The study focuses on durational variation of segments in read speech of Czech and British speakers of English. The variation in segmental duration was examined in the speech of three Czech and three British speakers with respect to individual vowel and consonant categories. Furthermore, stress and intonation phrase boundary were explored as possible factors influencing segmental duration. The theoretical part of the study focuses on two main topics. The first is foreign accent with regard to accentedness, intelligibility and comprehensibility as well as in connection to its implications and factors which might influence its degree. The second part contains theoretical background about the time domain of speech concerning segmental duration in Czech and English, the area of rhythm, the importance of durational cues in perception and a short survey of factors reported to affect segmental duration. Czech accent in English and the importance of duration in foreign language are also covered. In the empirical part of the study, Czech speakers were found to miss the appropriate proportions between individual vowel categories and realize their long vowels as slightly too short. They lacked an adequate degree of durational contrast in stressed and unstressed vowels when compared to the British speakers. With regard...

This diploma thesis examines the foreign accent of Czech speakers in English. We focus on the factor of phone duration, which relates to both segmental and prosodic levels of phonetic description and is one of the correlates of prosodic prominence and speech rhythm. 84 words were selected from the texts avaible in the Prague Phonetic Corpus that have analogues in the loanword lexicon of Czech. Pronunciations of these words by native speakers (professional radio reporters) were compared with productions by Czech university students. The students were recorded prior to atteding a course in English phonetics. Based on our observations of durational patterns, we infer some plausible tendencies to be expected in Czech production of English. As durational interference from Czech into English has up to this date been a relatively unresearch domain, the present study adopts a qualitative research methodology. Keywords: Duration, Foreign Accent, Czech English, Interference 6

Marriage duration specific fertility trends Abstract The aim of this Master thesis is to describe the development of the marital fertility in the Czech Republic with focus on the analysis of the period between the marriage and the birth of child of a given order in the current marriage. It shows trends in the marital fertility in the time period between 1974 and 2011from transverse and longitudinal view. Using selected indicators the thesis describes different development of the marital fertility in the given period, which is closely connected with the distinct social and demographic situation in the Czech Republic prior and after the year 1989. In the whole monitored period the number of marriages is decreasing significantly. There was a significant increase both in a number and ratio of the children born alive outside of marriage, and on the opposite, decrease in the number and ratio of children born alive within the marriage. Within the framework of the current marriages substantial changes of the reproductive behavior occurred with an obvious breaking point in 1989. Since that time significant decrease in number of children, both in total and in the number of children of a given order has started. At the same time significant prolongation of the period between the start of marriage and birth of a child...

La thèse est centrée sur la notion de temporalité pratique. Elle étudie le rapport entre normativité et temporalité en montrant que dans la connaissance, l’objectivité est produite par une méthode de schématisation des catégories de l’entendement, ce qui permet de relier et d’appliquer les concepts universels, a priori et intérieurs, à un donné sensible particulier, alors que dans la pratique, les catégories de la liberté rendent possible une synthèse pratique au sein des désirs mais immédiatement sans passer par la schématisation de l'imagination. Il ne s’agit plus de légiférer sur un donné sensible et de l’ordonner mais de produire une réalité ou une effectivité qui est la « résolution de la volonté» de manière absolument immédiate. Or, s'il y a production d'une volonté moralement déterminée, il doit y avoir une temporalité pratique dans laquelle se déploie cette causalité par liberté. Cette notion n’a pas été élaborée par Kant mais il semble nécessaire de la penser pour comprendre l’efficace de la Loi morale. En effet, le problème de l’applicabilité du principe pur inconditionné dans le temps de l’esthétique transcendantale est incompréhensible car s’il s’applique dans le temps alors on doit conclure qu’il est lui-même conditionné a priori et s’il s’applique en dehors du temps, on arrive à la conclusion que le caractère intelligible est intemporel, éternel et immuable, ce qui éteint la liberté pratique comme bonne volonté. Notre thèse vise à répondre à ce problème en montrant que la Loi morale n’est agissante et ne devient un devoir que par la personne qui n’est pas immuable mais qui est temporalité pratique et duratio nouménon (durée rendue infinie par le postulat de la Dialectique de la raison pratique). / The thesis is centered on the notion of practical temporality. It studies the connection between normativity and temporality by showing that in knowledge, objectivity is produced by a schematism of the categories of the understanding, which allows to connect and to apply the universal concepts, a priori and internal, to one given sensitive private individual, while in practice, the categories of freedom make a practical synthesis possible within the desires, but at once, without passing through the schematism of imagination. It is not any more a question of legislating on one given sensitive and of ordering it, but of producing a reality or an effectiveness which is the " resolution of the will ", in a absolutely immediate way. Now, if a morally determined will has been produced, there should be a practical temporality in which this causality through freedom will operate . This notion was not elaborated by Kant but it seems necessary to think of it to understand the effectiveness  of moral Law. Indeed, the problem of the applicability of the unconditioned pure principle in the time of transcendental aesthetics is incomprehensible because if it applies in the time then we have to conclude that it is itself a priori conditioned and if it applies outside time, we reach the conclusion that the intelligible character is timeless, eternal and unchanging, which invalidates practical freedom as goodwill. Our thesis aims at answering this problem by showing that the moral Law is active and becomes a duty only by the person who is not unchanging but who has to be seen as practical temporality and duratio nouménon (duration made infinite by the postulate of the Dialectic of practical reason).

Thesis advisor: Noah Snyder / Increasing attention has been drawn to the need for reliable streamflow estimates at ungaged locations under a range of climatic and hydrologic conditions. Climate projections for the northeastern United States over the 21st century--which include significant increases in temperature and precipitation--could have broad impacts on streamflows, potentially reducing the accuracies of existing streamflow models for the region. This thesis investigates recent changes in daily flow-durations in southern New England, and examines their influence on the reliability of the low-flow models for Massachusetts presented by Ries and Friesz (2000). An analysis of discharge data collected at gaging sites through water year 2012 revealed increases in nearly all flow durations at sites across southern New England since the mid-20th century, whereas very low flows (quantiles at or above the 95-percent exceedance probability) generally showed decreases, especially since the 1990s. Twenty-year moving streamflow quantiles at each of ten selected exceedance probabilities were examined for the periods of record of 16 streamflow-gaging stations in southern New England. The beginning of water year 1992 appeared to mark an inflection point in low-flow quantiles, before which very low flows were steady or increasing, and after which these flows showed near-universal decreases. While the observed peak in 20-year low-flow quantiles around 1992 may be due to the statistical method used to calculate the quantile trends, the inflection point could also be an indicator of when increasing evapotranspiration surpassed increasing precipitation as the principal climatic driver of changes in low flows in southern New England. The general upward translation of the flow-duration curve observed over the last 60 years is very likely linked to increases in annual precipitation during this period, while the decreases in very low flows are likely due to changes in climatic variables (increasing summer temperatures and evapotranspiration rates), and amplified by anthropogenic factors (greater areas of impervious surfaces and increasing rates of surface- and ground-water withdrawal). The data suggest that increasing precipitation rates have already caused the Ries and Friesz (2000) equations for the median low flows (Q50 to Q75) to become biased towards underestimation, and decreases in very low flows threaten to render the models for these flows biased towards overestimation in the coming decades. The streamflow quantile trends (for both the entire period of record of the gaging stations and just the post-1992 period) for each of the ten flow-durations of interest were extended into the future to the point where the corresponding Ries and Friesz (2000) model would fail (when actual flow durations would be outside the 90-percent prediction intervals for the estimated flows for greater than 10% of sites). The models for the lowest streamflows are estimated to lose validity by as early as 2018. Climate change is predicted to have significant effects on streamflow characteristics in southern New England over the 21st century, and the results of this study indicate that the Ries and Freisz (2000) low-flow models should be reformulated using more recent streamflow data within the next decade, and validated every 20 years thereafter to ensure their accuracies are maintained despite the effects of regional nonstationarity. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Thesis advisor: Sanjay K. Chugh / Thesis advisor: Fabio Schiantarelli / My doctoral research focuses on the role of labor market frictions in shaping macroeconomic outcomes. I am currently pursuing three main lines of research that constitute the three chapters of this dissertation. The first chapter focuses on involuntary part-time employment as an additional margin used by firms to adjust to business cycle fluctuations. The chapter documents empirical regularities of involuntary part-time employment in the U.S. and furnishes a tractable analytical framework for studying this phenomenon that has gained so much attention in the years that followed the Great Recession. In the second chapter, which is joint work with Sanjay Chugh, Ryan Chahrour and Alan Finkelstein-Shapiro, we study the labor market wedge in the context of a search and matching model to understand how static and dynamic inefficiencies change over the business cycle. Measuring the labor market wedge and understanding its sources of movement is of great importance from a macroeconomic point of view, as existing research shows it holds a prominent place in explaining fluctuations in aggregate output. Finally, in the third chapter I study empirically the determinants of the job finding probability, a key object in the context of frictional labor markets. More specifically, I analyze how decisions on time allocation by the unemployed affect their chances of finding a job, and identify the activities that make more likely for an unemployed individual to receive and accept a job offer. Chapter 1. In recent years researchers and policymakers have shown renewed interest in involuntary part-time employment as a crucial indicator of labor market health. The fact that individuals have part-time jobs even though they would be willing to work more hours is evidence that resources in the economy are not employed at full capacity. This group represents almost 40 percent of total underemployment. Despite its large size and importance to policy-makers, surprisingly little literature addresses the empirical regularities or economic role this margin plays in determining labor market outcomes. In "Underemployment and the Business Cycle" I address several questions regarding involuntary part-time employment. First, how does involuntary part-time employment differ from the standard extensive and intensive margins? Second, what factors influence the choice of firms to use involuntary part-time workers? Third, how might economic policy contribute to the existence of involuntary part-time employment in the economy? And, fourth, have there been any changes over time in the response of involuntary part-time employment to changes in aggregate economic conditions and, if so, what explains them? To describe the empirical regularities of involuntary part-time employment, I use detailed micro-level data from longitudinally-linked monthly files of the Current Population Survey. A novel finding that emerges from the analysis of this dataset is that wages of involuntary part-time workers display higher volatility and lower persistence than those of their full-time counterparts, thus indicating a higher degree of flexibility. In addition, I find that changes in involuntary part-time employment are mostly explained by reallocation of workers from full-time to part-time positions within the firm, which involves more than just a mere reduction in hours worked. I then aggregate the data and compute business cycle statistics. Surprisingly, I find that the behavior of involuntary part-time employment resembles the behavior of unemployment more than the one of full-time employment. In fact, the results indicate that involuntary part-time employment is very volatile and strongly countercyclical. To understand the evidence I find at the micro and macro levels, I build an augmented search and matching model of the labor market featuring full-time and part-time employment, and a production function that combines both types of workers. The decision of whether a worker is full-time or part-time is made entirely by the firm, depending on the realizations of both aggregate and idiosyncratic productivity processes. The model is able to deliver the countercyclicality of involuntary part-time employment found in the data. The key mechanism to obtain this result is the relatively higher flexibility of part-time contracts that makes it more profitable for the firm to reallocate workers from full-time to part-time arrangements during recessions. Based on the model that captures key empirical facts, I conduct policy analysis to evaluate the effect of an increase in the cost of health insurance on involuntary part-time employment. The policy experiment predicts that an increase in the cost of health insurance provided by the firm to its full-time workers, such that their share in average full-time wages goes up by 1 percentage point, leads to an increase of steady state involuntary part-time employment by 10 percent, which nowadays would be equivalent to half a million additional involuntary part-time workers. I find evidence that involuntary part-time employment has become more volatile and persistent in the last 25 years. I study the impact that innovation in workforce management practices, a process that started in the 1990s and that has increased the degree of substitutability between full-time and part-time workers, may have had in changing the response over time of involuntary part-time employment to business cycle fluctuations. Impulse response analysis from the model indicates that an increase in the degree of substitutability makes involuntary part-time employment more sensitive to aggregate productivity shocks. Chapter 2. In "The Labor Wedge: A Search and Matching Perspective" we define and quantify static and dynamic labor market wedges in a search and matching model with endogenous labor force participation. Existing literature has generally centered on Walrasian labor markets in characterizing the inefficiencies, or ``gaps'', between labor demand and labor supply. However, given the conventional view in the profession that the matching process plays an important role in the labor market, the neoclassically-measured labor wedge suffers from a misspecification problem as it ignores the role of long-lasting relationships in explaining the cyclical pattern of the labor wedge. To construct the wedge we use a rigorously defined transformation function of the economy, which contains both the matching technology and the neoclassical production technology. Both technologies are primitives of the economy in the sense that a Social Planner must respect both processes. Given the model-appropriate transformation frontier and the household's static and dynamic marginal rates of substitution, we use data on the labor force participation rate, the employment rate, the vacancy rate, real consumption, real government spending, and real GDP to construct static and dynamic labor wedges. We find that, in a version of the model where all employment relationships turn over every period, the static labor wedge is countercyclical, a result that is consistent with existing literature. Once we consider long-lasting employment relationships, we can measure both static and dynamic wedges separately. We then find that, while the static wedge continues to be countercyclical, the dynamic (or intertemporal) wedge is procyclical. Since the latter is associated with the vacancy-posting decision of the firm, this result suggests that understanding the behavior of labor demand may be crucial to explaining the dynamic wedge. Our focus so far has been on obtaining a quantitative measure of both the static and dynamic wedges, and on analyzing their business cycle properties. Now we are working on extending this framework to provide a micro-founded explanation of the forces that could be driving the cyclical movements of the wedges. Chapter 3. Recent research has found that individuals who become unemployed allocate most of their forgone working hours into leisure rather than increasing the time devoted to job search activities. What is the rationale behind this decision? There are many factors that may affect the job search behavior of the unemployed. However, in this study I focus on a particular channel: the decision on how unemployed individuals allocate their time could be biased towards activities that increase their probability of finding a job. They might find more valuable to increase their social activities rather than looking formally for a job because this enhances their network, which could increase their chances of finding a job, even with less search effort. In "The Time Use Decisions of the Unemployed: A Survival Analysis", I conduct a duration analysis to estimate the effect of different time use allocations on the unemployment hazard rate using time use data from the Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey. Defining "finding a job" as a failure, I estimate a single-spell, discrete-time duration model of unemployment with time-varying covariates using semi-parametric techniques. Given that I work with interval-censored data, I conduct the analysis using discrete time survival analysis techniques. The results indicate that education/training activities have a significant and positive impact on the hazard rate, i.e. they increase the probability that an unemployed worker finds a job, while leisure has the opposite effect. Furthermore, neither job-search nor networking have a significant effect on the hazard rate in the baseline specification. However, this result changes when incorporating into the regression interaction terms of these variables with a dummy that takes the value one if the individual is a long-term unemployed and zero otherwise. In this case, the coefficient associated with networking becomes positive and significant, while the coefficient of the interaction term is negative. This implies that networking has a positive effect on the hazard rate for short unemployment spells, but this effect weakens if the individual has been unemployed for a longer period. On the other hand, even after incorporating the interaction term, job search remains insignificant. These findings shed light on why individuals may not want to devote additional time to formal job search: it does not pay off with a higher likelihood of receiving a job offer, regardless of the length of the unemployment spell. On the other hand, other activities, such as investing in education or networking, are positively related to the probability of finding a job -- at least for short unemployment spells -- and thus it makes more sense for these individuals to devote more time to them.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a estrutura do desemprego dos jovens no Brasil, procurando identificar os motivos da taxa de desemprego dos jovens ser muito superior à dos adultos. Apesar de sua importância, este tema tem recebido pouca atenção na literatura sobre o mercado de trabalho brasileiro. Na primeira análise deste estudo, decompõe-se a taxa de desemprego em dois determinantes, duração média e taxa de entrada no desemprego de jovens, adultos e idosos; percebe-se que a duração do desemprego é praticamente a mesma para as três categorias, enquanto a taxa de entrada dos jovens é maior que a das outras duas, sendo, portanto, o determinante que faz com que o desemprego juvenil seja mais elevado que o de trabalhadores mais velhos; assim, com uma nova decomposição da taxa de entrada de jovens, verifica-se que cerca de 80% dessa taxa é composta de jovens que já trabalharam. Outro método será o cálculo, para jovens e adultos, das matrizes de transição entre os estados do mercado de trabalho. Para avaliar a questão do desemprego dos jovens no Brasil, recalcula-se as taxas de desemprego de cada categoria, substituindo uma de cada vez nas matrizes, as probabilidades de transição da outra categoria; os resultados mostram a alta rotatividade dos jovens no mercado de trabalho. Com esses resultados, conclui-se que a causa do alto desemprego dos jovens não está na dificuldade em conseguir o primeiro emprego. / This work has the purpose to analyze the youth unemployment structure in Brazil, trying to identify the reasons for the youth unemployment rate being so superior relative to the unemployment of adults. Despite its importance, this subject has received less attention in the Brazilian labor market literature. In the first analysis of this work, the unemployment rate will be decomposed into two determinants, mean duration and inflow rate for young, adult and old people; it is noticed that the unemployment duration is practically the same for the three categories, but the youth inflow rate is relatively higher than the other two ones, being so, the determinant that makes youth unemployment be higher than unemployment of older workers; and, with a new decomposition of youth inflow rate, it is verified that about 80% of this rate is composed of young people that have already worked. Another method will be the calculus, for young and adult people, of the transition matrices between labor market states. To evaluate where is the problem of Brazilian youth unemployment, it is recalculated these rates for each one of the categories, substituting one at a time in the matrices, the transition probabilities of the other category; results show the high turnover of the category in labor market. With these results, it is concluded that the reason of the high youth unemployment is not the difficulty of finding the first job.

Accuracy in estimation of precipitation can be achieved by utilizing the combination of spatial radar reflectivity data (Z) and the high resolution temporal rain gage based rainfall data (R). The study proposes the use of optimization models for optimizing the Z-R coefficients and exponents for different storm types and seasons. Precipitation data based on reflectivity, collected from National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and rain gage data from Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) over same temporal resolutions were analyzed using the Rain-Radar- Retrieval (R3) system developed as a part of the study. Optimization formulations are proposed to obtain optimal coefficients and exponents in the Z-R relationships for different seasons and objective selection of storm-type specific Z-R relationships. Different approaches in selection of rain gage stations and selection of events for optimization are proposed using gradient based solver and genetic algorithms. / Kandarp Pattani. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.\

Notre hypothèse de travail est la suivante : l’œuvre de Gracq, exprime le rapport privilégié que l’auteur entretient avec l’histoire. Il est néanmoins évident que ce lien ne se limite pas à une pure écriture historiographique ou à un simple témoignage. Il s’agit plutôt d’une forme particulière de représentation littéraire qui porte sur un objet complexe : le passé, le présent et le devenir d’un être-là. Notre ambition, à travers le travail sur un corpus de quatre œuvres narratives, est, d’abord, de mettre en rapport l’œuvre littéraire avec le matériau même de l’histoire ainsi qu’avec les autres champs de la connaissance et de la perception avec lesquels la littérature forme un continuum. Lire l’histoire à travers cette œuvre revient dans un premier lieu à saisir cette continuité qu’il y a entre les deux dimensions fondamentales du temps et de l’espace historiques et de son inscription dans l’artefact littéraire qui la transforme en une matière fertile pour une « poésie de l’histoire ». Dans une première étape, nous essaierons de cerner les différentes manières avec lesquelles le temps historique est ressenti puis exprimé à travers la notion d’événement. C’est cette notion d’événement qui nous permettra aussi d’explorer l’espace géographique gracquien à travers les différents statuts qu’il assume dans l’œuvre. La troisième partie tentera de décrire les différents modes discursifs selon lesquels la représentation du temps et de l’espace historiques se transforme en artefact littéraire. Dans cette étude nous nous inspirerons essentiellement des travaux de Paul Ricoeur (Temps et récit, La Mémoire l’Histoire l’Oubli) et de Hayden White dans Metahistory. / The main hypothesis of this thesis is: Julien Gracq’s works are the expressions of a privileged relationship linking the author to History. It is evident, however, that this link is not limited to a pure historiographical writing or to a simple testimony. It is rather a specific form of literary representation that covers a complex issue, namely: the past, the present and evolution of living entities in the universe. Via analyzing a corpus of four narratives, my ambition is to connect the literary works to the other fields of knowledge and cognition, with which literature makes a continuum. Throughout these works, History turns to mean that we must understand the continuity between the two fundamental dimensions of historical time and space, and how they are enshrined into a literary artifact that transforms them into a “poetry of history” (“Poésie de l’histoire”). In a first phase, I will try to identify how historical time is felt and then expressed trough the notion of event. This very notion of event will then enable me to explore gracquian geographical space through the various statutes it takes in the literary work. The third part of this thesis will describe the different discursive strategies used to transform historical time and space into literary artifact. The main inspirations for this thesis are the works of Paul Ricoeur (Temps et récit ; La Mémoire, l’Histoire, l’Oubli) and Hayden White (Metahistory) .

Esta tese tem por objetivo compreender a formação e o papel do conceito de causalidade na filosofia de Henri Bergson (1859-1941), notadamente no período de 1889 a 1907. Sua primeira parte é dedicada à exposição da redefinição do conceito de causalidade dentro do Ensaio sobre os dados imediatos da consciência (1889). Neste livro, para que a causalidade torne-se certa causalidade psicológica, uma série de posicionamentos teve de ser tomada pelo filósofo no intuito de questionar a importância de tal conceito na determinação da experiência interna do tempo. É nosso propósito pôr em evidência como essa mudança é operada sobre bases filosóficas seguras. Na segunda parte deste trabalho, procuramos expor como Bergson abandona a via da teoria do conhecimento em prol de uma ontologia fundamentada em bases fisiológicas inseguras, notadamente no que concerne à ideia de corpo que o autor apresenta em Matéria e memória (1896). Do ponto de vista filosófico, sua concepção de subjetividade, definida a partir de um campo de possibilidades, deixa em aberto o modo como esse campo transforma-se, em retorno, da possibilidade à realidade. Dito de outro modo, o filósofo garante a especificidade da ação metafísica com precisão filosófica, mas não avança sobre o problema da realização com grau de precisão comparável. Com efeito, em algumas circunstâncias no ínterim de Matéria e memória (1896) e A evolução criadora (1907), Bergson ocupa-se do problema da realização em referência explícita ao próprio problema da causalidade. É dos desdobramentos conceituais desta causalidade concebida como sentimento do esforço que nos ocupamos aqui. Por fim, a terceira parte deste trabalho apresenta uma reflexão de conjunto sobre os pontos de vista acima mencionados. Nela, a relevância das duas causalidades é posta em destaque através da análise de um curso inédito de Georges Canguilhem, em que a problemática da causalidade na filosofia de Bergson é valorizada segundo o modo como procuramos entendê-la e expô-la nesta tese. Assim, a discussão das dificuldades da ação material poderá representar um prelúdio à compreensão da especificidade do problema da invenção técnica. / This thesis aims to understand the formation and the role of the causality concept in the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859-1941), notably in the period from 1889 to 1907. Its first part is devoted to exposing the redefinition of causality concept within Time and Consciousness (1889). In this book, a set of statements were assumed by the philosopher so that causality in general becomes a sort of psychological causality, particularly in order to question the importance of the concept of causality itself in determining the inner experience of time. It is our intent to underscore how this change is operated on a cautious philosophical basis. In the second part of this work, we try to disclose how Bergson abandons the path of knowledge theory on behalf of an ontology based on incautious physiological bases, notably regarding the idea of body, which the author presents in Matter and memory (1896). From a philosophical point of view, his conception of subjectivity, defined within a field of possibilities, leaves open the way in which this field is backwards transformed from possibility to reality. Put differently, the philosopher reassures with philosophical accuracy the specificity of metaphysical action, but does not advance the problem of its achievement with a comparable degree of precision. Indeed, in some circumstances in the interim of Matter and Memory (1896) and The Creative Evolution (1907), Bergson dedicates to the problem of realization in explicit reference to the very problem of causality. It is from the conceptual unfoldings of that causality conceived as the feeling of effort that we are concerned here. Finally, the third part of the thesis presents an overall reflection on the points of view mentioned above. In it, the relevance of the two causalities is highlighted by the analysis of an unpublished course by Georges Canguilhem, in which the problem of causality in Bergson\'s philosophy is valued according to the way in which we try to understand and reveal it here. Thus, the discussion on the difficulties of material action may represent a prelude to the comprehension of the specificity of the problem of technical invention.