Abstract According to the Company Act, to convene a regular shareholder¡¦s meeting, a majority of the shareholders who represent more than 50% of the total number of the company¡¦s outstanding shares shall be present. It is also regulated that a shareholder may stipulate the scope of authority in the proxy issued by the company and appoint a proxy to attend the shareholder¡¦s meeting on his behalf. Due to the dispersion trend of ownership structure of domestic listed companies, where some mid/large-size companies with long histories have, in average, less than 20% of shareholding of board of directors, it seems reasonable for companies to rely on proxy solicitation in order to convene a shareholder¡¦s meeting, have all proposals resolved, and elect board members. The operation of a business entity and its corporate governance are closely tied to the effectiveness of its top management. However, domestic listed companies in general are unable to separate the ownership and management, and therefore those who obtain the management become the management team of a company. As a result of relatively low shareholding held by major shareholders of domestic listed companies, lower cost of proxy solicitation than buying shares from the market, and less care about proxy rights from individual investors, major shareholders in listed companies intend to win more seats in the board via proxy solicitation in order to obtain management. For the above reasons, proxy solicitation becomes an important tool in determing management of listed companies, their operation and corporate governance. Proxy makes it possible to obtain the management of a corporate with relatively low shareholdings, resulting in asymmetry in cost and management obtained, and this might pose risks on company¡¦s corporate governance. However, on the other hand, proxy assists convening a shareholder¡¦s meeting, and therefore become an indispensable tool in defending the management of a corporate with honesty and integrity. With all the advantages and disadvantages, proxy is of great importance for individual corporate and overall operation of economy. The research conducts a case study on C Company with references on other listed companies to explore the impacts of proxy on management and operation of a company and its corporate governance. Pros and cons for proxy solicitation are summarized while solutions are proposed. The result of the research shows that listed companies demonstrate deep reliance on proxy. Whether or not a listed company conducts business with honesty and good faith, its major shareholder is likely to exploit the advantages to obtain unsymmetrical positions in the board in contrasts with its low shareholding. However, the performance of corporate governance afterward depends on the integrity and conscience of the management team, and actually has no direct link to proxy solicitation. Also, with the ¡§winning betting¡¨ nature to achieve management leverage, proxy solicitation could be a possible factor for corporate mis-governance. To avoid the unfairness caused by proxy solicitation and enhance corporate governance, competent authorities must consider revising the Company Act and related laws instead of revising regulations governing proxy solicitation alone. Suggestions in this research include the following: (1) To abrogate rules in the Company Act providing that ¡§to convene a regular shareholder¡¦s meeting, a majority of the shareholders who represent more than 50% of the total number of the company¡¦s outstanding shares shall be present¡¨. (2) The number of shares present via proxy solicitation, voting right and election right shall be discounted. (3) To promote electronic voting, split of voting rights of institutional shareholders, and adoption of nomination system for the director election. (4) To change the election method of independent directors, where the new method elects the independent director based on the number of voting individual shareholders, rather than the cumulative voting shares. The suggestions are proposed to provide a reference for competent authorities. Key words: proxy, corporate governance, board election, management, electronic voting, board election nomination system

Cloud computing has been developed rapidly in recent years, and offers novel concepts and innovations in computer use. One application of cloud computing is that people can designate a proxy to help them to execute a number of tasks in certain situations instead of undertaking all tasks themselves. With this application, people can benefit from the proxy; however, some information is revealed to the proxy, such as their activities, and private data. That is, the proxy is aware of the actions of people through delegation processes, and proxy re-encryption which is a cryptographic primitive has been proposed to solve this problem. In the proxy re-encryption system, when a user (e.g., Alice) wants to send a ciphertext that is encrypted by her secret key and stored in the cloud to another user (e.g., Bob), she can designate a proxy to transform the ciphertext into a different ciphertext that can be decrypted by Bob¡¦s private key. Based on attribute-based encryption and proxy re-encryption, we propose attribute-based proxy re-encryption with bilinear pairing. Furthermore, in the proposed scheme, third paries cannot decrypt the ciphertext if they do no have matching attributes, regardless of being helped by proxy. Finally, we offer security proofs to demonstrate that the proposed scheme satisfies the essential requirements of attribute-based encryption schemes and proxy re-encryption schemes.

<p>Firewalls protect network traffic and decide witch traffic to send further and witch traffic will be blocked. All this depends on the rules in the firewall. The firewall is installed between the internal network and the Internet. It is difficult to find a firewall that can protect us against different threats. Firewalls have both advantages and disadvantages and all this make them vulnerable. It is important to understand how the firewall protects the network and how to configure it. This paper gives the reader a clear idea how firewalls can protect against different attacks and improve the security.</p><p>Computers are not safe when connected to Internet. This paper is about how to use a personal firewall to protect a computer when connected to Internet. One of the firewalls in this examination is Norton Personal Firewall 2005.</p><p>Perkins, “Firewalls 24seven, 2nd Edition” and Brian Komar, Ronald Beekelaar and Joern Wettern “Firewalls for Dummies”. Information has also been collected from Apples home page.</p><p>It is important to have knowledge about different attacks against network traffic and also about how to protect against them. To know the risks is the first step to be able to evolve an own strategy; too defend network attack.</p>

<p>This report presents the results of a master level thesis project that analyzes and designs about the issue “Framework for Flexible Connectors with Java Reflection Proxies”. In this project, there are two main issues; first one is about finding a way to implement the function of a connector. And the other one is to build a framework for flexible connectors.</p><p>By studying on Java’s dynamic proxy, we find we can use it to implement the function of a connector. When building a connector chain, we use an important Java technique--Java Reflection API.</p>

<p>The aim of this work is to design an experiment, where client-server systems can be compared. They belong to the group of systems that are called component systems. Client-server systems are difficult to compare, because they are complex. The client-server systems are documented in different ways. Notations in the implementation of them are in different ways. There is a large difference in the communication between the client and server. The architectures between the client-server systems differ also, but they are not totally different. Therefore it is possible to construct an experiment for comparing them. Client-server systems that will be compared are Java RMI, Web Services, CORBA, and Enterprise JavaBeans. We are going to use Java as the programming language. Some of these systems, for example CORBA, can be implemented in other languages. The designed experiment is among other things going to answer how long time is needed to implement a specific application, how fast a specific client-server system is, and how long time is spent for learning about a specific system.</p>

The distributions of calcite rich horizons within dryland soils are commonly used as paleoclimate proxies. Comprehensive conceptual and mathematical models of calcite accumulation in soils are required to accurately interpret and calibrate these proxies. A conceptual model for calcite accumulation is already well established: As water percolates through a soil, it dissolves minerals, such as calcite, transporting the soluble minerals downward. As soil water is removed by evaporation and transpiration, the water solution becomes supersaturated resulting in precipitation of calcite at depth. The impacts of dynamic plant growth and microbial respiration have not yet been simulated in numerical models for calcite accumulation but are likely important because of their influence on variables governing calcite solubility. The soil hydraulic modeling software, HYDRUS-1D, simulates water and solute transfer through a soil column, accounting for variations in all previously studied variables (temperature, water content, soil pCO₂) while additionally simulating vegetation-soil interactions. Five separate sensitivity studies were conducted to determine the importance for calcite accumulation of 1) soil texture, 2) plant growth, 3) plant phenology, 4) atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, and 5) the proximal variables that control calcite dissolution and precipitation: soil CO₂, soil water content, and soil temperature. In each modeling simulation, calcite was leached from the top several cm and redistributed deeper in the soil after 20 years. Soils with courser texture yield deeper (+20cm), more diffuse calcite horizons, as did simulations with bare soil compared to vegetated soil. The phenology of plant communities (late spring versus late summer growth) resulted in soil calcite accumulation at temperatures differing by at least 10°C. Changes in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations do not affect the soil calcite distribution. Variations in concentration of soil CO₂, rather than soil water content, have the greatest direct effect on calcite solubility. The most significant time periods of annual accumulation also corresponded with positive water fluxes resulting from high matric potential at the surface. Transpiration and evaporation moisture sinks caused solution to travel upward from higher to lower soil CO₂ concentrations, causing CO₂ de-gassing and calcite accumulation. This pathway describes a new qualitative mechanism for soil calcite formation and should be included in the conceptual model. / text

A lack of well-distributed, high-resolution records of Late Quaternary Asian palaeomonsoon variability remains an outstanding issue for palaeoclimatologists, and is especially marked in remote regions such as the mountains of southwestern China (Wang et al., 2005). Characterising the nature, timing and magnitude of climate variability in southwestern China is essential for understanding the regional climate as a whole, and the potential social, economic and environmental impacts that may result from Asian monsoon system changes. The NERC-funded research presented in this thesis focuses on a high altitude lake sediment record obtained from Lake Shudu, Yunnan Province, China. The lake is located on the southeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The primary aims of this research were to identify and examine key environmental and climatic shifts which occurred in southwestern China during the Late Pleistocene (Dali) - Early Holocene Period; to examine the possible drivers of these changes; and to compare the findings with other regional proxy records in order to better understand climate dynamics in southwestern China. These aims were chosen in order to test the hypothesis that Late Quaternary millennial to centennial scale climatic and environmental changes in southwestern China were driven by changes in solar insolation and / or glacial climate boundary conditions, characterised by stepwise increases in palaeomonsoon intensity. AMS 14C radiocarbon dates obtained from bulk sediment samples and pollen concentrations indicated that the seven metre core (06SD) that forms the focus of this research spans the last c. 22.6 ka cal. yr BP, making it one of the longest high-resolution Late Quaternary records available for southwestern China. 06SD was examined using a multi-proxy approach incorporating physical, organic and palaeoecological analyses. The record captures the shift from colder, drier Pleistocene (Dali) conditions to warmer, wetter Holocene conditions and is punctuated by two events. The first event, centred at c. 17.3 ka cal. yr BP, possibly represents a phase of warmer and / or wetter conditions in response to rising solar insolation during the deglacial period. The second event, commencing at c. 11.7 ka cal. yr BP, possibly denotes the Pleistocene - Holocene Boundary. Overall, the findings of this research support the view that during the Late Pleistocene, Asian summer monsoon strengthening was non-linear and driven by changes in glacial dynamics and / or solar insolation.

Persons with aphasia (PWA) have language difficulties and their Quality of Life (QoL) has most likely been affected. Because of their loss of language abilities, it is difficult to use PWA in QoL studies. This can lead to the use of proxy responses (a person who answers for the PWA). The aim of this study was to compare the rankings from QoL questionnaires for PWA with the rankings from their spouses/caregivers (i.e., proxyresponse). We also wanted to find out which of the 11 aspects of life PWA andspouses/caregivers ranked as the most respectively the least impacted ones. A totalnumber of 57 persons participated in the study. The participants consisted of two groups, one group with PWA and one group of their spouses/caregivers. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey completed via a face-to-face interview was used to collect data from both groups. The results showed that there was poor internal consistency and a weak correlation between the two groups. The two groups ranked different aspects of life as “most impacted” and “least impacted”. The PWA ranked Vocation/Occupation as the “most impacted” and Family life as the “least impacted”aspects of life. The spouses/caregivers ranked Overall ability to communicate as the“most impacted” and Ability to self-care as the “least impacted” aspects of life. The results indicate that proxy responses may not be appropriate and should be interpreted with caution in QoL studies with PWA.

Late Pleistocene sediments recovered from ODP Leg 175, Site 1085 are used to generate a high-resolution (500 yr) record of continental climate change in Southern Africa. The location of Site 1085, the SW African continental slope, provides a continuous hemipelagic section with a significant terrigenous component. Terrigenous sediments are transported via fluvial and/or eolian transport mechanisms with MIS 1 being dominated by eolian transport. Analyses, including grain-size, color reflectance, biogenic sediment geochemistry (%CaCO3, %TOC, and C/N), bulk sediment geochemistry, and clay mineralogy, are used to identify continental climate conditions in southern Africa. Analyses indicate glacial/interglacial variation. Median grain-size peaks are associated with changes in transport. Clay mineralogy indicates the presence of kaolinite, smectite, and illite in varying percentages. Smectite and illite dominate the clay mineral assemblages except during MIS 2. Maximum kaolinite was found during MIS 2 and is associated with poleward transport by the Angola Counter Current.

In recent years, Component models have become common for desktop and server-side applications. But it has not obtained such importance in case of embedded real-time systems.  Therefore, there has been a lot of research undergoing for introducing such component models for embedded real-time systems.  This thesis work proposes an alternative approach for doing this, by the generation of proxies.   The idea is to provide an extension to an existing binary component and modify it to adapt to the targeted real-time operating system. Rather than modifying the existing component, a new component is generated, which is called as the proxy component.  This newly generated proxy component provides the same method implementation as the original component and also provides some additional services.  These services enable these components to meet the needs of targeted embedded real-time systems.  In order to achieve this, a Visual Studio 2008 add-in has been created. This add-in is capable of inspecting an existing Smart Device Component and visualizes the Classes, Interfaces and Methods in the original component in its UI.  In addition to this, the add-in also shows the available services to be included in the proxy component.  The UI of the add-in is designed in such a way that, the user is able to select the services, which should be included in the proxy component.  Based on the user’s selection, the add-in generates the proxy component with the additional services.