Made available in DSpace on 2009-11-18T19:01:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2004 / This paper analyses the effect of International capital flows and their behavior for emergent countries, focused in Brazilian financiai market. It considers that capital flows had dramatically increased, however their impact, proposals on changes in international market and capital controls has not been clear. Considering capital flows In comparison to portfolio investments and to direct investments, this paper, also aims to discuss and highlight questions whether the concepts that capital flows generally associated to portfolio investments are frequently connected with incidence of crises meanwhile the second have been associated with growth in some countries. / Esta dissertação procura avaliar, dentro de um contexto de economia globalizada, o comportamento dos fluxos de capitais estrangeiros para investimentos nas economias emergentes, com foco no Brasil e nos investimentos em portfólio. Considera que os fluxos desses capitais têm crescido, dramaticamente, nos últimos anos e que as propostas de reformulações do sistema financeiro internacional e a adoção de controles desses capitais não estão totalmente claras, merecendo maiores estudos. Por meio de comparação entre os fluxos para investimentos em portfólio e os direcionados para investimentos diretos, o texto, aborda e questiona também, conceitos que, geralmente, relacionam esses capitais à incidência de crises, enquanto que os fluxos de capitais para investimentos diretos são associados ao crescimento de alguns países.

Text in English / Procurement fraud is an enormous problem and the South African news is perforated with reports of this illicit act. Procurement fraud occurs in all the phases of the procurement cycle, but this illicit act is mostly committed during the tender phase. Business does not see procurement fraud as a crime and therefor this crime is committed due to non-existent internal controls and processes to assess the adequacy of these controls. The purpose of the research was to highlight that procurement fraud occurs when internal controls are being bypassed or if an entity has an ineffective internal control system. The researcher studied the appraising of internal controls to understand the role it plays in detecting, preventing and investigating procurement fraud, specifically during the tender phase. The research design utilised was a qualitative research approach and an empirical design plan or strategy, to obtain the information. The researcher opted for this design to obtain information from literature and information from individuals in appraising internal controls. This ensured a comprehensive data gathering process. The goal of this research was to provide practical recommendations to assist investigators in private and public sectors with investigations into procurement fraud during a tender. / Police Practice / M. Tech. (Forensic Investigation)

This study investigated and examined the effectiveness and implementation of the existing internal controls designed specifically for exempted micro-enterprises (EMEs) contracting with the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), in order to minimise the risk of possible tax evasion within the supply-chain management (SCM) processes. The research was completed by conducting a document review and face-to-face interviews with SASSA‟s SCM practitioners, risk manager, fraud and corruption manager, internal-control manager and internal auditor in order to identify risks of possible tax evasion within the SCM processes. It was concluded that there is a risk of possible tax evasion within the SCM processes due to the ineffectiveness and inconsistent implementation of internal controls designed for EMEs contracting with SASSA. This risk could be minimised by incorporating possible anti-tax-evasion procedures in the risk-assessment process, and ultimately in SASSA‟s broader fraud and corruption strategies. Such procedures should then help minimise funds being lost to the fiscus due to tax evasion in the SCM processes. / Taxation / M. Phil. (Accounting Sciences)

Audit evidence enables the auditor to express an opinion on the financial statements. To address the risk that the auditor may express an inappropriate opinion, the nature, timing and extent of audit procedures must be responsive to the assessed risks of material misstatement. The auditor must aggregate the levels of assurance obtained from different combinations of tests of controls, substantive analytical procedures and tests of details to respond to the assessed risks. These evidence planning decisions are complex and require professional judgement. Research has found that the extent of audit procedures is not linked to the assessed risks and that auditors may not know to aggregate evidence from different types of audit procedures. Research also supports the use of a structured audit methodology that includes decision models, to guide the application of professional judgement. This leads to the overall objective of this study: the development of an integrated audit evidence planning model to quantify the extent of audit evidence. The study employs a grounded theory model building approach, interpreting the relevant concepts and principles from the literature review into the development of the model. The integrated audit evidence planning model quantitatively relates the extent of audit evidence in a logical and structured manner with the risk assessment and three distinct overall levels of assurance needed to support the audit opinion. It uses the cumulative nature of audit evidence and the compensatory inter-relationship between tests of controls, substantive analytical procedures and tests of details to quantitatively aggregate the extent and levels of assurance from the different combinations of procedures to obtain reasonable assurance at the required overall level of assurance. The model provides a framework for influencing and guiding the exercise of professional judgement and is a practical and effective tool to benefit the users thereof when conducting an audit. Thus, the study models the extent of audit evidence with reference to the aggregation of different types and combinations of evidence and the linkage between the risk assessment and the extent of evidence that provides a flexible framework for the application of professional judgement regarding the gathering of audit evidence. / Auditing / D. Com. (Auditing)

Modern medical practice and science involve complex phenotypic definitions. Understanding patterns of association across this range of phenotypes requires co-analysis of high-dimensional association studies in order to characterise shared and distinct elements. In this thesis I address several problems in this area, with a general linking aim of making more efficient use of available data. The main application of these methods is in the analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and similar studies. Firstly, I developed methodology for a Bayesian conditional false discovery rate (cFDR) for levering GWAS results using summary statistics from a related disease. I extended an existing method to enable a shared control design, increasing power and applicability, and developed an approximate bound on false-discovery rate (FDR) for the procedure. Using the new method I identified several new variant-disease associations. I then developed a second application of shared control design in the context of study replication, enabling improvement in power at the cost of changing the spectrum of sensitivity to systematic errors in study cohorts. This has application in studies on rare diseases or in between-case analyses. I then developed a method for partially characterising heterogeneity within a disease by modelling the bivariate distribution of case-control and within-case effect sizes. Using an adaptation of a likelihood-ratio test, this allows an assessment to be made of whether disease heterogeneity corresponds to differences in disease pathology. I applied this method to a range of simulated and real datasets, enabling insight into the cause of heterogeneity in autoantibody positivity in type 1 diabetes (T1D). Finally, I investigated the relation of subtypes of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) to adult diseases, using modified genetic risk scores and linear discriminants in a penalised regression framework. The contribution of this thesis is in a range of methodological developments in the analysis of high-dimensional association study comparison. Methods such as these will have wide application in the analysis of GWAS and similar areas, particularly in the development of stratified medicine.

El desarrollo de la presente tesis busco comprobar los errores en la aplicación de la identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y Controles (IPERC), el grado de compromiso del trabajador y la política del sistema de gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo, con el objetivo determinar una propuesta para mejorar la aplicación del Sistema de gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo para reducir la perdida de la capacidad auditiva denominada “hipoacusia profesional” en los trabajadores del área de compactación de una Empresa Distribuidora de Gas Natural en Lima Metropolitana. Durante el desarrollo se identificó en el área de compactación un porcentaje del 55% de trabajadores con hipoacusia profesional. Para identificar el peligro potencial de esta enfermedad ocupacional se realizó mediciones de la exposición al ruido en los trabajadores, determinando que la contaminación presentada durante sus actividades alcanzaron niveles de 98.90 dB superando los limites máximos permisibles de 85 dB para una jornada de 8 horas (Decreto supremo 357, 2012) convirtiéndose en el mayor riesgo del lugar de trabajo. La propuesta de mejora en el Sistema de gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo fue el de proponer una nueva matriz de identificación de peligros, evaluación de riesgos y controles (IPERC) estableciendo nuevos controles para reducir el riesgo por la exposición del ruido, para esto se calculo la protección auditiva adecuada para resguardar la salud del trabajador, proponiendo una doble protección auditiva; se buscó tener un personal capacitado para el puesto proponiendo un programa de certificación de trabajadores del área de compactación. Además de proponer un programa de incentivos para mejorar el compromiso del trabajador que cumpla con los estándares de seguridad y salud en el trabajo. The development of this thesis looking check for errors in the application of hazard identification, risk assessment and controls (IPERC), the degree of commitment and political worker management system safety and health at work, with the aim to determine a proposal for improving the implementation of the management system of health and safety at work to reduce the loss of hearing called "professional hearing loss" workers in the area of compaction of a Natural Gas Distribution Company in Delhi . During development it was identified in the compaction area percentage of 55% of hearing loss professional workers. To identify the potential of this occupational disease risk exposure measurements were performed on workers to noise, pollution determining that presented during their activities reached 98.90 dB levels exceeding the maximum permissible limits of 85 dB for an 8-hour day (decree Supreme 357, 2012) becoming the greatest risk in the workplace. The proposed improvement in the management system of health and safety at work was to propose a new array of hazard identification, risk assessment and controls (IPERC) establishing new controls to reduce the risk of noise exposure to this proper hearing protection was calculated to protect worker health, proposing a double hearing protection; He sought to have qualified for the position proposing a certification program area workers compaction staff. In addition to proposing an incentive program to improve employee engagement that meets the standards of safety and health at work.

This dissertation focused on development and utilization of numerical and experimental approaches to improve the CFD modeling of fluidization flow of cohesive micron size particles. The specific objectives of this research were: (1) Developing a cluster prediction mechanism applicable to Two-Fluid Modeling (TFM) of gas-solid systems (2) Developing more accurate drag models for Two-Fluid Modeling (TFM) of gas-solid fluidization flow with the presence of cohesive interparticle forces (3) using the developed model to explore the improvement of accuracy of TFM in simulation of fluidization flow of cohesive powders (4) Understanding the causes and influential factor which led to improvements and quantification of improvements (5) Gathering data from a fast fluidization flow and use these data for benchmark validations. Simulation results with two developed cluster-aware drag models showed that cluster prediction could effectively influence the results in both the first and second cluster-aware models. It was proven that improvement of accuracy of TFM modeling using three versions of the first hybrid model was significant and the best improvements were obtained by using the smallest values of the switch parameter which led to capturing the smallest chances of cluster prediction. In the case of the second hybrid model, dependence of critical model parameter on only Reynolds number led to the fact that improvement of accuracy was significant only in dense section of the fluidized bed. This finding may suggest that a more sophisticated particle resolved DNS model, which can span wide range of solid volume fraction, can be used in the formulation of the cluster-aware drag model. The results of experiment suing high speed imaging indicated the presence of particle clusters in the fluidization flow of FCC inside the riser of FIU-CFB facility. In addition, pressure data was successfully captured along the fluidization column of the facility and used as benchmark validation data for the second hybrid model developed in the present dissertation. It was shown the second hybrid model could predict the pressure data in the dense section of the fluidization column with better accuracy.

This thesis describes a genetic approach for shaping the dynamic responses of linear state space systems through pole placement. This paper makes further comparisons between this approach and an island approach parallel genetic algorithm (PGA) which incorporates orthogonal mutation vectors to increase sub-population specialization and decrease convergence time. Both approaches generate a gain vector K. The vector K is used in state feedback for altering the poles of the system so as to meet step response requirements such as settling time and percent overshoot. To obtain the gain vector K by the proposed genetic approaches, a pair of ideal, desired poles is calculate first. Those poles serve as the basis by which an initial population is created. In the island approach, those poles serve as a basis for n populations, where n is the dimension of the necessary K vector. Each member of the population is tested for its fitness (the degree to which it matches the criteria). A new population is created each “generation” from the results of the previous iteration, until the criteria are met, or a certain number of generations have passed. Several case studies are provided in this paper to illustrate that this new approach is working, and also to compare performance of the two approaches.

Public organisations account for their performance by making annual reports available to the public. While such increased emphasis on performance leads to a greater awareness of annual reports, it also raises the question of whether performance information is relevant and effective for accountability purposes. This qualitative study uses the Critical Realism approach to assess the contribution of performance reports in making municipalities more responsible; and their managers accountable for achieved and failed service delivery targets. Content and thematic analyses are applied to the collected data following case studies on the metropolitan cities of Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, and Tshwane in Gauteng, South Africa. The findings are that despite poor quality issues in reports, there is no link between performance and accountability. In other words, while performance reports have the capacity to correctly provide actual performance data, they are not used to hold public managers to account. Generally, politicians from underdeveloped countries are elected based on popularity rather than ability, hence they are reluctant to utilise performance reports, instead they tend to keep those public managers who look after their interest despite failures. Therefore, lack of consequences, complex governance systems, and passive citizenry, create a safe zone for both councillors and public managers to remain unaccountable. Further studies are recommended on empowering communities and accountability of councillors to citizens. / Business Management / M. Phil (Accounting Sciences)

This diploma thesis deals with demolition of the motorway overpass. The bridge (overpass) is located over the D1 motorway from Prag to Brno at the 115,881 km. On the brigde runs the local comunication II/352 between villages Švábka and Měšín. The bridge demolition is part of the D1 renovation plan. The main reason behind the demolitions si that the bridge no longer meets it´s lenght requierments. During the demolition and construction will be any use of II/352 for public transport over the bulding site forbiden. This diploma thesis include technical report for construction technology project, time and financial evaluation of the project. Also the thesis deals with the selected technological regulations of carried out activities, timetable of controls and tests, trafice relationships on wider scale, a list of main building machines and mechanisms with their specification, a concept of the construction site, health and safety requlations, and in detail plans for realization of a road surface layers.