<p>Strengthened stratification of the upper ocean, associated with either anthropogenic warming trends or natural climate oscillations, is generally expected to inhibit marine primary productivity at low and mid latitudes, based on the supposition that increased water column stability will decrease vertical mixing and consequently the upward entrainment of deep nutrients into the euphotic zone. Herein, we examine the local stratification control of productivity over the subtropical and equatorial Pacific by directly comparing a wide range of contemporaneous metrics, drawn from the modern observational record, for interannual stratification and productivity variability. We find no correlation between the two in the subtropical North Pacific. In the equatorial Pacific we do observe a correlation, but find no evidence of a strong causal connection between the two- instead, our analysis suggest that both biomass and stratification in this region are impacted by changes in the westward transport, via surface currents, of relatively cold, nutrient-rich waters that have been upwelled in the eastern Equatorial Pacific. The importance of horizontal nutrient supply is further evidenced by an analysis of seasonal variability in the subtropical North Atlantic, where the annual contraction and expansion of the oligotrophic region appears to be strongly influenced by the waxing and waning, respectively, of lateral nutrient transfers from neighboring, nutrient rich waters of the subpolar gyre and the West African upwelling zone.</p> / Dissertation

The Dual-Ladders system of Community Planners and Community Architects was established and propelled by the public works department of the Kaohsiung city government in 2002; it has been almost 2 years. Based on the basic principles of ¡§Bottom-up¡¨ and ¡§Community Independence¡¨ created by the whole community and driven by the current head of the public works department, Mr. Chin-Rong Lin, with the citizen participation in environment planning and reworks, it encourages the involvement of local community planners/community architects to proceed with the system of space problems diagnose and material space reworks plans. This study is to cite the Community Veranda plan pushed by the City of Kaohsiung as an example. In 2002, this plan produced five pieces of work representing the five administrative districts. Starting from September of 2003, these pieces completed one after another. These pieces were the signature pieces of the first anniversary of the Community Planners /Community Architects system in Kaohsiung. Based on this operation model and the working attitudes and the levels of satisfaction of the participating community planners and community architects toward this system, explore and discuss the major issues, such as the participation motives, role identifications, volunteer frequency, system establishment, interaction, difficult situations, and future developments. In addition, for the problems such as the special needs of local environments, the understandings of the system, the role definitions for the professionals, the differentiation of job responsibilities, the self-examination of professional ethics, the interactions among the professionals, and the interaction/integration of government agencies, use the research methods such as document reviews, case analysis and in-depth interviews, to further discover the problems within, to explore the directions for improvements and to guide the strategies for the future development of the system. This study shows that the levels of involvements of the community planners/community architects dropped after their initial participation. The reasons are mostly the practical concerns of personal interests. Besides, the construction industry shows signs of recovery, therefore the demands for these professionals increase. There is a lot of similarity between the expectations for the professionals from the system and the role identifications of the average professionals. There should be differentiation and cooperation for the two systems. Most professionals have the same way of volunteering, but it is not frequent enough. Overall, the professionals think that ¡§Bottom-up¡¨ and ¡§Community Independence¡¨ are beyond reach at this moment and there are many issues of the system need to be addressed. On top of that, lack of trainings, the mere formality of checkpoint mechanism, much needed improvement of the interactions between the professionals and the government agencies, and no leading agency for integration are also the causes for the poor operations and many obstacles of the system.

In the 21 Centuries after Y2K millennium bug scare, the Internet industry hottest issue is Dot-com bubble. Dot-com Company is based on Internet platform for all kind business transaction like developing, marketing, selling and service providing. During the rapidly new technology and truncated productivity cycle, the Internet business is much differ from traditional businesses, it must confront a market with fluctuation and uncertainty in every aspect. An Internet company that will survive and thrive must extremely organize their company very well for turn into Internet plays. This research is based on the reports and documents that had been announced, study the theories and method of the environment, strategy, structure, then acquire a perfect solution. Proceeding research with the physical company as an individual case, and identify the possibility of the structure established, finally conclude the study and provide a solution to any company that is in the same field. After the solid study, this research comes out following conclusions: 1.While organizing a business enterprise¡¦s structure, it must consider environment and strategy simultaneously. 2.The development of the business enterprise, certainly affected by environment but when the environments impact the business, business must adjust the structure to respond to the environments quickly. 3.No matter what kind of structure that business enterprise used,organizational design should be flexible and responsive. 4.Strategy and structure are the most import to a business enterprise, a business enterprise is hardly to resist or change the environments, but it can adjust itself to be following the trend.

Previous experiments - injecting pure CO2 into carbonate cores - showed that the process is a win-win technology, sequestrating CO2 while recovering a significant amount of hitherto unrecoverable natural gas that could help defray the cost of CO2 sequestration. In this thesis, I report my findings on the effect of flue gas ??impurities?? on the displacement of natural gas during CO2 sequestration, and results on unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests to carbonate samples. In displacement experiments, corefloods were conducted at 1,500 psig and 70??C, in which flue gas was injected into an Austin chalk core containing initially methane. Two types of flue gases were injected: dehydrated flue gas with 13.574 mole% CO2 (Gas A), and treated flue gas (N2, O2 and water removed) with 99.433 mole% CO2 (Gas B). The main results of this study are as follows. First, the dispersion coefficient increases with concentration of ??impurities??. Gas A exhibits the largest dispersion coefficients, 0.18-0.25 cm2/min, compared to 0.13-0.15 cm2/min for Gas B, and 0.15 cm2/min for pure CO2. Second, recovery of methane at breakthrough is relatively high, ranging from 86% OGIP for pure CO2, 74-90% OGIP for Gas B, and 79-81% for Gas A. Lastly, injection of Gas A would sequester the least amount of CO2 as it contains about 80 mole% nitrogen. From the view point of sequestration, Gas A would be least desirable while Gas B appears to be the most desirable as separation cost would probably be cheaper than that for pure CO2 with similar gas recovery. For UCS tests, corefloods were conducted at 1,700 psig and 65??C in such a way that the cell throughput of CO2 simulates near-wellbore throughput. This was achieved through increasing the injection rate and time of injection. Corefloods were followed by porosity measurement and UCS tests. Main results are presented as follows. First, the UCS of the rock was reduced by approximately 30% of its original value as a result of the dissolution process. Second, porosity profiles of rock samples increased up to 2.5% after corefloods. UCS test results indicate that CO2 injection will cause weakening of near-wellbore formation rock.

The region of eastern and southern Africa is very diverse in environments and agronomic practices. The region has one of the highest per capita consumption of maize (Zea mays. L), which is predominantly produced by smallholder farmers. Some important constraints facing these farmers include drought and low fertility. For decades, the International Center for Wheat and Maize Improvement (CIMMYT) has been involved in developing maize genotypes that have high grain yields and are tolerant to drought, low fertility and other important constraints. This germplasm is developed for wide adaptation. However, the development of superior germplasm is significantly affected by interaction between genotypes and the environment (i.e., genotype by environment interaction, GEI). To estimate and understand GEI maize genotypes are evaluated in a range of environments representing as much variability of the target growing areas as possible. Because of dwindling resources needed to conduct testing in the region, it may not be possible to test in all potential target areas. Therefore, a careful process of site selection for testing is essential to improve efficiencies in cultivar testing and deployment. The objective of this research was to characterize the maize testing locations of the eastern and southern Africa region. Historical data from CIMMYT Regional Trials from 1999 to 2003 was used to characterize the environments and estimate genetic parameters. Environmnent and GEI showed consistently high contributions to the total variation observed among genotypes for grain yield. Environment contributed over 60% and sometimes up to 85% of total variation observed. Sequential retrospective pattern analysis (Seqret) was conducted on the adjusted standardized grain yield. A total of 7 groups of environments were identified. Repeatabilites, a measure of the proportion of phenotypic variation that is due to genetic differences, was reduced under stress conditions. The relationship among traits showed that anthesis-silking interval (ASI) is an important selective trait, which can improve selection efficiency for grain yield under stress conditions. Stability analysis provided an opportunity to observe the response and adaptation of genotypes to a wide range of environments. Variety ZM621 was a stable and high yielding genotype.

<p>This project is associated with the field of Information Systems and more specifically with Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). These environments are becoming very popular the last years, especially in higher education. However we decided to focus in lower level education since there is lack of these learning platforms and their spreading is limited.</p><p>More specifically our project will focus on the description of a Virtual Learning Environment for preliminary schools. The target age will be 5-8 years old. The design of our system is based on the guidelines of a preliminary schoolteacher in Spain, who is actually our stakeholder. Designing a system for so young students means that various aspects have to be taken into consideration such as their level of computer knowledge, their maturity, their not still developed studying abilities and the fact that it is their first approach to school as a learning environment. However we believe that if they can be integrated in the information society in such an early age, it will be beneficial for their future and the future of information technologies as well. We hope that through this project we will be able to contribute to computer based education and equip the young students with new ways and potentials of learning.</p><p>On a theoretical basis, we could say that our project contains two different parts: a theoretical part and a more practical one. In the theoretical part, all the related work of similar VLEs is presented in an effort to see what products already exist in the market and try to create a new, innovative system taking into consideration various educational aspects. In addition, a review of our literature research concerning computer based education and VLEs is included in order to provide the necessary theoretical background before starting to design our system. Finally, a summary of our research made including questionnaires and interviews as well as the analysis and the conclusions of this research are presented since before designing our system we tried to include the opinion of the different people involved in this system like the students and their parents, the teachers and the pedagogues. On the other hand, the second more practical part focuses on the description of the learning platform. The architecture of the system as well as the use cases is included here. A prototype of the system is also provided but we were not able to complete the whole implementation due to time limitations.</p>

Dissertation (doctoral)--Bucerius Law School, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MS)--University of Montana, 2009. / Contents viewed on December 18, 2009. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.