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[pt] No novo modelo do Setor Elétrico é essencial desenvolver novas técnicas que estimem valores futuros, a curto e longo-prazos, das potências ativa e reativa. Com base nisso, este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar uma nova técnica de previsão horária de potência reativa a curto-prazo, por subestação, baseada na linearidade existente entre as potências ativa e reativa. O modelo proposto, denominado de Modelo Híbrido de Previsão de Reativo, é dividido em duas etapas: A primeira etapa é feita uma classificação dos dados através de uma rede neural não supervisionada Mapas Auto-Organizáveis de Kohonen (SOM); A segunda etapa, utiliza-se um modelo de defasagem distribuída auto-regressivo (ADL) com estimação de Mínimos Quadrados Reponderados Iterativamente (IRLS) acoplado a uma correção para autocorrelação serial dos resíduos - Método Iterativo de Cochrane-Orcutt. Este Modelo Híbrido tem como variável dependente a potência reativa, e como variáveis explicativas dados horários de potência ativa e reativa no instante atual e defasadas no tempo. A previsão de potência reativa a curto-prazo é dividida em in sample e em out of sample. A previsão out of sample é aplicada a períodos horários em até um mês à frente. O modelo proposto é aplicado aos dados de uma concessionária específica de Energia Elétrica e os resultados são comparados a um modelo de Regressão Dinâmica convencional e a um modelo de Redes Neurais Artificiais Feedforward de Múltiplas camadas (MLP) com um algoritmo de retropropagação do erro. / [en] The forecasting of reactive and active power is an important tool in the monitoring of an Electrical Energy System. The main purpose of the present work is the development of a new short-term reactive power hourly forecast technique, which can be used at utility or substations levels. The proposed model, named A Hybrid Model for Reactive Forecasting, is divided in two stages. In the first stage, the active and reactive power data are classified by an unsupervised neural network - the Self-Organized Maps of Kohonen (SOM). In the second stage, a Autoregressive Distributed Lags Model (ADL) is used with its parameters estimated by an Iteratively Reweighted Least Square (IRLS). It also includes a correction lag structure for serial autocorrelation of the residuals as used in the Cochrane-Orcutt formulation. The short term reactive power forecasting is divided in in sample and out of sample. The out of sample forecast is applied to hourly periods until one month ahead. The proposed model is applied to real data of one substation and the results are compared with two other approaches, a conventional Dynamic Regression and a Feedforward Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) Artificial Neural Network model.

The fight against terrorism and organized crime require strong collaboration between public security organizations. Public security networks include several agencies that are not bound to each other with strong hierarchical ties. Because of a lack of the strong hierarchical structure, managing public networks is not similar to managing a single government agency. This study aims to examine the factors influencing network effectiveness in the public security sector. The main research questions of the study are: Which factors are important for effectiveness in public security networks? What is the role of inter-organizational trust among partner agencies? Which kind of leadership style will achieve the highest performance in public security networks? What is the relative importance of goal convergence and organizational culture in network effectiveness? How does the relationship between inter-organizational trust, leadership style, goal convergence and organizational culture impact network effectiveness? In order to find these relations, a self-reported survey was sent to 2,095 current and previous Turkish public security network managers. The study found that inter-organizational trust and goal convergence have a positive relationship with network effectiveness. Although facilitator leadership is found to be the most common leadership style in Turkish public security networks, it is found as inappropriate to achieve higher network effectiveness. According to the results, the co-producer network leadership is the most convenient leadership style in terms of network effectiveness. While the results of the descriptive statistics confirm that six specific features of organizational culture in public security sector have negative influence on network effectiveness, the hypothesis testing with the covariance structure model only support the negative impact of competition among partner organization. This study contributes to the literature on network effectiveness with particular proposals for the public security managers and practitioners.

The increase in complexity in software development is followed by higher pressure on several factors such as time-to-market. Software development projects are, however, found to often run over time due to many uncertainties throughout the project. Agile methodologies have become popular in managing software development projects due to their flexible, short-term, and iterative approach to working and planning. There is however a dilemma between being agile without fixed plans, and simultaneously having pressure from management and customers to set and meet a deadline, based on long-term plans. The Agile way of working includes self-organized teams that are involved in project management tasks such as planning and estimating. Agile teams create their own variances of different Agile frameworks as well as their own team characteristics, planning methods, and working ways. Important characteristics of Agile teams are, for instance, cross-functionality and adaptation. Agile planning includes activities such as the breakdown of work, effort estimation, prioritization, task assignment, and planning of iterations. These activities are commonly used in software development teams to manage their work and increase the ability to deliver on time.  This study aims to investigate how software development teams plan their work in practice and what Agile planning activities and Agile team characteristics are regarded, by the development teams, to be important for on-time delivery. Furthermore, it is interesting to investigate how the identified activities and characteristics are reflected in the teams’ actual planning. A case study is conducted on two software development teams at Ericsson’s organization Cloud RAN to investigate this matter.  The studied software development teams are found to use variations of Agile methodologies. The thesis identifies a number of Agile planning activities and team characteristics to be regarded, by the teams, as important for on-time delivery. Many of these activities and characteristics are also reflected in how the teams actually plan. However, there are some contrasting opinions regarding the activities and team characteristics. It can therefore not be stated that all the identified Agile activities and team characteristics are reflected in the actual team-level planning. The thesis also includes other findings impacting teams to deliver on time as well as factors affecting team-level planning.

La prolifération des armes à feu illégales en territoire canadien a un impact sur l’augmentation de la violence armée observée au cours des dernières années. La mobilité des armes illégales au Canada a été étudiée par des chercheurs. Toutefois, le sujet des sources alimentant ce marché illicite n’a été que très peu abordé au sein de la littérature scientifique. L’une des possibilités reliées à cette thématique présente les États-Unis comme source d’approvisionnement en armes à feu illégales au Canada. C’est à travers cette idée que s’inscrit l’objectif principal de ce mémoire. En effet, cette étude vise une recontextualisation de la problématique du trafic d’armes à feu au Canada en tant qu’enjeu sécuritaire transnational selon le postulat identifiant les États-Unis comme la principale source d’alimentation du marché noir des armes à feu au Canada. Afin de répondre à cet objectif, nous décrivons d’abord l’environnement au travers duquel s’articulent les dynamiques de contrebande d’armes à feu au Canada. Ensuite, nous portons notre regard sur la réponse institutionnelle reliée au contrôle et à la lutte contre le trafic transfrontalier d’armes à feu. Une méthodologie qualitative basée sur l’analyse d’entretiens semi-dirigés avec des acteurs impliqués au sein d’organisations d’application de la loi, de rapports et de documents gouvernementaux ainsi que de documentation juridique a été utilisée dans le cadre de cette étude. Les résultats découlant des analyses présentées dans ce mémoire permettent tout d’abord de contextualiser l’enjeu de la contrebande transfrontalière d’armes à feu entre les États-Unis et les Canada ainsi que les efforts des organisations d’application de la loi en matière de contrôle. Ils permettent également de mettre en lumière les disparités existantes entre la nécessité d’une utilisation efficiente du renseignement et la réalité sur le terrain. En effet, les lacunes quant à la collecte et à l’analyse des données reliées à la contrebande transfrontalière d’armes à feu ont un impact sur le ciblage et l’orientation des mesures visant à lutter contre cet enjeu. / The proliferation of illegal firearms on Canadian soil has had an impact on the increase in gun violence observed in recent years. The mobility of illegal firearms in Canada has been studied by researchers. However, the topic of the sources of this illicit market has received very little attention in the scientific literature. One of the possibilities related to this theme presents the United States as a source of supply of illegal firearms in Canada. It is through this idea that the main objective of this thesis lies. Indeed, this study aims to recontextualize the problem of firearms trafficking in Canada as a transnational security issue based on the premise that the United States is the main source of supply for the black market in firearms in Canada. More specifically, in such a context, firearms would be brought into Canada through cross-border smuggling. First, we define the environment through which the dynamics of firearms smuggling in Canada are articulated. Secondly, we examine the institutional response to controlling and combating cross-border firearms trafficking. A qualitative methodology based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with actors involved in law enforcement organizations, government reports and documents, and legal documentation was used in this study. The results of the analyses presented in this paper first contextualize the issue of cross-border firearms smuggling between the United States and Canada and the control efforts of law enforcement agencies. They also highlight the disparities between the need for efficient use of intelligence and the reality of the operational environment. Gaps in data collection and analysis related to crossborder firearms smuggling have an impact on the targeting and direction of measures to combat this issue.

This dissertation is an attempt at establishing a bridge between biology and physics leading naturally from the field of phase transitions in physics to the cooperative nature of living systems. We show that this aim can be realized by supplementing the current field of evolutionary game theory with a new form of self-organized temporal criticality. In the case of ordinary criticality, the units of a system choosing either cooperation or defection under the influence of the choices done by their nearest neighbors, undergo a significant change of behavior when the intensity of social influence has a critical value. At criticality, the behavior of the individual units is correlated with that of all other units, in addition to the behavior of the nearest neighbors. The spontaneous transition to criticality of this work is realized as follows: the units change their behavior (defection or cooperation) under the social influence of their nearest neighbors and update the intensity of their social influence spontaneously by the feedback they get from the payoffs of the game (environment). If units, which are selfish, get higher benefit with respect to their previous play, they increase their interest to interact with other units and vice versa. Doing this, the behavior of single units and the whole system spontaneously evolve towards criticality, thereby realizing a global behavior favoring cooperation. In the case when the interacting units are oscillators with their own periodicity, homeodynamics concerns, the individual payoff is the synchronization with the nearest neighbors (i.e., lowering the energy of the system), the spontaneous transition to criticality generates fluctuations characterized by the joint action of periodicity and crucial events of the same kind as those revealed by the current analysis of the dynamics of the brain. This result is expected to explain the efficiency of enzyme catalyzers, on the basis of a new non-equilibrium statistical physics. We argue that the results obtained apply to sociological and psychological systems as well as to elementary biological systems.

[pt] Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar o papel das Organizações de Sociedade Civil (OSCs) brasileiras na integração local de refugiados e em que medida estas assumem responsabilidades que deveriam ser do Estado de acordo com os compromissos nacionais e internacionais firmados por ele. Dentro desse contexto, o trabalho ressalta a dinâmica do modelo tripartite ou de responsabilidade compartilhada que possibilita essa transferência de responsabilidade do Estado para as OSCs. Para tanto, este trabalho realiza uma revisão da literatura no tema e fundamenta essa análise com entrevistas realizadas em campo. Assim, no primeiro momento, este trabalho analisa os compromissos do Direito Internacional dos Refugiados e da legislação brasileira em vigor a respeito de refúgio e migração. Posteriormente, o trabalho expõe um breve debate sobre o conceito de integração local. Por fim, é analisado o papel da sociedade civil organizada na integração local de refugiados no Brasil, incluindo a visão dos entrevistados, e então, expostas as conclusões a partir do evidenciado. / [en] This dissertation investigates how Brazilian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) develop the local integration of refugees, and to what extent they are willing to take on responsibilities that originally belong to the State under the national and international commitments signed by it. Within this context, this work highlights the tripartite or shared responsibility model s dynamics that enable this assignment of responsibility from the State to the CSOs. To pursue this argument, this work relies on a literature review and interviews carried out in the field throughout the research. Firstly, this work will analyse the commitments of International Refugee Law and the current Brazilian legislation regarding refuge and migration. Then, this work follows by exposing a brief discussion of the concept of local integration. Finally, this dissertation will look at the role of organized civil society in the local integration of refugees in Brazil. In this part, this work will consider the perspectives brought by interviewees to advance its argument, and then, conclusions are exposed from the evidence.

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Syftet med studien var att utforska unga vuxnas uppfattningar om varför de började föreningsidrotta och varför de valde att hoppa av från föreningsidrotten. Vidare strävades utforska om det fanns några likheter eller kontraster mellan hur individer från en storstad kontra en tätort i Sverige upplever motiven bakom ingång till och avhopp från föreningsidrotten. Sex unga män mellan åldrarna 18-30 rekryterades utifrån en målstyrd, icke-sannolikhetsbaserad urvalsmetod. Kvalitativa, semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med deltagarna för att motta beskrivningar om deras upplevelser kring motiven bakom ingång till/avhopp från föreningsidrotten. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys användes för att analysera och tematisera insamlad data för att kunna besvara på de formulerade forskningsfrågorna. Resultaten är i linje med tidigare forskning som visat att avhopp från föreningsidrotten är ett kombinerat resultat av yttre såväl som inre faktorer. Centrala teman kring motiv bakom ingång till föreningsidrott var gruppinflytande, intresse för idrott/idrotter, och bristande utbud av föreningsidrotter i närområdet. Kring motiv bakom avhopp från föreningsidrott framkom missnöje med tränare, andra prioriteringar, bristande samhörighet, andra intressen, för långa distanser till idrottsföreningar, idrottsskada och upplevd kompetensbrist som centrala teman. / The purpose of the study was to investigate young adults’ perceptions of why they started participating in organized sports, and why they chose to drop-out from organized sports. Additionally, the study sought to explore whether there were any similarities or contrasts between how individuals from a large city versus an urban area in Sweden experienced the motives behind entering and leaving organized sports. Six young men between the ages 18-30 were recruited based on a goal-oriented, non-probability sample method. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were performed with the participants to receive descriptions of their experiences of their motives behind entering and leaving organized sports. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyze and thematize collected data in order to answer the formulated research questions. The results are in line with prior research which suggest that drop-out from organized sports is a combined result of external as well as internal factors. Central themes connected to the motives behind entrance into organized sports was group influence, interest in sports/sports, and lack of sportclubs in the local area. Connected to the motives behind drop-out from organized sports, dissatisfaction with the coach/coaches, other priorities, lack of fellowship, other interests, too long distances to sportclubs, sport injuries, and lack of perceived competence arose as central themes.