With the longevity risk of human being and the low income replacement ratio (IRR), people start to plan their retirement early. Even though there are many new designed products for retirement demand on the market, but actually the investors have no enough time and financial knowledge to select the proper retirement products for themselves, and to plan their future retirement life. Therefore, this study aims at designing the ¡§Life Cycle Fund¡¨ for those Taiwan investors. This study mainly bases on the method of asset allocation using ¡§Age¡¨ basis and the method of international asset allocation to construct the life cycle portfolio. We consider both conditions of ¡§age¡¨ and ¡§international asset allocation¡¨ in this study. We use simple questionnaire investigation in two dimensions, the preference of investment instrument (to tell the risk preference of stocks or bonds) and the preference of investment region (to tell the risk preference of international asset allocation), to analyze the investors risk acceptance level. At the end, construct the life cycle portfolio by applying our model and the result of questionnaire investigation. We divided the empirical study into three parts, which are respectively the investment in four assets, the investment in multi-assets and the life cycle fund for American investors, to explore the portfolio performance under different risk parameters and different retirement ages. Consequently, from the result of forecasting and history back-testing, our model not only can control the risk properly, but also can be applied to different countries. This model can help the investors in planning for their retirement, and help investors who have the investment demand in multilnational countries to reach stable asset allocation. We expected this model can be a comparing benchmark for investors to measure the performance of life cycle fund.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the null subject phenomenon in the acquisition of English by Taiwan EFL learners to see whether the participants are influenced by their L1 knowledge or UG and whether they can reset their L1 value of null subject parameter. Two experimental tasks in questionnaire, grammaticality judgment task (GJ) and paragraph translation task (PT), and one oral task, storytelling task (ST), were adopted in this study. As for the participants, in the questionnaire part the GJ and PT tasks were given to 132 EFL learners, which were divided into the lower proficiency group (n=56) and the higher proficiency group (n=76), and 15 native speakers of English as a control group. Besides, we reanalyze the data of the ST task in Lin & Wu (2005), which consisted of 20 high English proficiency participants and 20 low English proficiency participants. Overall, the main findings are summarized as follows: 1. Chinese topic constructions seem to influence profoundly on the L2A of English by EFL learners. This may imply that L2 learners acquire the L2 through L1-based knowledge. 2. The asymmetry of null subjects and null objects was found in our data across the three tasks, which suggests EFL learners treated both features differently and have difficulty in unlearning null objects. We support Kong¡¦s (2005) claim that Chinese learners are influenced by L1 topic structure but they adjust this rule to: every sentence must have an overt topic in the sentence-initial position. 3. The different judgments between matrix and embedded clauses with null subjects and null expletives may infer EFL learners do not intrinsically reset the parameter of null subjects. 4. According to our results in ST task, there seems to be several patterns which make null subjects and null objects easier to occur, such as structures with coordinate relationship or clear reference relationship. These sentence patterns prove that the EFL learners are still easier to be influenced by the discourse-oriented feature in Chinese. According to the result, we may infer that the position of Partial Access to UG probably the best answer to our research questions since it is assumed that through Partial Access to UG, L2 learners will not be able to acquire the L2 values of parameters when these differ from the L1; that is, UG is accessible but only via the setting of the L1.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-170).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009. / "Submitted to Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-187)

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Roberto Cristi, Fotis A. Papoulias. Includes bibliographical references (p. 155). Also available online.

Autonomic Computing is an approach to designing systems that are capable of self-management. Fundamental to the autonomic ideal is a software's awareness of and ability to tune parameters that affect metrics like performance and security. Traditionally, these parameters are tuned by human experts with extensive knowledge of parameter names and effects---existing software was not designed to be self-tuning. Efforts to automate the isolation and tuning of parameters have yielded encouraging results. However, the parameters are identified manually. This thesis proposes the adaptation of reverse engineering techniques for automating the recovery of software tuning parameters. Tuning parameters from several industrially relevant applications are studied for patterns of use. These patterns are used to classify the parameters into a taxonomy, and to develop a metamodel of the source code elements and relationships needed to express them. An extractor is then built to obtain instances of the relationships from source code. The relationships are represented as graphs, which are manipulated and queried for instances of tuning parameter patterns. The recovery is implemented as a tool for finding tuning parameters in applications. Experimental results show that the approach is effective at recovering documented tuning parameters, as well as other undocumented ones. The results also indicate that the tuning parameter patterns are not specific to a particular application, or application domain. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2008-06-28 19:36:43.291

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Despite criticisms of its methodology, the Taguchi philosophy for quality improvement is generally applauded. Though originally intended to primarily achieve its results "off line", during the product design phase and before manufacturing, it has frequently also been deployed to solve problems "on line". Taguchi identifies the crucial design phases as "system design" and "parameter design", and his statistically-based tools are directed at the latter. The general objective of this investigation is to study two contrasting approaches to product and process optimisation, ie Genetic Algorithms, which may be appropriate to both "system design" and "parameter design" phases, with Taguchi and related statistical tools which may be appropriate to the "parameter design" phase. The literature review concentrates on the up and downsides of Taguchi Methods, focusing on the philosophy and methodologies. Its statistical content, particularly related to the use of Signal-To-Noise ratios and saturated fractional factorial designs, have widely reported deficiencies. In order to evaluate and, if necessary, overcome these deficiencies, a combination of Taguchi and non- Taguchi tools are brought into an experimentation strategy to determine robust methodologies that contribute to enhanced product performance. The approach is motivated from a design for quality standpoint and is directed principally at improving performance. The approach is illustrated using three case studies in surface finish from metal cutting and simulation systems optimisation. These case studies involve a variety of experiments different in nature, from real physical experiments to computer-based ones, and tackling a wide range of different problems such as: surface finish in milling and turning machining (metal cutting), optimum travel time and traffic junction control (transport traffic simulator) and out-of-balanceforce problem (optimisation of simple Genetic Algorithms). The study of Taguchi tools is an extension of previous work by Taher (1995). Some of his investigations are extended, principally the reliability of Taguchi saturated fractional factorial arrays, the need for factor/level analysis, criticisms of the Taguchi Signal-to-Noise ratios and the use of sequential experimentation. In addition to these, attention is focussed on the use of repetitions within the Taguchi methodology, the use of transformations or Generalised linear Models and the possibility of using robust statistics. The adoption of a sequential experimentation approach leads to a successful use of predefined Taguchi arrays influenced by user knowledge of confounding and interaction effects on main factors. From a global viewpoint, Factor/Level analysis is highly recommended. It is also determined that the reliability of results is highly affected by the use of Signal-to-Noise ratios, and alternative dispersion control tools are strongly advised. Taguchi's robust design methodologies are of value but require integration with other design and quality assurance methodologies, such as Concurrent Engineering and Quality Function Deployment. The optimisation of a simple Genetic Algorithm (for the out-of-balanceforce problem) is used as one test case for the investigation of Taguchi tools. However, this investigation is itself of interest for the general use of genetic algorithms as it addresses issues such as appropriate population size and choices for crossover and mutation modes and probabilities. Many previous investigations of these have only been of the "one factor at a time" type.