This dissertation examines the general research issue of whether the components of earnings are informative and specifically 1) how analysts consider earnings components when predicting future earnings and 2) whether the information content in, and analysts’ use of, earnings components have changed through time. Although earnings components have predictive value for future earnings based on each component’s persistence, extant research provides only a limited understanding of whether and how analysts consider this when forecasting. Using an integrated income statement and balance sheet framework to estimate the persistence of earnings components, I first establish that disaggregation based on the earnings components framework in this study is helpful to predict future earnings and helps explains contemporaneous returns. I then find evidence suggesting that although analysts consider the persistence of various earnings components, they do not fully integrate this information into their forecasts. Interestingly, analysts appear to be selective in their incorporation of the information in earnings components, seeming to ignore information from components indicating lower persistence, which results in higher forecast errors. Conversely, when a firm’s income is concentrated in high persistence items, analysts appear to incorporate the information into their forecasts, reducing their forecast errors. I also report that the usefulness of components relative to aggregate earnings has dramatically and continuously increased over the past several decades, and contemporaneous returns appear to be much better explained by earnings components than aggregate earnings (than historically). Finally, the relation between analyst forecast errors and the differential persistence of earnings components has also declined over time, indicating that analysts appear to recognize the increasing importance of earnings components through time. / text

This thesis explores the mental representation of subject-verb agreement, and the factors that can affect the determination of agreement in language production. It reports nine experiments that used a task in which participants produced sentence completions for visually presented complex subjects such as “The greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting”. Such completions typically agree with the head noun (greyhound) as in “A greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting is jumping” but sometimes agree with the local noun (rabbits) as in “A greyhound which two lively rabbits were tempting are jumping”. The first experiments examined the value of the concept of markedness in subject verb number agreement to see whether it has explanatory power for languages like Slovene with more than two number values. Results from two experiments employing complex sentence preambles including a head noun post modified by a prepositional phrase or a relative clause (e.g., “The nudist(s) near the sand dune(s)”) show that Slovene number agreement differs from number agreement in languages with no dual, but that it is not possible to simply state that the singular is the least marked and the dual the most. I argue that using languages with more complex number systems allows greater insight into the processes of correct and erroneous subject-verb agreement, and shows that it is necessary to dissociate susceptibility to agreement from error-causing status. To conclude, the concept of markedness seems unable to explain my results. Semantic effects in agreement are then examined using two comparison experiments in English. Experiment 3 shows that although English has only a two value system, speakers are sensitive to semantic differences in number. Experiment 4 explores the possible influence of speakers’ native language three-value number system on their two-value second language system. It shows that native speakers of English are more sensitive to semantic number differences in English than Slovene speakers of English. Experiment 5 explores gender agreement in Slovene (which has three genders) and shows that there is a complex pattern of agreement. As with number, there is not just one number value which is problematic: neuter and masculine are most confusable, but masculine errors are also common when feminine agreement would be expected, thus suggesting that speakers revert to two different defaults, masculine and neuter. Finally, the results of four experiments examining number and gender agreement in coordinated phrases are presented. Agreement in such phrases may be resolved (i.e. the verb agrees with the whole subject) but may instead agree with one conjunct. Agreement with one conjunct is affected byword order (agreement with the nearest conjunct is most common), coordinator (e.g., single-conjunct agreement is more common after “or” than “and”) and the gender or number of the conjuncts (e.g., dual number is associated with single-conjunct agreement). Taken together, my results suggest that agreement is affected by a complex interplay of semantic and syntactic factors, and that the effects of a three-valued system are quite distinct from those of a two-valued system.

As optical designs become more sophisticated and incorporate aspheric and free form surfaces, the need to specify limits on mid-spatial frequency manufacturing errors becomes more critical, particularly as we better understand the effects of these errors on image quality. While there already exist methods based on Fourier analysis to specify these errors in most commercial interferometry software, the method of calculation and the power spectral density (PSD) results remain obscure to many in the optical design and manufacturing field. We suggest that the structure functions (SF) contains the same information as in the Fourier based PSD but in a way that is much more transparent to analysis, interpretation and application as a specification. The units of measure are more familiar and the concept behind the analysis is simpler to understand. Further, the information contained in the structure function (or PSD) allows a complete specification of an optical surface from the finest measurable detail of roughness to the overall figure. We discuss the origin of the structure function in the field of astronomy to describe the effects of air turbulence on image quality, the simple mathematical definition of the structure function and its easy means of calculation and how its results should be scaled depending on the location of the optical surface in a system from pupil to image plane. Finally, we give an example of how to write a specification of an optical surface using the structure function.

The area of misfire detection is important because of the effects of misfires on both the environment and the exhaust system. Increasing requirements on the detection performance means that improvements are always of interest. In this thesis, potential improvements to an existing misfire detection algorithm are evaluated. The improvements evaluated are: using Gaussian processes to model the classifier, alternative signal treatments for detection of multiple misfires, and effects of where flywheel tooth angle error estimation is performed. The improvements are also evaluated for their suitability for use on-line. Both the use of Gaussian processes and the detection of multiple misfires are hard problems to solve while maintaining detection performance. Gaussian processes most likely loses performance due to loss of dependence between the weights of the classifier. It can give performance similar to the original classifier, but with greatly increased complexity. For multiple misfires, the performance can be slightly improved without loss of single misfire performance. Greater improvements are possible, but at the cost of single misfire performance. The decision is in the end down to the desired trade-off. The flywheel tooth angle error compensation gives nearly identical performance regardless of where it is estimated. Consequently the error estimation can be separated from the signal processing, allowing the implementation to be modular. Using an EKF for estimating the flywheel errors on-line is found to be both feasible and give good performance. Combining the separation of the error estimation from the signal treatment with a, after initial convergence, heavily restricted EKF gives a vastly reduced computational load for only a moderate loss of performance.

This study was a follow up to P. C. Dams' (1996) unpublished University of North Texas masters thesis, The effect of defect probability during training on inspection accuracy in a quality control simulation. Graphics of computer circuit boards were presented in dyads with an error free sample on the left and a comparison on the right. Comparisons had either a rotation or transposition defect, or were error free. Subjects had 10-s to accept or reject the comparison as identical to the sample. They were trained using two different stimulus fading procedures (using descending defect probabilities) and immediate feedback. Defect probabilities for the Tens were 0.60, 0.50, 0.40, and 0.30 and for the Twenties were 1.00, 0.80, 0.60, and 0.40. The last 4 pretraining and posttraining sessions were compared and the posttraining performance of the Twenties, as compared to the Tens, demonstrated greater improvement over pretraining performance. No firm conclusions could be drawn as to the effectiveness of either training procedure. The significance of the current investigation and suggestions for future research are discussed.

An investigation of concurrent validity of the Non-ah Speech Disturbance Ratio (Non-ah SDR) with the State Form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Twenty male college students talked on an anxiety-arousing topic before female audiences who rated observed anxiety. Each subject completed the State and Trait Forms of the STAI. Reliabilities were, by the Intraclass correlation for Raters on Day 1, .63 (p<.01) and Day 2, .20 (p<.05). Pearson's r for scorers was .98 (p<.01). The Non-ah SDR and all other measures of anxiety correlated. A partial correlation test found the naive ratings significantly determined by manifest speech disturbance, as measured by the Non-ah SDR. Certain categories of speech disturbance were only infrequently utilized and added little to the measure as a whole.

This study evaluated the effects of error correction procedures on sight word acquisition. Participants were four typically developing children in kindergarten and first grade. We used an adapted alternating treatment design embedded within a multiple baseline design to evaluate instructional efficacy of two error correction procedures; one with preferred items plus error correction and one with error correction only, and a concurrent chain schedule to evaluate participant preference for instructional procedure. The results show that there was no difference in acquisition rates between the procedures. The evaluation also showed children prefer procedures that include a positive reinforcement component.

Corporate investment decisions are among the most important decisions of a firm. Internal capital markets play a key role in facilitating the allocation of capital resources in order to finance investment projects within diversified firms. This thesis investigates internal capital markets and its relationship with analysts earnings forecast errors in three countries with two distinct financial systems, namely, the market-based and bank-based financial system. Using segment level data for public listed companies in the UK, France and Germany between 2005 and 2010, we examine the operation and efficiency of internal capital markets in market- and bank-based systems. We also examine the impact of the financial crisis of 2008 on internal capital markets and analysts earnings forecasts errors, namely, the accuracy, bias and dispersion. The findings indicate internal capital markets actively facilitate the allocation of resources within diversified firms and, in general, operate inefficiently. Furthermore, internal capital markets appear to be more active in France compared with the UK. On the other hand, their role appears to be limited in Germany, as segments appear to rely more on their own resources and less on internal capital markets for investments. In addition, we find that internal capital market activity declines and efficiency improves during the financial crisis in UK. In contrast, there is no significant evidence to suggest that efficiency improves during the crisis in France or Germany. This research also finds some evidence to suggest internal capital markets operations aggravate firm complexity and, in turn, negatively affect short-term forecast accuracy in the UK. In addition to this, our analysis shows there is a positive relationship between the size of internal capital markets and dispersion in analysts earnings forecasts. In general, our study shows analysts are optimistic about firms future performance; however, the level of optimism significantly declines during the financial crisis. Lastly, we report a positive relationship between efficiency of internal capital markets and optimism in earnings forecasts.

External-beam radiotherapy is one of the primary methods for treating cancer. Typically a radiotherapy treatment course consists of radiation delivered to the patient in multiple daily treatment fractions over 6-8 weeks. Each fraction requires the patient to be aligned with the image acquired before the treatment course used in treatment planning. Unfortunately, patient alignment is not perfect and results in residual errors in patient setup. The standard technique for dealing with errors in patient setup is to expand the volume of the target by some margin to ensure the target receives the planned dose in the presence of setup errors. This work develops an alternative to margins for accommodating setup errors in the treatment planning process by directly including patient setup uncertainty in IMRT plan optimization. This probabilistic treatment planning (PTP) operates directly on the planning structure and develops a dose distribution robust to variations in the patient position. Two methods are presented. The first method includes only random setup uncertainty in the planning process by convolving the fluence of each beam with a Gaussian model of the distribution of random setup errors. The second method builds upon this by adding systematic uncertainty to optimization by way of a joint optimization over multiple probable patient positions. To assess the benefit of PTP methods, a PTP plan and a margin-based plan are developed for each of the 28 patients used in this study. Comparisons of plans show that PTP plans generally reduce the dose to normal tissues while maintaining a similar dose to the target structure when compared to margin-based plans. Physician assessment indicates that PTP plans are generally preferred over margin-based plans. PTP methods shows potential for improving patient outcome due to reduced complications associated with treatment.

This thesis addresses the issue of the interplay of product form changes and experience in simultaneous interpreting from English into Czech comparing students and graduates in Interpreting. The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic overview of language form errors in simultaneous interpretation performed by interpreters on different stages of acquiring interpreting skills. The study is divided into two sections - theoretical and empirical. The theoretical section introduces the current state of knowledge and the findings of previous studies concerning product form changes on a language level in simultaneous interpreting. The present study is based on the assumption that growing experience and regular interpreting excercise improve interpreter's output form achieving thus a smooth and fluent interpreting perfomance without any language disfluencies unpleasant to the listener. The study also addresses listener's perception of the language form of interpreter's output with all of its potential infelicities. The empirical section consists of an experiment which is divided into two parts. The first part aims at classifying and quantifying product form changes in simultaneous interpreting performed by three groups of interpreters - beginning students, advanced students and graduates in...