DNA condensation is a fundamental process in all living organisms. The highly abundant nucleoid-associated proteins, HU and IHF, present in bacteria, have been shown to play an important role in shaping the nucleoid. However, the exact mechanism is not well understood. In this thesis, we have demonstrated that both HU and IHF guide DNA to condense into linear bundle-like structures in presence of cellular condensing components, but the proteins alone do not condense DNA into densely packed structures. Our results suggest a mechanism by which HU and IHF could act as architectural proteins during in vitro and in vivo DNA condensation. More recently, DNA condensation has attracted much attention for its relevance in optimizing artificial DNA delivery systems for gene therapy. The research presented in this dissertation provides in depth biophysical studies that demonstrate how local modulations in the nucleic acid structure can be used to control both the size and the morphology DNA condensates. We describe a novel strategy for improving the condensation of oligonucleotides that is based on the self-organization of half-sliding complementary oligonucleotides into long duplexes (ca. kb) with flexible sites at regular intervals along the duplex backbones, in the form of single-stranded nicks or single-stranded gaps. Our results also provide new insights into the role of DNA flexibility in condensate formation and suggest the potential for the use of this DNA structure in the design of vectors for oligonucleotide and gene delivery.

With the global environment changed rapidly, traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer provide a sustainable strength for business, the approach to global business strategy point to core competencies, invisible assets, and organizational capabilities as key factors influencing MNC¡¦s long-term success in global markets. Benefited by resource-based view (RBV), strategic human resource management (SHRM), and organization behavior (OB) theories as theoretical groundwork, and our contributions include of (1) We built up a theoretical framework from the perspective of human capital to investigate how learning organizational capital facilites firm¡¦s innovative capabilities through human capital flexibility as a mediator. (2) Define human capital flexibility and its seven dimentions. (3) Define learning organizational capital with three dimensions derived from human capital perspective of knowledge-based literatures. Using sample of 184 subsidiaries of Taiwanese MNCs with SEM technique, our empirical result further indicates that human capital flexibility and learning organizational capital has positive effects on firm¡¦s innovative capabilities. Also, human capital flexibility plays a key role as a strong mediator that enhanced organizational capital to exert firm¡¦s innovative capabilities

Outsourcing is a popular name in the employ market. It is a common situation for enterprises to adopt the outsourcing system instead of hiring employees in order to achieve the goals of cost-down and elevate the competency of enterprises. Especially at the lower level technical and heavy physical- loaded industries. China Steel Corporation (CSC) has been experiencing of applying the outsourcing system on site-work over thirty years. CSC and the subcontractor are becoming a symbiosis relationship. Nevertheless, most of the documents focused on the research between the workforce flexibility and organization performance of the subcontract system, it¡¦s rare to investigate the integral job performance which are resulted from the cooperative working model in specific factory. Moreover, there are problems to be improved during the long period operation experiences under the similar symbiotic structure, such as work safety, quality, efficiency, management of manpower etc. which lead to results that are unsatisfied working performances. But there is no actual performance evaluation system to verify. This research conducts to find out the key successful factors and construct the key performance index of mechanical maintenance for job performances evaluation. It can be utilized to promote continuously for synchronizing maintenance performances of CSC and subcontractors. Eventually, enterprises¡Boutsourcing employees and subcontractors can get the best of benefits from each other. This research applies the method of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to conduct interviews from experts and questionnaires survey. It was capable to be calculated the key performance factors weight for the references of the performance evaluation standard. Furthermore, the key points of recognition of maintenance performances from supervisors were analyzed the weight differentiations of sections¡Bpositions¡Bfield experiences from the EXCEL statistic program. The final conclusions were: 1 The priority to weight Key Performance Indexes of mechanical maintenance on main hierarchy structure are management of manpower(0.346), equipment maintenance(0.27), preparation of material(0.148), working environment(0.122) , working method planning(0.113)¡C 2 The top 80 % of KPI¡¦s weight include 14 items listed as below: 2.1 promotion of reliability of equipment maintenance. 2.2 reduce the rate of resignation. 2.3 promotion of numbers of qualified for the testing of technical and operation licenses. 2.4 decreasing the waiting time of materials during the repair period. 2.5 increase periodical training hours. 2.6 elevate the level of education. 2.7 reduce accident occurring rate. 2.8 reduce the times of safety working accidents 2.9 reduce the trouble shooting time. 2.10 raise the rate of presence. 2.11 reduce the break down hours of equipments. 2.12 reduce the numbers of break down equipment. 2.13 raise amounts of equipment improvement proposals. 2.14 raise amounts of operation method improvement proposals. 3 From the individual survey analysis, it shows that there are obvious differentiation related to the management of manpower¡Bequipment maintenance¡Bworking environment. 4 Based on different sections perspectives, it shows that even though most of the sections are consistent, but having diverse recognition were found. It means that only a slice difference can be observed overall. 5 Based on different positions perspectives, it shows that different levels of authority are consistent in top two KPI indexes on main structure. the others indexes have slice differences. 6 Based on different experienced perspectives, it shows that reverse result occurred between veterans and people who are not experienced for long time of work, and the former focus on the management of manpower; the latter focus on equipment maintenance.

¡@In recent years, the industry environment has been affected by the globalization and the dramatic changes of industrial competition, thus the enterprises, considering cost, flexibility and speed, show a yearly rising employment rate of foreign workers in Taiwan and some of them even reach the top limit. In addition, they gradually stop employing full-time or long-term workers, but start to employ the outsourced and dispatched personnel. As a result, the traditional employment relationships are confronted with challenges. According to the survey issued by CHEER magazine in April, 2004, more than 12% enterprises possess 10~20% contract-based employees of their total staff, and in the future more than 35% enterprise will continue to enlarge the scale of contract-based employees. Hence, the long-term official employment relationship is no longer the only choice, the enterprises tend to use multiple and flexible employment modes. ¡@¡@From 2008 to now, after experienced the financial crisis, have the enterprises added the application of flexible manpower employment strategies, or examined and adjusted their current flexible employment strategies? Therefore, the study further explores the current situation of enterprises¡¦ application of flexible employment strategies. ¡@¡@This study hopes to utilize the interview to collect the enterprises¡¦ current situation of flexible manpower employment, application reasons and effectiveness, as well as the relevant management regulations and practical operations derived from the application of flexible manpower employment in the enterprises, so as to explore the influences of flexible manpower employment strategies on the enterprises. Finally, it can be served as references for the enterprises of different fields to utilize the flexible manpower employment and the government to draft relative policies and labor laws in the future. ¡@¡@From the interview data, the flexible manpower mainly takes charge of the peripheral work like administrative support and elementary manufacturing or service works. However, it is extraordinary that the enterprises related to credit cards of financial service sector often employ the dispatched manpower, or assign the core business to the atypical employees. ¡@¡@As for the reasons for applying flexible employment, taking cost into consideration, serving as bridge to employ the regular workers are the primary. The benefits of flexible employment strategies are mainly shown in the cost reduction in welfare, training and recruiting and the flexibility of personnel application. During the financial crisis of 2008 when the case company conducted the organizational adjustment and downsizing, it primarily controlled and downsized the dispatched manpower by means of non-renewal of contracts upon labor termination or early termination of contract. However, it didn¡¦t downsize all the dispatched personnel but reserved the excellent ones. In addition, the regular workers without an outstanding performance were also handled. Moreover, the issues faced by dispatching companies such as high labor turnover rate, hard to recruit, low personnel quality, and unable to recruit the excellent personnel are also the important subjects to be faced and solved for the enterprises.

Abstract After operate The National Health Insurance policy, every hospital focused in decreased cost to improve profit. The nursing staffs become the main target to lower staffing cost¡Aso recruited the flexibility in nursing manpower followed. This study focuses to investigate a hospital how to utilize different working status nursing staffs and analysis they in organization commitment¡Bjob satisfaction and performance. The results are as follows¡G The nursing staff's age mostly range between 21-25, mean working years is 6.45. In functional flexibility, the formal staff is the first member to transfer place. In number flexibility, the hospital recruited contingent workers to resolve the manpower shortage. In time flexibility, part-timers could fit the vacancy in manpower of numbers and some intervals times. Estimate the cost¡Gthe part-timers part could save about NT$ 2 million dollars per year, but the temporary-contract part paid more around NT$1 million dollars in recruitment. The part-timers in moral commitment, calculative commitment, working condition and performance are below than the formal staffs. In educational level, the occupational staffs are higher than the university level staffs, but no different about job satisfaction. In married status, unmarried workers are lower than the married employees. Over 40 years old workers in many parts are higher than the 25-29 years old. More than 20 working years staffs compare with 3-5 years shows different results. The regression model exhibits formal staffs, higher supervisor ability and lower working condition then the working performance is high. Calculative commitment is different from many other parts. Total accident events and working status shows significant difference. The fall event and working status, age also have significant difference. According to the above results, this study suggests the consideration about cost, when the hospital hire the contingent workers, it still need to provide enough on-job training opportunity and other relative procedures then could maximum the efficiency of the flexibility utilization in manpower.

Abstract By following changeful environment and global competition trends, business strategy has an enormous influence toward enterprises. The most significant resource in an enterprise is manpower. Therefore, this research attempts to fit the relationship through environment uncertainty, the enterprise business strategy and human resources flexibility strategy. Besides, the research will discuss the human resources strategy how to make human resources flexibility fit and adjust business strategy practically, then promote to create enterprise competitive superiority, to follow external environment to reach enduring competitive capabilities, and to have double win. This research method adopts depth interviews and discussions with four individual cases. These four companies in this research are high-tech multinational stock companies. Their main products are different¡G crystal, IC¡]Integrated Circuit¡^seal and test, electric capacity, electric photography and scanner, etc. Totally there are 19 companies (including branches and subsidiaries) in investment cases. To build this method construction in this research by literary studies has found out the management connection among these case studies which all get involved with environment uncertainty, business strategy and human resources flexibility strategy. Four key findings are: (1) When the enterprise is aware of the low general environment uncertainty, characteristic business environment uncertainty and industrial environment uncertainty, business strategy should take it in terms of prospector and human resources flexibility strategy should select temporal working day and flexible wages. (2) When the enterprise is aware of the high general environment uncertainty, and low characteristic business environment uncertainty and industrial environment uncertainty, business strategy should take it in terms of prospector and human resources flexibility strategy should select temporal working day and flexible wages. (3) When the enterprise is aware of the low general environment uncertainty and characteristic business environment, and high industrial environment uncertainty, business strategy should take it in terms of defender and human resources flexibility strategy should select functional and numerical flexibility (4) When the enterprise is aware of the low general environment uncertainty and characteristic business environment uncertainty, and middle industrial environment uncertainty, business strategy should take it in terms of analyzer and human resources flexibility strategy should select functional and temporal flexibility. The conclusion is an enterprise must have different business strategies to fit environment uncertainty. If the enterprise can execute the human resources flexibility strategy at all times, they can build up effective management systems, and promote competitive conditions

As various forces rendering the business environment more dynamic, organizations nowadays must rapidly correspond to changes in order to survive and prosper. Observing the flexible use of manpower, Atkinson (1987) proposed the flexible firm model and attempted to draw clear demarcation among core, peripheral and external workforces. Such flexible deployment of different workforces are not uncommon in the cooperative subcontracting system in Taiwan¡¦s steel industry (Chang, 2001). In his exploratory research, Chang (2001) discusses the deployment of different workforces in the cooperative subcontracting system, however, the discussion of the relationship between workforce flexibility and organizational performance is neglected. In order to provide a more complete understanding of workforce flexibility, it is important to conduct further research. Hence, this research intends to continue Chang¡¦s research and collect more data to analyze the relationship between workforce flexibility and organizational performance among the China Steel Co.¡¦s subcontractor. Among 183 questionnaires distributed, 118 were collected and 108 were considered effective. The return rate is 59.02%. Analyzing the data, the research discover the following findings: (1) Significant differences on functional flexibility were found among different organizational traits. It is found that subcontractors with more than 3 divisions rated themselves better on the Development of Multi-skill than subcontractors with 3 divisions. (2) Significant differences on numerical flexibility were found among different organizational traits. Subcontractors with capital over 80 million dollars outsource more than subcontractors with capital under 20 million dollars. Engineering subcontractors outsource more than labor subcontractors. (3) Significant differences on wage flexibility were found among different organizational traits. Subcontractors with 60-80% dependence on CSC have more flexible wage design than subcontractors with 20-40%. (4) Significant differences on subjective organizational performance were found among different organizational traits. Subcontractors with capital over 80 million dollars were rated higher on the operational performance than subcontractors with capital under 20 million dollars. Labor subcontractors and cleaning subcontractors were rated higher on production performance more than labor subcontractors. Significant difference on production performance was also found among subcontractor of different numbers of division. Significant difference on customer satisfaction was found among subcontractors of different degree of dependence on CSC and different sizes of capital. Labor and cleaning subcontractors rated higher than engineering subcontractors. (5) Significant differences on objective organizational performance were found concerning organizational traits. Subcontractor of 60-80% dependence on CSC have higher turnover rate than subcontractors of 0-20% dependence. (6) Functional flexibility has significant positive influence on organization performance. Horizontal and vertical transfer has significant positive influence on operation performance and production performance. The development of multi-skill has significant positive influence on production performance. (7) Numerical flexibility has significant influence on organization performance. The higher the proportion of temporary workers, the lower the operation performance. The higher the proportion of temporary workers, the higher the turnover rate. (8) Wage flexibility has significant influence on organizational performance. Flexible wage design has negative significant influence on operational performance and customer satisfaction. Variable wage ratio has positive significant influence on customer satisfaction. Thus far, it is suggested that the cooperative subcontractor can (1) continue enhance measures that promote functional flexibility, (2) consider the skill difference when promoting functional flexibility, (3) hire cooperative skilled engineers or technicians for core workers, (4) implement training programs to help core workers develop multi-skills, (5) analyze business trends and maintain suitable ratio of contingent workers, (6) pay attention to legal issues regarding contingent workers, (7) consider the use of temporary help service (THS) as the substitution of hiring temporary worker by the company itself, (8) carefully evaluate the influence of wage flexibility.

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Nowadays, outsouring is quite popular and acceptable in business usage. In recent years, HR outsourcing has become a popular and known knowledge , and outsourcing on training is one of important strategies in HR outsourcing. However, the related academic research on the training outsourcing is as limited as a virgin field. Therefore, this study will evaluate if businesses use training outsourcing to achieve human resource flexibility and upgrade the organization performances, and to understand how the High-Tech Industry uses it and its affects . This study uses 40 data of Hsin-Chu Science-Based Industrial Park companies from both questionnaire form and interview survey in order to understand the usage status, usage reason, its problem and key successful factors of the training outsourcing on the High-Tech Industry. From the returned questionnaires, we found that 100% of the companies implement ¡§Training¡¨ and 95% of the companies take training outsourcing, but also found that the degree of training of outsourcing is not so popular as its usage status and most of companies prefer to do it by themselves. In addition, we also found that the demand degree of training outsourcing is much higher on the specific profession course than management and general training. The result shows the companies are required to use outside vendors for specific profession. According to the result of statistic analysis, we examine Hypothesis 1 and find the amount of staff and revenue are positive related with training outsourcing and are also positively affected , so it shows if the business scope is smaller, the degree of the training outsourcing will be higher. The result of Hypothesis 2, Human Resource Flexibility also positively affect the training outsourcing, especially the functional flexibility which meant as the degree of Flexibility is higher, the degree of training outsourcing will be also higher. The result of Hypothesis 3, training outsourcing is only positively affected to the organizational performance of ¡§ deducted Staff cost¡¨. According to the result of the interviews, we found the main reason that high-tech industry uses training outsourcing is due to lack of interior professional speaker; to strength the learning opportunity and experience of staffs to get-in the required professional skill and knowledge from the outside provider and to improve the competition ability; to improve the training quality and no specific department to take charge of training. The main problems for training outsourcing are the contents of training cannot match with the staff¡¦s need, the factor of outside speaker and what the staff learned from outside course cannot practice on the jobs. The role of Human Resource people during outsourcing play the administration service role, and sometimes can also play the strategic role, but in just a few cases. So, the result shows the training outsourcing is not quite the important mission in a company and still in a low level job. The key factor to make outsourcing successful is the cooperation and profession from the outside vendor, the support of high-level manager, the contents to match with the business strategy and goal , and the contents can match with the need of staff and company.

The use of Creative Problem Solving (CPS) as an instructional strategy to increase the creativity levels of students across all levels of the curriculum is currently a popular topic of investigation. Curriculum content and the underlying objectives that are presented to students in public schools have been the subject of close scrutiny since school accountability became a hot topic during the 1980's. However, despite all the efforts to improve student productivity through a well defined curriculum, and possibly because of the increased emphasis on student accountability to reflect that student improvement, concern for the apparent declining creativity levels among students appears to be growing. The purpose of this dissertation was to compare conventional instructional methodologies with those of creative problem solving. It was hypothesized that students' low, high, and total cognition levels, overall creativity levels, and satisfaction with instructional methodologies, improve as a result of instruction through creative problem solving strategies. By improving the levels of creativity within students, they will be better equipped to deal with the complex types of problems the future will present. This study utilized an experimental, posttest only, control group design. Participants were ninth grade students (n=20) who were enrolled in an Introduction to World Agricultural and Science Technology I course. Posttests were administered to measure low, high, and total levels cognition at the conclusion of the course. For this measure of the dependent variable, a forty question (10 true/false, 25 multiple choice, and 5 short answer) test was administered. Pretests and posttests were administered to measure student creativity. A standardized Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was used as the measure of the dependent variable of creativity. Pretests, mid-tests, and posttests were used to measure student satisfaction. A satisfaction instrument developed by Brashears (2004) was used for the measurement of clarity, delivery, content, and total satisfaction as the dependent measure of satisfaction. These instruments were used to measure the five research hypotheses of the study. Results of the study did not support the hypotheses that significant differences exist between creative problem solving and traditional instructional strategies, as they pertain to student cognition, creativity, and satisfaction. However, although not significant, possibly due to the small sample size, upon closer examination of group means, one can detect definite patterns of greater mean score gains among the CPS group over the traditional group in cognition, creativity, and satisfaction. Based on these findings, this researcher suggests that replications of this study be performed with larger sample sizes in different curriculum areas to further perpetuate the integration of creative problem solving strategies as an effective instructional strategy for all age groups and in all areas of the curriculum.