The Caledonian pinewoods are a habitat of crucial environmental and cultural importance, and the sole home of many rare species. However, they have seen steady decline in recent centuries, through the establishment of hunting estates and forestry plantations. A recent trend in management is the attempted transformation of existing plantations (dense communities with a regular spatial structure and low variance in size and age) towards a state mimicking the perceived natural condition, which has a lower density, irregular spatial pattern, high variance in size and age. This presents a problem for traditional forestry practices, which were conceived primarily with “even-aged” plantation populations in mind. The shift towards management of an uneven-aged structure requires a more in-depth consideration of individual trees’ lifecycles and their effect upon long-term population dynamics. In recent years, great advances in computational and mathematical models for spatially interacting populations have been made. However, certain complications have prevented them from being utilised to their full potential for the purposes of forest management. Forest communities are not only spatially structured; the size of each tree plays a role in its ability to acquire resources for growth and survival. Existing models of population dynamics are discussed, and their extension to incorporate both size- and spatially- structured interactions is presented. The key aspects of populations’ structural development are studied. Data from both plantation and semi-natural Scots Pine stands in Scotland allow parameterisation of a stochastic individual-based model, which in turn provides insights into the behaviour of real populations, and the importance of spatial effects and heterogeneity in individuals. A partial differential equation (moment) approximation to the stochastic model is presented. While this is analytically intractable, numerical integration and heuristic analysis of the equations enable clearer identification of the drivers of population structure. Many results are concordant with existing models of both qualitative forest stand development and theoretical dynamics of spatially-structured populations, while others are specific to joint size-space structure. This deeper understanding of the population dynamics allows robust recommendations for diverse uneven-aged stand management objectives to be made. Approaches to accelerating the transformation of plantation stands towards a “natural” state (using two key operations: thinning – removal of trees, and planting) are investigated. Finally, approaches to so-called “continuous cover forestry” – the practice of maintaining a quasi-natural state while also obtaining economic value from a forest – are also considered. In both cases, the model’s simplicity enables clearer conclusions than would be possible using other approaches.

Master of Science / Department of Statistics / Susan J. Brown / Haiyan Wang / DNA hybridization microarray technologies have made it possible to gain an unbiased perspective of whole genome transcriptional activity on such a scale that is increasing more and more rapidly by the day. However, due to biologically irrelevant bias introduced by the experimental process and the machinery involved, correction methods are needed to restore the data to its true biologically meaningful state. Therefore, it is important that the algorithms developed to remove any sort of technical biases are accurate and robust. This report explores the concept of background correction in microarrays by using a real data set of five replicates of whole genome tiling arrays hybridized with genetic material from Tribolium castaneum. It reviews the literature surrounding such correction techniques and explores some of the more traditional methods through implementation on the data set. Finally, it introduces an alternative approach, implements it, and compares it to the traditional approaches for the correction of such errors.

This thesis addresses the research question of how social awareness support in computer systems for groups and communities can be designed in a successful way. While the field of human-computer interaction has been working with similar questions for more than 20 years, many aspects of people’s cooperation and the way those should be considered in system design still need further consideration and research. The thesis presents a number of projects where systems for cooperation have been designed for different settings and different kinds of use with a particular interest in social awareness. Drawing from the experiences of the different projects, design sensitivities around awareness, as a central prerequisite for collaboration, are suggested. Another contribution of the thesis is the presentation of a theoretical model for awareness, called Aether, introduced by us a number of years ago. We will discuss the theoretical implications of the model as well as a number of applications of it based on our own work as well as based on the work of other researchers who used Aether, by this providing confirmation of our model. Based on the findings around awareness, the thesis argues for a ‘translucent’ approach to the issue of socio-technical balance that one has to consider in the design process. Instead of trying to understand and model human behaviour or the social organization of cooperation, in order to ‘code’ them into the computer system, this approach advocates for systems that mediate information in a ‘translucent’ way so that people can retain the control of the organization of cooperation in their given context. By using a ‘reflective practitioner’ approach, the thesis discusses how people-centred methods have been used throughout these projects and looks into how awareness could be considered by using these methods. The focus of this investigation is twofold: on one hand to understand how the used methods have influenced our discussion about awareness and on the other hand it aims to address the practitioners of the field by questioning some of the common beliefs in the field. By investigating social awareness support in collaborative systems, the thesis contributes to theoretical arguments in the field of humancomputer interaction, and the area of CSCW in particular, while at the same time it provides the interaction design practitioner with a number of considerations for practical use. / QC 20100913

The world has made important efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015. However, it is still insufficient and inequalities prevail in the poorest settings. We tracked selected MDG, barriers for their achievement, and community actions that help to accelerate the pace of their accomplishment in two Nicaraguan communities (León and Cuatro Santos). In the first two studies we track the progress of MDG4 (reduce child mortality) using the under-five mortality rate. Inequalities in mortality were mainly assessed by means of maternal education, but other social stratifications were performed on rural-urban residence and sub-regional comparisons between both communities. The last two studies describe community interventions in Cuatro Santos and their association with progress toward MDG1 (poverty reduction). Participation in interventions and poverty were visualized geographically in this remote rural community between 2004 and 2009. Other selected MDG targets were also tracked. These communities will possibly meet MDG4 even before 2015. In León, MDG progress has been accompanied by a decline in child mortality. Despite social inequalities with regard to mortality persisting in education and places of residence, these have decreased. However, it is crucial to reduce neonatal mortality if MDG4 is to be achieved. For example, in León the percentage of under-five deaths in the neonatal period has doubled from 1970 to 2005. In the remote rural area of Cuatro Santos, progress has been accelerated and no child mortality differences were observed despite the level of a mother’s education. Cuatro Santos has also progressed in the reduction of poverty and extreme poverty. The participation of the population in such community interventions as microcredit, home gardening, technical training, safe drinking water, and latrines has increased. Microcredit was an intervention that was unequally distributed in this rural area, where participation was lower in poor and extremely poor households than in non-poor households. In those households that transitioned from poor to non-poor status, microcredit, home gardening, and technical training were associated with this transition. Furthermore spatial analysis revealed that clusters of low participation in interventions overlapped with clusters of high poverty households.

Dedicated energy crops have the potential to supply a sustainable biomass feedstock to support the bioenergy industry. However, a major constraint for promoting energy crops has been the availability of land for establishing energy crops. In this study, we developed a spatially-explicit model to identify suitable and economically feasible sites for establishing energy crops based on biomass price, production costs and site-specific biomass productivity. Results from our study provided an objective evaluation of factors that influence the amount and spatial distribution of land suitable for establishing energy crops. In addition, our model had the ability to capture variation across the feasible areas because of changing biomass market and policy conditions. By performing a sensitivity analysis with different market and policy scenarios, we were able to identify the most effective and favorable scenarios that could maximize the available land for producing energy crops.

Firms are interested in identifying customers who generate the highest revenues. Typically, customers are regarded as isolated individuals whose buying behavior depends solely on their own characteristics (e.g., previous purchase behavior, demographics etc.). In a social network setting, however, customer interactions can play an important role in purchase behavior. This thesis develops a generalizable methodology to identify high-value customers in a network. Previous work on social networks has focused most attention on modeling the interaction between individuals and understanding the positions of individuals in a network (e.g., measuring the influence of an individual based on his/her degree of network centrality). Little is known about how network influence directly translates into the benefits to the firm. In this study, the importance of taking into account both an individual characteristics and network effects when measuring customer value is argued. Drawing upon the spatial statistics literature, a spatial autocorrelation model is constructed that explicitly shows how these effects interact in generating firm revenue. This model is applied to a unique user-level dataset from a popular online gaming company in Korea. The data contain information about demographics of individual gamer, interaction between gamers, behavior within the game environment, and revenues generated by each individual. First, we propose a static model studying gamers' revenue in one period. We quantify the relative impact of an individual characteristics and network effects on revenue. The proposed static model shows better forecasts of an individual's value within a network for the firm than the benchmark models. The empirical analysis shows that individuals who are most influential in a network sense are not necessarily individuals who have the highest customer value. Next, we incorporate the spatio-temporal aspects of social influence in a network into the static model. This model is extended to construct the spatial dynamic model to forecast revenue in a social network. Second, we account for the homophily effects by separating the contemporaneous network effects out into the contemporaneous, temporal, and spatio-temporal effects. The proposed spatial dynamic model allows us to quantify an individual value in a network in a long-term perspective. The dynamic model is shown to outperform the static, and the other benchmark models in quantifying an individual value in revenue generation to the firm. Lastly, a dynamic coevolution model to account for homophily is suggested and discussed for future research.

The Integrated Nested Laplace Approximations (INLA) method has become a commonly used tool for researchers and practitioners to perform approximate Bayesian inference for various fields of applications. It has become essential to incorporate more complex models and expand the method’s capabilities with more features. In this dissertation, we contribute to the INLA method in different aspects. First, we present a new framework, INLA$^+$, based on dense matrices to perform approximate Bayesian inference. An application of the new approach is fitting disease-mapping models for count data with complex interactions. When the precision matrix is dense, the new approach scales better than the existing INLA method and utilizes the power of multiprocessors on shared and distributed memory architectures in today’s computational resources. Second, we propose an adaptive technique to improve gradient estimation for the convex gradient-based optimization framework in INLA. We propose a simple limited-memory technique for improving the accuracy of the numerical gradient of the marginal posterior of the hyperparameter by exploiting a coordinate transformation of the gradient and the history of previously taken descent directions. Third, we extend the commonly utilized Bayesian spatial model in disease mapping, known as the Besag model, into a non-stationary spatial model. This new model considers variations in spatial dependency among a predetermined number of sub-regions. The model incorporates multiple precision parameters, which enable different intensities of spatial dependence in each sub-region. To avoid overfitting and enhance generalization, we derive a joint penalized complexity prior for these parameters. These contributions expand the capabilities of the INLA method, improving its scalability, accuracy, and flexibility for a wider range of applications.

The present thesis focuses on Czech allergology and clinical immunology by studying this branch of health care in a geographic variation framework while using methods of spatial econometrics. This has been the first work with such focus. District-level data on care provision and utilization in 2012 are used. It is found that there exist geographical differences between provision and utilization and that the geographical distribution of allergists and clinical immunologists does not correspond to population's needs. Care utilization is modeled using a spatial autoregressive model specification. Based on this model, it is concluded that a shortage of physicians in the majority of districts actually limits care utilization. Also based on the utilization model, there is a discussion about the potential need for policy coordination. Care provision cannot be modeled using explanatory variables that are available, therefore, future data collection is necessary. However, it was found that variables influencing the need for care by patients do not influence care provision per physician. JEL Classification I11, I14, I19 Keywords geographic variation, Czech, allergology, clinical immunology, ACI, spatial model Author's e-mail 18702440@fsv.cuni.cz Supervisor's e-mail michal.paulus@fsv.cuni.cz

The overall aim of this thesis is to evaluate the risk for increased morbidity and mortality due to long-term arsenic exposure via drinking water by use of epidemiological and spatial approaches in studies performed in Matlab, Bangladesh. A total of 166,934 individuals aged 4 years and above were screened for skin lesions in 2002-2003. Another sample of 115,903 adults aged 15 years or more and a third sample of 26,972 pregnancies in 1991-2000 were considered in a historical cohort and an ecological study, respectively, where risk of adult mortality and spatial clusters of foetal loss and infant death were analysed in relation to arsenic exposure. More than 70% of the tube-wells in the study area exceeded the threshold for arsenic contamination according to the WHO guideline (10 µg/L). The prevalence of arsenic-induced skin lesions was 3/1000 and men had significantly higher prevalence of skin lesions (SMR 158, 95% CI: 133-188) compared to women. There was an increased risk for death in adulthood due to all non-accidental causes (hazards ratio = 1.16, [95% CI 1.06-1.26]) even at a low level of arsenic contamination (10-49 µg/L). Slightly lower risks were observed for death in cancers (1.44 [1.06-1.95]) and infectious diseases (1.30 [1.13-1.49]) at 50-149 µg/L, but for cardiovascular diseases, it was evident (1.23 [1.01-1.51]) from the level 150-299 µg/L. A dose-response relationship was observed for each of these causes. We identified high and low risk clusters of foetal loss and infant death that coincided with identified high and low clusters of arsenic exposure. Water arsenic concentration of the reported main water source was significantly correlated with arsenic concentration in urine, which reflects current arsenic intake from all sources (R2=0.41, ρ< 0.0001), and the influence of neighbouring water sources was minimal. The study findings underlines that the ongoing arsenic exposure has resulted in a series of severe public health consequences in Bangladesh that call for reinforcement in the mitigation efforts. Knowledge about the spatial distribution of exposure and health effects may be of value in that process.

Submitted by Geyciane Santos (geyciane_thamires@hotmail.com) on 2015-07-27T14:31:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação -Jurimar Collares Ipiranga.pdf: 6045469 bytes, checksum: cb2f46a3bb5ec4c10c0fb95454fb7b36 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-07-28T14:51:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação -Jurimar Collares Ipiranga.pdf: 6045469 bytes, checksum: cb2f46a3bb5ec4c10c0fb95454fb7b36 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-07-28T14:57:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação -Jurimar Collares Ipiranga.pdf: 6045469 bytes, checksum: cb2f46a3bb5ec4c10c0fb95454fb7b36 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-28T14:57:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação -Jurimar Collares Ipiranga.pdf: 6045469 bytes, checksum: cb2f46a3bb5ec4c10c0fb95454fb7b36 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-02-12 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The space dynamic modelling technique stands out by its capacity to show the landscape evolution of the Tarumã Mirim Stablishment Project in a predctive way, assisting studies on the use of natural resources, territorial planning and allowing a view of the presence or absence of specific public policies. That is because the planning of a rural settlement must take into account the land use and its positive or negative impacts generated in this process. The evolution of that landscape since the creation of the PA, in march 1992, makes possible a stochastic projection for 2011, even it was made during the erlier period of 1995 to 2003. That projection was able to report growth rates and removal of vegetation carried out by human action. It was used two scenes of the orbit 231 and section 062 of the years 1995 and 2003, properly cut from the area of study and applying the Markov Chains Theory, supported by remote sensing technique that delimited the area. It was classified the land use and land cover. It was made the cross-tabulation of the classes showing the transition between them and the probability of changes and projection of land use for 2011. From 42,910.760 hectares intended for settlement and farming family in 1995, wich is the baseline time for predictive modeling, it was identified by the classification of land use in order to 1,119.60 ha, in 2003 3,075.30 ha and a projection of land use for 2011 about 10,023.30 ha, and the removal of vegetation cover in 1995 47,069.10 ha, in 2003 45,113.40 ha and the projection of vegetation removed for 2011 (simulation) is about 38,165.40 hectares deforested. The study revealed in its modeling of the dynamics use of land for future scenarios, a concerning situation that should be reviewed and demands a special attention referred to positive and negative environmental and hydrological network, recommended in the plan for environmental control and protection of ciliary forests. / A modelagem dinâmica espacial destaca-se por ter a capacidade de apresentar a evolução da paisagem do Projeto de Assentamento Tarumã Mirim de forma preditiva, auxiliando os estudos quanto ao uso dos recursos naturais, ordenamento territorial e possibilitando uma visão da existência ou não de políticas públicas pontuais. Pois, o planejamento de um assentamento rural deve levar em consideração o uso da terra e os seus impactos positivos ou negativos gerados nesse processo. A evolução da paisagem desde a sua criação do PA em março de 1992, possibilita entre os anos 1995 a 2003 uma projeção estocástica para o ano 2011 de forma preditiva, capaz de informar as taxas de crescimento e supressão da vegetação exercida pela ação antrópica. Utilizaram-se duas cenas da órbita 231 e ponto 062 dos anos de 1995 e 2003, devidamente recortadas da área de estudo e aplicando a Teoria de Cadeias de Markov, apoiada em técnicas de sensoriamento remoto que delimitou a área, classificou-se o uso da terra e cobertura vegetal, fez-se a tabulação cruzada das classes mostrando a transição entre elas, as probabilidades de mudanças e a projeção do uso da terra para o ano de 2011. Dos 42.910,760 ha destinados para assentamento e agricultura familiar, em 1995 data início do estudo para modelagem preditiva, foi levantado pela classificação do uso da terra na ordem de 1,119.60 ha, em 2003 3,075.30 ha e uma projeção de uso para 2011 10,023.30 ha, e a supressão da cobertura vegetal em 1995 47,069.10 ha, em 2003 45,113.40 ha e a projeção de supressão vegetal para 2011 (simulação) é da ordem de 38,165.40 ha desflorestados. O estudo revelou em sua modelagem da dinâmica do uso da terra para cenários futuros, uma situação de caráter preocupante que deve ser reavaliada e receber especial atenção em relação aos impactos positivos e negativos no entorno e na rede hidrológica, preconizados no plano de controle ambiental e proteção das matas ciliares.