While many organizational actors, including firms, governments, universities, and non-profit organizations may have an impact on the innovative capacity of the firms with which they engage, we have little knowledge of their relative importance. The literature on innovation intermediaries reports on the impact of specific types of organizations, but has not considered the relative importance of different types of organizations. While the studies using Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data are able to consider relative effects, data on the nature of those effects are limited. In the interests of a better understanding of the relative nature and degree of the innovation enabling contributions of a range of organizational actors, I conduct a comparative examination of the contributions of firms, governments, universities, industry associations, and research institutes. Using survey data from a sample of 499 firms, I identify the actors that are most strongly associated with each of ten innovation intermediation activities.

<p>Development of the World Wide Web makes it possible for multiple computers to work together in order to solve problems and make the most efficient use of resources. A distributed system is composed of such computers which are separately located and connected with each other through a network. One paradigm for computation using distributed systems is the multi-agent systems, in which many autonomous agents interact with each other to solve problems. The agents in a multi-agent system may be distributed on different computers (or nodes), where each computer owns its resources. Although the resources in a multi-agent system are connected by a network through which mobile agents can migrate for accessing sufficient resources, how to share these independently owned resources in both an effective and an efficient way is not fully understood. A key challenge in multi-agent systems is how to account for and control the resources which are located on individual nodes.</p> <p>The CyberOrgs model offers one approach to manage resources among competitive or collaborative agents by organizing computations and resources in a hierarchy. A cyberorg encapsulates agents and resources in a boundary and distributes the resources available to it within this boundary. A cyberorg contained in another cyberorg has a contract with the outer cyberorg, according to which it receives resources that it may use. A cyberorg also encapsulates an amount of the eCash, which is the currency for purchasing resources from its host cyberorg. Therefore, cyberorgs have a hierarchical structure in which resources are delivered to computations by a process where resources flow down from the root to the leaves of the hierarchy and the eCash flows up from the leaves toward the root. However, the hierarchical structure of the CyberOrgs model presents challenges in scalability. As a result, efficiency is an important concern in the implementation of CyberOrgs.</p> <p>In this thesis, an efficient implementation of the CyberOrgs model is described. System design, APIs of the implementation, example applications, experimental results, and future directions are presented.</p>

To be an island, Taiwan owns an abundant ocean environment, therefore, it is good to develop varied marine activities. Keel-boat is one of the important activities just budding from the branch. Our study explored the development of keel-boat activity in Taiwan, following with an analysis framework of four-function development, i.e., leisure, sports, education, and industry. Methods of case study and qualitative skills, such as interviews, documentary analysis, and observation were used in this study, including applying on varied actors, i.e., governmental units, NGOs, business, and individuals. Data was analyzed under the four-function framework and some results had been produced as the following: 1. Leisure and sports are dominant functions of keel-boat activity in the post development. However, leisure should be the future developing direction. 2. The actors in private sector play an important role to promote keel-boat leisure. 3. Some regulations needed to be changed for the development of keel-boat activity.

The critical endangered species has become one of the main concerns regarding the loss of biodiversity in the 21th century. It is also a new challenge for the protection of the endangered Chinese White Dolphin (CWD) which was discovered living along the western coast of Taiwan since the year 2002. It has a large overlapping occurred in the coastal place where the CWD population is inhabited around with human¡¦s development activities. Therefore, the conservation actions are emergently needed tasks and immediately entangled with difficulties. The present study employs the qualitative tool to investigate the institutional policy on the conservation strategies related to the protection of endangered CWD. These include documental analysis of literatures, interviews, and observations to identify the key concepts for the conservation strategies. The interactions among context of the strategies, actions to impacts and threats, and scientific contributions are also analyzed. The results are assessed according to three levels of conservation objectives, i.e. the individual/population, habitat, and ecosystem. The formal regulations cover the individual/population level much less than the habitat and ecosystem levels. The policies and scientific efforts are mostly concerned on the individual/population and habitat levels. The ecosystem level is ignored. The legal guidelines have set for the impacts and threats to the conservation policy, but there is lack of scientific investigation and input. It is imperative to emphasize the intensive interaction between scientific research and conservation strategies. The scientific development is obviously one of the key institutional policies of conservation. This study examines three issues in relevance to the development of conservation strategies and the implementation of management. Furthermore, the present work concludes that the conservation strategy must perceive to a correct direction for future planning and implementation, in order to integrate the conservation capacity and achieving the comprehensive conservation results.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 380-388). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-294). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1955. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [374]-390).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 390-404). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 390-404). Also available on the Internet.

Although the topic is rarely discussed, performance anxiety is a debilitating condition that sometimes even successful actors face. This thesis chronicles my experience dealing with performance anxiety in four productions as an actor in the M.F.A. acting program at The University of Texas at Austin. It includes an overview of research on the topic and calls for additional study from researchers of psychological disorders and practitioners of the acting craft. / text