Telomeres are located at the ends of all eukaryotic chromosomes and provide the stability of chromosomes. They consist of simple tandem hexametric repeats and play an important part in cell longevity. In human lymphocytes, telomeres shorten progressively with age. Mental retardation (MR) is a disorder with intelligence quotient below average (IQ < 70) and impairment in adaptive skills. IQ by Weschsler Adult Intelligence Scales revised (WAIS-R) appears to peak in the of 30-34 and thereafter decline gradually. Life expectancy is defined as the number of years remaining to be lived. The overall increase in life expectancy indicates an improvement in longevity. The life expectancy of MR patients is shorter than that of the general population. The purpose of this study is to predict the relationship between telomere length and IQ in normal control as well as to analyze the differences among the average telomere length for the control and subgroups of MR cases. Fifty-nine patients who met the fourth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) criteria for mental retardation were included in this study. According to the degree of intellectual impairment, MR patients were divided into 4 types: mild, moderate, severe, and profound. Fifty-two female nursing students aged 19-21 were recruited as normal controls. DNA was isolated from their lymphocytes. Telomere length was analyzed by Southern blot hybridization. The length was calculated by the Photo CaptMw Version 99.03 software. Correlation between the telomere length and IQ in normal control was performed by the Pearson product-moment correlation. One-way ANOVA was used to test if any differences existed among the normal, mild, moderate, severe, and profound MR. Analyses displayed that there were no correlations between telomere length and IQ including PIQ(r=-0.001; p=0.922), VIQ(r=-0.033; p=0.817), TIQ(r=-0.026, p=0.857), and no difference existed among the normal and subgroups of MR cases. Results obtained from this study indicated that life expectancy of MR patients may approximate to that of the general population if live in the well environment.

In this thesis, I will apply Michel Foucault¡¦s knowledge/power theory to discuss gender politics in two Renaissance plays ¡V Ben Jonson¡¦s Epicoene or The Silent Woman and William Shakespeare¡¦s The Taming of the Shrew. The first chapter aims to delineate Foucault¡¦s discursive discipline and its exertion in Renaissance male-female relations. According Foucault, discourses are functional and regulative: they powerfully frame sciences and knowledges that have effects upon our souls and actions. Thus, ¡¥truth¡¦, or the so-called ¡¥self-evident¡¦ and ¡¥commonsensical¡¦ empowers articulators to discipline and control others. Gender discourses in the name of masculine or feminine ¡¥nature¡¦ are similarly little more than instrument of domination. Precisely, the phallo-centrical discourse of Renaissance age empowers contemporary men by subjecting, or explicitly formulating and shaping the ¡¥feminine nature¡¦ of obedient silence. The patriarchal assessment codifies two genders -- one subordinate to the other -- as a key element in its patriarchal view of the social order, and buttressed its gendered division of power. In other words, what lies beneath the discourse is patriarchal consideration for male domination. As long as contemporary women keep silent, the normative power would enable their fathers and husbands to regulate ¡¥womanly conducts¡¦ of all occasions. Then, I would examine how Morose and Epicoene wield disciplinary power by setting up certain ¡¥behavior norms¡¦ in Epicoene. Morose¡¦s ¡¥truth¡¦ of having his family members hold their tongue and make signs has been internalized by Mute: Mute is hence drilled to self-discipline himself to answer the family head¡¦s questions in rigidly prescribed signs or gestures. Mute reifies the formidable outcome of silent conformity to ¡¥reality¡¦: he takes for granted the ¡¥natural¡¦ routine of body language. However, Morose¡¦s wife Epicoene keeps correcting Morose¡¦s mistakes to reinforce her version of ¡¥right¡¦ and ¡¥wrong¡¦. In order to rehabilitate Morose, Epicoene and other characters further label his insanity in public. The conclusion they draw results from the same complicity to put badness to Morose¡¦s ¡¥crazy¡¦ will to discourses and goodness to the ¡¥reasonable¡¦ tolerance of their opinions. In The Taming of the Shrew, Katherina is frightening to the Renaissance males equally because of her undisciplined behavior, or her automatic discourse and self-assertion. The male characters in the play try their best to eschew from Katherina so as to defend themselves against the fear that they will not be capable of keeping ¡¥domestic order¡¦. In one word, talkative women as Katherina are frightening to Renaissance men because of their threat to the original ¡¥orders¡¦. Petruchio hence invalidates Katherina¡¦s judgments ever since they first meet: the purpose of his deliberate pretense of misunderstanding her words is to grant her discourses no influence on him since disciplinary power lies in influencing others¡¦ deeds. He vanquishes resistance from Kate by making her conformable to his ¡¥knowledge¡¦¡Xfemale obedience to male domination. Katherina¡¦s new identity is thus constructed according to Petruchio¡¦s ¡¥rules¡¦: by labeling goodness to female obedience and badness to female transgression, he thus produces another Kate obedient to his intentions. From this aspect, the gender politics between Petruchio and Katherina is essentially a battle for discourse; disciplinary power lies in voicing and reinforcing particular ¡¥truths¡¦. In one word, systematic knowledges are never power-free, but quite the contrary.

Many methods can be used to predict the secondary structure of an RNA sequence. One of the methods is the dynamic programming approach. However, the dynamic programming approach takes too much time. Thus, it is not practical to solve the problem of long sequences with dynamic programming. RAGA (RNA Sequence Alignment by the Genetic Algorithm) is a genetic algorithm to align two similar sequences that the structure of one of them (master sequence) is known and another (slave sequence) is unknown. We can predict an RNA sequence by analyzing several homologous sequence alignment. In this thesis, we add an operator to mutate the residues of the base pairs in the master sequence and realign two sequences again. We compare our operator with other traditional operators, such as crossover and mutation. The experiment results show that our new operator gets a big improvement.

Reliable communication in the hypercube with the safety vectors is discussed in this thesis. In the hypercube, the safety levels and the safety vectors, used to guide fault-tolerant routing, is a kind of limited global information based methods. The transmission cost of the safety vectors is O(n2) for each node. For increasing the probability of optimal routing, we attempt to increase the transmission cost for obtaining more information. We propose two methods with O(n3) transmission cost in each node, the enhanced safety vector and the spanning safety vector, to achieve the goal. We also propose the probabilistic safety vector which provides the probability of optimal routing for each node. Finally, our experiments show that the routing with the enhanced safety vector is more reliable than the safety vectors and the extended safety vectors, which were propose the probabilistic safety vector.

This thesis adopts a historical point of view to analyze Wordsworth¡¦s concept of education in relation to nineteenth-century English educational reform. In the nineteenth century, mass education, following the pace of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, became an indispensable social issue. Among the diverse educational reform movements, Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell¡¦s monitorial system was most prominent in that they provided a pedagogy that utilized teaching assistants to achieve efficiency and sufficiency in a large classroom and thus fulfilled the need of large-quantitative education of the age. Featured by efficiency, sufficiency, and materialism, the monitorial system best embodies the spirit of the Industrial Age. On the other hand, Wordsworth insisted on a community-based educational philosophy that urged people of his age to cherish old moral concepts such as harmonious, affectionate, and cooperative communal spirit inherent in traditional rural communities. The poet, representing the eighteenth-century rural tradition, observed with anxiety those children raised in an materialistic atmosphere. He delineates in his major works, especially The Excursion, a social vision that provides the best environment for the development and education of a spiritually mature man in which nature, man, and society are incorporated into a harmonious unity. This insistence on the old rural tradition distanced Wordsworth from his contemporary educational reformers and caused him to withdraw from his original support of the monitorial system.

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The multiple sequence alignment (MSA) is a fundamental technique of molecular biology. Biological sequences are aligned with each other vertically in order to show the similarities and differences among them. Due to its importance, many algorithms have been proposed. With dynamic programming, finding the optimal alignment for a pair of sequences can be done in O(n2) time, where n is the length of the two strings. Unfortunately, for the general optimization problem of aligning k sequences of length n , O(nk) time is required. In this thesis, we shall first propose an efficient group alignment method to perform the alignment between two groups of sequences. Then we shall propose a clustering method to build the tree topology for merging. The clustering method is based on the concept that the two sequences having the longest distance should be split into two clusters. By our experiments, both the alignment quality and required time of our algorithm are better than those of NJ (neighbor joining) algorithm and Clustal W algorithm.

It has been a trend that employees of new generations pay much more attention to individual leisure than before. Job is no longer the only essential issue for lives, work-life balance has become a leading topic for human resource management. Compare to foreign enterprises which usually provide well employee benefits, the local companies in Taiwan, especially for the high-tech industry, had also attach importance to provide well-planned employee benefits to foster a dynamic and fun work environment for employees. Production or performance is not the only successful factor for running companies, keeping talents within organizations is significant as well. No matter economic or non-economic employee benefits, the business owners never stop thinking for providing innovative and various employee benefits to attract talents. It was obviously for high-tech industry that the employees are under high job pressure and intense competition. Moreover, to have well employee benefit programs for employees could not only help employees achieving work-life balance to improve well-being for reducing business cost, but also enhance labor relations which is no doubt the substantial element for successful companies. This study examined the relationship between employee benefits and labor relations through questionnaire survey on 228 employees from the first 1500 companies in Taiwan. The results indicated that: 1. Employee benefits satisfaction was positively significant to labor relations. 2. Employee communication was positively significant to employee benefits satisfaction and labor relations. 3. Employees with different personal features show different satisfaction at employee benefits, except for marital status and job position. 4. Employees with different personal features show different satisfaction at labor relations, except for seniority and job position. 5. No differences were found within different industries toward employee benefit satisfaction.

This thesis studies and develops an agent-based on-line monitoring and diagnosis system. With the advent of industry facilities toward high speed and automation, the on-line monitoring and diagnosis mechanism becomes important. The traditional time-based maintenance strategy cannot consider all practical conditions of machines. The accidental breakdowns may occur unexpectedly. In order to make production line automation, yield high production rate, and enhance the ability of market competition, an effective way is to ensure facilities running smoothly and to reduce the manpower monitoring. Meanwhile in order to reduce the cost of development and enhance the feature of reuse, we use a communication interface to integrate and interact information among developed softwares. Through this system, users may easily monitor and diagnose the machines on production lines through user interfaces, such as display of machine status, malfunction alarming, trend chart, waveform, spectrum, cepstrum and envelop spectrum, etc. A model consisting of domain knowledge and behaviors of cooperative multi-agents to integrate various facilities and functions in different production lines is proposed. In addition, via a Web-based environment, it releases the restrictions by of temporal and regional isolation. The system provides a real-time and dynamical operation circumstance and can meet the needs of different levels of users. Consequently, it is of greatly help to lower the cost of personnel and enhance the ability of market competition.

The enforcement of reusability and shareability of products or components based on new technology standards for simulation and modeling is of paramount importance. In this thesis we first utilize DMSO HLA as the basic fundamental to design a customization environment for Web-based modeling and simulation. The environment is able to offer the interoperability framework between a broad spectrum of simulation paradigms, including both real-time and logical time models and to support a huge number of participants. To fulfill the goal we proposed three main tasks to be done. First, we proposed the mechanism to reduce the communication overhead and to balance the information consistency among large participants by incorporating a three-level control mechanism and Dynamic Filtering Strategy (DFS) within HLA RTI. In the second task, we proposed a load balancing algorithm to efficiently utilize the resource over the network environment. At the last task we use Java 3D to build a virtual reality application on the environment.