The purpose of this study was to understand residents¡¦ sense of community and their cognition of community empowerment of metropolitan communities, and to investigate the relationship between residents¡¦ sense of community and their cognition of community empowerment in He-ti Community, Kaohsiung City. Hopefully, this study might offer related suggestions to boost community empowerment of metropolitan communities. The methodology of this study was using questionnaire survey to collect data on the He-ti Community for analysis. The subjects of this study were community residents of 20 year-old and above. ¡§Questionnaire about residents¡¦ sense of community and their cognition of community empowerment¡¨, which was developed and based on related literatures, was adopted as tool for this survey. 600 questionnaires were issued while 505 valid questionnaires were received, with valid sample rate 84.17¢H. The main conclusions of this study are as follows: 1. Residents of the community have the above average degree on sense of community, especially on the ¡§community identification¡¨ domain, but the domain of ¡§community familiarity¡¨ in need of improvement. 2. The cognition of community empowerment among the residents¡¦ are below the middle with the highest on the domain of ¡§actual boost¡¨ and the lowest on the domain of ¡§policy content¡¨. 3. The residents of male, the age above 50, the education below junior high school, married, having children with the age below 18, with house self-having and filling the autonomy post, have higher degree of sense of community. 4. The residents of male, the age between 50 and 59, having no children with age below 18, living in community 5~9 years and filling the autonomy post, have higher degree on cognition of community empowerment. 5. There is a positive correlation between residents¡¦ sense of community and their cognition of community empowerment. 6. Residents¡¦ sense of community has a significant prediction on their cognition of community empowerment. The prediction capacity of factor ¡§community concern¡¨ is the highest with the factor ¡§community familiarity¡¨ the second highest. Based upon the above conclusions, this study offers several related suggestions to the governments, community autonomies and future researchers for their reference to boost ulterior community empowerment and researches.

Three high performance circuits for a low power supply DRAM¡¦s are presented in this thesis. First, a modified multi-stage sense amplifier is proposed, that utilizes the auxiliary transmission gate and charge recycling technique. The auxiliary NMOS transistor of the multi-stage sense amplifier is replaced by the transmission gate to improve the sensing speed. In addition, the charge recycling technique is used to reduce the power dissipation of multi-stage sense amplifier. It improves the sensing time by 6.1ns (24.4%) compared to that of the conventional multi-stage sense amplifier and the power saving percentage of 25.6% compared to that of the conventional one. Second, an improved Standby Power Reduction (SPR) Circuit is reported. The capacitor boosting technique is utilized in our proposed Static Current Cut-off Standby Power Reduction (SCCSPR) Circuit, which turns off the always-on MOS transistor of SPR circuit. The power consumption is 30.9% reduced by our design compared to that of the conventional SPR circuit. Third, an improved voltage doubler is developed. The indirect switch is utilized in our proposed circuit, it provides larger gate source bias applied to the PMOS pass transistor. Thus, the current drivability is arisen and the pumping speed is improved as well. In the 2V supply voltage, the pumping speed of our modified voltage doubler is arisen about 18.6% compared to that of the conventional voltage doubler. These high performance circuits in this thesis are applied in a 1-Kbit DRAM circuits. A data access time of 36ns and total power consumption 52.58mW are attained when the supply voltage is 2V. The access time of 10.3ns (22.2%) and power consumption of 6.44mW (11%) are reduced compared to that of the conventional DRAM.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is now increasingly being used for fast imaging applications such as real-time cardiac imaging, functional brain imaging, contrast enhanced MRI, etc. Imaging speed in MRI is mainly limited by different imaging parameters selected by the pulse sequences, the subject being imaged and the RF hardware system in operation. New pulse sequences have been developed in order to decrease the imaging time by a faster k-space scan. However, they may not be fast enough to facilitate imaging in real time. Parallel MRI (pMRI), a technique initially used for improving image SNR, has emerged as an effective complementary approach to reduce image scan-time. Five methods, viz., SENSE [Pruesmann, 1999], PILS [Griswold, 2000], SMASH [Sodickson, 1997], GRAPPA [Griswold, 2002] and SPACE RIP [Kyriakos, 2000]; developed in the past decade have been studied, simulated and compared in this research. Because of the dependence of the parallel imaging methods on numerous factors such as receiver coil configuration, k-space subsampling factor, k-space coverage in the imaging environment, there is a critical need to find the method giving the best results under certain imaging conditions. The tools developed in this research help the selection of the optimal method for parallel imaging depending on a particular imaging environment and scanning parameters. Simulations on real MR phased-array data show that SENSE and GRAPPA provide better image reconstructions when compared to the remaining techniques.

The first topic of the thesis reveals a mini-invasive low-power measurement system for bladder pressure measurement. Not only can the mode of measurement be selected, the input range and amplification of instrumentation amplifier (IA) is also adjustable. The proposed system can measure the pressure in a bladder in a continuous mode. It also can monitor the pressure in a long-term mode with an automatic sleeping mechanism for power saving. The signal generated by the pressure sensor is sensed by an IA, which is then fed into the following ADC (analog-to-digital converter). The input range of the IA must be adjustable to keep the required linearity. The pressure range of the proposed system is found out to be 5 Psi with the maximum resolution of 1 cm-H2O, which covers the range of all of the known unusual bladder syndromes. The second topic is a self-disable sense technique for content addressable memory (CAM). The differential match-line sense circuit can be self-disabled to choke the charge current fed into the match line right after the comparison result is generated. Besides, the 13-T CAM cell provides the complete write, read, and comparison functions to refresh the data bit and verify its correctness before searching. The average energy consumption of the searching process is 1.872 fJ/bit/search according to thorough simulations.

Spiral of silence has been published for 30 years, and been tested in many areas, however these test are not all qualified. This study aims to interpret spiral of silence theory and to inspect if there are any misuse in these test. First, we interpret these theory form the origin of the theory and it¡¦s deducing process, and built an theory model. Then inspect those test based on this model. The result discovered that most of these test stressed on testing people¡¦s willingness to speak out, and misleaded to compare one¡¦s opinion and one¡¦s perception of majority. This comprehension gap may comes from the wrong variable definition in the operational models. For this sake, this study offered a theory model to overcome this gap.

This study aimed to investigate relationship between individual and organizational variables on staff innovative behavior. Individual variables were personal playfulness and sense of humor, and organizational variable was organizational playfulness climate. The analyses were done by using hierarchical linear modeling for Windows. The main findings of this study were as follows: 1. Personal playfulness had significant influence on staff innovative behavior. 2. The sense of humor had insignificant influence on staff innovative behavior. 3. Organizational playfulness climate had significant influence on staff innovative behavior. 4. The relationship among personal playfulness, sense of humor, and staff innovative behavior was not affected by organizational playfulness climate. Finally, some suggestions were offered as references to businesses and further studies.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-126). Also available in print.

This thesis focuses in presenting Miguel de Unamuno’s concept of the tragic. Historically this concept has suffered various changes of meaning and application. If successful the project shall provide the distinct connotation, features, and characteristics that Unamuno attributes to the tragic. His special treatment of the tragic harnesses a way for the will to become aware of its existential condition. This awakening of consciousness evokes an arousal of dichotomies that the will must confront. Faith against reason, religion against science, heart against intellect, are amongst these conflicting predicaments. The will’s constant struggle between these opposing forces constitutes for Unamuno the tragic feeling of life. The will must live between the two and avoid the dangers of ignoring one side of the dichotomy and embrace the other. Quixotic philosophy, Unamuno argues, stands in as a manifestation of the will to salvage itself against the existential calamities of the tragic condition. The quixotic outlook empowers the will for the opportunity to forge an authentic life out of the tragic. Therefore the tragic is a fundamental aspect to understand Unamuno’s existentialism, religion, and philosophy of life.

There is a tendency within intersectional blogging discourse for settlers to ignore the ongoing colonial process occurring on Turtle Island. This pattern is bound up in a settler common sense that understands settler occupancy as inherent and natural. Such an approach to intersectional-type work ignores the manner in which all oppressive actions on Turtle Island are occurring on Indigenous lands. Regardless of a settler’s intersections, their presence on Indigenous lands indicates that they are implicated in an ongoing process of colonization. This thesis identifies and examines how intersectional bloggers are writing about issues pertaining to Indigenous peoples and nations. It is argued that through the exploration of Indigenous feminist writing, intersectional settler blogging has the potential to work towards decolonization and solidarity with Indigenous nations. This thesis draws from the work of Indigenous feminist blogs in order to gain insight on how settlers can begin to decolonize their own work. / Graduate

Sport providers should be concerned with the participant experience, and in particular extraordinary experiences, as they have the potential to shift participant behaviors and attitudes to those desired by sport organizations. Extraordinary experiences are characterized by interpersonal interactions, separation from the usual, and feelings of self-transformation or personal growth (Arnould & Price, 1993). Due to the power, intensity, and transformative effects of these experiences, they can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes (Schouten, McAlexander & Koenig, 2007). This research project examined the relationship between the extraordinary experience and the personal transformation by examining the characteristics of the experience and impacts on participants. Texas 4000 is a community of cancer fighters who “train, fundraise, educate, and bring hope to those with cancer” for one year before their experience culminates with a 4,000 mile bike ride. University students apply to participate, and once accepted they begin planning, fundraising, volunteering and training for their ride to Alaska. Along the ride, they interact with members of the communities they pass through to spread “hope, knowledge, and charity.” Over 400 individuals have completed the ride within the last ten years. For this study, alumni participated in in-depth interviews about their experience and how it impacted their life. Participant impacts included feelings of empowerment, new perspectives and appreciations, a sense of meaning and purpose, and strong relationships that resulted in a sense of community with other riders, the organization, and the larger cancer community. Importantly, participants’ history and backgrounds influenced how participants interacted with the community and the impacts that they felt. Additionally, the extraordinary experience of the ride created enduring change in participants; the preparation for the extraordinary experience was not as impactful and merely allowed participants to develop the necessary skills to participate in the summer ride. / text