公司管理型態的外標互助會模式，是一個複雜的競標過。但是，如果將之化簡並標準化以後，則可得出某一個競標的預期報酬函數，並以一階條件求出最佳標金策略，再佐以二階條件證明此標金策略，可使極大化預期報酬。其次，並探討在最佳標金策略之下，保證成本、利率、保留價值及不同型態的互助會會員的標金策略，得到以下五個定理： 　　定理一：提高保證成本有抑制搶標的功能。 　　定理二：利率水準越高，競標者所設定的標金越高。 　　定理三：競標者的保留價值越高，將設定越高的標金。 　　定理四：急需用錢的人與儲蓄者的標金策略是背道而馳的。 　　定理五：競標者的訊息溢價越高，將設定越低的標金策略。

This thesis examines the formation, development, role and behaviour of the Singapore National Employers' Federation (SNEF). Its focus is primarily the field of labour management. It addresses key issues in the role of the SNEF from its formation in 1980 to 2004, in the institutional context of Singapore's politics, economic development and industrial relations. This longitudinal study makes a substantial original contribution to understanding Singapore's leading national employers' association, and is a pioneering study of a national employers' association in East Asia. The thesis is a qualitative case-study, using fieldwork interviews, primary documents and the secondary literature as data sources. Through the critical event method, the work focuses analysis on key junctures for the SNEF's development and change during the period examined. In addition, the author employs the Sheldon and Thornthwaite (1999) model of employers' association strategy in framing the analysis of the thesis' central questions, and in examining SNEF's strategic decisions in response to changes in its external environment. By analysing how the SNEF's external roles and internal relations changed during each period, the research draws attention to the dynamic nature of this employers' association in the rapidly changing conditions marking Singapore's development. Given the central role of the People's Action Party (PAP) in Singaporean society, a central theme of this thesis is how the SNEF balances political pressures from Singapore's government-dominated corporatist system, with the needs of its diversified membership. The narrative core of the thesis identifies five distinct periods of Singaporean industrial relations - through the lens of the SNEF - reflecting larger economic developments through which the government guided the economy and society. The thesis finds that, while the SNEF is an independent and apolitical organisation, it is nevertheless deeply embedded in the Singaporean variant of corporatism. Accordingly, the SNEF's role and behaviour are inherently guided by the PAP's ideology of pragmatism and, in Singapore, sectoral interests deferred to and institutionally served national interests.

The purpose of this essay is to document the development of the American Bandmasters Association's Ostwald Award from its inception in 1955 to the present day. The study addresses several aspects of the award's development, taking into account more localized evolution in regard to the award's history, purpose, compositional specifications, and the procedures employed to select the winning composition and composer. Ultimately, the discussion focuses not only on how the award is presented in accordance with its own purposes but the objectives of the American Bandmasters Association. The data for this study are collected through two different methods. The primary method of data collection involves an examination of documents and other associated materials located in the ABA Archive at the University of Maryland. A secondary method of interviews is utilized in order to augment the written record and overcome its deficiencies. Participants in the study include Ostwald Award Committee members and chairs both past and present. While the Ostwald Award has recognized forty-seven compositions since its inception, no formal consideration of the award's history and contribution to the wind band repertoire has been undertaken. Such is the aspiration of this essay.

Mutualisms are delicately balanced partnerships and are increasingly recognized as being fundamental to patterns and processes within ecological systems. Changes to the ecological setting in which such interactions operate can disrupt this balance. By understanding the context-dependent nature of such associations, researchers can begin to understand how changes in the environment can have cascading effects on the entire community within which they occur. Oxpeckers (Buphagus spp.) feed on the ectoparasites of ungulates in sub-Saharan Africa and from the blood of ungulate wounds. Because of this dichotomy in feeding behavior, the role of oxpeckers as consistently beneficial partners of their hosts has been questioned, and it has been suggested that the concept of conditional mutualism be applied to this interaction. I combined observational studies of oxpeckers in Kruger National Park, South Africa, with experiments on oxpeckers in captivity at the Mokopane Biodiversity Conservation Centre, South Africa, to test the hypothesis that the ectoparasite cleaning service provided by oxpeckers to their hosts is context-dependent. The results of my dissertation research demonstrate that the oxpecker-ungulate association has conditional outcomes. Under certain conditions, the oxpecker-ungulate relationship is a nutritional mutualism where ungulates provide food (ticks) for oxpeckers in exchange for a cleaning service. Under other conditions, oxpeckers exploit their hosts to feed from their blood. My findings suggest that a high abundance of the tick species and tick stages oxpeckers prefer is necessary to maintaining an alignment of interests between oxpeckers and ungulates. When ungulates host few ticks of the species oxpeckers prefer, these birds will wound-feed to meet their nutritional demands. Such wound-feeding threatens the balance of the oxpecker-ungulate mutualism. Although oxpeckers frequently wound-fed in captivity, the frequency of wound-feeding events on wild host species was only 3.1% of feeding events. Whether the relationship between oxpeckers and domesticated hosts differs from that between oxpeckers and wild hosts, or if this observed difference is actually a result of researcher constraints in the wild, needs further exploration.

As the development of software applications and Internet, the security issues that come with get more serious. Buffer Overflow is an unavoidable problem while software programming. According to the advisories of each year, they show that many security vulnerabilities are from Buffer Overflow. Buffer Overflow is also the cause of intrusion made by hackers. The users of software applications usually depend on the software updates released by software venders to prevent the attacks caused by Buffer Overflow. So before applying software updates, that how to avoid attacks to software and prolong the save period of software is an important issue to prevent Buffer Overflow. By collecting and analyzing the exploit codes used by hackers, we can build the overall pattern of Buffer Overflow attacks, and we can take this pattern as the basis for preventing future Buffer Overflow attacks. Association rules can find the relations of unknown things, so it can help to build the common pattern between Buffer Overflow attacks. So this work applies association rules to build the pattern of Buffer Overflow attacks, and to find out the relations of system calls inside the exploit codes. We experiment and build a group of system call rules that can differentiate the attack behavior and the normal behavior. These rules can detect the Buffer Overflow attacks exactly and perform well in false positives. And then they can help to do further defenses after detecting attacks and alleviate the seriousness of Buffer Overflow attacks to computer systems.

The object of my investigation is Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen (SAF) (The Swedish Employer’s Association) and the concrete questions I wish to raise are: (i) How did SAF articulate their ideal of liberty during the period 1902-1948? (ii) How did they combine this ideal with the demands of an ascetic work ethic among the workers? My ambition with this investigation has been to spread some light on how SAF, one of the market’s most important actors in Sweden during the twentieth century, has combined an alleged strong belief in personal freedom with the demands of adjustment to specific virtues and how the proclaimed freedom has, in fact, been subject to a number of conditions. It would be fair to say that the survival of a market economy depends on a broad foundation of workers that in practice are not allowed to make use of the freedom that they are proclaimed to have in theory. The workers must not only be convinced to go to work but also to work efficiently. If this were not the case, then capitalism, built on competition, would collapse. This is congruent with the conclusions made in my investigation. SAF’s proclamations of freedom were indeed a freedom for the believers; for those who could take advantage of the competition. But for those who did not believe in the system or who did not feel that they could find themselves justice in it, SAF demanded a high moral standard. As a consequence of this we are confronted with the following paradox: Freedom for the rich, morality to the poor.

The present study explores the concepts behind Japanese and Swedish dimensional adjectives. The focus is on examining which similarities and differences in the conceptualisation across the two languages exist, if any at all. In order to see how concepts underlying dimensional adjectives are represented in the speaker's minds, data was collected mainly from two word-association tests. The results show that dimensional adjectives are conceptualised and represented differently by speakers of these two languages. The most remarkable difference resulting from the word-association tests is that Japanese participants associate dimensional adjectives mostly with nouns that denote entities the prominent extension of which is aptly described by the stimulus dimensional adjective (e.g. 'long' is associated with 'river'). In Swedish, however, participants associate dimensional adjectives with both adjectives and nouns, and the association patterns and their underlying conceptualisations are thus more diverse (e.g. 'high' is associated with 'building', and 'long' is associated with 'narrow').

Paru dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle, le féminisme roumain se manifeste dans la période d'entre les deux guerres dans toute sa puissance, quoique la plupart des femmes impliquées dans le mouvement soient les représentantes d'une élite féminine, sans des rapports trop profonds avec le reste de la population. Les premières féministes découvrent le féminisme français par l'intermédiaire des études et des stages faits à l'étranger. Leurs contacts deviennent de plus en plus durables une fois que le mouvement roumain s'intègre, s'organise et s'affirme en public après l'union de 1918. L'implication des principales associations sur le plan international, la propagande et les actions déroulées au niveau national, les " victoires " obtenues (les droits civils en 1932, politiques intégrales en 1938) sont la preuve incontestable que dans l'espace roumain il y a eu un mouvement féministe fort. De plus, la période d'entre les deux guerres en est le moment d'apogée, " l'indifférence patriarcale " et une partie de l'opinion publique sont combattues grâce aux efforts soutenus et à la patience spécifique féminine. Les affinités franco-roumaines, relevées dans notre thèse, celles au niveau des programmes, de l'organisation et même des formes de manifestation ne sont pas des nouvelles, mais plutôt une preuve que le cadre national est dépassé. Ces deux pays latins ont déroulé des actions communes à l'intérieur des fors féminins internationaux, les liaisons d'amitié se manifestant aussi au niveau officiel que sur le plan personnel. Mais, chaque mouvement se dessine dans des contextes sociopolitiques différents, avec des nuances et spécificités qui leur donnent l'individualité.

Since its creation in 1998, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has become a commonly used measure in social psychology and related fields of research. Studies of the cognitive processes involved in the IAT are necessary to establish the validity of this measure and to suggest further refinements to its use and interpretation. The current thesis used ERPs to study cognitive processes associated with the IAT. The first experiment found significant differences in P300 amplitude in the Congruent and Incongruent conditions, which were interpreted as a reflection of greater equivocation in the Incongruent condition. The second experiment tested the task-set switching account of the IAT in much greater detail by analyzing each trial type separately. In the Congruent condition, all trial types elicited the same amplitude P300. Local probability, and the consequent checking and updating of working memory, was thought to be responsible for differences between trials of the Incongruent condition that required or did not require a task switch. The final experiment examined the role of working memory in the IAT by introducing obtrusive and irrelevant auditory stimuli. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that the introduction of an obtrusive and irrelevant auditory increment deviant has little overall effect on the IAT, and a similar effect on switch and no-switch trials within the Incongruent condition. This could have been because both the Congruent and Incongruent conditions of the IAT make such extensive demands on central processing resources that few are available to allow for the switching of attention, or it is possible that the IAT does not require significant updating of working memory. The usefulness of ERPs in the study of the IAT effect is demonstrated by the current research. In particular, the finding that behavioural results were not always consistent with the ERP results demonstrates that electrophysiological measures can complement traditional behavioural measures.

A major challenge in medical genetics is to identify the mutations underlying heritable diseases. Dogs are excellent genetic models in the search for causative mutations, as they constitute a large library of naturally occurring heritable diseases many of which are analogous to those suffered by man. In addition, these animals have a genome structure well suited to gene mapping. The Shar-Pei dog has two breed-specific features; a strongly selected for wrinkled skin and a high predisposition to an autoinflammatory disease (AID). Abnormalities in the innate immune system cause this type of disease, presenting as spontaneous attacks of inflammation. Persistent inflammation puts an affected Shar-Pei at risk of amyloidosis, organ failure and premature death. In humans, similar AIDs occur and for a majority of cases, no underlying genetic cause has yet been identified. The aim of this thesis was to use the Shar-Pei as a genetic model for autoinflammation in order to find new genes and signalling pathways involved in disease. In paper I, a pleiotropic mutation was identified that could explain both the wrinkled skin and autoinflammation in Shar-Pei. The mutation is associated with an up-regulation of Hyaluronic Acid Synthase 2 (HAS2). Increased expression of HAS2 leads to abnormal depositions of hyaluronic acid (HA) in the skin, resulting in the wrinkled appearance. When fragmented, HA also function as a damage signal sensed by the innate immune system which then responds with inflammation. By selecting for the wrinkled skin, the autoinflammatory disease has inadvertently been enriched in the breed. In paper II, five different inflammatory signs could be associated with the same genetic risk factor, allowing the introduction of a new terminology: Shar-Pei autoinflammatory disease (SPAID) to describe the whole disease complex. In addition, a modifying locus containing several biologically attractive genes was suggested to contribute to varying incidence of amyloidosis in Shar-Pei. In paper III, signs of pathological changes in HA metabolism were investigated in human AID. HA concentration was found to be both higher in subjects with no molecular diagnosis and also associated to disease activity and severity. Taken together, this suggests HA is also involved in human AID.