This thesis deals with the comparison of banks and credit unions with a focus on the comparison in terms of access to credit risk management. Both institutions are analyzed on the basis of aggregated data within the Czech financial market, capital adequacy, liquidity, asset quality of the loan portfolio and other key indicators of solvency and financial stability. In the final part of the thesis, there are analyzed the causes of failure of these credit unions: "Metropolitní spořitelní družstvo", "UNIBON -- spořitelní a úvěrní družstvo" and "WPB Capital, spořitelní družstvo".

This diploma thesis is about Singletary's Integration Infrastructure Model and its practical application. The main goal of the thesis is proposal of application of IT Integration Infrastructure Model from Lester Singletary in practical realization of integration with development of existing eCommerce solution in business practice. In theoretical part there is introduced each point for achieving the goal, which is used to build an appropriate methodology or its consequential application. In the following part there is shortly defined the description of practical application, where is explained how is the creation of methodology for fulfilment of Singletary model approached. After that follows the proposal of methodology, character of particular environment in which is the model applied and the application of the methodology itself as well as creation of the model. The benefit of this thesis is experimental application of proposed methodology, which leads to achievement of Lester Singletary's model which helps to determine easier if the model is suitable for practical application or not. Another benefit is categorisation of the model by chosen solution which simplifies its search and classification.

Orientadores: Monica Sanches Yassuda / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-07T14:29:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carvalho_FabianaCastilloRoda_M.pdf: 1906824 bytes, checksum: eae2560df34d2b9c45cc4eb33fd9444c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: A memória é uma habilidade fortemente associada à qualidade de vida e ao bem-estar do idoso e de sua família, pois é vital para sua independência e autonomia. O presente estudo teve como objetivo principal estudar os efeitos do treino de memória episódica em uma população idosa brasileira saudável. Para alcançar esse objetivo foram recrutados 57 idosos, a partir de 60 anos de idade e com escolaridade entre 4 e 8 anos, sem indício de depressão e demência. Esses idosos foram divididos aleatoriamente em grupo controle (GCOs= 26) e grupo experimental (GEXs=31). Os participantes do grupo controle participaram do pré e pós-teste e receberam treino posteriormente. Os participantes do grupo experimental participaram do pré-teste, de 5 sessões de treino de memória episódica, nas quais foram instruídos a categorizar listas de supermercado e listas de figuras e realizaram o pós-teste na 6° sessão. As medidas do pré e pós-teste para ambos os grupos incluíram a recordação de uma prancha de 18 figuras, a prova Códigos da bateria WAIS-III, avaliação do uso de estratégia através do auto-relato (pergunta aberta e fechada) e através do cálculo da medida de Bousfield direto do protocolo. Resultados indicaram que o treino de memória episódica envolvendo a aprendizagem e prática com a estratégia de categorização promoveu uma melhora no desempenho da memória episódica e um maior uso da estratégia treinada. Pôde-se verificar a manutenção da plasticidade da memória em uma população idosa entre a faixa etária de 60-69 anos e em idosos com mais de 70 anos / Abstract: Memory is a cognitive ability that is strongly associated with quality of life and well-being of older adults and their families, because it is vital to independence and autonomy. The present study had as its main goal to verify the efficacy of an episodic memory intervention offered to a population of healthy Brazilian older adults.To reach this goal 57 older adults, 60 and older with 4 to 8 years of formal education with no signs of depression or dementia, were invited to participate. Participants were randomly divided into two control (n=26) and two experimental groups (n=31). Control participants completed pre and pos test and afterwards received training. Experimental participants completed pre test five training sessions (when they learned to categorize grocery lists and pictures) and post test. Assessment measures for both groups included memory recall of 18 pictures, WAIS-III Digit Symbol, an open question about strategy use, and a check list question about possible strategies used, as well as the Bousfield measure of categorization. Results indicated that episodic memory training involving learning and practice of categorization can lead to higher strategy use and performance in this population, Results suggest presence o memory plasticity in Brazilian older adults 60-69 years old and above 70 / Mestrado / Gerontologia / Mestre em Gerontologia

This qualitative study focuses on perceptions of actors within protracted social conflicts and the value of using self-categorization as a tool to increase understanding of conflict actors as a step towards to finding alternative solutions. It compares self-perceptions of the Hilltop Youth, a radical settler group in the West Bank region in the Middle East, to categorizations used in all of the established literature on the group. Five categories that are recurring in the literature on the Hilltop Youth (terrorists, vigilantes, active flank within a social movement, gang, and activist) are contrasted with Self-Categorization theory and will be used as a tool to determine the self-image of the group as displayed in the digital and social media. The findings show that the category that finds common ground between the two perspectives is activists. The Hilltop Youth view themselves as freedom fighters, doing what they are chosen to do: settle the land, already promised to them.  Their actions and beliefs translate to political activism this both including building homes and creating outposts as well as conducting “price tag” attacks. The findings underline the difference in perceived realities between the Hilltop Youth and researchers. Concluding the need to incorporate the perspective of the actor itself in order to create a sustainable peace based on the same reality, something that have been overlooked in previous Hilltop Youth research.

During spoken language comprehension, listeners transform continuous acoustic cues into categories (e.g. /b/ and /p/). While longstanding research suggests that phoneme categories are activated in a gradient way, there are also clear individual differences, with more gradient categorization being linked to various communication impairment like dyslexia and specific language impairments (Joanisse, Manis, Keating, & Seidenberg, 2000; López-Zamora, Luque, Álvarez, & Cobos, 2012; Serniclaes, Van Heghe, Mousty, Carré, & Sprenger-Charolles, 2004; Werker & Tees, 1987). Crucially, most studies have used two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) tasks to measure the sharpness of between-category boundaries. Here we propose an alternative paradigm that allows us to measure categorization gradiency in a more direct way. We then use this measure in an individual differences paradigm to: (a) examine the nature of categorization gradiency, (b) explore its links to different aspects of speech perception and other cognitive processes, (c) test different hypotheses about its sources, (d) evaluate its (positive/negative) role in spoken language comprehension, and (e) assess whether it can be modified via training. Our results provide validation for this new method of assessing phoneme categorization gradiency and offer valuable insights into the mechanisms that underlie speech perception.

Several fundamental questions about speech perception concern how listeners understand spoken language despite considerable variability in speech sounds across different contexts (the problem of lack of invariance in speech). This contextual variability is caused by several factors, including differences between individual talkers' voices, variation in speaking rate, and effects of coarticulatory context. A number of models have been proposed to describe how the speech system handles differences across contexts. Critically, these models make different predictions about (1) whether contextual variability is handled at the level of acoustic cue encoding or categorization, (2) whether it is driven by feedback from category-level processes or interactions between cues, and (3) whether listeners discard fine-grained acoustic information to compensate for contextual variability. Separating the effects of cue- and category-level processing has been difficult because behavioral measures tap processes that occur well after initial cue encoding and are influenced by task demands and linguistic information. Recently, we have used the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique to examine cue encoding and online categorization. Specifically, we have looked at differences in the auditory N1 as a measure of acoustic cue encoding and the P3 as a measure of categorization. This allows us to examine multiple levels of processing during speech perception and can provide a useful tool for studying effects of contextual variability. Here, I apply this approach to determine the point in processing at which context has an effect on speech perception and to examine whether acoustic cues are encoded continuously. Several types of contextual variability (talker gender, speaking rate, and coarticulation), as well as several acoustic cues (voice onset time, formant frequencies, and bandwidths), are examined in a series of experiments. The results suggest that (1) at early stages of speech processing, listeners encode continuous differences in acoustic cues, independent of phonological categories; (2) at post-perceptual stages, fine-grained acoustic information is preserved; and (3) there is preliminary evidence that listeners encode cues relative to context via feedback from categories. These results are discussed in relation to proposed models of speech perception and sources of contextual variability.

Tato diplomová práce popisuje návrh a implementaci nástroje pro automatickou kategorizaci webových stránek. Cílem nástroje je aby byl schopen se z ukázkových webových stránek naučit, jak každá kategorie vypadá. Poté by měl nástroj zvládnout přiřadit naučené kategorie k dříve nespatřeným webovým stránkám. Nástroj by měl podporovat více kategorií a jazyků. Pro vývoj nástroje byly použity pokročilé techniky strojového učení, detekce jazyků a dolování dat. Nástroj je založen na open source knihovnách a je napsán v jazyce Python 3.3.

This thesis deals with text mining. It focuses on problems of document classification and related techniques, mainly data preprocessing. Project also introduces the SVM method, which has been chosen for classification, design and testing of implemented application.

L’objectif central de cette thèse consiste à étudier les effets des couleurs associées au genre, particulièrement bleu et rose, sur la perception du sexe des visages. Les enregistrements électrophysiologiques de surface (potentiels évoqués cérébraux) et les données comportementales issus de mon travail indiquent que la perception du visage, au-delà de sa dimension physiologique, est soumise à l’influence de processus top-down induits par le stéréotype de la couleur bleue pour le genre masculin et de la couleur rose pour le genre féminin. Ces influences s’observent précocement au cours de l'étape d'encodage perceptif des visages. / The present thesis aims at studying the impact of the colors associated to gender, particularly blue and pink, on the perception of face gender. Our electrophysiological and behavioral data indicate that the perception of the face, beyond its physiological dimension, is subject to the influence of top-down processes induced by pink for female and blue for male stereotype. These influences are evident at early perceptual stage of face processing.

abstract: Social media bot detection has been a signature challenge in recent years in online social networks. Many scholars agree that the bot detection problem has become an "arms race" between malicious actors, who seek to create bots to influence opinion on these networks, and the social media platforms to remove these accounts. Despite this acknowledged issue, bot presence continues to remain on social media networks. So, it has now become necessary to monitor different bots over time to identify changes in their activities or domain. Since monitoring individual accounts is not feasible, because the bots may get suspended or deleted, bots should be observed in smaller groups, based on their characteristics, as types. Yet, most of the existing research on social media bot detection is focused on labeling bot accounts by only distinguishing them from human accounts and may ignore differences between individual bot accounts. The consideration of these bots' types may be the best solution for researchers and social media companies alike as it is in both of their best interests to study these types separately. However, up until this point, bot categorization has only been theorized or done manually. Thus, the goal of this research is to automate this process of grouping bots by their respective types. To accomplish this goal, the author experimentally demonstrates that it is possible to use unsupervised machine learning to categorize bots into types based on the proposed typology by creating an aggregated dataset, subsequent to determining that the accounts within are bots, and utilizing an existing typology for bots. Having the ability to differentiate between types of bots automatically will allow social media experts to analyze bot activity, from a new perspective, on a more granular level. This way, researchers can identify patterns related to a given bot type's behaviors over time and determine if certain detection methods are more viable for that type. / Dissertation/Thesis / Presentation Materials for Thesis Defense / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2019