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An approach to introduce the visually impaired to personal computers is presented in this thesis. The PC used for this work was an IBM PC Portable. Use of the resident software developed in conjunction with a Votrax Voice Unit can greatly simplify PC applications for the visually impaired. Further, a method to communicate with a mainframe is also presented. Almost all of the commonly used DOS application software are supported by the software presented in this thesis. Two modes of operation are possible. The advantages and differences between these two modes are considered. A detailed discussion on the software implementation is also presented. A method to develop resident programs that need to trap PC BIOS vectors is presented. It should be noted that the shell concept presents a shell of user invoked resident applications and not a group of subprograms which can be used by other applications. / M.S.

In this thesis, a PROCESSOR and a POSTPROCESSOR are developed for a plane frame analysis computer program on the IBM PC. The PROCESSOR reads the data prepared by a PREPROCESSOR and solves for the unknown joint displacement using the matrix displacement method. The POSTPROCESSOR uses the results of the PROCESSOR to obtain the required responses of the structure. A chapter on testing procedures is also provided. / Master of Science

The advent of the Personal Computer into the technical world has, at an extremely reasonable expense and trouble, made available to us, considerable computational power. But, as it was with computers, the next logical step is to have multiple units running in concert, or, in other words, sharing the load. This leads to the concept of Multiprocessing in order to attain an enhancement in operation speed and superior efficiency. The IBM PC is a versatile and market proven personal computer with a very large volume of software support and the STD Bus is a standard that has been developed to cope with a variable support, i.e. different processors and different I/O capabilities. Together, they combine the user interface - the display and keyboard · of the PC, the processing capabilities of the PC, the I/O capabilities of the STD Bus and the support processing possible on the STD Bus. The resulting system is powerful, easy to use and it has a lot of scope for development. / Master of Science

Research into multiattribute utility theory far outweighs current attempts to apply findings, while the need for usable decision techniques continues to increase. Current decision maker - analyst procedures involving decision making sessions and numerous manual calculations are considered to be overly time-consuming, except for the most important of complex decisions. The purpose of this thesis was to design and develop a microcomputer package utilizing recent improvements in decision theory to increase the efficiency of the decision making process. Algorithms for independence testing and parameter estimation have been developed for both continuous attributes and discrete attributes. Two separate packages, an additive value function package (DECISION) and a SMART technique package (SMART), are developed based on these algorithms and their validity tested by means of a case study. Both packages are written for use on a standard (256K) IBM PC microcomputer. / Master of Science

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O mercado cinematográfico pode ser caracterizado como uma indústria de entretenimento com a produção de bens de informação que são também bens de experiência, cuja qualidade só é conhecida após o consumo. Deste modo, a revisão crítica se torna importante para induzir seu consumo, fornecendo previamente algum grau de informação sobre a qualidade do bem. Segue-se o trabalho de Reinstein e Snyder (2005) para determinar se as revisões críticas conduzidas por consumidores e por críticos profissionais online afetam o tempo de exibição de filmes no mercado americano de cinema, medido em quantidades de semanas, conforme modelos de duração/sobrevivência na literatura. Para esta finalidade foi gerado, a partir de sites de cinemas americanos (Box Office Mojo e Rotten Tomatoes), um banco de dados extremamente rico com informações semanais de todos os filmes disponíveis no cinema americano de 2004 a 2015. Especificamente, investigou-se os efeitos das revisões críticas de críticos profissionais de primeira linha (Tops) e de consumidores, conforme a média das notas atribuídas na semana de lançamento de cada filme. No que se refere à avaliação dos consumidores foi aplicada a computação afetiva, que reconhece o sentimento e a emoção em suas resenhas online para captar o efeito boca a boca potencializado pelas mídias sociais e fornecendo, portanto, uma análise mais profunda do boca a boca online. O estudo controla por possíveis problemas de endogeneidade decorrente de simultaneidade, usando as críticas somente antes e durante a semana de lançamento dos filmes. Os resultados sugerem que os críticos profissionais exercem grande influência no tempo de duração dos filmes em cartaz, bem como a positividade dos consumidores em relação ao filme. No entanto, o efeito dos críticos profissionais é em média 3 vezes maior do que dos consumidores. Adicionalmente, pode-se observar que algumas emoções afetam a expectativa de vida dos filmes a depender do gênero do mesmo / The movie market may be considered as entertainment industry, which produces experience goods that is also information goods, whose quality is only known only after consumption. Thus, critical reviews becomes important to induce consumption, since it provides some level of information about product quality. We follow Reinstein and Snyder (2005) works in order to determine if experts and consumers online critical reviews affect the survival time of movies at the American movie market, measured by number of weeks, according to survival analysis models in the literature. For this purpose, an extremely rich database with weekly information on all the films available in American cinema from 2004 to 2015 was generated from American movie sites (Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes). Specifically, we investigate the effects of critical reviews from top professionals and from consumers, according to the average ratings assigned in each movie\'s release week. As far as consumer assessment was concerned, affective computing was applied, which recognizes the sentiment (sentiment analysis) and emotion (emotion mining) in their online reviews to capture the word-of-mouth effect boosted by social media. The study controls for possible problems of endogeneity due to simultaneity, using the criticisms before and during the week of release of the films. The results suggest that the professional critics exert a great influence on the duration of the films in exhibition, as well as the positivity of the consumers in relation to the film. Thus, the effect of professionals are 5 times greater, generally, than the effect of the consumer critics. Additionally, it can be observed that some emotions affect movie life expectancy depending on the its genre

O mercado cinematográfico pode ser caracterizado como uma indústria de entretenimento com a produção de bens de informação que são também bens de experiência, cuja qualidade só é conhecida após o consumo. Deste modo, a revisão crítica se torna importante para induzir seu consumo, fornecendo previamente algum grau de informação sobre a qualidade do bem. Segue-se o trabalho de Reinstein e Snyder (2005) para determinar se as revisões críticas conduzidas por consumidores e por críticos profissionais online afetam o tempo de exibição de filmes no mercado americano de cinema, medido em quantidades de semanas, conforme modelos de duração/sobrevivência na literatura. Para esta finalidade foi gerado, a partir de sites de cinemas americanos (Box Office Mojo e Rotten Tomatoes), um banco de dados extremamente rico com informações semanais de todos os filmes disponíveis no cinema americano de 2004 a 2015. Especificamente, investigou-se os efeitos das revisões críticas de críticos profissionais de primeira linha (Tops) e de consumidores, conforme a média das notas atribuídas na semana de lançamento de cada filme. No que se refere à avaliação dos consumidores foi aplicada a computação afetiva, que reconhece o sentimento e a emoção em suas resenhas online para captar o efeito boca a boca potencializado pelas mídias sociais e fornecendo, portanto, uma análise mais profunda do boca a boca online. O estudo controla por possíveis problemas de endogeneidade decorrente de simultaneidade, usando as críticas somente antes e durante a semana de lançamento dos filmes. Os resultados sugerem que os críticos profissionais exercem grande influência no tempo de duração dos filmes em cartaz, bem como a positividade dos consumidores em relação ao filme. No entanto, o efeito dos críticos profissionais é em média 3 vezes maior do que dos consumidores. Adicionalmente, pode-se observar que algumas emoções afetam a expectativa de vida dos filmes a depender do gênero do mesmo / The movie market may be considered as entertainment industry, which produces experience goods that is also information goods, whose quality is only known only after consumption. Thus, critical reviews becomes important to induce consumption, since it provides some level of information about product quality. We follow Reinstein and Snyder (2005) works in order to determine if experts and consumers online critical reviews affect the survival time of movies at the American movie market, measured by number of weeks, according to survival analysis models in the literature. For this purpose, an extremely rich database with weekly information on all the films available in American cinema from 2004 to 2015 was generated from American movie sites (Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes). Specifically, we investigate the effects of critical reviews from top professionals and from consumers, according to the average ratings assigned in each movie\'s release week. As far as consumer assessment was concerned, affective computing was applied, which recognizes the sentiment (sentiment analysis) and emotion (emotion mining) in their online reviews to capture the word-of-mouth effect boosted by social media. The study controls for possible problems of endogeneity due to simultaneity, using the criticisms before and during the week of release of the films. The results suggest that the professional critics exert a great influence on the duration of the films in exhibition, as well as the positivity of the consumers in relation to the film. Thus, the effect of professionals are 5 times greater, generally, than the effect of the consumer critics. Additionally, it can be observed that some emotions affect movie life expectancy depending on the its genre