Temos problema, aktualumas ir naujumas. Mes gyvename vartotojiškoje visuomenėje kurioje tobulo kūno kultas labai svarbus. Čia dominuoja kūno, kaip simbolių sistemos versija: kūnas, išvaizda, yra patraukli rinkos prekė, o nuo to neretai priklauso mums įdiegtos vertybės, kuriomis tame vartotojiškame pasaulyje mes vadovaujamės. Nuo kūno išvaizdos priklauso ir mūsų sėkmė įvairiuose gyvenimo patyrimuose. Sėkmė ir gyvenimo prasmė jaunimo tarpe dažniausiai yra suvokiama tik turint tobulą kūną, ir jaunimas stengiasi bet kokia kaina tai pasiekti, tas neretai priveda ir iki mirties. Lietuvoje apie jaunimo nuostatas į kūną kaip sekmės veiksnį nebuvo atlikta sociologinių tyrimų. Darbo tikslas. Išanalizuoti moksleivių, moksleivių tėvų, mokytojų, darbdavių, gyvenimo poziciją ir ištirti jų nuostatas į kūną kaip vertybę bei sėkmės veiksnį jaunimo socializacijos procese. Šiame darbe bus analizuojama, kaip jaunimo grupėje paplitęs tobulo kūno kultas ir kaip jis siejamas su sėkme socializacijos procese, t.y. bendraujant su kitais jaunuoliais, kuriant savo vaizdą bei vietą visuomenėje. Ginamieji teiginiai: 1. Pagrindiniai kūno kaip sėkmės veiksnio jaunimo grupėje vertinimo skirtumai išryškėja pagal respondentų santykį su jaunimu. Moksleiviai, tėvai ir mokytojai bei darbdaviai turi skirtingas nuostatatas tobulo kūno ir sėkmės sąsajos atžvilgiu. Tėvai ir mokytojai mano, jog kiekvienas kūnas yra gražus ir nereikia laikytis visuomenės suformuoto stereotipo. Tuo tarpu moksleiviai ir darbdaviai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Topic question, relevance and novelty: We live in a consumer society where the "perfect" body worship is very important. There are dominating the body as a system of symbolic version: the body, the good looking, is the attractive product of the market and our life values often dependant on those and we follow such values in the surrounding consuming world. Body appearance is successive factor in various life experiences. The fortune and meaning of life among young people are usually seen only with respect to a perfect body, and young people try at any price to achieve it, and that often leads to death. About young generation attitude “the body as a factor of success”, there haven’t been conducted any sociological studies in Lithuania. Objective of thesis. To analyze pupils’, pupil parents’, teachers’, employers’, life position and explore their attitudes to the body as an asset and success factor in the socialization process of young people. This paper will analyze how within a group of young people the cult of the perfect body spreads and how it relates to the success of the socialization process, i.e. communicating with other young people, developing their image and position in society. Defense claims: 1. The main body evaluation differences as the factor of success within the youth group reveal according to respondent relation and position to young people. Pupils, parents, teachers and employers have different attitudes to perfect body and the view of it to the common... [to full text]

Hierarchical models provide a flexible way of modeling complex behavior. However, the complicated interdependencies among the parameters in the hierarchy make training such models difficult. MCMC methods have been widely used for this purpose, but can often only approximate the necessary distributions. Acceptance-rejection sampling allows for perfect simulation from these often unnormalized distributions by drawing from another distribution over the same support. The efficacy of acceptance-rejection sampling is explored through application to a small dataset which has been widely used for evaluating different methods for inference on hierarchical models. A particular algorithm is developed to draw variates from the posterior distribution. The algorithm is both verified and validated, and then finally applied to the given data, with comparisons to the results of different methods.

This thesis explores the ways in which the body is positioned within consumer society. The development of body ideals in Western societies is examined in order to point out consumers’ occupation with appearances and their bodies as signifiers of success. The three case studies (A&F, Calvin Klein Underwear and fitness magazines) will enable a close analysis of contemporary society and its engagement with the body. I argue that today the body acts as a signifier for people’s narcissistic obsession with the surface, and that the body itself has come to exhibit characteristics of a commodity in consumer society.

The entropy of a graph is a functional depending both on the graph itself and on a probability distribution on its vertex set. This graph functional originated from the problem of source coding in information theory and was introduced by J. K\"{o}rner in 1973. Although the notion of graph entropy has its roots in information theory, it was proved to be closely related to some classical and frequently studied graph theoretic concepts. For example, it provides an equivalent definition for a graph to be perfect and it can also be applied to obtain lower bounds in graph covering problems. In this thesis, we review and investigate three equivalent definitions of graph entropy and its basic properties. Minimum entropy colouring of a graph was proposed by N. Alon in 1996. We study minimum entropy colouring and its relation to graph entropy. We also discuss the relationship between the entropy and the fractional chromatic number of a graph which was already established in the literature. A graph $G$ is called \emph{symmetric with respect to a functional $F_G(P)$} defined on the set of all the probability distributions on its vertex set if the distribution $P^*$ maximizing $F_G(P)$ is uniform on $V(G)$. Using the combinatorial definition of the entropy of a graph in terms of its vertex packing polytope and the relationship between the graph entropy and fractional chromatic number, we prove that vertex transitive graphs are symmetric with respect to graph entropy. Furthermore, we show that a bipartite graph is symmetric with respect to graph entropy if and only if it has a perfect matching. As a generalization of this result, we characterize some classes of symmetric perfect graphs with respect to graph entropy. Finally, we prove that the line graph of every bridgeless cubic graph is symmetric with respect to graph entropy.

The question of adverbs and the meaning of the present perfect across varieties of English is central to sociolinguistic variationist methodologies that have approached the study of the present perfect (Winford, 1993; Tagliamonte, 1997; van Herk, 2008, 2010; Davydova, 2010; Tagliamonte, 2013). This dissertation attempts to disentangle the effect of adverbial support from the three canonical readings of the present perfect (Resultative, Experiential and Continuative). Canadian English, an understudied variety of English, is used to situate the results seen in the Early Modern English data. Early Modern English reflects the time period in which English has acquired the full modern use of the present perfect with the three readings. In order to address both these questions and current controversies over statistical models in sociolinguistics, different statistical models are used: both the traditional Goldvarb X (Sankoff, Tagliamonte and Smith, 2005) and the newer mixed-effects logistic regression (Johnson, 2009). What is missing from the previous literature in sociolinguistics that advocates logistic mixed-effects models, and provided in this dissertation, is a clear statement of where they are inappropriate to use and their limitations. The rate of adverbial marking of the present perfect in Canadian English falls between rates reported for US and British English in previous studies. The data show in both time periods that while adverbs are highly favored in continuative contexts, they are strongly disfavored in experiential and resultative contexts. In Early Modern English, adverbial support functions statistically differently for resultatives and experientials, but that difference collapses in the Canadian English sample. Both this and the other linguistic contexts support a different analysis for each set of data with respect to adverbial independence from the meaning of the present perfect form. Finally, when the focus of the analysis is on linguistic rather than social factors, both the traditional and newer models provide similar results. Where there are differences, however, these can be accounted for by the number of tokens and different estimation techniques for each model.

Computations with polynomials are at the heart of any computer algebra system and also have many applications in engineering, coding theory, and cryptography. Generally speaking, the low-level polynomial computations of interest can be classified as arithmetic operations, algebraic computations, and inverse symbolic problems. New algorithms are presented in all these areas which improve on the state of the art in both theoretical and practical performance. Traditionally, polynomials may be represented in a computer in one of two ways: as a "dense" array of all possible coefficients up to the polynomial's degree, or as a "sparse" list of coefficient-exponent tuples. In the latter case, zero terms are not explicitly written, giving a potentially more compact representation. In the area of arithmetic operations, new algorithms are presented for the multiplication of dense polynomials. These have the same asymptotic time cost of the fastest existing approaches, but reduce the intermediate storage required from linear in the size of the input to a constant amount. Two different algorithms for so-called "adaptive" multiplication are also presented which effectively provide a gradient between existing sparse and dense algorithms, giving a large improvement in many cases while never performing significantly worse than the best existing approaches. Algebraic computations on sparse polynomials are considered as well. The first known polynomial-time algorithm to detect when a sparse polynomial is a perfect power is presented, along with two different approaches to computing the perfect power factorization. Inverse symbolic problems are those for which the challenge is to compute a symbolic mathematical representation of a program or "black box". First, new algorithms are presented which improve the complexity of interpolation for sparse polynomials with coefficients in finite fields or approximate complex numbers. Second, the first polynomial-time algorithm for the more general problem of sparsest-shift interpolation is presented. The practical performance of all these algorithms is demonstrated with implementations in a high-performance library and compared to existing software and previous techniques.

Wood is a highly versatile renewable material (with carbon sequestering properties), that is light in weight, has good strength properties in both tension and compression while providing good rigidity and toughness, and good insulating properties (relative to typical structural materials). Engineered wood products combine the benefits of wood with engineering knowledge to create optimized structural elements. Cross-laminated timber (CLT), as one such engineered wood product, is an emerging engineering material which provides great opportunities for the building industry. While building with wood has many benefits, there are also some concerns, particularly decay. Should wood be exposed to elevated amounts of moisture, rots and moulds may damage the product or even risk the health of the occupants. As CLT panels are a relatively new engineered wood product, the moisture characteristics have yet to be properly assessed. Consequently, the amount of decay risk for CLT in building applications is unknown, and recommended protective actions during design construction and operation have yet to be determined. The goal of this research was to determine the moisture durability of CLT panels in wall assemblies and address concerns related to built-in construction moisture. The approach used to address the problem was to first determine select moisture properties of CLT panels through experimental approaches, and then use the results to calibrate a hygrothermal model to quantify the risks of wall assemblies. The wall assemblies were simulated in six different cities across Canada, representing a range of climates: Vancouver, B.C., Edmonton, A.B., Winnipeg, M.B., Ottawa, O.N., Québec City, Q.C., and St. John, New-Brunswick. The risks associated with moisture exposure during construction are also considered in the simulations. The experimental phase of the research was limited to moisture uptake tests. These tests were utilized to determine the liquid water absorption coefficient for four different types of full scale panels (2’x2’) and 12 clear wood samples. The panels were either made of 5-ply of Western-SPF, Eastern-SPF, Hemlock-Fir, or 3-ply of a generic softwood provided by a European CLT manufacturer; the clear samples were all cut from the same nominal 2x6 SPF-grade lumber. The panels were installed in a drying rack and gravimetrically tracked to assess the drying rates of the panels. Finite resources precluded more thorough material testing, but a parametric study was conducted to determine the relative impact of the missing material data on the final simulation results. In the hygrothermal simulations, four main wall assembly types were considered- those with either exterior or interior insulation, and those using either vapour permeable or impermeable air-water barriers. Various types of insulation and vapour control were also modelled. The simulations were run for a variety of interior relative humidities. The metric for comparison between the simulations was the water content of a 4mm thin layer on the extreme lamina of a CLT panel system. The results of the simulation suggest that vapour impermeable membranes, when install on dry CLT panels (less than 14% M.C.) do not pose moisture risks in any of the climates considered. However, when high levels of construction moisture is considered, only vapour permeable membranes controlled moisture risks by allowing the CLT panel to dry both to the interior and to the exterior.

This thesis is a sociolinguistic study of Preterit and Present Perfect (PP) usage in contemporary and earlier Argentinian River Plate Spanish (ARPS). The data analyzed stem from a 244,034-word corpus collected for the purposes of the study, including contemporary casual conversation, sociolinguistic interviews, participant observation, written questionnaires, and newspapers spanning the 19th–21st centuries. / The study is motivated by previous claims that in Latin America the PP is restricted to contexts that extend into the present time, resembling Peninsular medieval and Renaissance usage (e.g. Lope Blanch 1972: 138; Harris 1982: 50; Squartini & Bertinetto 2000: 413). I challenge this proposal showing that (1) ARPS has undergone its own development, and (2) Latin American varieties do not represent earlier frozen developmental stages akin to earlier Peninsular Spanish. / Although low in overall frequency, the contemporary ARPS PP is used in experiential settings to express indefinite past (a vernacular use). Moreover, multivariate analysis of the contemporary oral data reveals that the ARPS PP is not aspectually restricted to repetitive and iterative contexts extending into speech time – contrary to Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos’ (2008) findings for contemporary oral Mexican Spanish. Indeed, the data show that the ARPS continuative PP is losing its link-to-present requirement. The ARPS PP also features minimally in resultative and continuative settings, supporting layering of old and new grammaticalizing structures (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994: 21). Present relevance does not determine ARPS PP usage and is instead encoded through the Preterit and temporal adverbials (TAs). / Historically, the PP has dwindled in usage frequency since the 19th century and the Preterit has invaded the spaces erstwhile occupied by the PP. PP functions like result, continuity, current relevance, and hot news are currently fulfilled by the Preterit, in combination with TAs (TA + VERB-PRET). I argue that the TA + VERB-PRET construction has emerged as a periphrastic encoder of PP nuances, a development reminiscent of perfect periphrases in languages such as Yoruba and Karaboro (Niger-Congo) (Dahl 1985: 130). A contemporary example of this construction includes the widespread temporal marker ahí ‘at this point in time’ (lit. ‘there’) in combination with the Preterit to indicate temporal immediacy. / The contemporary ARPS PP is sociolinguistically constrained; men use it significantly more often than women. The PP is also employed by younger speakers, challenging the position that this form is on the verge of extinction (Kubarth 1992a: 565; Burgos 2004: 103). In contrast to the contention that the PP occurs more frequently in written media (e.g. De Kock 1989: 489; Squartini & Bertinetto 2000: 413), the contemporary oral and newspaper corpora show similar distributional tendencies. Only in the questionnaire is the PP used more readily in ways unattested in oral interaction (i.e. in current relevance and past perfective settings). ARPS ambivalent use of the PP represents the essence of the so-called “actuation problem”; that is, the contention that the process of linguistic change involves stimuli and constraints from both society and from the structure of language (Weinrech, Labov & Herzog 1968: 186).

In this work we investigate the use of perfect sampling methods within the context of Bayesian linear regression. We focus on inference problems related to the marginal posterior model probabilities. Model averaged inference for the response and Bayesian variable selection are considered. Perfect sampling is an alternate form of Markov chain Monte Carlo that generates exact sample points from the posterior of interest. This approach removes the need for burn-in assessment faced by traditional MCMC methods. For model averaged inference, we find the monotone Gibbs coupling from the past (CFTP) algorithm is the preferred choice. This requires the predictor matrix be orthogonal, preventing variable selection, but allowing model averaging for prediction of the response. Exploring choices of priors for the parameters in the Bayesian linear model, we investigate sufficiency for monotonicity assuming Gaussian errors. We discover that a number of other sufficient conditions exist, besides an orthogonal predictor matrix, for the construction of a monotone Gibbs Markov chain. Requiring an orthogonal predictor matrix, we investigate new methods of orthogonalizing the original predictor matrix. We find that a new method using the modified Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedure performs comparably with existing transformation methods, such as generalized principal components. Accounting for the effect of using an orthogonal predictor matrix, we discover that inference using model averaging for in-sample prediction of the response is comparable between the original and orthogonal predictor matrix. The Gibbs sampler is then investigated for sampling when using the original predictor matrix and the orthogonal predictor matrix. We find that a hybrid method, using a standard Gibbs sampler on the orthogonal space in conjunction with the monotone CFTP Gibbs sampler, provides the fastest computation and convergence to the posterior distribution. We conclude the hybrid approach should be used when the monotone Gibbs CFTP sampler becomes impractical, due to large backwards coupling times. We demonstrate large backwards coupling times occur when the sample size is close to the number of predictors, or when hyper-parameter choices increase model competition. The monotone Gibbs CFTP sampler should be taken advantage of when the backwards coupling time is small. For the problem of variable selection we turn to the exact version of the independent Metropolis-Hastings (IMH) algorithm. We reiterate the notion that the exact IMH sampler is redundant, being a needlessly complicated rejection sampler. We then determine a rejection sampler is feasible for variable selection when the sample size is close to the number of predictors and using Zellner’s prior with a small value for the hyper-parameter c. Finally, we use the example of simulating from the posterior of c conditional on a model to demonstrate how the use of an exact IMH view-point clarifies how the rejection sampler can be adapted to improve efficiency.

Um importante fator que precisa ser considerado para alcançar alto desempenho em aplicações paralelas é a distribuição dos processos nos núcleos do sistema, denominada mapeamento de processos. Mesmo o mapeamento estático de processos é um problema NP-difícil. Por esse motivo, são utilizadas heurísticas que dependem da aplicação e do hardware no qual a aplicação será mapeada. Nas arquiteturas atuais, além da possibilidade de haver mais de um processador por nó do cluster, é possível haver mais de um núcleo de processamento por processador, assim, o mapeamento estático de processos pode considerar pelo menos três níveis de comunicação entre os processos que executam em um cluster multi-core: intra-chip, intra-nó e inter-nó. Este trabalho propõe a heurística MapEME (Mapeamento Estático MPI com Emparelhamento) que emprega o Emparelhamento Perfeito de Custo Máximo (EPCM) no cálculo do mapeamento estático de processos paralelos MPI em processadores multi-core. Os resultados alcançados pelo mapeamento gerado pela MapEME são comparados aos resultados obtidos pelo mapeamento gerado pela aplicação Scotch, que utiliza o Biparticionamento Recursivo Dual (BRD), já utilizado como heurística para mapeamento estático de processos. Ambas as heurísticas são comparadas à Busca Exaustiva (BE) para verificar o quanto estão próximas do ótimo. Os três métodos têm a complexidade e o ganho no tempo de execução em ralação à distribuição padrão da biblioteca MPICH2 comparados entre si. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é mostrar que a heurística EPCM apresenta ganho de até 40% equivalente a já difundida BRD, e possui uma complexidade menor ao ser aplicado em um cluster multi-core que compartilha cache nível 2 a cada dois núcleos. / An important factor that must be considered to achieve high performance on parallel applications is the mapping of processes on cores. However, since this is defined as an NP-Hard problem, it requires different mapping heuristics that depends on the application and the hardware on which it will be mapped. On the current architectures we can have more than one multi-core processors per node, and consequently the process mapping can consider three process communication types: intrachip, intranode and internode. This work propose the MapEME (Static Mapping MPI using Matching) that use the Maximum Weighted Perfect Matching (MWPM) to calculate the static process mapping and analyze its performance. The results provided by MapEME are compared with the results of application Scotch. It uses Dual Recursive Bipartitioning (DRB), an already used heuristics for static mapping. Both heuristics are compared with Exhaustive Search (ES) to verify how much the two heuristics are near the optimum. The three methods have theirs complexities analyzed. Also the mapping gain when compared with the standard MPICH2 distribution was measured. The main contribution of this work is to show that the heuristic, EPCM, provides gain up to 40%, close of DRB gain. Furthermore, EPCM has a lower complexity when applied to a multicore cluster that shares L2 cache every two cores.