This manuscript includes two studies. The research design for study 1 was a single-subject reversal design, while study 2 was a case study with 5 experimental conditions. These studies investigated the effects of a Tier 3 peer-matching self-management intervention on two elementary school students who had previously been less responsive to Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions. The Tier 3 self-management intervention, which was implemented in the classroom, included daily electronic communication between teachers and the two students' parents. Results indicated that this intervention effectively reduced disruptive behaviors and increased total engagement when implemented with integrity; without integrity, results were variable.

More than 20,000 primary- and secondary-level schools, which represent 20% of all schools in the United States, are implementing school-wide positive behavior supports (SWPBS) to enhance socially desirable behavior and promote a decline of problematic behavior among students. The overall efficacy of the 3-tier SWPBS framework is well documented. However, a paucity of empirical research addresses the use of check in/check out (CICO), a Tier 2 intervention, for youth who present as quiet and withdrawn, and who are at risk of academic and social disengagement. Accordingly, this quasi-experimental, nonequivalent groups study assessed the overall effectiveness of CICO and considered the differential effects of conducting a functional behavior assessment (FBA) at the secondary level of SWPBS. Twelve students from 1 middle school formed the convenience sample. Analysis of covariance repeated across time, with the preintervention scores being the covariate, was used to assess between group differences in the students' internalizing behaviors on the Behavior Assessment System for Children-Second Edition (BASC-2) Self-Report, teachers' BASC-2 ratings of adaptive skills, and office discipline referrals. Paired sample t tests were conducted to assess within-group effects. Findings indicate that CICO was an effective intervention for students presenting with a pattern of internalizing behaviors. For participants in the experimental group, a significant effect was found on the functional communication scale. Social change implications include educators having a better understanding of how Tier 2 interventions can be enhanced to meet diverse needs and that inclusion of youth's self-reports is needed when determining effects of supports.

Active school social workers are tasked with teaching social-emotional learning to students, including high need youth placed in alternative education settings. Multitiered systems of support provide a framework utilized by school systems to identify and address all student needs. However, a gap in research exists for evidenced-based social-emotional learning practices for students falling within Tier 3 of the multitiered systems of support framework, particularly those separated from the mainstream population and educated in alternative programs. This study explored how school social workers address the social-emotional learning needs of students in alternative education settings within the state of Illinois. The qualitative case-study design used a purposive sample of school social workers. Data sources included individual semistructured and focus group interviews of school social workers, and program curricula materials. Data analysis followed the constructivist perspective that multiple explanations of reality exist and, therefore, knowledge is constructed and emerges through the social practices and interpretations of people. Results indicated that school social workers in Illinois struggle to find existing evidence-based interventions to meet the social-emotional learning needs of high-school students in alternative education due to limited resources. Social work services maintain a student-driven focus and are strengthened by school-wide systemic structures for social-emotional learning that include cohesive efforts among staff and time for individual student processing of behaviors. This research has potential for social change through expanding knowledge available for school social work practitioners to meet the social-emotional learning needs of students in alternative education.

L'origine de la masse des particules élémentaires est liée au mécanisme de brisure de la symétrie électrofaible. Son étude sera l'un des enjeux majeurs de l'expérience Atlas auprès du Large Hadron Collider, au Cern à partir de 2008. Dans la plupart des cas, les recherches seront limitées par notre connaissance des performances du détecteur, telles que la précision avec laquelle l'énergie des particules est reconstruite ou l'efficacité avec laquelle elles sont identifiées. Ce mémoire d'habilitation présente un travail portant sur la reconstruction des électrons dans Atlas avec des données simulées et des données prises durant le test en faisceau combiné qui s'est déroulé en 2004. L'analyse des données d'Atlas nécessite l'utilisation de ressources de calcul et de stockage importantes qui a impliqué le développement d'une grille de calcul mondiale dont un des noeuds est développé au laboratoire. Le manuscrit présente aussi l'effort effectué au LPNHE Paris pour la mise en place d'un Tier 2 en r\égion Ile de France.

Due to the imperative need to reduce the management costs, operators multiplex several concurrent applications in large datacenters. However, uncontrolled resource sharing between co-hosted applications often results in performance degradation problems, thus creating violations of service level agreements (SLAs) for service providers. Therefore, in order to meet per-application SLAs, per-application performance modeling for dynamic resource allocation in shared resource environments has recently become promising. We introduce Chorus, an interactive performance modeling framework for building application performance models incrementally and on the fly. It can be used to support complex, multi-tier resource allocation, and/or what-if performance inquiry in modern datacenters, such as Clouds. Chorus consists of (i) a declarative high-level language for providing semantic model guidelines, such as model templates, model functions, or sampling guidelines, from a sysadmin or a performance analyst, as model approximations to be learned or refined experimentally, (ii) a runtime engine for iteratively collecting experimental performance samples, validating and refining performance models. Chorus efficiently builds accurate models online, reuses and adjusts archival models over time, and combines them into an ensemble of models. We perform an experimental evaluation on a multi-tier server platform, using several industry- standard benchmarks. Our results show that Chorus is a flexible modeling framework and knowledge base for validating, extending and reusing existing models while adapting to new situations.

Due to the imperative need to reduce the management costs, operators multiplex several concurrent applications in large datacenters. However, uncontrolled resource sharing between co-hosted applications often results in performance degradation problems, thus creating violations of service level agreements (SLAs) for service providers. Therefore, in order to meet per-application SLAs, per-application performance modeling for dynamic resource allocation in shared resource environments has recently become promising. We introduce Chorus, an interactive performance modeling framework for building application performance models incrementally and on the fly. It can be used to support complex, multi-tier resource allocation, and/or what-if performance inquiry in modern datacenters, such as Clouds. Chorus consists of (i) a declarative high-level language for providing semantic model guidelines, such as model templates, model functions, or sampling guidelines, from a sysadmin or a performance analyst, as model approximations to be learned or refined experimentally, (ii) a runtime engine for iteratively collecting experimental performance samples, validating and refining performance models. Chorus efficiently builds accurate models online, reuses and adjusts archival models over time, and combines them into an ensemble of models. We perform an experimental evaluation on a multi-tier server platform, using several industry- standard benchmarks. Our results show that Chorus is a flexible modeling framework and knowledge base for validating, extending and reusing existing models while adapting to new situations.

After the failed experiment of Prohibition in the early 20th century, the 21st Amendment was passed to repeal the 18th Amendment as well as grant the power of alcohol regulation to the states. Within this power is the three-tier distribution system, where alcohol suppliers are required to sell their products to a wholesaling company, who later sell to a retailer. This system makes alcohol easy to regulate as well as encourages competition within the alcohol market. Today however, companies are finding ways through new legislation and court cases to bypass this three-tier system by shipping their products directly. This gives these companies a competitive advantage against others that have to sell their products through the three-tier system, and as a result the three-tier system is slowly starting to fade away.

The thesis project describes  the analysis, process and major factors in development of a simple component oriented Web Shop in ASP.NET. It addresses to the concepts used in  the application as  well  as  derivation  of  technical  design  and  development  from  the  concepts  acquired  by studying existing approaches. The report  describes  a  brief  summary of  existing  approaches  and related  technologies.  It also lays  the foundation  of  goal  oriented  approach  by  providing  an  overview  of  component  based  software engineering. The  basic  concepts for modularization  were  barrowed from  entities  identification,  object models and component models pplication’s architecture is set to be a layered app roach combining the software layered  architecture  approach  with  multi  tier  architecture  of  web  applications. Class models explaining the inner structure of each component have been provided and an overview of user interface pages is given to explain the application outer flow. The application sets out to prove the significance of component oriented approach as well as  the  support  provided for it by ASP.Net. The resulting package proves  to  have  scalable  components  that could be scaled for  or  reused in another  application or  in  a later version of the same application. / First and Final Version of our Thesis Report / SoftIn - Introducing methods and tools for software development in small and medium-sized enterprises

I examine the association between earnings quality and audit firm type using a three-tiered audit firm classification scheme which allows for an explicit examination of the quality of Second-Tier audited earnings. My tests are motivated by the lack of competition in the market for audit services, theoretical arguments which suggest a positive association between audit firm size and audit quality, evidence pointing to the rapid post-Andersen growth in Second-Tier audit practices, and the lack of empirical research that fully differentiates audit firm type. My results indicate that the post-Andersen growth of Second-Tier audit firms coincides with improved Second-Tier audit quality, relative to the other audit firm types (Big N and other non-Big N). Specifically, the results indicate that Second-Tier client earnings quality was not distinct from that of other non-Big N clients in the pre-Andersen period. However, in the post-Andersen period, the results indicate that Second-Tier client earnings quality was higher than that of other non-Big N clients. Moreover, the post-Andersen results provide partial evidence suggesting that there is no difference in Second-Tier and Big N client earnings quality and, thus, lend some credence to the notion of a new era for the Big 8. These results convey important information to market participants (e.g., investors, underwriters, analysts, etc.) who wish to assess the extent to which financial statements are likely to be free from opportunistic managerial manipulation, to clients that are contemplating switching to a Second-Tier audit firm, to government agencies who have expressed concern over the state of competition in the market for audit services, and to those who have promoted the use of Second-Tier audit firms in the wake of SOX-related resource constraints.

This study is to research the ¡§Corruption Prevention and Profits Promotion of Corporate Governance in our country¡¨. Recently, companies have encountered the corporate governance problems globally and indicate that corporate governance have not been fulfilled exactly. It not only failed to maximize the profit of shareholders and stakeholders, and even worse, unable to make the investment money get back. Furthermore, it will also cause bad effects that associate with the social instability and weaken the economic development. In view of the reasons that contribute to the occurrence of company scandals, most of people will think it¡¦s due to lack of monitoring and supervision of companies. But this should be merely the direct reasons. Apart form this, it has to be added with indirect causes of inability of company strategy leadership and cause financial problems to occur consequently. It¡¦s obvious that monitoring with corruption prevention and leadership work to profit promotion are two essential features of corporate governance. In the aspect of monitoring system enhancement, this paper has investigated the current supervision problems of corporate governance and provided improvement suggestions accordingly. To the issue of evaluating these two systems regarding independent directors and existing supervisors, several fundamental but important points have been reviewed and recommendations have been provided. In consideration of increasing leadership management performance and building a multi-purposes board, we recommend taking British mode of a balancing board as a good reference example. It¡¦s recommended that both characteristics of independent monitoring and excellent ability of promoting company¡¦s profit should be taken into account simultaneously when choosing directors. It¡¦s expected that the board can fulfill the duties of monitoring the company efficiently and playing the role as excellent navigator successfully to lead the company going forward continuously. It¡¦s all wish that owing to these dual functions have been stressed and developed; it can bring a new era to our corporate governance.