Small Business Administration statistics indicate that 20% of small businesses fail within the first 2 years and 50% fail within 5 years. The purpose of this case study was to explore the success factors and strategies of 12 small business owners of independent financial planning firms who achieved profitability beyond 5 years. A gap exists in the literature concerning such business owners, and their experiences provide valuable information to others desiring to start or maintain a financial planning business. The conceptual framework was entrepreneurship theory and Porter's 5 forces model of competitive strategy. The data were gathered via semistructured interviews and business websites and newsletters. Initial coding of the responses preceded an analysis of recurring patterns and themes. This process led to the identification of major themes: technical training is necessary but not sufficient for success; planners need training in business creation, operations, and marketing; and differentiation is important and is achieved by specialization and providing excellent client service. The business owners used Internet websites to present unique planning approaches and fee structures to clients and prospects. These results provide information to people considering starting or maintaining a small business, providers of professional education and training, and business leaders seeking to improve recruitment and retention of financial planning employee retention. Implications for positive social change include providing information to policymakers who seek to support small businesses to mitigate small business failure rates, expand job creation, and provide sources for financial guidance for American employees.

The application of technology makes a lot of things easier, but for individuals with disability, it makes things possible. Rehabilitation robotics aims at providing robotic devices, which can act as functional extensions of the user, while performing basic activities. Providing a well-designed gripper as its end-effector can greatly enhance the performance of a rehabilitation robot. The gripper performs simple tasks like picking up objects and manipulating objects, which help in performing activities of daily living. This thesis describes the development of a prototype gripper for a wheelchair mounted robot. The pre-development surveys conducted before the development of commercialized robotic assistive devices were analyzed and user task priorities were understood. The role of the gripper as an object-grasping device was focused upon. The size and weight parameters, which the gripper should effectively grasp, were decided. Based on these parameters, a prototype was developed. Force sensors were used to monitor the gripping forces. The data was acquired using a Data Acquisition System. The gripping forces were measured using a Labview program that utilized the force-voltage relationship for the sensor. This relationship was obtained by performing calibration experiments. The performance of the prototype was tested using objects that are used in everyday environment and was analyzed by conducting a set of experiments. A relay circuit was designed that would stop the motors once the gripping forces exceeded a threshold value for a given object. This avoided any damage to the object during the gripping process. The gripping forces measured were found to be in close agreement to the theoretically calculated force values.

Since 1985, there have been major fundamental policy changes in the governance and funding of higher education in China - general devolution ( decentralisation) in resource allocation and utilisation, diversification of the funding base, and imposition of fee charges on most higher education students. This thesis examines the impact of the changes on the function of higher education, and on quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the system. This thesis formulated some overall conclusions, extrapolated from current trends in China and in other countries of the world, on the prospects of higher education governance and funding in a global perspective. This country study has identified current patterns in China strikingly similar to those found globally despite great diversity in international experience. Based on this material, the researcher predicts that the future directions of higher education governance and funding will be characterised by counter-balance of government regulation by market forces; greater efforts for cost-efficiency and funding linked to performance; further diversion of government financial priority from higher education to other sectors and greater reliance on private and more diversified funding / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The main problem investigated is how successful Australia???s citizen soldiers would have been in fulfilling either their anti-invasion or their anti-raid roles between 1919 and 1939. The organization, command, training, equipment, social composition, recruitment and retention of Australia???s citizen soldiers are examined in an effort to discover the solution to this problem. The conclusion reached is that Australia???s citizen soldiers could not have fulfilled their roles, the nature of which was widely debated by British and Australian defence planners because of their differing threat perceptions. Inter-Service rivalry over money also encouraged this debate. Basically, the A.M.F. did not have the equipment and trained troops to enable it to concentrate in time to repel a Japanese raid or invasion. Motor vehicles could have provided this mobility but their expense was prohibitive. However, in other respects the Military Board failed to make the best use of its resources. Slight changes in organization and the command structure might have made the C.M.F., once concentrated, more efficient and better able to fight the Japanese. More attention paid to ensuring that training was imaginative and interesting then might have led to higher retention rates, thereby eliminating the expensive and wasteful requirement for constant recruiting campaigns

This thesis argues that General Abdul Haris Nasution, the most influential military strategist that Indonesia has produced, developed an elective affinity between his strategies for 'people�s resistance' and an organicist vision of the proper relations between the state (including the military) and society that led to the Indonesian Army�s formulation of a unique, pervasive and highly durable means of military intervention in politics, the economy and society. Organicism is a stream of political thinking that views state and society as a single organic unity. Corporatist / functional modes of interest representation are often associated with organicist thinking. Nasution�s 'people�s resistance' strategies emerged during the armed struggle for national independence (from the Dutch) in the second half of the 1940s. The thesis argues that unlike the 'people�s war' strategies that emanated from the political left at roughly the same time, Nasution�s concepts were designed to uphold organic 'traditional' authority structures and depoliticise the national struggle. Associated with these strategies was a system of territorial commands that shadowed and supervised the aristocratically led civilian administration. The form of military intervention that grew out of this elective affinity reached its peak during the New Order regime of former President Suharto (1966 � 1998), when the army used its 'people�s resistance' doctrines and their associated territorial commands to control the population and the regime championed state-sanctioned corporatist / functional modes of interest representation. The identification of this elective affinity is a major point of departure from previous political biographies of Nasution. Another is the emphasis placed on Nasution�s family and personal life, particularly in the early chapters. This thesis explains how personal and family influences encouraged Nasution towards organicist thinking. It identifies how, in the early 1950s, Nasution idealised his 'people�s resistance' strategies and the support given to him during the armed struggle by organic 'traditional' authority figures. It shows how Nasution�s elective affinity between organicist thinking and 'people�s resistance' infused the interventionist doctrines that the army began to develop in the mid-to-late 1950s. In recent years the Indonesian Army has distanced itself from corporatist / functional forms of interest representation and has largely retreated from an active involvement in politics. Nevertheless, the thesis identifies a continuing adherence within the Army leadership to Nasution�s system of territorial commands and concepts of 'people�s resistance' that cannot readily be reconciled with democratic processes.

To investigate the wheel/rail contact impact forces at insulated rail joints (IRJs), a three-dimensional finite element model and strain gauged experiments are employed and reported in this thesis. The 3D wheel/rail contact-impact FE model adopts a two-stage analysis strategy in which the wheel-IRJ railhead contact is first established in the static analysis and the results transferred to dynamic analysis for impact simulations. The explicit FE method was employed in the dynamic analysis. The Lagrange Multiplier method and the Penalty method for contact constraint enforcement were adopted for the static and dynamic analyses respectively. The wheel/rail contact-impact in the vicinity of the end post is exhibited via numerical examples from the FE modelling. The wheel/rail contact impact mechanism is investigated. The strain gauged experiments which consist of a lab test and a field test are reported. The signature of the strain time series from the field test demonstrates a plausible record of the dynamic responses due to the wheel/rail contact impact. By using the experimental data, both the static and the dynamic FE models are validated. It is found that the stiffness discontinuity of the IRJ structure causes a running surface geometry discontinuity during the wheel passages which then causes the impact in the vicinity of the end post. Through a series of sensitivity studies of several IRJ design parameters, it is shown that the IRJ performance can be effectively improved with optimised design parameters.

This study sought to investigate young children's understandings of the science concept forces. A government preschool in the A.C.T. was the setting for the study. The research methodology consisted of pre and post interviews conducted before and after a teaching sequence using an interactive approach to teaching science (Biddulph and Osbome 1984). Interviews were audio taped, work samples were kept and lessons and discussions were audio taped during the teaching sequence. This study examined three factors associated with young children's understandings of the science concept forces. First, it documented young children's understandings prior to any formal teaching in this area. It was found that most children did hold views about the areas of forces such as pushes and pulls, inertia, friction and gravity. Some of these views are generally recognised by the scientific community as being scientifically correct answers. Second, this study sought to reveal if these prior views were changed or reached a higher conceptual level after the experience of a three week interactive teaching sequence on forces. It was found that in all cases changes in language indicating higher level understandings, the use of scientific terms and more detailed responses indicated that it was possible and relevant at the early childhood level to teach the concepts of forces. A third aspect of this study sought to identify teaching strategies which would effectively teach forces to very young children. It became clear in this study that as young children already have views about the concepts of forces it is possible to build on these views with correct scientific knowledge and thus empower the young child in an area of science which research has indicated may cause problems for older learners. It is therefore proposed that early childhood is a crucial time for teaching correct science concepts in the area of forces. This thesis has shown that young children, particularly those 4-5 years old, have already formed views of forces, some scientifically correct and it is proposed that building on this existing knowledge will empower the child in later learning in the areas of physics and mechanics.

Les nanomatériaux représentent un sujet de recherche en plein essor dans des domaines variés : D'une part, la miniaturisation augmente la vitesse de transmission et le stockage de l'information dans les technologies de la communication. D'autre part, la réduction en taille des matériaux révèle des propriétés physiques (optiques, électriques, etc.) nouvelles et étonnantes qui ouvrent la voie à de nombreuses applications (dispositifs nanoélectroniques, capteurs moléculaires etc.). Un grand défi consiste à fabriquer ou intégrer des nanostructures fonctionnelles afin d'exploiter leurs propriétés physiques intrinsèques. Dans ce contexte, nous avons développé une nouvelle approche de nanofabrication à partir de nanomatériaux colloïdaux basée sur l'assemblage par forces de capillarité. Cette technique consiste à contrôler l'évaporation en milieu confiné d'une suspension colloïdale sur un substrat lithographié grâce à un dispositif thermoélectrique associé à un système d'aspiration d'air. Les phénomènes physiques mis en jeu pendant l'assemblage ont été étudiés aussi bien à l'échelle macro- que nano-scopique. Ainsi, la température et le débit d'aspiration se sont révélés être des paramètres complémentaires pour le contrôle de l'évaporation, le déplacement de la ligne de contact, l'angle de contact et le mouvement colloïdal. De cette manière, des colloïdes de taille et nature (or et polystyrène allant de 50 nm à 1 μm) variées ont été assemblés dans des structures complexes. En particulier, des objets métalliques déterministes ont été crées afin d'étudier leurs interactions plasmoniques. Des dimères d'or de distance inter-particule variable ont démontré un fort couplage plasmonique.