The physical effects of substance use (tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana) are well known, but it is not clear whether the use of these substances can be a warning sign for psychological or emotional problems in high school students. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is a nationwide survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention every other year which asks students questions about risk behaviors such as substance use, sexual activity, the amount of violence in their lives, and suicide attempts. We examined students who were involved in the use of substances more commonly found in high schools (tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana) to see if they were significantly more likely to attempt suicide than their peers who were not involved in this type of activity. A multiple logistic regression analysis was performed on the 2013 Nationwide YRBS data (n = 13,583) to examine this effect while controlling for the following possible covariates: depression, gender, age, race, lack of sleep, and access to weapons. Results of this analysis showed a significant increase in suicide attempts among students who used tobacco and marijuana (OR = 1.987, 95%CI = 1.638, 2.411; OR = 1.273, 95%CI = 1.038, 1.561, respectively). However, the results of this analysis did not show a significant increase in suicide attempts for students that consumed alcohol. It was interesting to see that while possession and use of marijuana for a high school student is a more highly punishable crime, tobacco use is a better indicator for possible attempts at suicide. While there are many variables at play when it comes to substance use and suicide risk, these results indicate that students who are identified as users of tobacco and marijuana should be looked at more closely as they represent a population more susceptible to attempting suicide.

The Carnegie Quarry in northeastern Utah is world-renowned for the dinosaur skeletons it has produced and for its in situ display of dinosaur bones. The specimens excavated at Carnegie Quarry are displayed and curated in 20 repositories, most in North America. Data on these specimens in the forms of notes, photographs, publications, field maps, and so on, are scattered in an array of formats and institutions. The primary goal of this thesis is to develop a database linking these data with a digital map (GIS system) to make them readily accessible. To this end, a relational database was created using Microsoft Access linked to a vector-based map developed using Avenza MAPublisher running in Adobe Illustrator. Analyzing these data, the Carnegie Quarry produced 4146 specimens representing at least 105 individuals pertaining to 18 genera; 12 dinosaurs, one crocodylomorph, two turtles, Unio utahensis (a freshwater clam), and one plant. The map is based on high resolution photographs of the current quarry face merged with historic maps of previously excavated portions of the quarry. Previous attempts to develop a complete map were hindered by the large number of maps, primarily from four institutions that excavated at the site, and the lack of an accurate map of the current quarry face (due to substantial relief, the 67° dip of strata, and the lack of a permanent grid). The new maps will provide invaluable insights into the depositional setting, taphonomy and paleoecology of the site. The map and database provide a single access point for data on specimens from 20 widely dispersed repositories linking them their original quarry positions. This expandable tool will be invaluable to scientists and the caretakers of Dinosaur National Monument and is recommended for adoption at other quarries.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (2006) the increased supply of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), with a range of subordination, has broadened the investor base in real estate debt markets and reduced the commercial property sector’s dependence on bank financing The CMBS market has been one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the capital markets, for a market which was virtually nonexistent prior to 1990. The global CMBS market issuance which stood at AU$5.1 billion (US$4 billion) in 1990 had grown to AU$380 billion (US$299 billion) by the end of 2006. In Australia, a total of over 60 CMBSs with nearly 180 tranches totalling over AU$17.4 billion had been issued to December 2006 from when they were first introduced in 1999. To date few studies have been done on Australian CMBSs outside the credit rating agency circles. These studies are predominantly practitioner focused (Jones Lang LaSalle 2001; Richardson 2003; Roche 2000, 2002). O’Sullivan (1998) and Simonovski (2003) are the only academic studies on CMBSs. As such, this thesis examines issues relating to the development of Australian CMBSs and quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the structuring of Australian CMBSs. In assessing the growth of the Australian CMBS market, an interpretive historical approach (Baumgarter & Hensley 2005) is adopted to provide a cogent review and explanation of features of international and Australian CMBSs. This helps to understand the changing nature of the market and provides better understanding of the present and suggests possible future directions. The Australian CMBS market is matured in comparison with the larger US and EU CMBS markets as seen by the diversity of asset classes backing the issues and transaction types, tightening spreads, and record issuance volumes. / High property market transparency (Jones Lang LaSalle 2006b) and predominance of Listed Property Trusts (LPT) as CMBS issuers (Standard & Poor’s 2005b), who legally have to report their activities and underlying collateral performance to regulatory regimes such as Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)/Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and their equity partners, have contributed to the success of the Australian CMBS market. Furthermore, the positive commercial real estate market outlook should support future CMBS issuance, with LPTs continuing their dominance as issuers. In investigating property risk assessment in Australian CMBSs, all the CMBSs issued over a six year period of 2000 to 2005 were obtained from Standard and Poor’s presale reports as found in their Ratings Direct database to identify and review how property risk factors were addressed in all issues and within specific property asset classes following the delineation of property risk by Adair and Hutchinson (2005). Adequate assessment of property risk and its reporting is critical to the success of CMBS issues. The proposed framework shows that assessing and reporting property risk in Australian CMBSs, which are primarily backed by direct property assets, under the headings of investment quality risk, covenant strength risk, and depreciation and obsolescence risk can easily be done. The proposed framework should prove useful to rating agencies, bond issuers and institutional investors. Rating agencies can adopt a more systematic and consistent approach towards reporting of assessed property risk in CMBSs. Issuers and institutional investors can examine the perceived consistency and appropriateness of the rating assigned to a CMBS issue by providing inferences concerning property risk assessment. / The ultimate goal of structuring CMBS transactions is to obtain a high credit rating as this has an impact on the yield obtainable and the success of the issue. The credit rating process involves highly subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors of a particular company as well as pertinent industry level or market level variables (Huang et al. 2004), with the final rating assigned by a credit committee via voting (Kwon et al. 1997). As such, credit rating agencies state that researchers cannot replicate their ratings quantitatively since their ratings reflect each agency’s opinion about an issue’s potential default risk and relies heavily on a committee’s analysis of the issuer’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. However, researchers have replicated bond ratings on the premise that financial ratios contain a large amount of information about a company’s credit risk. In this study, quantitative analysis of determinants of CMBS credit ratings issued by Standard and Poor’s from 2000 – 2006 using ANNs and OR and qualitative analysis of factors considered necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue through mail surveys of arrangers and issuers are undertaken. Of the quantitative variables propagated by credit rating agencies as being important to CMBS rating, only loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is found to be statistically significant, with the other variables being statistically insignificant using OR. This leads to the conclusion that statistical approaches used in corporate bond rating studies have limited replication capabilities in CMBS rating and that the endogeneity arguments raise significant questions about LTV and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) as convenient, short-cut measures of CMBS default risk. / However, ANNs do offer promising predictive results and can be used to facilitate implementation of survey-based CMBS rating systems. This should contribute to making the CMBS rating methodology become more explicit which is advantageous in that both CMBS investors and issuers are provided with greater information and faith in the investment. ANN results show that 62.0% of CMBS rating is attributable to LTV (38.2%) and DSCR (23.6%); supporting earlier studies which have listed the two as being the most important variables in CMBS rating. The other variables’ contributions are: CMBS issue size (10.1%), CMBS tenure (6.7%), geographical diversity (13.5%) and property diversity (7.9%) respectively. The methodology used to obtain these results is validated when applied to predict LPT bond ratings. Both OR and ANN produce provide robust alternatives to rating LPT bonds, with no significant differences in results between the full models of the two methods. Qualitative analysis of surveys on arrangers and issuers provides insights into structuring issues they consider necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue. Rating of issues was found to be the main reason why investors invest in CMBSs and provision of funds at attractive rates as the main motivation behind CMBS issuance. Furthermore, asset quality was found to be the most important factor necessary to obtain a high credit rating supporting the view by Henderson and ING Barings (1997) that assets backing securitisation are its fundamental credit strength. / In addition, analyses of the surveys reveal the following: • The choice of which debt funding option to use depends on market conditions. • Credit tranching, over-collateralisation and cross-collateralisation are the main forms of credit enhancement in use. • On average, the AAA note tranche needs to be above AU$100 million and have 60 - 85% subordination for the CMBS issue to be economically viable. • Structuring costs range between 0.1% – 1% of issue size and structuring duration ranges from 4 – 9 months. • Preferred refinancing options are further capital market issues and bank debt. • Pricing CMBSs is greatly influenced by factors in the broader capital markets. For instance, the market had literary shut down as a result of the “credit crunch” caused by the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. These findings can be useful to issuers as a guide on the cost of going to the bond market to raise capital, which can be useful in comparing with other sources of funds. The findings of this thesis address crucial research priorities of the property industry as CMBSs are seen as a major commercial real estate debt instrument. By looking at how property risk can be assessed and reported in a more systematic way, and investigating quantitative and qualitative factors considered in structuring CMBSs, investor confidence can be increased through the increased body of knowledge. Several published refereed journal articles in Appendix C further validate the stature and significance of this thesis. It is evident that the property research in this thesis can lead aid in the revitalisation of the Australian CMBS market after the “shut down” caused by the melt-down in the US sub-prime mortgage market and can also be used to set up property-backed CMBSs in emerging countries where the CMBS market is immature or non-existent.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: Who said what? – A qualitative content analysis regarding the UD’s, the government’s and the travel agencies after the Tsunami disaster.</p><p>Number of pages: 38</p><p>Author: Malin Hansson</p><p>Tutor: Peder Hård af Segerstad</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies D</p><p>Period: Autumn 2006</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of information science, Uppsala University</p><p>Purpose/Aim: The purpose of the paper is to find out what person said what to the media and public after the tsunami catastrophe. The aim is to find out if there is any difference in how the government and communicators talked, and if those differences agree with the public opinion about these persons.</p><p>Material/Method: The material is interviews with the relevant people on TV news. The first three days are included and the interviews have been transcribed and counted in sentences. The method is therefore quantitative content analysis.</p><p>Main results: All of the analysed persons used the category Concrete action the most, which is what they are doing at the moment. The biggest difference between the groups was that people from UD/government had to spend a lot of time defending their work and admit that they acted wrong while the travel agencies had a more personal touch and seemed more personally involved.</p><p>Keywords: Crisis communication, tsunami, news interviews, quantitative analysis</p>

Abstract Title: Who said what? – A qualitative content analysis regarding the UD’s, the government’s and the travel agencies after the Tsunami disaster. Number of pages: 38 Author: Malin Hansson Tutor: Peder Hård af Segerstad Course: Media and Communication Studies D Period: Autumn 2006 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of information science, Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: The purpose of the paper is to find out what person said what to the media and public after the tsunami catastrophe. The aim is to find out if there is any difference in how the government and communicators talked, and if those differences agree with the public opinion about these persons. Material/Method: The material is interviews with the relevant people on TV news. The first three days are included and the interviews have been transcribed and counted in sentences. The method is therefore quantitative content analysis. Main results: All of the analysed persons used the category Concrete action the most, which is what they are doing at the moment. The biggest difference between the groups was that people from UD/government had to spend a lot of time defending their work and admit that they acted wrong while the travel agencies had a more personal touch and seemed more personally involved. Keywords: Crisis communication, tsunami, news interviews, quantitative analysis

The Usability of a website can be evaluated using various methods. One of the methods is usability testing, which is widely used and employed by the usability tester due to its low cost and user friendliness. The results of usability testing can be affected positively or negatively by several factors such as evaluator’s role, number of users, test environment, tasks, usability problem report, usability measures, and other factors. For more than a decade, the number of users plays a key role in usability testing. Previously done study [12], has shown that correlation exists between the number of user tasks and the number of issues found. As an extension and follow-up of the recent studies, the current work was carried out on task design, task number, and task coverage. Two types of task designs were proposed namely, guided tasks and unguided tasks. Considering the task as a key factor, the remaining factors were also considered while employing the usability test.

The application of a hollow waveguide (HW) was investigated as a gas cell for analytical infrared analysis. The analysis was the measurement of carbon monoxide (CO) and nitric oxide (NO) in sidestream cigarette smoke. An FT-IR analysis system was setup with a 3m multi-pass gas cell and a 55cm by 2mm i.d. Ag/AgI coated HW in tandem with individual CO and NO gas analyzers. The HW demonstrated response times an order of magnitude less than the larger volume multi-pass gas cell and slightly faster than the single analyte gas analyzer. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the HW provides up to approx. 60% greater sensitivity on a per meter optical path basis than the multi-pass gas cell of the analytes investigated due to increased optical efficiency maximizing the light concentration within the gaseous sample volume. Simulations in 3-D showed the sensitivity could theoretically improve by more than an order of magnitude if the IR beam was coupled more efficiently into the waveguide. Both FT-IR configurations gave statistically equivalent results for CO to the independent analyzers. With the HW increased temporal resolution, inter-puff measurements comparable to the gas analyzer were achieved at a lower spectral resolution. The HW optical configuration was modeled for ray tracing in MATLAB. Simulations in 2-D and 3-D were accomplished. The simulations show a major drawback to HW optimization is the coupling of the infrared beam into the waveguide. As demonstrated in a 3-D simulation, approximately 97% of the rays are rejected when an off-axis parabolic mirror with 25.4mm focal length is used to focus the IR beam into the 2mm i.d. waveguide. Repeating the simulation with longer focal length mirrors showed improved in IR coupling into the waveguide from 3% to 85%. Simulations applying a compound parabolic concentrator show comparable performance to the traditional design of two OAP mirrors to collect rays from the HW and focus onto the detector, but in a much smaller configuration. The simulation routines can be used to further improve the design of this and other optical sensing systems and enhanced by incorporating a spectral component to the simulation.

Quantitative analysis is one branch of portfolio management. The advantages of quantitative analysis are fast and objective. It has developed significantly in recent years because of the improvements in computer technology. This thesis applies the structure of a multi-factor model (MFM) to undertake quantitative analysis. Singapore has one of the most prosperous financial markets in Southeast Asia. The Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) and Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange (FTSE) are now in cooperation, which has added vitality to this market. It has great influence in global financial markets, and this is why we select its security market to be our target in MFM. The model refers the multi-factor processes of Jeng and Tsai (2011) . For backtesting, we adopt an enhanced strategy as testimony. We transmit information from the MFM to the enhanced strategy. Then we create the stock weightings to constitute the enhanced portfolio. This model includes 68 significant descriptors, 14 composite factors and 7 industry factors. The Singapore MFM shows 43% adjusted R-Square in the sample period. The enhanced portfolio we suggested has an information ratio of 76.80% with a tracking error of 4.02% and 1.53% for monthly turnover rate.

ABSTRACT Redirecting the inspection plan to place emphasis on high risk equipment items is not the only objective when implementing Risk Base Inspection (RBI). Rather it would be much more fruitful if company staff were educated to be equipped with the capability of identifying potential risks and were willing to actually put into real practice in eliminating all these potential threats to an enterprise. Since its release, the API-580 technology has seen growing acceptance and becomes a popular methodology in maintaining the mechanical integrity of pressure equipment and piping. In addition to U.S.A, many other country including European nations and Japan have also assimilated the same risk concepts into regulations that require plant operators to aim for practical performance of equipment management, not at the extent of obligations required by the government. Such a risk-based concept is not just incorporated in regulations, when utilized in close conjunction with plant maintenance and inspection, becomes a powerful tool in helping determine optimal inspection intervals of pressure equipment. In order for the equipment management system to perform effectively, fundamental tasks such as failure mechanisms identification and effectiveness of inspection methods are keys to a successful RBI program. Some might question Risk Base Inspection (RBI) to be a conservative, less aggressive approach that rather than opting for more aggressive managerial methods, it recommends to focus on the whole life cycle of plant equipment. Keywords: API-581¡BRBI¡Bbusiness risk¡Bbusiness administration¡Bquantitative analysis¡Bconsequence analysis¡Brisk base inspection

The International Maritime Organization(IMO) has adopted a draft of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as modified by the Protocol of 1978 relating thereto and by the Protocol of 1997(termed as MARPOL 73/78/97)since September 1997, amended the Convention and added a new Annex VI which regulates gas pollution emitted from ships, the latest Annex came into effect after the MARPOL convention. This study aims to discuss the effect of the Annex VI Prevention of Air Pollution from Ships after it was implemented on 19 May 2005 and the growth and decline status of pollution by document analysis and quantitative analysis methods. This study find that there were different concern positions from each PSC region, the enforcement state of Europe, Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions were better than Black Sea, west and central Africa, Latin America and Caribbean regions. The statistical show that sulfur oxides decreased notably, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxides decreased slowly by UNFCCC web; in addition, some countries did not submit their gas inventory, including developed countries: Canada, United States of America, Japan, Luxembourg and Netherlands et al. The quantitative analyses show that some countries has decreased or slow down the ship-source gas pollution with countries¡¦ economy developed, including Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Japan, Australia and United States of America et al.