Desde 2010, os bancos brasileiros são obrigados a publicar suas demonstrações financeiras anuais consolidadas em dois padrões contábeis diferentes, COSIF e IFRS. Este estudo buscou conhecer e apontar impactos do peculiar processo de adoção dos bancos brasileiros ao IFRS, tanto sob o ponto de vista de quem fornece as informações, quanto dos investidores. Para tanto, buscou-se inicialmente conhecer a população brasileira de bancos e quais as mudanças divulgadas em suas demonstrações financeiras. Por meio de uma análise comparativa das demonstrações financeiras, foram encontradas diferenças entre os valores publicados em praticamente todas as contas das DREs das instituições e com uma aparente independência entre as decisões de reclassificação uma vez que ocorreram em amplitudes e sentidos diferentes. Por meio de uma amostra de 16 bancos, observou-se que o Lucro Líquido apresentado em IFRS foi menor em nove e o Patrimônio Líquido aumentou em 14 bancos. Pela ótica dosinvestidores (usuários externos da informação) o impacto foi mensurado por meio de variações de valor de mercado e de um estudo de evento. Os resultados do estudo de evento evidenciaram a existência de retornos anormais acumulados (CAR) entre -16,9% e +12,5%, sugerindo que a adoção de IFRS foi Value Relevant. O relacionamento entre as variáveis foi obtido por meio de uma matriz de correlações de Spearman e indica que o mercado reagiu em sentido inverso ao risco, com correlação de -0,89. A reação do mercado foi mensurada pelo CAR e o risco pelos betas. Esta correlação fornece indícios de que o mercado reagiu mais negativamente a instituições de maior risco. Logo, pode-se supor que o novo padrão contábil apresentou informações que podem ter aumentado a percepção dos investidores ao risco. / Since 2010, Brazilian banks are required to publish their consolidated financial statements in accounting standards: IFRS and COSIF. This study aims to know and point impacts of particular adoption process of Brazilian banks to IFRS, both from the point of view of who provides the information and investors. It sought to know the population of Brazilian banks and the changes disclosed in its financial statements. The results showed differences between the values published in all accounts of Income Statement, in all institutions, with rare exceptions, and an apparent independence of the reclassification decisions as they occurred in different directions and amplitudes. Given a sample of 16 banks, net income presented in accordance with IFRS was lower in nine and equity increased by 14. From the standpoint of investors (external users of information) impact was measured through changes in market value and an event study. The results of the event study indicated the existence of cumulative abnormal returns between -16.9% and +12.5%, suggesting evidence that the adoption of IFRS was Value Relevant. The relationship between variables was obtained from a matrix of Spearman and showed evidence that the market reacted to the risk in reverse, with a correlation of -0.89. Market reaction was measured by the CAR and risk betas. This correlation points to evidence that the market reacted more negatively the greater the risk, where one can assume that the new accounting standard may have increased investors\' perception of risk.

In the context of continuous innovations in information and communication technology (ICT) and its impact on higher education, this descriptive study explores the state of instructional technology (IT) integration by university lecturers in pre-service secondary school teacher education programs in Zimbabwe. Specifically, the study examines how the lecturers conceptualize IT integration, how they integrate IT into their instruction, the support given by their institutions, and the constraints they face. The qualitative methodology used is basic or generic in nature (Merriam, 1998). Twenty-one lecturers in the colleges of education at 3 universities participated. The 3 data collection methods used are questionnaires, interviews and analysis of documents. Analysis of data was inductive and Miles and Huberman’s (1994) interactive data analysis model was employed. Findings show that the conceptualization of IT and its integration by the majority of the lecturers was largely as hardware in nature, with focus put on viewing technological tools as audiovisual aids. Lecturers with qualifications in educational technology (ET) viewed IT and its integration from what Schiffman (1995) calls a narrow systems view. Most of the lecturers used technological tools for illustrating key points in their lecture delivery and lecturers who used computers used these for lecture preparation. Lecturers’ computer proficiency and competencies were at the basic level in Internet usage, with little confidence shown in basic productivity software skills and in IT integration tasks and processes. The lecturers’ integration of IT was at the Entry and Adoption stages (Dwyer, Ringstaff and Sandholtz, 1991). Institutional support was characterized by poor availability and access to appropriate technological tools by both lecturers and students, and in the context of a hyper-inflationary operating environment, constraints ranged from lack of institutional funding, to the absence of an IT integration policy framework, and lack of appropriate initial and continuous staff development. This study is part of the genesis of instructional technology research in the Zimbabwean context. It is hoped that insights gleaned will influence policy, practice and future research. From a global perspective, this study will add to the limited knowledge and literature on instructional technology integration in “developing” and/or low-income countries like Zimbabwe.

Desde 2010, os bancos brasileiros são obrigados a publicar suas demonstrações financeiras anuais consolidadas em dois padrões contábeis diferentes, COSIF e IFRS. Este estudo buscou conhecer e apontar impactos do peculiar processo de adoção dos bancos brasileiros ao IFRS, tanto sob o ponto de vista de quem fornece as informações, quanto dos investidores. Para tanto, buscou-se inicialmente conhecer a população brasileira de bancos e quais as mudanças divulgadas em suas demonstrações financeiras. Por meio de uma análise comparativa das demonstrações financeiras, foram encontradas diferenças entre os valores publicados em praticamente todas as contas das DREs das instituições e com uma aparente independência entre as decisões de reclassificação uma vez que ocorreram em amplitudes e sentidos diferentes. Por meio de uma amostra de 16 bancos, observou-se que o Lucro Líquido apresentado em IFRS foi menor em nove e o Patrimônio Líquido aumentou em 14 bancos. Pela ótica dosinvestidores (usuários externos da informação) o impacto foi mensurado por meio de variações de valor de mercado e de um estudo de evento. Os resultados do estudo de evento evidenciaram a existência de retornos anormais acumulados (CAR) entre -16,9% e +12,5%, sugerindo que a adoção de IFRS foi Value Relevant. O relacionamento entre as variáveis foi obtido por meio de uma matriz de correlações de Spearman e indica que o mercado reagiu em sentido inverso ao risco, com correlação de -0,89. A reação do mercado foi mensurada pelo CAR e o risco pelos betas. Esta correlação fornece indícios de que o mercado reagiu mais negativamente a instituições de maior risco. Logo, pode-se supor que o novo padrão contábil apresentou informações que podem ter aumentado a percepção dos investidores ao risco. / Since 2010, Brazilian banks are required to publish their consolidated financial statements in accounting standards: IFRS and COSIF. This study aims to know and point impacts of particular adoption process of Brazilian banks to IFRS, both from the point of view of who provides the information and investors. It sought to know the population of Brazilian banks and the changes disclosed in its financial statements. The results showed differences between the values published in all accounts of Income Statement, in all institutions, with rare exceptions, and an apparent independence of the reclassification decisions as they occurred in different directions and amplitudes. Given a sample of 16 banks, net income presented in accordance with IFRS was lower in nine and equity increased by 14. From the standpoint of investors (external users of information) impact was measured through changes in market value and an event study. The results of the event study indicated the existence of cumulative abnormal returns between -16.9% and +12.5%, suggesting evidence that the adoption of IFRS was Value Relevant. The relationship between variables was obtained from a matrix of Spearman and showed evidence that the market reacted to the risk in reverse, with a correlation of -0.89. Market reaction was measured by the CAR and risk betas. This correlation points to evidence that the market reacted more negatively the greater the risk, where one can assume that the new accounting standard may have increased investors\' perception of risk.

Early research on just why it might be the case that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” suggested that denial of relevance was a significant factor. Asking why denial of relevance would be significant and how it might be resolved began to raise issues of the very nature of questions. Pursuing the nature of questions, in light of denial of relevance and Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” provoked a journey of modeling questions and constructing a biography of the initial question of this research and its evolution. Engaging literature from philosophy, neuroscience, and retrieval then combined with deep interviews of successful lawyers to render a thick, biographical model of questioning.

Sustainable development research makes use of various indicators for environmental monitoring without really focusing on quality and comparability of these indicators. This paper tries to lay down method of assessment of one of these indicators - the relevance. My method will be used for evaluating the indicators of ECI set - European Common Indicators, ten indicators of the Sustainable Urban Development, established by European Commission in cooperation with European cities. My method of evaluating the indicators is based on searching the keywords. One set of the keywords was specified for each indicator of ECI set and several sets of the keywords were specified for every indicator's theme. I collected data to establish three types of relevance - public, scientific and political relevance. Data for the public relevance were searched on World Wide Web by search engine Google, data for the scientific relevance were searched in the Google Scholar database and data for Political Relevance were searched in several official documents related to sustainable development. Public and scientific relevance were determined as a proportion of number of present keywords for the indicators and for their topics together and number of present keywords for the topics alone. Political relevance was determined as a...

<p>The use of contexts in school mathematics is receiving much attention both nationally and internationally. This as well as the scarcity of research focusing on the topic stimulated me to research the contexts preferred by learners of mathematics. The large-scale project is called the Relevance of School Mathematics Education (ROSME) project. The current study essentially deals with that section of the larger project which investigates the issues and situations that learners in grades eight, nine and ten would prefer to deal with in mathematics. Broadly, this study focuses on the contexts preferred by grade 8, 9 and 10 learners as a domain in which to embed school mathematics.</p>

This thesis uses insights from a modern theory of communication, Relevance Theory, to examine the function of certain particles - in particular the conjunction hina - in Koine Greek. This particle has been regarded from the time of Classical Greek as an introducer of purpose clauses and so has been thought to have the lexical meaning of ‘in order that.’ More recently, however, scholars have recognised that in the New Testament at least, no more than 60% of the uses of hina merit such a translation, with a considerable number of independent clauses being introduced by this particle also. Apart from the New Testament it is the case that pagan writers of Koine used this particle to introduce a wider range of clauses than merely those with a telic relationship to the main clause of the sentence. This is particularly noticeable in the Discourses of Epictetus, a philosopher who taught in the latter half of the first century of the Christian era. In addition, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a notable critic of literary style and the historian Polybius, both writing within the Koine period used hina to introduce indirect commands and noun clauses as well as purpose clauses. The frequency of such uses (approximately 10% of all the instances of this particle) in their writings is considerably less than that of Epictetus, but those uses are nevertheless present in their works. Since iota-nu-alpha was used for this wider range of clauses by pagan, non-Jewish authors, some of whom spoke Greek as their first language, it seems extremely implausible to attribute such use to the incompetence of the implied authors of the New Testament, or ‘Semitic interference’. Since the many instances of non-telic hina in the New Testament are identified with reference to the context in which they occur, the telic instances should also be deduced from such context. I claim that the function of this particle is not to introduce a purpose clause nor does it have a fixed lexical meaning of ‘in order that’, but rather that it alerts the reader to expect an interpretation of the thought of the speaker or implied author. Of course in many instances a clause introduced by hina will be a purpose clause, but this is inferred from context rather than solely from the presence of this particle. This thesis proposes a unified account of the function of hina which fits the developing pattern of the language and relates it to the particle 'hina', and provides a theoretical basis for its use as an indicator of speaker or subject’s thought, thus enabling a reader to re-examine biblical texts whose interpretation has been problematic to date.

While the original focus of pragmatics was spoken conversation, this approach has been increasingly used in the analysis of written and monological texts, e.g. advertisements (Tanaka, 1994), as a means of explaining how the meanings within them are generated and recovered through context. The range of texts subjected to pragmatics has thus far been somewhat limited and there is scope for applying pragmatics in other genres. The research for this essay was designed to explain the generation of implicatures in newspapers by relating a sample of articles to theoretical approaches offered within pragmatics, such as Relevance Theory and deixis. A number of semantic and stylistic devices are used in such articles, such as anaphora, metaphor and metonymy. These depend upon an expectation of reader familiarity with them and they are thus able to contribute to brevity and comprehension. While newspapers have been examined by scholars to some extent, the focus of these studies has been on headlines and not on entire articles. In this current study, three articles from different British tabloid papers were examined. The examination showed that the articles had many features in common and what was the most salient was that they require the reader to rely heavily on encyclopaedic knowledge. It turned out that writers keep their articles brief by withholding details or clarifying information from the reader, as they assume the reader are familiar with the phenomena mentioned. Anaphora is frequently used in tabloid newspaper articles as it also enables the writers to keep their articles brief, but also because it makes the articles more varied and less repetitive. Additionally, reader familiarity with metonymy, metaphor and deixis is necessary if the reader is to make sense of what an article means.

S’il est admis que notre attention est préférentiellement orientée vers les stimuli émotionnels, les dimensions du stimulus qui sont responsables d’un tel biais font toujours l’objet d’un débat. Contrairement aux conceptions classiques qui proposent que l’attention émotionnelle (i.e., l’amélioration du traitement de l’information émotionnelle) est guidée de façon bottom-up par la valence ou l’arousal, le Modèle des Processus Composants propose que l’attention émotionnelle est guidée de façon plutôt top-down par la pertinence des stimuli. Dans cette perspective, l’attention émotionnelle serait un mécanisme à part entière qui serait responsable d’une capture attentionnelle valence non-spécifique et automatique par les stimuli pertinents pour les buts et besoins de l’individu. De plus, un tel mécanisme serait guidé par l’appraisal de l’individu plutôt que par les caractéristiques intrinsèques du stimulus. Dans la première partie expérimentale de cette thèse, nous présentons plusieurs études qui ont été conduites afin de tester l’existence de ce mécanisme. Tout d’abord, les résultats de ces études ont révélé des effets de capture et d’interférence attentionnelles par des stimuli pertinents positifs et négatifs, ce qui est cohérent avec l’idée que l’attention émotionnelle est valence non-spécifique. Ensuite, ces études ont mis en évidence une modulation du biais attentionnel provoqué par un unique stimulus en fonction de sa pertinence, ce qui suggère que l’attention émotionnelle est guidée par l’appraisal de l’individu et non par les caractéristiques intrinsèques du stimulus. Enfin, les données soutiennent aussi l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’attention émotionnelle est automatique, puisque les stimuli pertinents ont provoqué une interférence alors même qu’il était explicitement demandé aux participants de ne pas les traiter. La seconde partie expérimentale de cette thèse s’intéressait à l’effet de la pertinence sur le comportement non-émotionnel subséquent à l’apparition d’un stimulus pertinent. Les résultats de l’étude présentée montrent que la pertinence influence le comportement de façon valence spécifique, en interaction avec les tendances à l’action. Ces données soutiennent aussi un modèle d’organisation des émotions selon deux systèmes motivationnels qui se déploient de l’orientation de l’attention vers la préparation à l’action. Enfin, la troisième partie expérimentale s’intéressait au traitement attentionnel de la pertinence chez une patiente ayant une lésion amygdalienne unilatérale. Les données ont montré une amplification du traitement des stimuli positifs pertinents, interprétée en termes d’effet de contre-régulation affective due à une sensibilité exacerbée de la patiente aux stimuli négatifs. Plus généralement, ce travail de thèse souligne l’importance de la notion d’appraisal, en particulier l’appraisal de pertinence, dans le guidage de l’attention émotionnelle, et dans la mise en œuvre du comportement. / If it is admitted that our attention is preferentially oriented toward emotional stimuli, there is no consensus on which stimulus dimension is responsible for such a bias. Contrary to classical conceptions that propose that emotional attention (i.e., the boosting of the processing of emotional information) is guided in a bottom-up way by negative valence or arousal, the Component Process Model posits that emotional attention is rather guided in a top-down way by the relevance of the stimulus. In that perspective, emotional attention would be a mechanism that can be reduced neither to exogenous nor to endogenous attention that would be responsible for an automatic and valence non-specific attention capture by stimuli that have and important place in the hierarchy of the goals and needs of an individual. Moreover, such a mechanism would be driven by the appraisal of the individual rather than by the intrinsic characteristics of the stimulus. In the first experimental part of this thesis, several studies were conducted in order to test the existence of such a mechanism. First, the results of these studies revealed both attentional captures and interferences by positive and negative relevant stimuli, which is consistent with the idea that emotional attention is valence non-specific. Second, these studies also showed a modulation of the attentional bias produced by a unique stimulus, as a function of its relevance, which suggests that emotional attention is driven by the appraisal of the individual rather than by the intrinsic characteristics of the stimulus. Third, the data also support the hypothesis that emotional attention is automatic, i.e., that it escapes voluntary control, because relevant stimuli provoked an attentional interference even if the participants were explicitly told not to process them. The second experimental part of the thesis focused on the effect of relevance on the non-emotional behaviour following the onset of a relevant stimulus. In this framework, the results of the study presented showed that relevance influences behaviour in a valence specific way, in interaction with action tendencies. The data also provide support to the organization of emotions in two motivational systems that evolve from attention orientation to action preparation. Eventually, the third experimental part dealt with the attentional processing of relevance in a patient with unilateral amygdala lesion. The presented study revealed an amplified processing of positive relevant stimuli that was interpreted in terms of an affective counter-regulation effect that could be caused by an exacerbated sensitivity of the patient to negative stimuli. On the whole this thesis points out the critical role played by the appraisal, particularly the appraisal of relevance, in the guidance of emotional attention, and in the implementation of behaviour.

Esta dissertação consiste em um estudo sobre os efeitos de sentido causados pelas obras literárias sob a ótica da semiótica greimasiana. O corpus analisado mais detidamente é a obra Anatomia de um romance, de Javier Cercas; também são analisados para comparação parte das obras 23-F: El golpe del Cesid, de Jesús Palacios, e Os três mosqueteiros, de Alexandre Dumas. Começando por uma reflexão sobre o objeto literário a partir do ponto de vista de uma metalinguagem não-científica, criou-se uma ponte entre a metalinguagem nãocientífica e a metalinguagem científica da semiótica greimasiana, tendo como base os conceitos desenvolvidos nos dois dicionários de semiótica. Os conceitos foram complementados pelo desenvolvimento de uma linha recente da semiótica, os níveis de pertinência. O corpus foi analisado conforme os níveis de pertinência, principalmente os níveis do texto enunciado, objeto, prática e estratégia. O efeito de sentido literário será considerado como dependente de diferentes níveis de pertinência e de forma gradual, podendo uma obra se estabelecer como mais ou menos literária dentro de um continuum. / This dissertation is a study on the effects of meaning caused by literary works from the perspective of greimasian semiotics. The corpus analyzed more closely Anatomia de um instante by Javier Cercas; They are also analyzed for comparison of the works 23-F: El golpe del CESID, Jesús Palacios, and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Starting with a reflection on the literary object from the point of view of an unscientific meta-language, it created a bridge between the non-scientific metalanguage and the scientific metalanguage of greimasian semiotics, based on the concepts developed in the two dictionaries semiotics. The concepts were complemented by the development of a new line of semiotics, the relevance levels. The corpus was analyzed according to the relevance levels, especially text, object, practice and strategy. The literary meaning effect will be considered as dependent on different levels of relevance and gradually, can a work be established as more or less literary within a continuum.