<p>The number of residential fires has not declined sufficiently since the smoke alarm entranced the Swedish homes, fires lead to devastating consequences in which possessions, homes and worst of all human lives are at stake. Every year, about 80 people get killed and more than 500 get´s injured in residential fires, often due to lack of safety equipment. The number of fires caused by electrical appliances has risen and taken over a period of ten years the fire caused by a forgotten stove has increased by 70 percent. Preventing the risk that a fire would start on the stove would saves money, worry and most importantly, lives.</p>

<p>The number of residential fires has not declined sufficiently since the smoke alarm entranced the Swedish homes, fires lead to devastating consequences in which possessions, homes and worst of all human lives are at stake. Every year, about 80 people get killed and more than 500 get´s injured in residential fires, often due to lack of safety equipment. The number of fires caused by electrical appliances has risen and taken over a period of ten years the fire caused by a forgotten stove has increased by 70 percent. Preventing the risk that a fire would start on the stove would saves money, worry and most importantly, lives.</p>

The number of residential fires has not declined sufficiently since the smoke alarm entranced the Swedish homes, fires lead to devastating consequences in which possessions, homes and worst of all human lives are at stake. Every year, about 80 people get killed and more than 500 get´s injured in residential fires, often due to lack of safety equipment. The number of fires caused by electrical appliances has risen and taken over a period of ten years the fire caused by a forgotten stove has increased by 70 percent. Preventing the risk that a fire would start on the stove would saves money, worry and most importantly, lives.

The number of residential fires has not declined sufficiently since the smoke alarm entranced the Swedish homes, fires lead to devastating consequences in which possessions, homes and worst of all human lives are at stake. Every year, about 80 people get killed and more than 500 get´s injured in residential fires, often due to lack of safety equipment. The number of fires caused by electrical appliances has risen and taken over a period of ten years the fire caused by a forgotten stove has increased by 70 percent. Preventing the risk that a fire would start on the stove would saves money, worry and most importantly, lives.

Corruption has been a global issue since ancient times till today, and acts of corruption take place regardless of the political system we exist under, hence, corruption can be said to be a type of conventional crime. As such crimes directly affect the functions, reliability and efficiency of governments, as well as national competitiveness of a country, relating to political austerity, economic prosperity and public sentiment, it would be sufficient enough to affect social stability, the rise an -+d decline of a nation¡¦s might, and the survival of governments. Throughout history, keeping corruption in check has always been a priority without exception by past governments in bringing peace and stability of the country; and ¡§Integrity¡¨ is the most fundamental requirement of a government. Should the administration of a government lacks the measure of integrity, the trust of the people towards the government will decline with poor governance, dishonest officials and rampant corruption, as a result, the integral administration of a government shall descend into a crisis; therefore, there is not one country around the world that is not constantly advancing its efforts in curbing corruption and governing impartially. Thus, in order to raise the integrity competence of the government, and to respond to the expectations of the public, the government convened a meeting with relevant agencies from the consensus of the meeting on the sustained development of Taiwan¡¦s economy, to jointly deliberate and enact the ¡§Anti-Corruption Action Plan¡¨, which has already been checked and ratified by the Executive Yuan on November 30, 2006. The purpose of enacting the plan was to immediately eliminate corruption and other factors that destabilize economic development, as well as to incorporate economic crimes that seriously impair the image of the government, hoping to effectively raise the integrity competence of the government and enhance national competitiveness. Since its establishment in 1995, Transparency International, the only international organization devoted to fighting against corruption, has according to the results of various corruption studies, established a Corruption Perception Index based on countries as the assessment subjects, and published it worldwide simultaneously. After several years, this economic index has become the most widely used instrument as a measure of the corruption situation in a country. The Swiss International Institute for Management Development has since 1989 been releasing its annual research report on the economic competitiveness of countries within major economic blocs. This has led to the close attention of various governments and related civic agencies around the world, moving on to adopt this report as its benchmark in governance and operations. The information published by the abovementioned organization has more than proven that the morality of government ethics is closely correlated to the overall performance of civil servants in notion, spirit, virtue, lives and work attitude. The ¡§Integral Governance Ethics Action Plan¡¨ currently driven to be implemented will improve not only the impartial image of government departments but also has the functions of educating and guiding the society. In view of this, various countries around the world place extreme importance in enacting and actualizing its anti-corruption policies. According to Transparency International, from their observations in the past 12 years, there has been little change in Taiwan¡¦s position on the Corruption Perception Index. On the whole, since 1995 till 2006, Taiwan¡¦s position has been hovering in the narrow range of 25th to 35th. From the viewpoint of comparison between countries around the world, Taiwan is yet to be classified a country with average integrity. However, it is worth noting that on November 6, 2006, Transparency International-Taiwan announced the findings of the 2006 Corruption Perception Index conducted by Transparency International, that Taiwan was placed jointly with Israel at 34th position with 5.9 points, as compared to 2005 , though the score has remained the same, its position has dropped by 2 places. While in comparison with Asian countries such as, Singapore (9.4 at 5th position), Hong Kong (8.3 at 15th position) and Japan (7.6 at 17th position), Taiwan was only slightly superior to South Korea (5.1 at 42nd position), indicating that the corruption situation in Taiwan remains one of the utmost issue pending improvement. Again, according to the 2006 Global Competitiveness Position officially released by the Swiss International Institute for Management Development on May 11, 2006, among the 61 economies, Taiwan was positioned 18th, dropping by 7 places as compared to its standing in 2005. The position of Taiwan in the 4 main index categories in 2006 unanimously slides down, except for ¡§Enterprise Efficiency¡¨ at position 14th, thus having certain comparative advantage. However, ¡§Economic Performance¡¨, ¡§Government Efficiency¡¨ and ¡§Infrastructure Construction¡¨ respectively positioned at 27th, 24th and 20th were on the contrary weaker; hence, there is still much room for improvement in enhancing national competitiveness. From the ranking results above, this should be a serious warning to Taiwan which has only just completed its democratic transformation, as it strives towards quality administration in the 21st century. Looking to the future, it is only with advocating integrity and anti-corruption by the different political parties and factions as well as blue and white collar classes and academic circles of Taiwan, that a united and collaborative networking relationship can be created. By striving together to build the National Integrity System of Taiwan, it is only then that Taiwan will have a chance to ascend to a country of high integral governance, and be able to play an even more active and important role in the international effort against corruption. In conclusion, among the ¡§Rebuilding Project of the Government¡¨, an integral governance is the basic demand of the people. The strength of national competitiveness is the key to whether a country is being able to have a foothold in the international community, and raising national competitiveness begins with the strengthening of ethical administrative work, and also forms the basic foundation for the current administration to be rebuilt on. According to the statistics from surveys carried out by the Ministry of Law recently, most of the people in society subjectively feel the improvement in the ¡§Integrity of the Government¡¨, though there is still considerable expectations, and how to have the people and government band together to form a climate of integrity, is the unshirkable mission of all civil servants in Taiwan. Though ¡§Uprighting Government Ethics, Stamping Out Corruption¡¨ is the principal task of administrative revolution and administration rebuilding ,it is an even more important index parameter of national competitiveness. Essentially erecting an ¡§Integrity Pride, Corruption Ashamed¡¨ benchmark, and by resolutely upholding the ¡§dare not desire, cannot desire, unable to desire and no necessity to desire¡¨ conviction, so that corruption cases within the government organizations have no avenue of arising again, it is then that a nation of integrity and transparency can be established. Consequently, the results of the present study can be sum up with the following conclusions and recommendations: 1. The acts of the government in stamping out corruption urgently needs to be strengthened. 2. The faith of people in judiciary officials remains low. 3. The promotion of anti-corruption by the government is still insufficient. 4. The undesirable practices of social nepotism and bribery needs further education. 5. Establish an integrated anti-corruption apparatus to give full support; to have a clean administration, clearing away all economic hindrance, lifting the national competitiveness of Taiwan, and stride into the ranks of countries with high integral governance in the world. Keywords: Keeping corruption in check, national competitiveness, integral governance, Transparency International and Swiss International Institute for Management Development.

The aim of coding theory is to design codes which can achieve the fundamental limits of communication [52] and yet are simple to implement. On average randomly constructed codes can achieve this goal, but with a decoding complexity that is impractical. Consequently, highly structured codes with practical decoding algorithms have been extensively studied. Unfortunately the vast majority of these codes do not approach capacity. Recent advances involving simple 'random like' codes with practical iterative decoding algorithms have closely approached capacity as the blocklength increases. This thesis investigates single parity check (SPC) product codes and introduces the class of randomly interleaved (RI) SPC product codes. It will be shown that RI SPC product codes can asymptotically force the probability of error to zero, at code rates up to capacity, for almost all codewords. Furthermore the structure of these codes allows a very simple, sub-optimal, iterative decoding algorithm to be used. This thesis also derives an asymptotic analysis on SPC product codes from the decoding point of view. It is shown that the probability of error can be driven to zero, as the blocklength increases, for signal to noise ratios within 2dB of capacity on the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Simulation results for both SPC and RI SPC product codes in an AWGN channel are presented. These results indicate that RI SPC product codes perform very well, typically within 1.5dB of capacity over a wide range of blocklengths and code rates. Further analysis on the weight enumerator of finite length RI SPC product codes is used to confirm the error floor of these codes. Extensions to parallel and serially concatenated SPC product codes are also investigated. Simulation results show an advantageous trade-off between code rate, blocklength and performance for three dimensional parallel concatenated SPC product codes. The design of irregular SPC product codes is also considered, and some simulation results are presented.

In wireless networks, it has always been a challenge to satisfy high traffic throughput demands, due to limited spectrum resources. In past decades, various techniques, including cooperative communications, have been developed to achieve higher communication rates. This thesis addresses the challenges imposed by cooperative wireless networks, in particular focusing on practical code constructions and designs for wireless relay networks. The thesis is divided into the following four topics: 1) constructing and designing low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes for half-duplex three-phase two-way relay channels, 2) extending LDPC code constructions to half-duplex three-way relay channels, 3) proposing maximum-rate relay selection algorithms and LDPC code constructions for the broadcast problem in wireless relay networks, and 4) proposing an iterative hard interference cancellation decoder for LDPC codes in 2-user multiple-access channels. Under the first topic, we construct codes for half-duplex three-phase two-way relay channels where two terminal nodes exchange information with the help of a relay node. Constructing codes for such channels is challenging, especially when messages are encoded into multiple streams and a destination node receives signals from multiple nodes. We first prove an achievable rate region by random coding. Next, a systematic LDPC code is constructed at the relay node where relay bits are generated from two source codewords. At the terminal nodes, messages are decoded from signals of the source node and the relay node. To analyze the performance of the codes, discretized density evolution is derived. Based on the discretized density evolution, degree distributions are optimized by iterative linear programming in three steps. The optimized codes obtained are 26% longer than the theoretic ones. For the second topic, we extend LDPC code constructions from half-duplex three-phase two-way relay channels to half-duplex three-way relay channels. An achievable rate region of half-duplex three-way relay channels is first proved. Next, LDPC codes for each sub-region of the achievable rate region are constructed, where relay bits can be generated only from a received codeword or from both the source codeword and received codewords. Under the third topic, we study relay selection and code constructions for the broadcast problem in wireless relay networks. We start with the system model, followed by a theorem stating that a node can decode a message by jointly decoding multiple blocks of received signals. Next, the maximum rate is given when a message is decoded hop-by-hop or decoded by a set of nodes in a transmission phase. Furthermore, optimal relay selection algorithms are proposed for the two relay schemes. Finally, LDPC codes are constructed for the broadcast problem in wireless relay networks. For the fourth topic, an iterative hard interference cancellation decoder for LDPC codes in 2-user multiple-access channels is proposed. The decoder is based on log-likelihood ratios (LLRs). Interference is estimated, quantized and subtracted from channel outputs. To analyze the codes, density evolution is derived. We show that the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the proposed low-complexity decoder is 0.2 dB higher than that for an existing sub-optimal belief propagation decoder at code rate 1/3.

Zugl.: Ulm, Univ., Diss., 2008

Background: International research has shown that socioeconomically disadvantaged groups experience significantly higher mortality and morbidity rates than other groups. Both cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes are major contributors to Australia's burden of disease, and individuals from lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to be affected by both, and to have worse prognoses and outcomes. There is substantial research evidence that a range of preventive activities can reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with these conditions. Research in countries with good access to primary health care services has demonstrated that socioeconomically disadvantaged groups tend to have higher levels of medical consultations, but make less use of preventive care and screening services. This fact contributes to their poorer health outcomes, as diagnosis will typically occur later than for more advantaged individuals, thus leading to a poorer prognosis. However, to date, there has been little research on the differential utilisation of preventive health services for CVD and diabetes by different socioeconomic groups in Australia. To understand socioeconomic influences on the use of preventive health services, a comprehensive review of the literature of determinants of health service utilisation was conducted and a number of explanations for this relationship considered. It was proposed that the following factors are likely to be important in this relationship: differences in the perception of the availability of, and accessibility to health care, attitudes and beliefs toward preventive health care, having a regular source of care, perception of interpersonal care from general practitioners, and social support. A number of theoretical models were also reviewed; in particular, the Andersen Behavioural Model of Health Service Research Utilisation. Aims: This doctoral research program has described the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and utilisation of preventive health services in relation to CVD and diabetes. It aims to improve the understanding of the determinants of uptake and utilisation of preventive health services in general practice by different socioeconomic groups in Australia. Methods: The study was conducted in Brisbane Australia, in 2004, using a cross-sectional design and a self-administered mailed survey for data collection. A sample of adults aged 25-64 years was selected randomly from the Brisbane Electoral Roll. A conceptual model incorporating a range of relevant socio-demographic, risk-factor and behavioural variables in the relationship between SEP and GP-based use of preventive health services was used to develop a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was pilot-tested and then reviewed by a panel of international experts. A new self-administered questionnaire, the Health Service Utilisation Questionnaire (HSUQ), was developed. It included 79 items: 12 socio-demographic items; 10 items assessing health status, disease conditions and smoking status; 20 items assessing use of health services; and 37 items assessing the factors that might affect use of health services utilisation. The HSUQ was then mailed to 800 randomly selected survey participants. The survey response rate was 65.6 per cent. After exclusion of those patients with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, the final sample size was 381, consisting of 155 males and 226 females. Socioeconomic indicators were individual education level and family income. Blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood glucose check-ups by general practitioners (GPs) were used as the major outcome variables. Nine scales and two dichotomous variables that measure those potential factors were derived following Principal Component Analysis and reliability testing. The data were analysed separately by gender, and adjusted for age and each of the socioeconomic indicators. Statistical description, bivariate analysis and multivariable modelling in SPSS were applied for the data analysis. Results: The survey results were suggestive of socioeconomically disadvantaged people being less likely than more advantaged people to utilise preventive health services for CVD and diabetes. For males, the low socioeconomic groups recorded the least use of preventive health services among the three education and income groups, including blood cholesterol and blood glucose check-ups, while the high socioeconomic group recorded the greatest use of preventive health services. There was no apparent relationship between education level and blood pressure check-up, while individuals from low-income families were less likely to go for a blood pressure check-up. For females, most of the results suggested that the low socioeconomic groups were less likely than the high socioeconomic groups to have blood cholesterol and blood glucose check-ups. However, this was not the case for blood pressure check-ups. The results showed that the low and middle socioeconomic groups were more likely than the high socioeconomic groups to have BP check-ups. However, the low socioeconomic groups were still less likely than the middle socioeconomic groups to have a blood pressure check-up. Overall, there was a similar pattern between education and income and the use of GP-based preventive health services among both males and females. The findings from the examination of the mediating factors between SEP and the GP-based use of preventive health services suggested that socioeconomically disadvantaged adults (both low level of education and low income) are more concerned about transport and travel time to health care, and accessibility to health care in terms of finding a GP who bulk bills, the cost of seeing a GP and having a choice of GP. They are also less likely to have a regular place of care and social support. These potential factors are likely to result in a lesser use of preventive health services than their high-SEP counterparts. In addition, the findings also suggested that respondents with a low level of education have less-positive attitudes towards health care, and that those from low-income families do not have a regular care provider and are less likely to visit their GP for a preventive check-up in relation to CVD and diabetes in Australia. Conclusions: Strategies for reducing socioeconomic health inequalities are partly associated with changing social and economic policies, empowering individuals, strengthening social and family networks, and improving the equity of the health care system. Strategies have been recommended for implementation in general practice that are directed at targeting the needs of disadvantaged groups; for example, providing longer consultation time and actively offering information on preventive care. Implementation of health promotion programs is needed in disadvantaged areas to keep the community informed about the availability of health services and to make health services more accessible. The health care system needs to be geographically accessible through improvements to the transport system. In addition, improving access to a regular source of primary health care is likely to be an important step in encouraging low-SEP individuals to use preventive health services.

The purpose of the study is to develop a project health check model to evaluate the status of projects within the coal mining industry. The model will be based on the Buttrick (2000) project health check model as described in his book “The Interactive Project Workout”. The model assesses the current “health” or status of a project. It looks at the full project environment and uses a set of question results in an assessment of the overall risk associated with the project. The model evaluates seven key project success factors which include: 1. Project Plan 5. Expertise 2. Resources 6. Clear Specification 3. Ownership 7. Top Level Support 4. Justifiable Case The model fulfils two roles: • As a checklist, and • As a tool to indicate where a project manager’s efforts should be directed. This study will give an overview of the coal mining industry and the way projects are being evaluated and prioritised. The Buttrick (2000) project health check model will be assessed and adapted to evaluate projects within the coal mining industry. The “new / adapted” model will be applied to the Douglas / Middelburg Optimisation (DMO) to evaluate the health status of the project which is currently at the end of definition (feasibility) stage within BHP Billiton Energy Coal South Africa. The results obtained from the new health check model showed that the DMO project was in a healthy state with a project health check score of 47.33. It could 4 thus be concluded that the DMO project is ready to move in to the execution phase of the BHP Billiton capital investment process. The results obtained from the project team member participants were split into management perception and team members’ perception. The overall health of the DMO project between the two parties gave similar results with the team members score of 43.76 being slightly lower than the management health score of 45.42. The only major difference was observed on the “Communication” project evaluation criteria where the management perspective on the communication effectiveness was higher than that of the project team members.