Thesis (M.Soc.Chg.Dev.)--University of Wollongong, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 120-124.

This dissertation explores the pragmatic implications of judicial rhetoric found in a 1988 Supreme Court decision, i.e., this is a dissertation about public administration using constitutional law to illuminate an administrative question. My viewpoint is a legal/constitutional one which uses the law as pedagogue to inform public administration and to offer a useful message for the public administration practitioner. That message deals with a legal/constitutional distinction between publicness and privateness and the implications of that distinction. Quincy West was sentenced to prison in 1973 for armed robbery. While in prison he suffered a torn Achilles tendon for which he received inadequate medical care. After numerous attempts to obtain medical care, West filed suit against the prison physician contractor in federal courts for cruel and unusual punishment. This dissertation uses the story of West's legal efforts and the Supreme Court's decision in his case to discuss the broad implications of that decision for the public administration practitioner and government contractors. The lens is a constitutional one. The framework is John Rohr's schema for understanding a Supreme Court case: viewing that case from the institutional, concrete, dialectical, and pertinent perspectives. The specifics of West's allegations against his physician invite discussions of bioethical topics such as informed consent and medical legal topics such as malpractice and patient abandonment. The Court's determination of state action in West v. Atkins (1988) requires discussion of the administrative areas of contracts and grants administration as well as risk management. The complex responsibilities of the public administration practitioner are examined, as is his or her need to follow and independently learn from the messages included in the courts' interpretation of the law. This historic story illustrates that there is no bright line between law and policy. The Court's dialogue with itself is not merely interpretation and development of the law - it is policy reformulation. For this reason, among others, the conscientious administrator must monitor the Court's ongoing dialogue and listen attentively to its messages of import for our field and our practice. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:36:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 4482656 bytes, checksum: 11b85e413d691749edd8d5be0d8f56d4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Electronic games and, in particular, real-time strategy (RTS) games, are increasingly seen as viable and important fields for artificial intelligence research because of commonly held characteristics, like the presence of complex environments, usually dynamic and with multiple agents. In commercial RTS games, the computer behavior is mostly designed with simple ad hoc, static techniques that require manual definition of actions and leave the agent unable to adapt to the various situations it may find. This approach, besides being lengthy and error-prone, makes the game relatively predictable after some time, allowing the human player to eventually discover the strategy used by the computer and develop an optimal way of countering it. Using machine learning techniques like reinforcement learning is a way of trying to avoid this predictability, allowing the computer to evaluate the situations that occur during the games, learning with these situations and improving its behavior over time, being able to choose autonomously and dynamically the best action when needed. This work proposes a modeling for the use of SARSA, a reinforcement learning technique, applied to combat situations in RTS games, with the goal of allowing the computer to better perform in this fundamental area for achieving victory in an RTS game. Several tests were made with various game situations and the agent applying the proposed modeling, facing the game's default AI opponent, was able to improve its performance in all of them, developing knowledge about the best actions to choose for the various possible game states and using this knowledge in an efficient way to obtain better results in later games / Jogos eletrônicos e, em especial, jogos de estratégia em tempo real (RTS), são cada vez mais vistos como campos viáveis e importantes para pesquisas de inteligência artificial por possuírem características interessantes para a área, como a presença de ambientes complexos, muitas vezes dinâmicos e com múltiplos agentes. Nos jogos RTS comerciais, o comportamento do computador é geralmente definido a partir de técnicas ad hoc simples e estáticas, com a necessidade de definição manual de ações e a incapacidade de adaptação às situações encontradas. Esta abordagem, além de demorada e propícia a erros, faz com que o jogo se torne relativamente previsível após algum tempo, permitindo ao jogador eventualmente descobrir a estratégia utilizada pelo computador e desenvolver uma forma ótima de enfrentá-lo. Uma maneira de tentar combater esta previsibilidade consiste na utilização de técnicas de aprendizagem de máquina, mais especificamente do aprendizado por reforço, para permitir ao computador avaliar as situações ocorridas durante as partidas, aprendendo com estas situações e aprimorando seu conhecimento ao longo do tempo, sendo capaz de escolher de maneira autônoma e dinâmica a melhor ação quando necessário. Este trabalho propõe uma modelagem para a utilização de SARSA, uma técnica do aprendizado por reforço, aplicada a situações de combate em jogos RTS, com o objetivo de fazer com o que o computador possa se portar de maneira mais adequada nessa área, uma das mais fundamentais para a busca da vitória em um jogo RTS. Nos testes realizados em diversas situações de jogo, o agente aplicando a modelagem proposta, enfrentando o oponente padrão controlado pela IA do jogo, foi sempre capaz de melhorar seus resultados ao longo do tempo, obtendo conhecimento acerca das melhores ações a serem tomadas a cada momento decisório e aproveitando esse conhecimento nas suas partidas futuras

A pilot study by Subramanian et al. on Markov decision problem task decomposition by humans revealed that participants break down tasks into both short-term subgoals with a defined end-condition (such as "go to food") and long-term considerations and invariants with no end-condition (such as "avoid predators"). In the context of Markov decision problems, behaviors having clear start and end conditions are well-modeled by an abstraction known as options, but no abstraction exists in the literature for continuous constraints imposed on the agent's behavior. We propose two representations to fill this gap: the state constraint (a set or predicate identifying states that the agent should avoid) and the state-action constraint (identifying state-action pairs that should not be taken). State-action constraints can be directly utilized by an agent, which must choose an action in each state, while state constraints require an approximation of the MDP’s state transition function to be used; however, it is important to support both representations, as certain constraints may be more easily expressed in terms of one as compared to the other, and users may conceive of rules in either form. Using domains inspired by classic video games, this dissertation demonstrates the thesis that explicitly modeling this negative policy information improves reinforcement learning performance by decreasing the amount of training needed to achieve a given level of performance. In particular, we will show that even the use of negative policy information captured from individuals with no background in artificial intelligence yields improved performance. We also demonstrate that the use of options and constraints together form a powerful combination: an option and constraint can be taken together to construct a constrained option, which terminates in any situation where the original option would violate a constraint. In this way, a naive option defined to perform well in a best-case scenario may still accelerate learning in domains where the best-case scenario is not guaranteed.

The purpose of this study is to trace the judicial history of the disintegration of the traditional concept of "state action" and the consequent development of the new concept that the prohibitions of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments apply to private action among individuals.

Submitted by Patricia Alencar Silva MELLO (patricia.mello@gvmail.br) on 2015-05-11T14:57:54Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação FINAL.pdf: 2803233 bytes, checksum: 0181e80c0079098d7afa58ac0a859c47 (MD5) / Rejected by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br), reason: Boa tarde Patrícia, Por favor, tirar o nome do curso na capa. Att. Suzi 3799-7876 on 2015-05-11T15:49:57Z (GMT) / Submitted by Patricia Alencar Silva MELLO (patricia.mello@gvmail.br) on 2015-05-12T00:06:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Final.pdf: 2803646 bytes, checksum: fffd16d5739f088ca56279b96d5651c3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2015-05-12T14:03:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Final.pdf: 2803646 bytes, checksum: fffd16d5739f088ca56279b96d5651c3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-12T15:50:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Final.pdf: 2803646 bytes, checksum: fffd16d5739f088ca56279b96d5651c3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-15 / O presente trabalho objetiva investigar a arquitetura jurídico-institucional de um ambiente inovativo denominado parque tecnológico. Este é um arranjo imobiliário que conta com os elementos da chamada tríplice hélice - academia, setor privado e Estado. Almeja a transformação do conhecimento em desenvolvimento, por meio de atividades fundadas em ciência, tecnologia e inovação (C&T&I). A pretensão é contribuir com a premissa de que esses arranjos são frutos da nova lógica econômica baseada no conhecimento e da atual concepção sistêmica de inovação que exige interdependência e interação dos seus agentes. Dentre esses destacamos, o Estado, por ser o ator mais paciente por resultados e o potencial idealizador, fomentador e articulador de processos inovativos sistemicamente pensados. A estratégia Estudo de Caso Único foi eleita para observar, em detalhes, a arquitetura jurídico-institucional do Parque Tecnológico de São José dos Campos, bem como para, a partir de um olhar jurídico-institucional, retirar aprendizados dessa experiência que possam ser aproveitados em novas modelagens de parques tecnológicos e de políticas públicas que focam a estruturação de ambientes inovativos sistêmicos. Foram priorizados exames qualitativos: (i) da sua fisiologia jurídico-institucional; (ii) dos agentes envolvidos e das respectivas amarrações jurídicas estabelecidas; (iii) da influência do Estado e das políticas públicas que o permeiam; (iv) do seu processo de implantação e desenvolvimento; e (v) dos desafios jurídico-formais e jurídico-institucionais que enfrenta. Compreendeu-se que parques tecnológicos são estruturados como arranjos híbridos, segundo a lógica da inovação em sistema, em que os elementos da tríplice hélice atuam em sinergia a partir da ativa atuação do Estado. Sua arquitetura jurídico-institucional decorre da aplicação de tecnologias de contratação e de regulação aplicadas em ambientes alicerçados em fatores institucionais específicos. / This study aims to investigate the legal and institutional architecture of an innovative environment called Technology Park. This is a real estate arrangement that involves the so- called triple helix elements - academia, private sector and government and intends to transform knowledge into development through activities based on science, technology and innovation. The intention is to contribute with the premise that these arrangements are the result of the new knowledge-based economy and the current system of innovation concept that requires interdependence and interaction between different actors. Among them we stressed the State that can be patient for results and that is the potentially creator, developer and coordinator of systemic innovative process in diverse places. The single case study strategy was chosen to observe in detail the juridical structure of the São José dos Campos Technology Park and to learn lessons that can help new models of technology parks and public policies that address the structuring of innovative environments. We prioritized the examination of: (i) its legal and institutional physiology; (ii) the players involved and their legal binds; (iii) the influence of the state and public policies that permeated it; (iv) its implementation and development; and (v) formal and institutional challenges that it faces. It was understood from the case studied, that technology parks are to be structured as hybrid arrangements, according to the innovation system theory, in which the elements of the triple helix act in synergy with an active state action. Its juridical and institutional architecture derives from contracting and regulation technologies applied in environments built upon specific institutional factors.

Proteins are considered the primary actors in living organisms. Proteins mainly perform their functions by interacting with other proteins. Protein-protein interactions underpin various biological activities such as metabolic cycles, signal transduction, and immune response. PPI identification has been addressed by various experimental methods such as the yeast two-hybrid, mass spectrometry, and protein microarrays, to mention a few. However, due to the sheer number of proteins, experimental methods for finding interacting and non-interacting protein pairs are time-consuming and costly. Therefore a sequence-based framework called ProtInteract is developed to predict protein-protein interaction. ProtInteract comprises two components: first, a novel autoencoder architecture that encodes each protein's primary structure to a lower-dimensional vector while preserving its underlying sequential pattern by extracting uncorrelated attributes and more expressive descriptors. This leads to faster training of the second network, a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) that receives encoded proteins and predicts their interaction. Three different scenarios formulate the prediction task. In each scenario, the deep CNN predicts the class of a given encoded protein pair. Each class indicates different ranges of confidence scores corresponding to the probability of whether a predicted interaction occurs or not. The proposed framework features significantly low computational complexity and relatively fast response. The present study makes two significant contributions to the field of protein-protein interaction (PPI) prediction. Firstly, it addresses the computational challenges posed by the high dimensionality of protein datasets through the use of dimensionality reduction techniques, which extract highly informative sequence attributes. Secondly, the proposed framework, ProtInteract, utilises this information to identify the interaction characteristics of a protein based on its amino acid configuration. ProtInteract encodes the protein's primary structure into a lower-dimensional vector space, thereby reducing the computational complexity of PPI prediction. Our results provide evidence of the proposed framework's accuracy and efficiency in predicting protein-protein interactions.

本文以國家行動為研究目標，意欲探究的是中共政治行動對農民抗議產生的影響以及遭遇農民抗議時中共政治行動的回應。其中，主要探討的是中共中央與地方行動上的差異性。兩者行動上的差異在本文中一方面認定為導致農民抗議產生的外部環境因素（即政治機會），一方面據以探究面對農民抗議時中共中央與地方在回應時所採取的政治行動分別為何。 本文以政治機會結構理論及國家與社會互動理論作為研究理論，並在「中央—地方—農民」三分的分析框架下，提出中央與地方的差異作為研究面向。整理農民抗議的定義、特點、方式、類型及成因時，並討論與之相關的農民權益。在探究行動上的差異對農民抗議的影響以及面對農民抗議時中央與地方的各自行動時，本文從稅費問題及土地徵用來看行動差異對農民抗議的影響，而中央政府的回應行動包括國家重建、事件定調、策略防範以及守住底線。基層政權的回應行動則分別就「官方論調」、「力量對比」、「對上訪時幹部行動的參酌」、「秩序共識下的行動劇碼」，以及「角色扮演」等予以解讀。 / State action is regarded as the research target, intending for the influence on peasant protest by PRC’s action and the response to peasant protest by PRC. Focusing on these two topics, action discrepancy in central-local relations is what I’d like to discuss in this research. For one thing, action discrepancy is seen as the outer environmental factor that brings about the begin of peasant protest. For another, based on action discrepancy,while responding to peasant protest, what the central do and what the local do can be explored. Based on the political opportunity structure theory and the state-society interaction theory, and analyzed on the framework of “central-local–peasant” tripartition, this research presents the discrepancy in central-local relations as main dimension. While definitions, characters, measures, types, and reasons concerning peasant protest are organized, peasant rights and interests are also discussed. The influence on peasant protest by action discrepancy and the actions separately by the central and the local when encountering peasant protest are then explored. This research examines the influence through tax-fee problem and land expropriation, and then concludes that the central actions include state-rebuilding, affair-identifying, strategy-guarding, and deadline-defending, and moreover, interprets the local regime’s actions in such ways like “official-like statement”, “power contrast”, “reference to local cadres’action toward peasant appealings to higher levels(shangfang)”, “act performance on the consensus of order”, and “role play”.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:48:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vinicius Gontijo Lauar.pdf: 347182 bytes, checksum: bc6816345331a10fe7480489968af1c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-06-27 / Regarding the Argentine economy, more unexpected than the economic chaos of 2001-2002, when the GNP has fallen 11%, a default was declared and it has irrupted with the convertibility regime, was the inversion of the economic tendency, which was remarked by an uninterrupted annual growth of 8.5% until 2006. The objective of this research is the comprehension of the period characterized by the accentuated recovery of the crisis passed by that country. In order to do so, we have written three papers related to the reconstruction of such economy. In the first one it s analyzed the convertibility, regime present in the 90 s, and the dynamics that conduced to economy crisis. The second paper treats issues centered in Argentina post-convertibility, with special regard to the aspects of the ruptures generated by the crises that explain the recovery. The third analyses the debate regarding some interpretations of the Argentine experience, with focus in the causes and consequences of the contracts ruptures and discretionary state action in the economic policy. As assumption, we see the govern measures along with the end of the convertibility model as essential to the return of positive growth rates and macroeconomic stability. Our framework stands in the keynesian and structuralist theories, mainly based in the works of Frenkel, Damill, Heymann and Calcagnno / Em se tratando de economia argentina, mais inesperado que o caos econômico de 2001-2002, quando o PIB caiu 11%, decretou-se uma moratória recorde e rompeu-se com a conversibilidade, foi a inversão da tendência econômica, marcada por um crescimento médio anual ininterrupto de 8,5% até 2006. O objetivo deste trabalho é a compreensão do período caracterizado pela recuperação acentuada da crise atravessada por aquele país. Para tal, foram elaborados três artigos relativamente independentes relacionados à reconstrução de tal economia. No primeiro, analisa-se a conversibilidade, regime vigente nos anos noventa, e a dinâmica que conduziu à crise. O segundo artigo trata de questões centradas na Argentina pós-conversibilidade, com especial atenção para os aspectos das rupturas geradas na crise que explicam a recuperação. O terceiro analisa o debate sobre algumas interpretações da experiência argentina, com ênfase nas causas e conseqüências da ruptura de contratos e da ação discricionária do Estado na política econômica. Como hipótese, colocamos as medidas do governo juntamente à ruptura com o modelo de conversibilidade como fundamentais para o retorno das taxas de crescimento e da estabilidade macroeconômica. Nosso arcabouço teórico apóia-se nas teorias keynesiana e estruturalista, baseada, fundamentalmente, nos trabalhos de Frenkel, Damill, Heymann e Calcagno

A presente dissertação é sobre a atuação do Estado na economia como acionista minoritário, focando, em especial, no caso do Brasil. Em um primeiro momento, tratamos das possibilidades do uso das participações minoritárias, apontando que, embora estejamos falando de propriedade pública sobre parcelas do capital social de empresas privadas, essas participações não configuram, somente, forma de exploração direta da atividade econômica, devendo ser compreendidas como uma técnica jurídica ou uma ferramenta da qual o Estado pode se valer para realizar as diferentes modalidades de atuação na economia. Nesse sentido, mostramos como as participações minoritárias possibilitam a atuação do Estado como empresário, regulador, fomentador e investidor. Em seguida, falamos dos mecanismos societários que a Administração Pública pode utilizar para que, mesmo como acionista minoritária, possa influenciar a direção das empresas público-privadas, tais como os acordos de acionistas e as golden-shares. Após cuidarmos da natureza jurídica e das vantagens comparativas da atuação estatal na economia por meio de participações minoritárias, passamos a analisar os limites dessa atuação. Desse modo, deve-se distinguir entre o uso das participações públicas como opção legítima de atuação na economia versus sua aplicação como burla ao regime jurídico aplicável às empresas estatais mediante o controle societário disfarçado e a simulação de contratações administrativas. Por fim, tratamos da questão da escolha de parceiros privados pela Administração Pública, bem como dos controles públicos que incidem sobre as empresas participadas. / This dissertation is about the state action in the economy as a minority shareholder especially focusing on the Brazilian case. At first, we discuss the possibilities of the use of minority equity stakes pointing out that, although we are talking about public ownership of shares of private companies, this equity participations do not constitute only a means of direct exploration of an economic activity, instead they should be considered as a legal technique or a tool which the state can rely on to accomplish the different modalities of economic action. This way, we show how the minority positions enable the state to act as an entrepreneur, a regulator, a promoter of private action and an investor. Then we talk about the corporate mechanisms that the Public Administration can use to, even as a minority shareholder, influence the direction of public-private companies, such as shareholders agreements and golden-shares. After dealing with the legal nature and the comparative advantages of the state economic action as a minority shareholder, we proceed to examine the limits of such action. Thus, we must distinguish between the use of minority equity as a legitimate option of state action in the economy versus its application as a way to elude the legal framework applicable to the state-owned enterprises by the disguised corporate control of private companies and the simulation of administrative procurement. At last, we deal with the issue of the choice of private partners by the Public Administration, as well as the public controls which apply to the invested companies.