The aim of this research is to propose an alternative approach to determine the maintainability prediction for aircraft components. In this research, the author looks at certain areas of the maintainability prediction process where missteps or misapplications most commonly occur. The first of these is during the early stage of the Design for Maintainability (DfMt) process. The author discovered the importance of utilising historical information or feedback information. The second area is during the maintainability prediction where the maintenance of components is quantified; here, the author proposes having the maximum target for each individual maintainability component. This research attempts to utilise aircraft maintenance historical data and information (i.e. feedback information systems). Aircraft feedback information contains various types of information that could be used for future improvement rather than just the failure elements. Literature shows that feedback information such as Service Difficulty Reporting System (SDRS) and Air Accidents Investigation Branch, (AAIB) reports have helped to identify the critical and sensitive components that need more attention for further improvement. This research consists of two elements. The first is to identity and analyse historical data. The second is to identify existing maintainability prediction methodologies and propose an improved methodology. The 10 years’ data from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) SDRS data of all aircraft were collected and analysed in accordance with the proposed methodology before the processes of maintainability allocation and prediction were carried out. The maintainability was predicted to identify the potential task time for each individual aircraft component. The predicted tasks time in this research has to be in accordance with industrial real tasks time were possible. One of the identified solutions is by using maintainability allocation methodology. The existing maintainability allocation methodology was improved, tested, and validated by using several case studies. The outcomes were found to be very successful. Overall, this research has proposed a new methodology for maintainability prediction by integrating two important elements: historical data information, and maintainability allocation. The study shows that the aircraft maintenance related feedback information systems analyses were very useful for deciding maintainabilityeffectiveness; these include planning, organising maintenance and design improvement. There is no doubt that historical data information has the ability to contribute an important role in design activities. The results also show that maintainability is an importance measure that can be used as a guideline for managing efforts made for the improvement of aircraft components.

This thesis studies the change process of risk management practices associated with the implementation of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and the extent to which it can lead to changes in capital allocation practices. The study develops a theoretical framework to study risk management changes, which draws on structuration theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984) and institutional theory, particularly the institutional framework of Burns and Scapens (2000), as well as new institutional sociology theory. A two-stage empirical study was undertaken in non-life insurance companies. The first stage was a field study of 10 listed non-life insurance companies, while the second stage was a case study of a large non-life insurance company. Multiple data collection methods were used including semi-structured interviews, documentary evidence, annual reports, and publicly available data. Findings show internal, coercive, and normative pressures have mainly driven the ERM adoption decision. The literature supports the impact of coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures on the trend toward ERM in financial industries. However, the study finds that internal pressures related to achieving the company's objectives are either equal to or surpass the external pressures. The study also provides empirical evidence of the changes in risk management practices, which include capital allocation change process associated with ERM implementation. Effective capital allocation requires the incorporation of ERM elements in the whole process of allocating capital. Furthermore, new capital allocation routines and institutions are produced. The study shows that the risk-based capital allocation method is intra- and extra-institutionalised at the company level. The main contribution of this thesis is to identify the nature of ERM adoption and implementation in insurance companies. More specifically, this study provides a better understanding of the institutional forces driving ERM adoption and offers empirical evidence on ERM implementation and the change in risk management practices (routines) within nonlife insurance companies. Moreover, this study avoids the limitations of previous research that was based on surveys, and it does so by conducting an exploratory field study and explanatory case study to address the changes in risk management practices. Practices and process need to be located in their institutional context and hence cannot be reflected in surveys.

A vast amount of usable electronic data is in the form of unstructured text. The relation extraction task aims to identify useful information in text (e.g., PersonW works for OrganisationX, GeneY encodes ProteinZ) and recode it in a format such as a relational database that can be more effectively used for querying and automated reasoning. However, adapting conventional relation extraction systems to new domains or tasks requires significant effort from annotators and developers. Furthermore, previous adaptation approaches based on bootstrapping start from example instances of the target relations, thus requiring that the correct relation type schema be known in advance. Generic relation extraction (GRE) addresses the adaptation problem by applying generic techniques that achieve comparable accuracy when transferred, without modification of model parameters, across domains and tasks. Previous work on GRE has relied extensively on various lexical and shallow syntactic indicators. I present new state-of-the-art models for GRE that incorporate governordependency information. I also introduce a dimensionality reduction step into the GRE relation characterisation sub-task, which serves to capture latent semantic information and leads to significant improvements over an unreduced model. Comparison of dimensionality reduction techniques suggests that latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) – a probabilistic generative approach – successfully incorporates a larger and more interdependent feature set than a model based on singular value decomposition (SVD) and performs as well as or better than SVD on all experimental settings. Finally, I will introduce multi-document summarisation as an extrinsic test bed for GRE and present results which demonstrate that the relative performance of GRE models is consistent across tasks and that the GRE-based representation leads to significant improvements over a standard baseline from the literature. Taken together, the experimental results 1) show that GRE can be improved using dependency parsing and dimensionality reduction, 2) demonstrate the utility of GRE for the content selection step of extractive summarisation and 3) validate the GRE claim of modification-free adaptation for the first time with respect to both domain and task. This thesis also introduces data sets derived from publicly available corpora for the purpose of rigorous intrinsic evaluation in the news and biomedical domains.

Rapid climate change in Arctic regions is of concern due to important feedbacks between the Arctic land surface and the global climate system. A large amount of organic carbon (C) is currently stored in Arctic soils; if decomposition is stimulated under warmer conditions additional release of CO2 could result in an accelerating feedback on global climate. The strength and direction of Arctic C cycle - climate feedbacks will depend on the growth response of vegetation; if plant growth increases some or all of the extra CO2 emissions may be offset. Currently the Arctic is thought to be a small net sink for CO2, the expected balance of terrestrial C sinks and sources in the future is unknown. In this thesis I explore some of the critical unknowns in current understanding of C cycle dynamics in Arctic vegetation. Quantifying gross primary productivity (GPP) over regional scales is complicated by large spatial heterogeneity in plant functional type (PFT) in Arctic vegetation. I use data from five Arctic sites to test the generality of a relationship between leaf area index (LAI) and canopy total foliar nitrogen (TFN). LAI and TFN are key drivers of GPP and are tightly constrained across PFTs in Low Arctic Alaska and Sweden, therefore greatly simplifying the task of up-scaling. I use data from Greenland, Barrow and Svalbard to asses the generality of the LAI-TFN relationship in predicting GPP at higher Arctic latitudes. Arctic ecosystems are unique among biomes in the large relative contribution of bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts) to plant biomass. The contribution of bryophytes to ecosystem function has been relatively understudied and they are poorly represented in terrestrial C models. I use ground based measurements in Northern Sweden to fill an existing data gap by quantifying CO2 fluxes from bryophytes patches in early spring and summer, and develop a simple model of bryophyte GPP. Using the model I compare bryophyte GPP to that of vascular plants before, during and after the summer growing season, finding that productive bryophyte patches can contribute up to 90 % of modelled annual GPP for typical vascular plant communities at the same site, and that the relative magnitude of bryophyte GPP is greatest in spring whilst the vascular plant canopy is still developing. Understanding how GPP relates to plant growth is important in relating remotely sensed increases in Arctic ‘greenness’ to changes in plant C stocks. I use a 13C pulselabelling techniques to follow the fate of recently fixed C in mixed vascular and bryophyte vegetation, with a focus on quantifying the contribution of bryophytes to ecosystem carbon use efficiency (CUE). I show that bryophytes contribute significantly to GPP in mixed vegetation, and act to increase ecosystem CUE. I highlight the importance of including bryophytes, which do not have roots, in aboveground: belowground partitioning schemes in C models. To further explore C turnover in bryophytes, I use the results of a second 13C labelling experiment to develop a model of C turnover in two contrasting Arctic mosses (Polytrichum piliferum and Sphagnum fuscum). I find significant differences in C turnover between Polytrichum piliferum which respires or translocates about 80 % of GPP, while Sphagnum fuscum respires 60 %. This analysis is the first to explicitly model differences in C partitioning between Arctic bryophyte species. Finally, I discuss the implications of each chapter for our understanding of Arctic C dynamics, and suggest areas for further research.

The thesis evaluates the benefit of allowing for long memory volatility dynamics in forecasts of the variance-covariance matrix for asset allocation. First, I compare the forecast performance of multivariate long memory conditional volatility models (the long memory EWMA, long memory EWMA-DCC, FIGARCH-DCC and Component GARCH-DCC models) with that of short memory conditional volatility models (the short memory EWMA and GARCH-DCC models), using the asset allocation framework of Engle and Colacito (2006). The research reports two main findings. First, for longer horizon forecasts, long memory volatility models generally produce forecasts of the covariance matrix that are statistically more accurate and informative, and economically more useful than those produced by short memory volatility models. Second, the two parsimonious long memory EWMA models outperform the other models – both short memory and long memory – in a majority of cases across all forecast horizons. These results apply to both low and high dimensional covariance matrices with both low and high correlation assets, and are robust to the choice of estimation window. The research then evaluates the application of multivariate long memory conditional volatility models in dynamic asset allocation, applying the volatility timing procedure of Fleming et al. (2001). The research consistently identifies the economic gains from incorporating long memory volatility dynamics in investment decisions. Investors are willing to pay to switch from the static to the dynamic strategies, and especially from the short memory volatility timing to the long memory volatility timing strategies across both short and long investment horizons. Among the long memory conditional volatility models, the two parsimonious long memory EWMA models, again, generally produce the most superior portfolios. When transaction costs are taken into account, the gains from the daily rebalanced dynamic portfolios deteriorate; however, it is still worth implementing the dynamic strategies at lower rebalancing frequencies. The results are robust to estimation error in expected returns, the choice of risk aversion coefficients and the use of a long-only constraint. To control for estimation error in forecasts of the long memory high dimensional covariance matrix, the research develops a dynamic long memory factor (the Orthogonal Factor Long Memory, or OFLM) model by embedding the univariate long memory EWMA model of Zumbach (2006) into an orthogonal factor structure. The factor-structured OFLM model is evaluated against the six above multivariate conditional volatility models in terms of forecast performance and economic benefits. The results suggest that the OFLM model generally produces impressive forecasts over both short and long forecast horizons. In the volatility timing framework, portfolios constructed with the OFLM model consistently dominate the static and other dynamic volatility timing portfolios in all rebalancing frequencies. Particularly, the outperformance of the factor-structured OFLM model to the fully estimated LM-EWMA model confirms the advantage of the factor structure in reducing estimation error. The factor structure also significantly reduces transaction costs, making the dynamic strategies more feasible in practice. The dynamic factor long memory volatility model also consistently produces more superior portfolios than those produced by the traditional unconditional factor and the dynamic factor short memory volatility models.

The recent advances in mobile computing and distributed multimedia systems allow mobile hosts (clients) to access wireless multimedia Data at anywhere and at anytime. In accessing multimedia information on the distributed multimedia servers from wireless personal communication service systems, a channel assignment problem and synchronization problems should be solved efficiently. Recent demand for mobile telephone service have been growing rapidly while the electro-magnetic spectrum of frequencies allocated for this purpose remain limited. Any solution to the channel assignment problem is subject to this limitation, as well as the interference constraint between adjacent channels in the spectrum. Channel allocation schemes provide a flexible and efficient access to bandwidth in wireless and mobile communication systems. In this dissertation, both an efficient distributed algorithm for dynamic channel allocation based upon mutual exclusion model, and an efficient distributed synchronization algorithm using Quasi-sink for wireless and mobile multimedia systems to ensure and facilitate mobile client access to multimedia objects are proposed. Algorithm's performance with several channel systems using different types of call arrival patterns is determined analytically. A set of simulation experiments to evaluate the performance of our scheme using message complexity and buffer usage at each frame arrival time.

L’étude des déterminants de l’aptitude phénotypique renseigne sur l’écologie évolutive des organismes, et sur les pressions de sélection pouvant agir sur leurs traits phénotypiques. Chez les femelles mammifères, la taille corporelle est associée à un meilleur succès reproducteur, à travers une fécondité accrue, des soins maternels plus performants et une survie améliorée de leurs juvéniles. Atteindre une grande taille, néanmoins, implique des coûts et des compromis, car la croissance est un processus coûteux qui limite l’énergie restante pour d’autres fonctions. Ainsi, la croissance occasionne des compromis à court terme entre différents traits pouvant tous favoriser une meilleure aptitude phénotypique. Il est intéressant d’étudier les décisions d’allocation entre la croissance et la reproduction pour mieux comprendre l’évolution des stratégies d’histoire de vie, plus particulièrement chez un grand mammifère itéropare. Mon projet de maîtrise visait à quantifier l’effet de la taille squelettique sur le succès reproducteur des femelles chez le kangourou gris de l’Est (Macropus giganteus). Ce modèle d’étude est particulièrement pertinent puisque les kangourous continuent de grandir pendant une grande partie de leur vie, prolongeant les compromis entre la croissance et la reproduction. Pour répondre à mes questions de recherche, j’ai utilisé les données de captures de femelles d’âge connu au fil des huit années de suivi, de 2008 à 2016, d’une population naturelle de kangourous au Wilsons Promontory National Park, dans l’état de Victoria en Australie. J’ai également étudié la composition du lait chez un sous-échantillon de femelles en 2014 et 2015, pour évaluer la variabilité des soins maternels chez cette espèce. J’ai d’abord identifié les facteurs les plus importants expliquant la croissance des femelles adultes. Les femelles plus jeunes et plus petites avaient les taux de croissance les plus élevés, mais les femelles de petite taille plus âgées grandissaient moins que les plus jeunes, indiquant potentiellement une accumulation de coûts pour la croissance avec l'âge. J’ai également trouvé que la condition corporelle des individus était positivement corrélée à leur croissance squelettique annuelle, alors que les précipitations hivernales semblaient réduire celle-ci. Parallèlement, la fécondité d’une femelle était positivement expliquée par sa taille corporelle et son âge, mais l’effet de la taille corporelle s’estompait chez les femelles plus âgées. De plus, la condition corporelle d’une femelle augmentait la probabilité de donner naissance et la survie du juvénile jusqu’à 10 mois. Ces résultats suggèrent que la fécondité et le succès reproducteur entrent en compromis avec la croissance squelettique, spécialement chez les jeunes femelles de petite taille. Alors que la croissance somatique semble priorisée en début de vie, l’allocation à la reproduction semble augmenter avec l’âge, et ce, indépendamment de la taille. L’étude de la composition du lait a révélé que les soins maternels des kangourous semblent fortement affectés par la qualité de leur environnement. En effet, les femelles allaitant pendant une année à faible productivité végétale produisaient un lait beaucoup plus faible en énergie que les femelles allaitant pendant une année plus productive, et ce, au même stade de lactation. De plus, les femelles atteignant le milieu de la lactation avant l’émergence printanière de la végétation produisaient un lait plus riche en lipides que celles allaitant vers la fin du printemps, suggérant que les femelles se reproduisant tôt ont dû puiser dans leurs réserves d’énergie au lieu de tirer l’énergie nécessaire à lactation de leur environnement. J’ai également trouvé que les femelles de plus grande taille squelettique produisaient un lait plus riche en protéines, suggérant que l’allocation des ressources à la reproduction augmente lorsque le compromis avec la croissance est plus faible. Finalement, les mères en bonne condition corporelle ayant un fils produisaient un lait plus riche en protéines que les mères de filles, suggérant un mécanisme adaptatif d’allocation de ressources en faveur de la croissance des mâles. En conclusion, les femelles atteignant une grande taille squelettique tôt dans leur vie ont une meilleure fécondité spécifique à leur âge. Comme les conditions environnementales expliquent en partie la variabilité en croissance annuelle chez les femelles adultes, les conditions précoces de vie auront potentiellement des répercussions à long terme sur le succès reproducteur à vie, en affectant les taux de croissance avant l’atteinte de la maturité. Finalement, la stratégie de lactation des kangourous semble être fortement influencée par la disponibilité de ressources, renforçant l’hypothèse que ces mammifères possèdent une stratégie de reproduction conservatrice et dépendante du statut nutritionnel de la femelle. Mes résultats offrent aussi une explication de la modulation de la composition du lait selon le sexe du jeune, montrant que les femelles de meilleure qualité phénotypique ont avantage à allouer davantage de ressources à leur progéniture mâle, pour augmenter leur succès reproducteur. Les prochains travaux pourront bénéficier des années additionnelles de suivi de cette population pour investiguer le succès reproducteur à vie et quantifier l’importance des effets cohorte.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The production of flight test plans have received attention from many research workers due to increasing complexity of testing facilities, the complex demands proposed by customers and the large volume of data required from test flights. The paper opens with a review of research work conducted by other authors who have contributed to ameliorating the preparation of flight test plans and processing the resulting data. This is followed by a description of a specific problem area; efficiently configuring the flight test data telemetry format (defined by the relevant standards while meeting user requirements of sampling rate and PCM word length). Following a description of a current semi-automated system, the authors propose an enhanced approach and demonstrate its efficiency through two case studies.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The identification, selection and employment of better resource allocation models or practices is the aim of this research. As nations seek to employ their resources in a more efficient manner while deriving more effective outputs, those elected to public office must be willing to involve other members of the society in their decision-making. National security is one such area that is in need of a shared vision if it is to achieve the desired results. This paper examines the resource allocation process for national security in Jamaica. The purpose of this study is to establish whether the current process is adequate for addressing this aspect of the country's expenditure, as it impacts upon every citizen and every other area of the nation's affairs. In establishing whether the Jamaican model is adequate, a study of the processes used in three developed countries, namely Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States is done with a view of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each process. The understanding of best practices in the field of national security is important, since after all, foreign trade and hence economic prosperity are more likely to be associated with nations that create secure environments. How much to allocate to defense and the consideration of all other viable alternatives is crucial. Only then can the nation look objectively at its unique situation. / Major, Jamaica Defence Force

"All cold-blooded animals and a large number of warm-blooded ones spend an unexpectedly large proportion of their time doing nothing at all, or at any rate, nothing in particular." (Elton 1927) Many animals are remarkably "lazy", spending >50% of their waking hours "resting" . This is common across all taxa, ecologies, and life histories, including what are commonly considered to be highly industrious animals: the social insects (e.g., Aesop's Fable 'The Grasshopper and the Ant'). This dissertation broadly seeks to explain a phenomenon that has long been observed, but never adequately addressed, by asking: 'why are there 'lazy' ants?' First, I established that inactivity was a real and ecologically relevant phenomenon in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus by testing whether inactivity was a lab artifact. I then showed that inactive workers comprise a behaviorally distinct group of workers that are commonly overlooked in studies looking at colony function, though they typically represent at least half of the individuals within social insect colonies. I then tested a set of mutually non-exclusive hypotheses explaining inactivity in social insects: that (1) inactivity is a form of social "cheating" in which egg-laying workers selfishly invest in their own reproduction rather than contribute to colony fitness, (2) inactive workers comprise a pool of reserve workers used to mitigate the effects of fluctuations in colony workload, (3) inactivity is the result of physiological constraints on worker age such that young and old workers may less active due to inexperience/physical vulnerability, and physiological deterioration respectively, (4) inactive workers are performing an as-yet unidentified function, such as playing a role in communication and acting as food stores, or repletes, and that (5) inactive workers represent the 'slow' end of intra-nest variation in worker 'pace-of-life'. Inactivity is linked to worker age, reproduction, and a potential function as food stores for the colony. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, likely form a 'syndrome' of behaviors common to inactive social insect workers. Their simultaneous contribution to worker inactivity may explain the difficulty in finding a simple answer to this deceptively simple question.