Human beings are facing instant and serious chemical fuel shortage and global warming subjects. We have being relying on the central power system, but causing low power efficiency and series environmental issues. Distributed power system can affect efficiently on the large investment on capital and land for central power system. It can backup the central power system for power management to maximize the power efficiency. It is one of the options for power system. Therefore, we expect to build up a reasonable measurer to the micro gas turbine thermal efficiency when the fat becomes power.

This dissertation sets out to explore the phenomenon of Born Globals, a small, international entrepreneurial firm. The study aims at exploring how the entrepreneur perceives the factors that influence the creation of a Born Global. This topic has been chosen since little research has been carried out in order to investigate what the entrepreneurs find important in the creation of a Born Global. This fact has been the basis in developing our study’s aim to investigate the factors’ relative importance. The first step in the investigation is the literature review which is carried out in order to gain significant knowledge about the phenomenon before collecting empirical data of our own, the deductive approach. The literature review revolves around the conceptual framework created by Andersson & Wictor (2003), which has been used to summarise other findings by other authors into the four subcategories that our found to facilitate the creation of a Born Global. In addition to these factors we have found that nation specific characteristics and company specific advantages, as well as entry modes are feasible facilitators to discuss further. When considering methodology a qualitative design has been found the most suitable. The approach used is influenced by Phenomenography which aims to describe people’s perceptions and experiences of different phenomena. In order to investigate this phenomenon we have used open interviews with two different entrepreneurs that were found through careful sampling. The companies chosen are located on two different continents and in two different businesses. The interviews have been transcribed and categorised and the empirical data have been divided into the same categories used in the literature review. This has been done in order to make it easier to read but also easier to analyse. After the summary of the empirical data we have conducted a cross analysis. In analysing the data we have looked for similarities and differences in order to draw conclusions regarding the issues set out to investigate. The empirical results and the analysis revolve around the six areas outlined in the theory, i.e. Globalisation, Entrepreneur, Networks, Industry, Entry Modes, and A fit between nation specific characteristics and company specific advantages. The two entrepreneurs consider the same factors to have had the biggest influence for the biggest part. However they disagree regarding the importance of Networks and Market Entry. These factors have both had an impact on the companies but their relative importance is disputed. We would like to stress that the investigated attitudes are subjective. It is the interviewees’ attitudes and opinions the study has been aiming at investigating and therefore it is important to identify the individual as a factor when discussing the investigation’s credibility. It is rather unlikely that we would have reached the same conclusions with different interviewees but since it is attitudes that have been investigated it is only natural and does therefore not clash with the purpose of the study.

In previous research, it is stated that founders/top managers have an impact on the born global firms, meaning firms that become international directly from start or short time after establishment. The purpose of our thesis is to understand how the characteristics of founders/top managers and entrepreneurial orientation have an impact on the born global firm’s innovation and outcome. Based on foundations in earlier studies we identified a research gap that this thesis aims to fill. This thesis will contribute to the importance of a better understanding of how entrepreneurial orientation affects a born global firm’s innovation and outcome. Therefore, we outline the following research question; “How have the characteristics of the founder/top manager and entrepreneurial orientation an impact on the born global firm’s innovation and outcome?” In order to answer this question we review previous literature and construct a conceptual framework suitable for our study.      When it comes to methodology, we apply an abductive approach, meaning that we start with a deductive approach and create a conceptual framework. Then along the way we move more towards an inductive approach since we want to develop existing theories and address theory implications for further studies. We use a qualitative research design and in-depth multiple case studies in order to get a deeper understanding of our research topic.              Our empirical findings consist of three interviews with founders/top managers from three different born global firms in Umeå and Skellefteå. From these interviews, we conclude that all the three founders/top managers have an impact on the born global firm’s innovation and outcome. Consequently, we managed to perceive a link between the age of the firm and the level of entrepreneurial orientation. The implication was that the characteristics of the founder/top manager had a bigger impact on the youngest firm. The two other firms had more of a firm level behavior in terms of entrepreneurial orientation as they have been in operations for many years and have been established by two founders, unlike the younger firm. We could also find that number of founders, relations, brand image/position, and networking should be taken into consideration when it comes to characteristics of the founder/top manager and entrepreneurial orientation. The research gap we discovered within entrepreneurial orientation is complex and cannot be fully met by this thesis. As such, we recommend further research into this area. We suggest including employees from different departments within the born global firms when investigating the level of entrepreneurial orientation and how it affects innovation and outcome. / Centre for Inter-organizational Innovation Research

Objective¡G The purpose of this research is to explore the influences of the global budget implementation on the older stroke patient's outcome and medical quality. In further analysis, this study compared the differences of the older stroke patient's rehospitalization and complication across age groups, genders, regions, and the hospital¡¦s characters. Analysis of the real extent of the Global budget policy on the readmission of patients was focused on stroke-related outcomes and costs. This study also reviewed the Global budget policy on whether it has effective control of medical resources, and measured its impact on medical care of patients, thus to control costs and improve quality of care. Method¡G The data were derived from the National Health Insurance database and the Taiwan census data. The study periods were 1999-2000 and 2004-2005. In this research, descriptive analysis was used to examine the older stroke patient's outcome and medical quality. T -test and chi-square was used to investigate the outcome and medical quality differences between medical institutions and personal characteristics. Logistic regression and linear regression model were used to detect and describes data trends. Results: Regarding Taiwan's overall four years of the older stroke patient's rehospitalization and complication, the status of infection and medical expenses showed significant growth trend after the Global budget policy implementation. For the medical institutions characteristics, the infection status of the non-for-profit hospital, medical center hospital, district hospital, teaching and non-teaching hospital were showing significant growth. For the personal characteristics, the infection status of male, female, aged 70-74, south and east regional were with significant growth. Conclusion¡G According to the study results, we found that the Global budget policy implemented in Taiwan was still need to be improved. We suggest the policy makers and the hospitals may use the ¡uGlobal budget policy implemented¡vas an indicator to monitor the quality of care and the outpatient care quality in Taiwan¡¦s healthcare system. Thus not only can reduce the unnecessary expenditure, but also can offer the general public better quality of healthcare and improve their quality of life.

This thesis studies the applications of the network coding technique for intercon- nect optimization and improving the routability of Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) designs. The goal of the routing process is to connect the required sets of sources and sinks while minimizing the total wirelength and reducing congestion. Typically, chip interconnects include multiple sinks and are routed through intermediate nodes. The main idea of the network coding technique is to enable the intermediate nodes to generate new signals by combining the signals received over their incoming wires. This is in contrast to the traditional approaches, in which an intermediate node can only forward the incoming signals. This thesis attempts to explore the possible ben- efits of the network coding technique for reducing the total wirelengh and mitigating congestion in VLSI designs. The contribution of the thesis is three-fold. First, we extend the Hanan’s theo- rem for multi-net rectilinear coding networks. Second, we propose several exact and heuristic solutions for finding near-optimal routing topologies that utilize network coding techniques. Next, we perform extensive simulation study to evaluate the ad- vantage of network coding over the traditional approaches. The simulations help to identify routing instances where the network coding techniques are expected to be beneficial. Finally, we evaluate the potential benefits from network coding in practical settings by analyzing its performance on the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) benchmarks. Our results show that while network coding shows upto 2.43% improvement on unconstrained rectilinear grids, it shows upto 4.34% improvement in cases with con- straints along the grid. In addition, it shows an improvement upto 8.4% in cases involving congestion reduction and also improves routing performance on ISPD rout- ing benchmarks.

Radiosity is a global illumination algorithm used by artists, architects, and engineers for its realistic simulation of lighting. Since the illumination model is global, complexity and run time grow as larger environments are provided. Algorithms exist which generate an incremental result and provide weighting based on the user's view of the environment. This thesis introduces an algorithm for directing and focusing radiosity calculations relative to the user's point-of-view and within the user's field-of-view, generating visually interesting results for a localized area more quickly than a traditional global approach. The algorithm, referred to as perspective-driven radiosity, is an extension of the importance-driven radiosity algorithm, which itself is an extension of the progressive refinement radiosity algorithm. The software implemented during research into the point-of-view/field-of-view-driven algorithm can demonstrate both of these algorithms, and can generate results for arbitrary geometry. Parameters can be adjusted by the user to provide results that favor speed or quality. To take advantage of the scalability of programmable graphics hardware, the algorithm is implemented as an extension of progressive refinement radiosity on the GPU, using OpenGL and GLSL. Results from each of the three implemented radiosity algorithms are compared using a variety of geometry.

Research on growth strategy of Taiwan PC firm

With the development of the MPEG4, the concept of video object plane (VOP) is more and more important. Before the MPEG4 video coding, it requires a prior process to decompose the video sequences into several video segmented object planes. As moving objects cause local intensities changes, these changes provide the most important information of the segmentation. Whereas the camera motion also changes intensities, we have to remove the changes caused by camera moving. The experimentation is using a fixed and single global lens CCD to detect the objects which are not belong to the environment. When global lens CCD finds the objects, the system will pass the objects information to PTZ lens CCD, which is able to capture the better image of the objects. When PTZ lens CCD is tracing objects, CCD`s moving causes global motion between frames. As extracting the objects in these frames, we use an efficient affine model to remove the image intensities changes caused by PTZ lens camera moving. After motion compensation, find the changes due to moving objects, and select the region of the objects. On purpose to find the precise contours of the objects, we use SRG algorithm to erode the background inside the objects region, and finally extract the objects. In the last step, we return back the image of the PTZ lens CCD with global lens CCD`s background and the extracted objects. By this method, we are able to reduce the redundancy and lower the data translation bit rate.

El ciclo diurno de la convección sobre la tierra es de gran importancia en los estudios del clima, debido a su fuerte influencia sobre el balance térmico de la atmósfera. Los objetivos de la presente tesis son simular el ciclo diurno de la precipitación y los calentamientos latente y radiativo usando el Modelo de Circulación General Atmosférico (MCGA), comparar la precipitación modelada con la nubosidad convectiva observada a partir de imágenes de satélite y analizar la distribución vertical del calentamiento total modelada. Se ha usado el MCGA para simular el ciclo diurno de la precipitación y los calentamientos radiativo y latente con muestras cada dos horas de modo que, permita estudiar variaciones de por lo menos cuatro horas en el ciclo diurno. El periodo de estudio abarca los quince primeros días del mes de enero del 2002 y el área de estudio está comprendida entre las longitudes 58 a 68o Oeste y las latitudes 4 a 10o Sur (Amazonía central). Entre los resultados más importantes obtenidos se tiene: El MCGA reprodujo la hora de máxima precipitación (2pm) en la Amazonía central que coincide con la máxima precipitación observada en el Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment (LBA). El MCGA reprodujo dos bandas de precipitación (Andes, Amazonía central) durante la tarde, que coinciden con las bandas de frecuencia de nubosidad convectiva obtenida por Garreaud y Wallace [14]. En el balance térmico de la atmósfera según el MCGA, durante el día predomina el calentamiento latente, mientras que durante la noche predomina el enfriamiento por onda larga.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-187). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.