In this thesis we study three basic issues related to international black tea markets: Are black tea markets integrated? Where is the price of black tea discovered? Are there leaders and followers in black tea markets? We use two statistical techniques as engines of analysis. First, we use time series methods to capture regularities in time lags among price series. Second, we use directed acyclic graphs to discover how surprises (innovations) in prices from each market are communicated to other markets in contemporaneous time. Weekly time series data on black tea prices from seven markets around the world are studied using time series methods. The study follows two paths. We study these prices in a common currency, the US dollar. We also study prices in each country's local currency. Results from unit root tests suggest that prices from three Indian markets are not generated through random walk-like behavior. We conclude that the Indian markets are not weak form efficient. However, prices from all non-Indian markets cannot be distinguished from random walk-like behavior. These latter markets are weak form efficient. Further analysis on these latter markets is conducted to determine whether information among the markets is shared. Vector Autoregressions (VARs) on the non-Indian markets are studied using directed acyclic graphs, impulse response functions and forecast error decomposition analyses. In both local currencies and dollar-converted series, the Sri Lankan and Indonesian markets are price leaders in contemporaneous time. Kenya is an information sink. It is endogenous in current time. Malawi is an exogenous price leader in dollar terms, but it is endogenous in local currency in contemporaneous time. In the long run, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malawi are price leaders in US dollar terms. In local currency series, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi are price leaders in the long run. We use Theil's U-statistic to test the forecasting ability of the VAR models. We find for most markets in either dollars or on local currencies that a random walk forecast outperforms the VAR generated forecasts. This last result suggests the non-Indian markets are both weak form and semi-strong form efficient.

Tuberculosis (TB) is called a disease of poverty and is the main cause of death from infectious diseases among adults. In 1993 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared TB to be a global emergency; however there were still approximately 1.4 million deaths due to TB in 2011. This thesis contains a detailed study of the existing literature regarding the global risk factors of TB. The risk factors identified from the literature review search which were also available from the NFHS-3 survey were then analysed to determine how well we could identify respondents who are at high risk of TB. We looked at the stigma and misconceptions people have regarding TB and include detailed reports from the existing literature of how a persons wealth, health, education, nutrition, and HIV status affect how likely the person is to have TB. The difference in the risk factor distribution for the TB and non-TB populations were examined and classification trees, nearest neighbours, and logistic regression models were trialled to determine if it was possible for respondents who were at high risk of TB to be identified. Finally gender-specific statistically likely directed acyclic graphs were created to visualise the most likely associations between the variables.

This work focuses on the use of a genetic algorithm for optimization in a search-based problem. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is a subset of evolutionary algorithms that models biological processes to optimize highly complex functions. A GA allows a population composed of many individuals to evolve under specified selection rules to a state that maximizes the “fitness” (i.e. minimize the objective function). A major advantage of using GA over most stochastic techniques is its parallelism, which speeds up the simulation results leading to faster convergence. With mutation, the GA is also less likely to get stuck in local minima compared to other stochastic techniques. However, some notable drawbacks of the Standard GA (SGA) include slow convergence and a possibility of being stuck in local optimum solution. The SGA uses a random process to generate parameter values for the initial population generation, crossover and mutation processes. Random number generators are designed to result in either uniform distributions or Gaussian distributions. We conjecture that the evolutionary processes in genetics are driven by a random non-linear deterministic dynamic process rather than a random non-deterministic process. Therefore, in the GA evolutionary process, a chaotic map is incorporated into the initial population generation, the crossover and mutation processes of the SGA; this is termed the Chaotic GA (CGA). The properties of a chaotic system that provides additional benefits over randomly generated solutions are sensitivity to initial conditions, topological density and topological transitivity (robust diversity). These properties ensure that the CGA is able to explore the entire solution space. Introducing chaos into the whole process of a standard genetic algorithm may help improve convergence time and accuracy. Simulation was done using Matlab and Java.

vii, 34 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / We study the Bousfield localization functors known as [Special characters omitted], as described in [MahS]. In particular we would like to understand how they interact with suspension and how they stabilize. We prove that suitably connected [Special characters omitted]-acyclic spaces have suspensions which are built out of a particular type n space, which is an unstable analog of the fact that [Special characters omitted]-acyclic spectra are built out of a particular type n spectrum. This theorem follows Dror-Farjoun's proof in the case n = 1 with suitable alterations. We also show that [Special characters omitted] applied to a space stabilizes in a suitable way to [Special characters omitted] applied to the corresponding suspension spectrum. / Committee in charge: Hal Sadofsky, Chairperson, Mathematics; Arkady Berenstein, Member, Mathematics; Daniel Dugger, Member, Mathematics; Dev Sinha, Member, Mathematics; William Rossi, Outside Member, English

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Apesar do crescente reconhecimento do potencial dos diagramas causais por epidemiologistas, essa técnica ainda é pouco utilizada na investigação epidemiológica. Uma das possíveis razões é que muitos temas de investigação exigem modelos causais complexos. Neste trabalho, a relação entre estresse ocupacional e obesidade é utilizada como um exemplo de aplicação de diagramas causais em questões relacionadas a confundimento. São apresentadas etapas da utilização dos diagramas causais, incluindo a construção do gráfico acíclico direcionado, seleção de variáveis para ajuste estatístico e a derivação das implicações estatísticas de um diagrama causal. A principal vantagem dos diagramas causais é tornar explícitas as hipóteses adjacentes ao modelo considerado, permitindo que suas implicações possam ser analisadas criticamente, facilitando, desta forma, a identificação de possíveis fontes de viés e incerteza nos resultados de um estudo epidemiológico. / Despite the increasing recognition of the potential of causal diagrams by epidemiologists, this technique has not been widely used in epidemiological research. One possible reason is that many research topics require complex causal models. In this article, the relationship between occupational stress and obesity is used as an example of application of causal diagrams on confounding. Some steps are presented, including the construction of the directed acyclic graph, the selection of variables for statistical control and the derivation of the statistical implications of a causal diagram. The main advantage of causal diagrams is to make the assumptions explicit, thus facilitating critical evaluations and the identification of possible sources of bias and uncertainty in the results of an epidemiological study.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Apesar do crescente reconhecimento do potencial dos diagramas causais por epidemiologistas, essa técnica ainda é pouco utilizada na investigação epidemiológica. Uma das possíveis razões é que muitos temas de investigação exigem modelos causais complexos. Neste trabalho, a relação entre estresse ocupacional e obesidade é utilizada como um exemplo de aplicação de diagramas causais em questões relacionadas a confundimento. São apresentadas etapas da utilização dos diagramas causais, incluindo a construção do gráfico acíclico direcionado, seleção de variáveis para ajuste estatístico e a derivação das implicações estatísticas de um diagrama causal. A principal vantagem dos diagramas causais é tornar explícitas as hipóteses adjacentes ao modelo considerado, permitindo que suas implicações possam ser analisadas criticamente, facilitando, desta forma, a identificação de possíveis fontes de viés e incerteza nos resultados de um estudo epidemiológico. / Despite the increasing recognition of the potential of causal diagrams by epidemiologists, this technique has not been widely used in epidemiological research. One possible reason is that many research topics require complex causal models. In this article, the relationship between occupational stress and obesity is used as an example of application of causal diagrams on confounding. Some steps are presented, including the construction of the directed acyclic graph, the selection of variables for statistical control and the derivation of the statistical implications of a causal diagram. The main advantage of causal diagrams is to make the assumptions explicit, thus facilitating critical evaluations and the identification of possible sources of bias and uncertainty in the results of an epidemiological study.

This paper deals with acyclic communication of Siemens Simatic S7-1200 PLCs and Sinamics drives on the Profinet industrial bus. Various possibilites of communication of the devices in accordance to the PROFIdrive profile is presented. General Proxy FBs for acyclic read/write of the drive's parameters are implemented. Together with other two FBs, that make use of acyclic communication to read the drive's fault buffer and to adjust an absolute encoder, an application with visualization for a simple positioning and for a demonstration of the Proxy FBs functionality is presented using a demo box.

No description available.

The ability of gold(I) to activate many types of unsaturated bonds toward nucleophilic attack was not widely recognized until the early 2000s. One major challenge in gold catalysis is the control over regioselectivity when there are two or more possible products as a result of complicated mechanistic pathways. It is well know that the choice of ligand can have dramatic effects on which pathway is being followed but very rarely are the reasons for this selectivity understood. The synthesis of new acyclic diaminocarbenes was developed and a study of the ligand effects on the regioselectivity of a gold-catalyzed domino enyne cyclization hydroarylation reaction and a Nazarov cyclization was undertaken. New chiral acyclic diaminocarbenes were also developed and tested along side new C3-symmetric phosphite ligands in an asymmetric intramolecular hydroamination of allenes. Structure activity correlations were developed for the potential use in further rational ligand design. The synthesis of 6a,7-dihydro-5-amino-dibenzo[c,g]chromene derivatives via a gold-catalyzed domino reaction of alkynylbenzaldehydes in the presence of secondary amines was developed. These were sent to be screened for biological activity.

In telecommunications, there is currently a lot of work being done to migrate to the cloud, and a lot of specialized hardware is being exchanged for virtualized solutions. One important part of telecommunication networks that is yet to be moved to the cloud is known as the base-band unit, which sits between the antennas and the core network. The base-band unit has very strict latency requirements, making it unsuitable for out-of-the-box cloud solutions. Ericsson is therefore investigating if cloud solutions can be customized in such a way that base-band unit functionality can be virtualized as well. One such customization is to describe the functionality of a base-band unit using a directed acyclic graph (DAG), and deploy it to a cloud environment using Kubernetes. This thesis sets out to take applications represented using a DAG and deploy it using Kubernetes in such a way that the network latency is reduced when compared to the deployment generated by the default Kubernetes scheduler. The problem of placing the applications onto the available hardware resources was formulated as an integer linear programming problem. The problem was then implemented using Pyomo and solved with the open-source solver GLPK to obtain an optimized placement. This placement was then used to generate a configuration file that could be used to deploy the applications using Kubernetes. A mock application was developed in order to evaluate the optimized placement. The evaluation carried out in this thesis shows that the optimized placement obtained from the solution could improve the average round-trip latency of applications represented using a DAG by up to 30% when compared to the default Kubernetes scheduler.