A atividade de exploração e produção (E&P) de óleo e gás caracteriza-se por ser tipicamente de capital intensivo, envolver altos riscos e longos prazos de maturação dos investimentos, evidenciando valores significativos dos ativos empregados e apresentando, consequentemente, dificuldade na recuperação dos valores capitalizados. Assim, o teste para verificar a recuperação dos valores dos ativos impairment tem importância acentuada para o setor. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho objetivou identificar o impacto das variações no preço do petróleo e no volume de reservas provadas sobre a perda do valor de recuperação (impairment) atribuída aos ativos de E&P de empresas petrolíferas listadas na NYSE, durante o período que correspondeu aos relatórios contábeis de 2003 a 2008. Para tal: (i) foram caracterizadas a indústria e a contabilidade para o setor petrolífero, sobretudo o seu principal segmento, de E&P; (ii) foram levantadas as principais normas norte-americanas, internacionais e brasileiras que orientam a metodologia do teste de impairment, evidenciando suas diferenças; (iii) foi apresentada a aplicação do teste de impairment especificamente na indústria petrolífera e (iv) foram levantadas evidências empíricas para serem identificadas as influências das variáveis selecionadas sobre a despesa de impairment atribuída ao segmento de E&P. Na caracterização da indústria petrolífera e de sua contabilidade ficaram evidentes características peculiares como, por exemplo, a possibilidade de escolha de um dos dois métodos de contabilização para os gastos incorridos nas atividades de E&P. Na análise das normas que orientam o teste de impairment, constatou-se que, apesar das consideráveis semelhanças, as diferenças observadas podem distorcer o real objetivo do instrumento, que é o de garantir que os registros contábeis retratem o valor mais acurado possível dos benefícios econômicos futuros que os ativos podem gerar à entidade. Na análise da aplicação do teste na indústria petrolífera, ficou evidente o risco existente na atividade de E&P, o que atribui a seus ativos uma incerteza na realização dos fluxos de caixas futuros. E, por fim, na análise de como as variáveis selecionadas se relacionam e, consequentemente, influenciam as Despesas de Impairment de E&P, observou-se, principalmente, a relação inversa dessa variável com os valores de Descobertas. Esses resultados dão indícios de que a variável Descoberta deve ser premissa levada em consideração no cálculo do valor de recuperação de um ativo de E&P. / Oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) is characterized as an activity that is typically capital-intensive, involves high risks and long investment maturity terms, with high values of assets used and, consequently, difficulties to recover capitalized amounts. Hence, impairment tests are very important to the sector. In that context, this research aimed to identify the impact of variations in oil prices and proven reserve volumes in the impairment of E&P assets of oil companies listed on NYSE, during the period corresponding to the financial statements between 2003 and 2008. Therefore, (i) the industry and accounting for the oil sector were characterized, particularly its main segment, which is E&P, (ii) the main North American, international and Brazilian standards were survey which guide the impairment test method, evidencing differences, (iii) the application of the impairment test was presented, specifically in the oil industry, and (iv) empirical evidence was raised to identify the influences of the identified variables on impairment expense attributed to the E&P segment. In the characterization of the oil industry and its accounting, peculiar characteristics were evidenced, such as, for example, the possibility to choose between one of two methods to account for costs incurred in E&P activities. In the analysis of the standards guiding the impairment test, it was verified that, despite considerable similarities, the observed differences can distort the true goal of this instrument, which is to guarantee that accounting records picture the value of the future economic benefits the assets can create for the entity as precisely as possible. In the analysis of the test application to the oil industry, the risk of E&P activities was evidenced, which entails uncertainty for the realization of these assets future cash flows. And, finally, in the analysis of how the selected variables are related and, consequently, influence Impairment Expenses of E&P, the main observation was related to the inverse relation between this variable and the values of Discoveries. These results indicate that the Discovery variable should be a premise taken into account when calculating the recovery value of an E&P asset.

The Linked Data concept relies on a collection of best practices to publish and link structured web-based data. However, the number of available datasets has been growing significantly over the last decades. These datasets are interconnected and now represent the well-known Web of Data, which stands for an extensive collection of concise and detailed interlinked data sets from multiple domains with large datasets. Thus, linking entries across heterogeneous data sources such as databases or knowledge bases becomes an increasing challenge. However, connections between datasets play a leading role in significant activities such as cross-ontology question answering, large-scale inferences, and data integration. In Linked Data, the Linksets are well known for executing the task of generating links between datasets. Due to the heterogeneity of the datasets, this uniqueness is reflected in the structure of the dataset, making a hard task to find relations among those datasets, i.e., to identify how similar they are. In this way, we can say that Linked Data involves Datasets and Linksets and those Linksets needs to be maintained. Such lack of information directed us to the current issues addressed in this thesis, which are: How to Identify and query datasets from a huge heterogeneous collection of RDF (Resource Description Framework) datasets. To address this issue, we need to assure the consistency and to know how the datasets are related and how similar they are. As results, to deal with the need for identifying LOD (Linked Open Data) Datasets, we created an approach called WIMU, which is a regularly updated database index of more than 660K datasets from LODStats and LOD Laundromat, an efficient, low cost and scalable service on the web that shows which dataset most likely defines a URI and various statistics of datasets indexed from LODStats and LOD Laundromat. To integrate and to query LOD datasets, we provide a hybrid SPARQL query processing engine that can retrieve results from 559 active SPARQL endpoints (with a total of 163.23 billion triples) and 668,166 datasets (with a total of 58.49 billion triples) from LOD Stats and LOD Laundromat. To assure consistency of semantic web Linked repositories where these LOD datasets are located we create an approach for the mitigation of the identifier heterogeneity problem and implement a prototype where the user can evaluate existing links, as well as suggest new links to be rated and a time-efficient algorithm for the detection of erroneous links in large-scale link repositories without computing all closures required by the property axiom. To know how the datasets are related and how similar they are we provide a String similarity algorithm called Most Frequent K Characters, in which is based in two nested filters, (1) First Frequency Filter and (2) Hash Intersection filter, that allows discarding candidates before calculating the actual similarity value, thus giving a considerable performance gain, allowing to build a LOD Dataset Relation Index, in which provides information about how similar are all the datasets from LOD cloud, including statistics about the current state of those datasets. The work in this thesis showed that to identify and query LOD datasets, we need to know how those datasets are related, assuring consistency. Our analysis demonstrated that most of the datasets are disconnected from others needing to pass through a consistency and linking process to integrate them, providing a way to query a large number of datasets simultaneously. There is a considerable step towards totally queryable LOD datasets, where the information contained in this thesis is an essential step towards Identifying, Relating, and Querying datasets on the Web of Data.:1 introduction and motivation 1 1.1 The need for identifying and querying LOD datasets . 1 1.2 The need for consistency of semantic web Linked repositories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3 The need for Relation and integration of LOD datasets 2 1.4 Research Questions and Contributions . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.5 Methodology and Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.6 General Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.6.1 The Heloise project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.7 Chapter overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2 preliminaries 8 2.1 Semantic Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.1.1 URIs and URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.1.2 Linked Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.1.3 Resource Description Framework . . . . . . . . 10 2.1.4 Ontologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2 RDF graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.3 Transitive property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.4 Equivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.5 Linkset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.6 RDF graph partitioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.7 Basic Graph Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.8 RDF Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.9 SPARQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.10 Federated Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 3 state of the art 15 3.1 Identifying Datasets in Large Heterogeneous RDF Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.2 Relating Large amount of RDF datasets . . . . . . . . . 19 3.2.1 Obtaining Similar Resources using String Similarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.3 Consistency on Large amout of RDF sources . . . . . . 21 3.3.1 Heterogeneity in DBpedia Identifiers . . . . . . 21 3.3.2 Detection of Erroneous Links in Large-Scale RDF Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.4 Querying Large Heterogeneous RDF Datasets . . . . . 25 4 relation among large amount of rdf sources 29 4.1 Identifying Datasets in Large Heterogeneous RDF sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4.1.1 The WIMU approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4.1.2 The approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 4.1.3 Use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.1.4 Evaluation: Statistics about the Datasets . . . . 35 4.2 Relating RDF sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.2.1 The ReLOD approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.2.2 The approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 4.2.3 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4.3 Relating Similar Resources using String Similarity . . . 50 4.3.1 The MFKC approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4.3.2 Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4.3.3 Correctness and Completeness . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.3.4 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 5 consistency in large amount of rdf sources 67 5.1 Consistency in Heterogeneous DBpedia Identifiers . . 67 5.1.1 The DBpediaSameAs approach . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.1.2 Representation of the idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.1.3 The work-flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5.1.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5.1.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 5.1.6 Normalization on DBpedia URIs . . . . . . . . . 70 5.1.7 Rate the links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 5.1.8 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 5.1.9 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 5.2 Consistency in Large-Scale RDF sources: Detection of Erroneous Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 5.2.1 The CEDAL approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 5.2.2 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 5.2.3 Error Types and Quality Measure for Linkset Repositories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 5.2.4 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 5.2.5 Experimental setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 5.3 Detecting Erroneous Link candidates in Educational Link Repositories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 5.3.1 The CEDAL education approach . . . . . . . . . 85 5.3.2 Research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 5.3.3 Our contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 5.3.4 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6 querying large amount of heterogeneous rdf datasets 89 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 6.2 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 6.3 The WimuQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.1 Identifying Datasets in Large Heterogeneous RDF Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 7.2 Relating Large Amount of RDF Datasets . . . . . . . . 101 7.3 Obtaining Similar Resources Using String Similarity . . 102 7.4 Heterogeneity in DBpedia Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . 102 7.5 Detection of Erroneous Links in Large-Scale RDF Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 7.7 Querying Large Heterogeneous RDF Datasets . . . . . 104

This thesis is devoted to the problem of the production of hulls of the gearboxes. The text of this final thesis shows the production technology for single and series production. At the same time, a critical amount of products for a different production options were established.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the possibility of arranging insurance house under construction in a variety of insurance companies. Unexpected risks that may occur, often causing major economic problems. If a legal or natural person out appropriate insurance will help him overcome the financial consequences of loss of insurance coverage.

The thesis is focused on assessing the possibilities of real division garage area as the first choice to balance the case of co-ownership in the absence of agreement between the venturers. The theoretical part of the work is collected all available evidence on the assessed property, including the implementation of local investigation and assessment of whether the real property division garage complex at all possible. Subsequently valuation is made by dividing the area before, quantifying the costs of real division and valuation of real estate for newly created division of property according to the above shares.

Using metacommunity theory, I investigated the mechanisms of meta-assemblage structure and assembly among medium- to large-bodied mammals in North Texas. Mammals were surveyed with camera-traps in thirty property units of the LBJ National Grasslands (LBJNG). In Chapter II the dispersal and environmental-control based processes in community assembly were quantified within a metacommunity context and the best-fit metacommunity structure identified. A hypothesis-driven modelling approach was used in Chapter III to determine if the patterns of species composition and site use could be explained by island biogeography theory (IBT) or the habitat amount hypothesis (HAH). Islands were defined as the LBJNG property unit or the forest patch bounded by the property unit. Forest cover was selected as the focal habitat for the HAH. Seasonal dynamics were explored in both chapters. Metacommunity structure changed with each season, resulting in quasi-nested and both quasi and idealized Gleasonian and Clementsian structures. Results indicated that the anthropogenic development is, overall, not disadvantageous for this assemblage, that community assembly receives equal contributions from spatial and environmental factors, and that the metacommunity appears to operate under the mass effects paradigm. The patterns of species composition and site use were not explained by either IBT or HAH. Likely because this assemblage of generalist, dispersal-capable mammals are utilizing multiple habitat types both in the protected land and in the private land. This research highlights the versatility of these species and the potential value of rural countryside landscapes for wildlife conservation.

This research study was designed to help illuminate if there is a relationship between the quality of career and technical education programs from centralized and decentralized-controlled systems in relation to the level of authority exerted by state governing/coordinating boards over the community college system. This study included data from the 50 states that are part of the United States of America. This study used a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent design. This study did not include randomly selected groups and was a nonequivalent control group design. The independent variables included: centralized or decentralized governance, median household income, the percent of community colleges that are rural, unemployment rate, and amount spent per full time enrolled community college student. The independent variable data that was collected came from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the United States Census Bureau, and the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The dependent variable was the mean score of Carl Perkins Act reporting data that each state is required to report to federal authorities every year. The states were divided in two separate groups, centralized or decentralized form of governance. A regression analysis was performed in order to analyze if a relationship exists between the independent and dependent variables for each group. The research indicated that the form of governance does impact Carl Perkins Act reporting scores in a decentralized form of governance in relation to median income, but overall the model is not a good predictor of overall scores. A significant difference was found in states that have a decentralized form of governance and median household income in relation to Carl Perkins Act reporting data. However, the model, as a whole, did not produce significant results in relation to the independent and dependent variables. Considerations for future research are discussed.

This study was conducted to examine whether a disparity exists between teacher expectations of honors and non-honors U. S. History students and if students who read more for U. S. History perform better on the U. S. History End-of-Course (EOC) examination. To generate answers to the research questions, both teachers and students in U. S. History courses were surveyed as to how much time was spent reading for U. S. History content both during class and for homework. The student surveys were matched to the U. S. History EOC Developmental Scale Scores to determine if students who responded as reading more for the course had higher achievement on the EOC examination. Five teacher surveys were completed, and 144 student surveys were analyzed, and comparisons were made using U. S. History EOC Developmental Scale Scores. Teachers surveyed did not appear to vary their expectations of student whether the students were in an honors or non-honors course. Approximately 71% of non-honors and 73% of honors students in this study were reading U. S. History homework content on a regular basis. Though not statistically significant, results did indicate a positive trend between students who read more for U. S. History content and achievement on the EOC examination. This study revealed the implementation of a standardized EOC examination may account for equally rigorous teacher expectations of both honors and non-honors students. All students have the same final evaluation and expectation of passing the EOC; therefore, all students are expected to learn the content.

Understanding how habitat amount and configuration affect species richness, occurrence or abundance has been one of the major foci of research in ecology and biogeography, given its central importance for conservation planning and landscape management. We conducted bird point counts within clearcuts and mature pine stands of different sizes and configuration in working pine forest in north-central Mississippi to determine species associations. Early-successional and mature pine focal species showed varying response to the proportion and proximity of vegetation conditions in the landscape. While elements of configuration exhibited a greater influence on predicted avian abundance in this landscape, meaning many species require a mosaic of habitat conditions that come from both early-successional and mature vegetation types. Efforts to combine management of timber and conservation of songbirds must consider both species’ habitat requirements and the distribution of these requirements in the landscape.

No description available.