The computing profession in the United States would benefit from an increasingly diverse workforce, specifically a larger female presence, because a more gender-balanced workforce would likely result in better technological solutions to difficulties in many areas of American life. However, to achieve this balance, more women with a solid educational foundation in computing need to enter the computing workplace. Yet a common problem is most colleges and universities offering computer-related degrees have found it challenging to attract females to their programs. Also, the women who begin a computing major have shown a higher tendency than men to leave the major. The combination of these factors has resulted in a low percentage of females graduating with a computing degree, providing one plausible explanation for the current gender imbalance in the computing profession. It is readily apparent that female enrollment and retention must be improved to increase female graduation percentages. Although recruiting women into computing and keeping them in it has been problematic, there are some who decide to pursue a computer-related degree and successfully finish. The study focused on this special group of women who provided their insight into the pursuit and completion of an undergraduate computing degree. It is hoped that the knowledge acquired from this research will inspire and encourage more women to consider the field of computing and to seek an education in it. Also, the information gathered in this study may prove valuable to recruiters, professors, and administrators in computing academia. Recruiters will have a better awareness of the factors that direct women toward computing, which may lead to better recruitment strategies. Having a better awareness of the factors that contribute to persistence will provide professors and administrators with information that can help create better methods of encouraging females to continue rather than leave. The investigation used a sequential explanatory methodology to explore how a woman determined to pursue an undergraduate computing major and to persevere within it until attaining a degree.

Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Modulation Dysfunction are Sensory Integration Disorders that are widely known to occupational therapists practicing in the paediatric occupational therapy field. These disorders have been the subject of numerous research studies that have managed to clarify and explain relations of these disorders with sensory processing as well as their prevalence in different diagnostic groups. Such a clarified relationship is between Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Discrimination, while Sensory Modulation Dysfunction is reported to occur in various diagnostic groups. Developments over the past decade in the field of Sensory Integration proposed that Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Modulation Dysfunction be regarded as two patterns of a Sensory Processing Disorder and suggested that these two disorder patterns occurred concomitantly. Clinical experience, however, resulted in the researcher questioning the above proposed concomitant relationship and hypothesised that there was a specific relation between Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Responsivity (Sensory Modulation Dysfunction). This study was directed at investigating the relationship between Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Responsivity. A review of the literature that described these two disorder patterns yielded reference to theories that underpin Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Responsivity. From these theories it was possible to identify some common ground between Developmental dyspraxia and Sensory Responsivity that could potentially support a relation. The Sensory Profile, Sensory Profile School Companion and the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests were used to assess and identify Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Responsivity. Obtained data were statistically analysed and compared and did not produce a statistically significant positive relation between Developmental Dyspraxia and Sensory Responsivity, but yielded some weak correlations in supplementary analysis. These weak correlations have value in terms of sensory responsiveness tendencies in the presence of types of dyspraxia. Clinical analyses of the data set were performed to examine the incidence of types of dyspraxia in the sample with sensory over- or under responsiveness. These analyses demonstrated a greater presence of Developmental Dyspraxia in the population with Sensory Under-responsivity. The clinical analyses provided the researcher with additional information that was taken into account when conclusions were made. It also contributed to the recommendations that were made at the end of Chapter 5. Discussion of results was directed at explaining correlations and interpreting the implications of those correlations. A discussion of possible problems included considering possible flaws in the method and procedure that could have contributed to the research outcome. Recommendations were directed at proposals for future research and recommendations for clinical practice. Copyright / Dissertation (MOccTher)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Occupational Therapy / unrestricted

L'objectif de ce travail est de proposer une nouvelle démarche pour améliorer et accélérer les études de dimensionnement des pièces de turboréacteurs en avant-projets. Il s'agit de fournir une méthodologie complète pour la conception robuste sous contraintes. Cette méthodologie consiste en trois étapes : la réduction de la dimension et la méta-modélisation, la conception robuste sous contraintes puis la résolution de problèmes inverses sous contraintes. Ce sont les trois principaux sujets abordés dans cette thèse. La réduction de la dimension est un pré-traitement indispensable à toute étude. Son but est de ne conserver, pour une sortie choisie du système, que les entrées influentes. Ceci permet de réduire la taille du domaine d'étude afin de faciliter la compréhension du système et diminuer les temps de calculs des études. Les méthodes de méta-modélisations contribuent également à ces deux objectifs. L'idée est de remplacer le code de calculs coûteux par un modèle rapide à évaluer et qui représente bien la relation entre la sortie étudiée et les entrées du système. La conception robuste sous contraintes est une optimisation bi-objectifs où les différentes sources d'incertitudes du système sont prises en compte. Il s'agit, dans un premier temps, de recenser et modéliser les incertitudes puis de choisir une méthode de propagation de ces incertitudes dans le code de calculs. Ceci permet d'estimer les moments (moyenne et écart-type) de la loi de la sortie d'intérêt. L'optimisation de ces moments constitue les deux objectifs de la conception robuste. En dernier lieu, il s'agit de choisir la méthode d'optimisation multi-objectifs qui sera utilisée pour obtenir l'optimum robuste sous contraintes. La partie innovante de cette thèse porte sur le développement de méthodes pour la résolution de problèmes inverses mal posés. Ce sont des problèmes pour lesquels il peut y avoir une infinité de solutions constituant des ensembles non convexes et même disjoints. L'inversion a été considérée ici comme un complément à l'optimisation robuste dans laquelle l'optimum obtenu ne satisfaisait pas une des contraintes. Les méthodes d'inversion permettent alors de résoudre ce problème en trouvant plusieurs combinaisons des entrées qui satisfont la contrainte sous la condition de rester proche de l'optimum robuste. Le but est d'atteindre une valeur cible de la contrainte non satisfaite tout en respectant les autres contraintes du système auxquelles on ajoute la condition de proximité à l'optimum. Appliquée au dimensionnement d'un compresseur HP en avants-projets, cette méthodologie s'inscrit dans l'amélioration et l'accélération des études marquées par de nombreux rebouclages chronophages en termes de ressources informatiques et humaines. / The aim of this PhD dissertation is to propose a new approach to improve and accelerate preliminary design studies for turbofan engine components. This approach consists in a comprehensive methodology for robust design under constraints, following three stages : dimension reduction and metamodeling, robust design under constraints and finally inverse problem solving under constraints. These are the three main subjects of this PhD dissertation. Dimension reduction is an essential pre-processing for any study. Its aim is to keep only inputs with large effects on a selected output. This selection reduces the size of the domain on which is performed the study which reduces its computational cost and eases the (qualitative) understanding of the system of interest. Metamodeling also contributes to these two objectives by replacing the time-consuming computer code by a faster metamodel which approximates adequately the relationship between system inputs and the studied output. Robust design under constraints is a bi-objectives optimization where different uncertainty sources are included. First, uncertainties must be collected and modeled. Then a propagation method of uncertainties in the computation code must be chosen in order to estimate moments (mean and standard deviation) of output distribution. Optimization of these moments are the two robust design objectives. Finally, a multi-objectives optimization method has to be chosen to find a robust optimum under constraints. The development of methods to solve ill-posed inverse problems is the innovative part of this PhD dissertation. These problems can have infinitely many solutions constituting non convex or even disjoint sets. Inversion is considered here as a complement to robust design in the case where the obtained optimum doesn't satisfy one of the constraints. Inverse methods then enable to solve this problem by finding several input datasets which satisfy all the constraints and a condition of proximity to the optimum. The aim is to reach a target value of the unsatisfied constraint while respecting other system constraints and the optimum proximity condition. Applied to preliminary design of high pressure compressor, this methodology contributes to the improvement and acceleration of studies currently characterized by a numerous of loopbacks which are expensive in terms of cpu-time and human resources.

Les contraintes sont les artéfacts fondamentaux permettant de donner un sens aux données. Elles garantissent que les données sont conformes aux besoins des applications. L'objet de cette thèse est d'étudier deux problématiques liées à la gestion efficace des données en présence de contraintes. Nous abordons le problème de répondre efficacement à des requêtes portant sur des données, en présence de contraintes déductives. Cela mène à des données implicites dérivant de données explicites et de contraintes. Les données implicites requièrent une étape de raisonnement afin de calculer les réponses aux requêtes. Le raisonnement par reformulation des requêtes compile les contraintes dans une requête modifiée qui, évaluée à partir des données explicites uniquement, génère toutes les réponses fondées sur les données explicites et implicites. Comme les requêtes reformulées peuvent être complexes, leur évaluation est souvent difficile et coûteuse. Nous étudions l'optimisation de la technique de réponse aux requêtes par reformulation dans le cadre de l'accès aux données à travers une ontologie, où des requêtes conjonctives SPARQL sont posées sur un ensemble de faits RDF sur lesquels des contraintes RDF Schema (RDFS) sont exprimées. La thèse apporte les contributions suivantes. (i) Nous généralisons les langages de reformulation de requêtes précédemment étudiées, afin d'obtenir un espace de reformulations d'une requête posée plutôt qu'une unique reformulation. (ii) Nous présentons des algorithmes effectifs et efficaces, fondés sur un modèle de coût, permettant de sélectionner une requête reformulée ayant le plus faible coût d'évaluation. (iii) Nous montrons expérimentalement que notre technique améliore significativement la performance de la technique de réponse aux requêtes par reformulation. Au-delà de RDFS, nous nous intéressons aux langages d'ontologie pour lesquels répondre à une requête peut se réduire à l'évaluation d'une certaine formule de la Logique du Premier Ordre (obtenue à partir de la requête et de l'ontologie), sur les faits explicites uniquement. (iv) Nous généralisons la technique de reformulation optimisée pour RDF, mentionnée ci-dessus, aux formalismes pour répondre à une requête LPO-réductible. (v) Nous appliquons cette technique à la Logique de Description DL-LiteR sous-jacente au langage OWL2 QL du W3C, et montrons expérimentalement ses avantages dans ce contexte. Nous présentons également, brièvement, un travail en cours sur le problème consistant à fournir des chemins d'accès efficaces aux données dans les systèmes Big Data. Nous proposons d'utiliser un ensemble de systèmes de stockages hétérogènes afin de fournir une meilleure performance que n'importe lequel d'entre eux, utilisé individuellement. Les données stockées dans chaque système peuvent être décrites comme des vues matérialisées sur les données applicatives. Répondre à une requête revient alors à réécrire la requête à l'aide des vues disponibles, puis à décoder la réécriture produite comme un ensemble de requêtes à exécuter sur les systèmes stockant les vues, ainsi qu'une requête les combinant de façon appropriée. / Constraints are the essential artefact for giving meaning to data, ensuring that it fits real-life application needs, and that its meaning is correctly conveyed to the users. This thesis investigates two fundamental problems related to the efficient management of data in the presence of constraints. We address the problem of efficiently answering queries over data in the presence of deductive constraints, which lead to implicit data that is entailed (derived) from the explicit data and the constraints. Implicit data requires a reasoning step in order to compute complete query answers, and two main query answering techniques exist. Data saturation compiles the constraints into the database by making all implicit data explicit, while query reformulation compiles the constraints into a modified query, which, evaluated over the explicit data only, computes all the answer due to explicit and/or implicit data. So far, reformulation-based query answering has received significantly less attention than saturation. In particular, reformulated queries may be complex, thus their evaluation may be very challenging. We study optimizing reformulation-based query answering in the setting of ontology-based data access, where SPARQL conjunctive queries are answered against a set of RDF facts on which constraints hold. When RDF Schema is used to express the constraints, the thesis makes the following contributions. (i) We generalize prior query reformulation languages, leading to a space of reformulated queries we call JUCQs (joins of unions of conjunctive queries), instead of a single fixed reformulation. (ii) We present effective and efficient cost-based algorithms for selecting from this space, a reformulated query with the lowest estimated cost. (iii) We demonstrate through experiments that our technique drastically improves the performance of reformulation-based query answering while always avoiding “worst-case” performance. Moving beyond RDFS, we consider the large and useful set of ontology languages enjoying FOL reducibility of query answering: answering a query can be reduced to evaluating a certain first-order logic (FOL) formula (obtained from the query and ontology) against only the explicit facts. (iv) We generalize the above-mentioned JUCQ-based optimized reformulation technique to improve performance in any FOL-reducible setting, and (v) we instantiate this framework to the DL-LiteR Description Logic underpinning the W3C’s OWL2 QL ontology language, demonstrating significant performance advantages in this setting also. We also report on current work regarding the problem of providing efficient data access paths in Big Data stores. We consider a setting where a set of different, heterogeneous storage systems can be used side by side to provide better performance than any of them used individually. In such a setting, the data stored in each system can be described as views over the application data. Answering a query thus amounts to rewrite the query using the available views, and then to decode the rewriting into a set of queries to be executed on the systems holding the views, and a query combining them appropriately.

Bakgrund: En stor revision av lagstiftningen för tvångsvård skedde 2008 då lagen om öppen psykiatrisk tvångsvård [ÖPT] tillkom. En av intentionerna med lagstiftningen var att användandet av tvångsåtgärder skulle minska, och patienter som får vård i ÖPT vistas i regel i sitt hem. Det finns dock bestämmelser att förhålla sig till för den som får öppen tvångsvård, vårdformen är tämligen omfattande och påverkar nästan alla aspekter av en individs vardag. Studier om vilka erfarenheter och upplevelser patienterna faktiskt har av att vårdas i ÖPT är dock sällsynta. Syfte: Att beskriva patienters erfarenheter av att vårdas i öppen psykiatrisk tvångsvård Metod: Åtta patienter som vårdas i öppen psykiatrisk tvångsvård har ingått som deltagare i studien. Det är en kvalitativ semistrukturerad intervjustudie, intervjuerna var individuella och analyserades med en manifest metod för att synliggöra patienternas egna ord om sina erfarenheter. Resultat: Resultatet beskrevs genom temat: Begränsningar och möjligheter, och visade att flertalet områden i deltagarnas liv berördes. Resultatet kunde sammanfattas i fem huvudkategorier: Att känna sig begränsad i sin vardag; Att känna vanmakt av att inte bli trodd och inte kunna påverka; Att känna sig utanför och inte förstå sina rättigheter; Att känna sig involverad av att bli sedd och hörd samt Att vårdens innehåll är viktigare än formen. Slutsats: Att vårdas i ÖPT innebär att känna sig begränsad, men slutsatsen är att denna erfarenhet till viss del kan hänga samman med otillräcklig medvetenhet hos patienter om vad ÖPT och dess villkor innebär. Vården misslyckas i vissa fall att tillgodose patienters behov av och rätt till information, och det finns uppenbara brister i att involvera både patienter liksom anhöriga i utformandet av vården, samt hur vården tar hänsyn till patienters lagliga rättigheter. Vården kan också bli bättre på att ge patienter personligt anpassad information samt tro på patientens önskan att medverka. Att patienter bjuds in till diskussion och medverkan kan öka möjligheter till förståelse och acceptans för vårdbehovet, att ges utrymme att få uttrycka sin åsikt samt ha möjlighet att påverka stärker också autonomi. Det är även betydelsefullt för patienterna att finnas i ett sammanhang, omvårdnadspersonal behöver därför tillvarata de erfarenheter som beskrivs som främjade och arbeta motiverande. Det finns positiva konsekvenser av vårdformen, såsom ökat stöd som ett resultat av tvingande samverkan. Men vi drar slutsatsen av att finns betydande brister, varför det är ett angeläget område i behov av översyn gällande hur patienters lagliga rättigheter tillgodoses.

abstract: Cities are in need of radical knowledge system innovations and designs in the age of the Anthropocene. Cities are complex sites of interactions across social, ecological, and technological dimensions. Cities are also experiencing rapidly changing and intractable environmental conditions. Given uncertain and incomplete knowledge of both future environmental conditions and the outcomes of urban resilience efforts, today’s knowledge systems are unequipped to generate the knowledge and wisdom needed to act. As such, cities must modernize the knowledge infrastructure underpinning today’s complex urban systems. The principal objective of this dissertation is to make the case for, and guide, the vital knowledge system innovations that coastal cities need in order to build more resilient urban futures. Chapter 2 demonstrates the use of knowledge systems analysis as a tool to stress-test and upgrade the Federal Emergency Management Agency flood mapping knowledge system that drives flood resilience planning and decision-making in New York City. In Chapter 3, a conceptual framework is constructed for the design and analysis of knowledge co-production by integrating concepts across the co-production and urban social-ecological-technological systems literatures. In Chapter 4, the conceptual framework is used to analyze two case studies of knowledge co-production in the Miami Metropolitan Area to better inform decisions for how and when to employ co-production as a tool to achieve sustainability and resilience outcomes. In Chapter 5, six propositions are presented – derived from a synthesis of the literature and the three empirical cases – that knowledge professionals can employ to create, facilitate, and scale up knowledge system innovations: flatten knowledge hierarchies; create plural and positive visions of the future; construct knowledge co-production to achieve desired outcomes; acknowledge and anticipate the influence of power and authority; build anticipatory capacities to act under deep uncertainty; and identify and invest in knowledge innovations. While these six propositions apply to the context of coastal cities and flood resilience, most can also be useful to facilitate knowledge innovations to adapt to other complex and intractable environmental problems. Cities must move swiftly to create and catalyze knowledge system innovations given the scale of climate impacts and rapidly changing environmental conditions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2020

Detta är en receptionsstudie om mottagandet av ett urval av Colin Nutleys filmer och serier, om hur dessa filmer togs emot av svenska kritiker. Genom en närläsning av recensioner vill denna studie forska kring hur det offentliga samtalet ser ut, samt att ta reda på om man kan koppla kritiken till auteurteorin. Studien undersöker vilka återkommande stildrag och metoder Nutley använder sig av i sitt filmskapande, samt hur kritikerna kommenterar detta i sina recensioner. Slutsatsen i denna studie besvarade hur det offentliga samtalet ser ut samt hur det går att koppla till ett auteurperspektiv.

General approach of international law to torture Abstract The prohibition of torture exists at national and international level. The author focuses only on the general approach of international law to torture. He analyzes the individual elements of the definitions of torture contained in international documents. At the same time, he does not forget to mention the cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that is inextricably linked to torture. He also highlights the importance of the threat of torture, which may under certain conditions separately constitute torture. He provides an overview of the current international regulation of the prohibition of torture enshrined not only in international human rights treaties, but also in the field of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. He also emphasizes the reflection of international regulation in the practice of individual protection mechanisms ensuring effective control over compliance with the prohibition of torture, specifically universal, European, Inter-American, African and other functioning mechanisms. Also, he places torture in the context of crimes under international law. He refers to the practice of the International Criminal Court and ad hoc criminal tribunals, which have even granted status of jus cogens to the...

The aim of my diploma thesis is to design the object of a chalet, which is intended for recreation, boarding and accommodation. The accommodation is designed for 16 people in the form of tourist accommodation. The land, on which the proposed building is located, is on a slight slope, in an uninterrupted area in the protected landscape area of Poľana. Access to the land is secured by asphalt road from the northeast side of the land. It is also accessible by a tourist route from the southeastern side. The affected area is located approximately 10 km from the nearest village Hriňová. In the past, the site was often used for recreation. At a distance of 1 kilometer is the old mountain hotel Poľana, which is out of operation, but provides only temporary accommodation. The new chalet should return tourism to this area and increase the interest of tourists. The underground floor has a separate service for servicing and borrowing sports equipment. The building has one underground floor partially embedded in the terrain, from the south side accessible for the public. Two above-ground floors are made up of CLT panels, the first serving for a restaurant and a private dwelling unit, the second one for accommodation. The underground floor is designed with concrete filling blocks. The roof is a saddle, made of wooden collar construction. On the south side of the building is a large dormer.

This Master’s Thesis deals with the design of ventilation and cooling of an under roof flat in a tenement building, built in the 1980s, and consists of five main parts. Within the first main part, the thesis is dedicated to the research of the current state of knowledge in the area ofventilation and cooling of residential premises, secondly, there is a detailed description of a particular flat, thirdly, the calculation for the optimal design of ventilation and cooling are made and, in the fourth part, suggested solutions are proposed with the following evaluation of them including the overall summary. The design of ventilation and cooling was carried out according to the design procedures with respect to the relevant standards and optimized to achieve the desired effect with respect to the requirements of the owner of a housing unit. As a solution, the ventilation of a flat by the Jablotron Futura´s ventilating unit and three variants of a flat cooling were proposed. After the evaluation of all cooling variants, the Sinclair´s multisplit system of cooling was chosen as the most suitable one.