This thesis provides a `proof-of-concept' prototype and a design architecture for a Object Oriented (00) database towards the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for the national freight transport planning problem. Both governments and industry require a Strategic Planning Extranet Decision Support System (SPEDSS) for their effective management of the national Freight Transport Networks (FTN). This thesis addresses the three key problems for the development of a SPEDSS to facilitate national strategic freight planning: 1) scope and scale of data available and required; 2) scope and scale of existing models; and 3) construction of the software. The research approach taken embodies systems thinking and includes the use of: Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOA/D) for problem encapsulation and database design; artificial neural network (and proposed rule extraction) for knowledge acquisition of the United States FTN data set; and an iterative Object Oriented (00) software design for the development of a `proof-of-concept' prototype. The research findings demonstrate that an 00 approach along with the use of 00 methodologies and technologies coupled with artificial neural networks (ANNs) offers a robust and flexible methodology for the analysis of the FTN problem domain and the design architecture of an Extranet based SPEDSS. The objectives of this research were to: 1) identify and analyse current problems and proposed solutions facing industry and governments in strategic transportation planning; 2) determine the functional requirements of an FTN SPEDSS; 3) perform a feasibility analysis for building a FTN SPEDSS `proof-of-concept' prototype and (00) database design; 4) develop a methodology for a national `internet-enabled' SPEDSS model and database; 5) construct a `proof-of-concept' prototype for a SPEDSS encapsulating identified user requirements; 6) develop a methodology to resolve the issue of the scale of data and data knowledge acquisition which would act as the `intelligence' within a SPDSS; 7) implement the data methodology using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) towards the validation of it; and 8) make recommendations for national freight transportation strategic planning and further research required to fulfil the needs of governments and industry. This thesis includes: an 00 database design for encapsulation of the FTN; an `internet-enabled' Dynamic Modelling Methodology (DMM) for the virtual modelling of the FTNs; a Unified Modelling Language (UML) `proof-of-concept' prototype; and conclusions and recommendations for further collaborative research are identified.

The major aim of this study was to investigate various leaching methods for the recovery of zinc and lead from blended neutral leach residues of &Ccedil / inkur having a composition of 12.59 % Zn, 15.21 % Pb, 6.45 % Fe, 0.054 % Cd. Initially water leaching tests were performed at various conditions of leaching temperature, reaction time and particle size. The optimized conditions for water leaching were found to be 2 h, 95&amp / #61616 / C and 250 g/l pulp density with a final pH of 5.9. However, the zinc recovery value of 10.26 % was not adequate for industrial scale operations itself. In acid leaching trials / acid concentration, temperature, reaction time and particle size were the chosen variables. At the optimized condition of 150 g/l H2SO4, 95&amp / #61616 / C, 2 h at 250 g/l pulp density with a final pregnant solution pH of 4.2, the extraction values were determined as 74.87 % for Zn and 39.59 % for Fe. These recovery values were evaluated as suitable for industrially feasible operations while creating a secondary leach residue of a composition of 4.10 % Zn, 19.17 % Pb, 5.52 % Fe and 85 ppm Cd that would not be suitable for pyrometallurgical lead production. After recovering zinc in considerable amount by hot sulphuric acid leaching, NaCl leaching experiments for the extraction of lead were done on the secondary leach residue by taking temperature, time and pulp density into account. The most promising conditions of brine leaching for lead recovery were found as 300 g/l NaCl, 20&amp / #61616 / C, 15 minutes and 20 g/l pulp density that gave approximately 82 % lead recovery with a final residue of 7.87 % Pb, 6.86 % Zn, 8.79 % Fe.

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) from the external surface of a buried pipeline is a serious matter and can cause significant economic and environmental losses. Despite of many research works which have been done on the understanding of crack initiation and propagation mechanisms, these mechanisms are still being debated. This research studied the crack growth behaviour of different pipeline steels including two types of X65, one X52 and one X80 pipeline steels in near-neutral pH environments. Crack growth behaviour of all steels has been found to be consistent with that of true corrosion fatigue. Crack growth rates were correlated with (K)2Kmax/f0.1. It was revealed that cracking behaviour of pipeline steels in near neutral pH environments is material dependent. Highest crack growth rate was seen in the steel which highest amount of hydrogen atoms could be generated and stored in its microstructure to contribute in cracking procedure due to hydrogen embrittlement effect. / Materials Engineering

Thesis (M.S.)--Miami University, Dept. of Botany, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 109 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36).

The major purpose of this study is to explore the stock movements of a publicly traded high-frequency trading firm, Virtu Financial. Virtu Financial, as of November 2015, is the only publicly traded high frequency trading firm, offering a opportunity to study the market behavior of a new kind of stock. Since Virtu serves as a unique financial intermediary, my hypothesis is that Virtu should be a market-neutral company since it is able to profit equally in economic upswings and downturns. This study uses a regression based on the Fama and French three factor model, focusing on the influence of the market risk premium, small sized company vs. medium sized company returns, and growth stock vs. value stock returns in changes in inter-daily Virtu Financial returns, These results are then compared to the returns of Virtu’s brokerage competitors, as deemed so by analysts, and CBOE Holding, a company with . The results suggest that Virtu Financial has a market neutral stock, consistent with its means of generating revenue, while its traditional brokerage competitors do not. On the basis of this research, it is concluded that HFT brokerages may present an opportunity to invest in a non-cylcical segment of the finance industry.

Statistical parametric text-to-speech synthesis currently relies on predefined and highly controlled prompts read in a “neutral” voice. This thesis presents work on utilising recordings of free conversation for the purpose of filled pause synthesis and as an inspiration for improved general modelling of speech for text-to-speech synthesis purposes. A corpus of both standard prompts and free conversation is presented and the potential usefulness of conversational speech as the basis for text-to-speech voices is validated. Additionally, through psycholinguistic experimentation it is shown that filled pauses can have potential subconscious benefits to the listener but that current text-to-speech voices cannot replicate these effects. A method for pronunciation variant forced alignment is presented in order to obtain a more accurate automatic speech segmentation something which is particularly bad for spontaneously produced speech. This pronunciation variant alignment is utilised not only to create a more accurate underlying acoustic model, but also as the driving force behind creating more natural pronunciation prediction at synthesis time. While this improves both the standard and spontaneous voices the naturalness of spontaneous speech based voices still lags behind the quality of voices based on standard read prompts. Thus, the synthesis of filled pauses is investigated in relation to specific phonetic modelling of filled pauses and through techniques for the mixing of standard prompts with spontaneous utterances in order to retain the higher quality of standard speech based voices while still utilising the spontaneous speech for filled pause modelling. A method for predicting where to insert filled pauses in the speech stream is also developed and presented, relying on an analysis of human filled pause usage and a mix of language modelling methods. The method achieves an insertion accuracy in close agreement with human usage. The various approaches are evaluated and their improvements documented throughout the thesis, however, at the end the resulting filled pause quality is assessed through a repetition of the psycholinguistic experiments and an evaluation of the compilation of all developed methods.

A partir da minha produção de fotografias da série Paredes, este estudo investiga a representação de paredes brancas e relaciona as imagens produzidas com as reflexões dos teóricos contemporâneos de arte Hanneke Grootenboer, sobre fundos de naturezas-mortas da Holanda seiscentista, e Georges Didi-Huberman, sobre a representação de paredes em alguns afrescos de Fra Angelico. As interpretações de ambos apontam como tais imagens de paredes, usualmente encontradas em fundos pictóricos, podem ser consideradas como áreas onde há a ocorrência de algo que excede a representação. A série Paredes propõe a análise de imagens que qualificamos como rarefeitas e neutras com a intenção de verificar se elas apresentam ou evocam algo diverso da cena fotografada, como o vazio proposto por Grootenboer ou o infinito divino sugerido por Didi-Huberman em imagens similares. Ao utilizar o conceito de “neutro” de Roland Barthes, podemos situar essas imagens, por serem representações de superfícies inexpressivas e sem importância, em um campo de oscilação no qual elas não aderem a nenhuma posição fixa quanto à definição de seu conteúdo. A condição de deriva – inerente ao neutro – que as imagens de parede carregam as tornam potências com capacidade de suscitar quaisquer ideias, inclusive opostas e extraordinárias, como as de vazio e de infinito. / This study is based on my photographic work the Paredes series and investigates the representation of white walls, relating the images to the work of the contemporary art theorists Hanneke Grootenboer and Georges Didi-Huberman, the former reflecting on the backgrounds of 17th-century Dutch still-life painting and the latter considering the representation of walls in some of Fra Angelico’s frescos. Their interpretations indicate how such images of walls usually found in the backgrounds of paintings might be considered as areas where something occurs that goes beyond representation. The Paredes series proposes an analysis of images that we consider neutral or less dense, with the aim of testing whether they present or evoke something other than the photographic scene, such as the void proposed by Grootenboer or the divine infinity suggested by Didi-Huberman in similar images. By employing Roland Barthes’s concept of the “neutral” we might, due to their being representations of inexpressive surfaces of no importance, situate these images in a field of fluctuation, in which they adopt no fixed position in terms of definition of content. The condition of drift – inherent to the neutral – contained in the images of walls, gives them potential to support any idea, including contrasting and exceptional ones such as the void and infinity.

Neste trabalho um modelo é apresentado que permite-nos prever quantitativamente o estado estacionário atingido por um plasma não-neutro durante um processo de relaxação nãocolisional. Como uma aplicação específica, a teoria é usada para estudar a relaxação de feixes de partículas carregadas na qual, mostra-se que, um feixe inicialmente casado relaxa para a distribuição de Lynden-Bell. No entanto, quando existe um descasamento inicial, o mesmo oscila e ressonâncias paramétricas conduzem-no a uma separação de fases: caroço e halo. A abordagem desenvolvida vale tanto para a densidade como para a distribuição de velocidade no estado final estacionário. / In this work a theoretical framework is presented which allows us to quantitatively predict the final stationary state achieved by a non-neutral plasma during a process of collisionless relaxation. As a specific application, the theory is used to study relaxation of charged-particle beams. It is shown that a fully matched beam relaxes to the Lynden-Bell distribution. However, when a mismatch is present and the beam oscillates, parametric resonances lead to a corehalo phase separation. The approach developed accounts for both the density and the velocity distributions in the final stationary state.

Submitted by Lucas Processi (lucasprocessi@gmail.com) on 2017-12-06T13:14:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Processi (2017).pdf: 1111887 bytes, checksum: 09c88a08f1d79acf1311e697cf8c14cc (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2017-12-21T11:42:42Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Processi (2017).pdf: 1111887 bytes, checksum: 09c88a08f1d79acf1311e697cf8c14cc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-27T11:50:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Processi (2017).pdf: 1111887 bytes, checksum: 09c88a08f1d79acf1311e697cf8c14cc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-08 / We investigate arbitrage opportunities in the Brazilian options market. Our research consists inbacktesting several delta-gamma neutral portfolios of options traded in B3 exchange to assessthe possibility of obtaining systematic excess returns. Returns sum up to 400% of the dailyinterbank rate in Brazil (CDI), a rate viewed as risk-free. However, with bootstrap analysis,we find evidence consistent with the absence of arbitrage opportunities in the Brazilian optionsmarket.This approach is different from other studies because the analysis is taken on several options ondifferent underlying assets, which gives us the opportunity to investigate factors that influencethe magnitude of excess returns. Europeanness is the most relevant factor found.

This study examines seven deverbal nominalizing suffixes through theoretical framework and previous research. They include the morphological aspects, productivity of suffixes, base-driven approach and phonological neutral and nonneutral suffixes. Learners participated in an instrument to account for their competence of verb-noun derivation. The participants presented knowledge of relational, syntactic and relatively distributional morphology. Also, some suffixes are more productive than others and that was shown through the level of accuracy of these suffixes. The suffixes -ing, -er, and (at)-ion are of high accuracy and thus productive. Whereas the suffixes -ment, -ent/-ant, -ence/-ance and -al are less accurate and less productive. The underlying reason behind the productivity and non-productivity of these suffixes is because of the phonological transparency factors. Suffixes that do not cause internal phonological changes in the base presented high accuracy and easily learned, while suffixes that require internal phonological changes posed challenges to learners. The -ment suffix is neutral, no internal change required, however; its accuracy went down in this study.