Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Photoidentification surveys of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were conducted from December of 2002 through December of 2003 in Chocolate Bay, Texas, and the adjacent Gulf of Mexico area. The research represented the continuation of an ongoing study of the dolphins of this area. Behavioral sampling was carried out on a small resident community of dolphins that seasonally reside in Chocolate Bay, as well as on dolphins found along the gulf coastline. Resident dolphins had a daily behavioral pattern, with peaks of foraging activity in the morning, traveling at midday, and socializing in late afternoon. Gulf dolphins had small mean group sizes of 3.4 and were primarily observed foraging and traveling, with little socializing. When resident and gulf dolphins interacted, the mean group size increased to 12 and the proportion of social behavior increased. Association indices demonstrated no long-lasting associations among adult male dolphins, while strong associations existed between several females. Females revealed two patterns of association; they were either members of a female band with other mother-calf pairs, or were solitary with no strong affiliations with any dolphins other than their calf. Males seemed to disperse upon maturation, which maintained the community size of approximately 35 animals. Behavioral evidence indicates the resident community is matrilinealy related and composed largely of adult females and their offspring. A few adult males remain resident, while most young males disperse from the community and may rove among the gulf population. Although mating probably occurs between resident and gulf dolphins, sources of both maternity and paternity for residents need to be determined, and further behavioral work needs to be carried out to support this hypothesis.

The purpose of this study was to determine if differences exist among NCAA divisions I, II and III as well as between Athletic Directors and Primary Women Administrators with regard to the perceived competencies and preparatory coursework required of athletic administrators. A mail survey utilizing a six point forced choice Likert rating scale was constructed from a review of the literature and modifications of the survey instrument "Athletic Club Managers Survey" developed by Lambrecht (1986). The questionnaire contained 46 competency statements and 30 course content area statements as well as a set of demographic questions. The 1987-88 NCAA Directory listed 466 institutions which employed both an Athletic Director and a Primary Woman Administrator. Two hundred five of these institutions were systematically randomly selected and received two questionnaires, one for the Athletic Director and one for the Primary Woman Administrator. Three hundred and forty-nine questionnaires were returned yielding an 85% response rate. It was hypothesized that there were no significant differences between the responses of athletic administrators from the three divisions of the NCAA with regard to the competency and course content area statements. The analysis of variance technique was used to analyze the data. Where differences existed the Newman-Keuls test was employed to determine the location. The null hypothesis was rejected for 20 competency items and 17 course content area items. Athletic Directors and Primary Women Administrators were also studied. Fifteen competency items and 14 course content area items were rejected in this comparison. The top six ranked competency items were: 1. Enforce NCAA Rules, 2. Human Relations, 3. Staff Communications, 4. Decision Making Process, 5. Budget Preparation and Control, and 6. Interpret NCAA Rules. These top six ranked competency items were the same in each division, although the order of importance varied. Competency items were rated higher than course content area items. Of the top 16 items with means above 5.0, only three items were course content area items. Public Relations, Speech and Writing were the top three ranked courses. Results of this study indicate that there is limited significant difference among the three NCAA Divisions or between Athletic Directors and Primary Women Administrators in their perception of competencies and coursework necessary for athletic administrators. / Graduation date: 1990

To date, there is a dearth of research examining the relationship between cognitive and affective aspects of prejudice and their ability to predict overt and covert homonegative behaviours. Research in this area is important as many gay men and lesbian women are the target of homonegative acts, and it is these behaviours that are important to understand. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis was to examine: 1) if modern homonegativity related to explicit affective measures; 2) if modern homonegativity related to implicit affective measures; 3) whether modern homonegativity related to implicit cognitive measures; 4) which measure was the best predictor of covert behaviour; and 5) which measure was the best predictor of overt behaviour. The four measures used as potential predictors were: 1) the Modern Homonegativity Scale (MHS), an explicit, cognitive measure; 2) the Implicit Association Test (IAT), an implicit, cognitive measure; 3) a feeling thermometer, an explicit, affective measure; and 4) facial electromyographic reactions, an implicit affective measure. This study consisted of three phases: in Phase I, 171 male undergraduates completed an online survey consisting of explicit measures of homonegativity. Fifty-five participants were recalled to participate in Phases II and III, which consisted of a behavioural component and the facial EMG and IAT components. Results indicated that modern homonegativity was associated with implicit cognitive measures as well as explicit measures of affect. However, modern homonegativity was not associated with implicit measures of affect. Additionally, positive affect in the form of cheek activity and negative affect toward images of couples kissing in the form of brow activity, measured through facial EMG, were associated with covert behaviour, with cheek activity being the better predictor. Brow activity toward images of gay couples kissing, indicative of negative affect, was the only measure associated with overt behaviour. Limitations and potential future directions for conducting research using implicit measures of homonegativity are discussed.

ABSTRACT Background: Obesity and asthma are significant public health problems and epidemics among children. From 1980 to 1994 the prevalence of self reported asthma in children increased 75% while the prevalence of childhood obesity increased by 100%. Studies have demonstrated a complex, but poorly understood association between obesity and childhood asthma. This study further examines the relationship between obesity and asthma in children and adolescents. Methods: Using secondary data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey NHANES 2005-2006, univariate analysis was used to examine the association between obesity and selected independent variables and current asthma status. Multivariate analysis was also used to examine the association between obesity and current asthma status. Independent t-test was used to compare mean values of continuous variables across asthma status. Finally, chi square test was used to compare categorical variables across asthma status. A p-value of < 0.05 and 95% confidence intervals were used to determine statistical significance throughout all the analyses performed. Results: In total 3,515 cases were included in the study analysis, out of which 50% are boys and 50% are girls. Results of multivariate analysis showed that obese children had 1.64 higher odds of having current asthma (Odds Ratio 1.64, 95% CI: 1.63-1.64, p-value of Conclusion: Obesity is significantly associated with current asthma status among children and adolescents. It may be beneficial to target obesity prevention in our efforts to control the asthma epidemic. Even small changes in mean population body mass index (BMI) may translate into significant increases or decreases in asthma incidence in children and adolescents.

Mining frequent itemsets and association rules is a popular and well researched approach to discovering interesting relationships between variables in large databases. The R package arules presented in this paper provides a basic infrastructure for creating and manipulating input data sets and for analyzing the resulting itemsets and rules. The package also includes interfaces to two fast mining algorithms, the popular C implementations of Apriori and Eclat by Christian Borgelt. These algorithms can be used to mine frequent itemsets, maximal frequent itemsets, closed frequent itemsets and association rules. (author's abstract) / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

In recent years quantum algorithms have become a popular area of mathematical research. Farhi and Gutmann introduced the concept of a quantum walk in 1998. In this thesis we investigate mixing properties of continuous-time quantum walks from a mathematical perspective. We focus on the connections between mixing properties and association schemes. There are three main goals of this thesis. Our primary goal is to develop the algebraic groundwork necessary to systematically study mixing properties of continuous-time quantum walks on regular graphs. Using these tools we achieve two additional goals: we construct new families of graphs that admit uniform mixing, and we prove that other families of graphs never admit uniform mixing. We begin by introducing association schemes and continuous-time quantum walks. Within this framework we develop specific algebraic machinery to tackle the uniform mixing problem. Our main algebraic result shows that if a graph has an irrational eigenvalue, then its transition matrix has at least one transcendental coordinate at all nonzero times. Next we study algebraic varieties related to uniform mixing to determine information about the coordinates of the corresponding transition matrices. Combining this with our main algebraic result we prove that uniform mixing does not occur on even cycles or prime cycles. However, we show that the probability distribution of a quantum walk on a prime cycle gets arbitrarily close to uniform. Finally we consider uniform mixing on Cayley graphs of elementary abelian groups. We utilize graph quotients to connect the mixing properties of these graphs to Hamming graphs. This enables us to find new results about uniform mixing on Cayley graphs of certain elementary abelian groups.

To date, there is a dearth of research examining the relationship between cognitive and affective aspects of prejudice and their ability to predict overt and covert homonegative behaviours. Research in this area is important as many gay men and lesbian women are the target of homonegative acts, and it is these behaviours that are important to understand. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis was to examine: 1) if modern homonegativity related to explicit affective measures; 2) if modern homonegativity related to implicit affective measures; 3) whether modern homonegativity related to implicit cognitive measures; 4) which measure was the best predictor of covert behaviour; and 5) which measure was the best predictor of overt behaviour. The four measures used as potential predictors were: 1) the Modern Homonegativity Scale (MHS), an explicit, cognitive measure; 2) the Implicit Association Test (IAT), an implicit, cognitive measure; 3) a feeling thermometer, an explicit, affective measure; and 4) facial electromyographic reactions, an implicit affective measure. This study consisted of three phases: in Phase I, 171 male undergraduates completed an online survey consisting of explicit measures of homonegativity. Fifty-five participants were recalled to participate in Phases II and III, which consisted of a behavioural component and the facial EMG and IAT components. Results indicated that modern homonegativity was associated with implicit cognitive measures as well as explicit measures of affect. However, modern homonegativity was not associated with implicit measures of affect. Additionally, positive affect in the form of cheek activity and negative affect toward images of couples kissing in the form of brow activity, measured through facial EMG, were associated with covert behaviour, with cheek activity being the better predictor. Brow activity toward images of gay couples kissing, indicative of negative affect, was the only measure associated with overt behaviour. Limitations and potential future directions for conducting research using implicit measures of homonegativity are discussed.

Abstract The importers of wood, sources from around the world through an exclusive of the way to import and export of wood materials to meet the needs of the Asian region, particularly in the domestic market. The wood materials used in public landscaping works are the most valuable and quantitative. Hence, many varieties of imported timbers which require the recommendation by the importer , and therefore the marketing strategy of timber importers often becomes the key decision to use wood materials, such as the United States imported Southern Yellow Pine and the Southeast Asia Pacific iron wood (Merbau), Borneo ironwood (Belian). However, due to the more mature trees being widely accepted by the users but some bad importers sell newly developed cheap replacement, resulting in shorter and the poor quality of life. And this resulted in lower market demand for timber, as a situation of economic theory, "bad money drives out good money". For these above reasons, there is a lack of coordinated organization to consolidate for such a long time in past one-stand-along critical competitive situation resulting in the decline of timber industry. Based on this, to integrate the business platform, the establishment of a national association should be implemented to avoid the price of damage a, build the coordination mechanism, and set up a set of standard testing procedures. Under the gradually declined timber industries, a strong sales promotion strategy should be developed to achieve the success in 1980s. The marketing promotion strategy of timber industry is developed and analyzed with marketing 4P tools. This study gathered the collective opinions of member companies towards the Association's recommendations and expectations. The survey was conducted collectively and analyzed. Finally, the conclusion and recommendations is proposed for guiding future marketing direction. Keywords: Timber Industry Association, marketing strategy, marketing communication

With the implementation of ¡§Representative Politics,¡¨ people¡¦s representatives have many out-of-control behaviors(i.e. throwing stuff, locking the door.... etc.). Such phenomena are frequently seen after Taiwan became a democratic country. Their disappointing behaviors distort people¡¦s thought on politicians. Therefore, people hope to amend the deficiency of ¡§Representative politics¡¨ by ¡§Referendum.¡¨ Referendum, based on ¡§Representative politics,¡¨ is the display of ¡§Direct democracy.¡¨ It is another way of displaying democracy when people¡¦s representatives fail to carry out people¡¦s will. Nowadays democratic countries around the world practice referendum to resolve important domestic issues, and so does Taiwan. The Legislative Yuan adopted ¡§Referendum law¡¨ in November 27th, 2003, which provides a basis for the people when practicing referendum. In November 15th, 2008, Kaohsiung Teacher Association held a referendum named ¡§small class referendum case of elementary and junior high school in Kaohsiung.¡¨ Based on the Referendum law and Local Referendum Self-government Act, it was the first eligible local referendum case proposed by local societies. Although it was finally vetoed because of a low turnout( lower than 50%), Kaohsiung City achieved much progress on the development of democracy. Using Literature Review Method and Inductive Method, this paper aims at researching case of local referendum, taking ¡§small class referendum case of elementary and junior high school in Kaohsiung ¡¨ for example. Through the basic principles of the administrative law, the administrative organization, the administrative limits of authority, the administrative relief and the administrative supervision, this paper analyzes issues related to the small class referendum case. Finally I conclude the development concept of Taiwan local referendum, providing some helpful advice for the government.