In the present research, I apply a construal level framework to understanding when people gravitate towards all-at-once (e.g., four hours in one day, $100 lump-sum) versus distributed (one hour a day for four days, $20 per month for 5 months) philanthropy. I argue that more abstract construals increase the weight that people place on idealistic concerns, whereas more concrete construals increase the weight that people place on pragmatic concerns, and that people expect allocating time and money in an all-at-once versus distributed manner to satisfy idealistic and pragmatic concerns to different degrees. Chapter 1 of this dissertation focuses specifically on volunteerism and compliance to specific requests (i.e., an all-at-once or a distributed request, but not both). Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated people expected all-at-once and distributed volunteerism to satisfy idealistic and pragmatic concerns, respectively. The final two studies in Chapter 1 showed that situationally induced differences (Study 3) and individual differences (Study 4) in construal level were associated with behavioral compliance to a volunteer request. Specifically, people who adopted a more abstract construal were more likely to comply with an all-at-once (versus distributed) request. Conversely, people who adopted a more concrete construal were more likely to comply with a distributed (versus all-at-once) volunteer request. Chapter 2 explored the role of construal level in compliance with allocated monetary requests. Study 5 demonstrated that people expect all-at-once and distributed donations to satisfy idealistic and pragmatic concerns, respectively. Study 6 demonstrated that a real-world relevant manipulation of construal level influenced behavioral compliance to a donation request. Specifically, people who were led to adopt a more abstract construal were more likely to comply with an all-at-once (versus distributed) request, whereas people who were led to adopt a more concrete construal were more likely to comply with a distributed (versus all-at-once) donation request. Study 7 provided evidence that people’s baseline preference is for all-at-once requests, highlighting the utility of a more concrete construal in increasing receptivity to distributed requests. Finally, although many organizations do not offer a distributed donation option, Study 8 showed that it does not necessarily hurt an organization to include it among the options. However, preliminary evidence is inconclusive as to whether offering distributed contribution option can increase the likelihood and amount that people donate in the long run. Chapter 3 concludes the dissertation with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the findings, as well as potential future research directions. / text

published_or_final_version / Applied Geosciences / Master / Master of Science

The aim of this project is to study the impact of future sea level rise on coastal development in Hong Kong and to review current marine design work standard of Port Work Design Manual. Projection of sea level rise to 2060 and 2099 from past tide gauge records has been carried out in this study. The recent redevelopment area, Kai Tak (Old airport), is chosen as study area. Data has been obtained from Hong Kong Observatory, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), Lands Department and Civil Engineering and Development Department to reconstruct and project the past and future sea level change in Hong Kong respectively. Global and local sea level are expected to rise in the 20th century from past studies. The increasing acceleration of sea level rise in my projection has an significant implication to Kai Tak area that existing formation level of reclaimed land and current marine design work standard for redevelopment may not be adequate to resist coastal flooding and inundation associated with sea level change in the near future. By 2099, Kai Tak area may be flooded in extreme cases, which is an issue that upgrading existing marine structure and reviewing current marine design standard needs immediate attention. / published_or_final_version / Applied Geosciences / Master / Master of Science

This dissertation investigates the High Level Architecture (HLA) as a possible distributed simulation framework for transportation systems. The HLA is an object-oriented approach to distributed simulations developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) to handle the issues of reuse and interoperability of simulations. The research objectives are as follows: (1) determine the feasibility of making existing traffic management simulation environments HLA compliant; (2) evaluate the usability of existing HLA support software in the transportation arena; (3) determine the usability of methods developed by the military to test for HLA compliance on traffic simulation models; and (4) examine the possibility of using the HLA to create Internet-based virtual environments for transportation research. These objectives were achieved in part via the development of a distributed simulation environment using the HLA. Two independent traffic simulation models (federates) comprised the environment (federation). A CORSIM federate models a freeway feeder road with an on-ramp while an Arena federate models a tollbooth exchange.

Disk performance for random access fares significantly worse compared to sequential access. Time required to transfer random blocks to or from disk is dominated by seeking and rotational delay. To improve the throughput and reduce the latency, one can apply techniques to increase the sequentiality of disk accesses, such as block rearrangement and replication. We introduce an approach to improve read performance by replicating blocks into file system free space at the block level. This makes the replication module independent of the file system and therefore easier to implement and verify. A solution that requires no changes to the file system is also easier to adopt. Supporting a new file system is a matter of writing a user-space component that understands its free block data structures. We implemented a prototype as a stacked device driver for Linux and evaluated its performance on a number of workloads.

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Les transformations dans la structure phonétique ont toujours accusé une tendance prononcée à l'articulation antérieure et labialisée ce qui aboutit à l'enrichissement considérable des consonnes prélinguales ( affriquées > consonnes chuintantes et sifflantes, semi-consonnes ) et des voyelles antérieures; celles-ci comportant deux oppositions importantes: ouvertes/fermées, labialisées/non labialisées. La quatrième série d'oppositions est présentée par l'opposition voyelle orale/voyelle nasale, constituée vers le XVIe s. La différenciation qualitative est à toutes les époques la caractéristique essentielle du vocalisme français: la durée vocalique peut aller de pair ou bien porter un caractère phonétique complémentaire. Les oppositions phonématiques parmi les consonnes sont moins générales que parmi les voyelles. Elles réunis¬sent les groupes de consonnes plus ou moins nombreux, laissant en marge plusieurs autres. Ainsi, l'opposition « sour¬de-sonore » ( srd-snr ) se manifeste seulement parmi les consonnes-bruits, les sonantes étant sonores par excellence. Une autre opposition « orale-nasale » frappe seulement les occlusives, les constrictives étant toutes orales.

The overall aim of this thesis is to uncover the key determinants of innovation in New Zealand firms and consider some of their likely effects. In order to provide a broad perspective on New Zealand’s local innovation processes, a mixed method approach combining both quantitative and qualitative analysis was adopted to allow analysis of both empirical data and case study data. The quantitative part of analysis utilises the unique dataset developed by Statistics New Zealand, namely the prototype Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), and the qualitative analysis includes four in-depth company case studies which complement the regression analyses by uncovering the key patterns of innovation behaviour at the firm level. In summary, a number of conclusions have been drawn from the research. Firstly, firms experience considerably smaller positive size effect because of New Zealand’s unique firm demographics, and the small size has limited individual firm’s innovation opportunities. Secondly, firms’ ability to develop new technologies directly influences their innovative ability, which is highly dependent on the availability of funds and skills. Lastly, innovation in New Zealand has a very strong market focus, while technology suppliers such as universities and Crown Research Institutes only have a limited role in selected industries.