Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are a class of drugs prescribed to relieve pain, fever and inflammation, and are among the most commonly consumed medications in Ontario. Approximately 70% of the ingested dose is excreted unchanged or as an active metabolite, much of which reaches the surface waters of lakes and rivers. NSAIDs function through the inhibition of cyclooxygenase (COX), an enzyme present in two isoforms in the body; the constitutively expressed COX-1 and the inducible COX-2. Traditional NSAIDs like ibuprofen inhibit both isoforms with little selectivity while newer variants such as naproxen preferentially inhibit COX-2. Both COX isoforms share a high similarity between humans and fish creating a potential for off target effects to exposed aquatic organisms. This research investigated the chronic effects of waterborne exposure to 0, 0.1, 1, 10 and 100 μg/L of a nonselective and selective NSAID (ibuprofen and naproxen, respectively) on Florida flagfish (Jordanella floridae) over one complete life-cycle. Chronic exposure concentrations were selected by performing a short term experiment which examined the hatchability of flagfish eggs using continuous semi-static exposure conditions. Growth, survivability and reproductive endpoints were assessed in the life-cycle study. A concentration-response relationship for both NSAIDs was detected during the first 28 days post-hatch, resulting in increased body length for F1 fish and their offspring with increasing concentrations. Exposure to 0.1 μg/L of both ibuprofen and naproxen resulted in a decrease in egg fertilization providing an experimental LOEC (lowest observable effect concentration) of 0.1 ug/L and NOEC (no observable effect concentration) of < 0.1 ug/L for both ibuprofen and naproxen based on the reproductive endpoint. This indicates that either NSAID has the potential to affect the reproductive success of flagfish at concentrations at or below those commonly found in the environment. / UOIT

Purpose This study explores the internationalization pathway of the Born Global, The Company, when entering the Mexican market. Background Companies have recently started realizing the importance of “being green” for their customers. Market demand shifts towards more natural and renewable materials that can prevent damage and enhance the well-being of individuals and societies.  Therefore, the market for biodegradable materials is growing and is full of possibilities. Today, many additives suppliers operate globally. Born Global firms stand out with their approach to the internationalization process. It is interesting to find out the uniqueness of the Born Global firm’s internationalization pathway, their motivation and behavior. Method  Qualitative data was collected through two in-depth semi-structured interviews with two top management team members of The Company behind the case study. Before the two main interviews, 4 pre-interviews took place, which helped the authors to become familiar with the environment and operations of the company.  This data was complemented with secondary data obtained though literature reviews.   Conclusion The authors were able to find several gaps in the Integrative Model of Small Firms Internationalization, by Bell et al. (2003). Firstly, they found that not all Born Global firms have a Home market to return to. Secondly, it was clear that the model was too rigid in its segmentation of types of Born Global firms. According to the research done by the authors, a firm can act as both an innovator and adopter, as a “Knowledge-intensive” and “Knowledge-based” firm, and can target both a niche and a mass market simultaneously.

Taiwan DRAM industry emerged on OEM basis, i.e. foundry manufactures based upon the technology authorized by the foreign owner. With the expansion of capacity, Taiwan DRAM industry has gradually increased its global market share. In particular, only those market players with 12¡¨foundry, which requires hefty capital investment and can significantly increases capacity, are able to compete in the market. The financial tsunami started in 2008, however, impacted severely on the global economy. DRAM industry could not immune from this, and the collapse was unprecedented. Majority of market players were suffering losses, and unable to afford the migration of manufacturing process. Taiwan players used to borrow to expand capacity. Four major Taiwan DRAM players carry an aggregate debt of TWD300 billion. Taiwan DRAM industry is almost destroyed by the high leverage during the financial tsunami. Facing the unprecedented difficulty of DRAM industry, Taiwan government raised an industry re-engineering (or consolidation, whichever is appropriate) proposal with an aim to enhance the competitiveness in the global market through changes in industry structure and business operation. Thanks to the industry recovery stemmed in the third quarter of 2009, DRAM price started rebounding. The financial difficulty of DRAM players was been resolved. The government¡¦s proposal for industry re-engineering was ended up with a failure.Taiwan DRAM players are still operating on OEM basis and lack of competitiveness in global market. Though Taiwan DRAM players have turned profitable, benefited from price rebound, it is still a question mark that these players can survive in the long run. As long as the structural problem remains unsolved, the industry players and the government will face the same issue again in future. When the next recession is coming, whether Taiwan players shall exit the market, or Taiwan government shall step in? Whether the industry shall go through a consolidation? This paper will present the migration of DRAM industry life cycle, change of business model, strategic alliance, and industry trend in future, analyze on business strategies adopted by Taiwan DRAM players under the competitive environment. Hopefully, this paper could provide a reference as to the development of business strategy for Taiwan DRAM players.

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Abstract In recent years, the amounts of non-profit organizations (NPO) have grown rapidly because of the social needs in Taiwan, and therefore their value and significance should not be ignored. But these organizations still face the difficulties from management. As Peter Drucker said, non-profit organizations should focus and manage by their mission. This concept is similar to Jim Collins¡¦ point of view that he indicated in ¡§Built to Last¡¨. Jim¡¦s research showed that most ¡§excellent organizations¡¨ never focus only on their profit, but also tried to achieve some thing more. Different from the companies in the second sector, non-profit organizations provide public-services, and can barely earned profit from these services. Therefore weather the leaders can motivate members in non-profit organizations and develop suitable strategies to create better services is the key factor of their success. But how do the leaders lead their members to achieve the mission? Base on the background the main purposes of this study are to examine the NPO leaders¡¦ traits and styles. To find out how leaders react when facing different organization types and different organization conditions. Because the complexity of leadership in management field. This study mainly used literature analysis and in-depth interview as research method. After interviewed six NPOs, this study coded the interview content into three parts as conclusions: A. Non-profit organization leaders¡¦ traits 1. Hold on to their dreams 2. Professional 3. Progressive 4. Moral & Ethical 5. Contingency B. Organization types and conditions 1. Most NPOs in Taiwan is still facing financial and human resource problems. These organizations are still in the early stage of organization life cycle. 2. In different types of NPOs, leaders show different behaviors. C. NPO leaders¡¦ behavior 1. Communication skills 2. Problem solving by: commercialized, bureaucratized or being flexible. 3. Motivate members 4. Being a role model

The Texas rice industry has undergone many changes over the course of the industry’s existence. Recently, high costs of production and the structure of government payments have contributed to a decreasing trend in rice acreage planted in Texas. While Texas was once the top rice producer in the United States, it now ranks fifth. Despite the fact that Texas has one of the lowest levels of production among rice producing states, it currently maintains the highest per acre yields. One of the major factors in maintaining superior yields is the development of high performance rice varieties and hybrids, which provide increased yields on fewer acres. Research institutions invest a great deal of time, effort, and money towards the development of new varieties every year. Each one of these varieties has a specific set of traits that are believed to be in high demand by producers and processors. However, during the developmental stages, scientists are uncertain as to how each new gerplasm will perform once it reaches the market. This study develops a regression model, which includes competition and the characteristics of a specific variety, to estimate the life cycle of new varieties and hybrids. In addition, simulation techniques are utilized to incorporate risk into the life cycle, providing a more robust prediction of the cumulative adoption and disadoption path. Results indicate that the life cycle of new rice varieties is becoming shorter over time. Furthermore, the length of the life cycle is directly related to a new seed’s performance, compared to other varieties on the market. Varieties that provide higher levels of performance, especially higher yields, tend to have a longer life cycle and achieve a larger market share, on average.

With the longevity risk of human being and the low income replacement ratio (IRR), people start to plan their retirement early. Even though there are many new designed products for retirement demand on the market, but actually the investors have no enough time and financial knowledge to select the proper retirement products for themselves, and to plan their future retirement life. Therefore, this study aims at designing the ¡§Life Cycle Fund¡¨ for those Taiwan investors. This study mainly bases on the method of asset allocation using ¡§Age¡¨ basis and the method of international asset allocation to construct the life cycle portfolio. We consider both conditions of ¡§age¡¨ and ¡§international asset allocation¡¨ in this study. We use simple questionnaire investigation in two dimensions, the preference of investment instrument (to tell the risk preference of stocks or bonds) and the preference of investment region (to tell the risk preference of international asset allocation), to analyze the investors risk acceptance level. At the end, construct the life cycle portfolio by applying our model and the result of questionnaire investigation. We divided the empirical study into three parts, which are respectively the investment in four assets, the investment in multi-assets and the life cycle fund for American investors, to explore the portfolio performance under different risk parameters and different retirement ages. Consequently, from the result of forecasting and history back-testing, our model not only can control the risk properly, but also can be applied to different countries. This model can help the investors in planning for their retirement, and help investors who have the investment demand in multilnational countries to reach stable asset allocation. We expected this model can be a comparing benchmark for investors to measure the performance of life cycle fund.

The importance of human resource management (HRM) increases with each passing day. In the past, organizations only focused on the coordination and the integration between HRM and other management functions. Nowadays, with a more broad and holistic angle, we usually elevate HRM in enterprise from the strategic point of view. The role it plays in the organization becomes more active rather than passive and it puts more emphasis on the intensive cooperation between HRM and business strategies. The studies of HRM strategy in Taiwan only focus on the high-tech industry. Therefore, this study will aim at Cable TV (CATV) system industry and investigate the influence of HRM strategy by organizational life cycle and business strategy. The purpose of this study is to know how the CATV systems obtain the employees they need by recruiting and education training in digital convergence. And then we can further understand the HRM strategy in organization and its relationships with organizational life cycle and business strategy. This research adopted case study and targeted three domestic CATV firms. This study also described and explained the status of HRM in CATV system industry by case comparison and then induced the conclusions and research propositions. The results were as follow: 1. The organizations will adopt different business strategic types when they are in different stage of organizational life cycle. 2. CATV will increase the varieties of their product line in order to earn more revenues as the stage of life cycle goes. 3. The stage of the development in organizational life cycle will be affected by parent company. 4. The organizations will adopt different HRM strategy types when they are in different stage of organizational life cycle. 5. No matter at what stage of life cycle, CATV will take internal training seriously. 6. Employee turnover rate of CATV is very low, and the source of recruitment is seldom from external. 7. The HRM strategy tends to be accumulation type. However, it will shift to facilitation type when they develop new services. 8. There is a ¡§Fit¡¨ relationship between business strategy and HRM strategy; however, it changes because of parent company¡¦s effect.

<p>This thesis analyzes the differences in monetary return when saving in stocks using Individual Pension Saving (IPS) or saving directly on the stock exchange (OMX). An individual is assumed to have the same portfolio of stocks whether he or she uses IPS or OMX. Different length of saving years, payment years, real rates of return, saving amounts and different tax rates are compared to each other between the systems. The results indicate a clear benefit using IPS in the long run, when tax rates are higher during the saving period compared to when retrieving the payment. It also indicates an uncertain usefulness of IPS compared to OMX when individuals have only income tax when saving and retrieving payment. In some cases using IPS can generate a monetary loss compared to OMX. Individuals that are low-income earners and prefers a low risk in their investments should not use IPS, while high-income earners that prefer high risk investments should use IPS instead of directly investing on the OMX.</p> / <p>Den här uppsatsen analyserar skillnaderna i avkastning om man sparar i aktier när man använder sig av Individuellt pensionssparande (IPS) eller sparar direkt på börsen (OMX). En individ antas inneha samma aktieportfölj vare sig han eller hon nyttjar IPS eller OMX. Olika längd av sparande, utbetalning, olika realavkastningar, olika sparnivåer och olika skattesatser jämförs med varandra i de olika systemen. Resultaten indikerar en klar fördel för användandet av IPS på lång sikt, när skattesatsen vid sparandet överskrider skattesatsen vid erhållandet av betalningen. Det finns också indikationer på osäkerhet vad gäller nyttan av att använda IPS jämfört med OMX när individer endast har inkomstskatt både vid sparandet och vid erhållandet av betalningen. I vissa fall kan individen förlora på att nyttja IPS jämfört med OMX. Individer som är låginkomsttagare och föredrar låg risk på sina investeringar skall ej använda sig av IPS, medan höginkomsttagare som föredrar högrisk på sina investeringar skall använda IPS istället för OMX.</p>

Thesis_Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.