Student Number : 0310100X - MSc dissertation - Faculty of Health Sciences / Eating patterns change over time. Studies have been conducted in industrialized countries stating that it is important to study the longitudinal development of dietary intake itself and to determine the stability of this intake, but monitoring longitudinal dietary habits of the same children over a period of time, in particular with regard to individual food items, is severely limited in developing countries such as South Africa. South Africa, a country with diverse cultures, is undergoing massive socio-economic and political changes, and an increasing social integration following the abolishment of the previous apartheid legislation. Obviously diet too must have been affected. The country is in a state of nutritional transition, and if the nutritional status of South African children is to improve in the 21st century, basic knowledge is required of the actual food items the children have been and are consuming, and the change in consumption of these individual food items during this transition. The Birth-to-Twenty (Bt-20) study is the continuation of Birth-to-Ten (BTT) study, which started in 1990 and plans to continue to 2010. It is the largest running cohort study on children’s development in Africa and also the first and only longitudinal study on the nutrient and individual food item intake of South African children, living in the Johannesburg/Soweto area of the Gauteng Province. This research will thus provide valuable, unique information on the individual food items consumed and change in consumption of these foods by South African children from the Bt20 study over an eight-year period (1995–2003). The overall objective of this study was to determine the variety and change in consumption of individual food items consumed by a true longitudinal group of urban black South African children from the Bt20 study in 1995; ’97, ’99, 2000 and 2003 when they were 5, 7, 9, 10 and 13 years of age, respectively. with the following sub-objectives: • To determine the number of times each food item was recorded by the longitudinal group of children. • To determine the percentage of children consuming the individual food items. • To determine the mean weekly frequency of consumption of the individual food items for all the children, as well as for only those children consuming the items. The study sample size comprised a true longitudinal group of urban black South African children (n = 143), from the Bt20 study that had nutrition information at all 5 interceptions (1995, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2003). Data were collected at each interception using the same semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Parents/guardians or the children themselves were asked by trained multi-lingual interviewers to indicate how frequently the listed food items were consumed. The food items were coded onto computer coding sheets using the South African Medical Research Council’s Food Composition Tables and Codes. Recorded or standard portions sizes were used based on the use of the National Research Institute for Nutritional Diseases(NRIND) Food Quantities Manual. The coded data were put on disk by a data capturing company and SAS was used for statistical analysis. Specific computer programmes were written to systematically re-arrange and merge the data by subject ID number. The final longitudinal sample with nutrition information at 5 interceptions was extracted by ID number as each child kept the same ID number for all interceptions. Frequencies were calculated for: 1. The number of times each food item was recorded per week, firstly for all five interceptions combined and secondly for each interception separately. The total number times each food item was recorded for all five interceptions combined was divided by the total number of times all food items at all five interceptions combined (23840) were recorded and expressed as a percentage. The total number of times each food item was recorded at each interception separately was divided by the total number of children in the group [n=143] and expressed as a percentage. 2. The total weekly frequency of consumption for each food item. The mean weekly frequency of consumption for each food item was calculated for all the children in the group [n=143] for each interception separately (total weekly frequency of consumption of each food item/total number of children [n=143] and then only for those in the group consuming the food items (total weekly frequency of consumption of each food item/number of times each food item was recorded for each interception. The food items were ranked in descending order according to: • their percentage contribution of the total number of times all food items at all five interceptions combined were recorded • the average number of times recorded for all five interceptions combined • the mean weekly frequency of consumption for all five interceptions combined. The ranked food items were then arranged within the 8 food groups listed in the questionnaire (chapters 3, 4, 5). Forty-one food items made up 1% or more of the total number of times all food items were recorded for all five interceptions combined. This was used as a cut-off point as all the other food items were recorded too infrequently to include. For this reason only these forty-one items will be discussed in chapter 3, 4 and 5 of this thesis. A total of 546 different food items were recorded 23840 times between 1995-2003. The highest number of food items recorded was in 1999 (124) and 2003 (123) both almost 23% of the total number of food items recorded when the children were nine and thirteen years old, respectively. Of this, 41 items contributed 1% or more of the total number of recordings. There was a decrease in the number of recordings from the grain and cereal group, fruits and vegetables and milk and milk products. However, among the meat and meat substitutes, the number of recordings for chicken and cheese increased over this time as did the number of recordings for margarine and ice-cream among the fats and oils. Among the miscellaneous group sugar, sweets, tea and carbonated beverages remained fairly stable over the 5 interceptions, but there was an increase in the number of recordings for crisps and chocolates from 2000 to 2003. Ninety percent or more of the children consumed rice, stiff maize-meal porridge, chicken, sugar, sweets and tea over the five interceptions. Fourteen food items were consumed by 75% or more of the children and 33% of these 41 items were consumed by 50% or more. All the top 41 food items were consumed by more than 33% of the children. Among grain/cereal group/breakfast cereal/porridges and other starches, the most frequently consumed food items were brown bread, stiff and soft maize-meal porridge, all being consumed between 4-6x/week for all the children as well as for only those consuming these items. Peanut butter, eggs and chicken were the most frequently consumed items among the meat and meat substitutes, 3-5x/week for all the children and for only children consuming these items. In the group of fruits and vegetables, fruit juice and mashed potato were consumed most frequently, but not everyday of the week either for all the children or for those consuming these items. Within fats and oils food group, cooking oil and butter were consumed most frequently (3-4x/week) for all the children and 5x/week for only those children who consumed these items. Full cream milk was the most frequently consumed food item (5-6x/week) among the group of milk and milk products for all the children as well as for only those consuming this item. Among the miscellaneous food items sugar (5-6x/week), sweets and tea (4-5x/week) were the most frequently consumed for all the children and between 5-7x/week for only those consuming these items. The dietary patterns of this longitudinal group of urban black South African children was far from the recommended South African Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs), which was developed with the aim of making evidence-based nutrition and lifestyle messages to the public accessible, understandable, generalizable, acceptable in a cross-cultural context and feasible. Thus, this study has provided useful insights to guide the governmental parastatals, nutrition scientists and other interested cooperate bodies in promoting successful nutrition intervention strategies that will lead to healthy dietary habits among children and adolescents.

We study the computational complexity of collecting items inside a grid map with obstacles, using an agent that always slides to the maximal extend, until it is stopped by an obstacle. An agent could be, for example, a robot or a vehicle, while obstacles could be walls or other immovable objects, and items could be packages that need to be picked up. This problem has very natural applications in robotics. The restricted type of motion of the agent naturally models movement on a frictionless surface, and movement of a robot with limited sensing capabilities and thus limited localization. For example, if a robot cannot determine the distance traveled once it starts moving, then it makes sense to keep moving until an obstacle is reached, even if the robot has a map of the environment. With today’s technology it is possible to create sophisticated robots but, since the complexity and the costs of such robots are high, it is sometimes better to use simple inexpensive robots that can still solve relatively complex tasks. In fact, simple robots are quite common and usually built using simple sensors that have limited capabilities, but that are easy to use and are considerably cheaper than more sophisticated ones. The computational complexity of numerous problems with movable objects has been extensively studied before. However, only a few of them have maximal sliding agents, and they usually do not have the goal of collecting items. We show that the problem of deciding if all the items can be collected by a maximal sliding agent can be solved efficiently when the agent is the only moving object in the map. However, we show that optimization problems such as determining the minimum number of moves required to collect all the items, and also variants in more complex environments are computationally intractable. Hence, for those problems it is better to focus on using heuristics than on finding optimal solutions.

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abstract: This thesis explores the distribution of certain lexical items in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and their relationship with two linguistic phenomena, negative concord (NC) and negative polarity items (NPIs). The present study examines two central questions: the first question investigates whether or not MSA shows the patterns of negative concord languages. The second question concerns the distribution of N-words and NPIs in MSA, and in which environments they appear. To answer the research questions, the thesis uses the framework of generative grammar of Chomsky (1995) and The (Non)veridicality Approach by Giannakidou (1998, 2000, 2002). The data reveal that MSA shows the patterns of strict negative concord languages that are suggested by Giannakidou (2000) in the sense that the negative particle obligatorily co-occurs with the N-words which strengthen the degree of negation, and never lead to a double negation interpretation. Moreover, the data show that there is only one pure NPI which appears optionally in two environments, antiveridical and nonveridical environments, and it is disallowed in veridical environments. On the other hand, the investigated indefinite nouns show a mixed picture since they work differently from their counterparts in Arabic dialects. Their descendants in Arabic dialects appear as NPIs while they tend to be indefinite nouns rather than NPIs in MSA. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

This research studies lateral transshipment of critical medical items that have low demands. Due to the high prices of medical items and their limited shelf lives, the expirations contribute significantly to the current prohibitively high cost of the healthcare system. Lateral transshipment between hospitals in a medical system provides opportunities to reduce the expiration costs. This paper studies the decision rule for lateral transshipment in a two-hospital system and extends the rule for the multiple-hospital cases. The decision rule takes the myopic best action by assuming no transshipments will be performed in the future. Numerical experiments demonstrate significant cost savings and the decision rule has a small gap from the upper bound of the total saving. The savings are more considerable when the difference of demand rates at different locations is large and the life time of the medical item is not too long or too short.

With the growing popularity of the ability to customize your characters in video games, cosmetic items are becoming a big part of the gaming experience; games let players pick and choose what to equip on characters and what colors to use. In this study, skilled Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 players were interviewed to gain a deeper understanding of the players’ experiences with the cosmetic items in their respective games. The games were chosen based on their well established system for cosmetic items and the authors’ previous knowledge of the games. The result yielded individual answers from ten different experienced players and were reviewed and divided into categories based on the patterns seen in the answers. From what could be seen from the results, the skilled players have a positive outlook on cosmetic items and believe that they have more than an aesthetic meaning, like for example that they can be a way to gauge player skill. / I takt med att förmågan att kunna skräddarsy karaktärer i spel har blivit populär, håller så kallade cosmetics på att bli en stor del av spelupplevelsen; spel låter spelare välja utrustning och färger i stor utsträckning. I den här studien blev erfarna Team Fortress 2- och Dota 2-spelare intervjuade för att ge en djupare förståelse för dessa spelares syn på kosmetiska förmål. Spelen valdes ut på grund av deras väletablerade system för kosmetiska föremål och författarnas tidigare kunskap om spelen. Alla de individuella svar som samlades in från de tio erfarna spelarna lästes igenom och delades upp i kategorier utifrån mönster som kunde utgöras från svaren. Från vad som kunde tydas har de erfarna spelarna en positiv syn på cosmetic items och antyder även att de har mer än en estetisk betydelse, till exempel att de kan vara ett sätt att tyda spelares kunskaper.

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2004 / Refer to the document / Department of Sports, Arts and Culture

Previous research indicates that many important changes in executive functions, or higher cognitive capacities, occur between the ages of three and five years. Additionally, a distinction can be made between the cognitive functions associated with two different cortical regions. The functions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC) are assessed using 'cool' tasks that are abstract and decontextualised. In contrast, the functions of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are assessed using 'hot' tasks that require flexible appraisal of the affective significance of stimuli (Zelazo & Müller, 2002). Different clinical populations have been hypothesized to differ in terms of their impairment on tasks associated with each area of functioning. Current research conclusions regarding the primacy of hot versus cool executive function impairments are limited, however, as they have not taken complexity into account. That is, tasks currently used in investigations of hot and cool executive functions might differ in terms of the complexity of the cognitive processes that the tasks require. Therefore, comparisons across tasks may be misleading because these tasks vary in terms of the demands they place on participants as well as their hot versus cool status. While complexity theories have been applied to a number of cool tasks, only one hot task, those measuring theory-of-mind abilities, have been analysed in terms of complexity. One aim of the current research was to modify several tasks presumed to measure OFC performance to include a complexity manipulation. Tasks from three hot domains (conditional discrimination, the Children's Gambling Task, and future-oriented decision-making) were analysed in terms of their relational complexity, that is, the number of related entities or arguments inherent in a task or concept (Halford, 1993). Based on these complexity analyses, binary-relational and ternary-relational items of each of these tasks were developed or existing tasks were selected and/or modified. The binary-relational items were closely matched to the ternary-relational items in terms of stimuli and procedure, however, they were lower in complexity. After pilot testing, the three new measures of hot executive functioning were included in a larger test battery that was administered to a sample of 120 normally developing 3-, 4-, 5- and 6-year-old children. Existing binary- and ternary-relational items assessing theory-of-mind (a hot task) and three cool measures (transitivity, class inclusion and the Dimensional Change Card Sort test) were also included. The inclusion of measures of both hot and cool executive functions, each with complexity manipulated, allowed for the examination of a possible differential age of emergence of executive abilities associated with the DL-PFC versus the OFC. In support of the relational complexity approach, significant complexity effects were found across all seven tasks. Items at a higher level of complexity were experienced as relatively more difficult by children of all ages. Significant effects of age were also observed, with performance across all tasks increasing with age. The age effects were strongest on the ternary-relational items. The pass-fail data indicated that the majority of children in all age groups succeeded on the binary-relational items. However, it was not until a median of five years of age that children were able to process ternary relations. Consequently, the ternary-relational items produce the greatest differences in performance between the four age groups. The overall pattern of the results also suggested that a distinction can be made between the ages of emergence of abilities associated with the OFC versus the DL-PFC. The results of the pass-fail percentages, patterns of age-related change and age effects on domain factor scores all suggested that while hot executive functions may begin to develop around four years of age, similar levels of improvement are not seen in cool executive functions until five years of age. Thus, the ability to succeed on ternary-relational items of hot executive function tasks appeared to emerge slightly earlier than the cool executive function tasks. Complexity appears to be a critical factor underlying children's performance on executive function tasks, and future assessment regarding the development of executive abilities will benefit from keeping this in mind. While some refinement of new task items may be beneficial, the current test battery may have utility in further examinations of the executive profiles underlying clinical groups, such as children with autism and ADHD.

The Master´s Thesis deals with concept of tax accepted and non accepted Correction Items to Assets used in Czech Accounting system. Further more it reviews Correction Items to Assets into existing Czech company.

Thesis advisor: Michael Russell / The growth of computer-based testing over the last two decades has motivated the creation of innovative item formats. It is often argued that technology-enhanced items (TEIs) provide better measurement of test-takers’ knowledge, skills, and abilities by increasing the authenticity of tasks presented to test-takers (Sireci & Zenisky, 2006). Despite the popularity of TEIs in operational assessments, there remains little psychometric research on these innovative item formats. Claims regarding their potential to provide better measurement are seldomly explored. This dissertation adds to this limited body of research by developing theory and proposing a methodology to compare TEIs to traditional item formats. This study investigated how to judge the comparative measurement value (CMV) of two drag-and-drop technology-enhanced formats (classification and rank-ordering) relative to stem-equivalent multiple-choice items. Items were administered to a sample of adults and results were calibrated using a 2-parameter logistic IRT model. Moreover, the utility of the TEIs was evaluated according to the TEI Utility Framework (Russell, 2016). Four indicators were identified as the most valuable characteristics to judge CMV and then combined into a hierarchical decision protocol. When applied, this protocol provides a CMV judgment and a recommendation of the preferred item format. Applying the protocol to the items revealed that most TEIs examined in this study showed decreased CMV, indicating that in a real-life scenario the multiple-choice format would be favored for most of these item pairs. Recommendations for the use of the CMV protocol and directions of future related research are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.