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Many studies have proved that a model with habit formation can well capture consumers’ responses to monetary policy and thus serves as a better platform for monetary policy analyses. However, most studies on monetary policy of Taiwan neglect habit formation. The goal of this paper is to verify the behavior of habit formation in consumption in Taiwan with the generalized methods of moments (GMM). Following Leith and Malley (2005), we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model in a closed economy and find that habit formation behavior is significant in Taiwan. The results from GMM estimation are as follows. The estimated value of habit persistence is 0.934, accord with that of other countries. Households would spend about 4 years to set the new wage contracts. Furthermore, it takes about 4.5 years for firms to reset the new price.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to provide a descriptive account of the experiences of two teachers with disabilities in order to report how disability influences them both personally and professionally. My research questions were as follows. Firstly, how do participants understand themselves as adults, adults with disabilities, and as adults with disabilities who are teachers? Secondly, how does disability contribute to their pedagogy and how do their experiences as educators contribute to their understanding of disability? Thirdly, for these teachers with disabilities, what is the nature of their relationships in both educational and workplace contexts? Fourthly, what is their perspective on accommodations? Finally, what is their advice to aspiring teachers who have disabilities, including myself? I conducted interviews that addressed these research concerns with two participants, both experienced teachers with self-identified disabilities. For data analysis, I used the method of constant comparison to create codes and find themes within the data collected from the interview, based on disability identity and self-advocacy theories. It is discussed that individuals with disabilities face unique identity-related challenges aside from the physical and mental aspects of having a disability. A key finding is that participants were shaped by prior experiences in childhood and in the education system that were related to their disability which now influence their teaching. Other findings include: their independence, resilience and ability to strategize led to their creation of their own accommodations: they found an environment that honoured their own strengths. Both teachers found that disclosing their own disability helped their students to better relate to them. However, at the same time, they were not as aware of accommodations for themselves as they were for their students. Teachers with disabilities serve an important role in schools as they are not only representatives of what inclusive societies can achieve: they also have unique experiences and skills that are an asset to their students. Recommendations to expand upon Gill’s (1997) disability integration model as well as to create more inclusive environments for teachers with disabilities are also discussed. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-28 00:52:34.69

The colonoscope is an important tool in diagnosis and management of diseases of the colon. One of the ongoing challenges with this device is that the colonoscope may form a loop together with the colon during the procedure. The result of the loop is that further insertion of the scope in the colon may not be possible. The loop may also cause risks of perforation of the colon and pain in the patient. There are currently several existing devices to overcome loop formation in colonoscopy, some of which have been introduced in clinical work. However, empirical assessment shows that these devices do not work very well. This is the motivation for the research presented in this thesis. In this thesis, a new paradigm of thinking, “doctor-assisted colonoscopy,” is proposed to overcome loop formation. In this new approach, the physician’s role is enhanced with new information that is acquired by sensors outside the human body and inferred from the mathematical model. It is referred to as a kinetic model due to the fact that this model describes the kinetic behaviour of the scope. This thesis is devoted to development of this kinetic model. In this study, the model of the colonoscope and the model of the colon are developed based on the Timoshenko beam theory, and parameters in both models are determined by the experiments. The following conclusions then are made: (1) self-locking of the colonoscope is the most basic cause for a loop to occur, while structural instability of the colonsocope is dependent on the self-locking; (2) both the scope and the colon can be well represented with the Timoshenko beam elements and the Linear Complementary Problem (LCP) formulation derived from Signorini’s law, and Coulom’s law for representation of interactions between the colon and scope is adequate; (3) there are effects from the location, looping, and tip deflection of the scope on flexural rigidity of the scope. Approximately, the flexural rigidity of the CF-Q160L colonoscope ranges from 300 to 650 N•cm2, and its accuracy is proven by a good agreement between the model predicted result and experimental result; (4) Rayleigh damping for the CF-Q160L colonoscope depends more on the mass matrix [M] of the colonoscope than the stiffness matrix [K], which is evident by the large coefficient value of “alpha” (0.3864) and the small coefficient value of “beta” (0.0164). The contributions of this thesis are: (1) the finding that the main cause of the loop is not structural instability of the colonoscope but rather self-locking of the colonoscope, which could lead to design of a “new-generation” colonoscope to avoid the loop; (2) a systematic evaluation of the existing colonoscopy technologies based on the well-proven Axiomatic Design Theory (ADT), which will serve as a guideline for the development of future new colonoscopes in future; (3) an approach to developing a kinetic model of the colonoscope useful to modeling similar objects such as a catheter guide-wire; (4) a novel ex-vivo colonoscopy test-bed with the kinetic and kinematic measurements useful for validation of new designs in colonoscopy technology and also useful for training physicians who perform the colonoscopy procedure; and (5) a new paradigm of thinking for colonoscopy called “doctor-assisted colonoscopy,” which has potential applications to other medical procedures such as catheter-based procedures.

Cell formation has received much attention from academicians and practitioners because of its strategic importance to modern manufacturing practices. Existing research on cell formation problems using integer programming (IP) has achieved the target of solving problems that simultaneously optimise machine-cell allocation and partmachine allocation. This thesis presents extensions of an IP model where part-machine assignment and cell formation are addressed simultaneously, and integration of inter-cell movements of parts and machine set-up costs within the objective function is taking place together with the inclusion of an ordered part machine operation sequence. The latter is identified as a neglected parameter for the Cell Formation problem. Due to the nature of the mathematical IP modelling for Cell Formation two main drawbacks can be identified: (a) Cell Formation is considered to be a complex and difficult combinatorial optimisation problem or in other words NP-hard (Non-deterministic Polynomial time hard) problem and (b) because of the deterministic nature of mathematical programming the decision maker is required to specify precisely goals and constraints. The thesis describes a comprehensive study of the cell formation problem where fuzzy set theory is employed for measuring uncertainty. Membership functions are used to express linguistically the uncertainty involved and aggregation operators are employed to transform the fuzzy models into mathematical programming models. The core of the research concentrates on the investigation and development of heuristic and . metaheuristic approaches. A three stage randomly generated heuristic approach for producing an efficient initial solution for the CF together with an iterative heuristic are first developed. Numerous data sets are employed which prove their effectiveness. Moreover, an iterative tabu search algorithm is implemented where the initial solution fed in is the same as that used in the descent heuristic. The first iterative procedure and the tabu search algorithm are compared and the results produced show the superiority of the latter over the former in stability, computational times and clustering results.

Product adaptability is the capability to adjust a product by adding/replacing its constitu-ents for different applications. To acquire this capability, a product should be a modular structure that can form different modular combinations. The purpose of this thesis is pro-posing a design method to develop such products. The method includes the following characteristics: a product essentially implements its applications by providing proper ac-tions/reactions to interact with its surrounding conditions; such actions/reactions can be used to develop the subsystems of a product by building energy-flow or force-path con-nections; optional modules can be separated from the subsystems that contain optional applications; all modules are arranged as an open architecture to provide space and inter-face for each optional module; and each module is endued with the principal content of actions/reactions, inside energy flows or force paths, space, and interfaces constraints, so that it can be physically formed through a dual-domain formation process. Following this method, a multi-purpose electric vehicle (MEV) is developed. Adaptability Efficacy (AE) is proposed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. / February 2017