This thesis challenges two key assumptions made in the current Islamic banking literature. Firstly, this thesis challenges and empirically invalidates the assumption that all Islamic banks are indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts and are thus equally unIslamic. To do so, this thesis uses the profit and loss sharing (PLS) criteria, which is central to the philosophy of Islamic banking and is the key principle differentiating Islamic from conventional banking, in theory and practice. By investigating variation in PLS levels between Islamic banks and comparing with conventional banks with and without Islamic windows, this thesis illustrates that the Islamic banking industry does not comprise a homogeneous group of banks that are all indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts. Rather, a typology of Islamic banks exists, comprising of three distinct groups of banks, each one following a different business model. While one group can genuinely be considered indistinguishable from conventional banks, another group shows clear evidence of pursuing PLS-oriented strategies in formulating its asset portfolio, differentiating itself from the purely debt-based intermediation model adopted by conventional banks. As such, empirical evidence shows that some Islamic banks are, in practice, operating closer to the PLS principle and can thus be considered more Islamic than others. Further investigation illustrates that the institutional environment matters for the provision of ideal PLS Islamic financing instruments. Secondly, this thesis overcomes two methodological issues to compare the corporate social performance (CSP) of Islamic and conventional banks. In doing so, this thesis challenges the second identified assumption from the literature, that religion-specific category of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is particular to Islamic banking, and invalidates it on conceptual, theoretical and empirical basis. A novel CSP Index based on the evidence-based disclosure criteria, comprising of 6 dimensions and 25 social performance indicators is constructed and complemented with three Social Performance Quantitative Indicators (SPQIs) to compare the CSP of Islamic and conventional banks. From this comparison, this thesis concludes that, contrary to the industry s claims and expectations held of it, Islamic banking does not offer an ethical alternative to conventional banking. Differences in the level and composition of CSP between the two industries are more subtle and require a nuanced approach to be studied.

Fóruns mundiais para a troca de informações de práticas e operações sustentáveis entre governos, pesquisadores e sociedade, têm sido organizados com foco no desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias e práticas gerenciais que visam o desenvolvimento sustentável (econômico, ambiental e social) da produção. Cenário de destaque e que também tem evoluído expressivamente no agronegócio nacional e mundial. Em razão da expressiva representatividade do setor leiteiro no Brasil, este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a sustentabilidade de fazendas produtoras de leite na principal bacia leiteira do país. A partir da revisão de literatura, foi escolhido o modelo de análise de sustentabilidade utilizado por Dolman et at. (2014) aplicado na avaliação de fazendas de leite na Holanda. Este mesmo ferramental foi ajustado e utilizado na avaliação da produção de leite em Minas Gerais, com base no banco de dados do Projeto EDUCAMPO/Sebrae. Para o desempenho econômico, foi calculada: a renda da atividade e a relação das receitas sobre os custos da atividade. Para o desempenho ambiental, foram calculados indicadores ambientais derivados da ACV (Análise de Ciclo de Vida), cujo perímetro do estudo foi do berço à porteira, sendo estes: a ocupação da terra (OT); o uso de energia não renovável (UENR); o potencial de aquecimento global (PAG); o potencial de acidificação (PA) e o potencial de eutrofização (PE), todos na unidade funcional de um quilograma de leite corrigido pelo teor de gordura e proteína (FPCM). Para o desempenho social, foi considerada a relação da área de mata nativa em cada fazenda, a bonificação recebida pelo leite comercializado e o número de folgas mensais que os funcionários possuem. Ao comparar os indicadores das fazendas de leite de Minas Gerais com os resultados das fazendas holandesas de Dolman et al. (2014), verificou-se um melhor desempenho das fazendas europeias em praticamente todos os indicadores calculados, com exceção dos indicadores de desempenho econômico, esta diferença pode ser atrelada ao tipo de sistema de produção adotado e ao nível de intensificação da produção existente nas duas realidades. Após o comparativo, foi realizada uma análise de clusters entre as fazendas do EDUCAMPO. Com essa análise foi possível verificar diferenças nas características estruturais e de produção entre os clusters formado a partir dos indicadores de sustentabilidade. Os resultados mostram a grande relevância deste tema na produção de leite, destacando a necessidade do acompanhamento desses indicadores para o melhor direcionamento da gestão nas operações de produção de leite. A sustentabilidade é um direcionamento complexo que exige a junção e a sinergia de diversas áreas para o seu entendimento e desenvolvimento / World forums for information exchange of best practices and sustainable operations among governments, researchers and society have been organized focusing on the development of new technologies and management practices aiming the sustainable (economic, environmental and social) production development. This featured scenario has also evolved significantly in discussing sustainability in the domestic and global agribusiness operations. Therefore, due to the significant representation of the dairy sector in Brazil, this study aims to analyze the sustainability of dairy farms in the main dairy region of the country. In the literature review, the main frameworks for assessing the sustainability of milk production around the world were assessed. Within this range, it has been chosen the model proposed and utilized by Dolman et at. (2014) to evaluate the sustainability of dairy farms of EDUCAMPO Program database in Minas Gerais, Brazil. For economic performance it has been calculated: income of activity and the ratio of revenue over the costs of the activity. The environmental performance indicators have been derived from a cradle to farm-gate LCA (Life Cycle Assessment): land occupation (LO); non-renewable energy use (NREU); global warming potential (GWP); acidification potential (AP) the eutrophication potential (EP), and all those indicators were calculated in the functional unit of one kilogram of fat-protein-corrected milk (FPCM). For social performance, it has been considered the amount of native forest present in the farm, plus the bonus received by the milk sold and the number of monthly days off that the employees have. When compared with the results of the Dutch milk farms of Dolman et al. (2014), there has been a better performance of almost all indicators of the European reality than the calculated for the Brazilian farms. Nevertheless, the economic performance has been better in the Brazilian reality. This difference can be linked to the type of production system and the level of intensification of existing production in both realities. The analysis of clusters between farms in MG showed that structural and production characteristics affects each sustainable cluster performance. These results shows the great importance of this matter in milk production. Hence, the need for monitoring these indicators could lead to the better management of the operations in the sustainability view. Sustainability is a complex focus that requires the addition and synergy of several areas for its understanding and development. Projects like EDUCAMPO are critical to keep the continuously improvements in the farming operations of the national milk industry.

QBEST, a novel statistical method, can be applied to the problem of estimating the No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL or QNOAEL) of a New Molecular Entity (NME) in order to anticipate a safe starting dose for beginning clinical trials. The NOAEL from QBEST (called the QNOAEL) can be calculated using multiple disparate studies in the literature and/or from the lab. The QNOAEL is similar in some ways to the Benchmark Dose Method (BMD) used widely in toxicological research, but is superior to the BMD in some ways. The QNOAEL simulation generates an intuitive curve that is comparable to the dose-response curve. The NOAEL of ellagic acid (EA) is calculated for clinical trials as a component therapeutic agent (in BSN476) for treating Chikungunya infections. Results are used in a simulation based on nonparametric cluster analysis methods to calculate confidence levels on the difference between the Effect and the No Effect studies. In order to evaluate the statistical power of the algorithm, simulated data clusters with known parameters are fed into the algorithm in a separate study, testing the algorithm’s accuracy and precision “Around the Compass Rose” at known coordinates along the circumference of a multidimensional data cluster. The specific aims of the proposed study are to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the QBEST Simulation and QNOAEL compared to the Benchmark Dose Method, and to calculate the QNOAEL of EA for BSN476 Drug Development.

Fifteen bone tool assemblages from shell midden sites were compared. Three of these are unpublished sites from Prince Rupert Harbor. They were grouped using cluster analysis. Inter and intragroup variation in bone tool assemblage structure was analyzed. One of the objectives of this study was to generate hypotheses about the function of the unpublished sites by comparing their bone tool assemblages with those from sites which are better understood by looking for underlying patterns in the bone tool assemblages. Other objectives were to test the utility of using bone tool assemblages as a diagnostic tool in analyzing sites and to test the utility of the cluster analysis procedure with this data set. Hypotheses were developed identifying possible site usage at the three Prince Rupert Harbor sites, Boardwalk (GbTo-31), Garden Island (GbTo-23), and Grassy Bay (GbTn-1). Bone tool assemblages were shown to be a useful aid in site analysis and cluster analysis was quite useful in identifying existing patterns in these data.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that more than 11.2 million people require critical and emergency care in the United States per year. Optimizing and improving patient morbidity and mortality outcomes are the primary objectives of monitoring in critical and emergency care. Patients in need of critical or emergency care in general are at a risk of single or multiple organ failures occurring due to a traumatic injury, a surgical event, or an underlying pathology that results in severe patient hemodynamic instability. Hence, continuous monitoring of fundamental cardiovascular hemodynamic parameters, such as heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, blood oxygenation and core temperature, is essential to accomplish diagnostics in critical and emergency care. Today’s standard of care measures these critical parameters using multiple monitoring technologies. Though it is possible to measure all the fundamental cardiovascular hemodynamic parameters using the blood flow dynamics, its use is currently only limited to measuring continuous blood pressure. No other comparable studies in the literature were successful in quantifying other critical parameters from the blood flow dynamics for a few reasons. First, the blood flow dynamics exhibit a complicated and sensitive dynamic pressure field. Existing blood flow based data acquisition systems are unable to detect these sensitive variations in the pressure field. Further, the pressure field is also influenced by the presence of background acoustic interference, resulting in a noisy pressure profile. Thus in order to extract critical parameters from this dynamic pressure field with fidelity, there is need for an integrated framework that is composed of a highly sensitive data acquisition system and advanced signal processing. In addition, existing state-of-the-art technologies require expensive instrumentation and complex infrastructure. The information sensed using these multiple monitoring technologies is integrated and visualized using a clinical information system. This process of integration and visualization creates the need for functional interoperability within the multiple monitoring technologies. Limited functional interoperability not only results in diagnostic errors but also their complexity makes it impossible to use such technologies to accomplish monitoring in low resource settings. These multiple monitoring technologies are neither portable nor scalable, in addition to inducing extreme patient discomfort. For these reasons, existing monitoring technologies do not efficiently meet the monitoring and diagnostic requirements of critical and emergency care. In order to address the challenges presented by existing blood flow based data acquisition systems and other monitoring systems, a point of care monitoring device was developed to provide multiple critical parameters by means of uniquely measuring a physiological process. To demonstrate the usability of this novel catheter multiscope, a feasibility study was performed using an animal model. The corresponding results are presented in this dissertation. The developed measurement system first acquires the dynamics of blood flow through a minimally invasive catheter. Then, a signal processing framework is developed to characterize the blood flow dynamics and to provide critical parameters such as heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. The framework used to extract the physiological data corresponding to the acoustic field of the blood flow consisted of a noise cancellation technique and a wavelet based source separation. The preliminary results of the acoustic field of the blood flow revealed the presence of acoustic heart and respiratory pulses. A unique and novel framework was also developed to extract continuous blood pressure from the pressure field of the blood flow. Finally, the computed heart and respiratory rates, systolic and diastolic pressures were benchmarked with actual values measured using conventional devices to validate the measurements of the catheter multiscope. In summary, the results of the feasibility study showed that the novel catheter multiscope can provide critical parameters such as heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure with clinical accuracy. In addition, this dissertation also highlights the diagnostic potential of the developed catheter multiscope by presenting preliminary results of proof of concept studies performed for application case studies such as sinus rhythm pattern recognition and fetal monitoring through phonocardiography.

A growing recognition of the need for effective marine environmental management as a result of the increasing exploitation of marine biological resources has highlighted the need for high speed ecological seabed mapping. The practice of mapping making extensive use of satellite remote sensing and airborne platforms is well established for terrestrial management. Marine biological resource mapping however is not readily available except in part from that derived for surface waters from satellite based ocean colour mapping. Perhaps the most fundamental reason is that of sampling difficulty, which involves broad areas of seabed coverage, irregularities of seabed surface and depth. Conventional grab sample techniques are widely accepted as a standard seabed mapping methodology that has been in use long before the advent of acoustic techniques and continue to be employed. However. they are both slow and labour intensive, factors which severely limit the spatial coverage available from practical grab sampling programs. While acoustic techniques have been used for some time in pelagic biomass assessment, only recently have acoustic techniques been applied to marine biological resource mapping of benthic communities. Two commercial bottom classifiers available in the market that use normal incidence echosounders are the RoxAnn and QTC View systems. Users and practitioners should be cautious however when using black box implementations of the two commercial systems without a proper quality control over raw acoustic data since some researchers in their studies have indicated problems with these two bottom classifiers such as, among others, a depth dependence. In this thesis, an alternative approach was adopted to the use of echosounder returns for bottom classification. / The approach used in this study is similar to,~ used in the commercial RoxAnn system. In grouping bottom types however, Multivariate analysis (Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis) was adopted instead of the allocation system normally used in the RoxAnn system, called RoxAnn squares. In addition, the adopted approach allowed for quality control over acoustic data before further analysis was undertaken. As a working hypothesis, it was assumed that on average 0 and aE2 = 0 where E1 and E2 are the roughness and hardness indices, respectively, and RO is the depth. For roughness index (E1), this was achieved by introducing a constant angular integration interval to the tail of the first OM returns whereas for hardness index (E2), this was achieved by introducing a constant depth integration interval. Since three different frequencies, i.e. 12, 38 and kHz, were operated, Principal Component Analysis was used here to reduce the dimensionality of roughness and hardness indices, formed from the three operated qu frequencies separately. The k-means technique was applied to the first principal component of roughness index and the first principal comp component of hardness index to produce separable seabed types. This produced four separable seabed types, namely soft-smooth, soft-rough, hard-smooth and hard-rough seabeds. / Principal Component Analysis was also used to reduce the dimensionality of the area backscattering coefficient sA, a relative measure of biomass of benthic mobile biota. The bottom classification results reported here appear to be robust in that, where independent ground truthing was available, acoustic classification was generally congruent with ground truth results. When investigating the relationship between derived bottom type and acoustically assessed total biomass of benthic mobile biota, no trend linking the two parameters, however, appears. Nevertheless, using the hierarchical agglomerative technique applied to a set of variables containing average first principal component of the area backscattering coefficient sA, the average first principal component of roughness and hardness indices, the centroids of first principal component of roughness and hardness indices associated with the four seabed types and species composition of fish group of the common species in trawl stations available, two main groups of quasi acoustic population are observed in the North West Shelf (NWS) study area and three groups are observed in the South East Fisheries (SEF) study area. The two main groups of quasi acoustic population in the NWS study area and the three main groups of quasi acoustic population in the study area are associated with the derived seabed types and fish groups of the common species.

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模糊理論開始於 1960 年代中期,關於這方面的研究與發展均已獲得相當不錯的成果.其中尤以在群落分析應用上的專題研究更是廣泛.Bezdek 提出的模糊分類演算法,乃根據 Dunn 的C平均法所作的一改良方法.但仍有其缺點,例如,未考慮權重且以靜態資料為主. 有鑑於此,本研究對 Bezdek 之方法加以改進推廣,提出加權模糊分類法.對於評價因素為多變量時,應加入模糊權重的考量.此外更結合時間因素,使準則函數成為動態的模式,將傳統的模糊分類法由靜態資料轉為動態資料形式,以反映真實 的情況. / Research on the theory of fuzzy sets has been growing steadily since itsinception during the mid-1960s. The literature especially dealing with fuzzycluster analysis is quite extensive. But the research on FCM still has somedisadvantages. For instance, the

本研究由「公平性」著眼，分析國內教育資源在各縣市的分配情形，主要 目的為：ぇ探討教育對經濟成長、區域發展的影響，及與個人所得、福利 分配的關係；え研究教育機會公平的真諦與衡量的方法；ぉ檢視過去四十 年來教育資源分配的縱貫演變情形與意義，以了解教育政策公平性的實質 效果與缺失，找尋未來政策的發展方向。研究對象為臺灣地區二十三縣市 ，資料來源為各縣市的教育、財政與人口統計資料，依水平公平、垂直公 平與財政中性原則三向度分別衡量各縣市納稅人與學生的待遇公平性。研 究方法以吉尼係數與相關係數分別衡量公平性，以迴歸分析探索教育經費 的影響因素，並以 Shorrocks 流動性測度檢視資源分配的變動，以集群 分析描述目前教育資源分配的不均情形。主要研究結果為：ぇ納稅人受益 公平：高等教育與高中的分布最為不均，都會區資源增加尤速；高職分布 較為均衡；國民教育資源則在人口比與空間分布上都相當均等。え學生受 益公平：單位學生教育經費分配允稱公平，但每校支出不均。迴歸分析發 現各縣市教育經費受人事費、縣市財富、學生數與學校數影響，偏遠地區 生師比低，單位學生教育經費高，但每校教學與設備支出較少。顯示縣市 教育經費支出以單位學生為基本考量，卻忽略學校規模大小的影響。ぉ納 稅人負擔公平：部份所得較低縣市的稅收與教育捐負擔高於台北、桃園、 台中、台南、高雄等縣及基隆市，不符水平及垂直公平。お垂直公平：省 與中央的補助符合濟弱扶貧的精神，但以補足財政缺口為主，缺乏刺激效 果，且補助收入佔比例過高，形成過度依賴，有損地方自主精神，相對也 使公共財的分配失卻效率。か集群分析結果：都會區（省、直轄市與較富 有縣份）在選擇性教育階段佔優勢，未來應行調整。最後根據研究結果提 出因應措施，並對未來研究方法提出建議。