Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Resumé This thesis deals with the concept of "good manners" in Czech legal order. The thesis does not attempt to define good manners. The aim of this work is not to give readers a comprehensive picture of good manners in contemporary Czech society, but to illuminate the term and explain its function. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter introduces readers to the history of the concept of good manners, with the concepts of morality, public morality and public order, as well as with the rules of good manners and the actual concept of good manners. The first chapter still contains good manners as an interpretative and application rule and the principle of fair trade. The second chapter is devoted to selected issues of individual civil rights. These issues are the following issues - a duty to maintain a divorced spouse, default interest, an usury, laesio enormis, further an objection limitation, a restitution, a penalty and an advertising and good fair competition. The third chapter deals with the case law of the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic and the case law of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. In addition case law, this chapter also deals with importance of good manners and a legal certainty. The fourth chapter deals with good manners in a civil trial. First of all...

Master of Science / Department of Psychological Sciences / Patrick A. Knight / Despite the functional importance of performance appraisals in organizational settings, rating inaccuracies persist and have been a widely researched topic for decades. Contemporary efforts to explore the problem have turned to components of accuracy to foster a more detailed understanding of the influence of situational factors and individual biases. In particular, a great deal of research has examined the role of rating purpose (e.g., administrative, developmental) on subsequent accuracy, consistently revealing greater leniency for administrative ratings than for developmental ratings. On the basis of spreading activation theory, rating purpose was conceptualized as a priming event, and in combination with rating strategy priming, was expected to prompt predictable enhancements to specific components of accuracy. Participants for this experimental study were 160 undergraduate students. Participants were randomly assigned a rating purpose with “real-world” implications, and exposed to a strategy priming task designed to promote specific rating cognitions. Students viewed video-recorded competitive marching band performances, and rated them. Participants’ ratings were compared to those made by experienced raters to compute accuracy estimates. Results were largely non-significant, but in the directions expected. Limitations and future research opportunities are discussed.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Behrooz Mirafzal / Wide bandgap devices have gained increasing attention in the market of power electronics for their ability to perform even in harsh environments. The high voltage blocking and high temperature withstanding capabilities make them outperform existing Silicon devices. They are expected to find places in future traction systems, electric vehicles, LED lightning and renewable energy engineering systems. In spite of several other advantages later mentioned in this paper, WBG devices also face a few challenges which need to be addressed before they can be applied in large scale in industries. Electromagnetic interference and new requirements in packaging methods are some of the challenges being faced by WBG devices. After the commercialization of these devices, many experiments are being carried out to understand and validate their abilities and drawbacks. This paper summarizes the experimental results of various applications of mainly Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) power devices and also includes a section explaining the current challenges for their employment and improvements being made to overcome them.

Master of Science / Food Science Institute / J. Scott Smith / Heterocyclic amines (HCAs) are cancer causing compounds formed during the cooking of meat. Previous studies show that incorporating antioxidant spices into meat as well as marinating meat with antioxidant spices reduces formation of HCAs. The purpose of this study was to determine if commercially available spices applied to the surface of meat could effectively reduce HCA formation. Two commercially available spice blends and one blend of spices with known quantities of antioxidant spices were sprinkled onto the surface of beef just prior to pan-frying. The quantities of spices used were based on the amounts customarily consumed in typical Western cooking. The results of direct application were then compared to marinating with the same types and amounts of spices. The antioxidant potential of the spices was analyzed using DPPH and total phenolics methods. Results indicated that the spices would be effective antioxidants. Low recovery rates and problems during the extraction process made results inconclusive, but suggest that further research may find that applying spices directly to the surface of meat in consumer acceptable quantities may be as effective as marinating at reducing the formation of HCAs.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel Andresen / Mobile application development is one of the recent trends in computing Industry. Among several existing platforms for mobile, Android is one of the largest platforms in the world that run in several smart phones and tablets from various manufacturers like Google, Motorola, Samsung, HTC etc. Android number game is a simple game application in android targeting the school children to train their mathematical skills and help them to think. The application presents a graphical user interface with several colored bubble balls moving in random directions each with a number on it. The numbers are generated randomly within a specified range. The application allows the user to burst a moving bubble by touching it. The user’s goal is to burst all the bubbles in the ascending order of numbers on them. The application contains multiple levels and the number of bubbles increase as the levels increase. Also, the complexity of the set of numbers on the bubbles increases with increasing levels. Three lives are given to clear all the levels of the game and scores are computed for every correct shot on the ball. Bonus points are also added for clearing every level. The application maintains the top 10 players with their scores.

The purpose of this research was to master several unfamiliar concepts and bring them together in one cohesive project. DroidCDF is an application for the Android operating system to create, write data to, and read data from netCDF format files. DroidCDF uses Unidata’s NetCDF Java Library and can write files in netCDF-3 format but read from any netCDF format files. As mobile devices become more powerful and commonplace, DroidCDF provides a convenient tool for researchers. An incremental methodology was applied; the application was built from a rough workflow to eventually a robust and fully functional program. The produced files are fully portable and can be used as the input for other applications. The application has been tested with several large netCDF files with varying conventions and has handled each one remarkably well. Upon submission of this thesis, DroidCDF will be released onto the open market.

Within the last decade, the United States Forest Service (USFS) has initiated a nation-wide project of Sustainable Recreation as a response to the decreasing amount of resources available to maintain the current recreation infrastructure, including trails, campgrounds, etc. These unmaintained trails and facilities pose a potential safety threat to users and the landscape in which they reside. This smaller pilot project, as part of the Southeast Arizona Sustainable Recreation Strategy, is the second pilot project in the Southwest Region of the USFS aimed at growing the Sustainable Recreation initiative. The main goal of this project is to create the framework for an inter-agency web application of recreation opportunities in Southeast Arizona, with an aim to increase communication between land management agencies, and to increase public participation and conservation of public lands. To achieve this, recreation data were gathered from multiple participating agencies and merged into a new schema in order to provide useful attribute information. This schema was then uploaded to ArcGIS Online and saved as a web map for internal, agency use. In addition, a public-facing web application and corresponding Story Map were also created. The result better portrays the Sustainable Recreation initiative and provides a one-stop-shop of useful recreation information and links for users who wish to become more involved. This project provides the groundwork for which more data from additional agencies and areas can be added and the participation of both land management agencies and the general public can grow.

In this thesis, the issue which is discussed applies to effects of Business Intelligence (BI). They are described in more detail the benefits and potential use of BI in various application areas, namely finance, marketing, manufacturing, logistics, supply chain management, human resources, CI, web analytics, informatics, and CPM. There are a lot of effects which BI brings. They are divided into different categories, which are the effects of economic, customer, personnel and increasing the analytical process and performance. BI provides many benefits to all of mentioned application areas. But in each of them it may occurs some problems which may involves the introduction of BI into different areas. The main goal is to review the possibilities of planning and analysis of BI effects. I would like to make the readers acquainted with effects which are brought together with BI applications, with the structure based on the application areas and based on the categories mentioned here. All of the effects are collected from the case studies and others sources mentioned in the end. The main contribution is the unified view to the effects which brings the implementation of BI to the enterprise. At each of the effects are mentioned the main dimensions needed to monitor during analysis, and importance to the enterprise during its planning. This thesis can be used as a basis for the next topics connected with the effects of BI or with the application areas.

Mid Sweden University staff has several different meetings around the year. Most meetings take place in Mid Sweden University's various campuses (Sundsvall and Östersund). In order for the staff to be able to participate in these meetings, rental-cars are rented from different rental companies. The rental cars are used to transport the staff between the university's campuses. The trips are mostly made by one or two people per car which can lead to unneces- sary extra costs. The goal of this project has been to provide a solution to this problem. The solution was in the form of a web application which the staff can use to register and join carpool trips. Since there are many carpool applications out there, the usability of the web application will be compared to the usability of a similar carpool application called GoMore to show if the developed appli- cation has any advantages in usability over similar applications. This was done by doing user-tests with 10 users followed by a questionnaire for each applica- tion. The usability metrics that were evaluated and compared for both applica- tions were the following: effectiveness, time based efficiency and the satisfac- tion of the user. The results showed a slightly better result in effectiveness and time based efficiency for the developed application. The results also showed a greater satisfaction for users who tested GoMore. Although the developed web application did not show a significant difference in usability over GoMore, the developed application is more specific for the university's problem and can be developed even further to suit the university's needs.