This dissertation deals with wireless communications using cooperating relay nodes. Specifically, this dissertation relaxes two restrictive conditions ubiquitous in the current literature. First, the assumption that relay nodes can perform complex calculations is lifted. Demodulate-encode-forward (DEF) is a low-complexity relaying scheme where the relay is asked only to demodulate, not decode, a source transmission. The implementation of DEF and various methods that can be used with DEF to improve the performance while satisfying the hardware complexity limitations are detailed here. Second, we remove the assumption that the relays either transmit the complete source codeword or not transmit at all. When relays have limited resources, each relay may only be able to transmit part of the source codeword. Fractional cooperation, which allows nodes to transmit a fraction of the source codeword, is proposed and analyzed. Fractional cooperation is also very flexible because coordination between relaying nodes is not required. A third contribution of this dissertation is the use of the union-Bhattacharyya bound (UBB) to analyze relay networks. The bound has the significant advantage of accounting for the specifics of the system parameters and coding scheme used. The UBB is shown here to provide an effective and efficient scheme for relay selection, performance prediction, and system design. It can also be used to distribute relay resources in order to optimize the total energy consumed and error rate performance. A sub-optimal distributed algorithm that can be used to solve the optimization problems is introduced.

The topic of this thesis is divided towns, defined as the towns which once existed as unified administrative units before an international border divided them. In a time of globalization, the character of many border lines is changing. In many places, borders are loosing their dividing character. In the European Union, divided towns might be perceived as natural symbols of integration between neighboring countries. The main goal of the study is to answer the research question: “In towns divided by an international border that is a river, what are the conditions that must be met to achieve a mutually beneficial level of cooperation?” In order to address the research question, benefits and barriers in cross-border cooperation and integration are studied. A quality of cooperation and an advancement of integration between bordering communities are explored. Impact of actions undertaken by local decision makers to improve the cross-border cooperation and integration are examined. Görlitz-Zgorzelec, located on the German-Polish border, was chosen as a case study place. The research methods used in the study requiring public involvement are official and non-official interviews and questionnaires. Additional information was also collected from academic and non-academic sources. Based on the data collected during the research, a set of key indicators was created to measure an advancement of cooperation between the divided town sections, in the field of spatial planning, culture and social integration.

The topic of this thesis is divided towns, defined as the towns which once existed as unified administrative units before an international border divided them. In a time of globalization, the character of many border lines is changing. In many places, borders are loosing their dividing character. In the European Union, divided towns might be perceived as natural symbols of integration between neighboring countries. The main goal of the study is to answer the research question: “In towns divided by an international border that is a river, what are the conditions that must be met to achieve a mutually beneficial level of cooperation?” In order to address the research question, benefits and barriers in cross-border cooperation and integration are studied. A quality of cooperation and an advancement of integration between bordering communities are explored. Impact of actions undertaken by local decision makers to improve the cross-border cooperation and integration are examined. Görlitz-Zgorzelec, located on the German-Polish border, was chosen as a case study place. The research methods used in the study requiring public involvement are official and non-official interviews and questionnaires. Additional information was also collected from academic and non-academic sources. Based on the data collected during the research, a set of key indicators was created to measure an advancement of cooperation between the divided town sections, in the field of spatial planning, culture and social integration.

Web Services (WS) are one of the most promising approaches for building loosely coupled systems. However, due to the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the WS environment, ensuring good QoS is still non-trivial. While WS tend to scale better than tightly coupled systems, they introduce a larger communication overhead and are more susceptible to server/resource latency. Traditionally this problem has been addressed by relying on negotiated Service Level Agreement to ensure the required QoS, or the development of elaborate compensation handlers to minimize the impact of undesirable latency.<p> This research focuses on the use of cooperation between consumers and providers as an effective means of optimizing resource utilization and consumer experiences. It introduces a novel cooperative approach to implement the cooperation between consumers and providers.

Abstract When the enterprise competition is no longer the individual show that will play singles fights alone, but is the supply chain or the network team war. The partnership importance grows day by day. In transforming process from ¡§you, I¡¨ to ¡§us¡¨, the reciprocal benefit and mutual trust are playing tug-of-war with the self-interest and selfishness, that will cause the synthesis effect by the cooperation or perhaps will make loss because of noncooperation. This research origin is created by a new born venture case of an international merger & acquisition. As a result of product characteristic is combined by the electronic and textile industry, collected on the modern science and technology and traditional process in a body. It faced the defeat and crisis because of the careless and indiscreet on the partnership management. After redesigning the transnational organization and establishing the unique supply chain, actually the cooperation synthesis effect causes the new venture to develop turns defeat into victory. The market share and the profit rate large are getting better. It also integrates the resources to get fine solid market competitive power. However, after we get the factors of the goal, the benefit, the risk, the specialty and the share, the communication and the culture, promise and crisis, how to carry on the management to obtain the high quality partner cooperation? This research utilized the qualitative case study technique, reconstructed the experience to narrated three sections of stories, the dialectical analysis will inquire into the enterprise merger & acquisition, the transnational associates and the core supplier partnership management to get the conclusion and the principle as below. 1. The partnership of the enterprise merger & acquisition started from¡§the common interest¡¨, but is terminated easy by¡§the crisis¡¨. 2. The partnership of the transnational associates was established on¡§specialty¡¨and facilitated the cooperation with¡§communication¡¨. simultaneously we must paid attention to the difference of¡§the culture¡¨extremely, and established ¡§the share¡¨ interaction, but can avoid both sides did not cooperate or is perfunctory to develop partnership because of the inter-competition point of view. 3. The core supplier's partnership, must be established above the long-term strategy, both sides were working by the supplementary operation pattern,set up¡§the common goal¡¨as the cooperation principle, and do the management and the execution to solid ¡§promise¡¨, and must positively manage the conflict of ¡§the culture¡¨ difference.

Why do people cooperate? Why does not every individuals in their groups choose to be a free-rider all the time? Based on two series of experiments, the author finds that reciprocity and punishment contribute to cooperation. When a group allows positive reciprocity where people can choose to cooperate, positive reciprocity facilitates cooperation. When reciprocity between group members turns to negative, however, group members make little contribution to the group and start to retaliate against their partners. Once punishment is incorporated into the experiment, people¡¦s behavior of cooperation varies. In the high positive reciprocity environment where punishment is used, people, as expected, continue to give more of their resources to their group. But it is worth noting that negative reciprocity did not get worse if punishment is used in group dynamics.

The purpose of this research is to discuss the Guanxi among the partners of strategic alliance, the influence on the degree of the trust among the strategic alliance partners caused by Guanxi, and the influences on the alliance performance and on the willing to cooperate in the future caused by the degree of the trust. As the internationalization and liberalization developing, many industries aware of the limitation of their own resources. A company is no longer able to compete with others alone, so they try to forge the strategic alliances to get the important resources to achieve their strategic goals. On the other side, the operation of the strategic alliances is deeply influenced by the trust and the interactions among partners. This trust could be broken due to the major differences on the organization cultures and on the management style in different partners, or due to the bad communications. The alliance could be broken because of the lack of the trust. The relationship between Guanxi and Chinese sociality is very closed. For Chinese enterprises, the development of the Guanxi can be the mechanism to overcome both the completion and the shortage of the resources. The managers in Chinese sociality are specially good at manipulate the Guanxi to construct the trust in an organization. They not only rely on the original Guanxi of the relatives and the acquaintances, but also expand the area of connections among people via the introduction of the intermediates. If both managers of two companies of strategic alliances have the interpersonal Guanxi, the degree of the trust between the strategic alliance partners will be higher. This research not only builds a theoretical framework by making a complete survey, but also verifies this framework by collecting and analyzing 112 effective questionnaires according to the structural equation model, SEM. The results show that the differences of basic types of the Guanxi among the alliances will be affected by the degree of the closeness and by the degree of the trust (including benevolence trust and credibility trust, from family, acquaintances, to strangers, in the descending order). The past cooperative experience of the alliance partners and the common interpersonal relationship are also able to affect the degree of the trust. There are also positive influences on the alliance performance for the degree of the trust among alliances (including the degree of satisfaction on the cooperative relationship and the degree of completion of the goals). And this degree of the trust among the alliances and the alliance performance are of the positive influences on the willing for alliances to cooperate in the future. Because the strategic alliance in essence is both competition and cooperation, the companies must carefully consult and discuss with each other when progressing the forge of the strategic alliances. Based on the Guanxi, the alliance partners should enhance the trust and the understanding between each other. If the alliances partners could be sufficiently trusted, it is believed that the alliance performance can be improved and the win-win can be fully achieved.

The purpose of this research is to explore the implementation of problem posing teaching activities in the seventh grade math class, including cooperative posing and individual posing, and to suggest specific teaching methods to those teachers who are interested in introducing problem-posing instruction in their classes. The research subjects were from one of grade seven classes and class materials were mainly based on textbook. In the first semester of the school year 2002, students received in a traditional mathematics class, and then in the second semester, they received one problem-posing lesson per week self-study period. There are two phases for this problem-posing research: four times cooperative posing and three times individual posing. During this research period, the researcher used a variety of ways to collect data, such as observing, interviewing, video-taping, self-introspecting, and asking students to keep diaries. The researcher examined results by triangulation and evaluated students¡¦ problem-posing abilities. The result of this research showed that students performed differently in different units. Of the seven units, the order of the highest score to the lowest is: Negative numbers, Volume and capacity, Approximation, Division of fraction, H.C.F. and L.C.M., The four basic operation, and, Number and Measures. In this regard, the researcher suggested that if teachers want to integrate problem posing into instruction , it would be more appropriate to apply to those units students received higher scores. As for the early phase of this implememtation, students did not know how to discuss with each other. Gradually they improved and understood the meaning of team work. As for the topics of activities, some students came out with something related to names and life events; other students used news and adolescent topics as discussion materials. As for evaluating classmates¡¦ topics, students did not know how to give suggestions nor to spot other classmates¡¦ mistakes. Sometime, they contradicted themselves when they gave suggestions. Finally they could focus on data, discussed, and gave concrete suggestions. The researcher also found that students evaluated the numerical information content of the problems they posed and checked if they are reasonable and if the problems meet teachers¡¦ requirements. As for editing their own questions, some students did not pay attention to their classmates¡¦ suggestions; some paid attention to peer suggestions but made the problems worse. After thorough practice, students learned how to make proper revisions. In all, there are advantages of implementing problem posing into matehmatics instruction. The advantage of cooperative posing is to create a team learning environment while the advantage of individual posing is to stimulate individual creative thinking in posing problems.

Traditional business process has provoked by advanced information technology and toward a collaborative and cooperative long-term orientation partnership rather than a short-term transactional relationship. Since opened market and loosened regulations on oil products and oil business in Taiwan, gas station industries have competed fiercely that results in a changed relationship with oil suppliers. This article aims to apply the KMV model conceptualized by Morgan & Hunt in 1994 to examine the cooperative partnership between oil suppliers and gas stations owners in Taiwan. 96 effective respondents of 269 samples from five regions, including Tainan county/ city, Kaohsiung county/ city and Pingtung county. The findings demonstrate the importance of relationship benefits, trust, relationship commitment, communication and opportunistic behavior between exchanging partners, whereas acquiescence, propensity to leave, cooperation and uncertainty affected by relationship commitment and trust. And trust is a mediating variable to relationship commitment and cooperation. Some managerial suggestions are given.

This study examined the effects of communication mode, both face-to-face (FTF) and computer-mediated communication (CMC), and polling on cooperation in a commons dilemma. Sixty-seven six-person groups used FISH, a computer program that uses a fishing metaphor to simulate a commons dilemma. Next, groups had a 10-minute discussion period, either FTF or via CMC, in which they devised a strategy for the second FISH session. Groups were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: FTF, no-poll CMC, end-poll CMC, and two-poll CMC. The polls allowed members to determine others' intended behavior, thus enhancing perceived consensus. Finally, groups used the FISH program again. Results indicted that experimental condition influenced consensus, with end-poll CMC groups reaching consensus most often, followed by FTF, two-poll CMC, and no-poll CMC groups. However, groups did not differ across experimental condition on resource pool sustainability or group profit. FTF groups were more satisfied with group performance than no-poll CMC groups and two-poll CMC and FTF groups had similar levels of satisfaction. The strategy the group decided to implement in the second FISH session had a significant effect on group profit but not resource pool sustainability. Thus, the harvest strategy implemented by the group may have been a stronger predictor of performance than experimental condition.