Thesis (M.S. in Systems Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2007. / Thesis Advisor(s): Thomas D. Fiorino, Tom Huynh. "March 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-90). Also available in print.

No Abstract Provided

Saul B. Gelfand, Sanjoy K. Mitter. / "August 20, 1985." / Bibliography: p. 32. / "U.S. Army Res. Off. ... Grant DAAG29-84-K-0005" "Air Force Off. of Scientific Res. ... Grant AFOSR 82-0135B"

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-124). Also available on the Internet.

Στην παρούσα εργασία ασχοληθήκαμε με την εκτίμηση συναρτήσεων κόστους επένδυσης για εργοστάσια παραγωγής ενέργειας από βιοαέριο στην Ευρώπη καθώς και με τη συνοπτική παρουσίαση της τεχνολογίας βιοαερίου. / In the present paper cost functions for biogas energy plants in Europe are estimated. Additionaly biogas technologies are briefly presented in order for the Greek investors to be familiarised with the advantages of using biogas.

Many Americans know Alzheimer’s disease for its devastating physical, emotional, and financial impact on patients as well as their family members and friends. According to the Alzheimer’s Association’s recent national survey, 73 million voters have had a family member or friend with the disease, indicating that the nation is aware of the disease’s affect on patients, their relatives, friends, and caretakers. Many are unaware, however, that Alzheimer’s could impose an enormous economic burden on the nation. Harry Johns, the president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, calls Alzheimer’s “a triple threat unlike any other disease with its soaring prevalence, lack of treatment and enormous cost.” Nearly 5.3 million Americans are currently diagnosed with this untreatable disease. As the elderly continue to age, the demand for government aid in the form of Medicare and Medicaid will increase. This increasing demand, along with the decline in the labor force participation rate, will increase costs to all those affected by Alzheimer’s in the coming decades. The federal government has assumed leadership in the fight against Alzheimer’s by passing legislation to secure funding and establish a timeline for research, engage stakeholders, and provide support for Alzheimer’s patients, families, and caregivers. This thesis offers a holistic view of the current challenges facing the Alzheimer’s community, including costs of the disease to patients, families, and to society. It also includes an overview of Alzheimer’s legislation that addresses these challenges and provides a budget for scientific research for a treatment or a cure in the next decade to prevent the impending national fiscal catastrophe. This thesis will provide recommendations for how policy makers can decrease the likelihood that the federal government will be forced to pay the projected cumulative $20 trillion total cost of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias by 2050. This thesis also recommends ways to provide immediate support the growing number of caregivers to Alzheimer’s patients.

Cost management forms a major discipline in delivering construction projects of different sizes and complexity. Traditional cost management systems are mostly based on principles enacted several decades ago. A notable feature of these traditional cost management systems is that key information required for critical decisions is usually produced too late, and is often too aggregated and configured in a form that is not amenable to the requirements for current project management practice. Other problems associated with traditional cost systems relate to inadequacies in estimating and cost control processes and particularly the lack of integration of cost management across the whole project. The lack of integration means measurements provided by traditional cost systems do not sufficiently align with the goals and objectives set for the project. To address these inherent weaknesses in the current practice of cost management, a number of studies have argued for an integrated alternative that better responds to the information demand and decision making need to be developed. The thesis presents the development of a solution to such an integrated cost management system. The developed solution addresses the gaps of the traditional option by integrating the stages making up the whole life cycle of the project to enable professionals gain an appreciation of the ramifications of any early decisions made. The investigation conducted to support the development of the integrated cost management system and the applied model addresses user requirements and determination of the system boundary conditions for efficacious use by key decision makers. The new cost management system developed achieves a linkage of the planning and control stages into one, with a continuous stream of cost management information in both stages. The integration ensures that cost information is more relevant to the circumstances of the modern project manager.

Capture of the energy in sunlight relies mainly on the use of light-absorbing semiconductors, in solar cells and in water-splitting devices. While solar cell efficiency has increased dramatically since the first practical device was made in 1954, production costs for the most-efficient solar absorbers, III-V semiconductors, remain high. This is largely a result of use of expensive, slow growth methods which rely on hazardous gas-phase precursors. Alternative growth methods are necessary to lower the cost for III-V materials for use in solar cells and improve the practicality of water-splitting devices. The research goal of this dissertation is two-fold: to expand the capabilities of close-spaced vapor transport, an alternative growth method for III-Vs to demonstrate its compatibility with current technologies; and to explore the fundamental chemistry of close-spaced vapor transport as a growth method for these materials. This dissertation surveys plausibly lower-cost growth methods for III-V semiconductors (Chapter II) and presents in-depth studies on the growth chemistry of two ternary III-Vs: GaAs1-xPx (Chapter III) and Ga1-xInxP (Chapter IV). Finally, the growth of GaAs microstructures which could be utilized in a water-splitting device is studied (Chapter V). This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material. / 2019-01-09

This thesis aims to identify the status of management accounting practices in the Jordanian financial sector in terms of both its usage and sophistication level and to examine the contingency factors that influence that status. The main objectives of the research are: to obtain a broad overview of management accounting practices in general, including the extent of usage of management accounting practices; examine the sophistication level of management accounting practices and at which phase, based on the IF AC model, the Jordanian financial sector is currently placed; investigate the effect of the contingent variables upon both the extent of usage and the sophistication level of management accounting practices. To attain these objectives, a combination of research methods has been conducted, namely, questionnaire and semi-structured interview; 64 valid questionnaires were returned, giving a 67.3% response rate, followed by 14 interviews. Several statistical analyses were used to analyse the responses, namely, descriptive analysis, bivariate correlation analysis (KendalFs tau test and Kruskal-Wallis test), and multivariate statistical tests. The results of the life cycle stages revealed that 67.2% of the respondent companies are located in the first two stages. In terms of the usage of management accounting practices, the research reported that traditional practices are still widespread and highly used, rarely using the more sophisticated or advanced practices, and that there is a diversity of practices used in the financial sector context. In general, the research revealed that budgeting practices and financial measures are heavily used, and there is a lack of usage of decision making practices and strategic analysis practices. Concerning the sophistication level of management accounting practices, the research revealed that almost all of the Jordanian financial sector companies are located in the first stage by 64.1% and 29.7% of companies in the second stage based on the IF AC model, thus indicating the simplicity of information that they require. This, in turn, reflects the simplicity of practices that are used in the Jordanian financial sector. In terms of the association between each contingency variables and the extent of usage of management accounting practices, the research reveals that the age of the company (number of years since establishment), net sale growth, number of employees, sophistication of operations, professional certificates, life cycle stages, and business type have a significant impact on the extent of usage of management accounting practices. In addition, it reveals that the age of the company, sophistication of operations, attendance of training courses, professional certificates, life cycle stages, and business type are the main contingency variables that influence the sophistication level of management accounting practices. The research's findings provide a broad overview of management accounting practices in the Jordanian financial sector. This overview is vital in improving the understanding of management accounting practices, particularly contemporary practices within the Jordanian financial sector in order to encourage practitioners to adopt contemporary practices of management accounting. In addition, the research informs practitioners of the main variables that influence the usage and sophistication level of management accounting practices and of those variables that need to be taken into account when planning the adoption or development of management accounting systems. Finally, the research's findings attempt to fill the gap between theory and practice in management accounting in Jordan.

An integrated computer model for time and cost optimisation has been developed for multi-storey reinforced concrete office buildings. The development of the model has been based on interviews completed with Planners, Estimators and Researchers within 2 of the top 20 (in terms of turnover) UK main contractors, and on published literature, bar charts and bills of quantities of concrete framed commercial buildings. The duration and cost of construction of a typical multistorey reinforced concrete office building is calculated through the first part of the integrated model, i.e. the simulation model. The model provides a set of choices for the selection of materials and plant and possible methods of work. It also requires the user to input the quantities of work, gang sizes and the quantity of plant required, lag values between activities, output rates, unit costs of plant, labour costs and indirect costs. A linked bar chart is drawn automatically by using the data available from the simulation model. The second part of the model, (optimisation) uses the data provided by the simulation part and provides sets of solutions of time vs. cost from which the minimum project cost corresponding to the optimum project duration is calculated under the given schedule restrictions. Linear programming is used for the optimisation problem. The objective function is set to be the minimisation of the project cost which is the total of the direct costs of all the activities creating the project and the indirect costs of the project. The constraints are formulated from the precedence relationship, lag values, and normal and crash values of time and cost for the activities supplied by the simulation model. The simulation part has been validated by comparing and contrasting the results with those methods and practices adopted by commercial planners and estimators. The validation of the optimisation part has been undertaken by plotting time-direct cost curves from the results and checking the convexity of the curves. Additionally, the validation procedures included taking account of the opinions of practitioners in the industry on the practical and commercial viability of the model.