Title: Long term cost efficiency through green management control systems.Authors: Nancy Vukania &Xiaochen QinSupervisor: Åsa Karin-EngstrandBackground: The worldwide financial crisis of 2008 has reconfigured the economic turf leading to a more uncertain and turbulent playing field – a greater challenge for business strategy and the quest for optimization- The oil price hike of 2008 (Furlong 2010)1 caused its rippling effect to affect various cost categories including energy, labor and logistics thus causing a roller coaster business decision making process regarding outsourcing, off shoring and internal control and cutting short the decision making term to make room for adjustments. Amidst this high volatility and turbulence of factor markets coupled with fierce competitor activity, organizations are being drawn towards alternative sources of cost advantage which can enable them pursue long-term profitability.Aim: With this research, we intend to introduce an idea of cost efficiency which in the long term has the potential to develop into cost leadership for mature public organizations who are facing uncontrollable instabilities from the external business eco-system as well as international legislation regarding environmental sustainability (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)2. We aim to do this through studying an Energy performance contracting (EPC) project currently being undertaken by Landstinget I Östergotland (LIO), the county council of the province of Östergotland in Sweden.Results: We aim to prove- based on the results of the studied EPC project and the literature on green technology and management control systems- that the interplay of green technological systems and management control techniques can in the long term achieve substantial cost saving and profit making differentials that are sustainable, eco-friendly and subject to further development.Key Phrases/Words: Cost strategy, Management control, Green technology, Long-term SustainabilityPaper Type: Research Paper

In recent years, even though the light output of GaN-related LED continues to increase, the brightness is still low compared to conventional lighting systems and it is necessary to further improve the light extraction of LEDs. In this study, we utilize the ZnO nanotip with aqueous solution and flip-chip technique to increase the light extraction of GaN LEDs. Electroluminescence (EL) and angular optical distribution are used to measure the light output intensity of LED. In the results, ZnO nanotip after thermal annealing with N2O ambiance decrease the ZnO defects. Flip-chip LED has higher light intensity ( 1.25 times) than conventional one in vertical emitting area ( at 0 angles). The enhancement of light output is duo to the reduction of light absorption from the metal contact and Fresnel¡¦s transmission losses. Finally, we fabricate a high brightness LED with above light enhancement design. EL intensity of LED is increased about 1.38 times than conventional one. Therefore, we can manufacture a LEDs array with above designs to obtain high light output for future solid-state illumination.

In the response to the globalization trend, governments around the world manage to establish high effective and ideal-typed governments by promoting ¡§reinventing government¡¨ projects to enhance administrative efficiency. Taiwan government, meanwhile, moves on to different phases of government reform plans. Since local governments in Taiwan were given the power of self governance in 1950, the administrative divisions haven¡¦t been readjusted. After 60-year development, the population distribution and urban modes have totally changed. Without readjustment of the administrative divisions, human resource could not be reasonably deployed, resources wasted, regional development gaps widened and the entire country development was severely influenced. How face with and readjust the issue of administrative divisions is urgent. Governmental organization reform has been a crucial policy for years, yet opinions on administrative divisions has been differentiated and a general consensus on this matter was hard to be reached. The objective of promoting the adjustment of administrative divisions is to boost the government administrative effectiveness. However, there are 319 urban and rural townships in Taiwan and to adjust and merge these administrative divisions is indeed a huge task. The author adopted a microcosm perspective and took the program of merging and adjustment of rural and urban townships in Pingtung county as a case. The program includes four phases of adjustment: 1) electoral divisions of regional legislatives, 2) electoral divisions of county councilmen, 3) divisions of land administration, and 4) divisions of police administration. With related literature review, the author analyzed and compared about administrative, political, legislative and fiscal factors before and after the adjustment of administrative divisions in Pintung county, and also proposed and discussed possible problems in the process of implementing the program. It is hoped that the study can be the reference to the future promotion of the adjustment of administrative divisions.

The economic development, environmental sustainability and energy security stay on the top of government agenda, which guarantee the citizen¡¦s standards of living . EU's indigenous energy production is depleting, and each states has different priorities. The European Union push new European energy policies improving security of energy supply ,which are aiming at reducing the risks being dependent on external supply. Those new european energy policies transform Europe into a highly energy efficiency and low CO2 economy,creating an internal energy market and diversifying energy supplies. The EU¡¦s internal policies include enhancing powers and independence of regulatory authorities at Community level, improving the integrated and flexible energy networks,establishing adequate minimum security of gas supply standards and emergency measures and executing the Action Plan for energy efficiency. The EU¡¦s external policies include enhancing energy partnership and continuing energy dialogue with Russia, Central Asia and Mediterranean area, improving investment and growth, developing common trade,transit and environment rules, building the energy supply chain and diversifying energy supplies. In this thesis the security of EU¡¦s energy supply will be examined by the perspective of neo-functionalism.

This paper attempts to test the cross-country efficiency in the foreign exchange market for four countries in East Asia : Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China,whose values of industrial output are the top four in Asia. This paper use time series methods to test whether the cointegration relations exist or not in U.S. dollar spot exchange market of the four countries . This paper use two econometric models : 2 X 1 VAR model to test mutual co-integration and 4 X 1 VAR model to test co-movements for the foreign exchange rates of the four countries. Additionally, the models includes ARCH effects for the error terms.The empirical results mostly show that there are no cointegration relationships between four countries' spot exchange rates . Based on above results as well as Granger's perspective to the market efficiency of speculative assets in 1986, this study concludes that the hypothesis of cross country efficiency holds for these four countries' foreign exchange market.

Body shape affects the capacity and efficiency of swimming in fishes, and places constraints on foraging and reproductive performance. Hence, fitness components, such as aerobic swimming capacity and efficiency, can be determined from analysis of swimming energetics using active respirometry. In particular, body shape adaptations, such as streamlining, aim at reducing hydrodynamic drag (resistance), thereby increasing swimming efficiency in the presence of water flow, which is a principal contributor to resistance for fish inhabiting rivers. For two populations of bluegill sunfish, one from the Brazos River and the other from Moelman’s Slough (a Brazos River oxbow lake), the metabolic transport rate (MTR) was determined to evaluate differences in swimming efficiency. The standard cost of swimming (SCOS) was also determined to evaluate differences in swimming capacity, which represents the overall capacity of the skeletal muscles to generate mechanical power to overcome hydrodynamic resistance. The MTR and the SCOS describe holistic swimming performance, where the MTR specifies the hydrodynamic response due to swimming, and the SCOS specifies the physiologic response due to swimming. The differences in swimming performance are mainly attributed to factors affecting hydrodynamic resistance and could be predicted by morphology; because body shape, like water flow, is also a principal contributor to resistance. Multivariate body shape, from generalized Procrustes analysis, was used to assess the influence of multiple shape traits on swimming costs. This measure of shape related to swimming performance using partial least-squares analysis showed the two bluegill populations to be significantly different. The results were as follows: the shallow-bodied condition in bluegills was highly correlated with efficient swimming and low swimming capacities; whereas, deep-bodied bluegills were highly correlated with inefficient swimming and high swimming capacities. This is an empirical case of divergent natural selection. For convergence, however, the position of the caudal peduncle is consistent with optimal swimming speed (Um), which depends on standard metabolic rate (SMR), or metabolic maintenance. Bluegills with erect caudal peduncles have a high range of swimming speeds without suffering much cost of swimming ability compared to bluegills with prone caudal peduncles. The adaptive physiological response to high Um is due to a low SCOS because swimming efficiency is low and metabolic maintenance is high. In other words, bluegills that are inefficient swimmers and require a high energy intake cannot survive unless they gain the ability to increase their foraging capacity by thrust or metabolic power reduction. This is perhaps one of the most remarkable adaptive physiological responses due to the joint effects of shape and SMR.

Air compressor systems play a large role in modern industry. These compressors can account for a significant portion of a manufacturing facility’s electric consumption and any increase in efficiency can lead to economic benefits. Air compressors are sensitive to ambient conditions, as evidenced by the fact that compressing cooler and drier air decreases the amount of work required to compress the air. A thermodynamic model of an air compressor system was developed and several cases were run by using both vapor compression and absorption cycle chillers to cool and dehumidify the inlet air. The results show that the performance increases as much as 8 percent for the compressor system with absorption inlet cooling and as much as 5 percent when using vapor compression inlet cooling. Climates with higher humidity and temperatures can see the most benefits from inlet air cooling and dehumidification.

These studies were designed to evaluate the relationships that exist between residual feed intake, parity, rate of return to estrous cyclicity and nonesterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations, as well as changes in both body weight (BW) and body condition score (BCS) during the prepartum and postpartum time periods in Brahman females. Residual feed intake classification was evaluated for all females during the course of 70-d trials conducted prior to these experiments. Heifers (n = 30) and cows (n = 63) were evaluated for BW and BCS, as well as by collection of weekly blood samples beginning five weeks prior to calving. Blood serum samples were utilized to assay for NEFA concentrations by enzymatic colorimetry both pre- and postpartum. Multiparous females (n = 44) were sampled weekly for five weeks following parturition. Beginning 28d postpartum, weekly blood samples were collected and assayed for progesterone concentrations by radioimmunoassay to determine return to estrous cyclicity. Following calving, females were exposed to epididymectomized bulls fitted with chin-ball markers to aid in estrus detection. After detection, estrus females were evaluated for presence of a corpus luteum by trans-rectal ultrasonography. Prepartum, it was found that inefficient females had a greater BCS than efficient females (P < 0.05), significant BW changes occurred during the sampling period (P < 0.05) and moderate to low correlations existed between BW and BCS. Additionally, it was found that the interaction between RFI x parity had a significant affect upon NEFA concentrations, BW and BCS (P < 0.05). During the postpartum period it was found that efficient females were lower in both BW and BCS (P < 0.05), no change occurred over time in NEFA concentrations (P > 0.1) and a greater pregnancy rate was achieved in efficient females, as well as in females that returned to estrous cyclicity rapidly (< 90d) following calving.

Radio Frequency (RF) Power Amplifiers are responsible for a considerable amount of the power consumption in the entire transmitter-receiver (transceiver) of modern communication systems. The stringent linearity requirements of multi-standard transceivers to minimize cross-talking effects makes Linear Power Amplifiers, particularly class A, the preferred choice in broadband transceivers. This linearity requirement coupled with the fact that the Power Amplifier operates at low transmit power during most of its operation makes the efficiency of the entire transceiver poor. The limited transceiver efficiency leads to a reduction in the battery life of battery operated portable devices like mobile phones; hence drastically limiting talk time. To alleviate this issue, several research groups propose solutions to improve PA power efficiency. However, these solutions usually have a low efficiency at low power and are mostly limited to narrow bandwidth applications. In this thesis, the efficiency of a class A Power amplifier in wideband wireless standards like WiMax is improved by dynamically controlling the bias current and supply voltage of the PA. An efficient supply modulator based on a switching regulator architecture is proposed for controlling the supply voltage. The switching regulator is found to be slew-limited by the bulky inductor and capacitor used to regulate the supply voltage. The proposed solution alleviates the slew rate limitation by adding a bang-bang controlled current source. The proposed supply modulator has an average power efficiency of 81.6 percent and is suitable for wireless standards with bandwidths up to 20MHz compared to the relatively lower efficiencies and bandwidths of state of the art modulators. A class-A PA is shown to promise an average power efficiency of 21.3 percent when the bias current is controlled dynamically and the supply voltage is varied using the proposed supply modulator. This is a significant improvement over the poor average efficiency of 1.06 percent for a fixed bias conventional linear class A PA. The project has been simulated using the TSMC 0.18 micrometer technology.

There is an increasing need to improve crop water-use efficiency (WUE) (ratio of whole-plant biomass to cumulative transpiration) due to decreased water availability and increased food and energy demands throughout the world. The objective of the study was to estimate the genetic variation and genetic basis for transpiration efficiency A:E (CO2 assimilation rate (A) divided by transpiration rate (E)) trait and its relationship to WUE related to pre-flower drought tolerance in recombinant inbred lines (RILs) of sorghum and associated QTLs. A greenhouse study was conducted at Bushland, TX, 2008, using 71 RILs derived from cross of Tx430 x Tx7078. A randomized complete block experimental design was used, with both genotype and water regime (40 and 80 percent water regime) as experimental factors, and four replications. Genotype had a significant effect on A, E and A:E under both the environments. Among the RILs, entry means for A:E ranged from 1.58 to 3.07 mmol CO2 mol^-1 H2O and 1.18 to 4.36 mmol CO2 mol^-1 H2O under 80 percent and 40 percent water regime, respectively. Heritability estimates based on individual environments for A:E , A and E were 0.77, 0.45 and 0.37 under 80 percent water regime and 0.90, 0.33 and 0.71 under 40 percent water regime, respectively. A genetic map was constructed by digital genotyping method using Illumina GAII sequencer with 261 informative indel/ single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP's) markers distributed over 10 linkage groups. Three significant QTLs associated with transpiration efficiency were identified; two on SBI-09 and one on SBI-10 with one logarithmic of odds (LOD) interval length ranging from 5.3 to 5.7 cM and accounting for 17 percent - 21 percent of the phenotypic variation. In field and greenhouse evaluation of agronomic of traits at College Station and Halfway, TX, 91 QTL that control variation in six major agronomic traits such as plant height, flowering, biomass, leaf area, leaf greenness and stomatal density were identified. Co-localization of transpiration efficiency QTLs with agronomic traits such as leaf area, biomass, leaf width and stomatal density indicated that these agronomically important QTLs can be used for further improving the sorghum performance through marker assisted selection (MAS) under pre-flowering drought stress conditions.