Arrow and Raynaud introduced a set of axioms that a ranking rule should verify. Among these, axiom V' states that the compromise ranking should be a so-called prudent order. Intuitively, a prudent order is a linear order such that the strongest opposition against this solution is minimal. Since the related literature lacks in solid theoretical foundations for this type of aggregation rule, it was our main objective in this thesis to thoroughly study and gain a better understanding of the family of prudent ranking rules. We provide characterizations of several prudent ranking rules in a conjoint axiomatic framework. We also prove that we can construct profiles for which the result of a prudent ranking rule and a non-prudent ranking rule can be contradictory. Finally we illustrate the use of prudent ranking rules in a group decision context and on the composite indicator problem.

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

The purpose of this dissertation is to be an introductory examination of whether the use of the Prudent Person Rule in place of legal list investment restrictions could have a significant difference upon the return on investment that a state or local government may receive through its cash management practices. The dissertation will examine this issue by studying the effect of the Prudent Person Rule and legal list limitations on state-run local government investment pools in the United States. The specific question to be asked in this study will be: "Is there a difference in the return on investment yield performance of state-run local government investment pools among those operating under the Prudent Person Rule fiduciary standard, those operating under a legal list fiduciary standard, and those operating under a combination legal list/Prudent Person Rule fiduciary standard, for the five-year period beginning with Fiscal Year 1992 and ending with Fiscal Year 1996? It appears from this brief examination that there may be a difference in return among state-run pools operating under different fiduciary standards. However, because of various factors that might affect the results, the author believes that this is just a preliminary study, and that further research must be done on this important topic in public cash management. / Ph. D.

In this thesis, we propose a family of concurrency control protocols for high data contention database environments. The first one is called the Prudent-Precedence Concurrency Control (PPCC) protocol. It is prudently more aggressive in permitting more serializable schedules than two-phase locking and maintains a restricted precedence among conflicting transactions and commits the transactions according to the serialization order established in the executions. The second one is a family of hierarchical concurrency control protocols called the Hierarchical Precedence Concurrency Control (HPCC) protocols. It maintains cycle-free precedence hierarchies for conflicting transactions. Conflicting operations are allowed to proceed only if the hierarchical orderings of precedence is not violated. Transactions also commit based on the serialization order established during the executions. Detailed simulation models have been implemented for all these protocols and extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approaches. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform the two-phase locking and optimistic concurrency control over a wide range of system workloads.

Diploma thesis - abstract Due managerial care and diligence as a criterion for the determination of liability (a legal and comparative analysis) Lucie Krtoušová The purpose of this thesis is to critically analyse the interpretation of the concept of the due managerial care and diligence and consider the requirements that a director must comply with. The method used in this paper is the comparative analysis. As a basis of the comparative analysis it is chosen the British concept of fiduciary duties and duty of care, skill and diligence which is compared with the Czech concept of the care of a prudent manager. The thesis is composed of five chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of the concept of the due managerial care and diligence. Chapter One is introductory and defines basic terminology used in the thesis such as the director, the care of a prudent manager, the duty of loyalty, fiduciary duties and the duty of care, skill and diligence. Chapter Two examines the British concept of fiduciary duties. The chapter consists of five parts. Part One focuses on introduction into the system of general duties of directors. Part Two explains the fiduciary position of a director. Part Three and Four address the two aspects of the duty of loyalty, i.e. the duty to act in the interest of the company and...

Arrow and Raynaud introduced a set of axioms that a ranking rule should verify. Among these, axiom V' states that the compromise ranking should be a so-called prudent order. Intuitively, a prudent order is a linear order such that the strongest opposition against this solution is minimal. Since the related literature lacks in solid theoretical foundations for this type of aggregation rule, it was our main objective in this thesis to thoroughly study and gain a better understanding of the family of prudent ranking rules. We provide characterizations of several prudent ranking rules in a conjoint axiomatic framework. We also prove that we can construct profiles for which the result of a prudent ranking rule and a non-prudent ranking rule can be contradictory. Finally we illustrate the use of prudent ranking rules in a group decision context and on the composite indicator problem.<p><p> / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Exposomics applies metabolomics methods and technologies to the comprehensive analysis of all low molecular weight molecules (< 1.5 kDa) in complex biological samples to characterize the interaction between cellular metabolism and exogenous lifestyle exposures that determine health and quality of life. To fully access the diverse classes of biological molecules related to an individual’s metabolic profile, metabolomics frequently requires the use of complementary analytical platforms, and employs targeted and untargeted molecular profiling strategies to identify biomarkers that are clinically relevant to an individual’s health status. Chapter 2 describes a quinoline-based boronic acid biosensor for N-acetylneuraminic acid that undergoes a striking binding enhancement under strongly acidic conditions. For the first time, this work allows for direct analysis of acidic sugars with high selectivity when using UV absorbance or fluorescence detection based on formation of a highly stable boronate ester complex with metabolites containing an α-hydroxycarboxylate moiety. Chapter 3 describes a targeted analysis of 24 different organic contaminants using GC-MS that can serve as biomarkers of recent smoke exposure following search-and-rescue training exercises by firefighters located at three different sites across the province of Ontario. Importantly, skin and possible respiratory uptake of various polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methoxyphenols, and resin acids was confirmed by peak excretion of several wood smoke biomarkers in urine within 6 h following acute exposure. Chapter 4 applied a cross-platform metabolomics strategy based on CE-MS and GC-MS in order to identify and validate dietary biomarkers in matching plasma and urine samples collected from healthy participants in the pilot Diet and Gene Interaction Study (DIGEST). For the first time, we demonstrate that a panel of metabolites can serve as reliable biomarkers following contrasting Prudent and Western diets over 2 weeks of food provisions, which correlated well with self-reported diet records. This work paves the way for the development of objective biomarkers for accurate assessment of wood smoke exposures, as well as complex dietary patterns as required for new advances in occupational health and nutritional epidemiology. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Exposomics is an emerging multidisciplinary science aimed at deciphering the complex interactions that impact human health and gene expression, such as lifestyle choices (i.e., habitual diet) and lifelong environmental exposures. There is growing interest in identifying biomarkers that can be readily measured for chronic disease prevention given an alarming global prevalence of obesity and cardiometabolic disorders, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. The research in this thesis focuses on developing new analytical methods for identifying and quantifying metabolites that may allow for better assessments of human health, and has contributed to the development of novel biosensors for the targeted analysis of N-acetylneuraminic (sialic) acid and related acidic sugars, as well as high resolution methods for broad spectrum analysis of biotransformed organic contaminants from smoke exposure by GC-MS, and plasma and urinary metabolites that differentiate contrasting Prudent and Western diets and correlate well with self-reported diet records.

La constitution d’une fiducie-trust a comme effet la création d’une universalité juridique, le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund. De cette universalité, les bénéficiaires-cestuis que trusts tirent les avantages que le constituant-settlor a prévu pour eux ; ainsi pour qu’ils puissent obtenir leurs avantages, il faut que le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund soit en bon état. D’où l’importance d’avoir des moyens adéquates qui protègent le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund. Dans le cas contraire, les possibilités que le but d’une fiducie-trust déterminée soit réalisé se réduisent, et l'efficacité de l'ensemble de l'institution est remise en question. La protection du patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund commence par des moyens qui évitent à cette universalité d’être endommagée. Puisque toute action, comme toute inaction du fiduciaire-trustee, peut avoir des effets négatifs sur le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund, il faut empêcher qu’il endommage cette universalité. A l’égard du fiduciaire-trustee, le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund encourt deux dangers : non seulement que le fiduciaire-trustee agisse dans un intérêt autre que celui des cestuis que trusts, mais aussi qu’il soit négligent dans l’exécution de ses obligations. Pour faire face à ces dangers, et empêcher que le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund soit endommagé par le fiduciaire-trustee, deux obligations lui sont imposées : le devoir de loyauté-duty of loyalty et le devoir de diligence-duty of care. D’autre part, si le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund peut être endommagé par le fiduciaire-trustee, il peut aussi être endommagé par des tiers. La protection à l’égard des tiers commence en faisant du fiduciaire-trustee le titulaire des droits mis en fiducie-trust (s’il s’agit d’une propriété, il sera propriétaire ; s’il s’agit d’une créance, il sera créancier) ; elle se poursuit en rendant les biens fiduciés, et donc le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund, indépendants du patrimoine du fiduciaire-trustee.Bien qu’il existe des moyens préventifs de protection du patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund, ces moyens ne sont pas infaillibles. Ainsi, quand le patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund est endommagé, il est nécessaire que le constituant et les bénéficiaires-cestuis que trusts disposent de recours pour faire face aux préjudices soufferts par cette universalité. Parmi les moyens curatifs de protection, on en trouve de nature personnelle : ceux dont les remèdes visent l’exécution en nature de la fiducie-trust et ceux qui visent la réparation du patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund. Pour réparer le dommage causé au patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund, on trouve aussi des remèdes de nature réelle. Si le droit anglais offre de vrais remèdes réels, en revanche le droit français offre de « faux » remèdes réels puisque, même si ces remèdes ne sont pas stricto sensu des remèdes réels, ils ont des effets analogues aux remèdes du droit anglais. / The constitution of a fiducie-trust has the effect of creating a patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund. Because the beneficiaries obtain their benefits from the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund it has to be in a condition that permits them to obtain those benefits. Hence the importance of having adequate means to protect the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund. The protection of the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund starts by preventing it from being harmed. Since any action or any inaction of the fiduciaire-trustee can have negative effects on the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund, it is necessary to begin by protecting it from the fiduciaire-trustee. There are two situations which have been proven to be dangerous to the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund: a) when the fiduciaire-trustee acts in an interest other than that of those of the beneficiaries and b) when the fiduciaire-trustee is negligent in the performance of his obligations. To cope with these two problems and to prevent the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund from being damaged by the fiduciaire-trustee, two obligations are imposed upon him: a) the devoir de loyauté-duty of loyalty and b) the devoir de diligence-duty of care. If the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund is at risk of the actions of the fiduciaire-trustee, it is also at risk of the actions of third parties. The protection of the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund from third parties begin by the ownership of the fiduciaire-trustee and continues by separating the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund from the personal property of the fiduciaire-trustee. Because the preventive measures that protect the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund are not infallible, it is necessary that the constituant and the beneficiaries have access to legal remedies for when the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund has been damaged. Among the remedial protection are those of personal nature, including remedies for specific enforcement of the fiducie-trust and those that tend to repair the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund. To repair the damage caused to the patrimoine fiduciaire-trust fund there are also real remedies. If English law provides true real remedies, in contrast to French law offers "fake" real remedies because even if the nature of those remedies are not strictly real, they have similar effects to those offered by English law.