The concept of a ready-to-assemble kit fabricated in a factory and delivered to the customer is well known and commonly used by the furniture industry. In wood construction, the lack of a simple and reliable method of assembling the frame members creates a barrier to wide acceptance of prefabricated kit structures. This thesis focuses on a novel technology of assembling structural components of a wood frame using a metal nail plate connector (NPC). This technology was referred to as a ready-to-assemble (RTA) wood framing system. The RTA system simplifies the framing process and allows for rapid erection of a wood structural frame by a small nonprofessional crew. A 16 x 24 foot RTA building was constructed to demonstrate the feasibility of the RTA system concept. An effective assembly sequence was proposed and successfully implemented. The design procedure for the RTA buildings was presented. The lateral load path for the RTA building includes diaphragms and shear walls. The contribution of the RTA frame can be ignored from the lateral load analysis. This conclusion was validated for the diaphragms with aspect ratios up to 4:1. The finite element method was used to model the RTA structures. The models incorporated semi-rigid behavior of the NPC. An analytical model was developed to predict the nonlinear moment-rotation relationship of the NPC. The proposed model showed a good agreement (R2=0.98) with the experimental data. Tests were conducted to measure the load-drift response of the RTA shear walls. / Master of Science

Efforts to automate building rule checking have not brought us anywhere near to the ultimate goal to fully automate the rule checking process. With the advancement in BIM and the latest tools and computing capability, we have what is necessary to achieve it. And yet challenges still abound. This research takes a holistic approach to solve the issue by first examining the rule complexity and its logic structure. Three major aspects of the rules are addressed in this research. The first is a new approach to transform BIM data into a simple database schema and to make it easily query-able by adopting the data warehouse approach. Geometry and spatial operations are also commonly needed for automating rules, and therefore the second approach is to integrate these into a database in the form of multiple representations. The third is a standardized rule language that leverages the database query integrated with its geometry and spatial query capability, called BIMRL. It is designed for a non-programmatic approach to the rule definitions that is suitable for typical rule experts. The rule definition takes a form of triplet command: CHECK – EVALUATE – ACTION statement that can be chained to support more complex rules. A prototype system has been developed as a proof-of-concept using selected rules taken from various sources to demonstrate the validity of the approach to solve the challenges of automating the building rule checking.

South Africa implemented a simplified Turnover Tax system with effect from the commencement of years of assessment 1 March 2009 in order to help improve the culture of tax compliance. To date the number of applicants has not been significant and a potential reason for this is that it is not fair. Fairness and equality within a tax system is important in order to discourage evasion. The purpose of this research is to explore the perceived fairness of the current Turnover Tax system. Using the principles of a fair tax system as advanced by Adam Smith (1776) a correspondence survey was issued to identify whether the Turnover Tax principles enhance or undermine fairness. The criticisms and provisions of the Sixth Schedule to the Income Tax Act No. 58 of 1962 were investigated to determine whether Adam Smith’s (1776) maxims are promoted or undermined and in turn whether they are perceived as being fair or not. Based on the responses and analysis of the survey, it was deduced that the Turnover Tax system is not being perceived as completely fair. As a result changes need to be implemented to in order to improve the overall compliance and effectiveness of the tax.

Purpose: To introduce the simplified therapeutic intervention scoring system (TISS-28), the original therapeutic intervention scoring system (TISS-76) and simplified acute physiological score (SAPS) version II in critically ill adult patients, in order to describe the validity and reliability of TISS-28 as a suitable measure of quantifying nursing workload in the adult intensive care units (ICU) of a public sector hospital in Johannesburg. Objectives: To describe the profile of patient admissions to the intensive care units, to investigate the impact of the patients’ profile on the requirements for nursing workload and to validate the use of TISS-28 as a measure of quantifying nursing workload in this setting. Design: A non-experimental, comparative descriptive, correlational and prospective two-staged design was utilized to meet the study objectives. Stage I involved face and content validation of TISS-28 by a panel of ICU nurse experts (n=6). Stage II involved assessment of concurrent and construct validity as well as inter-rater reliability of TISS-28 using participants (n=105) drawn from trauma, cardiothoracic and multidisciplinary ICUs. Data necessary for the calculation of TISS-28, TISS-76 and SAPS II were recorded for each patient in the ICU at 24 and 48 hours after admission and in the wards after discharge within 24-48 hours. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data. Results: Content Validity Index (CVI) of 0.93 was found for TISS-28. A significant positive correlation was found between TISS-28 and TISS-76 scores (r = 0.7857, p = 0.0001) as well as TISS-28 and SAPS II scores (r = 0.2098, p = 0.0317). A significant difference was found between TISS-28 scores among patients in the ICU and patients in the ward (t = 25.59, p = 0.0001; t = 21.48, p = 0.0001) respectively. A significant correlation was found between the data collected from a sample of patients by the researcher and the expert assistant researcher with an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.99 and a p-value of 0.0001. Conclusions: The findings support validity and reliability of TISS-28 hence its feasibility for use in South African ICUs. Recommendations for nursing education, practice, management and research are proposed.

Det pågår en intensiv debatt i Sverige om revisionspliktens vara eller inte vara i små aktiebolag. Sverige är ett av få europeiska länder som fortfarande har kvar en lagstadgad revisionsplikt för samtliga aktiebolag, och debatten är även av än mer intresse när Svensk redovisnings- och revisionsstandard alltmer anpassas till internationell standard. Ett medlemsland i Europeiska Unionen har möjligheten att undanta små aktiebolag från revisionsplikt. Men på grund av rådande regler i Sverige ska alla aktiebolag följa samma regler, något som ifrågasätts i debatten. Debatten om revisionsplikten är aktuell och viktig eftersom ungefär 200 000 aktiebolag skulle påverkas om revisionsplikten skulle tas bort. Det övergripande syftet med uppsatsen är att bidra till debatten om revisionsplikt för små aktiebolag, genom att gå bakom “ja- och nejdebatte.” Vi kommer att beskriva och förklara attityderna till revisionsplikten, samt till de existerande redovisningsreglerna hos mikroföretag i två olika branscher. För att uppfylla syftet har vi genomfört en kvalitativ studie. Vi har intervjuat ägarna till sex mikroföretag från två olika branscher, nämligen organisationskonsulter och byggnadsentreprenörer. De viktigaste slutsatserna från den här studien är, att oberoende av deras respektive attityd till revisionsplikten är det ingen av respondenterna, som skulle vilja ta bort revisionsplikten för små aktiebolag. Vidare uppfattar respondenterna inom byggnadsentreprenörsbranschen redovisningsreglerna som mer komplicerade än respondenterna inom organisationskonsultbranschen och en förenkling av reglerna skulle inte förändra någon av respon-denternas attityd till revisionsplikten / There is an extensive debate going on in Sweden about the being or not being of the statutory audit for small limited companies. Sweden is one of the few European countries that still have a statutory audit for all limited companies, and the debate is even more of immediate interest when the Swedish accounting and auditing standards are converging more and more to international standards. A member state in the European Union has the possibility to exempt small limited companies from the statutory audit. But due to the current regulations in Sweden, all limited companies are to follow the same rules, which is questioned in the debate. This debate is a current and important issue due to that approximately 200 000 limited companies would be affected if the statutory audit would be abolished. The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the debate about the statutory audit for small limited companies, by moving beyond the “yes and no debate”. We will describe and explain the attitudes towards the statutory audit and the existing accounting regulations among micro companies in two different business sectors. In order to fulfil the purpose, we have conducted a qualitative study. We have interviewed the owners of six micro companies from two different business sectors, namely organizational consultants and building contractors. The main conclusions from this study are that independent of their respective attitudes towards the statutory audit, none of the respondents would like the statutory audit to be abolished for small limited companies. Further, the respondents within the building contractors business perceive the accounting rules as more complicated than the respondents within the organizational consultants sector do, and a simplification of regulation would not change any of the respondents’ attitudes towards the statutory audit.

Recently, Quality management has become the important management method of every enterprise especially the government which confront the government-own-civil-operate(GOCO) competitive trend in view of rapidly changing generation. This research aims at investigating the quality management system development of military organization (Example: military facility) in response of future mission demand. Furthermore, through analyzing the related documentation and questionnaire to build up a feasible model ¡§NEW QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM¡¨ which is composed of four main axes including of ¡¥Organization coordination¡¦, ¡¦Precise goal¡¦, ¡¥Simplified management¡¦, ¡¥Human-base value¡¦. The model not only evaluates the improved performance of efficiency, quality, cost in the facility, but also offers profit to a considerable extent and reference value for the current various governmental organization no matter what it might become civil-operative or not.

<p>Det pågår en intensiv debatt i Sverige om revisionspliktens vara eller inte vara i små aktiebolag. Sverige är ett av få europeiska länder som fortfarande har kvar en lagstadgad revisionsplikt för samtliga aktiebolag, och debatten är även av än mer intresse när Svensk redovisnings- och revisionsstandard alltmer anpassas till internationell standard. Ett medlemsland i Europeiska Unionen har möjligheten att undanta små aktiebolag från revisionsplikt. Men på grund av rådande regler i Sverige ska alla aktiebolag följa samma regler, något som ifrågasätts i debatten. Debatten om revisionsplikten är aktuell och viktig eftersom ungefär 200 000 aktiebolag skulle påverkas om revisionsplikten skulle tas bort.</p><p>Det övergripande syftet med uppsatsen är att bidra till debatten om revisionsplikt för små aktiebolag, genom att gå bakom “ja- och nejdebatte.” Vi kommer att beskriva och förklara attityderna till revisionsplikten, samt till de existerande redovisningsreglerna hos mikroföretag i två olika branscher.</p><p>För att uppfylla syftet har vi genomfört en kvalitativ studie. Vi har intervjuat ägarna till sex mikroföretag från två olika branscher, nämligen organisationskonsulter och byggnadsentreprenörer.</p><p>De viktigaste slutsatserna från den här studien är, att oberoende av deras respektive attityd till revisionsplikten är det ingen av respondenterna, som skulle vilja ta bort revisionsplikten för små aktiebolag. Vidare uppfattar respondenterna inom byggnadsentreprenörsbranschen redovisningsreglerna som mer komplicerade än respondenterna inom organisationskonsultbranschen och en förenkling av reglerna skulle inte förändra någon av respon-denternas attityd till revisionsplikten</p> / <p>There is an extensive debate going on in Sweden about the being or not being of the statutory audit for small limited companies. Sweden is one of the few European countries that still have a statutory audit for all limited companies, and the debate is even more of immediate interest when the Swedish accounting and auditing standards are converging more and more to international standards. A member state in the European Union has the possibility to exempt small limited companies from the statutory audit. But due to the current regulations in Sweden, all limited companies are to follow the same rules, which is questioned in the debate. This debate is a current and important issue due to that approximately 200 000 limited companies would be affected if the statutory audit would be abolished.</p><p>The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the debate about the statutory audit for small limited companies, by moving beyond the “yes and no debate”. We will describe and explain the attitudes towards the statutory audit and the existing accounting regulations among micro companies in two different business sectors.</p><p>In order to fulfil the purpose, we have conducted a qualitative study. We have interviewed the owners of six micro companies from two different business sectors, namely organizational consultants and building contractors.</p><p>The main conclusions from this study are that independent of their respective attitudes towards the statutory audit, none of the respondents would like the statutory audit to be abolished for small limited companies. Further, the respondents within the building contractors business perceive the accounting rules as more complicated than the respondents within the organizational consultants sector do, and a simplification of regulation would not change any of the respondents’ attitudes towards the statutory audit.</p>

Due to difficulties associated with formulating complex models and obtaining reliable estimates of unknown model parameters, modellers often use simplified models (SMs) that are structurally imperfect and that contain a smaller number of parameters. The objectives of this research are: 1) to develop practical and easy-to-use strategies to help modellers select the best SM from a set of candidate models, and 2) to assist modellers in deciding which parameters in complex models should be estimated, and which should be fixed at initial values. The aim is to select models and parameters so that the best possible predictions can be obtained using the available data and the modeller’s engineering and scientific knowledge. This research summarizes the extensive qualitative and quantitative results in the statistics literature regarding the use of SMs. Mean-squared error (MSE) is used to judge the quality of model predictions obtained from different candidate models, and a confidence-interval approach is developed to assess the uncertainties associated with whether a SM or the corresponding extended model will give better predictions. Nine commonly-applied model-selection criteria (MSC) are reviewed and analyzed for their propensities of preferring SMs. It is shown that there exist preferential orderings for many MSC that are independent of model structure and the particular data set. A new MSE-based MSC is developed using univariate linear statistical models. The effectiveness of this criterion for selecting dynamic nonlinear multivariate models is demonstrated both theoretically and empirically. The proposed criterion is then applied for determining the optimal number of parameters to estimate in complex models, based on ranked parameter lists obtained from estimability analysis. This approach makes use of the modeller’s prior knowledge about precision of initial parameter values and is less computationally expensive than comparable methods in the literature. / Thesis (Ph.D, Chemical Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2009-12-23 09:48:45.423

A number of studies seem to indicate that Extensive Reading (ER) enhances language proficiency in general and vocabulary knowledge in particular. However none of those surveyed focused on poorly motivated lower level language learners in a normal course of study that incorporated ER of unsimplified material, and few addressed partial vocabulary gain and the other factors that could have affected this. In this study the participants were young adult male Saudi Arabians, who were elementary English language learners and who were not used to reading for pleasure even in Arabic. Tests were used to gauge their partial vocabulary acquisition when they engaged in ER involving an open choice of simplified and unsimplified English material during a regular English preparatory course of just one semester. If ER could be linked to improved vocabulary acquisition in such difficult but natural conditions, the case for ER‘s wider implementation could be strengthened. The study also used diaries, surveys and interviews to delve into the reading habits, academic background and cultural context that could also explain any observed vocabulary gain. The results showed there were few statistically significant partial vocabulary gains after the ER programme, and although the experimental cohort that received the ER programme showed greater gains than the control in most of these cases, the difference was not large in terms of the absolute number of words. The diaries, surveys and interviews gave a rich profile of the participants with a level of detail that surpassed that of any other surveyed study, offering several possible reasons for their modest vocabulary gains and yielding unanticipated findings, such as an exposition of their motivations for academic study. It is concluded that a greater awareness of the learners‘ context is essential when applying ER, which in this particular context leads to the view that pure ER may not be suitable for vocabulary learning, and instead a significantly modified version could be more appropriate. These modifications include selecting appropriate books for the students and adding explicit vocabulary learning activities, and they even include linking the reading to the students‘ final grade. Further research is needed to gauge the effectiveness of such modifications, while a more inductive approach is also important when investigating ER and vocabulary acquisition to give the opportunity for unforeseen results to emerge.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(農学) / 甲第19028号 / 農博第2106号 / 新制||農||1030(附属図書館) / 学位論文||H27||N4910(農学部図書室) / 31979 / 京都大学大学院農学研究科食品生物科学専攻 / (主査)教授 入江 一浩, 教授 安達 修二, 教授 保川 清 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DGAM