A product pair is two products with similar functionality that satisfy the same high level need but are different by design. The goal of this research is to apply association rule-based learning to product pairs and develop universal design rules to be used during the conceptual design phase. The Apriori algorithm produced 1,023 association rules with input parameters of 70% minimum confidence and 0.5% minimum support levels. These rules were down-selected based on the prescribed rule format of: (Function, Typical User Activity) ? (Change, Universal User Activity). In other words, for a given product function and user activity, the rules suggest a design change and new user activity for a more universal product. This research presents 29 universal design rules to be used during the conceptual design stage. These universal design rules suggest a parametric, morphological, functional, or no design change is needed for a given user activity and product function. No design change rules confirm our intuition and also prevent inefficient design efforts. A parametric design change is suggested for actionfunction elements involving find hand use to manipulate a product. Morphological design changes are proposed to solve actionfunction elements in a slightly more complex manner without adding or subtracting overall functionality. For example, converting human energy to mechanical energy with the upper body opposed to the lower body or actuating fluid flow with motion sensors instead of manual knobs. The majority of the recommended functional changes involve automating a product to make it more universal which might not be apparently obvious to designers during conceptual design.

Polyfluorene (PF) and its derivates as well-known fluorescent materials are promising materials in optoelectronic applications due to their high quantum yields in the solid state. Nevertheless, the easy chain inter-action in PFs to result in the unfavorable associations (aggregate and excimer) are generally considered to be detrimental to the emission efficiency in the concentrated solid state and/or at high temperatures. In the study, restraining the extent of associations is therefore by embedding fluorene-based alternative and block copolymers in crosslinked network as matrix. Firstly, alternative copolymers with fluorene connected by anthracene (or pyridine or fluorene) ring were prepared through Suzuki coupling. In this way, the steric hindrance between the o-hydrogens in the neighboring aromatic ring causes the twisting of the constructed polymer chain and the resulting twisting chain conformation keeps the polymer chains from the unfavorable inter-chain interactions and reduces the extent of the association. Secondly, the alternative fluorene-anthracene copolymer (a-PFA) from the first approach can be further chemically formulated to obtain a triblock copolymer with the central a-PFA rod block connected by two flexible poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) segments. In this way, the two flexible PMMA chains serve as spatial isolator to keep the central PFA rod from approaching each other and a reduced extent of association is expected for this block polymer of b-PMMA-PFA. Thirdly, all the alternative and block copolymers cited above were immersed in the curable liquid methyl metharcylate (MMA)/ditrimethylolproanetetracrylate (DTTPT) monomer mixtures and photo-irradiated to obtain composites with the fluorescent polymers immersed in the cured crosslinked network. The chain morphology and thus the degree of associations will be successfully frozen by the immobilized crosslinked network. For systems before and after photo-irradiation, the degree of aggregation was evaluated by Uv-vis absorption, photoluminescent (PL) and PL excitation spectroscopy. Polymer concentration was found to be important factor in controlling the degree of aggregation and was discussed in this study. In addition, the cured solid composites after high-temperature annealing were studied and compared with pure PFs to evaluate the effectiveness of this crosslinking strategy in restraining the extent of aggregation. In most cases, quantum yields (£XPLs) also were measured to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy.

This study aims to explore the current operation, its effects and problems faced by the Sports Teams of public elementary schools in Kaohsiung. With the adoption of questionnaire, the study has investigated the opinions of the student's affair directors, sports group leaders, guiding coaches (the teachers) and the full-time coaches who have practically participated in the operation of sports teams of public elementary schools. The research tool of the study is ¡§A Questionnaire of Current Operation and Problems Faced by the Sports Teams of Public Elementary Schools in Kaohsiung.¡¨ There are 243 copies (from 81 schools) of the questionnaire have been retrieved. The retrieving percentage is 93.1. Through analyzing the statistical materials obtaining from the questionnaire, the following conclusions are made: 1. Most operators of the sports teams are male graduated from non-sports colleges. 2. In average, each school has 3.2 teams of different events with the track and field teams mostly. 3. The primary function of parents' support association is to increase the funds and resources for the sports teams. 4. Most of the guiding coaches are male with interest or specialty in sport. 5. Most of the team members are the voluntary students from different classes. 6. Most of the sports teams have training plans. 7. Most of the schools pay much attention to the counseling and the daily behaviors of team members. 8. The period of service of the sports team leader shows obvious relevance with the sports performance of the team. 9. The effects of carrying on the sports teams are outstanding. 10. Lack of inducement is the primary reason why the teachers will not to take the work of directing the sports teams. According to the research results and conclusions, the study offers suggestions separately to the educational administration institutes, the administrative units of school and future research.

To detect dependence among variables is an essential task in many scientific investigations. In this study we propose a new measure of association, the coefficient of intrinsic dependence (CID), which takes value in [0,1] and faithfully reflects the full range of dependence for two random variables. The CID is free of distributional and functional assumptions. It can be easily implemented and extended to multivariate situations. Traditionally, the correlation coefficient is the preferred measure of association. However, it's effectiveness is considerably compromised when the random variables are not normally distributed. Besides, the interpretation of the correlation coefficient is difficult when the data are categorical. By contrast, the CID is free of these problems. In our simulation studies, we find that the ability of the CID in differentiating different levels of dependence remains robust across different data types (categorical or continuous) and model features (linear or curvilinear). Also, the CID is particularly effective when the dependence is strong, making it a powerful tool for variable selection. As an illustration, the CID is applied to variable selection in two aspects: classification and prediction. The analysis of actual data from a study of breast cancer gene expression is included. For the classification problem, we identify a pair of genes that best classify a patient's prognosis signature, and for the prediction problem, we identify a pair of genes that best relates to the expression of a specific gene.

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.

In the research of focus on intonation languages, it is generally assumed that the stress not only signals the focus but also contributes to the different truth condition in sentences containing focus particle only. This phenomenon is known as ¡¥association with focus¡¦ (Jackendoff, 1972; Rooth, 1985, 1992, among others). However, this phenomenon has not been comprehensively studied in tonal languages such as Chinese. To further investigate whether the stress signals the focus in triadic sentences with zhi ¡¥only¡¦ and whether there is a preferred default focus interpretation, the study probes into the issue with respect to younger participants, i.e., teenagers in junior high schools. The study contains triadic sentences such as dative construction, double object construction and ba construction. Participants were asked to choose the focus which zhi ¡¥only¡¦ is associated with in a multiple choice questionnaire after the stories and test sentences were shown by a powerpoint file in the computer. There were three experiments in this study. In Experiment 1, 116 participants in the regular classes judged a contrastive stress awareness task and a modified Truth Value Judgment (TVJ) Task. Experiment 2 (TVJ task only) followed Experiment 1 except for using unfamiliar Cartoon figures. Experiment 3 (the contrastive stress awareness task and the TVJ task) reduplicated Experiment 2 in English. The participants in Experiment 2 and 3 were the same 30 participants in the gifted class. The results, first, further confirmed that even though Chinese teenagers were aware of the contrastive stress, they did not use it for disambiguating sentences with zhi ¡¥only¡¦ in both Chinese and English. Second, the participants tended not to choose the default wide VP focus but narrow focus. However, contrary to the default narrow DO focus that Chinese adult speakers preferred, the teenager participants favored the narrow focus which usually falls on the neutral stress (sentence-final) position. The phenomenon is even more salient in ba construction. Third, in English, contrastive stress was not used for disambiguation although they were aware of the stress. The interpretation of English focus particle only was similar to that of Chinese, so it was ascribed to L1 transfer.

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The standard of Wireless Metropolis Area Network, IEEE 802.16e, has mechanisms beyond the static standard, IEEE 802.16d, to cope with mobile nodes. One of the mechanisms is the handover procedure. Mobile node scanning of neighbor BSs in the IEEE 802.16e handover procedure has a procedure: Association. Association is an initial ranging procedure. The transmission is discontinued when a mobile node is scanning of neighbor BSs. Because initial ranging procedure is defined from the static standard, the delay time of association becomes a bottleneck of handover. One of the researches, NFHO (Network-assisted Fast Handover), proposes a method -¡¨Fast Association¡¨ to shorten the scanning time. In the method, the serving BS coordinates neighbor stations the exactly synchronization time for mobile node transmission of the initial ranging code. Another method of NFHO is to add an equipment, CSSC (Convergence Sublayer Switch Center). CSSC stores and broadcasts the data packets which are discontinued between handover. The metric proposed in this thesis called RAPHO (Rapid Association and Prediction-assisted Handover) which can shorten much scanning discontinued time. In one part of RAPHO, the serving BS takes the role of the mobile node to send the initial ranging code; in another part, the serving BS predicts the possible target BSs list. Because the mobile node doesn¡¦t participate in association and the number of scanning neighbor BSs is decreased, the improving scanning delay time of RAPHO is better than that of NFHO. According to the result of simulation, the total delay time (the scanning time plus the handover time) of RAPHO is better than that of NFHO.

In Taiwan, the clan associations have some leverage over local affairs, including elections of legislator, county mayor, county congressman, township heads, town heads and town councilman, and so on. Some critics observe that the clan associations have far more significant influence than political party in some counties such as Tao-yuan, Hsin-chu, etc. This thesis aims to explore the interaction between local faction and clan association in Taiwan through analysis on several cases about Tao-yuan county. The author will focus on the social network and bring forward the following assumptions: (1) politicians influence the result of an election by involving themselves in local faction; (2) politicians influence the result of an election by involving themselves in clan association; (3) local faction forms an alliance with clan association to influence the result of an election. In sum, the interactive patterns between local faction and clan association can be divided into four categories: (1) clan faction, i.e. local faction comprised primarily of members of clan association; (2) clan faction with some other clan ; (3) non-clan faction, i.e. local faction comprised primarily not of members of clan association; (4) local faction unrelated to any clan association. The author attempts to explain the following aspects: first of all, how local faction develops cooperation relationship with clan association in various elections in Tao-yuan county; secondly, the alliance between local faction and clan association will be a short-term or long-term relationship; furthermore, if clan association will be in the cooperative process dwindled into factious clubs. Finally, what kind of interest exchanges will exist between local faction and clan association? The major findings of this study were as the following: (1) local faction develops a long-term cooperation relationship with clan association in various elections in order to win; (2) local factions win over clan associations by providing service and fellowship; (3) clan association has tendency to dwindle into factious clubs.

<p>Metabolic syndrome is taking epidemic proportions, especially in developed countries. Each risk factor component of the syndrome independently increases the risk of developing coronary artery disease. The risk factors are obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, diabetes type 2, insulin resistance, and microalbuminuria. Nuclear receptors is a family of receptors that has recently received a lot of attention due to their possible involvement in metabolic syndrome. Putting the receptors into context with their co-factors and ligands may reveal therapeutic targets not found by studying the receptors alone. Therefore, in this thesis, interactions between genes in nuclear receptor pathways were analysed with the goal of investigating if these interactions can supply leads to biomarkers for metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome donor gene expression data from the BioExpressä, database was analysed with the APRIORI algorithm (Agrawal et al. 1993) for generating and mining association rules. No association rules were found to function as biomarkers for metabolic syndrome, but the resulting rules show that the data mining technique successfully found associations between genes in signaling pathways.</p>