Cost-plus-loss analyses of forest inventory strategies based on kNN-assigned reference sample plot data

Abstract

Osuuspankkiryhmän OP 100 Plus –ryhmästrategian vaikuttavuus jäsenosuuspankkien menestykseen

Pro gradun tavoitteena on selvittää Osuuspankkiryhmän OP 100 Plus –ryhmästrategian vaikuttavuus jäsenosuuspankkien menestykseen. Tutkielma perustuu kvantitatiivisten analyysimenetelmien käyttöön. Aineistona on 66:n jäsenpankin kvantitatiiviset tiedot niiden taloudesta ja kvalitatiivinen luokiteltu tieto näiden pankkien ryhmästrategian implementoinnista. Käytännössä regression avulla voidaan löytää matemaattinen malli, joka soveltuu likimääräisesti kuvaamaan edellä mainittujen tekijöiden välistä riippuvuutta. Jotta regressiota on voitu käyttää, sekä pankin menestykselle että strategian implementoitumiselle on määritelty määrää kuvaavat mittarit. Molemmat mittarit ovat suhteellisia ja ne mahdollistavat vain 66:n tutkitun pankin keskinäisen vertailun.

D’abord, ensuite, enfin et 0, De plus: Organisation textuelle par des séries linéaires dans les articles de recherche

The study examines the signalling of text organisation in research articles (RA) in French. The work concentrates on a particular type of organisation provided by text sequences, i.e. structures organising text to items of which at least some are signalled by markers of addition or order: First… 0… The third point… In addition… / Premièrement… 0… Le troisième point… De plus… By indicating the way the text is organised, these structures guide the reader in the reading process so that he doesn’t need to interpret the text structure himself. The aim of the work is to study factors affecting the marking of text sequences. Why is their structure sometimes signalled explicitly by markers such as secondly, whereas in other places such markers are not used? The corpus is manually XML-annotated and consists of 90 RAs (~800 000 words) in French from the fields of linguistics, education and history. The analysis highlights several factors affecting the marking of text sequences. First, exact markers (such as fist ) seem to be more frequent in sequences where all the items are explicitly signalled by a marker, whereas additive markers (such as moreover) are used in sequences with both explicitly signalled and unmarked items. The marking of explicitly signalled sequences seems thus to be precise and even repetitive, whereas the signalling of sequences with unmarked items is altogether more vague. Second, the marking of text sequences seems to depend on the length of the text. The longer the text segment, the more vague the marking. Additive markers and unmarked items are more frequent in longer sequences possibly covering several pages, whereas shorter sequences are often signalled explicitly by exact markers. Also the marker types vary according to the sequence length. Anaphoric expressions, such as first, are fairly close to their referents and are used in short sequences, connectors, such as secondly, are frequently used in sequences of intermediate length, whereas the longest sequences are often signalled by constructions composed of an ordinal and a noun acting as a subject of the sentence: The first item is… Finally, the marking of text organisation depends also on the discipline the RA belongs to. In linguistics, the marking is fairly frequent and precise; exact markers such as second are the most used, and structures with unmarked items are less common. Similarly, the marking is fairly frequent in education. In this field, however, it is also less precise than in linguistics, with frequent unmarked items and additive markers. History, on the other hand, is characterised by less frequent marking. In addition, when used, the marking in this field is also less precise and less explicit.

Delay reduction in courts of justice – possibilities and challenges of process improvement in professional public organizations

Delays in the justice system have been undermining the functioning and performance of the court system all over the world for decades. Despite the widespread concern about delays, the solutions have not kept up with the growth of the problem. The delay problem existing in the justice courts processes is a good example of the growing need and pressure in professional public organizations to start improving their business process performance.This study analyses the possibilities and challenges of process improvement in professional public organizations. The study is based on experiences gained in two longitudinal action research improvement projects conducted in two separate Finnish law instances; in the Helsinki Court of Appeal and in the Insurance Court. The thesis has two objectives. First objective is to study what kinds of factors in court system operations cause delays and unmanageable backlogs and how to reduce and prevent delays. Based on the lessons learned from the case projects the objective is to give new insights on the critical factors of process improvement conducted in professional public organizations. Four main areas and factors behind the delay problem is identified: 1) goal setting and performance measurement practices, 2) the process control system, 3) production and capacity planning procedures, and 4) process roles and responsibilities. The appropriate improvement solutions include tools to enhance project planning and scheduling and monitoring the agreed time-frames for different phases of the handling process and pending inventory. The study introduces the identified critical factors in different phases of process improvement work carried out in professional public organizations, the ways the critical factors can be incorporated to the different stages of the projects, and discusses the role of external facilitator in assisting process improvement work and in enhancing ownership towards the solutions and improvement. The study highlights the need to concentrate on the critical factors aiming to get the employees to challenge their existing ways of conducting work, analyze their own processes, and create procedures for diffusing the process improvement culture instead of merely concentrating of finding tools, techniques, and solutions appropriate for applications from the manufacturing sector

Simulation of Solid Processes by Aspen Plus

Solid processes are used for obtaining the valuable minerals. Due to their worth, it is obligatory to perform different experiments to determine the different values of these minerals. With the passage of time, it is becoming more difficult to carry out these experiments for each mineral for different characteristics due to high labor costs and consumption of time. Therefore, scientists and engineers have tried to overcome this issue. They made different software to handle this problem. Aspen is one of those software for the calculation of different parameters. Therefore, the aim of this report was to do simulation for solid processes to observe different effect for minerals. Different solid processes like crushing, screening; filtration and crystallization were simulated by Aspen Plus. The simulation results are obtained by using this simulation software and they are described in this thesis. It was noticed that the results were acceptable for all solid processes. Therefore, this software can be used for the designing of crushers by calculating the power consumption of crushers, can design the filter and for the calculation of material balance for all processes.