Hierarchical Wireless Sensor networks (WSNs) are becoming attractive to many applications due to their energy efficiency and scalability. However, if such networks are deployed in a privacy sensitive application context such as home utility consumption, protecting data privacy becomes an essential requirement. Our threat analysis in such networks has revealed that PPDA (Privacy Preserving Data Aggregation), NIDA (Node ID Anonymity) and ENCD (Early Node Compromise Detection) are three essential properties for protecting data privacy. The scope of this thesis is on protecting data privacy in hierarchical WSNs byaddressing issues in relation to two of the three properties identified, i.e., NIDA and ENCD, effectively and efficiently. The effectiveness property is achieved by considering NIDA and ENCD in an integrated manner, and the efficiency property is achieved by using an adaptive approach to security provisioning. To this end, the thesis has made the following four novel contributions. Firstly, this thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the threats to data privacy and literature review of the countermeasures proposed to address these threats. The analysis and literature review have led to the identification of two main areas for improvements: (1) to reduce the resources consumed as the result of protecting data privacy, and (2) to address the compatibility issue between NIDA and ENCD.Secondly, a novel Adaptive Pseudonym Length Estimation (AdaptPLE) method has been proposed. The method allows the determination of a minimum acceptable length of the pseudonyms used in NIDA based on a given set of security and application related requirements and constraints. In this way, we can balance the trade-off between an ID anonymity protection level and the costs (i.e., transmission and energy) incurred in achieving the protection level. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we have evaluated the method by applying it to two existing NIDA schemes, the Efficient Anonymous Communication (EAC) scheme and theCryptographic Anonymous Scheme (CAS).Thirdly, a novel Adaptive Early Node Compromise Detection (AdaptENCD) scheme for cluster-based WSNs has been proposed. This scheme allows early detections of compromised nodes more effectively and efficiently than existing proposals. This is achieved by adjusting, at run-time, the transmission rate of heartbeat messages, used to detect nodes' aliveness, in response to the average message loss ratio in a cluster. This adaptive approach allows us to significantly reduce detection errors while keeping the number of transmitted heartbeat messages as low as possible, thus reducing transmission costs. Fourthly, a novel Node ID Anonymity Preserving Scheme (ID-APS) for clusterbased WSNs has been proposed. ID-APS protects nodes ID anonymity while, at the same time, also allowing the global identification of nodes. This later property supports the identification and removal of compromised nodes in the network, which is a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art solution, the CAS scheme. ID-APS supports both NIDA and ENCD by making a hybrid use of dynamic and global identification pseudonyms. More importantly, ID-APS achieves these properties with less overhead costs than CAS. All proposed solutions have been analysed and evaluated comprehensively to prove their effectiveness and efficiency.

This dissertation is a study of non-standard economic behavior. The first chapter concerns two widely observed violations of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, the Compromise and Attraction effects. I construct a novel method of representing them by reducing the context of a menu to a frame, encompassing the worst option along each attribute in the menu, and observing a collection of preferences indexed by frames. The agent behaves as though a good’s attractiveness along each attribute is judged relative to the frame with declining marginal utility. This allows me to give a novel interpretation of the compromise and attraction effects: they are consistent with indifference curves rotating clockwise as the frame moves down, and counter- clockwise as it goes left. It also allows me to give a representation theorem showing the behavioral axioms associated with a utility representation taking a good and the frame as arguments. The second chapter applies the representation from Chapter One to electoral politics. It shows that incorporating these preferences generates equilibria where extremist candidates enter plurality elections in order to attractively frame their preferred moderate candidate, even if the extremists have probability zero of obtaining office themselves. While such candidates are frequently observed in elections, and there are papers generating equilibria with centrist sure losers (including Solow (2015)), this is the first paper generating equilibria with these extremist candidates without unusual assumptions on election rules, or non single-peaked preferences. This paper creates a four candidate equilibrium with two extremist sure loser candidates, each on the fringes of opinion. The third chapter concerns the effect of guilt on preferences in the circumstance of gift giving. A decision maker who experiences guilt may receive an increase in surplus from a gift card allowing guilt-free indulgence, potentially beyond even the surplus she’d receive from an equivalent cash gift. This paper isolates the behavior of guilt avoidance by exploiting a multi-period setting which incorporates a distinction between the decision maker’s preferences over what she’d receive, and what she would choose. A representation inspired by Kopylov (2009) is adapted to this setting, providing a representation theorem for these preferences.

In the United States, businesses have reported over 2,800 data compromises of an estimated 543 million records, with security breaches costing firms approximately $7.2 million annually. Scholars and industry practitioners have indicated a significant impact of security breaches on consumers and organizations. However, there are limited data on the best practices for minimizing the impact of security breaches on organizational performance. The purpose of this qualitative multicase study was to explore best practices technology leaders use to minimize data security breaches for increased business performance. Systems theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. Fourteen participants were interviewed, including 2 technology executives and 5 technical staff, each from a banking firm in the Northcentral United States and a local government agency in the Southcentral United States. Data from semistructured interviews, in addition to security and privacy policy statements, were analyzed for methodological triangulation. Four major themes emerged: a need for implementation of security awareness education and training to mitigate insider threats, the necessity of consistent organization security policies and procedures, an organizational culture promoting data security awareness, and an organizational commitment to adopt new technologies and innovative processes. The findings may contribute to the body of knowledge regarding best practices technology leaders can use for securing organizational data and contribute to social change since secure organizational data might reduce consumer identity theft.

This thesis deals with the political crisis in Hungary (and by extension Austria-Hungary as a whole) at the turn of centuries. Attempts to modernize the armed forces and increase their size led, especially in Hungary, to a broad discussion about relations between the army and the nation and the position of Hungary within the monarchy. Thesis describes basic characteristics of political development in relation to the army question during years 1902-1912, its actors, their aims, motivations and results. Keywords: Austria-Hungary, compromise, dualism, army, crisis

The provision of medical care to top-level athletes in New Zealand comes with a number of challenging ethical issues. Some of these arise out of the commercial interest present in sport that links sporting success with funding, sponsorship deals and media interest. The requirement that athletes stay at peak physical function in order to be successful can, at times, be at odds with concepts of well-being and good health. The employment structure under which doctors are engaged by teams and the employment contracts which define these relationships can be the source of divided loyalty for doctors. For example, sharing health information beyond the doctor-athlete relationship may be in line with contractual obligations, but at odds with what the athlete requests. Divided loyalties also exist when athletes wish to participate in sport despite high risk of harm. Here there is a difference between what the doctor understands as the athlete�s best interest, and the athlete�s consideration of best interest. This thesis adopts two strategies for examining the area of sports medicine in elite athletes in New Zealand. The first section utilizes qualitative research. Sixteen sports doctors were interviewed and the data analysed. The next section involves normative reflection. Here two issues (where a range of behaviours were exhibited by participants) selected from the data are considered and discussion is presented on how doctors should respond to these issues. An examination of the level of guidance offered to sports doctors from the Australasian College of Sports Physician�s Code of Ethics follows. The level of guidance offered is considered inadequate and the thesis ends with a call to attend to these concerns.

Abstract In Sweden all persons under the age of 18 are considered children. The age when it is possible to be held responsible for a criminal act, and therefor convicted in court, is 15. Society’s and, perhaps first and foremost, the authority’s attitude towards juvenile crime is that they should not be equal adults in the process within criminal law. Because children are considered essential for the society of tomorrow, it is important to pay extra attention to crimes committed by juveniles. The social services authorities are considered to have the best resources and competence to handle this group of juveniles. In the criminal law process the prosecutor requests a statement regarding the young person who is reasonably suspected of a criminal act. The statement should contain information about if the young person is in need of certain interventions from social services in order to prevent unfavorable development. The conclusion that has been drawn when the statements has been reviewed is that a borderland has been created where social law and criminal law overlap. This overlapping is in a way a collision where social aspects and principles of criminal law have to meet. However, it is not always easy to make both sides satisfied. As a way to meet the needs of both sides the borderland becomes a compromise consisting of the process regarding the juveniles. The purpose of this essay is to describe and understand the compromise that has been made where statements and young juveniles are existing. The aim of this essay is to study 23 statements from social services that prosecutor request and the 23 court records attached to them. All statements and court records are regarding persons between 15 – 17 years old. The study is limited to the period between 2010-01-01 to 2010-12-31. This essay has been from a qualitative point of view where the discourse analysis as an text analytical method has been used to understand the collected statements and court records. Central results is that the statements reviewed in this essay overall are satisfying in fulfilling the social law and criminal law aspects. However the results also point out that an uncertainty within the social services regarding the design of the statements also is to be found. Descriptions of social aspects about the young juvenile behind the statement seems to be important to emphasize.

This paper contains two parts. First, we study the decoy effect (especially for the compromise decoy effect) by the experiments where the subjects face the trade-off of inflation and unemployment. As earlier studies show that the compromise decoy is not good as dominated decoy, we try to explore factors of determining compromise effect. Second, we investigate the factors affecting the subjects¡¦ preference over unemployment and inflation. In Part 1, we explore how to enhance the compromise decoy effect by changing the relative location among target, compromise, and decoy. It emerges that the distance between target and decoy, the distance between target and competitor, and the existence of the dominated decoy all affect the size of the compromise decoy effect. In Part 2, we explore the relation of subjects¡¦ preference over inflation and unemployment and their personal characteristics, such as location of hometown, the attitude toward risk, political participation, ideology, household income, knowledge of related terminology, whether to take related course or not, and friends¡¦ and relatives¡¦ unemployment status, and so on. Though the direction of effects is in line with our conjecture, the level of significance is not high enough.

In order to meet our needs, consumer always believe that the more wild of selection, the better to choose the best of us. One such assumption is the regularity principle, which asserts that the addition of a new option to the choice set should not increase the probability of choosing any of the original options (Luce 1977). Clearly, both the attraction and compromise effects reflect an increase in the share of the target option after adding a third option. It implies that a new option added to a given set should take shares from existing options in proportion to their original shares. In fact, not all of the consumers react to these "third option" in the same level, because of the different personality traits , everyone have different thoughts even they get the same message. So, we want to know the impact of personality traits on compromise and attraction effects, and the intensity of those effects. We choose ¡§self-confidence¡¨, ¡§need for cognition¡¨, ¡§need for uniqueness¡¨, ¡§locus of control¡¨, and ¡§self-monitoring¡¨ to test the compromise and attraction effects, and we found that people with ¡§low need for uniqueness¡¨ had the strongest compromise effect; and with ¡§high need for cognition¡¨ had the strongest attraction effect. In addition, ¡§high self-confidence¡¨, ¡§high need for cognition¡¨, ¡§high need for uniqueness¡¨, and ¡§low self-monitoring¡¨ groups only exist attraction effect but compromise effect; ¡§low self-confidence¡¨, ¡§low need for cognition¡¨, ¡§low need for uniqueness¡¨ and ¡§high self-monitoring¡¨ groups react not only on attraction effect, but on compromise effect.

Målgruppen för studien är de elever som i högstadiet blivit obehöriga till gymnasiet och nu går på något introduktionsprogram. Studien syftar till att belysa hur de talar om sin position och hur detta påverkar resonemanget kring framtiden samt hur de förhåller sig till normer i resonemangen. Studien är av kvalitativ karaktär med livshistorisk metod och det empiriska materialet består av intervjuer. Det saknas i princip framåtblickande studier för denna målgrupp men tidigare forskning finns för den närliggande gruppen dropouts där positionen beskrivs som kostsam. Intressant är därför att vidga forskningsområdet till den position där de obehöriga eleverna som ännu finns kvar i utbildning befinner sig. Slutsatsen är att elever på introduktionsprogrammet talar om sin position som ett fråntagande av deras ansvar för framtiden. De talar om positionen som en brytpunkt där deras önskan om att följa normerna för utbildning ökar motivationen till kompromisser i framtidsvalet. Studiens slutsats är att positionen förskjuter fokus i elevernas resonemang från valalternativen till att få tillgång till en valmöjlighet. / The target group for this study are the students that has become ineligible for upper secondary school and educates in a introductory program. The study aims to convey a picture of how these students speak about their position and how this affects their reasoning about the future and how they relates to norms in this reasoning. The study is qualitative with a life-historical method and the empirical material consists of interviews. There are no prospective studies for this target group but previous research on dropouts in general describes the position as costly. Interesting is therefore to expand the research to the position where ineligible students are in their education. The results of the study suggest that these students speak of the position as a deprivation of their responsibility for their future. These students speak about the position as a breaking point where the desire to follow the norms of education increases motivation to compromise. The study concludes that the position shifts the focus about their future from selections of choice to the ability to choose.

Das Europäische Parlament ist zweifelsohne die mächtigste parlamentarische Versammlung auf supranationaler Ebene. Das provoziert die Frage, wie Entscheidungen in diesem Parlament gefällt werden und wie sie begründet werden können. Darin liegt das Hauptanliegen dieser Arbeit, die zur Beantwortung dieser Frage auf soziologische Ansätze der Erklärung sozialen Handelns zurückgreift und damit einen neuen Zugang zur Beobachtung parlamentarischen Handelns schafft. Dabei arbeitet sie heraus, wie wichtig es ist, bei der Analyse politischer Entscheidungsprozesse zu beachten, wie politische Probleme von Akteuren interpretiert und gegenüber Verhandlungspartnern dargestellt werden. An den Fallbeispielen der Entscheidungsprozesse zur Dienstleistungsrichtlinie, zur Chemikalien-Verordnung REACH und dem TDIP (CIA)-Ausschuss in der Legislaturperiode 2004–2009, wird der soziale Mechanismus dargestellt, der hinter Einigungen im Europäischen Parlament steckt. Kultur als Interpretation der Welt wird so zum Schlüssel des Verständnisses politischer Entscheidungen auf supranationaler Ebene. / The European Parliament is the most powerful parliamentary assembly on the supranational level. However, the question of how and why decisions are being taken in this parliament has been insufficiently addressed so far. This is the main aim of this book, which draws on sociological theories for explaining social action and thus opens up a new approach to the analysis of parliamentary action. It argues that it is necessary to take into account how actors interpret political problems and how they relate to their counterparts in negotiations. In three case studies on decision-making processes in the 6th European Parliament between 2004 and 2009 - Services Directive, REACH and the TDIP (CIA-)committee – the study reconstructs the social mechanism behind compromise in the EP. Culture as the way actors attach meaning to the world is the key to understanding political decisions on the supranational level.