<p>Aggressive fiscal and monetary policies by governments of countries and central banks in developed markets could somehow push inflation to some very high level in the long run. Due to the decreasing of pension fund benefits and increasing inflation rate, pension companies are selling inflation-linked products to hedge against inflation risk. Such companies are seriously considering the possible effects of inflation volatility on their investment, and some of them tend to include inflationary allowances in the pension payment plan. In this dissertation we study the management of pension funds of the defined contribution type in the presence of inflation-recession. We study how the fund manager maximizes his fund&rsquo / s wealth when the salaries and stocks are affected by inflation. In this regard, we consider the case of a pension company which invests in a stock, inflation-linked bonds and a money market account, while basing its investment on the contribution of the plan member. We use a benchmarking approach and martingale methods to compute an optimal strategy which maximizes the fund wealth.</p>

The main objective of this research is the study of the magnetization of ferromagnetic spheres in the presence of external magnetic fields. The exact analytical solutions derived in this thesis are benchmark solutions, valuable in testing the correctness and accuracy of various approximate models and numerical methods. The total scalar magnetic potential outside the spheres, related to the magnetic field intensity, is obtained by the superposition of the potentials due to all spheres and the potential corresponding to the external field. The translational addition theorems for scalar Laplacian functions are used to solve boundary value by imposing exact boundary conditions. The scalar magnetic potential inside each sphere, related to the magnetic flux density, also satisfies the Laplace equation, which is solved by imposing the boundary conditions known from the solution of the outside field. Finally, the expressions derived are used to generate numerical results of controllable accuracy for field quantities.

This document gives an overview of the proposed MSc study. The main goal of the study is to model the cases listed in the code benchmark study of the International Atomic Energy Agency CRP–6 fuel performance study (Verfondern & Lee, 2005). The platform that will be employed is the GETTER code (Keshaw & van der Merwe, 2006). GETTER was used at PBMR for the release calculations of metallic and some non–metallic long–lived fission products. GETTER calculates the transport of fission products from their point of fission to release from the fuel surface taking into account gas precursors and activation products. Results show that for certain experiments the codes correspond very well with the experimental data whilst in others there are orders of magnitude differences. It can be seen that very similar behaviour is observed in all codes. Improvements are needed in updating the strontium diffusion coefficient and in understanding, on a deeper level, the transport of silver in TRISO particles and how it deviates from simple diffusion models. / Thesis (M.Sc. Engineering Sciences (Nuclear Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

This document gives an overview of the proposed MSc study. The main goal of the study is to model the cases listed in the code benchmark study of the International Atomic Energy Agency CRP–6 fuel performance study (Verfondern & Lee, 2005). The platform that will be employed is the GETTER code (Keshaw & van der Merwe, 2006). GETTER was used at PBMR for the release calculations of metallic and some non–metallic long–lived fission products. GETTER calculates the transport of fission products from their point of fission to release from the fuel surface taking into account gas precursors and activation products. Results show that for certain experiments the codes correspond very well with the experimental data whilst in others there are orders of magnitude differences. It can be seen that very similar behaviour is observed in all codes. Improvements are needed in updating the strontium diffusion coefficient and in understanding, on a deeper level, the transport of silver in TRISO particles and how it deviates from simple diffusion models. / Thesis (M.Sc. Engineering Sciences (Nuclear Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

This thesis presents a whole-core benchmark of the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) using multiple transport methods. The core specifications were taken directly from the Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR) submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the reactor was modeled in a stylized manner while maintaining full heterogeneity at the pin and assembly level. The geometry and material specifications are given as well as problem-specific cross sections for 2, 4, and 8 energy group calculations. Cross sections were generated using HELIOS, a lattice depletion code based on the Collision Probability Method (CPM). The multi-group cross sections were utilized in the reference calculation, COMET calculation, and response function generation. The reference solution was obtained via an MCNP model identical to the one implemented in COMET. Specific steps towards constructing and running a COMET calculation are outlined. Detailed results including assembly eigenvalues, core eigenvalues, and pin fission densities are presented.

This thesis presents a method for enhancing performance of Storage Class Memory File System (SCMFS) and an implementation of SCMFS on Android platform. It focuses on analyzing performance influencing factors of memory file systems and the differences in implementation of SCMFS on Android and Linux kernels. SCMFS allocates memory pages as file blocks and employs virtual memory addresses as file block addresses. SCMFS utilizes processor's memory management unit and TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) during file accesses. TLB is an expensive resource and has a limited number of entries to cache virtual to physical address translations. TLB miss results in expensive page walks through memory page table. Thus TLB misses play an important role in determining SCMFS performance. In this thesis, SCMFS is designed to support both 4KB and 2MB page sizes in order to reduce TLB misses and to avoid significant internal fragmentation. By comparing SCMFS with YAFFS2 and EXT4 using popular benchmarks, both advantages and disadvantages of SCMFS huge-page version and small-page version are revealed. In the second part of this thesis, an implementation of SCMFS on Android platform is presented. At the time of working on this research project, Android kernel was not merged into Linux kernel yet. Two main changes of SCMFS kernel code: memory zoning and inode functions, are made to be compatible with Android kernel. AndroSH, a file system benchmark for SCMFS on Android, is developed based on shell script. Evaluations are made from three perspectives to compare SCMFS with YAFFS2 and EXT4: I/O throughput, user data access latency, and application execution latency. SCMFS shows a performance advantage because of its small instruction footprint and its pre-allocation mechanism. However, the singly linked list used by SCMFS to store subdirectories is less efficient than HTree index used by EXT4. The future work can improve lookup efficiency of SCMFS.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1985. / Bibliography: leaves 180-187. / Photocopy. / xiv, 187 leaves, bound ill., maps 29 cm

Thesis (doctoral)--Techn. University, Darmstadt, 2005.

Techn. University, Diss., 2004--Berlin.

Aim: To investigate how the University of Gävle conducts relationship with graduate students and retains graduate students and creates loyalty. This study explores the importance of relationship marketing theories that intends to be applied in higher education through alumni programs and services. University of Gävle and Stockholm University will be compared in benchmarking to determine in what ways the alumni offices create relationships to retain and create loyalty to alumni students.  Method: A qualitative research was conducted on the University of Gävle and Stockholm University in Sweden for this study, which included interviews with the relation officers on this subject. Result &amp; Conclusions: It was evident that the University of Gävle alumni actually exist as titles, and there is no certain relationship strategy, however, only they are NOT actively operational. The study identified that the University of Gävle was not using a certain strategy to create lasting relationship, loyalty and increase prospective students. The study revealed the importance of relationship marketing strategy to effectively administrate the progress in establishing relationship with the alumni, to increase the prospective international students, to keep a regular track and communications with alumni. Suggestions for future research: This study focused on two universities, further research could be conducted to examine the relationship marketing with alumni students and investigate students’ relationship with university in other countries and institutions.