In recent years, many construct wetlands in Taiwan have been built for the purposes of wastewater treatment, river water purification, and ecology conservation. To evaluate the effectiveness of constructed wetlands on water purification, frequent water quality monitoring is needed. In this study, the multivariate statistical analysis was applied to evaluate the contaminant removal efficiency in a constructed wetland, and the time series method was then used to predict the trend of the indicative pollutant concentration in the wetland. Multivariate statistical analysis simplifies the original data into representative factors, or hive off the similarity between data to cluster, and then identify clustering outcomes. In this study, an artificial wetlands at the site around an old bridge locates at the Kaoping River Basin was used as the study site. The statistical software SPSS 12.0 was used to perform the multivariate statistical analysis to evaluate water quality characteristics of its. Results from this study show that the removal efficiency for the total coliforms (TC) of System A and B was 98%, 55% for biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), 53% for chemical Oxygen demand (COD), 55% for ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), and 39% for total nitrogen (TN). Moreover, suspended solids (SS) couldn¡¦t be removed in both A and B systems. The box-and-whisker plot indicates that the water quality of inflow was unstable and variable; however, outflow was turning stable with its flow direction. The major pollutant indicators, except SS, were all in a decreasing tendency. The paired t-test shows p value of each item were lower than 0.05, except total phosphorus (TP) in System A, nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N) and Chlorophyll a (Chl-a) in System B. The correlation parameters from TN, nitrogen oxides (NOx), NO3-N and nitrite nitrogen (NO2-N) and so on were all higher than 0.7. The factor analysis of SPSS shows that 17 water-quality items of the study site could obtain four to six principal components, including nitrate nutrition factor, phosphorus nutrition factor, eutrophication factor, organic factor, and environmental background factor, the major influencing components are nutrition factor and eutrophication factor. The ponds of the study site were classified into two or three clusters depend on in-and-out flow location. This study attempted to establish a forecasting model of wetland pollutants concentration through the time series (ARIMA), results show that the outcome of the B7 pond was better than others. Results indicate that the ARIMA model can be used to simulate the trend of treatment efficiency using the wetland system. Experience and results obtained from this study would provide solutions for water quality control.

As a result of tough competition in the marketplace and the shift form a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, companies are looking more and more at gaining competitive advantage through managing and maximizing their most valuable asset ¡V knowledge. In line with the increasing need to manage knowledge systems (KMS), which involve the application of IT systems and other organizational resources to manage knowledge strategically, are growing in popularity. Given the fact that it is not difficult to find applications relevant to KMS in organizations, the topic of KMS has not been well explored by researchers and scholars. Besides, even among the limited literature on KMS, there is a scarcity of studies on the empirical perspective of KMS, especially in the area of adoption, which is an important issue of managerial capacity. This research tries to address this gap by studying the adoption of KMS in Taiwanese organizations. Specifically, we want to find the significant factors of the KMS adoption. This study is based on innovative perspective combining with some important factors to mold an integrated model. Three dimensions are involved in, including: (1) Innovative characteristics of KMS: includes relative advantage, complexity, compatibility and cost of KMS (2) Organizational factors: includes IT infrastructure inside organization, employees¡¦ IS knowledge, management support, slack resources and business size (3) External factors: only includes competitive pressure. We try to find out whether there is something critical to adopt KMS. An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and hypotheses proposed in this study. Eight out of nine hypotheses are validated in our research model with Discriminant Analysis. The research result reveals that management support of a firm has the strongest discriminability; on the other hand, competitive pressure also affects the adoption of KMS of a firm strongly. In conclusion all the variables have discriminant power expect relative advantage.

In stead of assuming the starting observations as zero, the cointegration test statistic derived in this paper takes the initial conditions into consideration. The statistic helps us understand how the initial conditions affect the test and helps us recognize whether the cointegration relationship exists in the data generation process or not. Beside, with this statistic derived with the concept of discriminant function and residual based test, we can simulate our own critical value table in according to what starting observations we have in hand, what significant level we want and what value of rho we meet under H_1.

In the study of sound identification, land animals such as birds and bats have been well investigated, and so are their habitats. On the other hand, sound making creatures in the ocean are much less researched. In this research, the stress calls of three Holocentridaes, Neoniphon sammara, Myripristis murdjan, and Sargocentron spinosissimum, who are commonly found in coral reefs, were recorded in water tank for analysis of sound characteristics. The averaged characteristic parameters of single pulse among three is around 410 Hz for the peak frequency, 100 Hz for the bandwidth, 0.07 dB/Hz for the slope, and duration of 0.05 s. As for the impulse train, averaged peak frequency is 415 Hz, 55 Hz for the bandwidth, 0.07 dB/Hz for the slope, and duration of 0.5 s. These parameters were first checked by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test to identify if each parameter follows normal distribution; the slopes of ascending and descending frequency and the total duration are not in normal distribution. The three parameters were later transferred so as to concentrate variances. Next, analysis of variance was applied on all characteristics to extract the significant parameters (including non transferred and transferred data), which were then tested by Stepwise Discriminat and Back-propagation Network. The identification rate of for single pulse with and without data transfer is 63% and 82% while pulse train is 57% and 73%. Both identification rates were raised up approximately 20% due to the data transfer. Both methods provide an reliable tool for marine sound identification, and the whole process of the study may be applied to another biological identification.

In the beginning of internet development, the advertising revenue is the most important income of a website. After the burst of internet bubbles, some scholars mentioned that the information content is priced and user-charged. Nowadays, because of the broadband network, users spend less money and more time in connecting to internet. The owners of websites also find out more online business models for earning advertising fee, recharging fee, transacting fee and license fee from customers and providers. This research intends to discuss what difference in website attributes between chargeable websites and free website and what kinds of service and content are attractive to users¡¦ willing to pay. Based on previous studies, this research concludes six website attributes: fit to purpose, ease of use, interaction, personalization, customization and trust. The 85 samples are the most popular websites in Taiwan and some experts scored their six website attributes, website awareness and competitive situation. After discriminant analysis, the result indicates that personalization, interaction and trust are discriminative between different chargeable models. Besides, an online questionnaire survey is used to know users¡¦ experience and willing to pay. There are three kinds of principle component after factor analysis: efficiency, design and personalization. The managers of websites can make their pricing strategy by measuring this attributes and factors.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

The present thesis has three main topics: geometry of coamoebas, hypergeometric functions, and geometry of zeros. First, we study the coamoeba of a Laurent polynomial f in n complex variables. We define a simpler object, which we call the lopsided coamoeba, and associate to the lopsided coamoeba an order map. That is, we give a bijection between the set of connected components of the complement of the closed lopsided coamoeba and a finite set presented as the intersection of an affine lattice and a certain zonotope. Using the order map, we then study the topology of the coamoeba. In particular, we settle a conjecture of M. Passare concerning the number of connected components of the complement of the closed coamoeba in the case when the Newton polytope of f has at most n+2 vertices. In the second part we study hypergeometric functions in the sense of Gel'fand, Kapranov, and Zelevinsky. We define Euler-Mellin integrals, a family of Euler type hypergeometric integrals associated to a coamoeba. As opposed to previous studies of hypergeometric integrals, the explicit nature of Euler-Mellin integrals allows us to study in detail the dependence of A-hypergeometric functions on the homogeneity parameter of the A-hypergeometric system. Our main result is a complete description of this dependence in the case when A represents a toric projective curve. In the last chapter we turn to the theory of real univariate polynomials. The famous Descartes' rule of signs gives necessary conditions for a pair (p,n) of integers to represent the number of positive and negative roots of a real polynomial. We characterize which pairs fulfilling Descartes' conditions are realizable up to degree 7, and we provide restrictions valid in arbitrary degree.

The objective of this study is to establish whether companies that utilise their resources more efficiently present specific characteristics in their financial profile, and whether on the basis of these characteristics a classification model can be constructed that includes, alongside resource utilisation measures, predictors related to other financial dimensions calculated from published information. The- research proceeds by examining the factors influencing companies' performance, and the reliabilty of published accounts. Discriminant analysis is chosen as the most appropriate technique of analysis. Its applications in the field of financial analysis are discussed -and an examination of the discriminant analysis technique is undertaken. For reasons of comparability and access to a large quantity of information, the analytical part of the study is based on data extracted from a computer readable tape provided by Extel Statistical Services Ltd. It starts by describing the financial variables to be used later on in the study, and proposing a classification framework that would be of assistance in identifying the financial dimensions of importance in relation to the problem under investigation. A discriminant model that correctly classifies 85 per cent of the companies is then constructed. It includes, besides measures of resources utilisation, measures of financial levarage, working capital management, cash position and stability of past performance. The-part of the analysis on the identification of potential well performing companies indicates that, although specific characteristics can be noticed up to five year before, it is only possible to construct a classification model with sufficient accuracy one year before a high level of performance is actually reached. Finally, an index of financial performance based on normal approximations of the z-score distributions from the model used to identify well performing companies is suggested and an assessment of the structural change experienced by companies rising from a less well to a well performaing status is presented.

L'expressiódels gens obtinguts de l'anàliside microarrays s'utilitza en molts casos, per classificar les cèllules. En aquestatesi, unaversióprobabilística del mètodeDiscriminant Partial Least Squares (p-DPLS)s'utilitza per classificar les mostres de les expressions delsseus gens. p-DPLS esbasa en la regla de Bayes de la probabilitat a posteriori. Aquestsclassificadorssónforaçats a classficarsempre.Per superaraquestalimitaciós'haimplementatl'opció de rebuig.Aquestaopciópermetrebutjarlesmostresamb alt riscd'errors de classificació (és a dir, mostresambigüesi outliers).Aquestaopció de rebuigcombinacriterisbasats en els residuals x, el leverage ielsvalorspredits. A més,esdesenvolupa un mètode de selecció de variables per triarels gens mésrellevants, jaque la majoriadels gens analitzatsamb un microarraysónirrellevants per al propòsit particular de classificacióI podenconfondre el classificador. Finalment, el DPLSs'estenen a la classificació multi-classemitjançant la combinació de PLS ambl'anàlisidiscriminant lineal.

Customer targeting is the key to the success of bank telemarketing. To compare the flexible discriminant analysis and the logistic regression in customer targeting, a survey dataset from a Portuguese bank was used. For the flexible discriminant analysis model, the backward elimination of explanatory variables was used with several rounds of manual re-defining of dummy variables. For the logistic regression model, the automatic stepwise selection was performed to decide which explanatory variables should be left in the final model. Ten-fold stratified cross validation was performed to estimate the model parameters and accuracies. Although employing different sets of explanatory variables, the flexible discriminant analysis model and the logistic regression model show equally satisfactory performances in customer classification based on the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves. Focusing on the predicted “right” customers, the logistic regression model shows slightly better classification and higher overall correct prediction rate.