Osipow and Spokane (1984) developed a model which divides occupational stress into the three main areas of stress, coping, and strain. In the past, this model has been empirically tested by the Occupational Stress Inventory (081). However, the Occupational Stress Inventory - Revised (OSI-R) has recently been developed in order to include some of the more recent developments in occupational stress literature. In addition to the original scales of the OSI, the OSI-R also contains five new experimental scales. The present study used the OSI-R to investigate differences in scale scores among management, trade/skilled, and direct labor personnel in two manufacturing plants. Although significant differences were found on the Role Insufficiency, Responsibility and Family Instrumental Support scales, the findings of this study should be questioned due to the unacceptable reliability levels on many of the OSI-R scales. / Department of Psychological Science

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Stress can be defined as the mental, physical, and emotional response of humans to stressors encountered in their personal or professional environment. Stressors are introduced in various activities, especially those found in dynamic task conditions when multiple task requirements must be performed. Stress and stressors have been described as activators and inhibitors of human performance. The ability to manage high levels of acute stress is an important determinant of successful performance in any occupation. In situations where performance is critical, personnel must be prepared to operate successfully under hostile or extreme stress conditions; therefore training programs and engineered systems must be tailored to assist humans in fulfilling these demands. To effectively design appropriate training programs for these conditions, it is necessary to quantitatively describe stress. A series of theoretical stress models have been developed in previous research studies; however, these do not provide quantification of stress levels nor the impact on human performance. By modeling acute stress under dynamic task conditions, quantitative values for stress and its impact on performance can be assessed. Thus, this research was designed to develop a predictive model for acute stress as a function of human performance and task demand. Initially, a four factor two level experimental design (2 (Noise) x 2 (Temperature) x 2 (Time Awareness) x 2 (Workload)) was performed to identify reliable physiological, cognitive and behavioral responses to stress. Next, multivariate analysis of variance (n=108) tests were performed, which showed statistically significant differences for physiological, cognitive and behavioral responses. Finally, fuzzy set theory techniques were used to develop a comprehensive stress index model. Thus, the resulting stress index model was constructed using input on physiological, cognitive and behavioral responses to stressors as well as characteristics inherent to the type of task performed and personal factors that interact as mediators (competitiveness, motivation, coping technique and proneness to boredom). Through using this stress index model to quantify and characterize the affects of acute stress on human performance, these research findings can inform proper training protocols and help to redesign tasks and working conditions that are prone to create levels of acute stress that adversely affect human performance.

In this study a methodological approach is presented on how transactions in the secondary market for life insurance policies can be fairly priced for both policyholders and life settlement companies. Monte Carlo simulation of mortality on a pool constructed based on actual data of 85 life settlement transactions shows that a realistic assumption for the range of offered prices is limited to 15% and 20% of the face amount of the policy, given a required return of 7%. The power of the proffered pricing approach is ensured by assessing and managing mortality risk along with the other pertinent risks using stress testing, where mortality risk appears to be analogous to some extent with systematic risk on other markets of assets.

Solar energy is one of the abundant, non-polluting renewable energy options in our planet. During the last three decades considerable progress has been achieved in developing technologies to produce electricity from solar radiation, but producing electricity with low cost and low pollution is of concern. The CdTe solar cells are the leading source for the production of cost effective solar cells. The main issue of concern in these CdTe solar cells is degradation observed when stressed at elevated temperatures. The degradation in CdTe solar cells can be attributed to the back contact, which often contains Cu to improve the electronic properties of CdTe (absorber layer) and to enable a quasi ohmic back contact.The main objective of this thesis was to study effect of amount of Cu in the back contact and contact annealing temperature on device stability.

Credit risk tracking and quantification play important roles in risk management and they are not applied only by financial institutions on microeconomic level, but also by central banks on the background of aggregated data. This master thesis deals with the analyses of shocks of given significant macroeconomic variables and their reply on changes of households' and firms' defaulted, non performing loans in Slovakian banking sector. In introductory part, the method of data handling is described, because of their inconsistency in the given field of research. That is caused on one hand by the post-transformational consolidation process of Slovakian banking sector and on the other hand by legislative shifts and changes in calculation methodology of non performing loans. The main aim of the thesis is not to describe and interpret most precisely the economic relations that could influence the level of non performing loans, but the effort to widen the range of credit risk stress testing possibilities in Slovakian banking sector. In order to check the macroeconomic variables' significance, OLS regression is used. Important part of the stress tests is the application of Monte Carlo method which simulates high number of stress scenarios and macroeconomic variables' shocks and therefore helps to improve the...

This thesis deals with the stress testing of banks in Czech Republic and the EU. The first part discusses the financial stability. Attention is paid mainly to different opinions of financial institutions and other experts. The first part includes the financial stability assessment tools of two major financial institutions that deal with financial stability (IMF and ECB). The second part is devoted to one the specific assessment tool for financial stability - stress testing. Stress testing part targets to include the latest theoretical knowledge that are related to stress testing. The third part deals with the stress testing of the banking sector in the Czech Republic and examines the evolution of stress scenarios and methods of stress tests, which are the responsibility of CNB. The fourth part analyzes in detail the stress scenarios and the results of stress tests of the banking sector in the Czech Republic. The last part of the thesis is devoted to the analysis of stress tests of the EU banking sector.

The goal of the thesis is to develop and describe application for Mikrotik Network stress testing. The aplication is developed in high-level scripting programming language Python. The aplication allowed us to configure and display in diagram our connected routers and network stress testing. Theoretical part is focused on Mikrotik company, their development and products. Next part is about theory of network stress testing and graph theory. The last part is about aplications development, programming language Python and used tools and libraries.

This thesis is concerned about performance and stress testing of Xtend product developed by Xura, Inc. Software development knowledge, theoretical knowledge of testing and testing tools are described in opening chapters together with key features and services provided by Xtend. Emphasis was put on implementation of performance and stress testing tool, which focuses on short-term and long-term testing scenarios and output of this tool serves Xtend developers. Part of this thesis also focuses on results of stress and performance tests.

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