by Kong Kan, Karen. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-82). / EXECUTIVE SUMMARY --- p.i / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / LIST OF TABLES --- p.v / ACKNOWLEDGMENT --- p.vi / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / "Marketing Difficulties Start with Chinese Misunderstanding of the Word ""Wine´ح" / Scope of Study --- p.3 / Decision Problem --- p.3 / Research Objectives --- p.3 / Methodology --- p.5 / Research Design --- p.5 / Data Collection Method --- p.7 / Limitations --- p.10 / Chapter II. --- EVALUATING THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY --- p.13 / Environmental Analysis --- p.13 / Macroenvironment --- p.13 / Microenvironment --- p.15 / Company Profile --- p.17 / Competition Profile --- p.19 / Market Share Competition --- p.19 / Fine Wine Segment competition --- p.20 / Regular Wine Segment competition --- p.21 / Consumer Profile --- p.22 / On-premise Sales --- p.22 / Off-premise Sales --- p.22 / Market Potential of Remy Wine Division --- p.22 / Summary of Chapter II --- p.26 / Chapter III. --- THE TARGET MARKET --- p.27 / "Alternative 1: General public as target market, including supermarkets as outlets" --- p.28 / "Alternative 2: General public as target market, maintaining the 4existing retail outlets" --- p.29 / Alternative 3: Middle to high income group as target market maintaining the 4 existing retail outlets --- p.29 / "Alternative 4: Middle to high income group as target market, including supermarkets as outlets" --- p.30 / Best Alternative Justification --- p.30 / Target Market Description --- p.32 / Chapter IV. --- STRATEGY FORMULATION --- p.34 / Marketing Strategies for Young Adults --- p.34 / Product and Price Strategy --- p.34 / Distribution Strategy --- p.38 / Promotional Strategy --- p.39 / Marketing Strategies for Mature Adults --- p.42 / Product and Price Strategy --- p.42 / Distribution Strategy --- p.44 / Promotional Strategy --- p.45 / Marketing Strategies for Mature Market --- p.48 / Product and Price Strategy --- p.49 / Distribution Strategy --- p.49 / Promotional Strategy --- p.49 / Chapter V. --- TIMING AND BUDGETING --- p.51 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.55 / EXHIBITS --- p.57 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.79

Three dimensional (3D) surface feature extractions based on mean (H) and Gaussian (K) curvature analysis of range maps, also known as depth maps, is an important tool for machine vision applications such as object detection, registration and recognition. Mean and Gaussian curvature calculation algorithms have already been implemented and examined as software. In this thesis, hardware based digital curvature processors are designed. Two types of real time surface feature extraction and classification hardware are developed which perform mean and Gaussian curvature analysis at different scale levels. The techniques use different gradient approximations. A fast square root algorithm using both LUT (look up table) and linear fitting technique is developed to calculate H and K values of the surface described by the 3D Range Map formed by fixed point numbers. The proposed methods are simulated in MatLab software and implemented on different FPGAs using VHDL hardware language. Calculation times, outputs and power analysis of these techniques are compared to CPU based 64 bit float data type calculations.

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The subject of this diploma thesis titled "Optimization of Transportation Routes between a Chosen Company and Its Clients" is the logistic routes optimization of the selected company, which is in thesis case company MITRANS - HK s.r.o. From company routes portfolio all circle routes are selected, which are lately solved by different methods, which are used for traveling salesman problem. Then the provided results are evaluated and compared between themselves and between real used routes variants. The thesis also handle the economic efficiency of optimization, which is presented on solved routes.

The Hegselmann-Krause system (HK system for short) is one of the most popular models for the dynamics of opinion formation in multi agent systems. Agents are modeled as points in opinion space, and at every time step, each agent moves to the mass center of all the agents within unit distance. The rate of convergence of HK systems has been the subject of several recent works and the current best bounds are O(n3) in one dimension and O(n4) in higher dimension where n being the number of agents. In this work, we investigate the convergence behavior of a few natural variations of the HK system and their e act on the dynamics. In the rest variation, we only allow pairs of agents who are friends in an underlying social network to communicate with each other and we can construct conjurations. In the second variation, only one of the agents updates its position at each time step and selection of such an agent may be at random or based on some preened order; as before, these updates of agents also take social information into consideration. In the third variant, agents may not move exactly to the mass center but somewhere close to it. In the fourth variant, we allow all agents to interact with one another, but instead of assigning equal weights to all neighbors as in the HK model, we assign Gaussian weights which are inversely proportional to the distance between agents. In the fifth variant, we consider the Synchronized Bounded In hence model where the agents have in hence bounds instead of con dance bounds, which changes the way agents interact with each other. In our nil variant, we consider the dynamics of HK systems with strategic agents where we have an additional set of agents called as strategic agents whose opinions are chosen freely at each time step. One of the goals using these strategic agents is to lower the convergence time. The dynamics of all the variants are qualitatively very different from that of the classical HK system. Nevertheless, we prove convergence or show some other interesting results for all of these models. To be more specific, for the rest and third variant we show that these systems make only polynomial number of non-trivial steps, regardless of the social network in the rest vary-ant and noise patterns in the third variant. For the second variant, however, we again show polynomial number of non-trivial steps but in expectation regardless of the social network and interestingly different dynamics. For the fourth variant, we prove an upper bound for the convergence time of Gaussian weighted HK model. For the fifth variant, we consider a special case of this SBI model and prove convergence for this case. For the final variant, we improve the existing results for the optimal convergence time for dumb-bell and equidistant configurations.

Wong King-chung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-78). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Abstract (Chinese) --- p.ii / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Table of Contents --- p.v / List of Figures and Tables --- p.vii / Chapter Chapter 1´ؤ --- Introduction / A New Age of Sound --- p.1 / Academic Background and Related Studies --- p.2 / Chinese Music and the Media --- p.4 / The Present Study and Methodology --- p.5 / Chapter Chapter 2´ؤ --- SoundScape of China: The Influence of Ethnomusicology in China in the 1980´ةs / Introduction --- p.8 / From Comparative to Cultural: Chinese Music Scholarship in the Twentieth Century Mainland China --- p.10 / Revealing a Soundscape of Chinese Music´ؤDevelopment of Musical Genre Study --- p.13 / Concluding Remarks --- p.18 / Chapter Chapter 3´ؤ --- Mapping a Soundscape: Analyzing the HUGO CD Catalogue(s) / Introduction --- p.20 / "Classification, Category and Catalogue" --- p.20 / Recording Industry in Hong Kong --- p.22 / Aik Yeh-goh and HUGO Production (HK) Ltd --- p.28 / HUGO'S Label Division --- p.29 / Statistical Analysis of HUGO CD Catalogues --- p.31 / An Aural Map´ؤSoundscape of China --- p.38 / Concluding Remarks --- p.42 / Chapter Chapter 4´ؤ --- Whose Music? The Role of the HUGO CD Catalogue in Chinese Cultural Memory / Introduction --- p.44 / Communication Theory in Studying Recording Industry --- p.46 / Lasswell's 5-W Formula as a System --- p.46 / Lewin's Gatekeeping Theory --- p.50 / The Role of HUGO CD: Imagination of Chinese Music outside Mainland China --- p.52 / Concluding Remarks --- p.54 / Appendix A: Name List of Record Companies in Hong Kong before the 1990's --- p.56 / Appendix B: The Catalogue of the HUGO CDs --- p.58 / Selected Bibliography --- p.66

Les reins sont les organes cibles de nombreuses molécules toxiques. Les cellules épithéliales du tubule proximal rénal sont particulièrement vulnérables vis-à-vis de xénobiotiques utilisés comme médicaments ou non. Ces agressions peuvent être corrélées à une augmentation du stress oxydatif et induire la mort cellulaire. Elles peuvent également mener à la perte des caractéristiques phénotypiques des cellules épithéliales, initiant leur dédifférenciation en cellules mésenchymateuses et éventuellement en fibroblastes, principaux responsables de la fibrose rénale.<p>Les stratégies de protection – notamment implémentées en clinique lors de l'administration de médicaments néphrotoxiques – reposant sur une approche pharmacologique restent rares.<p>A partir de données de médecines traditionnelles, nous avons sélectionné une série de plantes considérées utiles pour le traitement ou la prévention de troubles associés aux maladies rénales :Angelicae sinensis radix, Eleutherococci radix, Ginseng radix, Schisandrae chinensis fructus et Silybi mariani fructus.<p>A l'aide d'un modèle in vitro reposant sur l'emploi de la lignée cellulaire HK-2, nous avons examiné si ces produits pouvaient apporter une protection efficace vis-à-vis de 3 xénobiotiques néphrotoxiques :les acides aristolochiques, le cisplatine et la ciclosporine. Cinq phénomènes impliqués dans la néphrotoxicité et couramment retrouvés lors du développement de la fibrose rénale ont été investigués :(i) la mortalité cellulaire et l'apoptose ;(ii) la génération de stress oxydatif ;(iii) la modulation des capacités de régénération ;(iv) la production de matrice extracellulaire ;et (v) l'activation de la voie de signalisation de la β-caténine. <p>Parmi les 5 plantes étudiées sur ce modèle, celle présentant l'activité la plus intéressante vis-à-vis de l'un des 3 toxiques a été investiguée plus en détails afin d'identifier le(s) composé(s) responsable(s) de sa bioactivité. Les résultats ont indiqué que l'extrait méthanolique d'Angelica sinensis était le plus efficace pour réduire la néphrotoxicité induite par le cisplatine. Ces principes actifs – l'acide férulique, le Z-ligustilide et le E-ligustilide – ont été testés selon la même méthodologie. <p>L'acide férulique a été le plus efficace pour améliorer la survie cellulaire et diminuer l'apoptose induite par le cisplatine. Il a également permis de réduire la production de matrice extracellulaire, de stimuler les capacités de régénération de cellules saines et d'inhiber partiellement la voie de signalisation de la β-caténine. Il n'a toutefois pas été capable de limiter la génération de stress oxydatif induite par le traitement au cisplatine. <p>L'acide férulique semble être un candidat prometteur pour protéger les tubules rénaux vis-à-vis du cisplatine et pourrait contribuer à limiter l'initiation et le développement de la fibrose rénale. <p>/<p>The kidneys are targets of numerous toxic compounds. Proximal tubular epithelia cells are particularly vulnerable to xenobiotics used as drugs or not. These injuries can be associated with an increased oxidative stress and can trigger cell death. They can also lead to the loss of phenotypic characteristics of epithelial cells and initiate their dedifferentiation in mesenchymal cells, eventually evolving in fibroblasts, major actors responsible for renal fibrosis. <p>Protective strategies – including those implemented in clinical practice during the administration of nephrotoxic drugs – relying on a pharmacological approach remain seldom.<p>By means of data issuing from traditional medicines, we selected a series of herbs potentially useful for the treatment or prevention of troubles associated with kidney diseases: Angelicae sinensis radix, Eleutherococci radix, Ginseng radix, Schisandrae chinensis fructus and Silybi mariani fructus.<p>Using an in vitro model based on HK-2 cell line, we examined if these herbal products could bring an effective protection towards 3 nephrotoxic drugs: aristolochic acids, cisplatin and ciclosporin. Five phenomena involved in nephrotoxicity and regularly occurring during the progression of renal fibrosis were investigated: (i) cell death and apoptosis; (ii) oxidative stress generation; (iii) modulation of regeneration capacities; (iv) extracellular matrix production; and (v) β-catenin pathway activation.<p>Among the 5 herbs that were studied, the one presenting the most interesting effects towards one of the 3 toxicants has been investigated in details in order to identify the compound(s) responsible for its bioactivity. Results indicated that the crude methanolic extract of Angelica sinensis was the most potent for reducing cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. Its active principles – ferulic acid, Z-ligustilide and E-ligustilide – were tested according to the same methods.<p>Ferulic acid was the most potent compound for improving cell survival and for alleviating cisplatine-induced apoptosis. It also allowed to restrain the extracellular matrix production, enhanced the regeneration capacities of healthy cells and partially inhibited the activation of the β-catenin pathway. It was however ineffective in preventing the generation of oxidative stress induced during cisplatin treatment. <p>Ferulic acid appears as a promising candidate for protecting renal tubules against cisplatin's nephrotoxicity and could contribute to limit the onset and progression of renal fibrosis. / Doctorat en Sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Diese Dissertation untersucht die verschiedenen Konstruktionen poetischer Selbstrepräsentationen durch Melancholie in Gedichten englischer Autorinnen des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts (ca. 1680-1750). Die vielfältigen Gedichte stammen von repräsentativen lyrischer Autorinnen dieser Epoche, z.B. Anne Wharton, Anne Finch, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Henrietta Knight, Elizabeth Carter, Mary Leapor, Mary Chudleigh, Mehetabel Wright und Elizabeth Boyd. Vor einem ausführlichen medizinhistorischen Hintergrund, der die Ablösung der Humoralpathologie durch die Nerven und die daraus resultierende Neupositionierung von Frauen als Melancholikerinnen untersucht, rekurriert die Arbeit auf die Zusammenhänge von Medizin und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. Für die Gedichtanalysen werden gezielt Analysekategorien und zwei Typen poetisch-melancholischer Selbstrepräsentationen entwickelt und dann für die Close Readings der Texte eingesetzt. Die Auswahl der Gedicht umfasst sowohl Texte, die auf generisch standardisierte Marker der Melancholie verweisen, als auch Texte, die eine hauptsächlich die melancholische Erfahrung inszenieren, ohne dabei zwangsläufig explizit auf die genretypischen Marker zurück zu greifen. Die detaillierten Close Readings der Gedichte zeigen die oftmals ambivalenten Strategien der poetisch-melancholischen Selbstkonstruktionen der Sprecherinnen in den Gedichttexten und demonstrieren deutlich, dass – entgegen der vorherrschenden kritischen Meinung – auch Autorinnen dieser Epoche zum literarischen Melancholiediskurs beigetragen haben. Die Arbeit legt ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die sog. weibliche Elegie und ihrem Verhältnis zur Melancholie. Dabei wird deutlich, dass gerade Trauer, die oftmals als weiblich konnotierte Gegendiskurs zur männlich konnotierten genialischen Melancholie wahrgenommen wird, und die daraus folgende Elegie von Frauen als wichtiger literarischer Raum für melancholische Dichtung genutzt wurde und somit als Teil des literarischen Melancholiediskurses dient. / This thesis analyses different constructions of poetic self-representations through melancholy in poems written by early eighteenth-century women writers (ca. 1680-1750). The selection of poems includes texts written by representative poets such as Anne Wharton, Anne Finch, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Henrietta Knight, Elizabeth Carter, Mary Leapor, Mary Chudleigh, Mehetabel Wright und Elizabeth Boyd. Against the background of a detailed analysis of the medical-historical paradigmatic change from humoral pathology to the nerves and the subsequent re-positioning of women as melancholics, the thesis refers to the close relationship of medicine and literature during the eighteenth century. Specifical categories of analysis and two different types of melancholic-poetic self-representations are developed, in order to support the close readings of the literary texts. These poems comprise both texts, which explicitly refer to generically standardized melancholy markers, as well as texts, which negotiate and aestheticize the melancholic experience without necessarily mentioning melancholy. The detailed close readings of the poems discuss the often ambivalent strategies of the poetic speakers to construct and represent their melancholic selves and clearly demonstrate that women writers of that time did – despite the common critical opinion – contribute to the literary discourse of melancholy. The thesis pays special attention to the so-called female elegy and its relationship to melancholy. It becomes clear that mourning and grief, which have often been considered a feminine counter-discourse to the discourse of melancholy as sign of the male intellectual and/or artistic genius, and the resulting female elegy offer an important literary space for women writers and their melancholy poetry, which should thus be recognized as a distinctive part of the literary discourse of melancholy.

The subject of this thesis is to study the interaction between carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and antiferromagnetic tetrametallic molecules attached to them. By employing quantum transport measurements, the sensitivity to sense the interactions is greatly increased, because the quantum dot is very susceptible to changes in its environment. The properties of carbon nanotubes can be altered by chemical functionalization with the aforementioned molecules, where the attachment is performed covalently via a ligand exchange with the CNT. The thesis is partitioned into two main parts: the first part presents experiments performed on tetramanganese functionalized CNTs, whereas for the second similar studies are conducted, except manganese is replaced by cobalt. Both complexes exhibit an antiferromagnetic ground state, yet the metal spin of manganese (S=5/2) is reduced to S=3/2 for cobalt. Additionally, an altered device preparation has been employed during the second part, leading to a strong suppression of the background signal. Quantum transport measurements at T=4K on manganese-functionalized CNTs show a very regular pattern of Coulomb diamonds, indicating only a mild disturbance of the quantum dot's electron system by the covalent bond. Moreover, the charging energy reveals a wave function extending over the entire device dimensions. However, at T=30mK in the tunneling current a strong noise emerges, when repeatedly measuring over an hour while keeping external biases constant. Additionally, these time traces are superimposed by a long-term background, which is removed by a correction algorithm plus a subsequent digitization. The remaining signal reveals a random telegraph signal (RTS) which is extensively studied and from its statistics the equivalent temperature of T=654mK for the excitation of the system is extracted. The quantum transport experiments conducted on cobalt-functionalized CNTs show a much better data quality of the coulomb diamonds, which is ascribed to the alteration in the device's preparation. From the line shape of the Coulomb oscillations as well as from the Coulomb staircases an electron temperature of about T=500mK is extracted. Moreover, a magnetic field dependence of the stability diagrams is apparent, attributable to Zeeman splitting. The respective Landé factor of g=1.73 is, compared to similar CNT quantum dot systems, unusually low. It is as attributed to an increased spin-orbit interaction between the conduction electrons and the cobalt's nuclei. The respective time traces exhibit or lack an RTS signal, depending on their external biases. Regarding the Coulomb diamonds, an essential prerequisite for the occurrence of an RTS is the proximity to a resonance, which is equatable to a high sensitivity of the quantum dot detector. Considering the available energy, the underlying process that is the cause for the emergence of the RTS is ascertained to be an internal excitation of the antiferromagnetic states of the metallic core.

Since the synthesis of Mn12, which can be regarded as the birth of the class of magnetic molecules, many different molecules of various sizes and structures have been produced. The magnetic nature of these molecules originates from a number of paramagnetic ions, whose unpaired electrons form collective angular momenta, referred to as spins. The interaction between these spins can often be described in the Heisenberg model. In this work, we use the rotational band model to predict the energy spectrum of the giant Keplerate {Mo72Fe30}. Based on the approximate energy spectrum, we simulate the cross-section for inelastic neutron scattering, and the results are compared to experimental data. The successful application of our approach substantiates the validity of the rotational band model. Furthermore, magnetic molecules can serve as an example for studying general questions of quantum mechanics. Since chemistry now allows the preparation of magnetic molecules with various spin quantum numbers, this class of materials can be utilized for studying the relations between classical and quantum regime. Due to the correspondence principle, a quantum spin system can be described exactly by classical physics for an infinitely large spin quantum number s. However, the question remains for which quantum numbers s a classical calculation yields a reasonable approximation. Our approach in this work is to develop a converging scheme that adds systematic quantum corrections to the classical density of states for Heisenberg spin systems. To this end, we establish a correspondence of the classical density of states and the quantum spectrum by means of spin-coherent states. The algorithm presented here allows the analysis of how the classical limit is approached, which gives general criteria for the similarity of the classical density of states to the quantum spectrum.