Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:52:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MarceloLRLL.pdf: 442281 bytes, checksum: ea5eb296d07cc8f9e05c442911ddad1a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-19 / This essay aims to analyze different aspects regarding employees satisfaction about their work environment in order to preparethem to deal with quality programs. The study was developed through field and bibliographic research, which was turn in to a comparative analysis between the results obtained in a pilot research and the results from a final research applied to Brazilian Mail enterprise that got the bronze award of the Federal Government Quality Award. The main issue is to define where to act so that employees will be ready to deal with a quality program, identifying why they consider important, their influence in the insertion of the program and the relationship between satisfaction in the work environment and the success of such insertion / Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar aspectos inerentes ? satisfa??o das pessoas no ambiente de trabalho, a fim de torn?-las preparadas para receber a implanta??o de programas de qualidade. O estudo foi empreendido atrav?s de uma pesquisa bibliogr?fica e uma pesquisa de campo, resultando numa an?lise comparativa dos resultados obtidos numa pesquisa inicial aleat?ria com os resultados obtidos numa pesquisa final aplicada na Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Tel?grafos, detentora da men??o bronze no Pr?mio de Qualidade do Governo Federal. A principal quest?o estudada diz respeito a onde atuar para que as pessoas estejam preparadas para receber um programa de qualidade, identificando aspectos que elas consideram importantes, como ? sua influ?ncia na implanta??o de um programa e qual a rela??o entre a satisfa??o no ambiente de trabalho e o sucesso dessa implanta??o

The presented thesis focuses on the comparison of the Tel Arad sanctuary with other Judean archeological sites (Beersheba, Lachish, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Tel Moza, Tel Halif), where an archaeological evidence of cultic places from the Iron Age IIa-b was found. A realistic reconstruction of the Arad and the Judean cults in the light of the latest findings was possible only after a research of epigraphic materials from Kuntillet Ajrud, Khirbet el-Qom and Khirbet Beit Lei. The thesis also analyzes the smaller cultic artefacts which are connected to the popular religion. The first evidence of the Judean cult dates back to the late 11th or early 10th century B.C.E. and was found in Khirbet Qeiyafa. Nevertheless, most of the findings are from the official legitimate and illegitimate cultic sites of the 8th century B.C.E. In the end, they were canceled by different rendition (e.g. they were abandoned, dismantled or buried under the layer of earthen fill). Many of the archaeological sites are still under excavation, which means, that the collection of the material culture is going to be larger and significantly more varied. We can use these artifacts to reconstruct and understand ancient Judean cult. There is a high possibility that the new future findings will challenge original theories from the last decades....

The presence of computer technologies in our daily life is growing by leaps and bounds. One of the recent trends is the use of mobile technologies and cloud services for supporting everyday tasks and the sharing of information between users. The field of education is not absent from these developments and many organizations are adopting Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in various ways for supporting teaching and learning. The field of Mobile Learning (M-Learning) offers new opportunities for carrying out collaborative educational activities in a variety of settings and situations. The use of mobile technologies for enhancing collaboration provides new opportunities but at the same time new challenges emerge. One of those challenges is discussed in this thesis and it con- cerns with uncertainties related to the dynamic aspects that characterized outdoor M-Learning activities. The existence of these uncertainties force software developers to make assumptions in their developments. However, these uncertainties are the cause of risks that may affect the required outcomes for M-Learning activities. Mitigations mechanisms can be developed and included to reduce the risks’ impact during the different phases of development. However, uncertainties which are present at runtime require adaptation mechanisms to mitigate the resulting risks. This thesis analyzes the current state of the art in self-adaptation in Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) and M-Learning. The results of an extensive literature survey in the field and the outcomes of the Geometry Mobile (GEM) research project are reported. A list of uncertainties in collaborative M-Learning activities and the associated risks that threaten the critical QoS outcomes for collaboration are identified and discussed. A detailed elaboration addressing mitigation mechanisms to cope with these problems is elaborated and presented. The results of these efforts provide valuable insights and the basis towards the design of a multi-agent self-adaptive architecture for multiple concerns that is illustrated with a prototype implementation. The proposed conceptual architecture is an initial cornerstone towards the creation of a decentralized distributed self-adaptive system for multiple concerns to guarantee collaboration in M-Learning.

La création d'une maquette numérique d'un bâtiment existant nécessite le relevé du bâtiment. Le scanner laser terrestre est largement utilisé pour atteindre cet objectif. Il permet d'obtenir la géométrie des objets sous forme de nuages de points. Il fournit une grande quantité de données précises de manière très rapide et avec un niveau élevé de détails. Malheureusement, le passage du nuage de points à la maquette numérique reste actuellement largement manuel en raison du volume important de données et des processus qui sont difficiles à automatiser. Cette démarche est chronophage et source d'erreurs. Un défi majeur aujourd'hui est donc d'automatiser le processus menant à la reconstruction 3D de bâtiments existants à partir de nuages de points. L'objectif de cette thèse est de développer une chaîne de traitements permettant d'extraire automatiquement le maximum d'informations du nuage de points d'un bâtiment en vue d'intégrer le résultat dans un logiciel de BIM. / The creation of an as-built BIM requires the acquisition of the as-is conditions of existing buildings. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is widely used to achieve this goal. Indeed, laser scanners permit to collect information about object geometry in form of point clouds. They provide a large amount of accurate data in a very fast way and with a high level of details. Unfortunately, the scan-to-BIM process remains currently largely a manual process because of the huge amount of data and because of processes, which are difficult to automate. It is time consuming and error-prone. A key challenge today is thus to automate the process leading to 3D reconstruction of existing buildings from point clouds. The aim of this thesis is to develop a processing chain to extract the maximum amount of information from a building point cloud in order to integrate the result in a BIM software.

People counting system involves the process of counting and estimating the number of people in a scene. The counting system has a number of useful applications, ranging from pedestrian traffic surveillance and monitoring the number of people that enters and leaves shopping malls to commercial buildings, vehicles and a number of other security-related applications. Over the years, significant progress has been made. However, people counting systems still have not overcome a number of challenges such as occlusions, human pose and direction, multiple people detection, varying lighting and weather conditions. The aim of this research is to present an optimal solution that is invariant to the challenges. That is, the outcome of the results will not be affected by the challenges. Also, the solution will handle the trade-off between the counting accuracy and the time it takes to implement the counting process. As a result, a new background subtraction method known as single pixel method is proposed. This is where useful features are collected from each scene using frame difference method. Then, these features are reduced into single pixels. The single pixels are then used to estimate the total number of people in the scene. Furthermore, a virtual-line direction-estimation method is presented where the directions in which the people are heading are estimated prior to counting. AFRIKAANS : Mense-telstelsels behels die proses van die tel en die beraming van die aantal mense op ’n toneel. Die telstelsel het ’n aantal nuttige toepassings wat wissel van voetgangerverkeer toesig en die monitering van die aantal mense wat binnekom en verlaat tot winkelsentrums, kommersiële geboue, voertuie, en ’n aantal ander sekuriteit-verwante programme. Oor die jare is beduidende vordering gemaak. Daar is egter ’n aantal uitdagings wat mense-telstelsels nog nie oorkom het nie, soos afsluiting, menslike inhou en rigting, die opsporing van veelvoudige mense, wisselende beligting en weerstoestande. Die doel van hierdie navorsing is om ’n optimale oplossing aan te bied, wat invariant is teen die uitdagings. Met ander woorde, die uitdagings sal nie die resultate affekteer nie. Die oplossing sal ook die uitruil tussen die tel akkuraatheid en die implementeringstyd van die telproses hanteer. As gevolg hiervan, is ’n nuwe agtergrondaftrekkingsmetode, wat bekend staan as ’n enkele beeldelement metode, voorgestel. Dit is waar die nuttige funksies van elke toneel, met behulp van die raamverskilmetode ingesamel word. Dan word hierdie eienskappe in enkele beeldelemente verminder. Die enkele beeldelemente word dan gebruik om die totale aantal mense in die toneel te skat. Verder is daar van ’n virtuele-lyn rigting-skatting metode gebruik gemaak wat die rigtings waarin die mense beweeg vooraf beraam. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

This thesis presents extended program notes for a seventy-minute vocal graduate recital consisting of the following repertoire for tenor: Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Ich armer Mensch ich Sündenknecht; two songs from the eighteenth-century Spanish collection Tonadillas Escénicas; Gaetano Donizetti's song La derniére nuit d'un novice; Francis Poulenc's song cycle Tel jour telle nuit; Jake Heggie's song cycle Friendly Persuasions; and John Corigliano's Three Irish Folk Songs for Flute and Tenor. Spanning four centuries of music and representing four different language traditions, these works are sufficiently representative of the tenor repertoire. The content of this thesis features detailed information on these works through historical study, and musical analysis.

Notre travail de recherche s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet de recherche REDiM (Réingénierie des EIAH Dirigée par les Modèles) qui porte sur la réingénierie d'un scénario pédagogique. Il se focalise plus précisément sur l'analyse de traces collectées en session par un EIAH pour fournir à l'enseignant des indicateurs calculés.Dans notre contexte de travail, UTL (Usage Tracking Language) permet de définir des indicateurs sous une forme proche des patrons de conception. Il a été conçu pour répondre aux questions de capitalisation et de réutilisation. Par contre, UTL ne disposait initialement pas de moyens pour spécifier formellement la façon de calculer l’indicateur à partir des traces collectées. De plus, les approches par développement ad hoc d’indicateurs ne permettent pas de modéliser de façon formelle la méthode de calcul. En général, les patrons de conception se limitent à la description, ils ne peuvent donc pas être automatisés. Des descriptions textuelles dans UTL pour produire un indicateur à partir des traces ne permettent pas de générer automatiquement les valeurs d’un indicateur.Notre principal objectif de recherche a donc été de définir des modèles, des méthodes et des outils pour la formalisation et l’automatisation du calcul d’indicateurs. Pour cela, nous avons élaboré une nouvelle version d’UTL qui intègre un langage de combinaison de données nommé DCL4UTL, qui permet de modéliser des indicateurs sous une forme capitalisable, automatisable et réutilisable afin de fournir des indicateurs signifiants à l’enseignant/concepteur. Ces indicateurs peuvent être calculés en temps réel ou après une session, respectivement dans un contexte de tutorat ou de réingénierie du scénario pédagogique.L'originalité de notre approche réside dans le fait que cette version permet non seulement de capitaliser des savoir-faire sur les techniques d'analyse d'usage d'un EIAH, mais aussi, avec le langage DCL4UTL (1) de décrire formellement dans une forme générique des méthodes de modélisation et de calcul d’indicateurs à partir des traces collectées par un EIAH, (2) d’intégrer des fonctions externes (qui proviennent d’autres outils d’analyse), et (3) de créer des données intermédiaires paramétrées facilitant la modélisation et la réutilisation de la méthode de calcul d’indicateurs. Nous avons également développé un outil d’analyse pour calculer les indicateurs modélisés.Cette version est le résultat d'une étude théorique et d’une analyse de l’état de l’art, mais aussi de travaux exploratoires sur la modélisation d’indicateurs et l’analyse de traces. L’approche et le langage ont été validés par plusieurs expérimentations avec plusieurs EIAH existants. / The research topic of this thesis is a part of the REDIM (model driven re-engineering) research project. It focuses specifically on the analysis of tracks collected during the learning session by a TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) system in order to provide teachers indicators calculated. In our work environment, UTL (Usage Tracking Language) allows users to define the indicators in a form close to the design patterns. It was designed to response capitalization and reuse questions. However, UTL did not initially have any means to formally specify how to calculate indicators based on tracks collected. In general, design patterns are limited to the description, they cannot be automated. In addition, textual descriptions in UTL to produce indicators from tracks do not allow generating automatically an indicator’s values.Our main research objective was therefore to define models, methods and tools for formalizing and automating the calculation of indicators. We propose an extension for UTL named DCL4UTL (Data Combination Language for UTL) to model indicators in a capitalizable, automatable and reusable form to provide meaningful indicators to teachers/designers. With this new version, the indicators can be calculated in real-time or after a learning session in the context of tutoring actions or the reengineering of learning scenarios, respectively.The originality of our approach (DCL4UTL) lies in the fact that this version not only capitalize know-how on analysis techniques of the use an TEL system, but also (1) formally describe models and calculation methods of indicators from tracks collected by a TEL system, (2) integrate external functions (from other analysis tools), and (3) create parameterized intermediate data facilitating the modeling and reuse of indicators’ calculation method. We have also developed an analysis tool to calculate modeled indicators. Our approach and language have been validated by several experiments with several existent TEL systems.

The purpose of this essay is to describe the perception of four medieval Syriac Christians Chroniclers, i.e. Pseudo-Dionysios of Tel-Mahre, Mikhael Rabbo, the anonymous Chronicler of The Chronicle of the year 1234 and BarcEbroyo, on the emergence of Islam with regard to religion, economic and social issues in the region of Syria and Iraq, here called Aramea, where Syriac speaking communities lived. The period of the study covers the time from the Prophet Muhammad to the end of the Umayyad dynasty.   Early passages in Syriac documents give positive accounts about the Prophet Muhammad, Abu Bakr, cUmar ibn al-Khattab and Mucawiya. And indeed, the Syriac speaking community received the coming of the Arabs as a liberation from the Byzantines´ yoke, i.e. persecution and humiliation. When the Arabs conquered the region, they made a dhimmi-deal with subjugated Christians, i.e. ahl al-dhimma “people of covenant”, and gave them protection in exchange for jizya, the protection tax. Indeed, they achieved some independence, had their own civil laws, and the Syriac church ruled very freely.   But the presence of the Muslim Arabs transformed the region in terms of religion, language, demographic and political circumstances. The jizya became a heavy burden and some Caliphs treated Christians unfairly.  The Arabs showed superiority and a political power over all subjugated.   Within this change there began also a cultural interaction between the Muslims and the Christians. The Church was challenged, the Syriac language was repressed, and the Church fathers had to act to protect their communities. First, documentation of historical events of the region became a very important and central issue. Second, the chronicles were authored in order to present a disparity between Islam and Christianity to indicate distinction in religion and moral laws. Third, the Syriac church was challenged and had to act by forbidding marriage with Muslims by constituting Church Law, as many Christians chose to convert to Islam because of interactions, heavy taxes and unfair treatment.

This dissertation examines how institutions and individuals navigate the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism by focusing on architectural preservationists' explanations of what are referred to as white cities. Through dialogue between architectural history, international relations, and critical heritage studies, I map the making and remaking of the histories of white cities, or what were designed as "European" zones – in opposition to "Indigenous" zones – that brought together modernist architecture, white supremacy, early twentieth-century European settler colonialism, and architectural preservation. My focus on preservationists' narrations of these white cities extends interdisciplinary work charting their historical production from a group of scholars focusing on the relationship of architecture in the production of domination in European colonialism. My work extends this scholarship by shifting to preservationists' narrations of white cities through the question: how do preservationists remake the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism that underpinned the production of white cities? In this dissertation, I argue that preservationists remake the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism that produced white cities by relying on what I refer to as didactic narratives to legitimate preservation interventions. Preservationists use these didactic narratives to reframe white cities as part of national histories, the universalism of the World Heritage List, and the history of the modernist movement in architecture and planning. My argument advances by showing preservationists' appropriations of the didactic narratives in the World Heritage List inscription materials for White City of Tel Aviv (2003), Rabat, Modern Capital and Historic City: A Shared Heritage (2012), and Asmara: A Modernist African City (2017) and through ethnographic fieldwork with local preservationists in Casablanca and Tel Aviv. To frame these analyses, I map the institutional changes within the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that sought greater legitimacy by expanding the typological and geographical scope of the World Heritage List. To do so, the institution enlisted the International Committee for the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites, and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO-International) to recraft the criteria to include twentieth-century modernist architecture onto the List. However, DOCOMOMO promoted a particular way of interpreting white cities through the didactic narratives that led to the proliferation of white cities on the World Heritage List. By charting the different ways that preservationists appropriate the didactic narratives in the World Heritage List materials and in the text of semi-structured interviews and from participant observation, I show how the intersecting power structures of white supremacy and settler colonialism that were embedded in the production of white cities are adapted by preservationists in the co-constitution of international institutions, disciplinary knowledge, and individual subject positions. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation considers how the histories of race and colonialism are narrated by architectural preservationists. I do so by focusing on preservationists' narrations of white cities, "European" enclaves designed in opposition to "Indigenous" zones in early 20th century settler colonialism. By focusing on the preservation of what were designed as racialized spaces, I explore how these histories of racial difference and colonialism are mediated by forms of knowledge, institutions, and individuals. Yet it is the focus on preservationists that I detail how preservationists silence, downplay, or mobilize the histories of white cities through three different narrative tropes of national histories, the universalism of the World Heritage List, and modernist movement architecture and design. I show how these narrative tropes justify preservation interventions while making some histories more accessible and others less so. To analyze how preservationists remake the histories of white cities, I map the creation and transformations of the primary international preservation organization, the World Heritage List. These institutional changes led to the addition of white cities in Asmara, Rabat, and Tel Aviv based on preservationists' adaptations of the three narrative tropes. I then show how these same narrative tropes are appropriated by local preservationists to remake the histories of race and colonialism in white cities. By drawing attention to the ways that the histories of race and colonialism are remade through the intersections of individuals, institutions, and forms of knowledge, the project shows how knowledge on the modernist movement is implicated in the constitution of power in the World Heritage List and in consolidating privileged subject positions. Moreover, my analysis opens up questions on the co-constitution of institutions, forms of knowledge, and individual subject positions. Lastly, the analysis demonstrates that individuals have the potential to challenge – rather than to uphold – the constellations of power etched into white cities. I show one instance of architectural preservationists challenging these structures of power in the preservation effort of Les Abattoirs in Casablanca in 2009-2013.

Das in der vorliegenden Arbeit vorgestellte Verfahren der nicht-radioaktiven Southern Blot Hybridisierung unter Verwendung einer Digoxigenin Markierung hat sich für die Darstellung von Rekombinationen im TEL-Genlokus genomischer DNA als sensitive Vergleichsmethode bewiesen. Es wurden insgesamt 122 Kinder mit dieser Methode auf das Vorliegen der Translokation t(12;21) untersucht. Bei einer nur relevante Faktoren berücksichtigenden Beschränkung des PatientInnenkollektivs auf protokollgerecht nach ALL-REZ BFM behandelte B-Vorläufer-Zell-ALL und Erstrezidive konnte eine Rekombination von TEL in 5 von 65 PatientInnen (7,7%) nachgewiesen werden. Lässt man die Einschlusskriterien der ALL-REZ BFM Studie unberücksichtigt, handelt es sich sogar um 7 von 71 (9,9%) PatientInnen. Damit bestätigen die hier vorliegenden Ergebnisse den Trend der aktuellen Diskussion über die Häufigkeit des Vorliegens des Fusionsgenes TEL-AML1 bei Erstrezidiven, die eine kumulative Inzidenz bei einem 10-jährigen Untersuchungszeitraum von 9 ± 5% angeben. Weiterhin konnte mit ereignisfreien Beobachtungszeiträumen nach dem 1. Rezidiv im Median von 8,6 Jahren ein Trend zu späten Rezidiven und somit eine mittelfristig günstige Prognose für die TEL-Rearrangement positiven Rezidivfälle konstatiert werden. Zusammenfassend kann gesagt werden, dass TEL-AML1 positive PatientInnen eine Subgruppe darstellen, die lange erkrankungsfreie Intervalle mit zur Zeit üblichen Therapieprotokollen erreichen, nach Therapie der Ersterkrankung aber auch nach dem ersten Rezidiv. Auf Grund der sich aus dem retrospektiven PatientInnekollektiv ergebenen Selektion war es nicht möglich, statistisch signifikante Aussagen zur unabhängigen prognostischen Bedeutung für die langfristige Prognose von ALL im Kindesalter mit TEL-Rekombinationen zu treffen. / The presence of TEL/AML1 fusion gene in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) defines a subgroup of patients with better than average outcome. Around 20% of the patient at point of initial ALL diagnosis are characterised by this fusion transcript from translocation t(12;21)(p12;q22). However, the prognostic significance of this aberration has recently been disputed by the Berlin-Frankfurt-Munster (BFM) study group due to its relatively high incidence found in relapsed patients (19.6% and 21.9%, in two cohorts). Here we wanted to get more data in a long term follow up retrospect investigation by analysing DNA from frozen conserved bone marrow samples of 65 children. In the study presented here only five out of 65 (7.7%) patients selected as childhood B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia only treated according to Berlin-Frankfurt-Munster (BFM) ALL relapse trial protocols (ALL-REZ BFM 82-96) (excluding T-lineage and Philadelphia chromosome (Ph)-positive leukaemia) carry this fusion. The detection was done due to a new developed non-radioactive Southern blotting with a Digoxigenin marked template. We could confirm the still good middle term prognosis in the relapsed TEL-AML1 positive subgroup. The TEL-AML1-positive and negative patients differed with respect to duration of last remission and age at initial diagnosis. At a median follow-up time of 8.6 years, children positive for TEL-AML1 had a higher probability of disease-free survival. Because of the small number of patients in this study it was not possible to get statistical significant facts about the independent prognostic impact for the long term prognosis of ALL in childhood with TEL rearrangement.