This thesis focuses on the candidate selection method of the ruling party of Tanzania, Chama Cha Mapinduzi. The method was changed in 2008. Through interviews made with local politicians, state officials and voters in Babati an understanding of why and in what way the change was made is presented. The thesis also presents an understanding of in what way different stakeholders perceive this change. The changed candidate selection method is examined as part of Tanzania’s democratic consolidation. At the end of the thesis a discussion about obstacles and opportunities for a further democratic consolidation is presented.The thesis describes how the transformation of the candidate selection method is, by the party itself, presented as a way of widen democracy and fight corruption. While many of the informants believe that the transformation, at least to some extent, have contributed to increased democracy, most of them believe that the actual difference from the previous method is small, since the crucial decisions still are taken by the party elite. The informants' responses are describing a multi-party system with several major obstacles. They are also, however, describing how the situation slowly is changing for the better.

Financial reporting in the public sector is influenced by the private sector accounting standards. The Swiss Federal Government has recently started to prepare consolidated financial statements. The purpose of this study is to describe how the Swiss Federal Government is doing its consolidated financial statements. Theoretically there are different consolidation theories and methods. The choice of consolidation method can explain which consolidation theory is used when the financial statements are put together. The research is done on the latest consolidated financial statements, 2010, from the Swiss Federal Government and in combination with an interview with the Head of Consolidation of the Swiss Federal Government. The finding in this research is that the Swiss Federal Government has an Entity Theory approach when consolidating its financial statements.

In this set of studies the modulation of feedback-based cognitive skill learning was investigated by modulating a probabilistic classification learning (PCL) task to be either emotional or neutral. In the current task, based on the weather prediction task, cue cards were presented on the screen and subjects were asked to predict what they would come across while walking in the woods, in the emotional condition a snake/spider or in the neutral condition a flower/mushroom. Chapter 1 is a review of the animal and human literature of multiple memory systems, amygdala modulation of multiple memory systems, and sleep-dependent procedural memory consolidation.Chapter 2 examined how emotional arousal affected performance, strategy use, and sympathetic nervous system activation in our manipulated PCL task. Subjects highly fearful of the outcomes in the emotional condition showed overall greater skin conductance responses compared to the other groups, as well as retardation in initial cue-outcome acquisition. Individuals who were not fearful of the outcome stimuli used more complex (optimal) strategies after a 24-hr period of memory consolidation relative to the other groups, reflecting greater implicit knowledge of the probabilistic task structure.The purpose of the experiment in Chapter 3 was to examine consolidation-based stabilization and enhancement in an emotional cognitive skill task. There was no effect of sleep on retention or savings on percent correct or strategy use in both the emotional and neutral PCL task. These results conform to recent evidence that probabilistic learning does not show sleep-dependent performance enhancements.Chapter 4 investigated the neural correlates of emotional PCL with functional magnetic resonance imaging. There was greater amygdala and striatal activity in the emotional versus neutral group on Day 1. There was also increased activity in the striatum on Day 2, suggesting an early and lasting bias of emotion on procedural learning. Additionally, there were differences in neural recruitment by subjects using complex versus simple implicit strategies.The findings from this series of experiments have implications for the assessment of psychopathologies that show dysfunction in affective and striatal areas, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome, and for the development, eventually, of optimal therapies. / Dissertation

Under the globalization, competition between the cities have been stronger, so how to establish its own advantage of the city brand is necessary, in order to increase it¡¦s competitiveness. Especially, in accordance to city and county consolidation, we create the city identity for the residents by city brand. Therefore, this research wants to know perceptiveness from the residents who live in different regions, in order to rebuild a new city brand which residents can accept. It¡¦s a important mission to promote the city identity for Kaohsiung. In this study, the study subjects consisted of 200 former Kaohsiung citizens, 200 former county residents and residents who not live in Kaohsiung. Because people live in different inhabited areas, which not only affects people¡¦s perceiptions on city brand and city identity, but also interferes the relationship between city brand and city identity. Furthermore, we want to know whether brand equity is a mediator on this relationship. This research passes the concept structure of Anholt City Brand Index, including ¡§The Presence¡¨, ¡§The Place¡¨, ¡§The Prerequisits¡¨, ¡§The people¡¨, ¡§The pulse¡¨, ¡§The Potential¡¨. The research analysis shows that people who live in different inhabited areas appeal significantly different in ¡§The Presence¡¨and ¡§The rerequisits¡¨. In this case, the result means that Kaohsiung should hold more international activities proactively, and strengthene to promote to others who not live in live in Kaohsiung. Most importantly, government needs to enhance the conditions of¡§The rerequisits¡¨ in the whole Kaohsiung city. Further on, the research analysis shows that no matter where the residents live, the people and the pulse can contribute the positive effect significantly for city identity. Therefore, in order to promote management of city marketing, we will start from the two factors. In addition, the brand equity can affect the relationship between city brand and city identity. It can not only improve the perception of city brand, but also help to find a Kaohsiung irreplaceable identity.

Now the motel industry in Taiwan is increasingly sophisticated, and even some motels are positioning themselves as the boutique hotels,so the business model has been out of the previous framework, like the hotel, with the high texture, on the other hand, beyond the hotel, with rich diversity. Now the motels are no longer set up near highway ramp to pursue convenience and privacy, but to find good location near department stores, metro, and science-based Industrial Park. Now the motel industry places more emphasis on the freshness and characteristics of the product, so in addition to the pursuit of convenience and practicality, motels now focus more on entertainment features. On the other hand, the motels are almost everywhere in high competition status, it is not difficult to find many cluster regions all over Taiwan. In the circumstances, consumers have clear and close impression to link the image between these cluster regions and the motels inside the regions. However the reason why motels usually were gathered and formed to be a cluster.What motivations resulted in industry cluster? What characteristics are shaped inside? How the cluster effect be developed and influence the relations of motels in the same cluster region. These questions are be researched in this thesis. In this study,I selected three major and representative motel clusters in Taiwan: Dazhi Land Consolidation of Taipei City, 7th Land Consolidation of Taichung, 16th agricultural Land Consideration of Kaohsiung City, mainly by interviewing with executives of the motel industry in order to understand the causes of industrial clusters,the competition and cooperation relation in motel clusters, and cluster effect in the industry. And exploring and analyzing the environment of these three cluster regions through observation method, in order to understand the correlation of regional environmental and development of clusters. Finally, the results of this study found that: (1) the main cause of motel cluster, is not because of being attracted by the cluster effect, but the similar needs for location. (2) There are seldomly cooperative behaviors in the motel industry, because the motel industry is very secretive and motels in the same cluster tend to imitate each other, so these results deepen the intensity of competition. (3) The causes of motel cluster are hoping for attracting more customers and finding the appropriate operating environment. (4) Because the industry become saturated and sophisticated, it is very important to make prudent cost-benefit assessment. Besides, it is better to reassess influences of the cluster and try to be aware of the direction of government policy to evaluate the future and the development. (5) Consumer loyalty in motel industry is low, therefore, the latecomers usually have more competitive advantage, and the cluster effects are positive. (6) Although the surroundings are important to all the motels, but there are some different connotations, meanings, and expectations for different motels. (7) The quality of the cluster effect, can not only be evaluated from the perspective of cluster itself, but also be judged from the consideration of the motel itself in one cluster with relative strengths or weaknesses.

In this dissertation we study the problem of allocating computational resources and managing applications in a data center to serve incoming requests in such a way that the energy usage, reliability and quality of service considerations are balanced. The problem is motivated by the growing energy consumption by data centers in the world and their overall inefficiency. This work is focused on designing flexible and robust strategies to manage the resources in such a way that the system is able to meet the service agreements even when the load conditions change. As a first step, we study the control of a Markovian queueing system with controllable number of servers and service rates (M=Mt=kt ) to minimize effort and holding costs. We present structural properties of the optimal policy and suggest an algorithm to find good performance policies even for large cases. Then we present a reactive/proactive approach, and a tailor-made wavelet-based forecasting procedure to determine the resource allocation in a single application setting; the method is tested by simulation with real web traces. The main feature of this method is its robustness and flexibility to meet QoS goals even when the traffic behavior changes. The system was tested by simulating a system with a time service factor QoS agreement. Finally, we consider the multi-application setting and develop a novel load consolidation strategy (of combining applications that are traditionally hosted on different servers) to reduce the server-load variability and the number of booting cycles in order to obtain a better capacity allocation.

Frictional measurements were made on natural fault gouge at seismic slip rates using a high-speed rotary-shear apparatus to study effects of slip velocity, acceleration, displacement, normal stress, and water content. Thermal-, mechanical-, and fluid-flowcoupled FEM models and microstructure observations were implemented to analyze experimental results. Slightly sheared starting material (Unit 1) and a strongly sheared and foliated gouge (Unit 2) are produced when frictional heating is insignificant and the coefficient of sliding friction is 0.4 to 0.6. A random fabric gouge with rounded prophyroclasts (Unit 3) and an extremely-fine, microfoliated layer (Unit 4) develop when significant frictional heating occurs at greater velocity and normal stress, and the coefficient of sliding friction drops to approximately 0.2. The frictional behavior at coseismic slip can be explained by thermal pressurization and a temperature-dependent constitutive relation, in which the friction coefficient is proportional to 1/T and increases with temperature (temperature-strengthening) at low temperature conditions and decreases with temperature (temperature-weakening) at higher temperature conditions. The friction coefficient, normal stress, pore pressure, and temperature within the gouge layer vary with position (radius) and time, and they depend largely on the frictional heating rate. The critical displacement for dynamic weakening is approximately 10 m or less, and can be understood as the displacement required to form a localized slip zone and achieve a steady-state temperature condition. The temporal and spatial evolution of hydromechanical properties of recovered from the Nankai Trough (IODP NanTroSEIZE Stage 1 Expeditions) have been investigated along different stress paths, which simulate the natural conditions of loading during sedimentation, underthrusting, underplating, overthrusting, and exhumation in subduction systems. Porosity evolution is relatively independent of stress path, and the sediment porosity decreases as the yield surface expands. In contrast, permeability evolution depends on the stress path and the consolidation state, e.g., permeability reduction by shear-enhanced compaction occurs at a greater rate under triaxialcompression relative to uniaxial-strain and isotropic loading. In addition, experimental yielding of sediment is well described by Cam-Clay model of soil mechanics, which is useful to better estimate the in-situ stress, consolidation state, and strength of sediment in nature.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / "Fall 2009." At head of title: University of Alberta. Title from pdf file t.p. (viewed on Dec. 4, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Researchin partial fulllment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Mathematical Finance, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences" Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1981.