Youth crime has been increasing rapidly since the Economy Reform and Open-door Policy in 1979 and become a serious social problem in China. Researches on explanations of juvenile delinquency, however, are relatively limited, while a number of scholars in western countries have developed delicate theoretical models to explore this problem. General strain, differential association, and social bond theory are employed in the current study to test if western theories can be applied to a different social context and to empirically explain the causes of youth crime in China. An integrated model is addressed through a self-reported survey with 385 respondents. The respondents are high school students in the city of Shenyang, aged from 16 to 18. Data from the questionnaire survey suggests that these three theories could explain Chinese youth crime. Two separate Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models are built for analyzing delinquency of males and females. Predictors related to strain and differential association theory are directly associated with youth crime, while weak social bonds have indirect impacts on juvenile delinquency. Males and females are influenced by different factors when they are involved in delinquency. The thesis concludes with a discussion of establishing a theoretical integrated model for Chinese adolescence and provides policy implications for protection programs.

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In recent years, the concept of Enterprise Architecture with business organization, management, and operation have called lots of attention. The construction of Enterprise Architecture is art. It needs not only the concrete structure but integrated with the operational process. The enterprise must emphasize architecture planning and management more than technique application or goods production. Therefore, we need to analyze the organization and process of an enterprise to establish a detail and unique strategy while building up an enterprise architecture. To use the concept of structure-process-integrated, enterprise architecture will optimize and improve business operations and flexibility. The most popular models of enterprise architecture always have bias. Either it emphasizes functional business structures or information system platforms. Note that business structure is applied to support operations. A company will fail without the support of business structure. It will bring great advantage to a company to adopt the concept of a structure-process-integrated enterprise architecture to maximize operations and communications of a company. This study is to review and analyze the current theories of enterprise architecture and explore the factors to ensure successes of an enterprise. It also mentions how to establish an integrated architecture through interaction of all factors besides the necessary of individual factor. We strongly think this study contributes a great deal to the current enterprise architecture research.

The crude oil is one of the major energy resources in our lifetime and plays its crucial role in our economy. How the stock prices of the oil industry will react to the foreseeable rising price that is important issue needed to be investigated. This research analyzes the relationship among oil price¡BSpread¡BDow Jones Index and five integrated oil and gas companies which are traded in NYSE. We found that the stock prices of all five companies were not related to Dow Jones Index and themselves according to the Granger-Causality test. We also found that the movement of Exxon¡¦s stock prices has significantly impact on the stock prices of the other four oil companies based on the results of the impulse function. In the long run, the five company¡¦s stock prices, oil price and Spread are jointly cointergrated, but not for only five companies considered. According to the VECM (Vector Error Correction Model), Spread could affect the changes in five oil company¡¦s stocks in short run, but not vice versus. It may explain that the investor would pay more attention on the future volatility of oil price into their investment strategies.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--OGI School of Science and Engineering at OHSU, 2001.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Minnesota, 2001. / "Accompanying CD-ROM contains Excel spreadsheets and Mathematica notebooks that contain data and templates" for further investigation.--P. 68. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-71). Also available on the World Wide Web as a PDF file.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-118). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.