When system runs are modeled with interval orders, interval order structures are useful tools to model abstract concurrent histories, i.e. sets of equivalent system runs. For the general cases, Mazurkiewicz traces allow a representation of the entire partial order by a single sequence with independency relations, and Comtraces allow a representation of stratified order structures by single step sequences with appropriate simultaneity and serializability relations. Unfortunately, both of them are unable to clearly describe the abstract interval order semantics of inhibitor nets. The goal of the thesis is to provide a monoid based model called Interval Traces that would allow a single sequence of beginnings and endings to represent the entire stratified order structures as well as all equivalent interval order observations. And the thesis will also show how interval order structures can be modelled by interval traces and how interval traces can be used to describe interval order semantics. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.

The vast quantity of leadership literature discusses factors that may contribute to leader development. However, strategic leaders—defined as those individuals in key positions at the organizational apex—are a subsection of the research that deserves more attention. In particular, what sets these leaders apart or enables them to excel is an area of particular interest and is explored in this dissertation. The purpose of this study was to understand the process of leadership development, specifically through the experience and beliefs of successful senior leaders. The study addressed the following questions: 1. How do strategic leaders for the federal government describe effective leadership? 2. How do they explain the development of effective strategic leadership? 3. How do the described behaviors of strategic leadership compare to the Executive Core Qualifications established for civilian federal government leaders by the Office of Personnel Management? To answer the research questions, the study employed grounded theory as the primary analytic procedure. The subjects interviewed were from areas of the federal government dealing with national security, predominantly Department of Defense. Both military and civilians subjects participated. Data were analyzed qualitatively and a conceptual model of strategic leadership behavior was developed. Finally, implications and suggestions as to how to foster the development of such capacities are offered. The findings show, as did earlier behavioral research, that the two aspects of task and relationship are important to successful leaders. In this case, both functioned predominantly in the leaders' behavior, but under the fabric of their contextual experience built on their own self-efficacy and relations with others. It follows that more attention paid to developing self-mastery and strong relationship skills are in order. Since studies on military leadership vice civilian federal service are more likely, the findings were examined in relation to the established qualifications for senior civilian leaders, revealing a gap. While the qualifications for senior executives are behavior oriented, the research indicates a need for stronger focus on personal development, growth as an individual, and contributions made to the development of others. The relationship aspect of leadership does not receive the proper emphasis. / Ph. D.

Elastomeric wastes plague our time, polluting our environment and requiring urgent upcycling solutions. This research contributes to this agenda using an important source of waste, car tyre shred fibre residue (TSFR). It is demonstrated how using binders, non-foaming (SBR) and foaming (PU), we can transform these TSFR into structured porous acoustic-thermal insulation materials, suitable as underlay, cavity wall and pipe insulation. These structures were fabricated in purpose designed moulds and characterised for their porosity, tortuosity, flow resistivity and density. Their acoustic absorption performance was measured using industrial standards and the measurement underpinned with the Johnson-Champoux-Allard (JCA) model. With the under-layer materials, thermal insulation was also measured. The results were as follows: (i) 40%/60% SBR/TSFR was an optimal composition for the underlay with the addition of 15% w/w bumper crumb of size > 1mm enhancing both impact sound and thermal insulation, (ii) PU was found to produce well performing wall cavity insulation, particularly when vacuum pressure was applied, allowing micro and macro pores to be formed; (iii) PU applied with controlled amount of water to control foaming CO2 formation produced super-performing (compared with Armacell System B) stratified pipe cladding insulation, optimal at porosity stratification of 90%, 83%, and 70%; (iv) Very good agreement was observed with predictions using JCA model, allowing further research to be carried out with these now well characterised sound insulations. In addition to the developing materials, a novel technique for measuring sound absorption of pipe cladding was developed that could replace the expensive standard using a reverberation chamber.

京都大学 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(人間健康科学) / 乙第13615号 / 論人健博第15号 / 新制||人健||8(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科人間健康科学系専攻 / (主査)教授 梁 楠, 教授 黒木 裕士, 教授 松田 秀一 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当 / Doctor of Human Health Sciences / Kyoto University / DFAM

In many real-world applications, it is common to have uneven number of examples among multiple classes. The data imbalance, however, usually complicates the learning process, especially for the minority classes, and results in deteriorated performance. Boosting methods were proposed to handle the imbalance problem. These methods need elongated training time and require diversity among the classifiers of the ensemble to achieve improved performance. Additionally, extending the boosting method to handle multi-class data sets is not straightforward. Examples of applications that suffer from imbalanced multi-class data can be found in face recognition, where tens of classes exist, and in capsule endoscopy, which suffers massive imbalance between the classes. This dissertation introduces RegBoost, a new boosting framework to address the imbalanced, multi-class problems. This method applies a weighted stratified sampling technique and incorporates a regularization term that accommodates multi-class data sets and automatically determines the error bound of each base classifier. The regularization parameter penalizes the classifier when it misclassifies instances that were correctly classified in the previous iteration. The parameter additionally reduces the bias towards majority classes. Experiments are conducted using 12 diverse data sets with moderate to high imbalance ratios. The results demonstrate superior performance of the proposed method compared to several state-of-the-art algorithms for imbalanced, multi-class classification problems. More importantly, the sensitivity improvement of the minority classes using RegBoost is accompanied with the improvement of the overall accuracy for all classes. With unpredictability regularization, a diverse group of classifiers are created and the maximum accuracy improvement reaches above 24%. Using stratified undersampling, RegBoost exhibits the best efficiency. The reduction in computational cost is significant reaching above 50%. As the volume of training data increase, the gain of efficiency with the proposed method becomes more significant.

Four different trials of stratified three-layered fine paper, of sulphate pulp, were performed to investigate if stratified fine fraction or fibres from birch can improve the properties of a paper compared to a reference sheet. All trials had five different scenarios and each scenario was calendered with different linear load. All sheets had a grammage of 80 g/m2.In the first trial, the paper contained birch, pine and filler of calciumcarbonate (marble), and was manufactured with the pilot paper machine XPM and the stratified headbox Formator at RCF (Stora Enso Research Center in Falun). The furnish consisted of 75% birch and 25% pine.The second trial contained coated sheets with paper from trial one as the base paper. The coating slip contained calciumcarbonate and clay and the amount was approximately 10-12 g/m2.The third trial, also with birch and pine but without filler, was performed at STFI (Skogsindustrins Tekniska Forskningsinstitut in Stockholm) with the laboratory scaled paper machine StratEx and the stratified headbox AQ-vanes. The furnish consisted of 75% birch and 25% pine, except for one scenario which contained of 75% pine and 25% birch.The last trial contained fractionated pulp of birch and pine and was performed at STFI. 50% was fine fraction and 50% was coarse fraction.This test does not show any clear benefits of making stratified sheets of birch and pine when it comes to properties such as bending stiffness, tensile index and surface smoothness. The retention can be improved with birch in the surface plies. It is possible that the formation can be improved with birch in the surface plies and pine in the middle ply. It is also possible that fine fraction in the surface plies and coarse fraction in the middle ply can improve both surface smoothness and bending stiffness. The results in this test are shown with confidence intervals which points out the difficulties of analysing sheets manufactured with a pilot paper machine or a laboratory scaled paper machine.

<p>In this study, we developed and improved the numerical mode matching (NMM) method which has previously been shown to be a fast and robust semi-analytical solver to investigate the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves in an isotropic layered medium. The applicable models, such as cylindrical waveguide, optical fiber, and borehole with earth geological formation, are generally modeled as an axisymmetric structure which is an orthogonal-plano-cylindrically layered (OPCL) medium consisting of materials stratified planarly and layered concentrically in the orthogonal directions.</p><p>In this report, several important improvements have been made to extend applications of this efficient solver to the anisotropic OCPL medium. The formulas for anisotropic media with three different diagonal elements in the cylindrical coordinate system are deduced to expand its application to more general materials. The perfectly matched layer (PML) is incorporated along the radial direction as an absorbing boundary condition (ABC) to make the NMM method more accurate and efficient for wave diffusion problems in unbounded media and applicable to scattering problems with lossless media. We manipulate the weak form of Maxwell's equations and impose the correct boundary conditions at the cylindrical axis to solve the singularity problem which is ignored by all previous researchers. The spectral element method (SEM) is introduced to more efficiently compute the eigenmodes of higher accuracy with less unknowns, achieving a faster mode matching procedure between different horizontal layers. We also prove the relationship of the field between opposite mode indices for different types of excitations, which can reduce the computational time by half. The formulas for computing EM fields excited by an electric or magnetic dipole located at any position with an arbitrary orientation are deduced. And the excitation are generalized to line and surface current sources which can extend the application of NMM to the simulations of controlled source electromagnetic techniques. Numerical simulations have demonstrated the efficiency and accuracy of this method.</p><p>Finally, the improved numerical mode matching (NMM) method is introduced to efficiently compute the electromagnetic response of the induction tool from orthogonal transverse hydraulic fractures in open or cased boreholes in hydrocarbon exploration. The hydraulic fracture is modeled as a slim circular disk which is symmetric with respect to the borehole axis and filled with electrically conductive or magnetic proppant. The NMM solver is first validated by comparing the normalized secondary field with experimental measurements and a commercial software. Then we analyze quantitatively the induction response sensitivity of the fracture with different parameters, such as length, conductivity and permeability of the filled proppant, to evaluate the effectiveness of the induction logging tool for fracture detection and mapping. Casings with different thicknesses, conductivities and permeabilities are modeled together with the fractures in boreholes to investigate their effects for fracture detection. It reveals that the normalized secondary field will not be weakened at low frequencies, ensuring the induction tool is still applicable for fracture detection, though the attenuation of electromagnetic field through the casing is significant. A hybrid approach combining the NMM method and BCGS-FFT solver based integral equation has been proposed to efficiently simulate the open or cased borehole with tilted fractures which is a non-axisymmetric model.</p> / Dissertation

Le cancer du sujet âgé est un réel problème de santé publique. L’incidence du cancer augmentant avec l’âge couplée au vieillissement général de la population font que plus de la moitié des tumeurs diagnostiquées aujourd’hui le sont chez des patients de plus de 65 ans. Cependant, cette population hétérogène a longtemps été exclue des essais cliniques et le manque de données prospectives rend difficile la prise en charge de ces patients. Plusieurs publications soulignent l’importance et la complexité de réaliser des essais cliniques dans cette population. Les schémas classiques ne prenant pas en compte l’hétérogénéité, les essais de phase II spécifiques aux sujets âgés sont rares et généralement stratifiés en sous-groupes définis selon un critère gériatrique ce qui augmente le nombre de patients à inclure et donc diminue la faisabilité. L’objectif de cette thèse est de présenter, comparer et développer des schémas de phase II adaptatifs stratifiés permettant de prendre en compte l’hétérogénéité de la population âgée. L’utilisation de ce type d’approche permet de réduire le nombre de patients à inclure tout en maintenant la puissance statistique et en contrôlant le risque d’erreur de type I. Ce qui implique une diminution du coût et de la durée de l’étude et donc une augmentation de la faisabilité. Afin d’améliorer l’efficacité de la recherche clinique en oncogériatrie, il est donc primordial d’utiliser des schémas adaptatifs stratifiés prenant en compte l’hétérogénéité de la population et permettant d’identifier un sous-groupe d’intérêt susceptible de pouvoir bénéficier (ou non) de la nouvelle thérapeutique. / Elderly cancer is a real public health problem. With the overall aging population and the increased incidence of cancer, more than half of all tumors diagnosed today are in patients aged 65 years or older. However, this heterogeneous population has long been excluded from clinical trials and the lack from prospective data makes it difficult managing these patients. Many publications highlight the importance and the complexity of conducting clinical trials in this population. As classical phase II designs do not take into account the heterogeneity, elderly specific phase II clinical trials are very uncommon and generally conducted in specific subgroups defined by geriatric criteria which increases the number of patients to be included and thus reduces the feasibility. The objective of this thesis is to present, compare and develop stratified adaptive designs that address the heterogeneity of the elderly population. The use of this methodology can minimize the number of patients to be included while maintaining statistical power and controlling the type I error risk. This implies a reduction in the cost and duration of the study and thus increases the feasibility. In order to improve the efficiency of clinical research in geriatric oncology, it is essential to use stratified adaptive designs that take into account the heterogeneity of the population and make it possible to identify a subgroup of interest that might benefit (or not) from the new therapeutic.

Introduction: The association between daily air pollution exposure and risk of mortality is well established. Few studies have investigated in detail the associations beyond a seven day lag. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the change in risk across longer (30 day) periods post exposure for three specific causes of death: pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and ischaemic heart disease (IHD). Methods: Daily Scottish mortality data (1980-2011) was matched to measurements from local fixed site pollution (Black smoke, PM10, PM2.5, SO2, & NO2) and temperature monitors. Exposure on subjects' 'day of death' was compared with control days in a time-stratified case-crossover analysis. Exposure effects on 30 days prior to day of death were modelled using distributed lag non-linear, lag stratified, and cubic distributed lag models. Matching hospital admissions data inferred subject location during exposure, further analyses investigated extreme outliers and missing data using multiple imputation techniques. The analysis accounted for several confounders including accurately modelling temperature relationships unique for each cause of death. Results: Of the 919,301 deaths, 20% were classified as being caused by pneumonia, 9.5% as COPD, and 30% as IHD in the 'any' cause of death field. Non-linear effects for temperature and linear effects for the pollutants were present across all 30 days. Temperature-mortality was observed to be U-shaped at shorter lags. Consistently increased risk occurred for longer in cold temperatures with 1oC increase (30 days lag) = %RR -0.35% Pneumonia, -0.62% COPD, and -0.26% IHD. PM2.5 on all three outcomes, and all pollutants on COPD showed the greatest effect sizes. In general, COPD risk only occurred after a delay, peaking between 12-18 days. COPD risk due to PM2.5 was immediate (%RR (95% C.I.) = 1.05% (0.14%,2.01%)) and lasted the full 30 days. Pneumonia risk often reported the shortest lag of 10-15 days, whereas IHD risk occurred 2 days after exposure but lasted the remaining 30 days. There was some evidence especially for pneumonia of a smaller association between air pollution on mortality when subjects included were present in hospital. A simulation study indicated slight improvement in accuracy when 'multiple imputation' was performed compared to 'complete cases' analysis; though both techniques reported similarly underestimated effect estimates. Extreme outliers in the main analysis of pollution exposure did not appear to have a strong influence on the risk. However, large variability between monitor measurements of pollution exposure was present and appeared to be influencing the results. Conclusion: This study provides additional evidence on the link between air pollution, and temperature, and acute mortality. Particular focus was on three causes of death (pneumonia, COPD, and IHD) that are shown to be influenced by air pollution in subtly different ways. Results also indicated that the 'true' effect of air pollution on mortality might be greater than shown by mortality studies which do not use hospital admission location during exposure into account.