STATEMENT OF PROBLEM. Yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystal (Y-TZP) ceramic material has been reported to possess remarkably high flexural strength; however, after sintering zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) frameworks and fixed partial dentures, some may not fit properly when trying them on their master cast. PURPOSE. The objective of this study was to investigate joining fully sintered YTZ-P by various methods including adhesive cements or fusion with intervening materials. MATERIALS AND METHODS. 216 specimens were used in this study; bars were fabricated from Vita In-Ceram YZ blocks and three bars were joined using dental cements; RelyX Unicem 2 Clicker and Multilink Automix, or fusing them with VM9, Infusion Glass, Boron Oxide, Aluminum Oxide, LUDOX, Colloidal Zirconia and Mullite Zirconia. The load to failure in Newtons was determined using a 3-point bending test. RESULTS. Sandblasted bars for RelyX (64.38N, RelyX-A-Sb) and Multilink (48.58N, M-Sb) wasn’t significantly higher compared to as-sintered groups (45.87N, RelyX-A) and (34.69N, M-A). Coating the bars with Monobond-Plus had a significantly higher load to failure 123.22N, RelyX-A-MP and 136.06N, M-MP compared to as-sintered and sandblasted groups. VM9 at an end firing temperature (EFT) of 1200 °C was significantly higher (228.97N, V-5) compared to lower fusing temperatures. Glass at an end firing temperature of 1200 °C was significantly higher (460.32N, G-6) compared to lower fusing temperatures. Frit at an end firing temperature of 1200 °C was significantly higher (214.52N, F-6) compared to lower fusing temperatures. Optical microscopy showed that Glass group G-6 (1200°C, EFT) had a thickness range from .09 to 0.03 mm while for Glass-A (1050°C, EFT) it was 0.5 mm. CONCLUSIONS. Within the limitations of this study, we concluded that sandblasted bars didn’t significantly increase the means load to failure values compared to as-sintered groups. Coating the bars with Monobond-Plus had a significantly higher load to failure compared to as-sintered and sandblasted groups. VM9, Glass and Frit at an end firing temperature of 1200 °C showed significantly higher means load to failure compared to lower fusing temperature groups. / 2018-09-28T00:00:00Z

Esta dissertação apresenta o Modelo de Componentes CORBA, que é parte da especificação CORBA 3.0. Esse modelo representa uma das mudanças mais significativas em relação às versões anteriores de CORBA. O desenvolvimento de sistemas distribuídos é uma tarefa complexa, envolvendo fatores como a organização de conjuntos de objetos que devem ser implantados e executados em servidores distintos. Aqui estes conjuntos são denominados componentes, conceito já existente em outras especificações, como a dos Enterprise Java Beans. O texto da especificação dos Componentes CORBA, apesar de conter exemplos, mostra-se de difícil compreensão para o desenvolvedor de sistemas. Este trabalho se propõe a facilitar a tarefa de entendimento e utilização de Componentes CORBA, procurando ser didático e ilustrativo o suficiente para que diferentes perfis de leitores possam compreender os diversos conceitos apresentados, seja como uma visão geral, ou ainda como auxílio no desenvolvimento de componentes. / This thesis presents the CORBA Component Model, which is part of the CORBA 3.0 specification. The model is one of the most significant additions with respect to previous versions of CORBA. The development of distributed systems is a complex task, involving factors such as the organization of sets of objects that must be deployed and executed in separate servers. Here, these sets are called components, a concept that already exists in other specifications, such as Enterprise Java Beans. Even though it contains examples, the CORBA Components specification text is not an easy reading for systems developers. Our text intends to facilitate the task of understanding and using CORBA Components, trying to be didactic and illustrative enough so that different profiles of readers are able to understand the many concepts presented, either as an overview, or still as an aid in components development.

The principal component analysis can be carried out two ways. First the R-mode: R = K'K and the second is the Q-mode: Q = K K' where K is a data matrix centered by column or by row. The most commonly used method is the R-mode. It has been suggested that principal components computed from either the R-mode or the Q-mode may have the same interpretation. If this is true, then interpretation of the principal components could be put on a much more intuitive level in many applications. This will occur whenever one type of principal component is more intuitively related to the physical or natural system being studied than the other. The relationship between the principal components of the R-mode and the Q-mode have been investigated with the result that they show a perfect correlation between them. The conclusion that the principal components of the R-mode or the Q-mode have the same interpretation is established. An example is given to illustrate this work. The resulting interpretation is found to be the same as that obtained by Donald L. Phillips (1977) using different methods.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate prediction of senior leader transformational leadership behaviour. Transformational leadership was identified as a major theory with substantial practical implications for economic prosperity. It was argued that a better understanding of what predicts transformational behaviour would assist in creating a lift in the effective application of the theory with attendant benefits for all organisational stakeholders. It was proposed that personality components would predict transformational behaviour. Personality was conceptualised in two ways: as components of the Five Factor Model of personality and as personality disorder components. Specifically, eight personality constructs were hypothesised as predictors. They were three Hogan Personality Inventory based Five Factor Model components and the five Hogan Development Survey personality disorder components. It was further proposed that self-subordinate rating agreement would moderate the prediction of transformational behaviour by the selected personality components. A survey research methodology was used to gather data from senior Australian organisational executive leaders. Two samples were accessed while subjects were attending training or strategy seminars. The samples incorporated a total of 462 individual senior leader subjects and 1,881 of their subordinates drawn from the top four levels of a range of large multi-level public and private Australian organisations. It was argued that the sample validly represent a senior executive cohort of organisational leaders. Subject leaders completed a brief demographic questionnaire, the leader version of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, and either the Hogan Personality Inventory or the Hogan Development Survey. Subjects' subordinates completed the rater version of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Transformational behaviour was operationalised as charisma, which was calculated as the mean of two subordinate rated transformational components of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, viz., idealised behaviour and inspirational motivation. This dependent variable was regressed on the various personality variables to assess predictive ability. Moderation of the prediction of transformational leadership behaviour by personality components was assessed by multiple regression of transformational leadership behaviour on the various personality components within self-subordinate rating agreement categories. There were eight specific original contributions from the findings of this thesis. The HPI component ambition was found to positively predict charisma. The HPI component prudence was found to negatively predict charisma. Self subordinate rating agreement operationalised as an absolute difference score was found to moderate the level of prediction by whole HPI regression model and some of the relationships and predictions of charisma by individual HPI components. It was found that prevalence of personality disorder components among senior executives varied from six percent to 34 percent of the sample cases. The HDS personality disorder components sceptical and cautious were found to negatively predict charisma; whereas the HDS component imaginative was found to positively predict charisma. Self subordinate rating agreement operationalised as a relative difference score was found to moderate the whole HDS regression model and some but not all of the relationships and predictions of charisma by individual HDS components. Theoretical and practical implications of the above findings, limitations of this research and recommendations for future research were discussed.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "August, 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-75). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Linear factor models have attracted considerable interest over recent years especially in the econometrics literature. The intuitively appealing idea to explain a panel of economic variables by a few common factors is one of the reasons for their popularity. From a statistical viewpoint, the need to reduce the cross-section dimension to a much smaller factor space dimension is obvious considering the large data sets available in economics and finance. One of the characteristics of the traditional factor model is that the process is stationary in the time dimension. This appears restrictive, given the fact that over long time periods it is unlikely that e.g. factor loadings remain constant. For example, in the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965), typical empirical results show that factor loadings are time-varying, which in the CAPM is caused by time-varying second moments. In this thesis we generalize the tools of factor analysis for the study of stochastic processes whose behavior evolves over time. In particular, we introduce a new class of factor models with loadings that are allowed to be smooth functions of time. To estimate the resulting nonstationary factor model we generalize the properties of the principal components technique to the time-varying framework. We mainly consider separately two classes of Evolutionary Factor Models: Evolutionary Static Factor Models (Chapter 2) and Evolutionary Dynamic Factor Models (Chapter 3). In Chapter 2 we propose a new approximate factor model where the common components are static but nonstationary. The nonstationarity is introduced by the time-varying factor loadings, that are estimated by the eigenvectors of a nonparametrically estimated covariance matrix. Under simultaneous asymptotics (cross-section and time dimension go to infinity simultaneously), we give conditions for consistency of our estimators of the time varying covariance matrix, the loadings and the factors. This paper generalizes to the locally stationary case the results given by Bai (2003) in the stationary framework. A simulation study illustrates the performance of these estimators. The estimators proposed in Chapter 2 are based on a nonparametric estimator of the covariance matrix whose entries are computed with the same moothing parameter. This approach has the advantage of guaranteeing a positive definite estimator but it does not adapt to the different degree of smoothness of the different entries of the covariance matrix. In Chapter 5 we give an additional theoretical result which explains how to construct a positive definite estimate of the covariance matrix while while permitting different smoothing parameters. This estimator is based on the Cholesky decomposition of a pre-estimator of the covariance matrix. In Chapter 3 we introduce the dynamics in our modeling. This model generalizes the dynamic (but stationary) factor model of Forni et al. (2000), as well as the nonstationary (but static) factor model of Chapter 2. In the stationary (dynamic) case, Forni et al. (2000) show that the common components are estimated by the eigenvectors of a consistent estimator of the spectral density matrix, which is a matrix depending only on the frequency. In the evolutionary framework the dynamics of the model is explained by a time-varying spectral density matrix. This operator is a function of time as well as of the frequency. In this chapter we show that the common components of a locally stationary dynamic factor model can be estimated consistently by the eigenvectors of a consistent estimator of the time-varying spectral density matrix. In Chapter 4 we apply our theoretical results to real data and compare the performance of our approach with that based on standard techniques. Chapter 6 concludes and mention the main questions for future research.

Although markets are emerging for commercial off-the-shelf components (such as Sun JavaBeans), there are many barriers to widespread component adoption. This is due to the inherent `black-box' nature of software components: developers have no knowledge or control of the component's internal characteristics. Without source or design details, developers only have the component's interface, documentation and test results to answer important questions about reliability, proper use, behavior andperformance. The current best practice of specifying a component's capabilities by providing only the syntax and informal documentation is insufficient to assemble mission or safety-critical systems successfully. To address these problems we have developed a framework forcreating and analyzing the concise specifications of components and their related interfaces. The framework extends a formal model for software architecture descriptions to support the specification of a range of terms. With formal component specifications developers can use the framework to analyze the properties of individual components or of entire systems. Unlike other approaches, the formal basis and implementation of our framework enhance understanding and automates much of thecomponent analysis process.

The M&A of Yageo and Philips¡¦s global passive components department in 2000 is a well-known failure case. This study investigates this 18.8 billion M&A case using business evaluation in order to explore its synergy and whether the offer price is reasonable. Contrary to media reports, this study found that the price was somehow high but reasonable during the period. Research shows taking out this M&A deal will erode shareholders¡¦ interest by NTD$31 billion. Yageo¡¦s current state of core business value is analyzed to find that Yageo¡¦s value increases at least NTD$40 billion. A decade after the M&A, Orion ¡V reinvested by Yageo Chairman Chen Taiming - announced to obtain 100% of Yageo¡¦s equity of NTD$16.1 per share in early April, 2011. Such action indicates Chairman Chen foresaw potential profitability in Yageo. In addition, the previous M&A of Philips Passive Components Division has a great influence in recent growth and points out that the M&A decision are not wrong. The findings of the study show that post-merger integration is implemented properly can gain positive benefits for shareholders through the M&A of Philips Passive Components Division.

Abstract As technology advances, new computer, telecommunications and consumer electronic products are constantly being introduced, giving consumers more choice than in the past. However, fluctuations in the business cycle mean that competitors fight to gain market share and this often results in an oversupply of 3C products and a decline in prices. Taiwan's notebook industry is world-famous, but because of pressure from foreign companies profit margins are relatively low. The notebook producers try to control the price of the components by putting pressure on component makers. This leads to a price war between the suppliers and even the winners of this war still have to cut prices on a quarterly basis. Technology, consumer preferences and prices are all changing rapidly. Component agents are being squeezed between suppliers, who want to maintain a fixed price, and customers who want prices to be cut. This has reduced profit margins. This research focuses on how passive component agents change in response to this situation and meet the demands for higher quality, better service, lower prices and faster delivery. The case study concerns Company A, which originally acted solely as a passive component agent. It examines how, between 2002-2010, the company restructured its business and supply chain and developed its own-brand components to gain key competitive advantage and establish an operating platform. This study researched the relevant literature and information concerning Company A to produce a summary of the company's transition strategy and how it was implemented. It is hoped that this research will provide a reference for other agents which are going through a similar transition. Keywords: passive components, OEM, own-brand, competitive advantage

The high speed machining is now recognized as one of the key manufacturing technologies. It possesses several better characteristics than those of a conventional machining way. For example, low chip load, and low cutting-heat generation can be obtained. It also contributes to high productivity and throughput. In this thesis, the technique about the high speed machining for cutting the aluminum thin-walled components will be discussed. An audio signal measuring system will be established to measure sound pressure for avoiding chatter. Meanwhile, the tool path will also be revealed in this thesis.