The principles of parallel counting, the MPI program parcel, which was used in this work, allow to adapt them to solve tasks using computer net and peculiarities of implanting this parcel.

Transformations of the various agricultural systems have been taking place in the coastal zone of Bangladesh. While some farmers continue to follow traditional practices, in recent years, others have become involved in massive shrimp cultivation, shrimp-rice cultivation, a rice-based improved agricultural system or a shrimp-rice-vegetable integrated system. All these types of agriculture are being practiced under highly vulnerable environmental conditions. The long-term livelihood, food security and adaptation of the coastal people largely depend on the sustainability of these agricultural practices. In this context, assessing the level of sustainability is extremely important and will be essential for developing future policy options in Bangladesh. This study attempts to examine the sustainability of agricultural practices in the coastal region of Bangladesh. A field study was carried out in 2011 in five villages of five upazilas in the mature and active delta areas of the country. The data were collected through in-depth questionnaire surveys, focus groups discussions, field observation, key informants and secondary materials. A comprehensive suite of indicators was developed considering productivity, efficiency, stability, durability, compatibility and equity of the coastal agriculture. The categories and the indicators were weighted using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to measure the sustainability level of five study sites. The integrated agricultural system (shrimp-rice-vegetable) of Dumuria appeared to be the most sustainable system among agricultural practices, and other integrated systems (rice-based improved agricultural system) of Kalaroa were also found to show a good level of sustainability. The massive shrimp cultivation system of Shyamnagar and Kaliganj appears to be least sustainable. A traditional agriculture system with some improved methods followed in Bhola Sadar also performed in a satisfactory manner, but there were limitations in terms of its location in the active delta. The level of the sustainability measured in this study allows for a comparison among agricultural practices of the five study sites. The information generated from the study may be used in formulating policies for this part of the country. Measuring agricultural sustainability in this way produces a useful summary of sustainability issues and also provides some vital learning experiences. A holistic and interdisciplinary approach is attempted in this study for assessing and comparing the sustainability level of coastal agricultural systems. It has the potential to become useful as one of the frameworks for sustainability assessment. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-28 15:08:18.847

No description available.

5th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems, Marriott Boston Cambridge, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sept 13-15, 2010

Mobility and using smartphones and tablets as replacement of laptops are getting to be increasingly vital for enterprises and accordingly bring new concerns from different perspective for both companies and individuals. To achieve enterprise mobility companies needs to ensure that the mobile equipment are always connected, complies with security policy in a safe and protected path toward being productivity and efficiency. To approach these purposes Mobile Device Management (MDM) was created few years back in order to not only secure enterprises information but additionally manage user’s activities and equipment. However there is no general methodology to define criteria weight for these systems and rather depends on different enterprise policy. One primary issue here is availability of many MDM solutions in market and several difficulties to compare them together and meanwhile most of comparison documents limited based on white papers of providers which mostly designed for commercial market purposes. This thesis will come up with a list of important properties for MDM solutions and evaluate several of solutions as well as categorizing all available criteria in this area. Second part of thesis is a case study of choosing proper MDM solution for two different scenarios and give recommendations on what products to utilize relying upon what sort of association you have. In order to achieve this, strong analytical methods are required to compare existing services and sharper eye from security perspective toward the applications.

Magistro baigiamajame darbe nagrinėjami viešųjų paslaugų teoriniai aspektai, analizuojama efektyvumo samprata viešajame sektoriuje, aptariami organizacijų efektyvumo didinimo galimybės. Apžvelgti nacionaliniai švietimo teisiniai dokumentai, reglamentuojantys švietimą Lietuvoje. Analizuojamos ir lyginamos įvairių pasaulio mokslininkų nuomonės vertinant efektyvių/gerų mokyklų veiklą. / Master's thesis deals with the theoretical aspects of the Public Service and examines the concept of efficiency in the public sector, conditions to increase it's capabilities. An overview of the national education system and legal documents regulating education in Lithuania is effectuated. An analysis and compare son of various scientifically recognized methods for the assessment of the effectiveness and quality of schools is done.

A main problem in machine learning is to predict the response variables of a test set given the training data and its corresponding response variables. A predictive model can perform satisfactorily only if the training data is an appropriate representative of the test data. This intuition is re???ected in the assumption that the training data and the test data are drawn from the same underlying distribution. However, the assumption may not be correct in many applications for various reasons. For example, gathering training data from the test population might not be easily possible, due to its expense or rareness. Or, factors like time, place, weather, etc can cause the difference in the distributions. I propose a method based on kernel distribution embedding and Hilbert Schmidt Independence Criteria (HSIC) to address this problem. The proposed method explores a new representation of the data in a new feature space with two properties: (i) the distributions of the training and the test data sets are as close as possible in the new feature space, (ii) the important structural information of the data is preserved. The algorithm can reduce the dimensionality of the data while it preserves the aforementioned properties and therefore it can be seen as a dimensionality reduction method as well. Our method has a closed-form solution and the experimental results on various data sets show that it works well in practice.

The use of goal programming in various real-world areas - including resource allocation, engineering, agriculture and other applications - has increased a lot in the past few years. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate goal programming approaches in determining prices. Various aspects of price determination - such as cosls, existing prices, competitors' prices, volume change due to price change and other aspects are incorporated in the model in order to suggest reasonable and realistic prices. Taking just these factors into account will not completely solve the problem, as there are usually certain goals that the decision maker would like to achieve. For example, the decision maker would probably like to attain an acceptable pre-specified minimum profit level without adjusting current prices too much whilst keeping prices competitive to insure that customers are not lost in the process of change. In this study, a goal programming model is developed for the determining of products' prices with consideration of these goals. The model makes provision for the change in demand due to the change in prices. / Mini-dissertation (M.Com. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Products are priced in order to sell them and make a profit. Every firm, therefore, needs a pricing strategy. Such a strategy should be simple. It should ensure simplicity in tactics and decisions and minimize complications. It is difficult to set a price with the help of only one pricing model. The price of a product may vary due to factors like geographical area, different clients and time difference. Prices must always be cost-compatible. An essential step in deciding on a pricing strategy involves looking at the characteristics of pricing decisions. The classic economic theory is based upon demand and supply and attempts to balance these two concepts. In most cases it works on the basis of cost plus profit. This way of thinking about prices does not guarantee a profit, because costs and profit depend upon volume and volume is dependent on the correct price. Prices can be cut at first. In this way only a small profit will be ensured. If the price is too low it will not automatically ensure a profit. Usually little attention is paid to the market itself in deciding on a price. It is not an easy task to arrive at the 'envelope of acceptable prices". Not to fall into the standard trap of adding profit to cost, one has to have a broad overview of pricing strategies. Multiple approaches are followed in determining prices. Firstly, one can look at cost and its characteristics. By adding a profit margin to cost, one can determine a new price. It may be too low or it may be too high, resulting in the risk that customers will buy the competition's product. It is there for essential to look at strategic concepts like the competition's price as well. The way a buyer looks at certain prices and then decides whether to buy or not, also plays a very important role. All of these factors have to be taken into consideration and all aspects have to be balanced to arrive at a price. A framework for pricing decisions includes the recognition of the need for a pricing decision, determining a price, developing a model, identifying and anticipating pricing problems, developing feasible courses of action, forecasting the outcomes of each alternative and monitoring and reviewing the outcome of each action. Management's pricing decision is taken after studying all this information. Information can be given as a single answer or in detail. Costs can be divided into direct costs and absorption costs. Although prices can be determined in more ways than one, the ideal is to take more than one factor into consideration. Every aspect must carry a weight and these weights can be changed. That is why the multiple criteria decision method is so effective. With this method a few factors are taken into account. Each of these factors adds to the price definition in a certain manner with regard to each product. By changing the profit margin, the price can be adjusted until one is satisfied with the new price. A company's structure, location and nature will play a role in determining which technique is used to determine a price. The best technique is one that can be adjusted and where multiple criteria can be set. The choice of a technique is a personal choice. The multi-criteria method is flexible and prices can be determined uniformly for all products or for a single product. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

If Jesus's resurrection did not happen, the Christian faith is falsified. The question is therefore raised as to whether it is possible to prove the historicity of the resurrection, and thus verify the Christian faith. The problem is first historical (what is the nature of the evidence for the resurrection?) and secondly apologetic (how does the resurrection help in communicating the Christian faith?); this thesis aims to address the historical question, and introduce apologetics as a future concern. The work is set in context by a survey of approaches to the historical Jesus through the centuries, culminating in the "Third Quest for the Historical Jesus." The origins of the idea of resurrection are sought in an examination of ancient Hebrew ideas about death, exploring the development of hope from the survival of the community rather than the individual, through the awareness of the need for justice and the continuing relationship with God, through a range of metaphors to the first explicit hope of resurrection from the dead. The influence of Hellenism and ideas of immortality in the intertestamental period are noted, but these ideas were not adequate to explain the experience of Jesus's disciples. The New Testament is then surveyed to identify all resurrection traditions. Some traditions are theological and metaphorical, but some are narrative or apparently derived from a historical event. It is noted that some canonical books make relatively little of the resurrection, and that extracanonical books such as the Gospel of Thomas ignore it completely. A study of the extracanonical texts suggests that omission of resurrection tradition is due to later theological preference, rather than indicating early tradition implying that passion-resurrection tradition was a later innovation. Where there is extracanonical resurrection tradition, it is dependent upon canonical tradition. There follows a discussion of the various criteria which have been used to examine New Testament tradition for historicity, examining the strengths and weaknesses of each. It is concluded that no single criterion is adequate, but that it is possible to achieve a satisfactory degree of historical plausibility. The discussion returns to the New Testament traditions to identify where they purport to be historical, and then explored in the light of the historical criteria for plausibility. While there is clear theological development and interpretation, there is a persistent core tradition deriving from an original event. Alternative explanations, that the disciples invented resurrection to explain other experiences, are dismissed as resurrection is the least likely explanation for them to offer. The historical event itself is irrecoverable, but may be discerned by its effects. The most plausible explanation for the testimony underlying New Testament tradition, celebration on the first day of the week, and the explosive growth of the Jesus movement, is that the resurrection actually happened. Brief consideration is given to the implications of the resurrection for theology, eschatology, apologetics and engagement with postmodernism. / Thesis (M.A. (New Testament)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, in association with Greenwich School of Theology, U.K., 2009.