Due to the saturation of the market and the economic downturn in 2008, the expansion rate of shops of convenience store chains in Taiwan has shrunk rapidly. In coping with this harsh external environment, all of the proprietors strive to implement varieties of promotion activities to boost their revenue. One of the most popular schemes is the "Whole Store Integrated Promotion Strategy" initiated by 7-Eleven in 2007. That is, by means of point collecting, customers can exchange for exclusive gifts or get a discount on certain products. The market response toward this activity is so strong that makes other competitors to follow suit immediately. Hence, this promotion skill has become the panacea for lifting sales. Thus, this study uses customers of convenience stores as the subject to analyze the impacts on impulsive buying behavior on different promotion activities and to understand the degree of customers¡¦ satisfaction after they finish their shopping. Meanwhile, the impulsivity traits and the social demographic variables of customers are included in this survey as well in order to find out their relationship with the impulsive buying behavior. The result reveals that the traditional price-discount promotion activity is favored and easier to induce impulsive buying behavior than the novel point collecting one. Besides, this study also finds out that the higher impulsivity trait the customer possesses the more possibility for them to conduct impulsive buying. As for customers' satisfaction, it shows that the higher degree of impulsive buying, the more satisfy the customer is.

In this thesis large deformation behavior of shell structures under high intensity transient loading conditions is investigated by means of finite element method. For this purpose an explicit finite element program is developed with interactive user interface. The developed program deals with geometric and material nonlinearities which stem from large deformation elastic - plastic behavior. Results of the developed code are compared with the experimental data taken from the literature and simulation results of the commercial finite element program Ls-Dyna. Moreover, sensitivity study is carried out for mesh size, element type and material model parameters. After the comparison and verification of the obtained results, it is concluded that converged and reasonable results are achieved.

In wireless communication systems, receivers have generally been designed under the assumption that the additive noise in system is Gaussian. Wireless receivers, however, are affected by radio frequency interference (RFI) generated from various sources such as other wireless users, switching electronics, and computational platforms. RFI is well modeled using non-Gaussian impulsive statistics and can severely degrade the communication performance of wireless receivers designed under the assumption of additive Gaussian noise. Methods to avoid, cancel, or reduce RFI have been an active area of research over the past three decades. In practice, RFI cannot be completely avoided or canceled at the receiver. This dissertation derives the statistics of the residual RFI and utilizes them to analyze and improve the communication performance of wireless receivers. The primary contributions of this dissertation are to (i) derive instantaneous statistics of co-channel interference in a field of Poisson and Poisson-Poisson clustered interferers, (ii) characterize throughput, delay, and reliability of decentralized wireless networks with temporal correlation, and (iii) design pre-filters to mitigate RFI in wireless receivers. / text

A growing body of research has emerged in order to better understand unethical behavior at work. However, most theory and research has focused on identifying personal and situational characteristics that predict unethical behavior. However, in order to develop a more complete picture of the phenomenon, research also needs to examine the outcomes of unethical behavior at work. In this research, I adopt research and theory from criminal justice in order to better understand how employees react to unethical behavior at work. In particular, I differentiate between two types of unethical behavior, namely premeditated and impulsive unethical behavior. Based on the criminal justice literature, I define impulsive unethical behaviors as unethical actions where the thought to act did not arise prior to the immediate situation, whereas premeditated unethical behaviors represent unethical actions where the thought to act occurred prior to the immediate situation. I argue that premeditated acts will result in more severe reactions than acts that are impulsive in nature. Specifically, I sought to examine observers' perceived unethicality and recommended punishment towards the two types of unethical behavior. Integrating attribution theory, I also explored three dimensions of attributions (i.e., controllability, stability, and intentionality) as mediating mechanisms. Then, utilizing ethical dissonance theory as an explanatory framework, I examined both wrongdoers' and observers' history of engaging unethical acts as potential moderators of the mediated effects. Finally, methods were presented for two studies. The first study utilized a field sample of adult workers, and the second study utilized a sample of university students. Based on the results from the two studies, I found evidence that the type of unethical behavior that a wrongdoer engages in matters in terms of how they will be evaluated. I also found that observers see premeditated behavior as more intentional, which drives their evaluations. Finally, both observers' and wrongdoers' past history impact my hypothesized model at different points along the causal chain. I hope my results help instigate a shift in the behavioral ethics literature; one that begins to integrate research from the criminal justice literature and one that shifts focus away from examining every possible predictor of unethical behavior at work to what happens following the act itself.

Impulsive differential equations are useful for modelling certain biological events. We present three biological applications showing the use of impulsive differential equations in real-world problems. We also look at the effects of stability on a reduced two-dimensional impulsive HIV system. The first application is a system describing HIV induction-maintenance therapy, which shows how the solution to an impulsive system is used in order to find biological results (adherence, etc). A second application is an HIV system describing the interaction between T-cells, virus and drugs. Stability of the system is determined for a fixed drug level in three specific regions: low, intermediate and high drug levels. Numerical simulations show the effects of varying drug levels on the stability of a system by including an impulse. We reduce these two models to a two-dimensional impulsive model. We show analytically the existence and uniqueness of T-periodic solutions, and show how stability changes when varying the immune response rate, the impulses and a certain nonlinear infection term. The third application shows how seasonal changes can be incorporated into an impulsive differential system of Rift Valley Fever, and looks at how stability may differ when impulses are included. The analysis of impulsive differential systems is crucial in developing more realistic mathematical models for infectious diseases.

The small target detection in High Frequency Surface Wave Radar is limited by the presence of various clutter and interference. Several novel signal processing techniques are developed to improve the system detection performance. As an external interference due to local lightning, impulsive noise increases the broadband noise level and then precludes the targets from detection. A new excision approach is proposed with modified linear predictions as the reconstruction solution. The system performance is further improved by de-noising the estimated covariance matrix through signal property mapping method. The existence of non-stationary sea clutter and ionospheric clutter can result in excessive false alarm rate through the high sidelobe level in adaptive beamforming. The optimum threshold discrete quadratic inequality constraints method is proposed to guarantee the sidelobe-controlling problem consistently feasible and optimal. This constrained optimization problem can be formulated into a second order cone problem with efficient mathematical solution. Both simulation and experimental results validate the improved performance and feasibility of our method. Based on the special noise characteristics of High Frequency radar, an adaptive switching Constant False Alarm Rate detector is proposed for targets detection in the beamformed range-Doppler map. The switching rule and adaptive footprint are applied to provide the optimum background noise estimation. For this new method about 14% probability of detection improvement has been verified by experimental data, and meanwhile the false alarm rate is reduced significantly compared to the original CFAR. The conventional Doppler processing has difficulty to recognize a target if its frequency is close to a Bragg line. One detector is proposed to solve this co-located co-channel resolvability problem under the assumption that target/clutter have different phase modulation. Moreover with the pre-whitening processing, the Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo method can provide target number and Direction-of-Arrival estimation with lower detection threshold compared to beamforming and subspace methods. RJMCMC is able to convergent to the optimal resolution for a data set that is small compared with information theoretic criteria.

This report intends to verify the possibility that the FastICA algorithm could be applied to the GPS system to eliminate the impulsive noise from the receiver end. As the impulsive noise is so unpredictable in its pattern and of great energy level to swallow the signal we need, traditional signal selection methods exhibit no much use in dealing with this problem. Blind Source Separation seems to be a good way to solve this, but most of the other BSS algorithms beside FastICA showed more or less degrees of dependency on the pattern of the noise. In this thesis, the basic mathematic modelling of this advanced algorithm, along with the principles of the commonly used fast independent component analysis (fastICA) based on fixed-point algorithm are discussed. To verify that this method is useful under industrial use environment to remove the impulsive noises from digital BPSK modulated signals, an observation signal mixed with additive impulsive noise is generated and separated by fastICA method. And in the last part of the thesis, the fastICA algorithm is applied to the GPS receiver modeled in the SoftGNSS project and verified to be effective in industrial applications. The results have been analyzed. / 6

Vartotojų elgsenos aktualumas verslo praktikoje ir teorijoje neabejotinas – vartotojų elgsenos, ypač pirkimo sprendimo priėmimo stimulų, kylančių iš vartotojų asmenybės bei aplinkoje esančių ir skatinančių pirkti stimulų išskyrimas. Impulsyvaus pirkimo fenomenas mokslinėje marketingo literatūroje analizuojamas jau daugiau kaip penkias dešimtis. Todėl stimulai, sąlygojantys impulsyvaus pirkimo sprendimą ypač svarbūs – tokių stimulų sukūrimas skatintų vartotojus priimti pirkimo sprendimą per sąlyginai trumpą laiko tarpą, o pastaroji tendencija generuotų pelną organizacijai. Dar vienas itin plačiai mokslinėje literatūroje analizuojamas konceptas – prekės ženklo vertė. Prekės ženklo vertė pagrįsta vartotojo sąmonėje susiformavusiomis teigiamos asociacijos su prekės ženklu, prekės ženklo vertės vartotojui sukūrimu bei vartotojų lojalumu prekės ženklui. Visi pastarieji veiksniai mokslinėje literatūroje traktuojami, kaip skatinantys vartotojo sprendimo pirkti priėmimą. Prekės ženklas įvardijamas, kaip vienas iš impulsyvaus pirkimo stimulų. Darbo objektas – impulsyvaus pirkimo stimulai ir prekės ženklo vertė. Darbo tikslas – teoriškai pagrįsti ir empiriškai patikrinti impulsyvaus pirkimo ir prekės ženklo vertės sąsajas „Nivea“ prekės ženklo pavyzdžiu. Darbo struktūra. Magistro darbą sudaro trys dalys. Pirmojoje darbo dalyje pateikta ir nagrinėta impulsyvaus pirkimo koncepcija, vidiniai ir išoriniai impulsyvaus pirkimo stimulai. Taip pat analizuojami prekės ženklo vertę kuriantys... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim of this master work – theoretically support and empirically examine the relationship between impulsive buying and brand equity. The structure of thesis. The Master work thesis consists of three parts. The first part of thesis represents and examines the conception of impulsive buying, its internal and external impulsive buying stimulus. It also analyzes the creating factors of the brand value. The analysis of impulsive buying models is also presented. The second part of the thesis represents the structural interface pattern of impulsive buying and the brand equity. The research methodology, aims and tasks are also given. A previous analysis of impulsive buying research results is done. The third part of Master work thesis does the empirical research of the relationship between impulsive buying and the brand equity; the results are generalized. Empirically checked structural model relationshiop between impulsive buying and the brand equity by the example of Nivea brand is done. At the end of the Master work the conclusions are made and suggestions are given. In order to make it more transparent, the work contains of 14 pictures and 17 tables. The theoretical analysis has been prepared using 117 English and Lithuanian literature sources.

A language comprehension mechanism that immediately starts processing language as it is encountered is typically thought of as one that speeds and facilitates spoken language comprehension. However, there exist cases where the earliest parts of a word or phrase encode information that is somewhat at odds with the remainder of the word or phrase in full. Examples of these "potentially misleading" cases include compound words where the initial subpart of the compound belongs to a different syntactic category than the entire compound (e.g., "popcorn", "greyhound"), or noun phrases where the initial element of the phrase signals perceptual properties possessed by the referent of the noun phrase (e.g., some Chinese Cantonese classifier-noun phrases). Using a visual-world methodology, this dissertation explores the kinds of unintended or "impulsive" activation that are triggered when listeners encounter such cases, as well as how syntactic and contextual cues can constraining this impulsive activation. Experiment 1 examines whether hearing compound subparts (e.g., "pop-" in "popcorn") activates conceptual associates across syntactic categories, and Experiment 2 examines whether this activation is moderated by listeners' expectations about the syntactic structure of the sentences they encounter. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate the processing of compounds whose initial subparts correspond to colour terms (e.g., "greyhound"). Experiment 3 explores whether these colour subparts trigger the activation of phrasal-level descriptions of non-target objects in the visual display, and whether this activation is influenced by the presence/absence of motivation to use colour descriptions when naming screen objects. Experiment 4 further explores whether a perceptual mismatch between a target object and the colour term in its name increases this impulsive activation. Finally, Experiment 5 investigates whether listeners use the perceptual information encoded in pre-nominal classifiers in Cantonese Chinese to guide their consideration of referential candidates whose perceptual properties do or do not match the classifier semantics. The findings from this dissertation point to the highly interactive nature of spoken language comprehension, suggesting that the kinds of impulsive activation under current discussion are rampant and automatic, but can also be suppressed to varying degrees by the syntactic, semantic, and contextual cues available to the listener.

In this thesis, we discuss models for multi-agent dynamical systems. We study the tracking/migration problem for flocks and a theoretical framework for design and analysis of flocking algorithm is presented. The interactions between agents in the systems are denoted by potential functions that act as distance functions, hence, the design of proper potential functions are crucial in modelling and analyzing the flocking problem for multi-agent dynamical systems. Constructions for both non-smooth potential functions and smooth potential functions with finite cut-off are investigated in detail. The main contributions of this thesis are to extend the literature of continuous flocking models with impulsive control and delay. Lyapunov function techniques and techniques for stability of continuous and impulsive switching system are used, we study the asymptotic stability of the equilibrium of our models with impulsive control and discovery that by applying impulsive control to Olfati-Saber's continuous model, we can remove the damping term and improve the performance by avoiding the deficiency caused by time delay in velocity sensing. Additionally, we discuss both free-flocking and constrained-flocking algorithm for multi-agent dynamical system, we extend literature results by applying velocity feedbacks which are given by the dynamical obstacles in the environment to our impulsive control and successfully lead to flocking with obstacle avoidance capability in a more energy-efficient way. Simulations are given to support our results, some conclusions are made and future directions are given.