No / Without making any distinction of the applicable accounting standards, this paper investigates, firstly, the value relevance of accounting information from 1999 to 2012 in different segments of the Chinese stock market. This investigation includes A-shares, prepared under Chinese Accounting Standards (CAS) for domestic firms; B-shares, prepared under either the International Accounting Standards (IAS) or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for both domestic and overseas firms; and H-shares prepared under either the IAS or Hong Kong GAAP for Hong Kong and overseas firms. Then, the paper examines whether or not the converged IFRS with CAS, applicable from 2007 onwards, is more value relevant when compared with prior to the 2007's standards (CAS, IAS, Hong Kong GAAP for A-share, B-share, and H-share markets, respectively). Based on 34,020 firm-year observations and after controlling for industry- and year-fixed effects, the findings suggest that accounting information is value relevant with A- and B-share markets, while it is partially relevant with the H-share market. The paper finds that the converged IFRS with CAS is more value relevant in A-shares and B-shares and it is partially more value relevant with the H-share market. These findings have implications for both policymakers and investors since they provide further empirical evidence for the current policy procedure which harmonizes local GAAP with IFRS.

No / A culturally sensitive approach needs to be adopted in disseminating evidence-based preventive programs internationally, and very little is known about effective dissemination into low-resource settings such as low and middle income countries. Following guidelines on optimizing the fit of evidence-based parenting programs worldwide, a cultural relevance study was conducted in Panama, Central America. Parents (N = 120) from low-resource communities were surveyed to explore cultural relevance of material from the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. Intention to participate and views on delivery formats and program features were also examined. Descriptive statistics and regressions were carried out to analyze the results. Parents found program materials highly relevant and reported that they would be willing to participate in a program if one was offered. A large proportion of the sample expressed a preference for self-directed formats such as books, articles and brochures (77.6 %). Regression analyses suggested that most parents considered material as relevant, interesting and useful, regardless of other factors such as socio-economic status, gender, the level of child behavioral difficulties, parental stress, parental confidence and expectations of future behavioral problems. The study provides a potential approach for dissemination of research and offers an insight into the needs and preferences of a particular segment of the world’s population—parents in low-resource settings. Strategies for meeting the needs and preferences of these parents in terms of service delivery are discussed.

No / Several international organizations have suggested the need for disseminating existing evidence-based parenting interventions into low-resource settings of the world in order to prevent societal difficulties such as violence. Before dissemination efforts take place, it is important to examine the fit of existing interventions in these contexts. In the present study, 80 practitioners from low-resource communities in Panama, Central America, were surveyed in order to explore their views on materials, principles and strategies of an evidence-based parenting program, the Triple P Positive Parenting Program. This study is part of a larger project in which cultural relevance was also explored from parents’ perspective, instruments were translated and validated, and a RCT was carried out to determine efficacy. Practitioners in the present study were psychologists, teachers, social workers and learning disability specialists based in school settings. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data and regression analyses were carried out in order to determine whether socio-demographic variables predicted acceptability scores. Scores for cultural relevance and usefulness of the program were high. A sample of material was found to be interesting, familiar, and acceptable. All practitioners (100 %) expressed a need to implement a parenting program in their community. Only being female and greater hours of consultation per week were associated with greater acceptability. These results have the potential to inform implementation efforts in Panama and the study offers a methodology which can be used to explore the relevance of other programs in other low-resource settings.

Quand des humains cherchent des informations au sein de bases de connaissancesou de collections de documents, ils utilisent un système de recherche d’information(SRI) faisant office d’interface. Les utilisateurs doivent alors transmettre au SRI unereprésentation de leur besoin d’information afin que celui-ci puisse chercher des documentscontenant des informations pertinentes. De nos jours, la représentation du besoind’information est constituée d’un petit ensemble de mots-clés plus souvent connu sousla dénomination de « requête ». Or, quelques mots peuvent ne pas être suffisants pourreprésenter précisément et efficacement l’état cognitif complet d’un humain par rapportà son besoin d’information initial. Sans une certaine forme de contexte thématiquecomplémentaire, le SRI peut ne pas renvoyer certains documents pertinents exprimantdes concepts n’étant pas explicitement évoqués dans la requête.Dans cette thèse, nous explorons et proposons différentes méthodes statistiques, automatiqueset non supervisées pour la représentation du contexte thématique de larequête. Plus spécifiquement, nous cherchons à identifier les différents concepts implicitesd’une requête formulée par un utilisateur sans qu’aucune action de sa part nesoit nécessaire. Nous expérimentons pour cela l’utilisation et la combinaison de différentessources d’information générales représentant les grands types d’informationauxquels nous sommes confrontés quotidiennement sur internet. Nous tirons égalementparti d’algorithmes de modélisation thématique probabiliste (tels que l’allocationde Dirichlet latente) dans le cadre d’un retour de pertinence simulé. Nous proposonspar ailleurs une méthode permettant d’estimer conjointement le nombre de conceptsimplicites d’une requête ainsi que l’ensemble de documents pseudo-pertinent le plusapproprié afin de modéliser ces concepts. Nous évaluons nos approches en utilisantquatre collections de test TREC de grande taille. En annexes, nous proposons égalementune approche de contextualisation de messages courts exploitant des méthodesde recherche d’information et de résumé automatique / When searching for information within knowledge bases or document collections,humans use an information retrieval system (IRS). So that it can retrieve documentscontaining relevant information, users have to provide the IRS with a representationof their information need. Nowadays, this representation of the information need iscomposed of a small set of keywords often referred to as the « query ». A few wordsmay however not be sufficient to accurately and effectively represent the complete cognitivestate of a human with respect to her initial information need. A query may notcontain sufficient information if the user is searching for some topic in which she is notconfident at all. Hence, without some kind of context, the IRS could simply miss somenuances or details that the user did not – or could not – provide in query.In this thesis, we explore and propose various statistic, automatic and unsupervisedmethods for representing the topical context of the query. More specifically, we aim toidentify the latent concepts of a query without involving the user in the process norrequiring explicit feedback. We experiment using and combining several general informationsources representing the main types of information we deal with on a dailybasis while browsing theWeb.We also leverage probabilistic topic models (such as LatentDirichlet Allocation) in a pseudo-relevance feedback setting. Besides, we proposea method allowing to jointly estimate the number of latent concepts of a query andthe set of pseudo-relevant feedback documents which is the most suitable to modelthese concepts. We evaluate our approaches using four main large TREC test collections.In the appendix of this thesis, we also propose an approach for contextualizingshort messages which leverages both information retrieval and automatic summarizationtechniques

Submitted by Viviane Lima da Cunha (viviane@biblioteca.ufpb.br) on 2017-03-30T11:54:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1621815 bytes, checksum: b23db6cd8d6f29f38f0e3c56fdda248b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-30T11:55:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1621815 bytes, checksum: b23db6cd8d6f29f38f0e3c56fdda248b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-07 / The objective of this paper was to analyze how the relation between the simultaneity of proxies of the earnings quality. It was sought to achieve this goal through the formulation of an empirical model of structural equations based on evidence presented by the review of literature about the earnings quality. The sample used in this study included the firms that traded shares in the US capital market from 1985 to 2015. It was used as proxies for earnings quality consolidated according to Dechow, Ge and Schrand (2010), which was earnings management used by Paulo (2007), quality of accruals (DECHOW; DICHEV, 2002) and value relevance by the model of prices (COLLINS; MAYDEW; WEISS, 1997), while for firms chacarteristics were used total debt and firm size. The initial results obtained by multiple linear regression showed, in general, that for the proxies quality of the accruals and value relevance the relations of the characteristics of the firms were presented according to the evidences of the literature (DECHOW; GE; SCHRAND, 2010); While for earnings management, the firm size relationship was positive, contrary to the literature. Regarding the measurement of the quality of information as a latent variable, that is, incorporating all the dimensions analyzed, the relationships corroborated the evidence pointed out in the literature, that is, the management of results reduced the quality of the accounting information and the quality of accruals and value relevance increased, whereas size was positively related to the earnings quality, while debt negatively impacted the quality of accounting information. Regarding the quality of the adjustment statistics, they did not meet the satisfactory statistical requirements, according to Marôco (2010), for validation of the tested model. Thus, measuring the earnings quality simultaneously by structural equations produces the effects capable of explaining the quality of accounting information as a latent variable when realigned with the characteristics of firms. / O objetivo deste trabalho foi analisar como se dá a relação entre a simultaneidade das proxies da qualidade da informação contábil. Buscou-se alcançar este objetivo através da formulação de um modelo empírico por equações estruturais baseado nas evidências apresentadas revisão da literatura acerca da qualidade da informação contábil. A amostra empregada neste estudo contou com as firmas que negociaram ações no mercado norte americano de capitais no período de 1985 a 2015. Utilizaram-se como proxies da qualidade da informação contábil variáveis consolidadas conforme Dechow, Ge e Schrand (2010), as quais foram o gerenciamento de resultados pelo modelo de Paulo (2007), qualidade dos accruals (DECHOW; DICHEV, 2002) e value relevance pelo modelo de preços (COLLINS; MAYDEW; WEISS, 1997), enquanto que para a característica das firmas utilizou-se o endividamento total e o tamanho das firmas. Os resultados iniciais realizados por regressão linear múltipla apontaram, de modo geral, que para as proxies qualidade dos accruals e value relevance as relações das características das firmas apresentaram-se de acordo com as evidências da literatura (DECHOW; GE; SCHRAND, 2010), ao passo que para o gerenciamento de resultados, a relação do tamanho da firma se mostrou positiva, contrariando a literatura. No que diz respeito a mensuração da qualidade da informação como variável latente, isto é, incorporando todas as dimensões analisadas, as relações corroboraram as evidências apontadas na literatura, ou seja, o gerenciamento de resultados reduziu a qualidade da informação contábil e a qualidade dos accruals e o value relevance a aumentaram, ao passo que o tamanho se relacionou positivamente com a qualidade da informação contábil, enquanto que o endividamento impactou negativamente a qualidade da informação contábil. No que diz respeito as estatísticas de qualidade do ajustamento, elas não alcançaram os requisitos estatísticos satisfatórios, de acordo com Marôco (2010), para validação do modelo testado. Sendo assim, mensurar a qualidade da informação contábil de forma simultânea por equações estruturais, produz os efeitos capazes de explicar a qualidade da informação contábil como variável latente quando relacionados com as características das firmas.

The aim of this research was to analyze the influence of comprehensive income volatility on the value relevance of accounting information of listed Brazilian companies. From the non-financial data released by Brazilian companies listed on the BM& FBOVESPA in the period between 2010 and 2014, it compared the volatility degree of comprehensive income (σRA) and income statement (σRE), aside from evaluate the association of market risk of Brazilian companies with the volatility of comprehensive income, income statement and other comprehensive income (σORA). It also verify whether the value relevance of these entities are associated with the volatility of comprehensive income, income statement and other comprehensive income, and/or the volatility of the components of other comprehensive income. In the data analysis, nonparametric statistical tools and models of multiple linear regression were utilized using panel data. The results show that the volatility of comprehensive income is statistically higher than the volatility of income statement. In addition, it was found that the volatility of income statement and comprehensive income exercise a significant and negative influence on the risk associated with the analyzed companies, and there is a significant and negative effect of other comprehensive income volatility on the risk of these entities. Moreover, it was found that there is a significant and positive influence on the volatility of income statement and the volatility of comprehensive income on the value relevance of the information reported by these companies. A likely explanation for these results relates to the brief moment of requirement and consequent dissemination of DRA, mandatory from the accounting year ending in 2010. Another factor relates to the low disclosure of other comprehensive income by Brazilian companies, which can impact on the understanding of the economic and financial situation of these entities. Likewise, it was found that there is a significant and negative influence of other comprehensive income volatility on the value relevance of the information reported by Brazilian companies, and only the variable related to gains/losses from hedging instruments (σHDEGit) had a significant influence and negative on the value relevance, whose results may show that there is a lack of clarity about the ORA components with regard to the measurement and disclosure of performance, suggesting that they may be perceived as mere \"trash\" to controversial issues. The results may be useful to agents of capital markets and accounting standard-setting bodies such as the CPC (Brazilian Accounting Pronouncements Committee) and the IASB, because they demonstrate that each of these measures (comprehensive income and income statement) have different but complementary roles. Demonstrate the influence of the comprehensive income volatility and its components on the risk and on the value relevance of accounting information can contribute to the discussion about the reasonableness of the separate disclosure in two different performance measures. / Com a presente pesquisa, buscou-se analisar a influência da volatilidade do resultado abrangente sobre a value relevance das informações contábeis de companhias abertas brasileiras. Dessa forma, a partir dos dados divulgados companhias brasileiras não financeiras listadas na BM&FBOVESPA no período compreendido entre 2010 a 2014, comparou-se o grau de volatilidade do resultado abrangente (σRA) e do resultado do exercício (σRE), além de se avaliar a associação do risco de mercado das companhias abertas brasileiras com a volatilidade do resultado abrangente, do resultado do exercício e dos outros resultados abrangentes (σORA), bem como verificar se a value relevance destas entidades está associada à volatilidade do resultado abrangente, do resultado do exercício e dos outros resultados abrangentes, e/ou com a volatilidade dos componentes dos outros resultados abrangentes. Na análise dos dados, foram empregados instrumentos estatísticos não paramétricos e modelos de regressão linear múltipla por meio de panel data. Os resultados permitiram evidenciar que a volatilidade do resultado abrangente é estatisticamente superior à volatilidade do resultado do exercício. Além disso, constatou-se que a volatilidade do resultado do exercício e do resultado abrangente exercem influências significativas e negativas sobre o risco associado às companhias analisadas, e que há influência significativa e negativa da volatilidade dos outros resultados abrangentes sobre o risco dessas entidades. Ademais, verificou-se que há influência significativa e positiva da volatilidade do resultado do exercício e da volatilidade do resultado abrangente sobre a value relevance das informações reportadas por essas companhias. Uma provável explicação para esses resultados refere-se ao pouco tempo de exigência e consequente divulgação da DRA, obrigatória a partir do exercício contábil findo em 2010. Outro fator refere-se à baixa divulgação dos outros resultados abrangentes por parte das companhias brasileiras, o que pode impactar na compreensão da situação econômico-financeiro dessas entidades. Outrossim, constatou-se que há influência significativa e negativa da volatilidade dos outros resultados abrangentes sobre a value relevance das informações reportadas por companhias abertas brasileiras, e que apenas a variável referente aos ganhos/perdas de instrumentos de hedge (σHDEGit) apresentou influência significativa e negativa sobre a value relevance, cujos resultados podem evidenciar que não há clareza sobre os componentes dos ORA no que diz respeito à mensuração e divulgação do desempenho, sugerindo que os mesmos podem estar sendo percebidos como mera \"lixeira\" para questões controversas. Os resultados evidenciados nesta pesquisa podem ser úteis para os agentes de mercados de capitais e para entidades normatizadoras, como o CPC e o IASB, pois demonstram que cada uma dessas medidas (resultado abrangente e resultado do exercício) têm papéis diferentes, mas complementares. Ao demonstrar a influência da volatilidade do resultado abrangente e seus componentes sobre o risco e sobre a value relevance das informações contábeis, contribui-se com a discussão acerca da razoabilidade da divulgação em separado de duas diferentes medidas de desempenho. / Mestre em Ciências Contábeis

This paper describes the way to realization such an application, where a user chooses a photo database to working with and enters a photo into the system. The system using a visual vocabulary finds the most similar photos from the database and offers tags of the searched photo with a suitable form based on the tag statistical analysis of this photo.

Czech party system can be described as relatively young compared to other, especially western European party systems. However in these days we can identify a number of regional parties inside it. This work answers the question how we can accurately identify which political entities belong to the group of regional parties in the context of the Czech Republic and which not. Likewise, it brings analysis of the position of these kinds of formations in the Czech political system. The theoretical part deals with the definition of "regional party". It brings several different theoretical approaches, which deal with the definition of that term, and then examines the application of the definition of regional parties to the case of the Czech Republic. In the analytical part, which is a case study, there is defined circuit of Czech regional parties. After that it is presented comprehensive analysis of these subjects on base of official documents of these parties, such as their articles of association, political program etc., as well as statistical data kept in the databases of central government authorities of the Czech Republic and interviews with members of selected regional formations. Particular attention is paid to these phenomena: the circumstances of creation of selected regional parties, as well as...

Morphing, ein Spezialeffekt zur Generierung eines Übergangs von einem Bild zum anderen, hat seinen Ursprung in der Filmindustrie, kann aber auch für kriminelle Zwecke missbraucht werden. Ein Zwischenbild eines Morphs, der das Gesicht einer Person in das einer anderen Person überführt, ähnelt beiden Gesichtern. Wenn ein solches Bild für einen Ausweis oder Reisepass verwendet wird, können beide behaupten, dessen Eigentümer zu sein. So könnten sich beide beispielsweise ein personengebundenes Verkehrsticket teilen oder es könnten illegal und unbemerkt Ländergrenzen überquert werden. Diese Dissertation stellt neue, auf neuronalen Netzen basierende Methoden zur Erkennung von Gesichtsmorphs und zur Lokalisierung von Fälschungsspuren vor. In Experimenten mit teilweise gemorphten Bildern wird gezeigt, dass die vorgestellten Detektoren in Kombination mit der vorgestellten Erklärbarkeitsmethode wesentlich genauer Fälschungsspuren lokalisieren können als andere gängige Methoden. Zum Trainieren der in der Arbeit entwickelten Detektoren wird eine große Menge an repräsentativen Daten benötigt. Daher legt diese Dissertation einen Schwerpunkt auf die automatische Erstellung von Gesichtsmorphs. Dazu stellt sie zwei Methoden vor, die Artefakte, die durch den Registrierungs- und Überblendungsschritt beim Morphing entstehen, deutlich reduzieren oder sogar vermeiden. Beide Verbesserungsmethoden ahmen die Möglichkeiten nach, die ein Angreifer durch manuelle Anpassungen hat. Die vorgestellten Detektoren wurden auf internen und externen Datensätzen evaluiert. Zusätzlich wurde ein Detektor bei einem international anerkannten Benchmark eingereicht. Dabei übertraf dieser andere Einreichungen in mehreren Kategorien deutlich. Zusammenfassend stellt diese Arbeit einen robusten und transparenten Detektor für gemorphte Gesichtsbilder vor, der Fälschungsspuren akkurat lokalisiert, mit dem Ziel einer nachvollziehbareren Klassifikation, sowie neue Methoden zur Erstellung von hochwertigen Gesichtsmorphs. / Morphing, as a smooth transformation of one image into another, originated in the cinematic industry. Beyond its entertainment applications, it can also be used for malicious purposes. An intermediate step of the morph from one person's face to that of a different one results in a synthetic face image that resembles both persons. If such an image is used for an ID card or passport, two individuals could claim ownership and share the associated privileges. Consequences can range from sharing a personal ticket for public transportation to entering a country unnoticed and without permission. This dissertation introduces novel methods for detecting morphed face images using Deep Neural Networks and proposes approaches to precisely identify traces of forgery. Experiments with partially morphed face images show that the proposed detection approaches in combination with this explainability method outperform other methods. A prerequisite for developing machine learning-based detectors is to have a substantial amount of representative data. Therefore, this thesis also emphasizes the automatic generation of morphed images and proposes two methods that mitigate artifacts caused by the alignment and blending step of the face morphing process. These improvement methods mimic the capabilities an attacker has through manual adjustments. The proposed detectors are evaluated on internal and on external datasets. Additionally, a proposed detector was submitted to an internationally renowned challenge. In this external benchmark, the submitted detector significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art submissions across multiple categories. As a summary, this thesis introduces a robust and transparent face morphing detector that is capable of highlighting detected traces of forgery to support humans in understanding the detector's decision, as well as advanced methods to improve the automatic generation of morphed face images.

The central issue of this study revolves around the necessity of the church to understand its essence in order to maintain a healthy balance between its identity and its relevance. The point of departure of this thesis is based on the supposition that in its attempt to remain relevant, the possibility exists that the church may in the process loose its identity. Yet on the other hand, the possibility exists that in its attempt to preserve its identity, the church may become irrelevant. While the point of departure of this study is based on the above premise, it is also postulated that it is essential for the church to reconsider the essence of its being, in order to fully appreciate the irrefutable meaning of church. Balance between identity and relevance seems nonexistent within the church unless the church understands the fundamental nature and real meaning of itself. In the Prolegomena, introductory remarks analyse the hypothesis as stated above, followed by an explanation of the research problem, a stimulus, the methodology applied, the purpose of the thesis, a chapter defining the terminology applied and a brief explanation of the close relationship between identity and relevance to other areas relative to the church as indicated in point 3 below. Within the thesis it is argued that the essence of the church is an attribute that every member of the church universal must necessarily partake of in order to belong thereto. Historical indications are employed whereby deductions can be made by which the essence, identity and relevance of the church may be demarcated. Discussions include: the origin and nature of the church; the current academic debate about the person of Jesus; the relationship between the kingdom and the church, and the implied current crisis of the church. The thesis closes with the formulation of the conclusion based on this research, namely that in order for the church to maintain a healthy balance between identity and relevance, theologians and church leaders - although situated in a variety of differing contexts - need to acquire a fresh understanding of the essence of the church and who constitutes the church / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)