Background: Despite the growing evidence of the positive effects of fruit consumption on health, many individuals do not consume the recommended dietary guideline amounts. It has been suggested that socioeconomic status and income have an influence on food choices and consumption. The aim of this study is not only to examine whether payment structure has an association with food choices but also to assess fruit consumption independent of vegetables in the US. Methods: The 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System was utilized and the study design led to a sample size that was n= 19,122 respondents. Variables that were selected for associations with sufficient fruit consumption included demographic data, employment status, payment structure, education, and home ownership status. A p-value of <0.05 and 95% confidence intervals were used to determine statistical significance of the analyses performed. Results: Factors that were associated with greater odds of sufficient fruit consumption included being African-American, education- all levels of high school graduate and higher, all income categories above $15,000 annually, those employed, and those who rent a home (p-value<0.01). Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that respondents' education defined as having college education was associated with increased odds of sufficient fruit consumption (OR = 7.09: CI =1.86-27.09] (p-value<0.01). Conclusions: Assessing fruit consumption alone did not provide greater insight on sufficiency with the exception of race's (specifically African American) influence. Payment structure was found not associated with increased fruit consumption. Promotion of education on the relevance of fruit consumption to overall health is critical and necessary in the United States.

Mobile payment is a new payment method that is being introduced on the Swedish market, but has not yet come to its breakthrough. This thesis investigates the attitude the Swedish consumer has towards mobile payment. Based on previous surveys and theory, three main attributes, security, privacy and convenience, were chosen to represent the attitude of the consumer towards mobile payment. In order to analyze the data obtained from the surveys conducted, the multi-attribute attitude model was used. The model showed that convenience was the most beneficial attribute in mobile payment, followed by security and then privacy. Security was the attribute that the survey participants valued the most when it comes to payment methods, but was also the attribute they thought that mobile payment would lack the most. Therefore security was determined to be the most important aspect when it comes to the success of mobile payment.

Objectives: Study wanted to explore the factors that will affect the total medical expense in the patients who receive laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). We also to confer the influencing factor that will associate with the difference of reports the expense under the case payment system. Methods:Retrospective study . Collected from year 2003 to 2007, received LC in a general teaching hospital in Kaohsiung city. We also adopt the chart review and combined with the health insurance expense data to explore the important factors that were associated with total hospitalized expenses, declaration of expense differences, and profits. The methods of multiple linear and logistic regressions were needed. Results: 1539 subjects, 613 male and 926 female. The average age was 54.4 , and 1313 subjects were hospitalized from outpatient. All subject¡¦s average hospitalized days were 3.79 and medical expenses were 42528.1 dollars. The frequencies of the type of declaration about ¡¥not exceed¡¦, ¡¥exceed but actually¡¦, and ¡¥exceed but no actually¡¦ were 88.8%, 8.6%, and 2.6%, in sequence. The average declaration of expense differences was 14484.1 dollars. The significant factors that were associated with total hospitalized expenses were the age, surgical year, source of hospitalize, major symptom, combine disease, a complication after surgery, hospitalized days, type of declaration. In the other linear regression model, we found the age, surgery year, source of hospitalize, major symptom, high technology examination before surgery, combine disease, a complication after surgery, hospitalized days, and physician¡¦s surgery quantity per year had been statistically significant with the declaration of expense differences. For the odds of hospital¡¦s profits, the significant factors include the surgery year, source of hospitalize, major symptom, high technology examination before surgery, and hospitalized days. Conclusion: We found a few significant factors that were associated with dependent variable in three regression models in this study. The major factor is hospitalized days that were a stronger influence total hospitalized expenses, declaration of expense differences, and hospital¡¦s profits. The hospital¡¦s superintendent can carry on the management through the appropriate method to control the medical resource consumes.

With the convenience of mobile network, people can do different kinds of activities, such as payments, shopping, auctions, and so on, whenever and wherever. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become so popular that the number of people using these online services has been increasing enormously in recent years. Hence, the security issues of e-commerce and the rights of users in transaction have raised our concerns. Electronic cash (e-cash) is definitely one of the most popular research topics among e-commerce area. It is very important that e-cash has to be able to hold the anonymity and accuracy in order to preserve the privacy and rights of customers. There are two types of e-cash in general, which are online e-cash and offline e-cash. Both systems have their own pros and cons, and they can be used to construct various applications. In this thesis, we propose a provably secure and efficient offline e-cash scheme with date attachability based on blind signature technique, where expiration date and deposit date can be embedded in an e-cash, simultaneously. With the help of expiration date, the bank can manage the huge database much more easily against unlimited growth, and the deposit date cannot be forged so that users are able to calculate the amount of interests they can receive in the future correctly. Furthermore, our scheme maintains the properties of e-cash, which are anonymity control, double-spending checking and unforgeability. We also provide security analysis and formal proofs in this thesis.

This dissertation is composed of three essays, investigating two aspects of the role of agricultural sector in climate change mitigation: leakage and additionality. Leakage happens when mitigation policies reduce net GHG emissions in one context, but increase (decrease) prices, which in turn causes production (demand) expansion resulting in an offsetting rise in emissions elsewhere. The first essay documents an integration of a US domestic agricultural sectoral model and a global agricultural sectoral model, with the aim to deliver better leakage assessment. The second essay investigates the trend of US crop yield growth and its implication on the international leakage effect. We find that the slowdowns have occurred to the growth rates of most US major crops. The implementation of climate change mitigation strategies, such as the expansion of bioenergy production, causes demand for the agricultural sector to increase substantially. The new demand would cause noticeable leakage effect if crop yields continue to grow at the current rates. Such effect may be potentially alleviated by higher crop yield growth rates; but the extent of alleviation depends on the mix of technological progress obtained across crops as well. Additionality is often a concern in programs designed to incentivize the production of environmental services. Additionality is satisfied if payments are made to services that would not have occurred without the payment. However, because of the information asymmetry between service buyers and sellers, ensuring additionality poses a challenge to program designers. The third essay investigates how the pursuit of ensuring additionality would complicate environmental policy design with a theoretical model. Specifically, we examine 4 types of policy design, including 2 discriminating schemes and 2 simpler non-discriminating schemes. We found that under certain conditions, some of the non-discriminating schemes can be almost as good as the discriminating ones. Findings in this dissertation contribute to inform policy makers about the potential impacts of climate change mitigation policies in the agricultural sector and also help to improve understanding of environmental program design.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was first proposed by Robert S. Kaplan, Professor of Accounting at the Harvard Business School, and David Norton, founder and president of a consulting firm in 1992. They elaborated the idea of strategic measurement system to oversee the performance of a business unit. The system is suitable for both profit and non-profit organizations. After ten years, BSC is proved to be a very powerful tool to inspect the performance of a company, also the implementation of a firm¡¦s strategy. National Health Insurance (NHI) in Taiwan was practiced in 1995. Medical service system had dramatic changes since that time. In order to keep financial balance, NHI develops new policies from time to time, reforms the reimbursement criteria, from fee-for-service to global budget. Hospitals face incessant new challenges. Military hospitals, belonging to non-profit government organizations, play an important role in medical services. It is absolutely important ¡§how to survive under such critical environment, and achieve the goal of permanent operation.¡¨ This thesis is a case study, taking an armed forces hospital as an example to construct its system of strategy management. By implementing the Balanced Scorecard, the hospital can reposition its role according to the mission. Then, the hospital can set up its vision and strategic objectives to draw the strategy maps. Within the four perspectives of the BSC, the hospital can select several measurements to evaluate their performance, then, they can know what has been changed and what needs to be improved. The Balanced Scorecard is the best management tool to implement a company¡¦s strategy. At present, BSC is applied to help strategy management in some hospitals. If it is applicable for a military hospital, it would be a great opportunity to overcome the competitive environment and to achieve the goal to run our military hospital permanently.

Abstract Hospital global budget payment of national health insurance in Taiwan starts from July 1, 2002. The payment of emergency department has fixed point-value from July 1 , 2002 to December 31,2003 ( one point of hospital global budget payment equals one NT dollar) . But the payment of emergency department becomes floating point-value, shared with out patient department from January 1,2004. Hospital global budget payment of national health insurance in Taiwan suppressed excessive medical supply through the mechanism of floating point-value. The emergency department of hospital in Taiwan can¡¦t refused patient¡¦s visiting by the regulation of law. We collect the figure of people¡¦s medical utility in emergency department of one regional hospital with 653 beds in Kaohsiung city from July 1 , 2002 to December 31,2003.( one point of hospital global budget payment equals one NT dollar)then the same data also collected from January 1,2004.to July 31,2005.( floating point-value),analyzed by T test. The research result indicates that : the numbers of patient¡¦s transfer to emergency department increased (p value: ¡Õ¡Õ0.05), the numbers of triage1,2 at emergency department increased (p value : ¡Õ¡Õ0.05), the numbers of emergency visiting each month increased (p value:0.036), the growth of admission don¡¦t have statistic significance (p value:0.509). Key word: global budget payment¡Bfloating point-value¡Btransfer¡Btriage

The rapid development of the information technology (IT), coupled with the dynamic changing industrial environment, is promoting the IT as a significant application for the banking to quickly response customer needs and maintains competitive advantage. To do so, banking need to have the ability to investigate the emerging technology, match the technology for economic opportunity, adjust the innovation for business grow, and evaluate the customer value for doing so. This study uses the ¡§Net-Enabled Business Innovation Cycle¡¨ (NEBIC) theory to analyze the above issues for the banking when banking promotes the electronic payment system. The results indicate that the application of the electronic payment system can create new value in opening the business globalization opportunity and reducing the transaction cost and time, repetitive data input and chance of human error. Based on these findings, some measures for emerging IT implementation are suggested. The study offers insights that the adopters can focus on to improve their understanding in business opportunity, needed capability for innovation and potential customer value when implementing an emerging technology.

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The research investigates the application of asset allocation model to pension structure and mortgage payment. The defined contribution pension plan has become the main pension plan in Taiwan. In this pension plan, labors could adjust the contribution rate to maximize their utility function even if they change jobs. Thus, the pension plan may cause changes in their optimal asset allocation. In addition, due to the financial innovations of personalized debt instruments, lenders are allowed to adjust the mortgage payment to maximize personal utility function and hence the adjustable payment ratio could also change the lenders¡¦ optimal asset allocation. This study presents an extended intertemporal asset allocation model of Campbell(1993) and Viceira(2001) to investigate the effects of defined contribution pension and mortgage payment. The numeric simulation is also present to demonstrate the effects on labors¡¦ optimal asset allocation.