My thesis document is contextualised as a three year study of my practice as a facilitator of experiential learning with pastoralist farmers in my role as an agricultural extension officer. In the study I used an action research methodology to provide change and understanding in situations in which it was too difficult to control variables. In my use of the methodology, action provided change and research provided understanding. The action research methodology also provided rigour through the spiral of its cyclic process. Within the agricultural extension context, my learning outcomes about my role in working participatively and collaboratively with pastoralists, prompted significant change in my practice of facilitation. The change enabled us as an experiential learning group facilitated by an agricultural extension officer, to provide for pastoralist participants to increasingly direct their own learning. From reflection on the project observations that led to my working more collaboratively and participatively, I theorise that improved facilitation practice can derive from personal and collaborative reflection as a part of action researching. My reflection, during the process of thesis writing allowed me to use action science to demonstrate that my improved facilitiation practice came about from enhanced congruency of theories of action of participation and collaboration. Personally, I developed a more congruent practice of participation and collaboration through action researching my practice of facilitating experiential learning with pastoralists, and by reflecting on the emergent outcomes for me as the facilitator. This thesis concludes with my consideration of whether or not my specific learning outcomes may provide a foundation for some cautious expansion of the emergent outcomes of the action research such that they may be of interest to others in extension. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this thesis, we study how the efficiency of competitive equilibrium in a pure exchange economy with hidden action depends on the market structure. We consider both competitive anonymous markets, where consumers make their choices taking as given some relevant economic parameters, and competitive strategic markets, where consumers interact with financial intermediaries who explicitly take into account the choices of other economic agents. In the first chapter, we review some known results on the efficiency of competitive equilibrium under different market structures. In the second chapter, we assume that there are multiple consumption goods and that the level of action affects the marginal benefit consumers get from consumption. We consider two different market structures: a complete set of contingent-commodity markets, and a complete set of financial markets, together with spot markets for consumption goods. The main result we provide in this chapter is that under more general hypothesis than those usually considered in the literature, the equilibrium with financial markets is not efficient. In the third chapter, we assume that consumers can insure themselves by voluntarily committing to deliver part of their endowment to a common pool in exchange for a sure return from the pool itself. We show that an equilibrium with pool of promises exists, and we characterize it.

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In this thesis, we study how the efficiency of competitive equilibrium in a pure exchange economy with hidden action depends on the market structure. We consider both competitive anonymous markets, where consumers make their choices taking as given some relevant economic parameters, and competitive strategic markets, where consumers interact with financial intermediaries who explicitly take into account the choices of other economic agents. In the first chapter, we review some known results on the efficiency of competitive equilibrium under different market structures. In the second chapter, we assume that there are multiple consumption goods and that the level of action affects the marginal benefit consumers get from consumption. We consider two different market structures: a complete set of contingent-commodity markets, and a complete set of financial markets, together with spot markets for consumption goods. The main result we provide in this chapter is that under more general hypothesis than those usually considered in the literature, the equilibrium with financial markets is not efficient. In the third chapter, we assume that consumers can insure themselves by voluntarily committing to deliver part of their endowment to a common pool in exchange for a sure return from the pool itself. We show that an equilibrium with pool of promises exists, and we characterize it.

Nietzsche’s view of the self and will seems to culminate in a naturalistic account of human agency. If we understand Nietzsche as primarily a naturalist who thinks philosophy should more or less be modeled on the sciences whose investigations are restricted to empirical observation and whose explanations, like causal explanation, are natural (rather than supernatural), then ascribing a naturalistic account of human agency to Nietzsche is appropriate. However, I argue that attributing a naturalistic account of agency, or any account of agency to Nietzsche, misunderstands Nietzsche’s skepticism. I attempt to demonstrate the primacy of Nietzsche’s skepticism by showing how “his” naturalistic “account” of agency is best understood as an instrument in the service of his purely critical and deflationary project. To show the instrumental character of his “account,” I show how the account is used to oppose traditional notions of agency without itself becoming Nietzsche’s theory of agency.

The study is based on the research subjects in chai-shan elementary school; the research subjects were from the fourth class of the sixth grade (female: 12, male: 17). The purpose of this study is using storytelling strategy to practice the life education course. Researcher recorded the subjects¡¦ learning situation; after this course, researcher also observed the growth and change in the cognitive concepts and behavior of the research students. What¡¦s more, researcher viewed the reflections and growth of the teacher and the students, hoping the research could provide other life education educators with some reference and implementation data. This research used action research method. By observation, interview and document analysis, researcher investigated the students¡¦ reactions and changes after implementing this course. This research implementation period is 10 weeks (20 classes) in the formal class curriculum. Meanwhile, this life education strategy is adjusted with the researcher¡¦s review and students¡¦ class performances. The research course is expected to be objective, complete and detailed, and it is also expected to sharp the researcher¡¦s professional knowledge and research ability on life education courses. The research result shows that: 1.By applying storytelling strategy, the course could achieve the goal of life education. 2. Implementing life education with narrative curriculum model could strengthen students¡¦ confidence, bringing up ability of communication and emotional adjustment, and made students understand the meaning and value of life. 3. The teacher could upgrade the growing of professional knowledge by the practice and reflection of the life education course. Last but not least, according to the result, researcher provide specific recommendations to the school administrative units and the future studies, for reference.

As an emerging great/super power, what the world needs to know about the rise of China? Unfortunately, many efforts to develop a comprehensive and detailed perspective on the rise of China are clouded, and even distorted. That is why and where this dissertation comes in. In order to help readers understand how observers interpret the rise of China; furthermore, what should be prepared to deal with a China led by the Chinese Communist Party(CCP), this study mainly concentrates on discourses on the rise of China, especially reflecting on the CCP¡¦s leaders¡¦ discourses from the perspective of identity and action. Based on the perspective of identity and action, this study reviewed the key concepts and logic as follows firstly: China, rise, identity, action, actor, rationality, imagine, and the logic of antithesis. Secondly, this study made a recombination of these concepts and the logic of antithesis to develop a theoretical framework, and named it ¡§the framework of identity-action positions.¡¨ Thirdly, in looking at the period from lat-Qing Dynasty to the present, this study applied the framework to analyze discourses on the rise of China, and particularly try to discover their common origin. Finally, this study argues that the origin of discourses on the rise of China is Chinese leaders¡¦ ambitions. However, there is a crucial difference between the CCP and other Chinese leaders. Continuous struggle, inevitably, is the essence of the CCP and its leaders¡¦ mindset. Thus, understanding the CCP and its leaders¡¦ continuous struggle for survival and development, in observing the rise of China, is what the world needs to know behind the scenes.

High-tech enterprise or Traditional enterprise, no matter to continue forever to manage, the enhancement profit, to become profitable and so on reasons, by each different form's organization transformation, achieves the transformation which and the goal the enterprise anticipated. This research is with the case study, and using ¡§Action Research¡¨ for the methodology to discuss the process factor which the influence organization transforms, its research background is as follows: 1. The case enterprise's short-term objective is to pay off the liability with all banks in two year which the debt occurred by the financial crisis's 8 years ago, the case enterprise could show a turn from loss to profit; 2. The case enterprise's organizational change plan is continuing to carry on, not already finished to discuss its final result; 3. In this research organizational change of the case enterprise is leading by its Human Resources Department, Not be top-down with its top managers. This research's objectives are: 1. To find the factors that would influence the organizational change in the back ground that organizational change is leading by Human Resource Department; 2. If the organizational change could move on after made some adjustment within the change plan? The main problems the case enterprise has includied: 1. Departmentalism; 2. The productivity concentrates in the minority product line. In this research the organizational change actions of the case enterprise includes: 1. to turn electronic division SVC department from profit center to cost center; 2. To intergrade all BU¡¦s SVC department to be a SVC Division in company; 3. To adjust the rules of Sales Quota Setting with Sales staff and leaders; 4. To change the ratio of variable salary with total compensation; 5. Promotes the new value activity. This research's result is: 1. The organization change which leading by HR department would be paied much attention and got smoothly executive when top managers have strong and consist intention. 2. The organizational change plan must be more closely to the business strategy, so can get recognition smoothly, staff get more interest and the motivaton to the organizational change, and have less resistance.

In recent years, automatic human action recognition has been widely researched within the computer vision and image processing communities. To identify human behavior which achieve the surveillance has great help by video automation in aspect of home caring, personal property and homeland security. To achieve action recognition, there are many factors to be considered, primarily the accuracy and real-time. If we can parallelize the action recognition algorithm, it will be a greatly improvement to the real-time processing capability of the algorithm. To achieve real-time demand, we study how to implement action recognition algorithm parallelization in the CELL B.E. platform. The action recognition algorithm with our design is faster than the original algorithm; it has 231 times speed up. We found that in the action recognition algorithm, there are many repeated operation between blocks, it can be parallelize by using single-instruction multiple-data architecture. In the action recognition algorithms, there are four major algorithms, DMASKS, HMHHb, MGD, SVM. The SIMD instructions in CELL B.E. platform can compute 128 bits data at once. While doing DMASKS, SIMD parallelism can reach 16 times, HMHHb parallelism up to 128 times, MGD parallelism up to 8 times, and SVM can reach 4 times. Based on CELL B.E. acceleration mechanism, we achieve high-performance computing models with multi-threading and multiple streaming. Our study showed that the action recognition algorithm is very suitable for multi-core system with parallel processing SIMD architecture. The parallelization for action recognition algorithm will have more immediate response in identifying human action. With the advantages of real-time, it can be expected to include more complex algorithms for the accuracy of algorithm in the future, to achieve both immediacy and accuracy.

Reviewing domestic related researches about dialogue, most of them focused on its effectiveness. This research focused on how to facilitate the learning of dialouge. We firstly reviewed the references about ¡§learning¡¨ and ¡§dialogue¡¨; and then described the action research process of how Systems Thinking and Organizational Lab designed the feedback mechanisms to facilite the learning process on dialogue for Company A. We also analyzed every feedback mechanisms about its effectiveness in this research. We found out that feedback mechanisms can facilitate the learning process on dialogue, and the reflective abiliy of the members is very important. Besides we could adopt different feedback mechanism to facilitate the learning effectiveness depending on the situation; therefore, we also made several suggestions on every feedback mechanisms for future adoption.