The aim of this diplomma thesis is to build a platform of the phenomenon of emergence in complex information systems. To our best knowledge, there has not been provided any similar concept in either internetional or domestic academic literature. The necessity to create a concept of the phenomenon of emergence in the enviroment of information systems stems from the observation of the fragmented knowledge about the emergence concept in the pool of scientific papers where the link between emergence and information systems is missing. As a result, the platform created in this work is the reaction to the lack of the above mentioned link, while the ambition is to provide a cornerstone for potential emergence's utilization in information systems. In this work, we provide a construct that describes and analyzes the characteristics, technics and methodologies in connection with the phenomenon of emergence, placing a great deal on the specifics of the emergence in complex information sytems. Special attention is paid to eNetworks that we consider to be the best enviroment for examining the characteristics of emergent behavior in regards to the concept of complexity. This enviroment shows suitable conditions for the analysis of information spreading and dynamic interactions, which is primarily connected with generating of emergent characteristic. In order to understand the causality of specific emergence's demonstrations, we take a closer look at two approaches: Holonistic multi-agemt systems and iterative simulation process.

This thesis interrogates the question ‘how does a local poet achieve connections in a context defined by difference?’ The creative practice section offers a collection of poetry written within given contexts, from specific places and emerging out of collaboration, commission and participative practice. Each project offers the difference anticipated by the research question. Therefore the context from which the poem emerged is made explicit to further support the argument. A local poet achieves connections in a context constituted by difference by using her imaginative capacities to produce virtual and emergent, yet real, material space. In Chapter One I define the creative process as that of ‘Local Poetics’ via a discussion of Heaney’s use of the term local poet and New-Materialist thought. I offer close readings of poems by Norman Nicholson, Adrian Henri and Barry MacSweeney to describe how the poem is a ‘local solution to a local problem’ and I present the history of participatory writing in Liverpool in relation to my own experience to support this idea. Chapter Two offers ‘case studies’ of my creative writing process to argue for ‘local poem as more than words’. The local poem emerges from multiple influences not all of them linguistic. In Chapter Three I extend this idea to consider how a local poet writes with their context not about it making poetry with the agency and affordances of materials. I conclude that connections are achieved by the local poet when multiple material trajectories acting on the sensate body become imaginative thought. In the process those material energies are transformed. Through intimate connection with an audience or reader the material process continues. I describe this activity as the work of the local poet.

The mechanism of semilunar emergence rhythm of the marine midge, Pontomyia oceana, was investigated. We used night light (1 lux) to entrain the emergence of the midge. Night light of 4 nights or more can effectively synchronize the semilunar emergence. Moreover, the night light has to be given about 10 days after fertilization to be effective. A batch of fertilized eggs of the marine midge emerge in two semilunar cycles, a second round of night-light treatment is necessary to synchronize the second peak of emergence. We also investigate whether the semilunar rhythm is dependent on the daily rhythm of the midge. Using different day length, from 20 to 28 hours per day, with equal light and dark periods, we want to know if the midges are counting numbers of light-dark cycles, or are independent of light-dark cycles, in determining their semilunar emergence. The results were intermediate between the two hypotheses. We suggest that the midge was not affected by light-dark cycle for the first 14 days of their life, afterward they count 15 light-dark cycles before emergence. This also explains how the second emergence peak occurs about 45 days after fertilization.

The study aims to understand the underlying factor why McDonald's customers return despite previous failure customer experiences. Why do customers come back to the company that contributes to the former dissatisfaction? McDonald's attempt to maintain unceasing purposeful emergence fail at the local level, where the customer contact occurs. McDonald's offerings and customers' bounded rationality results in that customers are satisfied with an "ok" experience, which adds to their low expectations of McDonalds. This makes clear that McDonald's does not have to make an effort through constant adaptation at the local level to achieve a "great" level of satisfaction. Because the customer is satisfied with an "ok" experience, and not require more to return to McDonalds. If you can lower your customers' expectations so much that they do not care about the previous failure customer experiences, the company's competitive invincible, even without continuous adjustment.

The increasing world population is putting pressure on global food production. Agriculture must meet these growing demands by increasing crop yields. One phenomenon which prevents seedling emergence and damages crop yield is soil crusting. Understanding of soil crusting and the factors which influence it is fundamental to ensuring good crop production. An instrument which will test soil crust strength in a novel way, mimicking seedling growth, may lead to pre-emptive agricultural soil management which could increase crop production. This work details the process of design, construction and testing of an ascending penetrometer to measure soil crust strength. The full design process is discussed from concept generation and evaluation, using experimental methods and a multi-criteria decision making tool, through to final design configuration, specification, manufacture and testing. Traditionally, soil penetrometers measure soil strength by forcing a probe from the surface of the soil into the bulk soil below. To more accurately measure the direct impedance a seedling would experience a device should measure impedance from the bulk soil upwards and into the soil crust, mimicking what a growing seedling would experience. Results prove that the manufactured ascending penetrometer with a force resolution of 0.01N and displacement resolution of 0.0004mm is capable of detecting differences in soil crusts. At these resolutions and accuracy to 0.1N and 0.1mm excellent repeatability was achieved. The machine is therefore a useful and realistic tool for quantitatively comparing soil crusts in soil. It is hoped that being able to compare soil crust strength will lead to improved soil management techniques.

This thesis explores the emergence and development of the Iraqi Kurdish novel between 1970 and 2011, aiming to demonstrate that it engages with political discourses, and that the political situation influenced the themes and structural development of the novel. It will seek to elucidate why, when we examine the history of Kurdish literature over the last fifty years, the first point that may attract our attention is its emergence from the political events. Based on this notion the current study has been divided into three historical phases; 1970-1991, 1991-2003 and 2003-2011. A chapter has been dedicated to each stage, examining two novels from each period, one from the Soranî and one from the Behdînî dialect. Chapter Two discusses the historical background of Iraqi Kurdistan and its influence on the emergence of the novel. Chapter One has been allocated to establishing the methodological background of the textual analysis, which has adopted Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralist theory. Such a theory, I will argue, proves helpful in order to discover the link between socio-political conditions and the form of literary works within a society, as Goldmann himself tried to do through his theoretical approach. Chapter Six discusses the results of the study. The thesis demonstrates how the political situation has formed the Iraqi Kurdish novel in terms of both formal and thematic structures, examining the notions of both the ’hero’ and the ‘world vision’ in the novels. It explores the reasons behind the dominant tragic world vision in the first stage, the hopeless worldview in the second, and the self-critical vision in the third phase. In addition, it examines the problematic nature of the hero in the novels, from their emergence until 2011.

Mental causation is with us all the time. Being a table is different from being a human---although we are composed of physical particles, we have understanding, reason, or perception, which are able to make a difference in the physical world. In this dissertation, I have detail discussions of contemporary substance dualism, the mind-brain identity theory, and Jaegwon Kim's functionalism, and thus conclude that none of them can provide an appropriate account to the problem of mental causation. By distinguishing the mind from the body, substance dualists face the pairing problem: How does this particular mind unite with this particular body and thus interact? With the pairing problem, more and more philosophers accept physicalism. However, it is surprising that the problem of mental causation arises again from the heart of physicalism. It means that accepting physicalist ontology does not make this problem go away. On the contrary, basic physical assumptions can even be seen as the source of the current difficulties with mental causation. My preferred idea is that mental properties emerge from physical properties, and both of them together make an occurrence to cause an effect. Emergence makes mental causation autonomous and also avoids epiphenomenalism.

Resumo: trabalho foi desenvolvido na Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias e Veterinárias do Câmpus de Jaboticabal (UNESP), na Escola Superior de Agricultura "Luiz de Queiroz" em Piracicaba (USP) e na Universidade Camilo Castelo Branco (UNICASTELO) em Fernandópolis, e teve por objetivo verificar a eficiência de alguns testes de vigor, conduzidos em laboratório, na previsão do desempenho germinativo de sementes de lotes de soja quando semeados sob condições de campo compatíveis com a prática agrícola. Foram avaliados nove lotes de sementes por meio dos seguintes testes laboratoriais: primeira contagem, padrão de germinação, envelhecimento acelerado, condutividade elétrica, frio, comprimento de plântula de acordo com procedimentos recomendados pela ISTA (1995), comprimento de plântulas de acordo com procedimentos recomendados pela ABRATES (1999), massa seca e emergência de plântulas no campo nas três localidades. O tempo de duração de cada teste foi também determinado. Os dados obtidos foram submetidos à análise de variância e as médias comparadas pelo teste Tukey a 5% de probabilidade. Dados da correlação entre resultados laboratoriais e desempenho germinativo no campo foram também determinados. Os resultados deste trabalho indicam que o produtor de sementes de soja dispõe de um número razoavelmente alto de testes entre os quais optar para avaliar, com um grau aceitável de confiança, o que esperar do desempenho germinativo de um lote de sementes quando semeado sob condições ambientais usuais para a prática agrícola. Os testes de maior precisão seriam os do envelhecimento artificial, o da condutividade elétrica e o do frio. Se, além da confiabilidade, ao produtor de sementes interessar também rapidez na obtenção de resultados, o teste da condutividade elétrica seria o mais... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research work was carried out on the campi of Jaboticabal, a unit of the Paulista State University (UNESP), Piracicaba, a unit of the University of São Paulo (USP), and Fernandópolis, a unit of the Camilo Castelo Branco University, the three of them localities of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The objective of this work was the evaluation of some laboratory tests for the analysis of soybean seeds quality as to their efficiency in forecasting seed lots germinative performance in the field. The environmental conditions in Jaboticabal, Piracicaba, and Fernandópolis were within the limits usually found under normal agricultural practice. Nine commercial soybean seed lots were used whose vigor levels previous laboratory tests showed to be high, medium, and low. The laboratory tests were the following: standard germination, germination first count, accelerated aging, electrical conductivity, cold, seedling length according to procedures found in ISTA (1995), seedling length according to procedures found in ABRATES (1999), seedling dry matter and field emergence at the three localities. The results indicate that soybean seed companies have a reasonably high number of laboratory tests among which to choose, all of them yielding highly trustable results. The accelerated aging, the electrical conductivity, and the cold tests would be those of the highest precision. The electrical conductivity test, in addition to being of high precision, was found to be the fastest one. In addition to those, the seed company still has a high number of tests from which to choose. Among them, those in which seedling length is measured were found to be more efficient than those in which seedling dry matter is measured. The seedling length tests have a duration between 128 and 151 hours. The measuring of seedling length according to... (Complete abstract, click electronic access below) / Orientador: Nelson Moreira de Carvalho / Coorientador: Silvio Moure Cícero / Coorientadora: Gisele Herbst Vazquez / Banca: João Nakagawa / Banca: Roberval Daiton Vieira / Mestre

abstract: The semiconductor field of Photovoltaics (PV) has experienced tremendous growth, requiring curricula to consider ways to promote student success. One major barrier to success students may face when learning PV is the development of misconceptions. The purpose of this work was to determine the presence and prevalence of misconceptions students may have for three PV semiconductor phenomena; Diffusion, Drift and Excitation. These phenomena are emergent, a class of phenomena that have certain characteristics. In emergent phenomena, the individual entities in the phenomena interact and aggregate to form a self-organizing pattern that can be observed at a higher level. Learners develop a different type of misconception for these phenomena, an emergent misconception. Participants (N=41) completed a written protocol. The pilot study utilized half of these protocols (n = 20) to determine the presence of both general and emergent misconceptions for the three phenomena. Once the presence of both general and emergent misconceptions was confirmed, all protocols (N=41) were analyzed to determine the presence and prevalence of general and emergent misconceptions, and to note any relationships among these misconceptions (full study). Through written protocol analysis of participants' responses, numerous codes emerged from the data for both general and emergent misconceptions. General and emergent misconceptions were found in 80% and 55% of participants' responses, respectively. General misconceptions indicated limited understandings of chemical bonding, electricity and magnetism, energy, and the nature of science. Participants also described the phenomena using teleological, predictable, and causal traits, indicating participants had misconceptions regarding the emergent aspects of the phenomena. For both general and emergent misconceptions, relationships were observed between similar misconceptions within and across the three phenomena, and differences in misconceptions were observed across the phenomena. Overall, the presence and prevalence of both general and emergent misconceptions indicates that learners have limited understandings of the physical and emergent mechanisms for the phenomena. Even though additional work is required, the identification of specific misconceptions can be utilized to enhance semiconductor and PV course content. Specifically, changes can be made to curriculum in order to limit the formation of misconceptions as well as promote conceptual change. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2014

In this research, it is examined whether U.S. domiciled multinational enterprises (MNEs) or U.S. domestic enterprises (DEs) emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and whether MNEs spend less time (duration) in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process than their DE counterparts. This research also studies the degree of multinationality and if the degree impacts positive recovery and duration from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on MNEs. This study consists of 403 companies, with 204 classified as MNEs and 199 classified as DEs, examining multinational diversification, internationalization, imperfect capital markets, and real options as measured by each firms' days in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. The results of this study show that the MNEs are more successful than DEs emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The duration of Chapter 11 for MNEs is basically the same for DEs, and the impact of degree of multinationality is not significant for either emergence or duration. However, the results did find that when using the number of foreign subsidiaries as the variable for degree, the predictive powers were significant in support that MNEs are more likely to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy than similar DEs, cet par