The current decision-making processes involved in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in South Africa suffer from a lack of coherence and do not include evaluation of trade-offs between qualitative and quantitative impacts, as well as environmental, economic, and social dimensions. In addition, insufficient capacity and knowledge among authorities, a lack of objectivity among Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs), and mediocre reports add to the problems associated with effective decision-making. This work presents a framework aimed at improving the effectiveness and objectivity of the decision-making process applied in South Africa’s EIAs in the energy sector. A number of decision-making models and tools are available to researchers and practitioners throughout the world that could potentially be applied in EIAs. Among these are Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM), and Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA). Each of the tools has its own advantages and disadvantages. With respect to the CBA, its biggest disadvantage is the fact that it requires conversion into monetary terms of all impacts, which is sometimes difficult to achieve. The RIAM, on the other hand, fails to provide a systematic approach to the ranking of alternatives. Both of these issues are addressed by the MCA tools. The MCA framework, furthermore, is universal, transparent, easy to replicate, and does not require a particularly large amount of labour and financial resources to complete. It is, however, subjective, but this shortcoming can be overcome by making the decision process more transparent. The framework proposed in this research paper is based on the Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) technique that allows the identification of the proposed development's cumulative impact versus the current status of the environment. It then compares possible alternatives, where available, in order to identify the most optimal solution. The proposed solution takes into account the trade-offs between the different impact metrics. The research methodology followed in this paper comprised four steps, namely:<ul><li> Selection of case studies, </li><li> Information collection, </li><li> Framework application and testing and </li><li> Feedback. </li></ul> The development of the framework followed an eight-step approach that is generic for MCA and was tested on two case studies that have already gone through the Environmental Impact Assessment process, i.e. the Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) plant in the Western Cape and the Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the Northern Cape. The former was evaluated against the "no-go option", but included a decision tree comprised of impact areas, categories of impacts and dimensions (environmental, social, and economic). The latter included alternatives for four components of the project, but the decision tree comprised only of categories and dimensions. The effectiveness of the framework was verified by testing the results of the case studies against the recommendations proposed in the respective Environmental Impact Reports. In all cases, but one, the results of the framework correlated with the recommendations made by the Environmental Assessment Practitioners in the respective studies. In addition, a workshop with the decision-makers was held to obtain their viewpoints regarding the usefulness of the framework in their decision-making environment. These decision-makers supported the use of the framework in their environment as it offered an integrated and transparent approach to the evaluation of projects and alternatives. They emphasised, however, that the decision-making process was complex and the application of the framework alone would not be able to address all the challenges. The case studies demonstrated that the proposed framework could be successfully applied in the process of undertaking impact assessments in the energy sector. It can be used to determine the trade-offs between impacts and dimensions, while taking into consideration the opinions of specialists and decision-makers when assigning weights. The framework has the ability to clearly illustrate the benefit of introducing mitigation measures and it also indicates an alternative that produces the optimal cumulative impact. In conclusion, the work presented contributes to the new body of knowledge in the field of Environmental Impact Assessment in the energy sector as it will assist authorities in making objective and informed decisions, while ensuring greater transparency in the process. It also opens opportunities for conducting follow-on investigations, such the application of the framework in other sectors of the economy, undertaking a sensitivity analysis to compare the range of scores used in the evaluation of impacts, and investigating the possibility of acquiring input from Interested and Affected Parties (I&APs) and integrating those into the framework. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) / unrestricted

In our everyday lives, we must often weigh the different attributes of items in order to select the item that best fits our current goals, allowing us to make optimal decisions. Construal Level Theory proposes a psychological mechanism for re-weighting attributes, utilizing selective attention as the process by which we implement self-control. It has been hypothesized that switching attention between attributes is facilitated by the suppression of cortical oscillations over posterior brain regions within the alpha (8-12 Hz) frequency range. To test this idea, we re-examined previously collected whole-brain electroencephalography (EEG) data from a dietary choice experiment in which participants made decisions naturally or with a weight loss incentive. Prior analysis found that although hungry subjects primarily relied on taste properties while responding naturally, they increased their behavioral and neural weighting of health when motivated to lose weight. Reanalyzing this data using time-frequency analyses, we compared alpha oscillations related to healthy versus unhealthy foods under natural and self-control conditions. We predicted that when participants exercised self-control we would see suppression of alpha oscillations over occipital sensors starting around 400 ms post-stimulus onset, for trials presenting healthy relative to unhealthy foods; no such suppression should appear during natural responding when ignoring health information. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found a significant decrease in alpha oscillations over occipital sensors between 440 and 800 ms post-stimulus onset for healthy compared to unhealthy items in the self-control condition. No such effect was seen for health information in natural choice, or for taste. Our findings extend previous research by linking alpha band suppression to the neural re-weighting of multiple attributes, suggesting a neuro-cognitive mechanism for self-control that uses selective attention to choose between multiple attributes.

Nowadays several indicators suggest that the statistical approach to machinetranslation is the most promising. It allows fast development of systems for anylanguage pair provided that sufficient training data is available.Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) systems use parallel texts ‐ also called bitexts ‐ astraining material for creation of the translation model and monolingual corpora fortarget language modeling.The performance of an SMT system heavily depends upon the quality and quantity ofavailable data. In order to train the translation model, the parallel texts is collected fromvarious sources and domains. These corpora are usually concatenated, word alignmentsare calculated and phrases are extracted.However, parallel data is quite inhomogeneous in many practical applications withrespect to several factors like data source, alignment quality, appropriateness to thetask, etc. This means that the corpora are not weighted according to their importance tothe domain of the translation task. Therefore, it is the domain of the training resourcesthat influences the translations that are selected among several choices. This is incontrast to the training of the language model for which well‐known techniques areused to weight the various sources of texts.We have proposed novel methods to automatically weight the heterogeneous data toadapt the translation model.In a first approach, this is achieved with a resampling technique. A weight to eachbitexts is assigned to select the proportion of data from that corpus. The alignmentscoming from each bitexts are resampled based on these weights. The weights of thecorpora are directly optimized on the development data using a numerical method.Moreover, an alignment score of each aligned sentence pair is used as confidencemeasurement.In an extended work, we obtain such a weighting by resampling alignments usingweights that decrease with the temporal distance of bitexts to the test set. By thesemeans, we can use all the available bitexts and still put an emphasis on the most recentone. The main idea of our approach is to use a parametric form or meta‐weights for theweighting of the different parts of the bitexts. This ensures that our approach has onlyfew parameters to optimize.In another work, we have proposed a generic framework which takes into account thecorpus and sentence level "goodness scores" during the calculation of the phrase‐tablewhich results into better distribution of probability mass of the individual phrase pairs.

Emissions of carbon dioxide, dioxins, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter as well as use of non-renewable resources and energy are some important sustainability challenges for the Swedish steel industry. Much effort has been made, mainly by technical solutions, which to a high degree have decreased the emissions during the last 30 years. Technical solutions however will not be sufficient to reach sustainable development, stakeholder involvement is also necessary. Stakeholder theory states that stake­holder involvement must include a dialog between the stakeholders involved and the operation. The first step in this process is to identify which key issues the stakeholders find most important and then the organisation needs to start interact with its stakeholders. This thesis deals with such issues. Stakeholder preferences for environmental issues were assessed with conjoint analysis, Q-methodology and focus group discussions. The theory of planned behaviour was used to assess how attitudes were connected to background factors and a potential pro-environmental behaviour. Five studies have been carried out in the framework of this thesis. The studies include: a literature review, method evaluation, evaluation of environ­mental objectives in stakeholder groups, screening of relevant factors, evaluation of steel environmental characteristics, identification of barriers to the introduction of new materials and the im­pact of worry and risk perception on strategic environmental decisions. It can be concluded that the methods applied in the studies work well in eliciting preferences. It has been possible to show how different stakeholder groups as well as individuals prioritise environmental objectives and sustaina­bility issues. Since individuals within a stakeholder group vary considerably in preferences, the results from this thesis show the importance of illustrating results on an individual level instead of the traditional group level. Also, a method has been tested where the results were brought back to the respondents in order to stimulate discussions between different stakeholder groups.

When using visual and proprioceptive information to plan a reach, it has been proposed that the brain combines these cues to estimate the object and/or limb’s location. Specifically, according to the maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) model, more reliable sensory inputs are assigned a greater weight (Ernst & Banks, 2002). In this research we examined if the brain is able to adjust which sensory cue it weights the most. Specifically, we asked if the brain changes how it weights sensory information when the availability of a visual cue is manipulated. Twenty-four healthy subjects reached to visual (V), proprioceptive (P), or visual + proprioceptive (VP) targets under different visual delay conditions (e.g. on V and VP trials, the visual target was available for the entire reach, it was removed with the go-signal or it was removed 1, 2 or 5 seconds before the go-signal). Subjects completed 5 blocks of trials, with 90 trials per block. For 12 subjects, the visual delay was kept consistent within a block of trials, while for the other 12 subjects, different visual delays were intermixed within a block of trials. To establish which sensory cue subjects weighted the most, we compared endpoint positions achieved on V and P reaches to VP reaches. Results indicated that all subjects weighted sensory cues in accordance with the MLE model across all delay conditions and that these weights were similar regardless of the visual delay. Moreover, while errors increased with longer visual delays, there was no change in reaching variance. Thus, manipulating the visual environment was not enough to change subjects’ weighting strategy, further i

Medidas de transmitância em óculos de sol fazem parte de alguns dos testes propostos pela norma NBR15111, porém, observou-se que não há no país um sistema preciso para medidas de transmitância que não seja com o uso de espectrofotômetros e pessoas qualificadas para utilizar o equipamento, aplicar as funções de ponderação e fornecer laudos técnicos sobre a lente testada. Assim, o trabalho propõe métodos que utilize componentes simples e resulte na construção de um equipamento que possa fornecer a informação sobre as transmitâncias dos filtros de óculos de sol de forma automática, de acordo com a NBR15111. Foi feita a espectrofotometria de 45 lentes de óculos de uso geral, e calculadas suas respectivas transmitâncias (luminosa, ultravioleta, semafórica), como amostras de comparação com as metodologias testadas. Os testes incluíram lâmpadas e LEDs como fontes de emissão para a região do espectro visível e lâmpadas fluorescentes para a região ultravioleta, além de sensores específicos para cada região espectral, e eletrônica de controle e aquisição dos sinais. Foram usadas ferramentas de análise estatística, como erro RMS, coeficiente de aderência (GFC) e análise de Bland-Altman. Aproximadamente 62% dos óculos testados foram reprovados para a direção no trânsito e nenhum foi reprovado para a proteção UV. Os métodos RMS e GFC apontaram combinações entre fonte e sensor que conseguem fazer a ponderação com os menores desvios-padrão das medidas espectrométricas. O sistema para teste UV mostrou melhoria significativa em relação aos desenvolvidos anteriormente, com um desvio padrão de 4,45 pontos percentuais e o sistema para testes na região visível utilizou o sensor TCS, no qual a regressão polinomial mostrou melhores resultados que as redes neurais artificiais, com os menores limites de concordância para as transmitâncias. Um número maior de amostras pode melhorar os métodos para que se obtenha uma aproximação ideal para todos os óculos de sol. Uma montagem com LEDs se apresenta como uma alternativa interessante quanto ao custo, tamanho e baixo consumo para medidores de transmitância portáteis. Desenvolveu-se um sistema com módulos para teste UV, Visível e Semafórico, para uso público no campus da USP de São Carlos, proporcionando conscientização e extensão dos estudos em relação aos óculos solares, contribuindo efetivamente com a população brasileira. / Transmittance measurements in sunglasses are a part of the standard tests proposed by NBR15111, however, it was observed that there is no accurate system for measuring transmittance different than using spectrophotometers and skilled practitioner to manage the equipment, apply the weighting functions and provide technical reports on the lens tested. Therefore, this study proposes methodologies using simple components and that can result a device that can provide information about sunglass filters automatically, according to NBR15111. Spectrophotometry was calculated in 45 lenses of sunglasses for general use, and their respective transmittance (visible, ultraviolet, traffic light), used as samples for testing the methodologies. The tests included lamps and LEDs as light sources for the visible region spectrum and fluorescent lamps for ultraviolet region, specific sensors for each spectral region, and electronic for control and signal acquisition. Statistical analysis tools were used, such as RMS error, goodness-of-fit coefficient (GFC) and the Bland - Altman analysis. Approximately 62% of the tested lenses failed in the test for signal light recognition and none has failed for UV protection. The RMS and GFC methods indicated combinations between source and sensor that calculated transmittance with the lowest standard deviations of the spectrometric measurements. The system for testing UV showed improvement compared to other previously equipment, with a standard deviation of 4.45 and the system for testing the visible region used the TCS sensor, in which the polynomial regression showed better results than artificial neural networks. A larger number of samples can improve the methods in order to obtain an optimal calibration that includes all sunglasses. LEDs seem to be a good alternative in terms of cost, size and low power consumption for portable transmittance meters. We developed a system with modules for testing UV, Visible and Traffic Light transmittance for public use on the USP São Carlos campus, providing awareness and extent of studies about the sunglasses, in order to contribute more effectively to the Brazilian population.

Orientador: Admilson Írio Ribeiro / Resumo: A demanda por energia elétrica e seus sistemas de produção e distribuição são relevantes para a sociedade, pois está associada ao desenvolvimento das nações. Atualmente muitas empresas do ramo estão surgindo em nosso país, particularmente na região Nordeste, devido às condições ambientais para geração de energia eólica. Assim, como toda ação antrópica, a utilização dos ventos para geração de energia elétrica apresenta impactos positivos e negativos. Nesse sentido, a proposta dessa pesquisa foi realizar uma análise integrada dos aspectos e impactos ambientais na operação do Parque Eólico Complexo Alto Sertão no distrito de Morrinhos - Guanambi\Bahia. A proposta de estudo foi delineada por meio de dois métodos de avaliação de impacto ambiental: rede de interação e matriz de ponderação. Dentre os impactos positivos destacados pode ser citada a melhoria das condições de vida dos proprietários de terra os quais são contratados por arrendamento do uso da área. Outro impacto positivo significativo foi à geração de empregos na instalação e operação do empreendimento, pois sugiram oportunidades de serviços local e regional. Destaca se também como impacto positivo significativo o aumento de recursos econômicos para os municípios da região dado o aumento na arrecadação de impostos e tributos. Assim, a sociedade local entende que produção de energia eólica auxilia desenvolvimento socioeconômico. A produção de energia eólica, mesmo sendo uma fonte renovável, como toda atividade humana pro... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Mestre

<p>Realizovana istraživanja disertacije mogu se podeliti na tri<br />osnovne celine. Prva celina predstavlja teorijski deo disertacije, u<br />okviru kog su postavljene osnovne podloge za razvoj sistema za<br />inteligentnu vi&scaron;ekriterijumsku analizu kod ocenjivanja životnog<br />ciklusa proizvoda i procesa. Drugu celinu predstavlja razvoj<br />modela i programskog sistema za inteligentnu vi&scaron;ekriterijumsku<br />analizu. U okviru treće celine prikazani su rezultati primene<br />razvijenog modela i programskog re&scaron;enja na primerima<br />ocenjivanja životnog ciklusa i procene opterećenja životne<br />sredine.</p> / <p>Dissertation reserch has been carried out in three main sections.<br />The first section presents the theoretical part of the dissertation,<br />where the base for the development of intelligent multicriteria<br />analysis within life cycle assessment of the products and<br />processes is set up. The second part presents the development of<br />model and software system for intelligent multicriteria<br />analysis.<br />Within the third section the results of applying the developed<br />model and software solution are presented on the case studies of<br />life cycle analysis and assessment of environmental burdens.</p>

Tomadas de decisão intertemporais são influenciadas não somente pelo efeito de desconto do valor em diferentes instantes, como também pelo efeito de percepção temporal. Uma das principais dificuldades que afetam experimentos padrões envolvendo estas escolhas é a simultaneidade de ambos os efeitos no processo de desconto. Através da unificação das leis da psicofísica de percepção do atraso e da associação destas às funções de desconto de valor, propusemos uma forma generalizada para o processo de desconto intertemporal envolvendo ambos os domínios. Mostramos também que a propriedade aditiva do grau de inconsistência, grandeza obtida a partir das funções de desconto, permite discriminar a influência de cada efeito no processo de tomada de decisão. De forma similar ao proposto para escolhas intertemporais, estendemos a teoria psicofísica de percepção ao domínio das probabilidades. Adotando a perspectiva de que o atraso médio para recebimento de uma recompensa está relacionado à sua probabilidade de recebimento, obtivemos uma função de desconto probabilística que abrange os efeitos de desconto de valor e de percepção de probabilidades. Em paralelo ao desenvolvimento no domínio experimental, exploramos também os modelos teóricos (axiomáticos) que fundamentam as tomadas de decisão probabilísticas. Propusemos que a forma da função peso de probabilidades, exploradas em modelos como a teoria da utilidade esperada dependente da ordenação e a teoria do prospecto acumulado, seja representada pela função de desconto generalizada que obtivemos a partir dos modelos fenomenológicos. Neste caso, a função peso é amparada por modelos fenomenológicos de decisão e deriva da suposição de que indivíduos se comportam de forma similar frente a probabilidades e atrasos. / Intertemporal decision making are influenced not only by the effect of the reward value discount at different moments, but also by the time perception effect. One of the main difficulties that affects standard experiments involving intertemporal choices is the simultaneity of both effects on the discount. Through the unification of the psychophysical laws of delay perception and their association to the value discounting functions, we proposed a generalized process for the intertemporal discount involving both domains. We also showed that the additive property of the inconsistency degree, quantity obtained from the discount functions, allowed us to distinguish between both effects in decision making. As proposed for intertemporal choices, we extended the psychophysical perception theory to the probabilities domain. Adopting the perspective that the average delay for receiving a reward is related to the probability of receiving it, we obtained a probabilistic discount function covering value discounting and probability perception. Parallel to the experimental development, we also explored theoretical models that underlie probabilistic decision making. We proposed that the shape of the probability weighting function, explored in models such as rank-dependent expected utility theory and cumulative prospect theory, should be described by the generalized probabilistic function that we obtained from the phenomenological models. Therefore, the weighting function is supported by phenomenological models and derives from the assumption that subjects behave similarly in front of probabilities and delays.

Dementia is a clinical syndrome caused by neurodegeneration or cerebrovascular injury. Patients with dementia suffer from deterioration in memory, thinking, behavior and the ability to perform everyday activities. Since there are no cures or disease-modifying therapies for dementia, there is much interest in identifying modifiable risk factors that may help prevent or slow the progression of cognitive decline. Medications are a common focus of this type of research. Importantly, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 19.1% of the population aged 60 and over report taking antidepressants during 2011-2014, and this number tends to increase. However, antidepressant use among the elderly may be concerning because of the potentially harmful effects on cognition. To assess the impacts of antidepressants on the risk of dementia, we conducted three consecutive projects. In the first project, a retrospective cohort study using Marginal Structural Cox Proportional Hazards regression model with Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) was conducted to evaluate the average causal effects of different classes of antidepressant on the risk of dementia. Potential causal effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), atypical anti-depressants (AAs) and tri-cyclic antidepressants (TCAs) on the risk of dementia were observed at the 0.05 significance level. Multiple sensitivity analyses supported these findings. Unmeasured confounding is a threat to the validity of causal inference methods. In evaluating the effects of antidepressants, it is important to consider how common comorbidities of depression, such as sleep disorders, may affect both the exposure to anti-depressants and the onset of cognitive impairment. In this dissertation, sleep apnea and rapid-eye-movement behavior disorder (RBD) were unmeasured and thus uncontrolled confounders for the association between antidepressant use and the risk of dementia. In the second project, a bias factor formula for two binary unmeasured confounders was derived in order to account for these variables. Monte Carlo analysis was implemented to estimate the distribution of the bias factor for each class of antidepressant. The effects of antidepressants on the risk of dementia adjusted for both measured and unmeasured confounders were estimated. Sleep apnea and RBD attenuated the effect estimates for SSRI, SNRI and AA on the risk of dementia. In the third project, to account for potential time-varying confounding and observed time-varying treatment, a multi-state Markov chain with three transient states (normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and impaired but not MCI) and two absorbing states (dementia and death) was performed to estimate the probabilities of moving between finite and mutually exclusive cognitive state. This analysis also allowed participants to recover from mild impairments (i.e., mild cognitive impairment, impaired but not MCI) to normal cognition, and accounted for the competing risk of death prior to dementia. These findings supported the results of the main analysis in the first project.