Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Majority system'

A continual problem in Canadian politics is regional conflict. There are several reasons why the major issues in Canadian politics are regionally-defined. Some of the socio-economic variables include ethnicity and economic bases, which are reinforced by geography. Some of the political variables include the division of powers between the central and provincial governments, and the regional concentration of party representation in the central government legislature. At the level of the electorate, Canada's national political parties actually receive multi-regional support. Thus, introducing an electoral system that translates votes into seats more proportionately than the present system should increase the multiregional representation of Canada's political parties at the level of seats in the legislature. However, introducing a more proportional electoral system would probably decrease the likelihood of a party forming a majority government. Consequently, if Canada's legislators felt that executive stability through majority government was a more important normative criterion (along with whatever vested interests they might have) than a government with multiregional representation, then proposals for a more proportional electoral system will remain an academic exercise. The objective of this study was to find an alternative electoral system which satisfies both the criteria of majority government and multiregional representation. Based on the premise that the most significant independent variables affecting majority government and multiregional representation are district magnitude and geographical distribution of partisan support, it was hypothesized that Increasing the district magnitude from one to two, or from one to three, would maintain the bias in favour of and increase the multiregional representation of a large, diffuse party. The results of the study show that a district magnitude of two would provide a large diffuse party with a majority of seats for the same voter support as the present system does. In addition, DM2 rewards this large diffuse party with the seats necessary to form a minority government at a much lower voter support level than does the existing system. Thus, DM2 solves the problem of underrepresentation of regions in the government party, and is at the same time even more advantageous to a large diffuse party than is the present electoral system.
Arts, Faculty of
Political Science, Department of
Graduate

Web 2.0 has significantly transformed the way how modern society works now-a-days. In today‘s Web, information not only flows top down from the web sites to the readers; but also flows bottom up contributed by mass user. Hugely popular Web 2.0 applications like Wikis, social applications (e.g. Facebook, MySpace), media sharing applications (e.g. YouTube, Flickr), blogging and numerous others generate lots of user generated contents and make heavy use of the underlying storage. Data storage system is the heart of these applications as all user activities are translated to read and write requests and directed to the database for further action. Hence focus is on the storage that serves data to support the applications and its reliable and efficient design is instrumental for applications to perform in line with expectations. Large scale storage systems are being used by popular social networking services like Facebook, MySpace where millions of users‘ data have been stored and fully accessed by these companies. However from users‘ point of view there has been justified concern about user data ownership and lack of control over personal data. For example, on more than one occasions Facebook have exercised its control over users‘ data without respecting users‘ rights to ownership of their own content and manipulated data for its own business interest without users‘ knowledge or consent. The thesis proposes, designs and implements a large scale, robust and fault-tolerant key-value data storage prototype that is peer-to-peer based and intends to back away from the client-server paradigm with a view to relieving the companies from data storage and management responsibilities and letting users control their own personal data. Several read and write APIs (similar to Yahoo!‘s P NUTS but different in terms of underlying design and the environment they are targeted for) with various data consistency guarantees are provided from which a wide range of web applications would be able to choose the APIs according to their data consistency, performance and availability requirements. An analytical comparison is also made against the PNUTS system that targets a more stable environment. For evaluation, simulation has been carried out to test the system availability, scalability and fault-tolerance in a dynamic environment. The results are then analyzed and conclusion is drawn that the system is scalable, available and shows acceptable performance.

Sous la Ve République, la seconde chambre a été conçue par le constituant comme un soutien prédisposé au Gouvernement et au régime nouvellement établi, eu égard à l’incertitude d’une majorité parlementaire à l’Assemblée nationale. La survenue imprévue de celle-ci aboutit à un rapprochement organique mais aussi fonctionnel de l’Assemblée nationale avec le Gouvernement. La discordance fréquente des majorités parlementaires place alors le Sénat et le bicamérisme dans une position institutionnelle délicate. Devenu un acquis du système politique, le fait majoritaire s’observe incontestablement, depuis l’alternance de 1981, au sein comme entre les deux chambres et influence leur organisation, leur fonctionnement et l’exercice de leurs prérogatives constitutionnelles. Les différentes configurations majoritaires témoignent en revanche d’une certaine spécificité du Sénat du point de vue du fait majoritaire et d’un exercice effectif et non orienté de la fonction parlementaire vis-à-vis du Gouvernement. Le Sénat trouve sa justification dans sa différenciation avec l’autre assemblée et la distanciation qu’il entretient avec le Gouvernement révèle le caractère équilibré du bicamérisme de la Ve République. L’institutionnalisation d’une majorité et ses particularités dans chacune des deux chambres conduisent le droit constitutionnel et le droit parlementaire à ne pas exclure les phénomènes extra-normatifs afin d’appréhender les institutions politiques dans leur fonctionnement effectif
At the time of the Fifth Republic, the second chamber was devised by the framers of the Constitution as a predisposed support to the Government and the newly-established regime, given the uncertainty of a parliamentary majority within the National Assembly. The unexpected arrival of such a majority led to a closer organic and functional relationship between the National Assembly and the Government. The frequent lack of harmony between parliamentary majorities then put the Senate and the bicameral system in a delicate institutional position. Having become an established right of the political system, majority rule has clearly been observed since the 1981 power changeover, both inside either chamber and between them. It also affects their organisation, the way they operate and exercise their constitutional prerogatives. However, the different majority configurations show a certain specificity of the Senate from the majority rule point of view and in the actual and non-oriented exercise of its parliamentary function in relation with the other chamber, and its distancingfrom the Government reveals the well-balanced nature of the Fifth Republic's bicameralism. As that majority became institutionalised, and because of its specificities in ether chamber, constitutional law and parliamentary law were led not to exclude non-normative occurences in order to gain an understanding of the way political institutions actually work

Image segmentation is important with applications to several problems in biology and medicine. While extensively researched, generally, current segmentation methods perform adequately in the applications for which they were designed, but often require extensive modifications or calibrations before used in a different application. We describe a system that, with few modifications, can be used in a variety of image segmentation problems. The system is based on a supervised learning strategy that utilizes intensity neighborhoods to assign each pixel in a test image its correct class based on training data. In summary, we have several innovations: (1) A general framework for such a system is proposed, where rotations and variations of intensity neighborhoods in scales are modeled, and a multi-scale classification framework is utilized to segment unknown images; (2) A fast algorithm for training data selection and pixel classification is presented, where a majority voting based criterion is proposed for selecting a small subset from raw training set. When combined with 1-nearest neighbor (1-NN) classifier, such an algorithm is able to provide descent classification accuracy within reasonable computational complexity. (3) A general deformable model for optimization of segmented regions is proposed, which takes the decision values from previous pixel classification process as input, and optimize the segmented regions in a partial differential equation (PDE) framework. We show that the performance of this system in several different biomedical applications, such as tissue segmentation tasks in magnetic resonance and histopathology microscopy images, as well as nuclei segmentation from fluorescence microscopy images, is similar or better than several algorithms specifically designed for each of these applications. In addition, we describe another general segmentation system for biomedical applications where a strong prior on shape is available (e.g. cells, nuclei). The idea is based on template matching and supervised learning, and we show the examples of segmenting cells and nuclei from microscopy images. The method uses examples selected by a user for building a statistical model which captures the texture and shape variations of the nuclear structures from a given data set to be segmented. Segmentation of subsequent, unlabeled, images is then performed by finding the model instance that best matches (in the normalized cross correlation sense) local neighborhood in the input image. We demonstrate the application of our method to segmenting cells and nuclei from a variety of imaging modalities, and quantitatively compare our results to several other methods. Quantitative results using both simulated and real image data show that, while certain methods may work well for certain imaging modalities, our software is able to obtain high accuracy across several imaging modalities studied. Results also demonstrate that, relative to several existing methods, the template based method we propose presents increased robustness in the sense of better handling variations in illumination, variations in texture from different imaging modalities, providing more smooth and accurate segmentation borders, as well as handling better cluttered cells and nuclei.

Este trabalho procura compreender como funcionam as coalizões que sustentam o Executivo no Brasil, com um olhar direcionado ao processo legislativo, ou seja, à forma como leis são processadas no interior do Poder Legislativo. Acredito que a formação de coalizões implica na divisão de poder e de responsabilidade sobre o conjunto de políticas, ou seja, implica que todos os partidos que compõem a coalizão participam e influem no resultado final do processo decisório. Pretendo, através da análise do processo de produção das leis, identificar em que moldes se dá o acordo entre os partidos no tocante a políticas específicas. Privilegio as medidas introduzidas e vetadas pelo Executivo para, por meio destas, mostrar como se dá concretamente este acordo.
This work seeks to understand the coalitions that support the Executive Power in Brazil, focusing the legislative process, which means, focusing how the laws are produced inside the Legislative Power. The assumption is that forming coalitions implies sharing power and responsibilities over the broad set of policies. In other words, it implies that the parties composing the coalition participate and influence the results of the decisionmaking process. By analyzing the legislative process, the aim is to identify the terms of the parties agreement concerning policies. The emphasis is on the bills introduced and vetoed by the Executive, assuming that they reveal this agreement.

The Republic of South Africa entered into a new constitutional dispensation in 1994. As part of this new constitutional dispensation, a new electoral system, i.e. the closed-list proportional representative electoral system, was adopted. This electoral system was accepted for elections on a national level of representatives for the National Assembly and has certain advantages and disadvantages. Some political scientists, political parties and opinion formers are of the opinion that this electoral system brings about poor contact between the representatives in the National Assembly (Parliament) and the voters. Critics are also of the opinion that party leaders obtain too much power within this electoral system, in that the parties appoint candidates to the candidate lists. In elections, voters vote for specific political parties and therefore do not have a choice with regard to who their representatives are. The result is that South Africa adheres to the representative aspect of democracy, but is lacking with regard to the accounting of representatives to voters. The legitimacy of Parliament is impaired by this defect. The aim of this study is to provide a critical analysis and investigate alternative frameworks of the South African electoral system and its functioning on a national level. In the analysis it is determined to what extent the South African electoral system meets the criteria set for an electoral system to ensure the legitimacy of Parliament, a sustainable representative democracy and an accountable government in the long term in the country. This analysis and evaluation was used to determine whether the existing closed-list proportional representative electoral system is the most suitable electoral system for South Africa and, if not, to identify and analyse an alternative electoral system for South Africa. The analysis entails a literature overview analysis of electoral systems. From the study it appears that modern democracies use a wide variety of different electoral systems. There is consensus that no single best electoral system exists which could be used by all countries, since every country has its distinctive circumstances and an electoral system’s functioning and outcomes are affected by it. In this study, twelve different electoral systems are identified with specific advantages and disadvantages. Criteria were set with which electoral systems had to comply in order to promote democracy and ensure the legitimacy of Parliament. These criteria require that electoral systems have to promote and ensure broad representation, accessible and meaningful elections, reconciliation, stable and effective government, accountability of government, accountability of representatives, promotion of political parties, opposition and oversight, sustainability of the electoral process, and international standards. The listed criteria were placed in order of priority according to those which are the most important in the current South African circumstances. In accordance with this, an evaluation model was drawn up which was quantified in order to calculate the extent to which every electoral system met the requirements and priority order. In determining the order of priority of the requirements in the criteria, the historical circumstances of South Africa, of discord, conflict, racial hatred, riots and suspicion between races, were taken into account. When applying the evaluation model to the twelve different electoral systems, it was found that the current closed-list proportional representative electoral system is the most suitable electoral system for South Africa and should be retained. In terms of the criticism of the current electoral system, the conclusion drawn is that electoral systems cannot ensure the measure of accountability of representatives. It is ensured by the internal rules and discipline of the political parties they represent. The contribution of electoral systems to the accountability of representatives is to ensure that voters have a choice between more than one candidate, or more than one political party at a following election. Furthermore, electoral systems also do not appoint candidates in an election; the respective political parties appoint them. In any appointment of candidates, the leadership and party bureaucracy will play a specific role, regardless of the type of electoral system.
Thesis (PhD (Political Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Les explications politiques de la fin de la monarchie de Juillet demandent à être reconsidérées. L’historiographie, s’appuyant sur les témoignages des acteurs qui l’ont combattue a insisté sur le refus du roi d’accorder la réforme électorale et parlementaire, refus appuyé par le cabinet ministériel dirigé par Guizot et par la Chambre des députés. La Charte de 1830 définissait le cadre d’un régime où le roi avait sa place et où le gouvernement devait chercher l’appui et le concours des chambres parlementaires. Dans ces conditions, le pouvoir exécutif devait obtenir l’assentiment des assemblées pour mener sa politique. Le refus de la réforme s’explique alors par l’obtention d’une majorité parlementaire acquise au gouvernement par des moyens peu avouables (élections manipulées, corruption, pressions de toutes sortes sur les députés) et la présence massive de députés fonctionnaires a priori dociles et obéissants. Était-ce vraiment le cas ? La dernière Chambre des députés élue en 1846 voit une victoire ministérielle incontestable plus fondée sur les effets du suffrage censitaire que par des manipulations. Le comportement de cette majorité durant cette courte législature révèle en fait que le cabinet s’occupa plus de composer avec les dissensions qui sont apparues en son sein que d’essayer de la diriger et de la dominer. En réalité, on en vient à se demander si Guizot, loin d’imposer son point de vue aux députés ministériels n’était pas en fin de compte le porte-parole de leurs aspirations conservatrices
The political explanations for the downfall of the July monarchy require re-examination. Relying on testimonies from the politicians who battled against it, historiography gives preference to the king’s refusal of parliamentary and electoral reform, a refusal that was backed by the ministerial cabinet under the direction of Guizot and the Chamber of deputies. The Charter of 1830 laid the foundations of a regime with a place for the king, and where the government had to solicit the assistance and cooperation of the assemblies. In these conditions, in order to conduct its policies, the executive branch had to first obtain the consent of the assemblies. The refusal of reform is thus attributed to the government’s winning the parliamentary majority by dubious means (corruption, rigged elections, and putting deputies under pressure of all sorts) and the immense presence of bureaucrats who were assumed obedient and docile. Was this really the case? The monarchy’s last Chamber of deputies, elected in 1846, reached an incontestable ministerial victory, due more to the effects of censitary suffrage than rigging. The behavior of this majority over the short course of this term of office actually reveals that the cabinet was more concerned with dissent from within than it was with trying to lead and dominate it. By this one is led to wonder if Guizot, far from imposing his point of view on ministerial deputies, wasn’t actually the spokesperson for their conservative aspirations

Le sujet central de cette thèse concerne les évolutions de la règle électorale dans les régimespost-communistes et traite de la contribution de ces évolutions à la démocratisation dessystèmes politiques de l’Europe du Sud-Est, à partir d’un échantillon d’Etats (Albanie,Bulgarie, Macédoine, Roumanie et Serbie-Monténégro). La transition démocratique et lechangement de régime impliquent la construction d’une nouvelle légitimité politique. Cettelégitimité passe par les élections qui sont au coeur de la démocratie. Ce travail cherche àcomprendre comment sont choisies les règles régissant ces élections. Le choix du systèmeélectoral est, dans une grande mesure, la conséquence de plusieurs processus. L’accent mis surles facteurs déterminants de l’adoption et de la réforme électorale permet de comprendre lesmotivations et les objectifs des évolutions de la règle électorale en Europe post-communiste.L’étude de la législation réformée et l’analyse du comportement des acteurs électorauxpermettent de constater que les leaders politiques ont très souvent contourné le sensdémocratique de la norme électorale. Dans cet échantillon d’Etats, les évolutions de la règleélectorale ont eu des conséquences relatives sur le nombre des partis politiques représentés auParlement. Le changement de régime a favorisé l’alternance des majorités électorales etparlementaires. Cette alternance démontre que les principes démocratiques des électionscontribuent à la stabilisation démocratique, même si le contexte et les enjeux politiques propresà cette région favorisent une relative instabilité des majorités parlementaires etgouvernementales
The central subject of this thesis concerns the developments of the electoral rule in postcommunistregimes and discusses the contribution of these changes to the democratization ofpolitical systems of Southeast Europe, from a sample of states (Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia,Romania and Serbia-Montenegro). Democratic transition and regime change involves theconstruction of a new political legitimacy. This legitimacy is through elections that are at theheart of democracy. This work seeks to understand how the rules are chosen these elections.The choice of electoral system is, to a large extent, the result of several processes. The focus onthe determinants of adoption and electoral reform to understanding the motivations and goalsof the developments of the electoral rule in post-communist Europe. The study of the reformedlegislation and behavior analysis of electoral allow players to see that the political leaders haveoften bypassed the democratic sense of the electoral standard. In this sample of countries,changes in the electoral rule had consequences on the number of political parties represented inParliament. Regime change has favored the alternation of parliamentary and electoralmajorities. This alternation shows that the democratic principles of elections contribute to thedemocratic stabilization, even if the context and the political stakes in this region favor a relativeinstability of parliamentary and government majority

Essa dissertação pretende debater as interpretações correntes sobre a atividade do Legislativo brasileiro. Tendo como princípio da análise a produção de leis, a proposta é observar a maneira pela qual se resolvem institucionalmente os conflitos de preferências inerentes a governos (e maiorias) multipartidários. Neste sentido, a principal contribuição é trazer novos elementos ao debate sobre como o Executivo é capaz de produzir e, mais especificamente, manter maiorias legislativas capazes de tornar o governo efetivo. Sem negar o peso das instituições e das regras internas no processo decisório, o argumento é que a manutenção da base governista e, portanto, a governabilidade, dá-se também em termos substantivos, via participação positiva do Legislativo na conformação das políticas que são aprovadas. O recorte temporal se estende de 1988, após a promulgação da Nova Constituição, até 2009. Como se verá ao longo do trabalho, apesar da lógica dominante de concentração dos poderes, está em efeito um processo de negociação constante entre os Poderes em torno da elaboração objetiva do conteúdo das leis. Para chegar a este ponto, trata-se inicialmente da questão da agenda de governo e do domínio do Executivo, com ênfase nas alterações que o Legislativo aprova nas propostas enviadas pelo Executivo ao Congresso Nacional. Depois, a questão é saber em quais instâncias legislativas (comissões ou plenário) se efetiva primordialmente a participação do Legislativo sobre essas políticas, em investigação que mostra que é nas comissões que se dá o principal canal de manifestação positiva dos parlamentares nessas propostas. Por fim, o foco se volta para a proposição de alterações, buscando demonstrar quem participa, levando o debate para os termos de coalizão de governo e de maioria e minoria parlamentar.
This dissertation intends to debate the current interpretations about the activities of the Brazilian Legislative houses. Focusing on law production, the proposal is to observe the ways in which the conflicts of interest inherent to multiparty governments (and majorities) are institutionally resolved. The main contribution is to bring new elements to the discussion about how the Executive build and, particularly, maintain legislative majorities that enable the effectiveness of the government. Without denying the importance of institutions and internal rules in the legislative process, the argumentation is that the maintenance of the government coalition, and thus, the governability, is also sustain in substantive premises, through positive participation of the Legislative in the conformation of the policies that are approved. The perimeter is from 1988, after the new Constitution promulgation, to 2009. As will be seen throughout the work, despite the dominant logic of concentration of powers, there is a process of constant negotiation between the Powers around the objective elaboration of the laws content. To reach this point, it was initially approached the topics of government agenda and Executive domain, emphasizing the changes made and approved by the Legislative in the proposal introduced by the Executive in the Congress. After that, its investigated in which legislative instances (committees or the floor) the Legislatives participation mainly occurs, in investigation that shows that the committees are the main channel of positive manifestation on those bills. Finally, the focus turn to the authorship of the alterations, in an intent to show who is participating, what leads the discussion to the terms of government coalitions and legislative majority and minority.

O sistema partidário-eleitoral brasileiro é tido como um dos mais fragmentados do mundo. As inferências para esse diagnóstico são extraídas do padrão de competição nas eleições proporcionais. O propósito da tese é estudar o sistema partidário brasileiro a partir das eleições majoritárias de 1989-2006. A tese tem como foco entender a dinâmica da competição política nessas disputas a partir da ação estratégica das elites partidárias. Do ponto de vista substantivo, o trabalho busca contribuir para o entendimento dos mecanismos que garantiram a dominância de PT e PSDB nas eleições presidenciais a partir de 1994. A tese busca demonstrar, ainda, a existência de estabilidade das clivagens políticas se tomarmos os Estados individualmente. O ponto de partida é que as eleições executivas são as mais importantes, tanto para as elites políticas como para os eleitores. Partidos políticos hierarquizam os diferentes pleitos. O argumento do trabalho é que o mecanismo central que garantiu a estabilidade da clivagem PT-PSDB foi a articulação nacional das candidaturas por meio das eleições para o governo do Estado. Esses dois partidos foram capazes de reproduzir essa clivagem nas diferentes disputas estaduais. A evidência empírica utilizada na análise é a frequência do lançamento de candidaturas dos nove maiores partidos nas eleições executivas. O custo de entrada das eleições majoritárias leva à criação de mercados eleitorais distintos no interior do sistema partidário brasileiro. O alto custo decorrente da baixa magnitude das eleições executivas torna esse mercado bastante concentrado. Assim, o padrão da competição política nas eleições majoritárias não apenas se encontra de acordo com a literatura institucionalista mas também apresenta uma estabilidade na identidade dos competidores tanto nas eleições presidenciais como, em menor medida, nas eleições para o governo estadual.
The brazilian electoral-party system is considered one of the most fragmented in the world. That diagnosis is based on the pattern of competition in proportional elections. The purpose of this thesis is to study the brazilian party system from the perspective of executive elections from 1989 to 2006. This thesis focuses on understanding the dynamics of political competition in these disputes from the strategic action of the party elites. Our central aim is to contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms that ensured the dominance of PT and PSDB in the presidential elections since 1994. This thesis seeks to demonstrate also the existence of stability of political divisions if the states are taken individually. The starting point of this work is that the executive elections are the most important for both political elites and voters. Political parties rank the different types of competition. The argument of this paper is that the central mechanism which ensured the stability of the PT-PSDB cleavage was the articulation of national contest through the elections to the government of the state. These two parties were able to reproduce the various disputes in the states. The empirical evidence used in the analysis is the frequency of the launch of applications of the nine major parties in the executive elections. The cost of entering the elections majority takes the creation of separate markets within the electoral party system in Brazil. The high costs of low executive elections make this market highly concentrated. Thus, the pattern of the executive elections is not only according to the institutionalist literature, but also shows stability in the identity of competitors both in the presidential elections and, to a lesser extent, in elections to the states governments.

This thesis focuses on the study of various algorithms for Distributed Computing and Machine Learning research areas. More precisely, the work within contains research into various communication protocols in different settings of Distributed Computing, accompanied by relevant analysis on protocol performance in time and space. These protocols are designed to operate in analogous environments using different models for communication, primarily population protocol and random walk variants. In our settings we aim to use as minimal memory as possible, achieving light weight protocols that are powerful in their capabilities and randomized as well as deterministic in nature. We also propose a novel technique of verification which enables multi-step protocols to work in synergy. These protocols generally never terminate, but converge and are difficult to disseminate results throughout the network to be used in dependent processes. With the verification technique proposed, protocols can become adaptive and stacked into a chain of dependent processes. We also provide experimental analysis of a subarea of Machine Learning, unsupervised clustering algorithms. Gaining inspiration from the agglomerative nature and techniques defined in classical hierarchical clustering as well as the Phylogenetic tree building methods, we provide a comprehensive study and evaluation of new method to agglomeratively combine `similar' data into clusters based on the general consensus of taxonomy and evaluation of clustering mechanisms.

The primary objective of this research was to identify andanalyse the challenges faced by ethnic minority studentswhile studying and building an academic career in the highereducation system of Serbia. The secondary objective was toanalyse the unconscious and conscious gender biases towardsethnic minority women, when building their academic careersand in reaching decision-making position in academia. Thetertiary objective of was to raise awareness about theincreased demand for human resources in the technical fieldsand that therefore more women should be steered towards thestudying engineering.The research was conducted based on 2192 filled inquestionnaires and 45 semi-structured interviews. Theresearch results showed that language, intersecting withgender, ethnicity and class result in a new inequality concept.It was shown that women are under-represented in technicalfields, which has its roots in gender stereotypes. Finally, itwas shown that women are less motivated to reach higherpositions in the Serbian higher education system than men.The author proposes a set of policy recommendations forsolving/mitigating the identified challenges, e.g. deconstructionof gender stereotypes via improved teachingaids in elementary and high schools, optimised Serbianlanguage teaching to eliminate the language difficulty facedat the start of their higher education; as well as the foundingof an ethnic minority research centre, which would researchthe challenges faced by ethnic minority communities.
Primarni cilj istraživanja je identifikacija i i analiza preprekau sistemu visokog obrazovanja tokom studiranja i izgradnjekarijere u akademskoj zajednici žena iz nacionalnih zajednicasa posebnim osvrtom na žene iz mađarske nacionalnezajednice. Sekundarni cilj je analiza nesvesne i svesne rodnepristrasnosti prema ženama etničkih manjina u toku izgradnjeakademske karijere i pri dosezanju visokih pozicija unutarakademije. Tercijarni cilj istraživanja je podizanje svesti otome, kako je potražnja za ljudskim resursima na tržištu radau oblasti tehničkih nauka značajna i da je stoga potrebnousmeriti veći broj žena ka tim oblastima. Istraživanje jesprovedeno pomoću 2192 popunjena upitnika i 45 polustrukturiranaintervjua. Istraživanjem je utvrđeno da jezik,koji je u intersekciji sa rodom, nacionalnošću i klasom,rezultira novim konceptom nejednakosti. Takođe je dokazanoda su žene nedovoljno zastupljene u tehničkim oblastima, štoje najvećim delom moguće pripisati rodnim stereotipima.Konačno, utvrđeno je da su žene manje motivisane dadosegnu visoke pozicije od muškaraca u sistemu visokogškolstva. Autorka predlaže skup mera za rešavanje i/iliublažavanje identifikovanih izazova, npr. dekonstrukcijarodnih stereotipa pomoću unapređenih nastavnih materijala uosnovnim i srednjim školama, prilađen program učenjasrpskog jezika za učenike iz etničkih manjina sa ciljemizbegavanja jezičke barijere na početku studija; odnosnoosnivanje centra za istraživanje statusa i izazova zajednicaetničkih manjina.

В дисертації розв’язано актуальну науково-прикладну проблему розвитку теоретичних засад комплексного забезпечення заданого рівня функціональної безпечності та надійності радіоелектронних систем відповідального призначення (РЕСВП). Розроблені засоби (методи, моделі, алгоритми та методики) дають змогу, на етапі системотехнічного проектування, визначати слабкі місця РЕСВП з точки зору функціональної безпечності. Це дає змогу проектанту обґрунтовано ввести необхідні види надлишковості (структурної, часової, функціональної), щоб підвищити, як функціональну безпечність, так і надійність РЕСВП. В дисертації, запропоновано новий метод для автоматизованого визначення різновидів непрацездатних станів. На основі цього методу запропоновано методику розроблення комплексних динамічних моделей РЕСВП у вигляді графа станів і переходів, які на відміну від існуючих, дають змогу без побудови дерева відмов, визначати як мінімальні січення, так і показники надійності РЕСВП. Для відображення взаємозв’язків між показниками функціональної безпечності і надійності відмовостійких структур, алгоритмів поведінки та стратегій технічного обслуговування запропоновано нові показники та характеристики функціональної безпечності: функція аварійності; частота потрапляння в аварійну ситуацію; ймовірність потрапляння в передаварійну ситуацію; середнє значення ймовірності існування мінімального січення. Розроблено нові моделі та методику синтезу стратегій технічного обслуговування, що дало змогу гарантовано підтримувати заданий рівень функціональної безпечності РЕСВП на етапі її експлуатації. В роботі запропоновано моделі відмовостійких РЕСВП з використанням мажоритарних структур, які на відміну від існуючих, дають змогу враховувати вплив на функціональну безпечність використання реконфігурації мажоритарної структури, дворівневої мажоритарної структури та технічного обслуговування і ремонту Розроблено методологію синтезу безпечних алгоритмів поведінки РЕСВП, в якій на відміну від існуючих, враховано вплив часової та функціональної надлишковості на функціональну безпечність РЕСВП. В диссертации решена актуальная научно-прикладная проблема развития теоретического базиса комплексного обеспечения заданного уровня функциональной отказобезопасности и надежности радиоэлектронных систем ответственного назначения (РЭСОН). Разработанные средства (методы, модели, алгоритмы и методики) позволяют на этапе системотехнического проектирования, определять слабые места РЭСОН с точки зрения функциональной отказобезопасности. Это дает возможность разработчику обоснованно вводить необходимые виды избыточности (структурной, временной, функциональной), чтобы повысить, как функциональную отказобезопасность, так и надежность РЭСОН. В диссертации, предложен новый метод для автоматизированного определения разновидностей неработоспособных состояний. На основе этого метода предложена методика разработки комплексных динамических моделей РЭСОН в виде графа состояний и переходов, которые в отличие от существующих, позволяют без построения дерева отказов, определять как минимальные сечения, так и показатели надежности РЭСОН. Для отображения взаимосвязей между показателями функциональной безопасности и надежности отказоустойчивых структур, алгоритмов поведения и стратегий технического обслуживания предложены новые показатели и характеристики функциональной безопасности: функция аварийности; частота попадания в аварийную ситуацию; вероятность попадания в предаварийное состояние; среднее значение вероятности существования минимального сечения. Разработаны новые модели и методика синтеза стратегий технического обслуживания, что позволило гарантированно поддерживать заданный уровень функциональной безопасности РЭСОН не этапе ее эксплуатации. В работе предложены модели отказоустойчивых РЭСОН с использованием мажоритарных структур, которые в отличие от существующих, позволяют учитывать влияние на функциональную отказобезопасность использование реконфигурации мажоритарной структуры, двухуровневой мажоритарной структуры и технического обслуживания. Разработана методология синтеза отказобезопасных алгоритмов поведения РЭСОН, в которой в отличие от существующих, учтено влияние временной и функциональной избыточности на функциональную отказобезопасность РЭСОН. This thesis presents the solution of the actual scientific problem of development the theoretical basis of complex maintenance of safety critical radio electronic system (SCRES) with a required level of functional safety and reliability. The developed means (methods, models, algorithms and techniques) enable an identifying the weaknesses in the SCRES design in terms of functional safety at the stage of system design. This allows an engineer to reasonably induce necessary types of redundancy (structural, temporary, functional) to increase both functional safety and reliability of SCRES. Thus, the developed tools give the opportunity to synthesize a fault-tolerant structure, behavior algorithm and maintenance strategy, which ensure that the SCRES will not fall into an emergency. Modern methods of assessing functional safety indexes are based on the determination of minimal cut sets, which show the weaknesses of the SCRES. To obtain minimal cut sets, these methods use fault trees, dynamic fault trees, event trees, or binary decision diagrams. However, the known methods don’t allow to take into account the impact on the SCRES functional safety of fault-tolerant majority structures with reconfiguration, fault-tolerant two-tier majority structures, maintenance strategies, temporary and functional redundancy in behavior algorithms. Also, a significant disadvantage of existing methods is that they don’t give the opportunity to obtain both functional safety indexes and reliability indexes on the basis of a single model. So, it can lead to the condition when the reliability of the SCRES is reduced with the induction of additional tools for increasing functional safety. Also, these methods aren’t suitable enough for solving synthesis tasks via multivariate analysis for a short period time, what is very important at the stage of system design. In the dissertation, a new method is proposed for automated definition of types of inoperable states. This method provides a classification of inoperable states of the SCRES according to the level of critical failures and allows obtaining trajectories of accidents. Based on this method, a new technique is proposed for development of complex dynamic models of SCRES in the form of a graph of states and transitions. This technique, unlike the existing ones, allows determining both minimal cut sets and reliability indexes of SCRES without constructing appropriate fault tree. To reflect the relationship between indexes of functional safety and reliability of faulttolerant structures, behavior algorithms and maintenance strategies, new indexes and characteristics of functional safety are proposed: the accident function; frequency of fall into an accident state; probability of fall into a pre-accident state; the average value of the probability of a minimal cut set existence. New models of strategies for planned and preventive maintenance and emergency recovery have been developed to take into account the impact of SCRES downtime on functional safety indexes during maintenance and repair procedures. These models enabled the development of method for synthesizing a maintenance strategy which guarantees to maintain a required level of functional safety of the SCRES. New method was developed to calculate the average value of the probability of the minimal cut set existence that gives an opportunity to solve the problem of minimizing impact of latent failures on the functional safety. This method makes it possible to obtain dependable values of the probabilities of the minimal cut sets existence for cases when the minimal cut set contains only latent failures or a combination of latent and active failures. New models of fault-tolerant SCRESs with majority structures were developed, which, in contrast to the existing ones, allow to take into account the impact of the use of reconfiguration of the majority structure, two-tier majority structure, maintenance and repair on the functional safety. The proposed models make it possible to solve the problem of synthesis of fault-tolerant systems for SCRES with a required level of functional safety and appropriate level of structural redundancy, that is especially important for onboard information and control systems of aircrafts, including unmanned vehicles, for which mass and size restrictions are critical. New methodology for the synthesis of safe behavior algorithms of the SCRES was developed, which, in contrast to the existing ones, takes into account the impact of time and functional redundancy on the functional safety of SCRES. This methodology shows the way to achieve a required level of probability of the task execution with the minimum value of the frequency of accidents.

Faced with the constant challenge of adapting to different contexts, the current understanding of transitional justice held by worldwide institutions, NGOs, donors and successor administrations cannot rely on international law alone as a framework of reference for the design and implementation of transitional processes - although the identification, interpretation and uses of local norms is inherently problematic. This thesis considers the tension between different rules applicable to transitional justice and explores their coexistence in the context of legal pluralism, drawing on comparative law perspectives to investigate the distinctive concept of legal truth and the victims’ right to it, within the broader transitional aims of accountability, justice and reconciliation after a history of serious abuse. The particular focus on Muslim-majority legal systems provides further appreciation of how transitional justice can be relocated from international law to a given local setting, discussing the difficulties in doing so and the possible solutions with reference to Islamic law and jurisprudence. Rejecting the universalist v relativist deadlock in favour of an interpretation of international law which is permeable to local practices (also channeled through states), this thesis argues that comparative law can help uncover the legal formants of a system and piece together a global set of rules for transitional justice which rely on different normative provenances. Based on a victim-centred approach to transitional justice and the acknowledgement of structural power struggles within societies facing radical political change, this work argues that local and global norms of transitional justice have the potential to cross-fertilise in delivering the key transitional aims. Cultural ownership of rules should not be limited to international actors, national or community leaders: if local unofficial norms resonate with victims and survivors of abuse, provided they do not contrast the transitional objectives, they are likely to contribute to given processes, and in turn influence the global paradigm of transitional justice.

Ett sedan länge betraktat problem inom politisk ekonomi är om, och i så fall i vilken utsträckning, politiska partier påverkar ekonomiska policyutfall. Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det rådande politiska majoritetsförhållandet i kommunfullmäktige har en effekt på kostnaderna för och kvaliteten inom en verksamhet som kommit att hamna allt högre på den politiska dagordningen under coronapandemin – äldreomsorgen. Studien tar avstamp i teoretiska utgångspunkter i form av medianväljarteoremet och citizen candidate-modellen. I syfte att estimera effekten av den politiska majoriteten på äldreomsorgen tillämpas en skarp regression discontinuity (RD) design för två kostnadsmått och två kvalitetsmått; antalet fallskador bland personer 80 år och äldre per 1 000 invånare samt brukarbedömning avseende äldreomsorg i särskilt boende. Resultatet visar att en vänsterblocksmajoritet är associerad med drygt 23 procent högre kostnader för äldreomsorg i kronor per invånare samt drygt sex procentenheters lägre nivå i fråga om brukarbedömning än jämfört med andra partikonstellationer. Resultaten är dock inte stabila över olika ekonometriska specifikationer och ytterligare studier skulle därmed behövas för att säkrare kunna belägga ett eventuellt samband.

This research is an enquiry to find an electoral formula that conforms to Canadian constitutional values. Three core values that are pertinent to the issue of electoral systems are identified: democracy, diversity, and efficiency. Each of these core values is divided into different aspects. These aspects will form the backbone of the evaluation of different electoral systems in this work. I will begin with an evaluation of the plurality model of elections, which is currently used in Canada. I will demonstrate that many of the attributes of the current system are not in tune with Canadian constitutional values, in particular with the progressive interpretation that the Supreme Court of Canada has given to the right to vote as enshrined in Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Although the interpretation of the right to vote will be the main thrust of the constitutional scrutiny in this work, attention will also be given to other pertinent rights such as equality rights, minority rights, and the freedom of expression. Next, I will examine provincial electoral reform initiatives that were initiated in five Canadian provinces. All of these initiatives - three of which were put to referenda and eventually defeated - proposed adopting a variant of proportional representation. Accordingly, I will evaluate proportional systems according to the intended values. I will conclude that these systems have problems of their own and they also cannot strike a fine balance between competing values. In the final stage, I will make a new proposal for elections to the Canadian Parliament. First, I will demonstrate that majority systems are better candidates to attain the envisioned values. Then I will introduce a new variant of the majority model, which I call a majority-preferential two-round variant. I will demonstrate that this new variant will outperform the other variants in the attainment of values if adopted for elections to the House of Commons. Finally, I will argue that the combination of a House of Commons elected through the majority-preferential formula and a proportionally elected Senate will result in a more balanced approach to the relevant constitutional values.

Mestrado em Contabilidade, Fiscalidade e Finanças Empresariais
Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo avaliar a instabilidade do sistema fiscal português. Foram observados 492 diplomas que alteraram os impostos: IRS,IRC,IVA,RITI, IS,IMI,IMT,CA,EBF. Esses diplomas continham 3178 alterações aos impostos referidos anteriormente. Com esses impostos foi feita uma análise às variáveis: ano de eleições, tipo de governo, governos de coligação e governos de maioria, de modo a verificar-se o impacto das variáveis no tipo de política praticada. A análise foi realizada de três maneiras distintas: OLS com o número de diplomas alterados por ano, OLS com o número de artigos alterados por ano e Poisson com número de artigos alterados por mês. Com este estudo concluiu-se que, apesar de terem existido mais governos de PSD, que são os governos de PS que mais alteram as finanças públicas em Portugal. O ano de eleições não tem impacto significativo uma vez que apresentam menor número de alterações face aos restantes anos. Tanto os governos de coligação como os de maioria levam a um maior número de alterações e de diplomas alterados.
The main goal of this work is to assess the instability of the Portuguese tax system. In the present study, 492 statutes which modified taxes have been analyzed: VAT, corporate tax, income tax, real estate tax. The said statutes gave rise to 3178 changes to these taxes. The following variables have been analyzed: election year, sort of government, coalition government, majority government; with the purpose of establishing their impact on the policy committed form. The analysis was carried out in three different ways: OLS with the number of statutes changed by year, OLS with the number of articles changed per year and Poisson with the number of articles changed per month. From this study, the following patterns derive: although there have been more PSD governments, PS governments seem to provide more changes across Portugal's finances; moreover, election years seem to display no significant impact, since they present small changes in comparison to non-election years; finally, both coalition and majority governments change more statutes and, thus, more articles per year.

This paper deals with the problem of monitoring the occurrence of the minority events in thermodynamic systems by using thermodynamic sensors based on the principle of balance equilibrium. The basis of this work is to find new sensor arrangement of thermodynamic sensors that allows work in a wide range of workloads of monitored system while maintaining the required sensitivity. Newly designed balance circuit for the sensor arrangement with four active sensors allows active setup of the default balance equilibrium and power matching of the sensor to its immediate surroundings in the system. By designing and optimization of balance circuit was achieved measuring the output response and its conversion to digital format. This enabled numerical analysis of output signal, algorithmic processing of the results and generate a feedback control signal to adjust the equilibrium conditions.

Cette thèse vise à interroger les enjeux et les modalités de la construction d’une majorité politique en Russie à partir des années 2000, après une décennie marquée par la faiblesse de l’exécutif central et l’éclatement de l’offre politique. Créé en 2001 pour soutenir Vladimir Poutine, la situation du parti politique Russie unie dans le paysage politique peut sembler paradoxale. Dominant à tous les échelons du pouvoir depuis 2003, il demeure néanmoins un instrument entre les mains des dirigeants de l’exécutif, sans réelle autonomie ou influence. Fort officiellement de 2 millions d’adhérents, Russie unie est peu ancré dans la société russe et compte très peu de militants. L’analyse de la tension créée entre la dynamique d’institutionnalisation du parti et, en même temps, son maintien sous le contrôle de l’Etat se présente comme un point d’entrée privilégié pour envisager, dans une perspective comparative, la production des mécanismes d’assujettissement d’une partie du personnel politique russe. Cela implique de s’intéresser à la mise en place et aux modalités concrètes de fonctionnement de Russie unie, d’observer les pratiques des acteurs engagés dans ces activités et de s’interroger sur les significations qu’ils leur donnent. Cette démarche suggère alors de montrer comment l’étude de ce processus spécifique de fabrication partisane est susceptible de nourrir une réflexion plus générale et comparative sur la façon dont les dynamiques de différenciation ou de rapprochement entre les partis et l’Etat contribuent à produire différentes formes d’investissements politiques. Pour cela l’étude des partis en tant qu’institution ainsi que de la sociologie historique comparative permet de montrer les tensions créées par le processus de différenciation sous contrôle de Russie unie et la façon dont celui-ci accompagne la mise en place de nouveaux mécanismes de domination
This thesis aims to examine the issues and modalities of building a political majority in Russia from the 2000s, after a decade marked by the weakness of the Central Executive and party system fragmentation. Created in 2001 to support Vladimir Putin, the situation of the political party United Russia in the political landscape may seem paradoxical. Dominant at all levels of power since 2003, it still remains a tool in the hands of leaders of the Executive, without any real autonomy or influence. United Russia, including officially 2 million members, is not rooted in Russian society and has very few militants. The analysis of the tension between the dynamics of the party’s institutionalization and, at the same time, its maintaining under control of the State appears as a privileged entry point for analyzing, in a comparative perspective, the production of mechanisms of subjections of Russian elected officials. This implies to study the establishment of United Russia and its concrete functioning, the practices of the actors involved in these activities and the meaning they give to these practices. Thus this approach suggests to show how the study of this specific process of party construction is likely to feed a more general and comparative reflection on how the dynamics of differentiation or reconciliation between parties and the State contribute to produce various forms of political investments. For this purpose, studying the party as an institution as well as the comparative historical sociology can show the tensions created by the process of differentiation under the control of United Russia and also how it supports the establishment of new domination mechanisms

La présente recherche se propose d'analyser et de comparer les articulations juridiques et politiques réalisées entre le système du gouvernement responsable et la fonction de chef de l'état dans deux républiques européennes très peu étudiées en France, la Grèce et l’Irlande. Il s'agit de tenter d'apporter une contribution à la théorie générale et à la pratique des régimes politiques de l’Europe contemporaine, en plaçant l'attention sur une problématique constitutionnelle majeure dans les républiques parlementaires mais relativement négligée. Malgré la primauté incontestable du gouvernement majoritaire, il n'en reste pas moins qu'il laisse subsister, dans les régimes républicains, des virtualités dualistes longtemps en sommeil, mais que des évolutions récentes paraissent vouloir réveiller ou au moins remettre en question dans certains pays. En d'autres termes, la fonction présidentielle, qui semblait condamnée à une inéluctable neutralisation dans les systèmes dominés par le premier ministre, tend à (re)trouver une vocation sinon gouvernementale, du moins centrale. Par-delà leurs différences structurelles, culturelles et politiques initiales, les constitutions grecque de 1975 (révisée de façon significative en 1986) et irlandaise de 1937 offrent deux exemples permettant de tester l'hypothèse retenue
The present thesis proposes an analysis on comparative basis of the legal and political articulations that take place between the system of the responsible government and the presidential function in these two parliamentary democracies, not thoroughly studied in France. The aim of this research is a contribution to the general theory and practice of the political systems in modern Europe, stressing out aspects of an important constitutional topic for parliamentary republics which is still relatively neglected. Although the supremacy of the majoritarian government is not put into question, it can be still claimed that within the republican political systems, certain dualist implications, that remained for long inactive, tend to be reactivated again in some countries by recent events. In other words, the presidential function that seemed to be condemned to an inescapable neutralisation within the systems dominated by the political figure of the Prime minister tends to find once again a reason of being, if not governmental, at least central. Beyond their initial structural, cultural and political differences, the Greek Constitution of 1975 (revised significantly in 1986) and the Irish Constitution of 1937 offer two fruitful examples of the constitutional dynamics that could test the above-mentioned assumption

This study aims at exploring the social, affective and cognitive variables that would be related to the use of the address form usted in Chilean Spanish. Specifically, we refer to the use that can be observed in interactions between Chileans residing in Sweden. A particular aspect of this situation is that, while the majority group almost exclusively use the form that is commonly associated with solidarity (in this case the Swedish pronoun du), the minority group referred to maintains the pronoun that normally is associated with power, distance, formality and politeness: usted. In other words, while the equivalent in Swedish of usted (ni) is seldom used in majority language, the opposite is observed in the minority language object of study. We believe that the motives for the use of usted in this minority context are more complex than they appear to be. Consequently, an alternative hypothesis has been worked out with reference to theories within the area of Social Psychology. On this basis the following main hypothesis was formulated: Individuals representing the minority group in ethnic contact situations tend to increase their identification with the minority group in order to be admitted by and adhere to this group, if they feel that they are rejected by the majority group. The form usted is not the result of a fortuitous situation, nor can it be explained by the fact that it is the normal usage in the native country, but that it fulfils a strategic objective: to mark the affiliation with the minority group. The method has consisted in grouping together and correlating factors pertaining to the environment, the agent and the guest according to the Ecological Triad, the interaction of which contributes to the appearance of the observed behaviour that underlies this study. The statistical analysis enabled us to verify what was put forward in the hypothesis.

碩士
國立成功大學
電機工程學系
88
In this Thesis, a new watermark system that is based on the discrete cosine transformation is proposed. Traditional watermark systems lose its hidden copyright information easily after serious attacks. The proposed algorithm provides a new method that embeds multiple copyright information into the middle band as invisible watermark. During watermark detection, the majority voting is adopted to extract the embedded information. To accommodate the characteristics of different images, the proposed algorithm uses adaptive watermark strength factor to strike a good balance between robustness and perceptual invisibility. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm can prevent the infirmity that traditional watermark systems suffer seriously: the security would weaken because of the publication of watermark infrastructure. The experimental results show that the proposed technique can preserve a higher image quality and withstand various common image operation attacks. Especially, it can withstand JPEG lossy compression under 1:18 or higher compression ratio. Most of the copyright information may survive under cropping attack and some basic affine transformations.

In this dissertation I advance a new, regime style, governing cycle theory to account for the constitutional origins and political dynamics of new majority formation. It is these periodic attempts to reorder politics and overcome conditions of entropy that I argue best account for the broad contours of American political development. Using a historical institutional approach, I argue that the U.S. Constitution’s durable separation of powers design interacts with America’s two party system to unintentionally structure political conflict in ways that makes it almost impossible for anyone to address the inevitable build up of entropy in the political system. Recurrently, this challenges partisan leaders to renew politics via the formation of a new governing majority. Partisan leaders accomplish this goal by completing three tasks: 1) shifting the main axis of partisan conflict; 2) assembling a new majority coalition that allows for effective control of federal governing institutions; and, 3) locking-in partisan priorities and advantage through institutionalization of a new governing regime. Through case study analysis, I demonstrate that the dynamics of new governing majority formation can play out in either a straightforward or a protracted manner depending on whether or not partisan leaders initially succeed or fail to accomplish these tasks. This leads to new interpretations of the crucial “System of 1896” and “Reagan Revolution” cases, which allows me to argue for the superiority of my new cyclical theory and to conclude that the governing cycle contains the American polity’s best opportunity to reorder and revitalize itself.
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碩士
輔仁大學
電子工程學系
97
In this paper our design integrates multiple sensors to construct a sensor group and count their states by using a majority voting mechanism (MVM). This method is helpful in decreasing the miss rate of a surveillance system because the majority compensates for sensing errors and thus enhances the reliability of a surveillance system in the monitoring area. To cover a large sensing area, we use multiple sensor groups which have a majority voting mechanism and are able to help each other. If over half the sensors in a sensor group sense a temperature change, the majority voting circuit sends a trigger signal to the surveillance system. The result of the statistics decides whether the embedded surveillance system is to be triggered which then records the images of an intruder in an efficient way. Our design uploads images or videos to Web pages in real time and allows the user to monitor the area through the Internet. We also research into the characteristics of PIR, and to design the ultrasonic sensors to complement the PIR sensors. We construct a more complete sensor network by complex sensor groups, and more reliable external sensor circuits.

碩士
東吳大學
法律學系
102
The right of self-determination is one of the basic principles of the Civil Code of Republic of China. At right now, there is legal guardianship in the adult guardianship system only. A person who has become subject to the order of the commencement of guardianship has no capacity to perform any juristic act. It might injure human right in some of cases. The adult guardianship system should provide another option for the people who have the intention of lacking capacity in the future. The principle should have chance to determine his/her living style, the ways of health care, and property management in future by making an authorization contract of agency. This study will focus on the necessity and the feasibility to establish the self-determinant majority custody system in our country. The thesis consists of 5 chapters. In the first one, it is an introduction, includes the sections of background and objectives, the methods of study and the organization of thesis. In the second, there are discussions to declare the existing systems did not fit the full requirements of the people who might lack capacity to make decision in the future due to the mental issues. In the third chapter, introduces the similar operations of the self-determinant majority custody system in the other countries, and prove the self-determinant majority custody system is feasible and workable. In the fourth chapter, there are critiques for the recommendations within the conclusion of the study report which was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice in 2011. Finally, the last chapter is the conclusion of the study. It is necessary to establish a proper self-determinant majority custody system. The feasibility had been well proved by the operations in other countries. The government should kick off to build it up as soon as possible under the proper and conscientious considerations.

碩士
國立交通大學
資訊管理研究所
102
In a dynamic environment, data are changed almost instantly. It is difficult and time-consuming to find the correlations between data. At the same time, concept drift might happen along with data change in the dynamic environment. In order to stimulate the highly correlated data to support better prediction and detect concept drift, this thesis proposes a dynamic weighted majority (DWM) algorithm based on distributed dynamic data-driven Application system (DDDAS) to solve the issue. The proposed algorithm tries to find the correlations between data by DWM. Moreover, it is capable of detecting concept drift. Both simulation data and real world (HAITAUNG typhoon) data are used to validate the proposed algorithm. The result show the proposed has up to 89% accuracy in simulation case and have 90% accuracy in real world case.

碩士
國立臺灣海洋大學
海洋法律研究所
104
ABSTRACT When human longevity is normally observed in modernized societies in the past, people tend to attribute it to the well-practice in medicine as well as social welfare provided by the societies. A better adult guardianship systems is more and more important. The right of self‐determination is one of the basic principle of the Civil Code in all over the world . However , so far in Taiwan there is legal guardianship in our adult guardianship system only. Compare to other modernized countries, which established voluntary guardianship system already, comply with the principle of the right of self‐determination. Therefore the evolution of Taiwan’s guardianship system is keen to keep up with the path of those modernized countries. It is appropriate to update our system with measures which are suitable for our society and culture need. This study compare and analyze the current adult guardianship system in Taiwan with similar ones in Germany, Japan and also in the United Kingdom. The goal of this study is to make suggestions in law making, by invesgating the necessity and to establish the self-determinant majority custody system in our country, for the purpose of protecting, assisting, and respecting adult wishes and feelings. Keywords: adult guardianship system , self-determinant majority custody system , legal guardianship, the right of self‐determination

Discussion of changes in the electoral system to the Senate of the Czech Republic The diploma thesis deals with the discussion of changes in the electoral system for the Senate. The work reflects draft laws to change the electoral system in the Senate from the past, interviews with representatives of political parties represented in both chambers of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. Furthermore, interviews with experts in the field of constitutional law and political science. The various proposals were analyzed and their principle and effects explained. The last part formulates the overall outputs of political parties and movements, experts and the opinion of the author of the diploma thesis. Key words: Senate, electoral systems, political system, constitutional system, change of electoral system, majority electoral systems, Czech Republic, parliament.

The objective of the Ph.D. thesis "Analysis of the Elections and Electoral Behaviour to the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic" is an analysis of Senate elections on a micro- level of districts in regular terms from 1996 to 2012, including by-elections. Data file comprises a total of 2153 candidates and their election results at the municipal level aggregated to five defined categories by number of registered voters. Analysis is mainly focused on the differences in electoral support for candidates in municipalities up to 999 voters, in municipalities between 1000 and 4999 voters, in municipalities between 5000 to 9999 voters, in municipalities over 10 000 voters and finally in districts covering territory of the four largest cities in the Czech Republic (the Capital City of Prague and cities Brno, Ostrava and Pilsen). In the theoretical part, the Ph.D. thesis presents the Senat as the second house of Parliament of the Czech Republic and deals with the majority run-off system. A quantitative research of Senate elections is performed in the analytical part, where electoral success of candidates conditioned by their political parties, socio-economic and political circumstances in districts and individual profile of candidates is examined. The analysis describes differences among...

In a distributed system many underlying nodes or processes work in tandem to come up with a solution to a given problem. In this report, we are concerned with distributed systems where each node is given the same problem, and the system uses the solutions provided by the nodes to formulate the answer. In our case, the problem is a simple question with two possible answers, and only one answer is correct. The system is asked the question at the beginning of a round. Once the system answers the question, the round is over, and the system is given the correct answer, then another round is started. To answer the question, the system uses the answers from each node, and based on the weight of the individual nodes, it decides on its answer. In this report, we experiment with multiple ways to update the weights of the underlying nodes, and aim to study the impact of certain limitations and parameters imposed on the system; such as the maximum accuracy of the underlying nodes and the number of underlying nodes.
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Σκοπός της παρούσας διδακτορικής διατριβής είναι η ανάπτυξη ενός ολοκληρωμένου συστήματος υποστήριξης της διάγνωσης (Decision Support System - DSS) με χρήση μεθόδων εξόρυξης δεδομένων για την ταξινόμηση επιχρισμάτων βιοψίας με λεπτή βελόνα (Fine Needle Aspiration - FNA). Δύο κατηγορίες επιλέχθηκαν για τα δείγματα FNA: καλοήθεια και κακοήθεια. Το σύστημα αυτό αποτελείται από τις ακόλουθες βαθμίδες: 1) συλλογής δεδομένων, 2) επιλογής δεδομένων, 3) εύρεσης κατάλληλων χαρακτηριστικών, 4) εφαρμογής ταξινόμησης με χρήση μεθόδων εξόρυξης δεδομένων. Επίσης, βασικός στόχος της παρούσας διδακτορικής διατριβής ήταν η βελτίωση της ορθής ταξινόμησης των ύποπτων επιχρισμάτων (suspicious), για τα οποία είναι γνωστή η αδυναμία της μεθόδου FNA να τα ταξινομήσει. Το σύστημα εκπαιδεύτηκε και ελέγχθηκε σε σχέση με το δείγμα για το οποίο είχαμε ιστολογικές επιβεβαιώσεις (ground truth). Για περιπτώσεις οι οποίες χαρακτηρίστηκαν ως μη κακοήθεις από την FNA, και για τις οποίες δεν είχαμε ιστολογικές επιβεβαιώσεις, το δείγμα προέκυψε από την συνεκτίμηση και άλλων κλινικών, εργαστηριακών και απεικονιστικών εξετάσεων. Στα πλαίσια της παρούσας διδακτορικής διατριβής συλλέχθηκαν εξετάσεις FNA θυρεοειδούς από το Εργαστήριο Παθολογοανατομίας του Α’ Τμήματος Παθολογίας της Ιατρικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών. Δεδομένου ότι το εν λόγω εργαστήριο λειτουργεί και σαν κέντρο αναφοράς, σημαντικός αριθμός των δειγμάτων εστάλησαν εκεί και από άλλα Εργαστήρια Παθολογοανατομίας για επανέλεγχο. Το αρχειακό υλικό ήταν πολύ καλά ταξινομημένο σε χρονολογική σειρά αλλά ήταν σε έντυπη μορφή. Αρχικά πραγματοποιήθηκε η ανάλυση απαιτήσεων για τη δομή και το σχεδιασμό της βάσης δεδομένων. Με βάση τα στοιχεία από την τεκμηριωμένη διάγνωση σχεδιάστηκε και αναπτύχθηκε προηγμένο σύστημα για την κωδικοποίηση και αρχικοποίηση των δεδομένων. Με τη βοήθεια του σχεδιασμού και ανάλυσης απαιτήσεων αναπτύχθηκε και υλοποιήθηκε η βάση δεδομένων στην οποία αποθηκεύτηκαν τα δεδομένα προς επεξεργασία. Παράλληλα, με το σχεδιασμό της βάσης έγινε και η προεργασία για το σχεδιασμό και την ανάλυση απαιτήσεων του γραφικού περιβάλλοντος εισαγωγής στοιχείων. Λαμβάνοντας υπόψη ότι το σύστημα θα μπορούσε να χρησιμοποιηθεί και πέρα από τα πλαίσια της παρούσας διδακτορικής διατριβής λήφθηκε μέριμνα ώστε να παρέχεται ένα φιλικό και ευέλικτο προς το χρήστη περιβάλλον. Σύμφωνα με τη μεθοδολογία προσέγγισης η οποία ακολουθήθηκε προηγήθηκε στατιστική ανάλυση των 9.102 συλλεχθέντων δειγμάτων FNA ως προς τα κυτταρολογικά χαρακτηριστικά τους και τις διαγνώσεις. Οι κυτταρολογικές διαγνώσεις των συγκεκριμένων δειγμάτων συσχετίστηκαν με τις ιστολογικές διαγνώσεις, στοχεύοντας στον υπολογισμό της πιθανής επίδρασης και συμβολής κάθε κυτταρολογικού χαρακτηριστικού σε μια ορθή ή ψευδή κυτταρολογική διάγνωση, έτσι ώστε να προσδιοριστούν οι πιθανές πηγές λανθασμένης διάγνωσης. Τα δείγματα τα οποία περιείχαν μόνο αίμα ή πολύ λίγα θυλακειώδη κύτταρα χωρίς κολλοειδές θεωρήθηκαν ανεπαρκή για τη διάγνωση. Οι βιοψίες εκτελέσθηκαν είτε στο Α’ τμήμα του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών (οι περισσότερες από τις περιπτώσεις με ψηλαφητούς όζους) είτε αλλού (κυρίως κάτω από την καθοδήγηση του κέντρου αναφοράς). Τα δείγματα επιστρωμένα σε πλακάκια, στάλθηκαν στο κέντρο αναφοράς από διάφορα νοσοκομεία, με διαφορετικά πρωτόκολλα σχετικά με τα κριτήρια εκτέλεσης βιοψίας FNA σε θυρεοειδή. Μετεγχειρητικές ιστολογικές επαληθεύσεις ήταν διαθέσιμες για 266 ασθενείς (κακοήθειες και μη). Το χαμηλό ποσοστό ιστολογικών επαληθεύσεων οφείλεται στην ετερογενή προέλευση των ασθενών και στην έλλειψη ολοκληρωμένης παρακολούθησης και επανελέγχου των ασθενών. Για την αξιολόγηση των δεδομένων χρησιμοποιήθηκαν περιγραφικά στατιστικά μεγέθη όπως, μέση τιμή, τυπική απόκλιση, ποσοστά, μέγιστο και ελάχιστο. Έγιναν επίσης και χ2 δοκιμές επιπέδου σημαντικότητας διαφόρων παραμέτρων για να ελεγχθεί η πιθανή συσχέτιση ή η ανεξαρτησία. Για τη συσχέτιση των κυτταρολογικών και των ιστολογικών διαγνώσεων και την αξιολόγηση των εργαστηριακών ευρημάτων, πέραν των περιγραφικών στατιστικών μεγεθών χρησιμοποιήθηκαν και υπολογισμοί της ευαισθησίας, της ειδικότητας, της συνολικής ακρίβειας, της αρνητικής και θετικής αξίας πρόβλεψης (negative and positive predictive value). Προκειμένου να καθοριστεί εάν μια κατηγορία ασθενειών συσχετίζεται ή όχι με συγκεκριμένες κυτταρολογικές παραμέτρους εφαρμόστηκε μέθοδος ελέγχου στατιστικής σημαντικότητας σε επίπεδο 5% (p < 0,05). Η διαδικασία ακολουθήθηκε για κάθε κατηγορία ασθενειών ή συνδυασμό τους και για κάθε παράμετρο των κυτταρολογικών και αρχιτεκτονικών στοιχείων της κυτταρολογικής διάγνωσης. Τα αποτελέσματα της στατιστικής ανάλυσης επέτρεψαν το διαχωρισμό των δεδομένων σε καλοήθη, κακοήθη, νεοπλασματικά, ύποπτα για κακοήθεια και οριακά με χαρακτηριστικά γνωρίσματα μεταξύ ενός καλοήθους και ενός νεοπλασματικού. Στην συνέχεια αναπτύχθηκε σύστημα υποστήριξης της διάγνωσης χρησιμοποιώντας εξειδικευμένες μεθόδους εξόρυξης δεδομένων. Το σύστημα αποτελείται από τέσσερις βαθμίδες. Η πρώτη βαθμίδα αυτού του συστήματος είναι το περιβάλλον Συλλογής Δεδομένων στην οποία τα δεδομένα αποθηκεύονται στη βάση δεδομένων. Η Δεύτερη Βαθμίδα αυτού του συστήματος αφορά στην Επιλογή Δεδομένων. Σύμφωνα με την καταγραφή των απαιτήσεων, την εισαγωγή και τη ψηφιοποίηση των στοιχείων, δημιουργήθηκαν 111 χαρακτηριστικά για κάθε ασθενή (record). Τα περισσότερα χαρακτηριστικά είχαν τιμές δυαδικού τύπου, αποτυπώνοντας την ύπαρξη ή μη του κάθε χαρακτηριστικού, ενώ κάποιες άλλες είχαν τιμές τύπων αριθμών ή αλφαριθμητικών χαρακτήρων. Από τα 111 χαρακτηριστικά επιλέχθηκαν 60 χαρακτηριστικά τα οποία περιγράφουν τη δομή των επιχρισμάτων ενώ δημιουργήθηκαν άλλα 7 χαρακτηριστικά τα οποία αφορούσαν στην ομαδοποίηση άλλων χαρακτηριστικών. Η Τρίτη Βαθμίδα του συστήματος αφορά στην εύρεση των Κατάλληλων Χαρακτηριστικών. Λόγω του αρχικά υψηλού αριθμού χαρακτηριστικών παραμέτρων (67 ανά περίπτωση), ήταν απαραίτητο να εξαλειφθούν οι χαρακτηριστικές παράμετροι που συσχετίζονταν γραμμικά ή δεν είχαν καμία διαγνωστική πληροφορία. H μέθοδος επιλογής χαρακτηριστικών εφαρμόστηκε πριν από την ταξινόμηση, με γνώμονα την ανεύρεση ενός υποσυνόλου των χαρακτηριστικών παραμέτρων που βελτιστοποιούν σε ακρίβεια τη διαδικασία ταξινόμησης. Εφαρμόστηκε η τεχνική επιπλέουσας πρόσθιας ακολουθιακά μεταβαλλόμενης επιλογής (SFFS). Ο αριθμός των δειγμάτων που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν είναι 2.036 (1.886 καλοήθειες και 150 κακοήθειες). Εξ αυτών, όλες οι κακοήθειες είναι ιστολογικά επιβεβαιωμένες. Επίσης, 140 καλοήθειες είναι ιστολογικά επιβεβαιωμένες με επάρκεια υλικού. Οι υπόλοιπες 1.726 καλοήθειες είναι επιβεβαιωμένες με συνεκτίμηση κλινικών, εργαστηριακών και απεικονιστικών ιατρικών εξετάσεων (υπέρηχοι κ.λπ.). Από τα 2.036 δείγματα, το 25% χρησιμοποιήθηκε για την επιλογή χαρακτηριστικών παραμέτρων, δηλαδή 37 περιπτώσεις κακοήθειας (Malignant) και 472 περιπτώσεις καλοήθειας (Non Malignant). Από την εφαρμογή της τεχνικής (SFFS) επιλέχθηκαν τελικά 12 χαρακτηριστικά ως βέλτιστα για την ταξινόμηση των δεδομένων FNA σε καλοήθη και κακοήθη. Η Τέταρτη βαθμίδα επεξεργασίας είναι η Εφαρμογής Ταξινόμησης με χρήση Μεθόδων Εξόρυξης Δεδομένων ή Ταξινομητής. Για το σκοπό αυτό, επιλέχθηκε να εφαρμοστεί μια πληθώρα αξιόπιστων, καλά επιβεβαιωμένων και σύγχρονων μεθόδων εξόρυξης δεδομένων. Το σύστημα εκπαιδεύτηκε και ελέγχθηκε σε σχέση με το δείγμα για το οποίο είχαμε ιστολογικές επιβεβαιώσεις (ground truth). Η ανεξάρτητη εφαρμογή τεσσάρων αξιόπιστων μεθόδων, Δέντρων Αποφάσεων (Decision Trees), Τεχνιτών Νευρωνικών Δικτύων (Artificial Neural Network), Μηχανών Στήριξης Διανυσμάτων (Support Vector Machine), και Κ - κοντινότερου γείτονα (k-NN), έδωσε αποτελέσματα συγκρίσιμα με αυτά της FNA μεθόδου. Περαιτέρω βελτίωση των αποτελεσμάτων επιτεύχθηκε με την εφαρμογή της μεθόδου πλειοψηφικού κανόνα (Majority Vote - CMV) συνδυάζοντας τα αποτελέσματα από την εφαρμογή των τριών καλύτερων αλγορίθμων, ήτοι των Νευρωνικών Δικτύων, Μηχανών Στήριξης Διανυσμάτων και Κ - κοντινότερου γείτονα. Η τροποποιημένη μέθοδος τεχνητών αυτοάνοσων συστημάτων (Artificial Immune Systems – AIS) χρησιμοποιήθηκε για πρώτη φορά στην ταξινόμηση και παρουσίασε ιδιαίτερα βελτιωμένα αποτελέσματα στην ταξινόμηση των επιχρισμάτων τα οποία χαρακτηρίζονται ύποπτα (suspicious) από τους ειδικούς και αποτελούν το αδύναμο σημείο της μεθόδου FNA. Αυτές οι περιπτώσεις υπόνοιας αποτελούν ένα πολύ δύσκολο κομμάτι για τη διάκριση μεταξύ των καλοηθειών και των κακοηθειών, ακόμα και για τους πλέον ειδικούς. Επειδή όλα τα περιστατικά που χαρακτηρίζονται από την βιοψία FNA ως υπόνοιες αντιμετωπίζονται κλινικά σαν κακοήθειες, η εφαρμογή των αλγοριθμικών μεθόδων βελτιώνει αισθητά τη διαχείριση αυτών των περιπτώσεων μειώνοντας τον αριθμό των άσκοπων χειρουργικών επεμβάσεων θυρεοειδεκτομών.
The Aim of present thesis is the development of an integrated system for supporting diagnosis (Decision Support System - DSS) using for categorizing FNA biopsy smears. Two categories were selected for the FNA smears: malignant and nonmalignant. The system is constituted by the following stages of 1) data collection, 2) data selection 3) choice of suitable clinical and cytological features, 4) application of data mining method for the categorization of FNA biopsy smears. Furthermore a fundamental objective of the doctoral thesis was the improvement of suspect smears (suspicious) categorization, for the latter FNA Biopsy has a known restriction. The system had been trained and checked in relation to the sample that histologic evaluation existed (ground truth). For smears that characterized as nonmalignant by FNA and histological data we’re not available, complementary clinical, laboratory and imaging evaluations took into account in order to create the sample. Τhe smears that were available in this thesis, were collected from FNA biopsies in Pathologoanatomy Laboratory, A’ Pathology Department, Medical School of Athens University. Given that the above referred laboratory is a reference center, an important number of FNA smears were sent to it from other laboratories for cross check. The examination files were sorted in chronological order, but there were in paper forms. The requirements for the formation and the design of database system were collected. Based on the material of the diagnosis an improved system was designed and developed for data initialization and coding. The database was developed based on the design and analysis of requirements; in this database data were stored for further investigation. Analysis of the graphical user interface design was performed in parallel to the database design. Taking into account that the system might be used after the completion of thesis, the graphical user interface was designed in order to be user friendly and flexible environment. According to the methodological approach that was followed, the various cytological characteristic of 9102 FNA smears aspired among 2000-2004 was analyzed statistically. The cytological reports cross correlated with histological diagnoses, aiming to calculate the effect or contribution of each cytological characteristic to a false or true cytological diagnosis and to find the possible sources of erroneous diagnosis. The smears that have blood or a few follicular cells without colloid were characterized as insufficient for further diagnosis. The aspiration was performed either in Α’ department of Athens University (most of the cases with palpable nodules) or elsewhere (mainly under guidance of the reference center). The acquired smears being send to the reference center from various hospitals with different protocols concerning criteria to perform a thyroid FNA. Histological reports were available for 266 patients. The small number of histological verifications was due to the heterogeneity and the lack of patients files. For evaluating of data, descriptive statistic values were used like mean, standard deviation, percentage, maximum and minimum. In addition to that χ2 tests of significance were performed in order to check possible correlation or independence. For correlating cytological and histological diagnosis and evaluating laboratory findings, apart from the descriptive statistic parameters also calculated sensitivity, specificity, total accuracy, negative predictive value and positive predictive value. Method of statistical significance in the level of 5% (p < 0,05) was applied in order to specify if a disease was correlated to a cytological parameter. Those checks were performed for each disease category in correlation to any cytological parameter. Statistical analysis divided the smears into nonmalignant, malignant, neoplasms, suspicious for malignancy and borderline. A diagnosis support system was implemented using data mining methods. The system is consisted of four stages. The First stage of the system is the Data Collection environment, which stores the data to the database. The Second stage of this system concerns the Selection of Data. User requirements concluded that 111 characteristics are needed to describe each patient (record). Most of them have binary values, presenting existence and not existence, other have alphanumeric and number values. Among them 60 were selected and 7 more are produced from grouping other characteristics. The final analysis reveals that 67 characteristics of the smears are capable for describing the structure of smears in general. The Third stage of system concerns the Selection of Best Characteristics. Due to the high number of attributes (67 per case), it was essential to eliminate the characteristics that are connected linearly or do not bring diagnostics information. The choice of characteristics applied before the classification, having the aim of discovering a subset of characteristics that optimizes the process of classification. The technique of Sequential Float Forward Search (SFFS) was applied. The number of patients that used was 2,036 (1886 non malignancies and 150 malignancies). Among them all malignancies were histologically confirmed. In addition to that 140 no malignancies were histologically confirmed in correlation to evaluation of clinics, laboratorial and medical image actions (ultrasounds etc.). Among 2.036 smears the 25% used for characteristics selection, 37 smears of Malignant and smears of Non Malignant. The Sequential Float Forward Search (SFFS) Technique, choose the best 12 elements that they reveal high performance to FNA data categorization. The Fourth stage is the Application of Classification using Data Mining Methods or in other words data mining method. For this aim a set of reliable, well confirmed but also modern methods applied. In addition to that the system was trained and was checked using the sample with histological verifications (ground truth). The independent application of four reliable methods, Decision Trees, Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine, and k-NN, resulting to comparable outcomes concerning those of FNA. However, further improvement was achieved with the application of Majority (Majority Vote - CMV) using of previous results of three algorithms Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine, and k-NN. The modified Artificial Immune System (AIS) was applied for first time. AIS presents particularly improved results for the categorization of smears, which are characterised “suspicious” by the experts and is a known weakness of FNA method. These cases constitute a very difficult part for the discrimination among non-malignant and malignant, even for a specialist. Since all these cases are faced clinically using FNA as malignancies, the application of an improved algorithmic method improves accordingly the management of these cases by decreasing the number of useless surgical thyroid operations.

碩士
國立高雄應用科技大學
電子工程系碩士班
101
This research designed a set of interactive digital teaching platform for vocational high school students. To enahnce students’ participation in the digital teaching platform, the research designed an APP of the Android system platform, which can be accessible to the teaching platform through mobile devices to do interactive learning. The content of the teaching platform was based on professional curriculum, constructing interactive webpages with ASP and enabling students to do professional curricular e-learning. With the increasing popularity of smart phone devices, more and more students use smart phones and mobile devices. This research took adrangage of the openness of the Android system and the publicity of software development environment to develop an APP connecting with the teaching platform. Students can do m-learning with smart hand-held devices to raise their learning interest and motivation. Through the teaching platform, they choose chapters of the courses, study with teachers’ teaching schedule, and understand the professional curriculum more easily. This resarch conducted teaching experiments on students in traditional classroom learning, digitial learning, and blended learning, respectively. The result discussed the differences and effectivenss of the three teaching strategies.

This thesis analyses minority shareholder protection in common law and civil law systems. Principally, this is done by examining closely-held corporations created under Canadian, Ukrainian and German laws. It examines minority shareholder protection by critically analyzing voting and related rights, the right to information; withdrawal from the company, expulsion right, the dissolution of a company, derivative action and direct action. The thesis also summarizes problems in the civil law system that cannot be solved in favor of minority shareholders. In addition to the above-mentioned, it provides possible solutions to the problems of minority shareholder protection in the civil law system, that is, methods by which to increase protection for minority shareholders against the majority and/or directors. Specifically, it focuses on cumulative voting, common law director’s duties, derivative action and the oppression remedy. Moreover, this thesis analyzes the possibility of incorporating some institutions into civil law legislation and considers obstacles to implementing them.