One of the most important aspects of coastal management and planning programs that needs to be investigated is shoreline dynamics. Long-term coastal analysis uses historical data to identify the sectors along the coast where the shoreline position has changed. Among the information that can be obtained from these studies are the general trend of coasts, either advancing or retreating. The erosion or accretion rates at each location can be used to forecast future shoreline positions. The current techniques used to study shoreline evolution are generally based on transects perpendicular to a baseline at selected points. But these techniques proved to be less efficient along more complex shorelines, and need to be refined. A new and more reliable method, the topologically constrained transect method (TCTM), was developed for this study and tested using data available for three sectors of the Texas Gulf Coast. Output data generated from TCTM also allowed performing shoreline evolution analysis and forecasting based on historical positions. Using topological constrained transects, this study provides a new method to estimate total areas of accretion or erosion at each segment of the coastline. Reliable estimates of future gains or losses of land along the coast will be extremely useful for planning and management decisions, especially those related to infrastructure and environmental impacts, and in the development of coastal models. Especially important is the potential to quickly identify areas of significant change, which eliminates the need for preliminary random sample surveying, and concentrate higher-resolution analyses in the most significant places. The results obtained in this research using the new methodology show that the Texas coast generally experiences erosion, with anthropogenic factors responsible for accretion. Accretion areas are located near coastal infrastructure, especially jetties that block the along shore sediment transport. The maximum erosion rate obtained in the study area is 5.48 m/year. This value helps make us aware of the powerful dynamic of the sector.

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La thèse comporte deux parties. Dans la première partie (Chapitres 1 et 2), un examen des déterminants des interventions officielles sur le marché des changes est proposée. Dans la second partie (Chapitres 3 et 4), c'est la problématique des interventions dites « secrètes » qui est étudiée. Chapitre 1: « Talks, financial operations or both » Ce chapitre propose une nouvelle approche aux fonctions de réaction permettant d’examiner, dans un même modèle, les déterminants des différents types d’interventions (les interventions effectives et les interventions orales). Le modèle permet de mieux comprendre les choix stratégiques des autorités (opérations financières ou simple politique de communication) et d’en évaluer le degré de substituabilité ou de complémentarité. Chapitre 2 : « The institutional organization underlying interventions » La structure institutionnelle sous-jacente au processus d’intervention (interactions entre le Ministère des finances et la banque centrale) est explicitement incorporée dans le modèle proposé dans ce chapitre. Cette approche permet d’évaluer, dans quelle mesure, le Ministère des finances (l’autorité responsable de la politique de change), en intervenant sur le marché, internalise les objectifs de la banque centrale(l’agent du Ministère pour l’implémentation des ordres d’intervention). Chapitre 3 : « The secrecy puzzle » Ce chapitre propose une évaluation empirique des différents arguments théoriques expliquant le recours aux interventions secrètes. Le travail repose sur l’examen économétrique d’une fonction de stratégie, dans laquelle, des déterminants relatifs à la décision d’intervenir secrètement d’une part et, d’autre part, des déterminants relatifs à la détection des interventions par le marché sont incorporés. Chapitre 4 : « A unified approach to interventions » Un modèle unique, permettant d’expliquer les trois étapes du processus d’intervention, est proposé dans ce chapitre. Ces trois étapes sont relatives (i) au choix d’intervenir, (ii) au choix d’intervenir de façon secrète et (iii) à la perception des interventions par le marché. Grâce à l’inclusion de déterminants spécifiques pour ces différentes étapes, cette approche multidimensionnelle permet d’appréhender leurs interrelations et, donc, de mieux comprendre les différents arbitrages réalisés par les autorités lorsqu’elles décident d’intervenir.

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In this paper, we use the Bai and Perron (1988, 2003) methodology to test for multiple structural breaks in the real exchange rate for 8 countries within Asia Pacific. We find extensive evidence of structural breaks in the real exchange rates. The Bai and Perron (1998, 2003) consider the estimation of multiple structural shifts in a linear model estimated by least-squares. They propose some tests for structural changes for the case with no trending regressors and a selection procedure based on a sequence of tests to estimate consistently the number of changes and break date. Also this paper apply Elliott and Müller (2003) method in order to test for stability of the estimated regression parameters with structural breaks. When comparing two test results, we find that the test conclusions is with little difference . Within those 8 countries including Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan , The processing result with Bai and Perron test with structural breaks, we find that real exchange rates of 4 countries have three structural breaks, 2 countries have two structural breaks, and other two countries has one structural break. Also we apply Elliott and Müller test , the result we got is that has a structural break of real exchange rate exist within 7 countries. Only one country has no structural break. According to the results which we applied those tests, There do exist some structural break under the impacts of some financial crisis and important events which , such as The Second Oil Chsis ( 1979), Plaza Accord (1985), Asia Financial Crisis (1997).

Abstract Since the open of domestic financial market recent years, the financial products have become more and more various. In six years, there has been 2.7 funds issued every month on average. For investors, how to choose a good fund company and an appropriate fund from plenty of new offered funds is uneasy. Particularly new offered fund has no history data to examine the performance, and also lacks the regular benchmarks like £]and Sharp ratio. This thesis uses the data of the domestic stock funds which were offered over 1 year from 1997 January 1 to 2006 December 31.The data resources is from TEJ. The study will distinguish all data from whether the prospectuses regulate the funds¡¦ stock holding percentage over 70 ¢H or not. Then we want to investigate the behavior in the first year and to discuss if the fund managers¡¦ experiment will result in the abnormal performance. The study results shows that the stock holding percentage of the domestic stock funds have been over 70¢H on average since offered 3 months, but the percentage of the funds with free investment period of 3 months is less than 60¢H. However the percentage of the funds with free investment period of 6 months would rise to be 70¢H early in the second or third month. We try to use a statistic way and set a dummy variable to test whether there is different between the performance of the funds with free period and those with limited period. The result shows that there is no fund performance difference between these two period. From the second month after the fund is offered, turnover rare is close or even over the average of one year. The average level is about 30¢H and it shows the domestic stock funds have changed stocks frequently since it is offered . The tenure of Fund managers¡¦ after domestic stock funds raised is 20 months on average from 95 months to 1 month.13¢Mof fund managers will be taken place less than half year after the fund offered, 39¢Mwill be less than 1 year. 60¢Mof the fund managers have ever managed other funds before the newly one which he manage now, but 40¢Mhave no such experiment. The statistics shows that there is no significant different between fund managers¡¦ experiment and fund¡¦s abnormal returns.

Secure symmetrical multilevel diversity coding (S-SMDC) is a source coding problem, where a total of L - N discrete memoryless sources (S1,...,S_L-N) are to be encoded by a total of L encoders. This thesis considers a natural generalization of SMDC to the secure communication setting with an additional eavesdropper. In a general S-SMDC system, a legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper have access to a subset U and A of the encoder outputs, respectively. Which subsets U and A will materialize are unknown a priori at the encoders. No matter which subsets U and A actually occur, the sources (S1,...,Sk) need to be perfectly reconstructable at the legitimate receiver whenever |U| = N +k, and all sources (S1,...,S_L-N) need to be kept perfectly secure from the eavesdropper as long as |A| <= N. A precise characterization of the entire admissible rate region is established via a connection to the problem of secure coding over a three-layer wiretap network and utilizing some properties of basic polyhedral structure of the admissible rate region. Building on this result, it is then shown that superposition coding remains optimal in terms of achieving the minimum sum rate for the general secure SMDC problem.

Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production are usual measurements within the sports and training physiology. The same measurements are also common when it comes to establish the amount of energy that is used during work and to establish the intensity of work. The volume of oxygen that is consumed contra the volume of carbon dioxide that is produced can be used to calculate the metabolic rate within the human body. This calculation shows the percent relationship between carbohydrates and fat in the metabolism. The first accurate method to measure the breathing gases for use in metabolic calculation was established in the early twenty century when the Douglas bag method was introduced. The expired air is collected in sealed bags and the volume of expired air is then analyzed when it comes to its content of oxygen and carbon dioxide. In our days several methods have been developed for automatic analysis of the breathing gases where the expired air is analyzed immediately by electronic instruments. When it comes to the modern automatic instruments there are few scientific investigations about their reliability and that has raised questions about how accurate measurements they produce. One instrument is the Oxycon Stationary Pro which is used by Gymnastik- och Idrottshögskolan in Stockholm Sweden and several of the Swedish university hospital. In this report there has been done a practical comparison between the Douglas bag method and the automatic instrument Oxycon Stationary Pro. The comparison showed a great similarity when it come to the metabolic rate. When it comes to the respiratory gases however, the Oxycon Stationary Pro shows values up to five percent higher than the Douglas bag.

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Polymer matrix composites are widely used as structural components in the aerospace industry and wind turbine industry etc. to take advantage of their unique mechanical properties and weight saving ability. Although there have been considerable developments in analyzing delamination growth and effects of voids on certain mechanical properties of composites, none of the present literatures investigates the effects of voids on delamination growth under compression. In this research, a parametric study is performed to investigate the effects of voids on delamination growth in composite laminates under compression. In composite structures, delamination would be created by eccentricities in structural load path, structural discontinuities, and during manufacturing and maintenance processes. Also, the service damage such as the impact of foreign objects may also result in delamination. In the Finite Element model developed, a through-width surface delamination is assumed, and void is placed in critical locations ahead of crack tip. Strain Energy Release Rate (SERR) is calculated by the Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT) in order to study the delamination growth. It is found that the delamination front experiences a mixed-mode delamination behavior when local out-of-plane buckling occurs. During the loading, Mode II SERR increases monotonically while Mode I SERR increases first and then decreases as the delamination front starts to close. Meanwhile, Mode II SERR is found to be much larger than the Mode I component. The presence of void does not significantly alter the transverse displacement of the delaminated part. However, the presence of void increases the Mode II SERR, as well as the total SERR, and this increase depends on the size and location of void. For Mode I SERR, the effect of void is not that prominent.