The intention of the empirical missiology is to systematically examine the reality of mission practice with the aid of empirical methods. To reach this aim the dissertation will attempt to combine empirical social science with missiology in a way that they positively complement one another throughout the whole process of research. This intradisciplinary procedure is new to missiology and therefore an important contribution to research. To form a basis, social as well as missiological research will be dealt with and von der Vens empirical theology examined. For the hermeneutic methodological realization of the empirical missiology an empirical-theological praxis cycle will be developed consisting of seven individual stages of research. The missiological reflection of each stage is the minor cycle. This procedure guarantees firstly a strictly methodical way of working and secondly missiological relevance that takes the context of praxis seriously and serves the mission. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th.

The pastoral visitation practice of Continuing Witness Training (CWT) is theoretically intended to cooperate with God to lead individuals to Christian conversion, but reconciles fewer individuals to God than anticipated. This empirical theological study of Praxis 1 analyzed the visited individuals' (1) perception of care-concern by the visitors, (2) post-visit positive mood, (3) satisfaction with the visit, (4) sense of God's presence in the visit, and (5) decision to pray to establish a relationship with Jesus Christ. in association with (a) the amount of the CWT presentation given, (b) the length of the visit, and (c) prior religious involvement. Greater amounts of the CWT presentation given resulted in greater satisfaction and greater conversion prayer. Longer pastoral visits resulted in greater satisfaction among females and males, in greater conversion prayer in females, and in higher post-visit positive mood in males. Lower prior religious involvement resulted in greater amounts of the CWT model presentation being given to females, and in greater conversion prayer in males. Although 60% of Individuals visited reported no or minimal religious involvement, the complete CWT presentation was given to only 19%, and a substantial portion of CWT was given to an additional 17%. Among this 36% of those visited who received the CWT presentation, 55% decided to pray to establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This situational analysis identified four praxis problems: ( 1) inconsistent application of the CWT model with unchurched individuals, (2) dissatisfaction among 25% of individuals visited, (3) lack of sense of God's presence in the visit reported by 23% of individuals visited, and (4) 31% of those visited being outside the stated unchurched target population for CWT visits. These praxis problems and related findings in the descriplive theological research were addressed by formulating a revised practical theology upon which to base Praxis 2. This revised theology of evangelism incorporated a multi-modal model of pastoral role-fulfillment (inYolving ketygma, didache, and paraklesis) as an agogic situation of primary initiation of a person into the kingdom of God, by proposing multiple contacts within a pastoral theology of care and counseling. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Th. D. (Practical Theology)

Context: The thesis is the analysis work of the replication of software experiment conducted by Natalia and Sira at Technical University of Madrid, SPAIN. The empirical study was conducted for the verification and validation of experimental data, and to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the testing techniques. The analysis blocks, considered for the analysis were observable fault, failure visibility and observed faults. The statistical data analysis involved the ANOVA and Classification package of SPSS. Objective: To evaluate and compare the result obtained from the statistical data analysis. To establish the verification and validation of effectiveness and efficiency of testing techniques by using ANOVA and Classification tree analysis for percentage subject, percentage defect-subject and values (Yes / No) for each of the blocks. RQ1: Empirical evaluation of effectiveness of fault detection testing technique, using data analysis (ANOVA and Classification tree package). For the blocks (observable fault, failure visibility and observed faults) using ANOVA and Classification tree. RQ2: Empirical evaluation of efficiency of fault detection technique, based on time and number of test cases using ANOVA. RQ3: Comparison and inference of the obtained results for both effectiveness and efficiency. Method:The research will be focused on the statistical data analysis to empirically evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the fault detection technique for the experimental data collected at UPM (Technical university of Madrid, SPAIN). Empirical Strategy Used: Software Experiment. Results: Based on the planned research work. The analysis result obtained for the observable fault types were standardized (Ch5). Within the observable fault block, both the techniques, functional and structural were equally effective. In the failure visibility block, the results were partially standardized. The program types nametbl and ntree were equally effective in fault detection than cmdline. The result for observed fault block was partially standardized and diverse. The list for significant factors in this blocks were program types, fault types and techniques. In the efficiency block, the subject took less time in isolating the fault in the program type cmdline. Also the efficiency in fault detection was seen in cmdline with the help of generated test cases. Conclusion:This research will help the practitioners in the industry and academic in understanding the factors influencing the effectiveness and efficiency of testing techniques.This work also presents a comprehensive analysis and comparison of results of the blocks observable fault, failure visibility and observed faults. We discuss the factors influencing the efficiency of the fault detection techniques. / shailendra.natraj@gmail.com +4917671952062

This study examines the impact of rapid and multi-faceted change (both domestically and inter-nationally over the past four decades) on the Dutch Reformed Church. 2 February 1990 is taken as a water shed date in the history of South-Africa: a speech in parliament of former president FW de Klerk put South-Africa on a course of fundamental change in all spheres of society. The research problem deals with loss the Afrikaans community experiences as a result of societal change. The result of change and loss is long-lasting, collective grief. Grief is defined as the nor-mal, spontaneous reaction to change and loss. Unresolved grief and nostalgia saps a lot of energy and tends to turn a congregation’s attention to itself, thereby contradicting the sound reformed ecclesiology. There is no appropriate practical theological theory to help congregations address unresolved grief. Change, loss and grief are made focus points for theological reflection and empirical study. The guiding hypothesis states that efforts to build up the local church are more likely to succeed, once the “black holes” of unaddressed grief have been dealt with by a collective and on-going process of mourning. Mourning is defined as an intentional and courageous process of letting go of different losses. It is hard work, but the result of deliberate mourning is growth – and eventually a more appropriate, new identity. Unresolved grief causes congregations to get stuck in survival mode, in stead of reaching out to the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Mourning is an antidote (Hamman 2005:35). The research model of G Heitink (1993) is employed to generate fresh practical theological thinking on the research problem: that congregations fail to live according to their missional identity. The hermeneutical cycle explores the “new” practical theology in the framework of a post-Einstein epistemology, as well as the theory of building up the local church in the framework of an ecosystemic meta-theory. The hermeneutical cycle is concluded with the study of contemporary theories of loss, grief and mourning. The empirical cycle reports the results of a qualitative empirical study in three local congregations of the Northern Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. A rich description is given of 31 respondents’ experience of loss and grief in the new South-Africa. It is established that unresolved grief indeed impacts negatively on efforts to build up the local church. The strategic cycle searches for practical theological wisdom and for a theory that can guide congregations to more productive responses to change and loss. The research boils down to twelve strategic suggestions for local congregations on how to make collective mourning a normal and on-going part of their ministry. The study concludes with the hypothesis that practical theology can serve the church by developing a theory that integrates intentional mourning and grief work as a necessary and normal aspect of ministry. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

In recent years, financial trading has become more available. This has led to more market participants and more trades taking place each day. The increased activity also implies an increasing number of abusive trades. To detect the abusive trades, market surveillance systems are developed and used. In this thesis, two different methods were tested to detect these abusive trades on high-dimensional data. One was based on empirical quantiles, and the other was based on an unsupervised machine learning technique called isolation forest. The empirical quantile method uses empirical quantiles on dimensionally reduced data to determine if a datapoint is an outlier or not. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to reduce the dimensionality of the data and handle the correlation between features.Isolation forest is a machine learning method that detects outliers by sorting each datapoint in a tree structure. If a datapoint is close to the root, it is more likely to be an outlier. Isolation forest have been proven to detect outliers in high-dimensional datasets successfully, but have not been tested before for market surveillance. The performance of both the quantile method and isolation forest was tested by using recall and run-time.  The conclusion was that the empirical quantile method did not detect outliers accurately when all dimensions of the data were used. The method most likely suffered from the curse of dimensionality and could not handle high dimensional data. However, the performance increased when the dimensionality was reduced. Isolation forest performed better than the empirical quantile method and detected 99% of all outliers by classifying 226 datapoints as outliers out of a dataset with 184 true outliers and 1882 datapoints. / Under de senaste åren har finansiell handel blivit mer tillgänglig för allmänheten. Detta har lett till fler deltagare på marknaderna och att fler affärer sker varje dag. Den ökade aktiviteten innebär också att de missbruk som förekommer ökar. För att upptäcka otillåtna affärer utvecklas och används marknadsövervakningssystem. I den här avhandlingen testades två olika metoder för att upptäcka dessa missbruk utifrån högdimensionell data. Den ena baserades på empiriska kvantiler och den andra baserades på en oövervakad maskininlärningsteknik som kallas isolationsskog. Den empiriska kvantilmetoden använder empiriska kvantiler på dimensionellt reducerad data för att avgöra om en datapunkt är ett extremvärde eller inte. För att reducera dimensionen av datan, och för att hantera korrelationen mellan variabler, används huvudkomponent analys (HKA).Isolationsskog är en maskininlärnings metod som upptäcker extremvärden genom att sortera varje datapunkt i en trädstruktur. Om en datapunkt är nära roten är det mer sannolikt att det är en extremvärde. Isolationsskog har visat sig framgångsrikt upptäcka extremvärden i högdimensionella datauppsättningar, men har inte testats för marknadsövervakning tidigare. För att mäta prestanda för båda metoderna användes recall och körtid. Slutsatsen är att den empiriska kvantilmetoden inte hittade extremvärden när alla dimensioner av datan användes. Metoden led med största sannolikhet av dimensionalitetens förbannelse och kunde inte hantera högdimensionell data, men när dimensionaliteten reducerades ökade prestandan. Isolationsskog presterade bättre än den empiriska kvantilmetoden och lyckades detektera 99% av alla extremvärden genom att klassificera 226 datapunkter som extremvärden ur ett dataset med 184 verkliga extremvärden och 1882 datapunkter.

<p dir="ltr">Modern software relies heavily on third-party dependencies (often distributed via public package registries), making software supply chain attacks a growing threat. Prior work investigated attacks and defenses, but only taxonomized attacks or proposed defensive techniques, did not consistently define software supply chain attacks, and did not provide properties to assess the security of software supply chains. We do not have a unified definition of software supply chain attacks nor a set of properties that a secure software supply chain should follow.</p><p dir="ltr">Guaranteeing authorship in a software supply chain is also a challenge. Package maintainers can guarantee package authorship through software signing. However, it is unclear how common this practice is or if existing signatures are created properly. Prior work provided raw data on registry signing practices, but only measured single platforms, did not consider quality, did not consider time, and did not assess factors that may influence signing. We do not have up-to-date measurements of signing practices nor do we know the quality of existing signatures. Furthermore, we lack a comprehensive understanding of factors that influence signing adoption.</p><p dir="ltr">This thesis addresses these gaps. First, we systematize existing knowledge into: (1) a four-stage supply chain attack pattern; and (2) a set of properties for secure supply chains (transparency, validity, and separation). Next, we measure current signing quantity and quality across three kinds of package registries: traditional software (Maven Central, PyPI), container images (Docker Hub), and machine learning models (Hugging Face). Then, we examine longitudinal trends in signing practices. Finally, we use a quasi-experiment to estimate the effect that various factors had on software signing practices.</p><p dir="ltr">To summarize the findings of our quasi-experiment: (1) mandating signature adoption improves the quantity of signatures; (2) providing dedicated tooling improves the quality of signing; (3) getting started is the hard part — once a maintainer begins to sign, they tend to continue doing so; and (4) although many supply chain attacks are mitigable via signing, signing adoption is primarily affected by registry policy rather than by public knowledge of attacks, new engineering standards, etc. These findings highlight the importance of software package registry managers and signing infrastructure.</p>

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Tracy M. Turner / Many municipalities are beginning to play a more central and active role in slowing and reversing the process of the economic stagnation of business and commerce within their cities. Many municipalities combat these problems through the use of providing existing businesses or start up businesses with financial assistance or incentives. Economic theory shows us that a firm’s decision on production and location is influenced by fiscal incentives that are afforded to them. This paper explores the external effects of municipally assisted redevelopment programs. This analysis strives to broaden our understanding of businesses redevelopment programs to include not just the impacts on the commercial side, but see the total effects which include the residential side as well. It analyzes key economic indicators of households who reside within and directly around publicly assisted redevelopment areas and compares these indicators to their non-redeveloped area counterparts. Specifically, it empirically examines the impact of redevelopment on house values and unemployment rates in seven large Midwestern cities: Des Moines, Wichita, Kansas City, St. Louis, Lincoln, Omaha, and Milwaukee, using census data at the block group and census tract levels. I find that redevelopment has a substantial impact in increasing house values and reducing unemployment rates in the vicinity of the redevelopment projects.

The aim of this study is to investigate family therapists understanding of knowledge, theories and methods in the treatment of mothers who use violence against their children. The study is made on the basis that the operation is not based on clear evidence-based knowledge and examines how family therapists understand and combines existing methods and theories in social work. Methodically the study is based on qualitative interviews with five family therapists in different municipalities in the south of Sweden. A compilation of the interviews gave rise to two main themes: Mothers and violence respective Treatment. The result shows that there are not always explicit methods and theories available in the treatment of violent mothers. Despite this, the family therapists shows a large degree of consensus regarding methods and theories. In the discussion it is suggested that this may be due to some theories and methods are so integrated in the environments that the family therapists are active in that they do not specifically reflect on them. They have, in short, become routine. / Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka familjebehandlares förståelse av kunskaper, teorier och metoder i behandlingen av mammor som använder våld mot sina barn. Studien görs mot bakgrund av att verksamheten inte bygger på tydliga evidensbaserade kunskaper och undersöker hur familjebehandlare, mot denna bakgrund, förstår och kombinerar i socialt arbete befintliga metoder och teorier. Metodiskt bygger studien på kvalitativa intervjuer med fem familjebehandlare i olika kommuner i södra Sverige. En sammanställning av intervjuerna gav upphov till två huvudteman: Mammor och våld respektive Behandling. Resultatet visar att det inte alltid finns uttalade metoder och teorier att tillgå i behandling av våldsutövande mammor. Trots detta uppvisar familjebehandlarna en relativt stor samstämmighet kring metoder och teorier. I diskussionen föreslås att detta kan bero på att vissa teorier och metoder är så integrerade i de miljöer familjebehandlarna är verksamma att de inte längre uttrycklig reflekterar över dem. De har, kort sagt, blivit rutin.

Thesis (MEng) -- Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Francou and Rodier (1967) empirical approach uses the original concept of envelope curves for the definition of the regional maximum flood (RMF). Kovacs (1980) adopted the Francou and Rodier empirical flood calculation method and applied it to 355 catchments in South Africa. He revised his study in 1988 to also include the southern portions of the Southern Africa subcontinent. No method other than the Francou and Rodier empirical flood approach in the reviewed literature was found to be suitable for the purpose of this study. Therefore the Francou and Rodier empirical approach, as applied by Kovacs in 1988, was reapplied and used in this study to update the RMF for Lesotho. Maximum recorded flood peaks were derived from annual maximum time series and an up to date catalogue of flood peaks for 29 catchments was compiled for Lesotho. The maximum recorded flood peaks were then plotted on the logarithmic scale against their corresponding catchment areas. There are 3 major river systems that divide Lesotho into hydrologically homogenous basins. Envelope curves were drawn on the upper bound of the cloud of plotted points for these 3 river basins. These envelope curves represent the maximum flood peaks that can reasonably be expected to occur within the respective river basins in Lesotho. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Francou en Rodier (1967) se empiriese benadering maak gebruik van die oorspronklike konsep van boonste limiet kurwes vir die definisie van die streeks maksimum vloed (SMV). Kovacs (1980) het die Francou en Rodier empiriese vloed berekening metode toegepas op 355 opvanggebiede in Suid-Afrika. Hy hersien sy studie in 1988 om ook die suidelike gedeeltes van die Suider-Afrikaanse subkontinent in te sluit. Geen ander metode as die Francou en Rodier empiriese vloed benadering is in die literatuur gevind wat as geskik aanvaar kan word vir die doel van hierdie studie nie. Daarom is die Francou en Rodier empiriese benadering, soos toegepas deur Kovacs in 1988, weer in hierdie studie toegepas en gebruik om die SMV metode vir Lesotho op te dateer. Maksimum aangetekende vloedpieke is verkry vanuit jaarlikse maksimum tyd-reekse en ʼn opgedateerde katalogus van vloedpieke vir 29 opvanggebiede saamgestel vir Lesotho. Die maksimum aangetekende vloedpieke is grafies aangetoon op logaritmiese skaal teenoor hul opvanggebiede. Daar is 3 groot rivierstelsels wat Lesotho in hidrologiese homogene gebiede verdeel. Boonste limiet kurwes is opgestel om die boonste grens van die gestipte punte vir hierdie 3 gebiede aan te toon. Hierdie krommes verteenwoordig die maksimum vloedpieke wat redelikerwys verwag kan word om binne die onderskeie rivierstelsels in Lesotho voor te kan kom.

This study investigated factors affecting housing finance supply in Nigeria. Housing finance is a major factor determining the quality and tenure of housing consumption, the overall financial portfolio of the public and the stability and effectiveness of the financial system. In both developed and emerging economies, sovereign governments have intervened in the markets by setting up institutions characterised by a significant degree of regulation and segmentation from the rest of the financial markets and very often with governments providing subsidised housing finance. Attempts were made to develop an empirical model to reveal the underlying factors affecting housing finance in Nigeria. Time series data from sampled Universal Money Deposit Banks (UMDBs) balance sheets between 2003 and 2007 were used to assess the ability of the financial institutions to engage in long-term lending. Additional instruments in form of questionnaire, for the sectoral allocation of loans and advances by these financial institutions were employed to gather information from Corporate Banking / Loans and Advances Managers coupled with unstructured interviews. Supplementary questionnaires were directed to the users of housing finance at the household level as control for validity to the research findings. Applying a multiple regression approach, the model identified that housing finance supply in Nigeria is significantly driven by clusters of factors related to share capital and the reserves of the financial institutions. It is closely observed that housing finance models in the developed economies, which are largely financed by deposit liabilities, cannot be wholly adopted in the emerging economies. The implication for practice therefore is that financial institutions in the emerging economies must adequately increase their capital base for effective housing finance supply and introduce mortgage products with long-term tenure to actively mobilise resources for mortgage lending.