The purpose of this research project was to examine theories of learning, theories of teaching, and theories of listening comprehension with a view to developing and testing a computer-enhanced listening comprehension system for English as a Foreign Language within the Thai university system. In addition to carrying out an in-depth literature review, factors contributing to difficulties in the listening process were also carefully examined in order to build a sound foundation for dealing with listening comprehension. A brief history and analysis of Computer Assisted Language Learning were presented together with a review of some computer programs with the aim of determining their characteristics. An Individualized CELL Listening Comprehension Program was then developed on the basis of four theoretical frameworks: the Constructivist approach, the need to use authentic spoken passages, reduction of cognitive load and response to learner differences. The system was then used by twenty students of Suranaree University of Technology (SUT), Thailand for a period of fifteen weeks. Students were volunteers from different proficiency levels. SUT midterm and final examinations were employed, in part, to observe the effect of the program on proficiency levels. The SUT examinations, which were usually in a multiple-choice format, tested students on minor details through short, simple conversations. These tests might not fit entirely within best practice for listening but they seem to be a common way of measuring listening development in several educational contexts. Pretests and posttests examining global ideas and specific details in written and multiple-choice formats were then developed so as to provide a more accurate gauge of improvement in listening skills. Log files were kept in order to scrutinize in detail students� interactions with the system. Questionnaire and interview techniques were applied to seek out students� attitudes towards the program. The results revealed that the participants performed better than their peers in the same proficiency levels in SUT midterm and final examinations although the difference was not at a statistically significant level. However, posttest scores were better than those of pretest at a statistically significant level in most aspects except in case of the global ideas. The log files revealed that all students tended to focus on the word level by attempting to understand and decode every word in the transcriptions. This fixation is likely to explain the low global ideas scores. Analysis was complicated by the fact that some students were not able to use the program frequently enough, usually because of unexpectedly heavy schedules. However, the data extracted through questionnaires and interviews showed that most students demonstrated a positive attitude towards the various features of the program and felt that use of the program had improved their listening skills. In addition to findings relating to the development of listening comprehension, the study revealed that the majority of students felt that they did not think listening comprehension and, more generally the study of English, was sufficiently important to spend time on. This interesting but shocking discovery needs to be attended to immediately as it may have a strong effect on how Thai students prioritize their learning of English, and how this may impact on the levels of proficiency which they might subsequently attain.

本研究透過性別的觀點，以大專院校之女學生為例，探討女生性受到電話性騷擾侵害之經驗，包括女性如何去認定電話性騷擾，受到電話性騷擾時的反應方式、如何解決，非受害者對於電話性騷擾的態度，以及一個組織（校方）在面臨其成員（學生）受此侵害時如何因應。本研究透過對受害女同學的訪談，以及bbs之文章，做為研究分析的基本資訊。 女性所認定電話性騷擾的形式主要分為二大類：一是內容與性(sexuality)有關，另一類則是內容與性無關，主要是性別(gender)關係的影響。電話性騷擾雖然沒有對女性造成直接的身體傷害，但許多女性卻因此而感到相當恐懼，嚴重者甚至需要改變日常生活作息；女性在電話性騷擾事件中所受到的傷害，不僅只來自於接到電話的當時，更因事後遭受他人對她遭受此事件的態度而蒙受二度傷害，這樣的二度傷害常來自於大眾對電話性騷擾的迷思，因此如何使得電話性騷擾受到重視，並避免使受害女害再受到二度傷害，破除迷私是相當重要之事。另外由學校對騷擾事件的處理過程中，可以看到校方組織與學生對於電話性騷擾事件認知的差異，使得處理方式不但未讓學生感到滿意，甚至有憤怒的情緒產生，因此處理者在面臨處理此類事件時須思考如何能夠照顧到被害者的情緒。 由於電話性騷擾是性別權力不平等所造成的問題，要保護女性免於電話性騷擾的侵害，應是教導女性提昇她的主體性，要不再是以減低風險的方式來使女性免於受到侵害，減低風險的解決方式所付出的代價就是女性的很多自由或是主體性就被消失掉，為了提昇女性在此方面的主體性，再策略上的做法可以透過公開、廣泛的討論和教育，使女性了解電話性騷擾的本質，讓女性在面臨電話性騷擾時能夠勇敢沉著地理解騷擾者的言語，而且也能跨出社會所貸給她的種種桎棝，以她自己為主體來選擇以何種方式來回應騷擾者，不再只是形式上的積極而已。

Användandet av olika incitamentsprogram och aktierelaterade ersättningar i synnerhet har ökat sen 80-talet. Aktierelaterade ersättningsprogram används för att uppmuntra persona-len att aktivt deltaga för att förbättra företagets resultat. Ersättningarna i dessa program be-står antingen av köpotioner, teckningsoptioner, syntetiska optioner eller konvertibler. Sedan den 1 januari 2005 gäller de nya redovisningsreglerna IFRS 2. Dessa regler styr redo-visningen av aktierelaterade ersättningar. IFRS 2 kräver att alla företag noterade på någon börs inom EU kostnadsför dessa ersättningar i resultaträkningen. Innan implementeringen av de nya reglerna räckte det med att ta upp dessa ersättningar i notform. IFRS 2 kräver att dessa regler retroaktivt skall användas för att påvisa dess effekter på 2004 års resultaträk-ning. Anledningen till detta är att potentiella investerare skall ha möjlighet att kunna jämfö-ra resultaträkningar från olika år. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka vilka effekter företagen på den svenska A-listan skul-le få erfara om IFRS 2 var implementerad redan år 2004. Vidare ämnar vi att beskriva hur aktierelaterade ersättningsprogram används och hur detta påverkar företagen. Uppsatsen är genomförd med en kvantitativ ansats och har baserats på sekundärdata från företagens årsrapporter. Vårt urval är det samma som totalpopulationen på den svenska A-listan. De slutsatser som vi kunnat dra i vår uppsats är att majoriteten av de noterade företagen på A-listan använder någon form av aktierelaterade ersättningsprogram. Den mest använda optionstypen är teckningsoptioner. I medel skulle resultatet minskat med 0,89 procent på grund av IFRS 2. Utspädningseffekten som orsakats av aktierelaterade ersättningar var i medel 0,54 procent. Företagen på A-listan använder i huvudsak Black & Scholes-modellen vid värdering av de aktierelaterade ersättningsprogrammen. Vidare indikerar resultatet av vår studie att företag som använder köpoptioner skulle ha haft mest negativ resultatpåver-kan på grund av IFRS 2. En annan intressant slutsats är att större företag tenderar att in-volvera alla anställda i sina aktieoptionsprogram medan mindre bolag föredrar att rikta des-sa aktierelaterade ersättningar endast till chefer och ledning. / The use of incitement programs and share-based programs in particular has increased since the 1980`s. These share-based programs are used to encourage the employees to actively participate in increasing the company’s result. The payment in these share-based compen-sations either is; call options, subscription options, synthetic options or convertibles. From January 1 2005, the new accounting regulation IFRS 2 regarding share-based pay-ments are implemented. The IFRS 2 demands all companies noted on a stock exchange in the European Union to account for the share-based payments and expense these in the in-come statement. Before this implementation, these payments only had to be described in a disclosed form. However for the year 2004, the effects due to the IFRS 2 have to be taken into consideration in the income statement. The reason for this is that potential investors must have the possibility to compare the financial statements between different time peri-ods. The purpose with thesis is to cover what effects the companies’ on the Swedish A-list should have had if the IFRS 2 were implemented already the year 2004. Secondly, the aim is to cover and describe the utilization of share-based programs among these companies and to explain how they are affected. The thesis is conducted through a quantitative approach and based on secondary data from annual reports of the companies’. Our selection is the total population on the Swedish A-list. The conclusions made in our thesis are that the majority of the A-listed companies’ use some kind of share-based programs. The most frequently used option type is the subscrip-tion option. On average, the decrease in result was 0,89 percent due to IFRS 2. On average the dilution effect due to the use of share-based programs decreased the result per share by 0,54 percent. The companies on the A-list use the Black & Scholes formula to valuate the share-based payments. Our study also indicates that the companies using call options should have experienced the greatest result decrease due to the IFRS 2. Another interesting conclusion is that the larger companies in our study are most likely to involve all the em-ployees’ in the share-based programs while the smaller companies prefer to only involve executives and other leading personnel.

The objective of this study is to implement a Java applet for calculating Bermudan/American-Asian call option prices and to obtain their respective optimal exercise strategies. Additionally, the study presents a computational time analysis and the effect of the variables on the option price.

Next generation heterogeneous wireless networks are expected to interwork with Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructures. Conventional network services operate like silos in that a specific set of services are offered over a specific type of access network. As access networks evolve to provide IP-based packet access, it becomes attractive to break these “service silos” by offering a converged set of IP-based services to users who may access these services using a number of alternative access networks. This trend has started with third generation cellular mobile networks, which have standardized on the use of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to manage user access to a wide variety of multimedia services over the mobile Internet, while facilitating interworking of heterogeneous wireless and landline access networks. The future users of communication systems will subscribe to both IP-based and Circuit Switched (CS) based services and in the foreseeable future a single database that handles user profiles across all domains will be required. Home Subscriber Server (HSS) as an evolved version of Home Location Register (HLR) is one of the key components of IMS. In deploying HSS as a central repository database, in a fully overlapped heterogeneous network setting, changes of access mode are very frequent and conveying this information to HSS imposes excessive signaling load and delay. In our proposed scheme we introduce an Interface Agent (IA) for each location area that caches the location and information about the access mode through which a user can be reached. This method results in significant amount of savings in signaling cost and better delay performance. The existing call delivery approaches in cellular networks may not be well suited for future communication systems because they suffer from unnecessary usage of network resources for call attempts that may fail which adds to excessive signaling delays and queuing costs. Reducing the number of queries and retrievals from the database will have a significant impact on the network performance. We present a new scheme based on Reverse Virtual Call setup (RVC) as a solution to the call delivery problem in heterogeneous wireless networks and evaluate the performance of this framework.

The growing demand for UI test automation has triggered the development of many tools. Researchers and developers have been continuously working to further improvise the existing approaches. If we look at GUI test evolution we can observe a clear progress from manual testing towards complete automation. Numerous approaches have been made to automate the GUI testing process. Record and playback tools, key-word driven methodologies, event flow exploration strategies, model based approaches are continuously evolving with higher level of automation. Similarly, new ideas and strategies to make these tests efficient are also emerging. Optimization of this resource consuming activity is another very important aspect in this area.  Dependencies between different tests can create deadlock scenarios, while running larger test suites. A concept of Ordered Test Suite can be used to cope with such dependencies. Following the Model Driven Architecture initiative by Object Management Group, a new global trend of Model Driven Engineering is creating a big sensation in the field of model based software development. Using the same principle, studies have also been made to automatically generate tests from models. Behavioral models can be made using the model driven approaches and these models can be analyzed to generate tests automatically. This master thesis addresses different approaches made for Graphical User Interface test automation, some optimization issues and solutions, a case study done at a software company to automate User Interface testing and a model driven approach for automatic test case generation.

This essay will focus on video and computer game violence. We hope to uncover, with the help of semiotics, according to Barthes design, if this kind of violence can have a negative effect on youth and adolescents. How intense is the violence and how graphic is it?. PEGI is the European measurement for game age limits. In our essay we will analyze five different games, each game in its own PEGI-value, except two games that share the limit of 18+ were we instead will try to uncover what differences in the two games that puts them on the same age limit. The games we will be investigating are “Pokemon Black Version”, “Megaman X: Command Missions”, “World of Warcraft Cataclysm”, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” and “Gears of War 2”, “Gears of War 2” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops” are the games which shares the age limit of 18+. With the help of our semiotic findings and various studies from researchers C A. Anderson, Jesper Juul and Clive Thompson we hope to be able to categorize the different types of violence in said games, according to the amount of violence, how intense it is, the amount of blood and death, how realistic the violence is and what kind of messages the different games contains and compare our findings to PEGI´s own guidelines.

In this study, four aspects of learner autonomy within the context of CALL were investigated so as to find out whether CALL environments contribute to the development of learner autonomy. Two groups of students, in total 48 preparatory school students, at intermediate level in the Department of Foreign Languages at a private university in Ankara were chosen to take part in the study. First&rsquo / the students&rsquo / language learning strategy use was explored. Then, only one group of students was given a five-week language learning strategy training through CALL. During the training, their motivation levels, willingness to take responsibility for learning and involvement in out-of-class studies were scrutinized. In order to reach the aforementioned goals, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected by the help of questionnaires, semi-structured face-to-face interviews, observations, e-learning diaries kept by the strategy training group and a five-week language learning strategy training through CALL. In order to reach the aim of the study, the data were collected in the form of pre-test and post-test for the language learning strategies of the learners from both groups to be analyzed and evaluated. Besides, both groups were observed by the instructors in order to address motivation, taking responsibility for learning and engaging in out-of-class study. However, only the students in one group were given a five-week language learning strategy training through CALL, and they were interviewed before and after the training and they kept e-learning diaries. The findings indicated that the five-week language learning strategy training helped the students in the strategy training group to improve their use of language learning strategies as well as increasing their motivation, encouraging them to take responsibility for their learning and engage in out-of-class activities. However, when compared to the students in the strategy training group, the students who did not get the five-week language learning strategy training through CALL did not show many uses of language learning strategies, high motivation levels, willingness to take responsibility and engage in out-of-class activities. Since the main aim of this study was to foster learner autonomy by the help of CALL, this study attempted to suggest ways to help learners to use language learning strategies, increase their motivation, take responsibility for learning and engage in out-of-class. Keywords: CALL, learner autonomy, learning strategies, motivation, taking responsibility, out-of-class study, language learning

Today, telecommunication is improving rapidly. People are online anywhere anytime. Due to increasing demand in communication, wireless technologies are progressing quickly trying to provide more services in a wide range. In order to address mobility and connectivity requirements of users in wide areas, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax) has been introduced as a forth generation telecommunication technology. Wimax, which is also called Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), is based on IEEE 802.16 standard where a Base Station (BS) provides last mile broadband wireless access to the end users known as Mobile Stations (MS). However, in places where high constructions exist, the signal rate between MS and BS decreases or even the signal can be lost completely due to shadow fading. As a response to this issue, recently an intermediate node specification, namely Relay Station, has been defined in IEEE 802.16j standard for relaying, which provides both throughput enhancement and coverage extension. However, this update has introduced a new problem / call admission control in non-transparent relay networks that support coverage extension. In this thesis, a Quality of Service (QoS) aware dynamic admission control algorithm for IEEE 802.16j non-transparent relay networks is introduced. Our objectives are admitting more service flows, utilizing the bandwidth, giving individual control to each relay station (RS) on call acceptance and rejection, and finally not affecting ongoing service flow quality in an RS due to the dense population of service flows in other RSs. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other existing call admission control algorithms. Moreover, this algorithm can be interpreted as pioneer call admission control algorithm in IEEE 802.16j non-transparent networks.

For the past half a century, there has been progressive development in corporate finance theories, and among these, corporate financial decisions have been attracting the attention of outsiders. As the outsiders¡¦ learning process of the firm¡¦s private information determines the firm¡¦s value, managers who are concerned with outsiders¡¦ perceptions of their firms try to enhance their firms¡¦ short-term reputation through their financial decisions. However, up to this date, few reputation models have been applied to predict these financial decisions. Three corporate finance issues are involved to identify the reputation effects on corporate finance: (1) convertible bond call policies, (2) IPO decisions and activities, and (3) corporate financing policies. As for the first issue, this study constructs a two-period reputation model of a convertible bond call policy. This model concludes that in equilibrium, a firm with bad management quality and a bad reputation chooses to call, while a firm with good management quality or of a good reputation builds up it reputation by not calling the convertible bonds. This is consistent with the signaling theory proposed by Harris and Raviv (1985). However, the reputation model here identifies the call policy as a reputation-building mechanism rather than being only a signaling role, and suggests that the reputation rents resolve the discrepancies of the stock¡¦s post-call price performance. As for the IPO decisions and activities, this study performs another reputation model to analyze a firm¡¦s reputation effects on IPO activities, especially on the decision to go public. The results yield that a firm¡¦s reputation does affect its decision to go public. By listing equities publicly, firms with good management quality and a solid past would anticipate enhancing their reputations, and those with a poor past would anticipate building up good names. Furthermore, good reputation firms with bad management quality would anticipate maintaining their reputations by going public. On the other hand, it is found that good firms over-invest in building up their reputations and bad firms take advantage of their reputations to go public. Both result in firms¡¦ over-going public and IPO mispricing. This constitutes an alternative interpretation on IPOs¡¦ long-run underperformance and the sharp decline of the survival rate. As for the corporate financing policies, the other reputation model is constructed by taking both determinants, the costs of financial distress as well as the firm¡¦s reputation into consideration. The results show that good management quality firms with good reputations enjoy their financial flexibility between debt and equity. Bad management quality firms take advantage of their good names to issue equities, which leads to over investment. Good management firms lose their financial accesses due to bad reputations, which lead to under investment. Reputations would screen the bad management quality firms with bad reputations off the market. This dissertation concludes that reputations indeed affect the three selected corporate financial decisions and suggests further plow on more corporate finance issues.