Abstract In response to the challenges of the globalized knowledge economy as well as the fierce competition from the global society, Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training, Council of Labor Affairs, Executive Yuan, referred to the foreign manpower training policies and developed Taiwan TrainQuali System Scorecard fairly suitable for our national enterprise so as to create the economic peak in Taiwan. It has been still unknown if Taiwan TrainQuali System Scorecard had a significant effect on the organizational performance since Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training, Council of Labor Affairs, commenced the application of Taiwan TrainQuali System Scorecard in 2005. Accordingly, the purposes of this study lied in 1) to study if the adoption of TTQS (Taiwan TrainQuali System) had a significant effect on the organizational performance, 2) to make a differential analysis on the organizational performance generated due to different industry category, and 3) to make a differential analysis on the organizational performance generated due to different employee characteristics. This study sample included Phoenix Tours in the service industry, Sheng Yu Steel Co., LTD in the manufacturing industry, as well as Orient Semiconductor Electronics, LTD in the high-tech industry. This study delivered 580 copies of questionnaires to the employees of Phoenix Tours, Orient Semiconductor Electronics, LTD and Sheng Yu Steel Co., LTD. The effective samples were 354 copies. The founding was described as follows by means of reliable analysis, factor analysis, ANOVA and t-test. 1. The adoption of TTQS had a positively significant rise in the organizational performance. 2. The employees in the service industry had a significantly more positive opinion over the organizational performance after adopting TTQS than those in the manufacturing and service industries. 3. The approval in the increase of the organizational performance after the adoption of TTQS was significantly different due to the different employee characteristics.

With the emergence of urban shopping mall in Taiwan, the general commodity marketers created a new retailing business model. Several stores of the same product category convene together in the mall to take advantage of the congregation of a consumer crowd. The current study conducted a questionnaires survey at Dream Mall of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, studying consumer behavior regarding the same-product category store: purchase readiness, information search, and store choice. The three testing same-category-stores in the mall are Daiso, Nitori and the Working House, which all are selling household wares. Another two major topics of the current research are shopper types and evaluation of shopping mall. The 468 valid consumer subjects for the study were randomly solicited to participate the questionnaires survey at the door fronts of each above stores.The result of indicates there exist different types of shopper in the mall., There are significant differences in terms of purchase readiness and in information search. Moreover, purchase readiness and attribute consideration on products significantly affect their store choice.

<p>Purpose - The purpose of the research is to study how category management is implemented by Chinese Lianhua supermarket. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is adopted a single case study of qualitative ap-proach with explanatory and exploratory design as our research strategy. The method of the re-search is developed by the following three steps: (1) based on the previous literature, we elaborate category management background, its definition, explain category management process, analyze its demand side and the benefits it brings to retailers; (2) according to the above literature and theories, we create a working model which combines category management and its demand-driven side feature (i.e. customer focus, category management collaboration and strategic retailing positioning) in order to analyze the implementation of category management in Chinese super-market retailing; (3) we find a Chinese supermarket that is carrying out category management and conduct a case study based on it. With consideration of the working model, we explain how cate-gory management is implemented in the supermarket, find barrier and challenges during the im-plementation and make the corresponding suggestions to the current situation. The case study is based on interviews with major representatives from Lianhua supermarket and one of its suppli-ers in order to achieve insight into the essence of the problem. Findings and analysis - The implementation of category management in Lianhua supermarket includes “strong outlet” strategy aiming to deal with the supermarket development in a fierce competitive environment. Besides, Lianhua supermarket closely carries out the category management process and adapts the process according to its own positioning. Insufficient systems to support the implementation of category management, collaboration with suppliers is still on the fence, lack of internal managerial techniques and conflicts between category concentration and customers’ personalized shopping are the major barriers and challenges facing to Lianhua supermarket during its implementation of category management. Authors suggest Lianhua supermarket to invest IT resources, establish win-win strategic relationship, enhance top management commitment, improve internal collaboration and improve category performance measures. Research limitations – This research only restricts insights of category management on single case and specific geographical location. As for whether the research is also applied to other industry, the researched hasn’t been concerned and needs further research. The case study in the research is conducted only from retailer’s point of view. Findings obtained from the interviews are mostly from Lianhua supermarket side. The inadequate interview from supplier side is a clear limitation of the study, but it leaves an interest for future research.</p>

The current trend in visual recognition research is to place a strict division between the supervised and unsupervised learning paradigms, which is problematic for two main reasons. On the one hand, supervised methods require training data for each and every category that the system learns; training data may not always be available and is expensive to obtain. On the other hand, unsupervised methods must determine the optimal visual cues and distance metrics that distinguish one category from another to group images into semantically meaningful categories; however, for unlabeled data, these are unknown a priori. I propose a visual category discovery framework that transcends the two paradigms and learns accurate models with few labeled exemplars. The main insight is to automatically focus on the prevalent objects in images and videos, and learn models from them for category grouping, segmentation, and summarization. To implement this idea, I first present a context-aware category discovery framework that discovers novel categories by leveraging context from previously learned categories. I devise a novel object-graph descriptor to model the interaction between a set of known categories and the unknown to-be-discovered categories, and group regions that have similar appearance and similar object-graphs. I then present a collective segmentation framework that simultaneously discovers the segmentations and groupings of objects by leveraging the shared patterns in the unlabeled image collection. It discovers an ensemble of representative instances for each unknown category, and builds top-down models from them to refine the segmentation of the remaining instances. Finally, building on these techniques, I show how to produce compact visual summaries for first-person egocentric videos that focus on the important people and objects. The system leverages novel egocentric and high-level saliency features to predict important regions in the video, and produces a concise visual summary that is driven by those regions. I compare against existing state-of-the-art methods for category discovery and segmentation on several challenging benchmark datasets. I demonstrate that we can discover visual concepts more accurately by focusing on the prevalent objects in images and videos, and show clear advantages of departing from the status quo division between the supervised and unsupervised learning paradigms. The main impact of my thesis is that it lays the groundwork for building large-scale visual discovery systems that can automatically discover visual concepts with minimal human supervision. / text

This thesis consists of three papers about N-complexes and their uses in categorification. N-complexes are generalizations of chain complexes having a differential d satisfying dN = 0 rather than d2 = 0. Categorification is the process of finding a higher category analog of a given mathematical structure. Paper I: We study a set of homology functors indexed by positive integers a and b and their corresponding derived categories. We show that there is an optimal subcategory in the domain of every functor given by N-complexes with N = a + b. Paper II: In this paper we show that the lax nerve of the category of chain complexes is pointwise adjoint equivalent to the décalage of the simplicial category of N-complexes. This reveals additional simplicial structure on the lax nerve of the category of chain complexes which provides a categorfication of the triangulated homotopy category of chain complexes. We study this in general and present evidence that the axioms of triangulated categories have a simplicial origin. Paper III: Let n be a product of two distinct prime numbers. We construct a triangulated monoidal category having a Grothendieck ring isomorphic to the ring of n:th cyclotomic integers.

Recent work has shown that the regulatory fit between global approach/avoidance goals and the local approach/avoidance mechanisms of goal pursuit influence cognition and behavior in predictable ways. A regulatory fit leads to an increase in motivation and engagement relative to a regulatory mismatch. The increase in engagement can lead to an increase in cognitive flexibility on cognitively demanding tasks. This work is composed of three inter-related studies that examine how the fit between global performance incentives and local mechanisms of goal pursuit influence decision-making and categorization. In Study 1 I examine how the interaction between global performance incentives and local goal pursuit mechanisms influences decision-making strategies in an experience-based decision-making paradigm. In this paradigm decision-making strategies can be classified as more exploratory or more exploitative. I find that participants in a regulatory fit would exhibit more exploratory decision-making patterns than participants in a regulatory mismatch. In Study 2 I examine how social pressure is related to approach and avoidance-based performance incentives using two types of category-learning tasks. I test the hypothesis that increasing performance pressure will induce an avoidance-based prevention focus which then interacts with the local mechanism of goal pursuit employed in the task (maximizing points gained or minimizing points lost). Participants either perform an explicit, rule-based category-learning task, or an implicit information-integration category-learning task. Behavioral and model-based analyses support the hypothesis that social pressure induces a prevention focus. When the pressure-induced prevention focus aligns with the local goal-pursuit mechanism participants perform better on the rule-based task, but worse on the information-integration task. Study 3 examines the effects of social pressure on categorization in highly-trained participants. Participants performed over 2500 training trials of either a rule-based or an information-integration category-learning task, and then performed another 640 trials after half received a manipulation designed to raise social pressure. Performance was worse on both the rule-based and information-integration task for participants who were under high social pressure compared to participants under low social pressure. The results from all three projects suggest that motivational incentives have a large effect on cognitively demanding tasks. / text

It is widely accepted within the software engineering community that the support for integration is necessary for requirement models. Several methodologies, such as the role-based software development, that have appeared in the literature are relying on some kind of integration. However, current integration techniques and their tools support are insufficient. In this research, we discuss our solution to the problem. More precisely, we present a general integration approach for scenario-based models, particularly for UML Sequence Diagrams, based on the colimit construction known from category theory. In our approach, Sequence Diagrams are represented by SD-graphs, a special kind of typed graphs. The merge algorithm for SD-graphs is an extension of existing merge operations on sets and graphs. On the one hand, the merge algorithm ensures traceability and guarantees key theoretical properties (e.g., “everything is represented and nothing extra is acquired” during the merge). On the other hand, our formalization of Sequence Diagrams as SD-graphs retains the graphical nature of Sequence Diagrams, yet is amenable to algebraic manipulations. Another important property of our process is that our approach is applicable to other kinds of models as long as they can be represented by typed graphs. A prototype Sequence Diagram integration tool following the approach has been implemented. The tool is not only a fully functional integration tool, but also served as a test bed for our theory and provided feedback for our theoretical framework. To support the discovery and specification of model relationships, we also present a list of high-level merge patterns in this dissertation. We believe our theory and tool are beneficial to both academia and industry, as the initial evaluation has shown that the ideas presented in this dissertation represent promising steps towards the more rigorous management of requirement models. We also present an approach connecting model transformation with source transformation and allowing an existing source transformation language (TXL) to be used for model transformation. Our approach leverages grammar generators to ease the task of creating model transformations and inherits many of the strengths of the underlying transformation language (e.g., efficiency and maturity). / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-28 13:03:08.607

Unlike men, women’s genital arousal is category-nonspecific with respect to sexual orientation, such that their genital responses do not differentiate stimuli by gender. A possible explanation for women’s nonspecific sexual response is the inclusion of women at different phases of the menstrual cycle or women using hormonal contraceptives in sexual psychophysiology research, which may be obscuring a specificity effect. The present study employs the ovulatory-shift hypothesis – used to explain a shift in women’s preferences for masculine traits during peak fertility – as an explanatory model for women’s nonspecific sexual arousal. Twenty-nine naturally-cycling women were tested at two points in their menstrual cycles (follicular and luteal) to determine the role of hormonal variation, as estimated by fertility status, on the specificity of genital (using vaginal photoplethysmograph) and subjective sexual arousal. Cycle phase at the time of first testing was counterbalanced; however, no effect of order was observed. Inconsistent with the ovulatory-shift model, the predicted mid-cycle shift in preferences for masculinity or sexual activity at peak fertility was not obtained. Category-specificity of genital arousal did not increase during the follicular phase. A statistical trend was observed for higher genital arousal to couple sex stimuli during the follicular phase compared to the luteal phase, suggesting that women’s genital arousal may be sensitive to fertility status with respect to sexual activity (specifically, couple sex), but not gender. Subjective arousal was not influenced by fertility status. This study is the first to provide evidence that women’s genital arousal may be influenced by the probability of conception. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-29 08:51:26.973

As a consequence of the gradually expanding aviation network, civil aircrafts are occupying an increasingly high proportion of the transport industry. Air transport now dominates the intercity rapid transit, long-distance passenger transport, international passenger and freight transport, and specific regional transport, advantaged as it is by fast, convenient, comfortable and safe options. Nevertheless, the potential adverse impact on the environment of air transport, specifically, in the case of this research, the pollutants generated during aircraft production remain a concern. Using the A319 as the main research object, this thesis will conduct a life cycle assessment research about its environmental impact. Moreover, it will focus on the impact brought by the application of composite materials to the entire life cycle environmental influence of the aircraft, particularly the material production and disposal process. At the same time, a contrast with the B737-800 aircraft will be made due to their different composite material use rate. Firstly, the inventory list is formed by collecting data about the weight and material of every component in the aircraft, the input and output information of the composite material manufacturing process, the disposal situation of the aircraft and the treatment of composite material. Secondly, the impact assessment of the aircraft is conducted to examine their environmental influence. During the assessment, each life stage and the whole life cycle of the aircrafts is assessed, and a comparison between these two aircraft types is made. Finally, according to the impact assessment result, the environment load increase brought by the manufacturing of composite material and the decrease of the environment impact due to the weight reduction character of composite material is calculated and compared. From this research, the conclusion that the use of composite material has a positive effect on decreasing the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of the aircraft is obtained. This will enable aircraft manufacturers to target these reas for improvement, to produce more comfortable, environment friendly and market competitive aircraft.

A Kahler category axiomatizes the algebraic geometric theory of Kahler Differentials in an abstract categorical setting. To facilitate this, a Kahler category is equipped with an algebra modality, which endows each object in the image of a specified monad with an associative algebra structure; universal derivations are then required to exist naturally for each of these objects. Moreover, it can be demonstrated that for each T-algebra of said monad there is a natural associative algebra structure. In this paper I will show that under certain conditions on the Kahler category, the universal derivations for the algebras arising from T-algebras exist and arise via a coequalizer. Furthermore, this result is extended to provide an alternative construction for universal derivations for a more general class of algebras, including all algebras in a Kahler category. A prospective categorical formulation of the theory of noncommutative Kahler differentials is then given, and the above said results are shown to apply in this context. Finally, another class of algebras is constructed via a colimit, and the modules of differential forms for these algebras is computed.