Based on the survey of Taiwan’s international tourist hotels during 1997 to 2001, this study applies stochastic frontier approach incorporating inefficiency effects to estimate cost inefficiency of international tourist hotels in Taiwan. Two hypotheses of no inefficiency and no inefficiency effects are rejected by using likelihood-ratio test. These outcomes indicate that the model and assumptions set up in this study are statistically more appropriate. The empirical evidence shows that the average cost inefficiency score during 1997 to 2001 is 1.1468 which suggests that actual cost expenditure is approximately 1.1468 times of minimum cost with fixed outputs. In empirical findings between inefficiency effects and cost inefficiencies, the factors such as diversification of services, competitive circumstances, various types of travelers, belonging to a international hotel chain, and located in the scenic area would improve cost efficiencies of international tourist hotels. However, it would worsen cost efficiencies for international tourist hotels to setting up a branch or branches.

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14 pp. / This publication summarizes the results of a three year research study that evaluated whether the turf water duties mandated by the Arizona Department of Water Resources provide adequate water to grow acceptable quality turf in the Tucson and Phoenix areas.

A four-chamber indirect calorimeter was constructed to evaluate energy utilization by laying hens as affected by dietary energy, protein and amino acid levels and by housing temperature. Heat production was measured by indirect calorimetry and metabolizable energy was determined for each diet. Net energetic efficiency was calculated as the slope of the regression of energy balance (metabolizable energy intake - heat production) on metabolizable energy intake. Hens fed diets formulated without protein specifications to provide amino acid levels equivalent to those provided by 14.5 or 16% protein, had higher (P < .05) net energetic efficiencies than hens fed diets formulated with specified protein levels. Addition of 3% animal fat to the higher (16% protein) amino acid diets produced the greatest increases (P < .05) in net efficiency, but decreased (P < .05) efficiency in the lower (14.5% protein) amino acid diet formulated without a protein specification. Metabolizable energy available for production was improved (P < .05) with animal fat additions to all but the diet formulated to the higher (16% protein) amino acid levels. Animal fat, cottonseed oil, corn oil, cod liver oil and safflower oil were used to determine effects of fat source on energy utilization by laying hens at 21.1 C. Higher net efficiencies were obtained for the cottonseed and safflower oil diets (99.1 and 99.8%, respectively) than for the basal diet (90.6%) or the other fat sources (cod liver oil = 86.0%, corn oil = 87.3%, animal fat = 91.1%). Full vs. meal (two 1-hr periods daily) feeding and total sulfur amino acid deficiency effects on energy utilization were evaluated. Meal feeding reduced (P < .05) metabolizable energy available for production while increasing (P < .05) maintenance metabolizable energy requirements. Feeding regime did not reverse the decline (P < .05) in net efficiency (89.2-89.7 to 81.7-82.6%) observed with total sulfur amino acid deficiency. Hens were fed either 7% animal fat or 7% corn oil and maintained at 10, 21.1 and 32.2 C to study effects of fat source and temperature on energy utilization. From 10 to 32.2 C, net energetic efficiency increased from 87.6 to 92.6% with animal fat. Corn oil showed the highest net efficiency (93.9%) at 10 C, while animal fat was highest (92.6%) at 32.2 C. Hens fed animal fat required the most (P < .05) maintenance metabolizable energy and had the highest (P < .05) fasting heat productions at each temperature.

Distributed imaging using sensor arrays is gaining popularity among various research and development communities. A common bottleneck within such an imaging sensor network is the large resulting data load. In applications for which transmission power and/or bandwidth are constrained, this can drastically decrease the network lifetime. In this dissertation, we consider a network of imaging sensors. We address the problem of energy-efficient communication of the resulting measurements. First, we develop a heuristic-based method that exploits the redundancy in the measurements of imaging sensors. The algorithm attempts to maximize the lifetime of the network without utilizing inter-sensor communication. Gains in network lifetime up to 114% are obtained when using the suggested algorithm with lossless compression. Our results also demonstrate that when lossy compression is employed, much larger gains are achieved. For example, when a normalized Root-Mean-Squared- Error of 0.78% can be tolerated in the received measurements, the network lifetime increases by a factor of 2.8, as compared to the lossless case. Second, we develop a novel theory for maximizing the lifetime of unicast multihop wireless sensor networks. An optimal centralized solution is presented in the form of an iterative algorithm. The algorithm attempts to find a Pareto Optimal solution. In the first iteration, the minimum lifetime of the network is maximized. If the solution is not Pareto Optimal a second iteration is performed which maximizes the second minimum lifetime subject to the minimum lifetime being maximum. At the nth iteration, the algorithm maximizes the nth minimum lifetime subject to the (n−1)th minimum lifetime being maximum, subject to the (n−2)th minimum lifetime being maximum, etc. The algorithm can be stopped at any iteration n. Third, we present a novel algorithm for the purpose of exploiting the inherent inter- and intra-sensor correlation in a network of imaging sensors while utilizing inter-sensor communication. This algorithm combines a collaborative compression method in conjunction with our cooperative multi-hop routing strategy in order to maximize the lifetime of the network. This CMT algorithm is demonstrated to achieve average gain in lifetime as high as 3.2 over previous methods. Finally, we discuss practical implementation considerations of our CMT algorithm. We first present some experimental results that illustrate the practicality of our method. Next, we develop a realistic optical model that permits us to consider a more heterogeneous network of cameras by allowing for varying resolution, intrinsic and extrinsic parameters, point-spread function and detector size. We show that our previous CMT algorithm can be extended to successfully operate in such a diverse imaging model. We propose new object-domain quality metrics and show that our proposed method is able to balance lifetime and fidelity according to expectations.

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