The study aims to analyze the impact of political linkage on diversification strategy and firm performance. Previous studies indicate that firm¡¦s political linkages will generate performance impact in emerging economies. However, whether firm¡¦s political linkages will generate performance implications are underestimated. By utilizing longitudinal data in financial family business groups in Taiwan, this study tries to examine the relationships among political linkages, diversification strategy, and family business group¡¦s performance from the social capital viewpoint. The results indicate that in the current database, the higher level of formal political linkages, the higher degree of diversification in family business groups. Moreover, diversification strategy will generate mediated impact on the relationship between formal political linkages and performance in family business groups. In that, the consideration of diversification will lower the performance implications by formal political linkage in family business groups. The family business group¡¦s formal political linkageswill generate distinctive impact on diversification strategy and performance in emerging economies. The results provide referable value in addressing political linkages issues in family business groups in Asia.

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Maize production is limited agronomically by the availability of water and nutrients during the growing season. Of these two limiting factors, water availability is predicted to increase in importance as climate change and the growing urban landscape continue to stress limited supplies of freshwater. Historically, efforts to breed maize for water-limited environments have been extensive; especially in the areas of root architecture and flowering physiology. As progress has been made and new traits have been discovered and selected for, the different responses to drought stress at specific developmental stages of the maize plant have been selected as a whole when drought tolerance is evaluated. Herein we attempt to define the characteristics of the maize drought response during different developmental stages of the maize plant that can be altered through plant breeding. Towards breeding for drought tolerance, 400 inbred lines from a diversity panel were amplified and sequenced at the ZmLOX4 and ZmLOX5 loci in an effort to characterize their linkage disequilibrium and genetic diversity. Understanding these characteristics is essential for an association mapping study that accompanies this project, searching for novel and natural allelic diversity to improve drought tolerance and aflatoxin resistance in maize. This study is among the first to investigate genetic diversity at important gene paralogs ZmLOX4 and ZmLOX5 believed to be highly conserved among all Eukaryotes. We show very little genetic diversity and very low linkage disequilibrium in these genes, but also identified one natural variant line with knocked out ZmLOX5, a variant line missing ZmLOX5, and five line variants with a duplication of ZmLOX5. Tajima's D test suggests that both ZmLOX4 and ZmLOX5 have both been under neutral selection. Further investigation of haplotype data revealed that ZmLOX12, a member of the ZmLOX family, showed strong LD that extends much further than expected in maize. Linkage disequilibrium patterns at these loci of interest are crucial to quantify for future candidate gene association mapping studies. Knockout and copy number variants of ZmLOX5, while not a surprising find, are under further investigation for crop improvement.

The issue of work and family interaction attracts a lot of attention in the academic field. More and more researchers devoted their energy into the exploration of the mystery of how people manage themselves to live in the work domain and family domain at the same time. There are a lot of papers discussing about the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction and its moderators. However, very few researchers pay attention to what kind of the role the work-family linkage, comprising the theory of spillover, compensation, and segmentation, may play in the relationship. Only a few paper discussed about the influence of work-family linkage. There were also very few papers mentioning about how to measure the linkage of work and family. Researcher has yet to discover how these outcomes are related to different processes of work/family linkage and patterns of work/home intersection (Lambert, 1990). In order to understand the influence of work-family linkage, this study tried to measure the linkage and explore its relationship with other variables, such as job satisfaction, work-family conflict, etc. Below are the discoveries of this thesis: (1) Positive spillover is positively related to job satisfaction. (2) Negative spillover is positively related to work-family conflict. (3) Segmentation has no relationship with job satisfaction (4) Segmentation has no relationship with work-family conflict. Through the discovery of influence of work-family linkage, we may know to adjust ourselves between the work life and family life. We can try to change our linkage patterns in order to improve our job satisfaction or reduce our work-family conflict. Since high work-family conflict and low job satisfaction can both make employees hard to fully devoted themselves into the job, even these situation will force them to leave the company. We should try our best to find ways to help employees understand their own situation, and find the best strategy to cope with it.

Work and family lives are two inseparable domains for employees in the organizations. That causes a lot of research attention on studying work-family linkage and conflict, and on how job satisfaction being affected. The highlight of this research is to understand the impact of employees¡¦ relationship and closeness with their family members, defined as relationship quality, on the relationship between work-family linkage, work-family conflict, and job satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to find out the following questions: 1. How perceived work-family linkage is affecting work-family conflict, and how relationship quality is moderating? 2. How perceived work-family linkage is affecting job satisfaction, and how relationship quality is moderating? 3. How can work-family conflict affect job satisfaction? The result indicates a strong relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction. Moreover, relationship quality plays a significant role in influencing the relationship between work-family linkage and work-family conflict. Therefore, if the organization intends to improve job satisfaction, they should really work on eliminating work-family conflict. In the meantime, employees¡¦ relationships with their family members should be valued so that work-family conflict can be decreased.

Cognate mechanisms have been often used in design of linkages. Improper positions of fixed link or transmission angle could be improved effectively. Cognate mechanisms of planar linkages have been developed well, but the research on the spherical cognate is still wild open. There are just only spherical supplement mechanisms that have been presented by Soni(1967) until today. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the existence of spherical four-bar linkages cognate mechanisms. The geometry and properties of planar cognate mechanisms are discussed and a simulation program is written for the planar cognate mechanism. Then, the characteristics of spherical mechanisms are considered and the spherical cognate simulation program is built by using the result of planar cognate as a reference. Three examples are given to demonstrate the existence of pseudo-cognates for spherical mechanisms.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on January 26, 2010) Thesis advisor: Dr. Timothy P. Holtsford. Includes bibliographical references.

With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the youth growing up in a new culture of settlement.The issue is increasingly studied; however, little of the research conducted has combined a developmental with a contextual approach. The aim of this dissertation was to explore the adaptation of immigrant youth on the basis of developmental theories and models which put emphasis on setting or contextual conditions. This entailed viewing immigrant youths as developing organisms that actively interact with their environments. Further, immigrant youths were seen as embedded in multiple settings, at different levels and with different contextual features. Two of the overall research questions addressed how contextual features of the settings in which the youth are embedded were related to adaptation. Results from all three studies combined to show that the contextual feature of a setting is not of prime or sole importance for the adaptation of immigrant youth, and that the contextual feature of SES diversity is of greater importance than theethnic compositions of settings. The next two overall research questions addressed how the linkage between settings was related to adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation is not always setting specific and that what is happening in one setting can be related to adaptation in anothersetting. Further, it was found that the cultural distance between settings is related to adaption, but that contextual factors affect this relationship. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggests that the adaptation of immigrant youth is a complex matter that is explained better by interaction and indirect effects than by main and direct effects. This highlights the importance of taking all settings in which the immigrant youths are embedded into account and to account for how the settings interact to understand the factors that foster and hinder positive adaptation of immigrant youth. / <p>The article "Homophily in friendship networks of immigrant and nonimmigrantyouth: Does context matter?" in the list of studies is published electronically as "Peer selection and influence of delinquent behavior of immigrant and nonimmigrant youths: does context matter?"</p>

The field of robotics is in continuous development. Driving forces for the development are higher demands on robot accuracy and being more cost effective in the development process. To reduce costs, product development is moving towards virtual prototyping to enable early analysis and testing. This process demands realistic models and modelling is therefore of utmost importance. In the process of modelling high fidelity robot dynamics many different physical aspects have to be taken into account. Phenomena studied in this thesis stretch from where to introduce flexibilities, mechanical and dynamical coupling effects, and how to describe friction. By using a bottom up approach the effects are analysed individually to evaluate their contribution both to accuracy and computationalcomplexity. A strategy for how to model a flexible parallel linkage manipulator by introducing some crucial simplifications is presented. The elastic parameters are identified using a frequency domain identification algorithm developed in [Wernholt, 2007] and shows that the presented method works well up to a certain level of fidelity. Friction is modelled using empirically derived static and dynamic models. Evaluation of accuracy is conducted through identification of friction models for a real manipulator and it is seen that to capture all existing phenomena in low velocities  a dynamic model is needed. It is also seen that friction characteristics vary with temperature and a Kalman filter is suggested to adaptively estimate friction parameters. Finally an implementation of a flexible manipulator model using the software MapleSim is presented. The tool severely simplifies the process of modelling manipulators and enables for export to other environment such as simulation, optimization and control.

The domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris, has emerged as a model system for the study of human hereditary diseases. Of the approximately 450 hereditary diseases described in the dog, half have clinical presentations that are quite similar to specific human diseases. Understanding the genetic bases of canine hereditary diseases will not only complement comparative genetics studies but also facilitate selective breeding practices to reduce incidences in the dog. Whole genome screens have great potential to identify the marker(s) that segregate with canine hereditary diseases for which no reasonable candidate genes exist. The Minimal Screening Set-1 (MSS-1) was the first set of microsatellite markers described for linkage analysis in the dog and was, until recently, the best tool for genome screens. The MSS-2 is the most recently described screening set and offers increased density and more polymorphic markers. The first objective of this work was to develop tools to streamline genomic analyses in the study of canine hereditary diseases. This was achieved through the development of 1) multiplexing strategies for the MSS-1, 2) a multiplex of microsatellite markers for use in canine forensics and parentage assays and 3) chromosome-specific multiplex panels for the MSS-2. Multiplexing is the simultaneous amplification and analysis of markers and significantly reduces the expense and time required to collect genotype information. Pancreatic acinar atrophy (PAA) is a disease characterized by the degeneration of acinar cells of the exocrine pancreas and is the most important cause of exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) in the German Shepherd Dog (GSD). Although the prognosis for dogs having EPI is typically good with treatment, many dogs are euthanized because the owners are unable to afford the expensive enzyme supplements. The second objective of this work was to determine the mode of transmission of EPI in the GSD and conduct a whole genome screen for linkage. Two extended families of GSDs having PAA were assembled and used to determine the pattern of transmission. The results of this indicate that PAA is an autosomal recessive disease. The multiplexed MSS-1 was used to conduct an initial whole genome screen, although no markers were suggestive of linkage.