This thesis presents novel algorithms and a revised modeling framework to evaluate residential aggregate electrical demand response performance under scenarios with limited device-state feedback. These algorithms permit the provision of balancing reserves, or the smoothing of variable renewable energy generation, via an externally supplied target trajectory. The responsive load populations utilized were home heat pumps and deferred electric vehicle charging. As fewer devices in a responsive population report their state information, the error of the demand response program increases moderately but remains below 8%. The associated error of the demand response program is minimized with responsive load populations of approximately 4500 devices; the available capacity of the demand response system scales proportionally with population size. The results indicate that demand response programs with limited device-state feedback may provide a viable option to reduce overall system costs and address privacy concerns of individuals wishing to participate in a demand response program. / Graduate

近年來，智慧型手機成長快速，根據全球市場研究機構TRENDFORCE調查顯示，2013年第四季全球智慧型手機出貨季成長6.5%，達2億六千五百萬支，與去年同期相比成長32.2%。其中小米科技在競爭激烈的市場達成了全球市佔率3%的成績，同時被預估2014年手機出貨上看4,000萬支，取得空前成功。基於此，本研究試圖從使用者參與、口碑行銷與傳遞，以及被廣泛稱為「飢餓行銷」的限量銷售的手法等三個層面對小米所採取的創新作法進行探討，試圖瞭解小米如何在創立至今四年多的時間達成其餘競爭廠商望其相背的成就。 研究結果發現，小米科技發展初期，尚未發行手機硬體前，口碑的形成源自消費者於論壇討論區大量參與MIUI開發與改進所引起關於服務品質、滿意度以及忠誠度的提升。在手機產品上市後，小米科技除了以較競爭廠商更具性能價格比優勢的手機產品吸引消費者外，亦持續透過論壇與服務經營消費者關係，增進了消費者對於品牌口碑傳遞的意願。本研究透過問卷與訪談發現，在小米口碑傳遞內容部分多為其產品之高性能價格比。對於性能價格比優勢，小米科技則是透過限量的搶購模式有效延長產品話題熱度與生命週期，利用常態性關鍵零組件價格走勢降低製造成本，並以手機產品普及後所帶來之服務收入作為其主要營運獲利模式。 本研究亦建議後續研究可針對限量銷售模式、使用者參與程度與口碑內容的影響等方向進一步進行探討，進而對行銷實務上有所貢獻。 / In recent years, a rapid growth in smart-phone usage is observed. According to a study by market research agency, Trendforce, global smart-phone shipment grew at a pace of 6.5% in fourth quarter of 2013 and reached 260 million units. Chinese brand, Xiaomi, alone captured 3% of the global market share during the most competitive period of smart-phone business. It is expected that its 2014 shipment volume will reach 40 million units. Due to this remarkable achievement, this study will analyze the brand from the perspective of end user behavior, word of mouth marketing and the so called "hunger marketing" where limited editions are used, to explore the success of Xiaomi's strategy and its position in the global market within a four year span. The research result indicates that in the early stage of Xiaomi's establishment, prior to their involvement in hardware, the awareness were already establishing from forum discussion of service quality, consumer satisfaction and loyalty, and the development of MIUI. When the hardware eventually launched, Xiaomi's selling point came not only from its low cost strategy, but they continued to participate in forum studies in consumer service level and naturally created brand viral. Consumer market research shows that leading awareness focuses on Xiaomi's high performance/cost ratio. To build on this advantage, Xiaomi uses a limited volume strategy to create brand viral and prolongs product life cycle. It takes advantage of the declining price trend of key components to lower manufacturing costs and income from the software services to enhance operating profit. Further study is recommended on the benefits and results of limited volume strategy, user participation and word of mouth marketing.

The need for health informatics education is recognized by many countries which are now engaged in introducing technology to healthcare. Universities have been slow to respond to the need for health informatics professional education. Governments are also involved in initiatives to fund the development of curricula and programs in this area. Entry level and generic courses in health informatics are being developed in order to start education programs. There are now a number of such programs being initiated in some of the developing countries. To meet this demand there is need for individuals who are educated in health informatics. These individuals should be able to perform health informatics related tasks and activities in order to serve the healthcare community better. The focus of their work should be on producing effective leaders in health informatics through formal educational programs and professional education. The purpose of this research is to answer the following research questions: 1) Is there a perceived demand for health informatics professionals in the healthcare institutions of Karachi as expressed by administrators of healthcare institutions? 2) Is there a perceived need for post-secondary Health Informatics education in Karachi as expressed by directors of academic institutions? 3) What types of skills and competencies will health informatics professionals need to acquire through educational programs in Karachi? Setting: This research was conducted in Karachi, Pakistan in 2010 to determine the demand for health informatics education by interviewing representatives from academic and healthcare institutions in Karachi. Participants: A snowball sampling methodology was used. Participants from different types of healthcare centers were interviewed including public and private healthcare centers, nongovernmental organizations, primary healthcare centers of Karachi, and academic institutions that include private and government institutes which are representative of the entire city. Method: Approval was elicited from Human Research Ethics Board of University of Victoria to conduct the study in Karachi, Pakistan. The study described in this thesis used a qualitative design. Thirty participants including fifteen directors of academic institutions and fifteen head of administration of healthcare institutions participated in the study. The sampling methodology used was snowball sampling, which is a non-probability type of sampling. This is the type of sampling where samples are gathered in a process that does not give all the individuals in the population equal chances of being selected [92]. The researcher identified an expert who provided the contacts of academic directors who were invited to participate in the study. The researcher conducted face-to-face interviews with them. Findings: There are many educational gaps and there is also a lack of resources needed to fulfill the demand for health informatics education in healthcare institutions. Ways to improve education in health informatics were discussed and competencies required for health informaticians were established. By obtaining understanding about health informatics, the need for health informatics education to meet the demand of healthcare institutions of Karachi was identified. After reviewing details and results from the research, institutions can make an independent decision regarding choosing an appropriate approach to health informatics education that blends in with the culture of the target population. The most important themes that were derived from the responses of directors of academic institutions fall under a number of different categories. Understanding of health informatics was expressed by participants as representing an integration of computer science and healthcare. It was also clear that subjects felt that capacity building was required for the development of skill sets related to data and system management. The status of HI education in Karachi was noted as being in its infancy, which was a constant theme in all the responses of the participants. Additionally, limited resources available along with a lack of financial assistance, lack of knowledge, manpower, educators and awareness were also a few prominent themes. The administrators had hands-on experience in managing healthcare institutions and they expressed important themes with regard to understanding health informatics as being the management of data and the maintenance of patient records through computer science. The collection of encounters and compilation of clinical documentation was seen as the key concept behind medical records. Themes related to job market requirements included critical thinking, computer knowledge, understanding of medical terminology and specific expertise related to the HI field. Limited resources and scarcity of funds were seen as themes reflecting barriers for health informaticians in the healthcare organizations. Administrators expressed the need for developing academic programs to address manpower training for prospective employees. Conclusion: This paper presents results that could be a major contribution towards enhancing the approach of training professionals in the field of health informatics in Pakistan. This research will hopefully help educators adopt health informatics in their curricula and will encourage educators in the field to impart their knowledge to local people. / Graduate

La tesi ha ad oggetto il passaggio generazionale nelle imprese di famiglia costituite in forma di società a responsabilità limitata, valutandone l’impatto sulla disciplina dell’amministrazione. Si rileva che i meccanismi tradizionali fondati esclusivamente sul trasferimento delle quote sociali non riescono a conciliare le esigenze di continuità dell’impresa e le norme di diritto successorio. Si individuano, allora, regole in grado di assicurare la stabilità dell'amministrazione anche dopo le modifiche alla compagine sociale conseguenti all’ingresso degli eredi. Lo studio si riferisce, da una parte, a regole convenzionali che garantiscono la permanenza dell’amministratore nella carica; dall’altra, a clausole con lo scopo di arginare l’interferenza dei nuovi soci sulle scelte di governance. Si dimostra, infine, la legittimità di una previsione statutaria che impone la successione automatica di un beneficiario nella carica di amministratore. / The thesis deals with the generational shift in family enterprises constituted as a limited liability company, assessing the impact on the discipline of the administration. It notes that traditional mechanisms based solely on the transfer of shares can not reconcile the needs of business continuity and the rules of inheritance law. Then, are identified rules that ensure the stability of the administration even after the changes to the shareholding structure resulting from the entrance of the heirs. The study refers, on the one hand, in the conventional rules which ensure the permanence of the administrator in charge; on the other, to clauses in order to curb the interference of new members on the choices of governance. It shows, finally, the legitimacy of a statutory provision requiring the automatic succession of a beneficiary in the position of director.

The thesis is divided into three chapters.1) I study how monetary policy should be optimally designed when households show financial wealth heterogeneity.Main results: thanks to its ability to affect interest payments volatility, monetary policy has real effects even in a flexible-price cashless-limit environment; second, in a setup with nominal rigidities, price stability is no longer optimal. The extent of deviation from price stability depends on the initial level of debt dispersion.2) I assess the role of housing price movements in influencing the optimal design of monetary policy. Under the optimal simple rule, housing price movements should not be a separate target variable in addition to inflation. Furthermore, the welfare loss arising from targeting housing prices becomes quantitatively more significant the higher the degree of access to the credit market.3) I analyze the effects of fiscal policy in a currency area. Results: a public spending shock in one region increases private agents demand for imports and appreciates the terms of trade; second, a countercyclical fiscal rule can restore the Taylor principle, the uniqueness of the equilibrium and reduce macro-volatility.

Wikis are a popular collaboration technology. They support the collaborative editing of web pages through a simple mark-up language. Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous, powerful and affordable. Thus it is advantageous for people to get the benefits of wikis in a mobile setting. However, mobile computing leads to its own challenges such as limited screen size, bandwidth, memory and battery life; they also have intermittent connectivity due to the mobility and the coverage of network. I investigate how wikis can be made mobile; that is how wiki forms of collaborative editing can be achieved through mobile devices such as PDAs and smart phones. A prototype mobile wiki has been created using .NET, which addresses these issues and enables simple collaborative working whilst on and offline through smart mobile devices. A cut down wiki runs on the mobile device. This communicates with a main central wiki to cache pages for off line use. When sitting in a powered cradle eager, downloading and synchronization of pages is supported. During mobile operation, pages are cached lazily on demand to minimize power use and to save the limited and expensive bandwidth. On re-connection, offline edited as well as new pages are synchronized with the main wiki server. Finally a pluggable page rendering engine enables pages to be rendered in different ways to suit different sized screens.

Thesis (M.A.)--Hong Kong Baptist University, 2005. / Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-53).

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2006. / Thesis Advisor(s): Donald Abenheim. "June 2006." AD-A451 305. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-100).

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-03-12Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:47:35Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ferreira_mc_me_sjrp.pdf: 2030782 bytes, checksum: 6be665234f9e1a4c6116708f4f20c11c (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Neste trabalho realizamos um estudo de um sistema dinâmico não ideal, constituído por um pêndulo acoplado a um bloco e que oscilam verticalmente. A oscilação é devida a rotação de uma massa desbalanceada e acionada por um motor DC, cuja fonte de energia é limitada. Consideramos situações em que as freqüências do bloco e do pêndulo estão em ressonâncias internas 1:1, 1:2 e 2:1, e analisamos o comportamento do sistema bloco- motor-pêndulo através de simulações numéricas. Uma análise similar e levada a efeito, no caso em que o sistema dinâmico é dotado de uma excitação de suporte ideal horizontal do tipo F cos wt. / In this work we studied a nonideal dynamical system which is constituted by a pendulum connected to a block, and that oscillates vertically. The oscillation is due to the rotation of a unbalanced mass moved by DC motor with limited power supply. We consider situations where the frequencies of the block and the pendulum are in 1:1, 1:2 and 2:1 internal resonances, and we analyse the behavior of the block - motor - pendulum system through numerical simulations. A similar analysis is performed in the case where the dynamical system has a periodic horizontal oscillation of type F cos wt.

Dès la loi NRE de 2001, le législateur français s’est intéressé à l’utilisation de la voie électroniqueen période d’assemblée générale des actionnaires. Il laisse au pouvoir réglementaire la liberté deposer les modalités de toute forme d’interaction à distance entre la société anonyme et sesactionnaires. Le régime juridique allemand relatif aux assemblées générales a quant à lui étémodernisé en profondeur par la seule ARUG de 2009. Cette loi transpose la directiveeuropéenne 2007/36/CE du 11 juillet 2007 concernant l’exercice de certains droits desactionnaires de sociétés cotées. Ces textes ont conçu un actionnaire qui utiliserait la voieélectronique pour faciliter l’exercice de ses droits, un « cyber-actionnaire ». Si les textes françaisont bien pour objectif de faciliter l’exercice des droits de l’actionnaire, un nouveau cadre juridiquesemble s’être greffé sur la réglementation connue jusqu’alors. À trop chercher à s’en distinguer,notamment pour marquer la nouveauté, un régime juridique spécial semble s’être constitué, alorsque le droit allemand paraît aisément assimiler la voie électronique aux modes traditionnels decommunication. Or l’on ne fait pas face à une nouvelle catégorie d’actionnaires qui justifierait untraitement particulier. Le cyber-actionnaire n’est qu’un actionnaire exerçant par voie électroniqueses droits relatifs à l’information, à la communication et à la prise de décision collective enpériode d’assemblée générale. Pour s’en convaincre, la présente étude tire le bilan del’implication de la voie électronique en droit des sociétés par actions français et allemand. / This study looks into the introduction of electronic means in French and German company law.The French legislator already introduced the possibility of participating in shareholders annualgeneral meetings via electronic means in 2001. The law on New Economic Regulations led thegovernment to set the conditions of all the electronic communication between companies andtheir shareholders. In Germany, mainly the ARUG from 2009 modernized the law related to theAGM, by transposing the European directive from 11th July 2007 on the exercise of certain rightsof shareholders in listed companies. The new laws have a shareholder in mind, who would useelectronic means to facilitate the exercise of his rights before and during the AGM, a “cybershareholder”.While the German law seeks to assimilate the electronic communication with thetraditional correspondence, the varying French decrees seem to distinguish between a new legalregime and a traditional one. However, there is no need for a new category of shareholders,which could justify a special legal foundation. The cyber-shareholder is just a shareholderexercising his rights related to information, communication and collective decision-making in theAGM via electronic means.