The aim of my thesis is an assessment of market value of a chosen company as of December 31, 2010. The appraisal was proceeded both by assumption of going concern and by assumption of limited duration of the company (in relation to prognosis of depletion of oil reserves).

Czechoslovakia during the Second World War - Influence of the Second World War on the political development of Czechoslovakia The years 1938-1945 determined the development that culminated in the communist coup d'état in February of 1948. At the same time, Czech society was undergoing a deep crisis that has been caused by bitter disappointment of the end of the First Republic and its internal political problems. The Great Depression, mass unemployment and the inability of government officials to deal with this situation satisfactorily led to dissatisfaction with the economic arrangement of the First Republic and became the subject of radical change. According to many, the First Republic political party system also had failed. Too many political parties, the need for coalition governments, selfish adherence to party interests instead of national interests, intrigues, were all given as reasons why democracy had not been able to confirm its primacy in the moments when it was most needed. Betrayal by the Western Allies, especially France (under the strong influence of Great Britain) and the relatively friendly behavior of the Soviet Union during the Munich crisis undermined foreign policy concepts, held in the interwar period. All these events had meant that almost no one wanted to return to pre-war...

Computational complexity theory studies which computational problems can be solved with limited access to resources. The past fifty years have seen a focus on the relationship between intractable problems and efficient algorithms. However, the relationship between inherently sequential problems and highly parallel algorithms has not been as well studied. Are there efficient but inherently sequential problems that admit some relaxed form of highly parallel algorithm? In this dissertation, we develop the theory of structural complexity around this relationship for three common types of computational problems. Specifically, we show tradeoffs between time, nondeterminism, and parallelizability. By clearly defining the notions and complexity classes that capture our intuition for parallelizable and sequential problems, we create a comprehensive framework for rigorously proving parallelizability and non-parallelizability of computational problems. This framework provides the means to prove whether otherwise tractable problems can be effectively parallelized, a need highlighted by the current growth of multiprocessor systems. The views adopted by this dissertation—alternate approaches to solving sequential problems using approximation, limited nondeterminism, and parameterization—can be applied practically throughout computer science.

Nearly 13.8 million Hispanics in the United States speak English "less than very well." This has important implications for the field of clinical neuropsychology. Patients who do not speak English fluently are being increasingly referred for neuropsychological services, and many of these individuals are assessed with the aid of language interpreters. However, whether or how the use of an interpreter has an effect on neuropsychological test scores is not known. For lack of a better alternative, it generally is assumed that the test data obtained through an interpreter are a valid indication of the patient's cognitive functioning, but with almost no empirical support, this assumption appears tenuous at best. The effect of an interpreter, in fact, could be substantial, making this issue all the more deserving of rigorous investigation. The primary objective of the current study was to determine whether using an interpreter to conduct neuropsychological testing of monolingual Spanish speakers had an effect on the neuropsychological test scores. Participants included 40 neurologically normal Spanish-speakers with limited English proficiency, ages 18-65 years, (M= 39.65, SD =13.91) who completed a 2-hour battery of verbal and nonverbal neuropsychological tests both with and without an interpreter. The condition of test administration was counterbalanced across participants and test score differences between the two conditions were compared. Results indicated that use of an interpreter significantly affected mean scores for some neuropsychological tests from the verbal modality. Also, variability in test scores generally was higher when an interpreter was used, significantly so for one verbal test. Results of this study contribute to the extant literature concerning the use of interpreters to facilitate neuropsychological testing of individuals with limited English proficiency. Specifically, they indicate that neuropsychologists should avoid interpreter use and refer patients to bilingual clinicians whenever possible. For situations in which this may not be a viable option, neuropsychologists should limit their test batteries to measures that require minimal reliance on the interpreter. Tests that rely almost entirely on interpreter skills for administration and scoring - such as the Vocabulary and Similarities subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) - should probably not be used. Larger confidence intervals should be used when interpreting observed scores from interpreter-mediated neuropsychological tests.

This dissertation studies the relationship between the existence of multiple means of payment and the effects of monetary policy. Chapter 1 studies the choice of endogenous means of payment when holding money is risky. In steady state equilibrium, the marginal rate of substitution of cash goods for credit goods depends on the crime rate as well as the nominal interest rate. Credit may be used when the return on money is not positive. A positive money injection reduces the crime rate and transactions costs. When the crime rate is positive, welfare increase with inflation, and the Friedman rule is not necessarily optimal. Chapter 2 discusses the risk-sharing role of monetary policy when the asset market is segmented. A fraction of households exchange money for interest-bearing government nominal bonds in the asset market. The government injects money through open market operations with only participating households. In equilibrium, money is nonneutral and there are distributional effects of monetary policy. With idiosyncratic endowment risk, monetary policy cannot perfectly insure households. The optimal money growth rate can be positive and the Friedman rule is not optimal in general. Chapter 3 is built on the work of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in exploring distributional effects of monetary policy when individuals can choose means of payment among alternatives. In equilibrium, monetary policy has distributional effects. With a positive money injection, some households purchase a greater variety of goods with cash while others purchase a greater variety of goods with credit. Consumption may increase or decrease because household can choose alternative means of payment. Credit is used to dampen fluctuations in consumption arising from monetary policy. The liquidity effect arises under a certain condition.

Health consciousness drives people to drink skim milk. Yet, improving the blue-white appearance and watery texture of skim milk is necessary to make consumers happy with skim milk. In this study, the influence of limited proteolysis with soluble or immobilized proteases, heat treatment, and pH on the whiteness of skim milk were examined to meet this goal. Limited proteolysis with milk-clotting enzymes increased the whiteness of skim milk. the proteases porcine pepsin and chymosin were immobilized onto nonporous ceramic, glass, and controlled pore glass (CPG) beads. The enzymes were coupled to beads either directly or via crosslinker proteins. Pepsin, immobilized onto CPG beads via crosslinker proteins, exhibited the best properties with respect to enzymatic activity, stability, and whitening efficiency. The L value (whiteness) of this immobilized enzyme-treated skim milk was 79.5, which approached the whiteness of 1% fat milk. Immobilized proteases whitened skim milk more effectively than did soluble proteases. The whiteness of skim milk was determined at various temperatures from 4 to 90°C. The L value increased with increasing temperature throughout the range tested. For samples not heated above 50°C, the increases in L values were completely reversible on cooling. Partial reversibility was observed with samples heated at 70°C and above. Milk whiteness was also determined at different pH values ranging from 5.0 to 8.2 at temperatures of 4, 20, and 30°C. The L value increased with decreasing pH and increasing temperature. A maximum L value of 80.0 was obtained at pH 5.0 and 30°C, which is higher than the L value of skim milk at its natural pH at room temperature. The temperature-dependent dissociation of major caseins was investigated by size exclusion chromatography at temperatures from 10 to 40°C. Free soluble β-casein and κ-casein were found only at 10°C.

In order to meet increasing water demands and more stringent regulations drinking water treatment plant managers must continually look to new treatment strategies and optimization techniques. One such strategy is to eliminate chlorine residual before filtration, allowing indigenous bacteria already present in the source water to grow on the filter media. These microorganisms help improve effluent water quality by increasing organic and inorganic contaminant removal. The process is known as biological filtration, or biofiltration. The implications of converting a conventional filtration plant (not specifically designed for biofiltration) to a biofiltration plant are still not well understood. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate water quality and operational trends of a side-by-side full-scale biofiltration conversion at the Quail Creek Water Treatment Plant (QCWTP), located in Hurricane, Utah, and to determine the impact of pre-chlorination elimination on filter performance. Four of twelve filters at the QCWTP were used to test the plant’s ability to operate in biological mode. One acted as a control and ran similar to the other eight filters in the treatment plant. The other three were converted to biofilters by quenching the influent chlorine residual with thiosulfate. The experiment lasted one year, so filter performance could be evaluated in each season. The results from the study indicated that the influent water was low in organic carbon (i.e. food for microorganisms), which resulted in small differences in biological activity between filters. Disinfection by-products (DBPs) (i.e. cancer causing agents created from the combination of chlorine and organic matter) were lower in the biofilters relative to the control. Biological conversion resulted in slightly higher and more variable final effluent turbidity values (though still within EPA drinking water standards and operational goals) compared to the non-biological filters; however, filter run times were unaffected.

Bibliography: leaves 261-276. Electronic publication; full text available in PDF format; abstract in HTML format. This thesis is about the role that shop floor workers play in organisational change. In particular, it investigates the manner in which a distinct group of worker-level leaders and change agents affected the generation and implementation of change and helped to shape the change process in an organisation undergoing planned change. The data for the thesis were obtained from a three-year, longitudinal case-study of organisational change in a medium-sized automotive components manufacturer, Moving Metals Limited (MML). Electronic reproduction.[Australia] :Australian Digital Theses Program,2001.

In this dissertation, we first derive exact reconstuction algorithms for thermoacoustic tomography (TAT) and broadband diffraction tomography (a linearized inverse scattering problem) using derived time-reversal formulas. Then we focus on some important practical problems of TAT including the limited-view problem, the effects of acoustic heterogeneity, and fast reconstruction algorithms. In Chapter II, we propose time-reversal methods and apply them to tomography with diffrating sources. We first develop time-domain methods to time-reverse a transient scalar wave using only the field measured on an arbitrary closed surface enclosing the initial sources. Under certain conditions, a time-reversed field can be obtained with the delay-and-sum algorithm (backprojection to spheres) used in synthetic aperture imaging.Consequently, the physicalmeaningandthe validconditions of this widely used algorithm are revealed quantitatively for the first time from basic physics. Then exact reconstruction for TAT and broadband diffraction tomography is proposed by time-reversing the measured field back to the time when each source or secondary source is excited. The theoretical conclusions are supported by a numerical simulation ofthree-dimensional diffraction tomography.The extension ofour time-reversal methods to the case using Green function in a heterogeneous medium is also discussed. In Chapter III, the limited-view problem is studied for TAT. We define a "detection region," within which all points have sufficient detection views. It is explained analytically and shown numerically that the boundaries of any object inside this region can be recovered stably.Otherwise some sharp details become blurred.One can identify in advance the parts of the boundaries that will be affected if the detection view is insufficient. Computations are conducted for both numerically simulated and experimental data. The reconstructions confirm our theoretical predictions. In Chapter IV, the effects of wavefront distortions induced by acoustic heterogeneities in breast TAT are studied. Amplitude distortions are shown to be insignificant for different scales of acoustic heterogeneities. After that we consider the effects of phase distortions (errors in time-of-flight) in our numerical studies. The numerical results on the spreads of point sources and boundaries caused by the phase distortions are in good agreement with the proposed formula. We also demonstrate that the blurring of images can be compensated for by using the distribution of acoustic velocityin the tissues in the reconstructions. In Chapter V, we discuss exact and fast Fourier-domain reconstruction algorithms for TAT in planar and circular configurations.

Limited English Proficient (LEP) patients are subject to low patient health outcomes due to limited health literacy. Cultural and linguistic barriers prohibit the obtainment and comprehension of health information and services. This systematic review will present the complications of healthcare experienced by LEP patients and will provide an analysis of interventions and policies that will be a gateway to better health outcomes for the LEP patient population.