This dissertation introduces a general framework modeling common rating processes in order to aggregate rating information stemming from a variety of raters or rating sources. Ratings play an increasingly important role in our life. They are used to evaluate a variety of objects and activities all over the world. Here we apply our model framework to two different ratings, the credit ratings and the bookmakers odds. Whereas credit ratings represent the evaluation of credit customers or firms by banks or external rating agencies, bookmakers odds are prospective ratings of the performance of the participating players or teams in a sports competition. Despite the fact that these ratings are used in different kind of areas, both rating systems have a very similar underlying rating process. In both rating processes each rater estimates an underlying numerical variable which represent a probability or is directly related to a probability. In the case of credit ratings this probability is the probability of default (PD) of a credit customer or a firm and in the case of bookmakers odds this probability is the probability of winning a specifc sports competition. The proposed model framework is then used to solve the aggregation problem of the two rating processes for different applications yielding different model specifcations. Finally, the model results are used to validate the different underlying rating systems as well as for forecasting. (author's abstract)

Cluster ensembles are collections of individual solutions to a given clustering problem which are useful or necessary to consider in a wide range of applications. The R package clue provides an extensible computational environment for creating and analyzing cluster ensembles, with basic data structures for representing partitions and hierarchies, and facilities for computing on these, including methods for measuring proximity and obtaining consensus and "secondary" clusterings. (author's abstract)

Purpose: While there are diagnostic criteria for functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs), their evaluation is challenging. This is because criteria are based on symptoms, and the underlying pathophysiology is not clear; as such, there are no gold standard tests. Diagnosis is further challenged by considerable clinical overlap between different FGIDs as well as other organic diseases, while many people with FGIDs have more anxiety and depression than healthy individuals. I hypothesised that assessment of separate components of FGIDs that also indicate their effect on the patient could improve diagnosis. My aim was to investigate the evolution of opinions from experts involved in the development of FGID diagnostic criteria on the proposal for the development of multiaxial assessment criteria (MAC) for FGIDs. Methods: I conducted a web-based Delphi study using a group of purposively sampled experts identified from committees of the Rome Foundation and the International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders. From a systematic search of relevant articles, I generated132 items that were sent to experts as a first round survey. The items assessed risk and contributing factors, the therapeutic relationship, areas of evaluation and the advantages and disadvantages of multiaxial assessment. Consensus on an item was reached when 75% of experts indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. Key results: 36 of 68 eligible participants (52%) responded to the first round. Consensus was reached on 96 items. Using participant feedback, thematic analysis was used to generate 33 additional items for round two. Thirty-one of 36 participants (86%) replied to rounds two and three. In round two, 19 items gained consensus, and in round three, nine items gained consensus. Participants agreed that multiaxial assessment was needed, using a systematic approach to establish the physiological and psychosocial components of FGIDs. Participants were unable to agree on the importance of physical risk factors such as previous surgery and genetic association. Overall, 124 of the 167 items achieved consensus. Conclusion and inferences: The key finding from my study shows that experts agree that multiaxial assessment of FGIDs is needed. I also identified expert agreement on the consideration of psychological risk factors and the importance of the impact of FGID symptoms on daily life. Findings also show that experts disagreed on the impact of physical risk factors, socioeconomic status and spirituality on people with FGIDs. While experts could not agree on genetic and gender-based risk factors, they considered that these areas are important and require further research.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / David Ben-Arieh / Group decision-making is an essential activity is many domains such as financial, engineering, and medical fields. Group decision-making basically solicits opinions from experts and combines these judgments into a coherent group decision. Experts typically express their opinion in many different formats belonging to two categories: quantitative evaluations and qualitative ones. Many times experts cannot express judgment in accurate numerical terms and use linguistic labels or fuzzy preferences. The use of linguistic labels makes expert judgment more reliable and informative for decisionmaking. In this research, a new linguistic label fusion operator has been developed. The operator helps mapping one set of linguistic labels into another. This gives decision makers more freedom to choose their own linguistic preference labels with different granularities and/or associated membership functions. Three new consensus measure methods have been developed for group decision making problem in this research. One is a Markov chain based consensus measure method, the other is order based, and the last one is a similarity based consensus measure approach. Also, in this research, the author extended the concept of Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) into a fuzzy linguistic OWA (FLOWA). This aggregation operator is more detailed and includes more information about the aggregate than existing direct methods. After measuring the current consensus, we provide a method for experts to modify their evaluations to improve the consensus level. A cost based analysis gives the least cost suggestion for this modification, and generates a least cost of group consensus. In addition, in this research I developed an optimization method to maximize two types of consensus under a budget constraint. Finally considering utilization of the consensus provides a practical recommendation to the desired level of consensus, considering its cost benefits.

The purpose of our study is to find the reasons behind teachers' different choices of literature in the Swedish subject at Sixth Form level in Sweden. These choices have didactical consequences regarding what is actually taught through literature. There is a risk that the diverse subject of Swedish, according to the Swedish curriculum, is not taught to its full extent due to a lack of understanding of what literature should be used for. We believe that one way to counteract this misunderstanding is finding a consensus in the choice of literature between teachers of Swedish. The literature review covers central Swedish sources with student and teacher perspectives on literature use in school. We also included more recent international studies to include further perspectives on different kinds of literature and literature use. To accomplish our study, we interviewed six teachers of Swedish at three different schools in the Southwest of Sweden about their choices of literature as well as their view of literature in Swedish education. The teachers' choices of literature were compared and analysed using theories on categorization of the Swedish subject in school and other factors that might play a role in the choice of literature. We also interpreted what kind of reading was prioritized by teachers to analyse the didactic implications of different literature choices. Additionally, we searched for any sign of consensus between the teachers that might show us whether or not teachers of Swedish do have consensus in their choice of literature. We concluded that our informants all have different views on literary education, which guide their choices, and we have made suggestions for finding consensus in the choice of literature.

In this thesis, I present my study on the impact of multi-group network structure on the performance of consensus building strategies, and the preliminary mathematical formulation of the problem on improving the performance of the National Airspace system (NAS) through long-term investment. The first part of the thesis is concerned with a structural approach to the consensus building problem in multi-group distributed sensor networks (DSNs) that can be represented by bipartite graph. Direct inference of the convergence behavior of consensus strategies from multi-group DSN structure is one of the contributions of this thesis. The insights gained from the analysis facilitate the design and development of DSNs that meet specific performance criteria. The other part of the thesis is concerned with long-term planning and development of the NAS at a network level, by formulating the planning problem as a resource allocation problem for a flow network. The network-level model viewpoint on NAS planning and development will give insight to the structure of future NAS and will allow evaluation of various paradigms for the planning problem.

Redes são representações poderosas para muitos sistemas complexos, onde vértices representam elementos do sistema e arestas representam conexões entre eles. Redes Complexas podem ser definidas como grafos de grande escala que possuem distribuição não trivial de conexões. Um tópico importante em redes complexas é a detecção de comunidades. Embora a detecção de comunidades tenha revelado bons resultados na análise de agrupamento de dados com grupos de diversos formatos, existem ainda algumas dificuldades na representação em rede de um conjunto de dados. Outro tópico recente é a caracterização de simplicidade em redes complexas. Existem poucos trabalhos nessa área, no entanto, o tema tem muita relevância, pois permite analisar a simplicidade da estrutura de conexões de uma região de vértices, ou de toda a rede. Além disso, mediante a análise de simplicidade de redes dinâmicas no tempo, é possível conhecer como vem se comportando a evolução da rede em termos de simplicidade. Considerando a rede como um sistema dinâmico de agentes acoplados, foi proposto neste trabalho uma medida de distância baseada no tempo de consenso na presença de um líder em uma rede acoplada. Utilizando essa medida de distância, foi proposto um método de detecção de comunidades para análise de agrupamento de dados, e um método de análise de simplicidade em redes complexas. Além disso, foi proposto uma técnica de construção de redes esparsas para agrupamento de dados. Os métodos têm sido testados com dados artificiais e reais, obtendo resultados promissores / Networks are powerful representations for many complex systems, where nodes represent elements of the system and edges represent connections between them. Complex networks can be defined as graphs with no trivial distribution of connections. An important topic in complex networks is the community detection. Although the community detection have reported good results in the data clustering analysis with groups of different formats, there are still some dificulties in the representation of a data set as a network. Another recent topic is the characterization of simplicity in complex networks. There are few studies reported in this area, however, the topic has much relevance, since it allows analyzing the simplicity of the structure of connections between nodes of a region or connections of the entire network. Moreover, by analyzing simplicity of dynamic networks in time, it is possible to know the behavior in the network evolution in terms of simplicity. Considering the network as a coupled dynamic system of agents, we proposed a distance measure based on the consensus time in the presence of a leader in a coupled network. Using this distance measure, we proposed a method for detecting communities to analyze data clustering, and a method for simplicity analysis in complex networks. Furthermore, we propose a technique to build sparse networks for data clustering. The methods have been tested with artificial and real data, obtaining promising results

The purpose of this thesis was to study how Yellow Vest protests, which started 17November 2018, and protesters themselves, were being described in the French mainstreampress. The material consisted in 19 editorials from 5 of the most-circulated newspapers in thecountry. They were analyzed using Norman Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysisand within a theoretical framework drawn from Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of the notion ofconsensus. The findings suggest that the mainstream discourse on Yellow Vests is one whichdenies their legitimacy within the political realm through a process of depoliticizationsupported by discourses of contempt, republicanism, and unity. This study illustrates thestruggle of protesters to be granted space and legitimacy within contemporary democracies to properly exercise their civil and political rights.

Layered structures are commonly used in communication systems, but their roles in decentralized control are not understood well. In the first part of this thesis, a theoretical study of consensus (a typical decentralized control task) in layered structures is conducted. The unique graph topology approach permits explicit characterization of consensus performance based on simple graphical characteristics of MLMG structures. In the second part of this thesis, a generic LEGO test-bed to mimic multi-domain communication with layered structures is described. A search-and-rescue scenario is implemented to demonstrate the use of the test-bed.

Selectins are key adhesion molecules responsible for initiating a multistep process that leads a cell out of the blood circulation and into a tissue or organ. Their extracellular structure is composed of an N-terminal extracellular C-type lectin like domain, followed by an Endothelial Growth Factor like domain (EGF), a defined number of short consensus repeats SCR. The adhesion of cells (expressing ligands) to the endothelium (expressing the selectin i.e., E-selectin) occurs through spatio-temporally regulated interactions that are mediated by multiple intra- and inter-cellular components. Furthermore, selectins play a role beyond fixing cells to a specific location by regulating important signaling pathways in the migrating cell during physiological and pathological processes. These interactions start mainly with the binding of the lectin domain of selectins and ligand on cells. Therefore, structural/functional studies to date have mainly focused on the direct interactions of the lectin domain of E-selectin with its ligands while other domains and conformational dynamics received less attention. For this purpose, we produced a number of different recombinant E-selectin proteins with and without artificial oligomerization and with changes in the SCR units in addition to proteins where strategic residues will be mutated to change the conformation of the selectin to an extended conformer. Moreover, double cysteine mutant candidates were produced for maleimide labeling for the real-time SM-FRET (single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer) studies to assess conformational dynamics of E-selectin. Using a comprehensive set of static- and flow-based assays, we concluded that SCR domains play a role by enhancing the interaction of recombinant E-selectin proteins with E-selectin ligand, while dimerization and extension of the lectin domain improve the binding. However, our double cysteine mutants purification and labeling requires further optimization to be utilized to study the conformational dynamics of E-selectin binding to its ligands using SM-FRET and force microscopy. Furthermore, our experiments extend to highlight the importance of phosphatases in regulating signaling pathways that are affected by E-selectin binding to migrating cells. Collectively, these studies are beneficial to understand the mechanistic details of cell adhesion and migration of cells using the established model system of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) adhesion to the selectin expressing endothelial cells.