According to the USDA, there were 52.7 million marketings of cattle through live and internet auction markets and other venues in 2005. With the national average herd size at 43 head, most producers have limited bargaining power when it comes to marketing and auctioning their cattle. This has led to the birth of numerous value added cattle programs in the U.S. Value added programs are named as such, because they add additional value to the cattle before they are sold, but this value is difficult to quantify. The objective of this research was to measure the value of characteristics of feeder cattle sold through auction markets and special source verified feeder cattle sales, specifically the value of participating in these value added programs. Data over seven years from regular and special feeder cattle sales at Joplin Regional Stockyards were used. The effects of explanatory variables on sale price were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression hedonic model. Type of sale, seasonality, cyclical effects, lot size, weight, breed type, sex, commingling, fed cattle futures price, and corn price were all found to have an impact on the sale price of feeder cattle. Feeder calves sold through MFA Health Track Beef Alliance and other value added programs received a premium over those calves that sold through regular sales and the premiums for MFA and other value added programs were statistically different. Commingled lots of feeder cattle received a discount in comparison with non-commingled lots, but a lot size of 17 head would offset the negative effect of commingling. The predictive power of the hedonic model was tested using out of sample forecasting. The mean absolute percent error and root mean square error are indicators of the ability of the model to forecast sale price based on the measured impact of the explanatory variables. When the hedonic model was used for forecasting the out of sample data, the MAPE was 7.84 and the RMSE was 10.48.

This thesis evaluates the Value of Delay (VOD) to commercial vehicle operators due to highway congestions. The VOD for congestion is a fundamental parameter driving the private sectors’ response to public freight projects and policies such as corridor construction and tolling. Factors affecting the commercial VOD include direct operational cost, travel length, travel time variation, inventory holding, and warehouse management. To approach the VOD, two methods are adopted in this thesis. One is the Stated Preference (SP) survey. The other is carrier fleet operational simulation. The simulation framework uses ArcGIS, and C . ArcGIS is used to generate a freight network based on the Houston, TX highway system. A set of customers are randomly generated, each having a random demand for service, which is associated with time windows for delivery and pickup. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to dispatch vehicles for truckload service on a continuous time horizon. The average VOD is then obtained through the ratio between additional operational cost and the delay caused by the congestion. This ratio is assessed in two scenarios: single depot and two cooperating depots. Different tests based on demand size, demand distribution pattern, time window and location of congestion are conducted. Simulation shows a range of VOD from $93.99/hr to $120.89/hr for the case of a central depot and $79.81/hr to $83.81/hr for the case of two depots. In addition, a SP survey is conducted for truckers and carriers in two scenarios. The first scenario assumes a driver running late by 30 minutes on a congested road, while the second scenario assumes an on-time delivery or pickup. Several tolling alternatives are assumed to test the driver’s willingness to pay for using a hypothetical toll road. The data is then regressed with the logit model using maximum likelihood estimation to obtain perspective value of delay. A generic utility function is adopted, which results in a VOD range from $24.72/hr to $64.99/hr. A comparison between the survey and the simulation results shows that drivers perceive a significantly lower VOD than the simulated VOD in freight operation.

As the point of integrated time and cost, the research is to study the project management by way of EVMS(Earned Value Management System). With case study the research explore the feasibility and value of EVMS applied project management The research explores the integration between time and cost by way of project-managerial technique. The purposes are as follows: l To explore the techniques of project management. 2 To study the theory, function and target about EVMS. 3 With case study, to compare the difference between traditional project management and EVMS. 4 Elementarily to evaluate to introduce EVMS into government project management. To fulfill previous purposes, the research design is adopted case study and paper investigation. The findings are as below: l EVMS has a better explanatory ability to the difference analysis of project management. 2 If time and cost control system adopt the same measurement unit, it can avoid confusion of information expression. 3 One of core information is to accurately measure the progress of the project. 4 EVMS has a good ability to forecast EAC(Estimate At Completion).It signals an early warning. 5 EVMS is suitable for government project management. The level of integration depends upon how to adjust the accounting system.

Global competition and electronic business is the inevitable for enterprises in the twenty-one century. Information technology for enterprises is just tools. According to an enterprise¡¦s role that is played in its supply chain and functions that is providing products¡¦ value, an enterprise apply business process design should display the advantage of electronic business. According to the Value System and the Supply Chain macro view, the research analyzed business processes and proposed a business process design approach, named ¡§Collaborated Design Approach of Business Process¡¨, to apply to enterprises collaboration and electronic business. Five steps composed the approach. The first step is Value System analysis to define the Value System, critical activities and linkages. And according that, the research defined the architecture of business core processes and linkages. The secondary step is business core process design. Based on the Value chain, the research explored the relations between demands, supplies and control, and proposed business processes integrated design directions. The third step is an analytic characteristic of supply chain. The research analyzed the supply chain variations with business process design. The forth step is processes simulated and analytic. The research simulated and evaluated the supply chain variations with business process design. The fifth step is the process operational strategy. The ¡§Process operational strategy matrix¡¨ that presented by the research, the research proposed suggestions of inbound and outbound logistics process operational strategies. The research use the supply chain of a famous brand sports shoes company as case study to instructed how to apply the ¡¨Collaborated Design Approach of Business Process¡¨.

Investors are always searching the market for stocks that are undervalued and that can potentially create value. One way of finding undervalued stocks is to carefully analyze firms’ accounting ratios. Researchers have in the past found evidence that an investment in value stocks, often categorized as low P/E and low P/B ratio stocks, in most cases generates more value than an investment in growth stocks (categorized as high P/E and P/B). However, we found a lack of studies that investigates if this relationship exists on the Swedish market and if it holds true during the financial crisis. This resulted in the following research question:Would a portfolio consisting of value stocks outperform a portfolio consisting of growth stocks on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm?In order to answer the research question a quantitative method with a deductive approach has been applied and historical stock prices and accounting ratios over the time period 2005-2013 have been collected from Thomson Reuters Datastream. Returns were then calculated and portfolios of value and growth stocks were created based on the accounting ratios for every year. The returns where risk-adjusted with the help of the Sharpe-ratio before the Mann-Whitney U test was used in order to see if there is a significant difference between value and growth portfolios.For the price to earnings ratio the risk-adjusted returns of the value portfolio only outperformed the risk-adjusted returns of the growth portfolio two years out of the nine years tested. For the price to book measure the risk-adjusted returns of the growth portfolio outperformed the risk-adjusted value portfolio seven out of nine times.The results of the study seems to indicate that growth stocks outperform value stocks, contrary to much of the previous research that has concluded that value stocks outperform growth stocks. However, our findings were not statistically significant and we could not draw any clear conclusions from our results. The study did contribute with new knowledge however, by increasing the data available for value investing in Sweden and highlighting a need for more studies into smaller stock markets and for a period of financial distress, such as the financial crisis.

Thése--Paris. / At head of title: Université de France, Faculté de droit de Paris.

No description available.

The advent of democracy brought about changes in the cultural heritage landscape. Cultural heritage used to be a preserve of the rich and experts. Heritage of places is not found lying around for it to be discovered, but it is continually reproduced to suit the needs of that particular society. Reproduction of heritage is due to it being amenable to be used and reused to suit the needs of that grouping. Cultural heritage in South Africa offers is used as an economic tool as it offers easy access for participants to the cultural tourism industry. The capital outlay is usually minimal. Politicians also use cultural heritage to create new identities. In South Africa, during the early stages of democracy, heritage was used to promote national reconciliation and nation-building. Robben Island was used as a flagship institution to open up the cultural heritage space and give voice to those previously denied access or whose heritage was distorted or misrepresented. Robben Island, a place of atrocity stemming from the colonial period, was seen as a beacon of hope and promoted as a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. The site's positioning as an economic tool and fostering notions of national unity invariably leads to selecting a layer that will resonate with the nationalist ideals. The exploratory study uses interviews with tour guides and heritage experts to examine the message told to visitors. The results obtained are contrasted with the national legislation, the site's conservation management plans, and UNESCO's requirements for listed sites. At an international level, UNESCO is concerned with preserving the outstanding universal value of sites. The preservation of the heritage at a local level is done through national legislation.

Most modern software attacks are rooted in memory corruption vulnerabilities. They redirect security-sensitive data values (e.g., return address, function pointer, and heap metadata) to an unintended value. Current state-of-the-art policies, such as Data-Flow Integrity (DFI) and Control-Flow Integrity (CFI), are effective but often struggle to balance precision, generality, and runtime overhead. In this thesis, we propose Data-Value Integrity (DVI), a new defense policy that enforces the integrity of "data value" for security-sensitive control and non-control data. DVI breaks an essential step of memory corruption based attacks by asserting the compromised security-sensitive data value. To show the efficacy of DVI, we present HyperSpace, a prototype that enforces DVI to provide four representative security mechanisms. These include Code Pointer Separation (DVI-CPS) and Code Pointer Integrity (DVI-CPI) based on HyperSpace. We evaluate HyperSpace with SPEC CPU2006 and real-world servers. We also test HyperSpace against memory corruption based attacks, including three real-world exploits and six attacks that bypass existing defenses. Our evaluation shows that HyperSpace successfully detects all attacks and introduces low runtime performance and memory overhead: 1.02% and 6.35% performance overhead for DVI-CPS and DVI-CPI, respectively, and overall approximately 15% memory overhead. / Master of Science / Many modern attacks originate from memory corruption vulnerabilities. These attacks, such as buffer overflow, allow an adversary to compromise a system by executing arbitrary code or escalating their access privilege for malicious actions. Unfortunately, this is due to today's common programming languages such as C/C++ being especially prone to memory corruption. These languages build the foundation of our software stack thus, many applications such as web browsers and database servers that are written using these vulnerable programming languages inherit these shortcomings. There have been numerous security mechanisms that are widely adopted to address this issue but they all fall short in providing complete memory security. Since then, security researchers have proposed various solutions to mitigate these ever-growing shortcomings of memory safety techniques. Nonetheless, these defense techniques are either too narrow-scoped, incur high runtime overhead, or require significant additional hardware resources. This results in them being unscalable for bigger applications or requiring it to be used in combination with other techniques to provide a stronger security guarantee. This thesis presents Data Value Integrity (DVI), a new defense policy that enforces the integrity of "data value" for sensitive C/C++ data which includes, function pointers, virtual function table pointers, and inline heap metadata. DVI can offer wide-scoped security while being able to scale, making it a versatile and elegant solution to address various memory corruption vulnerabilities. This thesis also introduces HyperSpace, a prototype that enforces DVI. The evaluation shows that HyperSpace performs better than state-of-the-art defense mechanisms while having less performance and memory overhead and also providing stronger and more general security guarantees.

The study aims to evaluate the understanding of value – based management (VBM) as a decision making tool, how it is embraced in all management levels and its impact on the performance of a petrochemical company. The application of VBM links business strategy, finance, performance management and management processes all together to create value. VBM is a powerful management framework with the aim to focus all managerial processes on shareholder value creation. It encourages employees at all levels within an organisation to focus on value creation. This study investigated VBM by means of literature study to formulate an understanding of how it can be used as a decision making tool in a petrochemical company. The VBM metrics were presented and some successes and failures of such metrics were considered to provide a better understanding of VBM implementation. A quantitative study was conducted through the use of a standardised questionnaire to collect primary data. The questionnaire was distributed to managers (from junior managers to senior managers) at Sasol. The completed questionnaire was tested for reliability and validity before it was analysed and specific constructs were developed from the literature review together with the respondents’ demographic profile. Even though most respondents indicated that they have not received adequate training and education on VBM, the results of the study indicate that there is a general knowledge and understanding of VBM and its principles in Sasol. After analysis the study provided practical recommendations to ensure that VBM is sustainably used as a decision making tool in a petrochemical company. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014