The focus of this thesis is to explore the influence of market power possessed by seed input companies on rent distribution in an identity preserved production and marketing system. This thesis develops a theoretical model to estimate rent distribution between participants in an identity preserved production and marketing system under constrained production and the elicitation of a premium from market development activities in the presence of a range of seed ownership structures. The thesis employs an empirical model to examine rent distribution of two varieties involved in the Canadian Wheat Boards Identity Preserved Contract Program.<p> The theoretical model demonstrates that market development activities for an identity preserved production and marketing program had a diminished impact on farmers when the seed industry possessed a large degree of market power. The finding of the theoretical model were consistent with that of the empirical model, where the price of certified seed for varieties involved in the identity preserved production and marketing program were priced higher than conventional varieties. The difference in price was found to be greater than the premiums offered by the Identity Preserved Contract Program marketing and/or production contracts for Saskatchewan farmers that received average yields and average prices of grain.

This paper examines the relationship between firm performance, measured by Tobin’s Q, and board diversity. Board diversity is measured by age differentials, gender diversity, board size, number of board members with higher education, and number of nationali-ties included in the board. The data were collected from firms on the OMX Stockholm 30, for the years 2006-2010. Because data were collected from 5 years, a panel type re-gression is used. Furthermore the regression of this paper corrects for time specific ef-fects. This paper contributes to the field of research by investigating the Swedish market in a quantitative manner and using these specific five explanatory variables as a measure of board diversity. The result of this paper shows a clear overall relationship between board diversity and firm performance. More specifically, the education and nationality variables are not significant. The size variable is significant and negatively correlated to firm performance, while the gender and age variables show a significant and positive re-lationship to firm performance.

Company’s annual report has been widely used by stakeholders such as investors, employees, suppliers, customers and creditors. Information included in annual report consists of both mandatory information required by law, regulations as well as accounting standard and voluntary information depended on management’s judgments. We find that voluntary information vary from company to company. From corporate governance field, we find that the company’s board of directors plays an important role in monitoring the management’s performance and have an impact on management’s judgment, including their decision to disclose information in annual report. Board of directors comprises inside and independent directors. Both of them have incentives to disclose information in annual report. In this study, we use quantitative method to examine the association between board composition and different types of voluntary disclosure in listed companies in the Shanghai stock exchange (SSE) of China and OMX Nordic Exchange Stockholm. The board composition is measured by the proportion of independent directors to total number of directors on the board. Voluntary disclosure has been classified into three categories: Strategic information, non-financial information and financial information. The results show that there is no significant association between board composition and voluntary disclosure from our samples Chinese and Swedish companies. However, we find association between different types of voluntary disclosure and firm characteristics. We find significant negative association between strategic information and financial leverage for Chinese companies. We find significant negative association between financial information and equity-based management compensation in Swedish companies. On comparison, we find that Swedish companies is inclined to disclose more financial information than Chinese companies while Chinese companies would like to disclose more strategic information than Swedish companies.

With smaller electronic devices and higher transmission speeds, a digital circuit will cause potential electromagnetic interference (EMI) and signal integrity (SI) problems. Nowadays, the flexible printed circuit board (FPC) is widely used in electronic systems, especially in the video circuit. In this thesis, we used transmission line model to explain effect of the structure of the flexible printed circuit board transmission lines. Eye-diagram is a fast and convenient tool to analyze the quality of the high speed transmission, and we can use the equivalent model to substitute for the electromagnetic (EM) model to simulate the performance. We used differential circuit and the reflection gain to increase the height and width parameters of Eye-diagram, and make the quality of signal transmission higher. For video driver circuit, since the terminal resistance is different depending on whether the IC is on or off, the standard probe cannot measure mixed-mode S-parameter directly due to the connectors. Thus, we provided a de-embedding method to remove the effects of high speed interconnect line on the test board. Finally, we use a simple structure to verify the method, and it can be used to measure mixed-mode S-parameter on the standard of Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) for D-PHY, v0.90.00.

The main purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between the characteristics of board composition and earnings management. It is a case study of steel industry and telecommunications industry ,which have state-owned enterprises after privatization. From the perspective of earnings management, the Modified Jones Model is used for the detection of earnings management ,and the period of the study samples is from 2005 to 2007. There are six independent variables .They are the proportion of shareholding directors and supervisors, the pledged share ratio of directors and supervisors , the proportion of shareholding foreign investors, the proportion of shareholding government, the number of independent directors and the if the board has set the labor director or not. SPSS statistical software is used to do empirical analysis. The empirical results of this study shows that there is significant positively correlated between the proportion of shareholding directors and supervisors and earnings management ; there is significant negatively correlated between the proportion of shareholding foreign investors and earnings management ; there is significant negatively correlated between the proportion of shareholding government and earnings management. Above all , part of the variables of characteristics of board composition in this study are not significantly affected earnings management , resulting in some of the hypotheses do not hold .Thus, this study suggests that the concept of corporate governance in Taiwan is not already universal yet in the study samples, and Taiwan's independent directors just set up in the beginning stages of implementation. Besides, the labor director only interest in the labor rights issues, not in earnings management issues , and also they do not have the ability to judge them.

In this dissertation, multiband ground antennas for slim handsets are presented. The design techniques are on efficiently exciting the resonant modes of the system ground plane of the handset to greatly enhance the antenna¡¦s operating bandwidth. The first antenna design is a monopole antenna integrated with a slot antenna formed in a clearance in the system ground plane to enhance the bandwidth of the antenna¡¦s lower band for penta-band WWAN operation. The second antenna design uses a shaped circuit board with a proper notch embedded therein to result in stronger surface current excitation in the ground plane, which leads to bandwidth enhancement in the antenna¡¦s lower band and upper band. The second antenna design can cover seven-band WWAN/LTE operation. The antenna geometry in the second antenna design is further applied in the third antenna design. In order to meet the practical application of slim handsets, the third antenna design is integrated with a battery element and a metal midplate to decrease the thickness of the handset. The third antenna design can cover seven-band WWAN/LTE operation. Finally, the simulated SAR and HAC results are analyzed for the three proposed antennas.

This research study was a qualitative study involving eight current or former school board members of a recently annexed, rural, impoverished, Latino school district in South Texas. The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to highlight the plight of rural education, specifically the plight of a poor school district by examining the perceptions of the school board members. This study was organized around the following sensitizing concerns (Blumer, 1969; Patton, 2002; Schwandt, 2001): What were the school board members’ perceptions about the school district prior to the annexation? What were the school board members’ perceptions of the factors that contributed to the annexation? What were the school board members’ perceptions of the effect of the annexation on the community? The method of inquiry was conversational information interviews (Patton, 2002), two unstructured interviews with each school board member, going where the interviews took me (Fontana & Frey, 2005). The themes revealed in the research included (1) power dynamics, with three sub-themes, (a) trusting those in power, (b) deferring to those in power, and (c) becoming those in power; (2) denial of the obvious, and (3) unspoken paternalism—the Anglo patron system. This study offers implications for policy, practice, and additional research in the areas of rural communities and rural school districts, but most importantly, it provides evidence that rural colonias located along the U.S.-Mexico border have unique educational needs. Rural school districts located along this border need strong school leaders with “a critical leadership of place that support community as a context for learning, understand that schools and their local communities are inextricably linked and that the ability of each to thrive is dependent upon the other” (Budge, 2006, p.8).

This study sought to determine and evaluate the effectiveness of the Leadership Advisory Board structure and its membership at meeting the needs of Visioning and Advocacy for Texas AgriLife Extension Service. The research was conducted with the members of the Leadership Advisory Boards in 48 counties in Texas, with a selection based upon distribution of counties across all Extension categories roughly equal to the percentage of each category currently present in the State. The primary purpose was to determine the self perception of members of their ability to serve as advocates and as a visionary organization to help Extension identify and validate the issues important to the residents of their county. A secondary purpose was to identify the benefits, concerns and solutions that can assist Texas AgriLife Extension in strengthening the organizational structure and methods associated with these Boards across the State. Five research questions were examined by the researcher. These questions were, 1. What is the competency level of the Leadership Advisory Board members on the pertinent issues in the county?, 2. Do members of the Leadership Advisory Boards understand the Land-Grant system and the Extension Service?, 3. Do members of the Leadership Advisory Board feel that their ideas lead to programs?, 4. Do members of the Leadership Advisory Board assist with interpreting program impacts to key stakeholders and decision makers?, 5. What benefits are Leadership Advisory Board members receiving from their involvement on the Board? The sample population included 490 Leadership Advisory Board members, with 236 of these participating in the survey. The instrument utilized was a seven page survey with 26 perception statements on a likert-type scale, six true or false questions to measure knowledge of the Land-Grant system, three open-ended questions for qualitative analysis, and 10 demographic questions to describe and categorize the respondents. The results included 10 significant findings, which led to 7 recommendations for Extension related to the Leadership Advisory Board, and 5 areas of further research.

This thesis is on the basis of searching EWOM actively and attempt to treat the motivation of using discussion board, and how these motivations explain the influence of discussion board. Reviewing literatures, the thesis generalize the motivations of searching WOM actively and use product involvement to be situational variable in order to explore that the motivation and the consequence of using different discussion board. The thesis adopted bulletin board systems to be the research field, and distributed questionnaires. The research found that though consumers had different motivations of using discussion boards while facing products with diverse level of involvement, in fact, they normally take ¡§information searching¡¨ and ¡§recognition seeking¡¨ as the main motivations. Further, the explanatory power of these motivation factors on the consumers¡¦ behaviors changed by the discussion boards will differ with the product involvement.

ABSTRACT The thesis focuses on aluminum porous board used in noise reduction. The experiment evaluates propagation of sound wave and examines acoustic characteristics of aluminum porous board when sound wave impinging on the aluminum porous board. Also, the material properties and acoustic properties of aluminum porous board are analyzed to help further understanding of aluminum porous board. Biot`s poroelastic theory is essentially used to obtain the equation of motion of the elastic porous material, following the calculation of sound transmission loss via application of appropriate boundary condition. Supported by the theoretical analysis and measured data, the result in the thesis shows that aluminum porous board can provide well noise reduction throughout all frequency ranges. In addition, aluminum porous board lined with multi-panel structure, through analysis on sound transmission loss, proved better effect than single-paneled aluminum porous board in noise reducing. The difference is about 5dB in low frequency and more than 10dB in high frequency. The studying of material mechanical properties of aluminum porous board is also included in the thesis, According to the database obtained in this thesis, acoustic properties and material properties of aluminum porous board can be worked out to estimate suitable aluminum porous board applied in noise reduction. The analysis suggests if higher noise reduction is required, one needs to thicken the aluminum porous board, or to increase density and Young`s modulus of the material, which results improvement in high frequency; but no effect in low frequency. Moreover, increasing material thickness and density will shift the resonance frequency to lower value; in addition, increasing Young`s modulus will move the resonance frequency to higher value.