This research examines age differences in the use and value of memory compensation strategies for everyday memory tasks. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on memory compensation and aging. According to Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) model, older adults may be more likely than younger adults to take advantage of memory compensation strategies when they are available. Chapter 2 describes a diary study in which older and younger participants rated the extent to which they use compensation strategies in everyday life and reported everyday memory errors over the course of a week. Older adults reported fewer memory errors than younger adults and more use of memory aids. However, use of memory aids was unrelated to frequency of memory errors in either age group. Chapter 3 reports a laboratory experiment on the use of memory aids for recalling phone messages. Participants listened to phone messages while simultaneously completing a seating chart, and were asked to report the content of the messages to the experimenter. Participants were either allowed to use a memory aid for the phone message task, or not. Older participants reported using compensation strategies more frequently in everyday life, but they were no more likely than younger participants to search for or employ an aid in the phone message task. Using a memory aid was differentially beneficial, improving performance more for older than younger participants. In Chapter 4, participants completed two phone message recall and two seating plan tasks. Participants were encouraged to use whatever in the room that they might find helpful. On one round of tasks a pen was tied to a clipboard and participants could use it to write down the phone messages. On the other round no pen was available. The order of the trials was counterbalanced across participants. This design examined the calibration between participants’ use of memory aids and their performance on the recall task – whether participants’ performance on the first trial predicted their subsequent use of memory aids, and whether participants who chose to use a memory aid when it was available on the first trial performed particularly poorly on the second trial when no aid was present. As in Study 1, older adults reported using memory aids more frequently in everyday life but age was unassociated with whether or not participants used the pen when one was available. There was little evidence of calibration. Participants’ memory performance on an initial trial had little impact on their use of a memory aid on a subsequent trial. Participants who used a memory aid on the first trial actually recalled more phone message details on the second trial (without the aid) than those who did not. This was true for both age groups. Chapter 5 reflects on older and younger adults self-reported and observed uses of memory compensation strategies. Across all 3 studies older adults reported using external memory aids more frequently in everyday life. However, contrary to the SOC model, in Studies 2 and 3 there were no age differences in older and younger adults’ use of a pen to write down phone messages on the lab task. Nor was participants’ choice to use the memory aid associated with their unaided performance on the task. These results do not support the prediction derived from SOC that older adults use compensation strategies more frequently or more sensitively than younger adults. However, using the memory did improve performance on the task more for older than for younger adults. These results support the hypothesis that external memory aids are a particularly valuable strategy for older adults and suggest the need to better understand why some individuals engage in compensation use and others do not.

The volume of cargo flowing through todays transportation system is growing at an ever increasing rate. Recent studies show that 90% of all international cargo that enters the United States flows through our vast seaport system. When this cargo enters the US, time is of the essence to quickly obtain and verify its identity, screen it against an ever increasingly wide variety of security concerns, and ultimately correctly direct the cargo towards its final destination. Over the past few years, new port and container security initiatives and regulations have generated huge interest in the need for accurate real-time identification and tracking of incoming and outgoing traffic of vehicles and cargo. On the contrary, the manually intensive identification and tracking processes, typically employed today, are inherently both inefficient and inadequate, and can be seen as a possible enabling factor for potential threats to our ports and therefore our national security. The contradiction between current and required processes coupled to the correlation with accelerated growth in container traffic, has clearly identified the need for a solution. One heavily researched option is the utilization of video based systems implementing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processes for automatically extracting the unique container identification code to expedite the flow of cargo through various points in the seaport. The actual current process of how this occurs along with the opportunities and challenges for adding such a technological solution will be investigated in great detail. This thesis will investigate the feasibility of application of motion compensation algorithms as an enhancement to OCR systems specifically designed to address the challenges of OCR of cargo containers in a seaport environment. This motion compensation could offer a cost effective alternative to the sophisticated hardware systems currently being offered to US ports.

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Taiwan is located in a strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of maritime shipping. With the passage of some 400 vessels in its coastal waters, the country is regarded as one of the high risk areas of oil spill. In early 2001, the Greek MV Amorgos grounded in Kenting and caused severe damage to the local marine ecosystem. However, the law suit failed to obtain a just compensation on the loss of coral reed recovery, fishery loss and local economy. The court did not accept the data provided by the authority. Since Taiwan is not the member of the United Nations, it is difficult to process and get the compensation following the related conventions (e.g., 1969 CLC Convention and 1971 FUND Convention¡^. In this regard, this thesis examine the related issues, analyze the international and domestic cases, review the existing mechanisms and finally proposed appropriate suggestions on the mechanism improvement of oil spill compensation for Taiwan.

Motion control systems are usually designed to track trajectories and/or regulate about a desired point. Most of the other objectives, like minimizing the tracking time or minimizing the energy expended, are secondary which quantify the above described objectives. The control problem in hard disk drives is tracking and seeking the desired tracks. Recent increase in the storage capacity demands higher accuracy of the read/write head. Dual stage actuators as compared to conventional single actuator increases the accuracy of the read/write head in hard disk drives. A scaled up version of the dual stage actuator is considered as the test bed for this thesis. Friction is present in all electromechanical systems. This thesis deals with modelling of the dual stage actuator test bed. A linear model predicts the behavior of the fine stage. Friction is significant in the coarse stage. Considerable time has been spent to model the coarse stage as a friction based model. Initially, static friction models were considered to model the friction. Dynamic models, which describe friction better when crossing zero velocity were considered. By analyzing several experimental data it was concluded that the friction was dependent on position and velocity as compared to conventional friction models which are dependent on the direction of motion. Static and Coulomb friction were modelled as functions of velocity and position. This model was able to predict the behavior of the coarse stage satisfactorily for various initial conditions. A friction compensation scheme based on the modelled friction is used to linearize the system based on feedback linearization techniques.

The significance of stock options as a component of executive compensation has fluctuated dramatically over the past decade. The purpose of this study is to investigate determinants of the effectiveness of stock option grants. These option grants are considered to be effective if they accomplish their intended role of enhancing firm value by inducing risk-taking behavior. Using data from 2,349 firms that granted stock options to their Chief Executive Officer (CEO) between 1992 and 2001, the relationship between the options granted and subsequent firm value was examined. This study found no universal positive association between option grants and firm value. However, CEO incentive equilibrium, defined as stability in the CEO’s stock and option portfolio sensitivity to stock price, was found to influence the association between stock option grants and firm value. The positive association between grants and firm value was evidenced for the sub-sample of firms that demonstrate disequilibrium in CEO incentives. This was not the case, however, for the CEO incentive equilibrium sub-sample. This finding indicates that the positive valuation impact of stock option grants is highest for those firms that demonstrate a trend of increasing CEO portfolio sensitivity to stock price. High CEO portfolio sensitivity to equity risk was not found to interact with grant sensitivity to equity risk in a manner that reduces firm value. Thus, this study did not find support for the hypothesis that, ceteris paribus, grants further reduce CEO diversification, and interact with portfolio sensitivity to reduce incentives for risk-taking. Consistent with Lambert, Larcker and Verrecchia (1991), however, a high level of uncorrelated wealth is found to interact with grant sensitivity to equity risk so as to increase the positive impact of grant sensitivity on firm value.

I examine two sets of incentives faced by corporate CEOs to determine how they respond to those incentives. I compare firms that restate financial statements to firms that do not restate to test the hypotheses that bank monitoring should provide incentives to deter misreporting. For relatively less (more) severe misreporting, I find the likelihood of misreporting is positively related (unrelated) to bank borrowing, and that ex ante changes in bank debt are positive (unrelated) for misreporting firms versus control firms. These results suggest that bank monitoring is insufficient to deter or detect misreporting, rather that it may provide incentives for managers to engage in relatively less severe misreporting, consistent with the "debt covenant hypothesis". I next examine the incentives that CEOs have to increase firm value that result from their compensation packages and opportunities for advancement in the managerial labor market. Traditional methods for estimating pay-performance sensitivity exclude incentives that derive from opportunities for advancement in the managerial labor market and assume a linear relation between changes in pay and changes in performance. But results in recent literature imply that advancement opportunities may be a significant source of incentives and that the relation between changes in pay and changes in performance may depend upon the level of performance. I estimate payperformance sensitivities that incorporate these results. I find that although performance may be positively related to opportunities for advancement, the contribution to a CEO's total pay-performance sensitivity is too small to be economically significant. I also find that pay-performance sensitivities vary depending on the level of performance and may be higher or lower than estimates from linear models suggest. In sum, observed CEO pay packages may not be as suboptimal as some prior studies suggest.

Th. doct.--Droit--Paris 2, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 353-379. Index.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xiii, 183 p. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Bruce S. Growick, College of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-183).