The essay focuses on the newly discovered findings that the distribution of preferences votes across candidate’s guides the political parties decisions on candidate promotions and helps shape the ballot list for the next election. Preference votes have therefore an indirect effect on candidate’s future political career. The aim of the essay is to supplement the existing research on the subject by analysing how the effect differs between candidates with different backgrounds. This due to the fact that candidates with foreign background are underrepresented in Swedish political assemblies and where previous research has showed that one explanation is the existence of discrimination in the political parties. It is therefore interesting to investigate whether the political parties reward candidates with different background for their share of preference votes to the same extent. The essay searches to do so by examining the correlation between candidate’s share of preference votes in the municipal council election in 2010 and the same candidates ballot list placement in the municipal council election in 2014. The essay finds that the there is no significant difference in effect between candidates with different background. Despite this, the results provide some support that preference votes is particular important for candidates with foreign background.

The Santa Ana River (SAR) is the largest river in Southern California. The flow of the SAR begins in the San Bernardino Mountains and discharges into the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach. The SAR contains one of the most essential and rare biodiversity hotspots on earth. In order to protect the wildlife, and suit population demands, the SAR must meet the Clean Water Act (CWA) regulations. The SAR Reach 6 is the uppermost segment of the river, and is currently listed under the CWA 303(d) List for impaired water due to contamination of cadmium, copper, and lead from an unknown source based on limited data provided in 1997 by the San Bernardino County Flood Control District (SBCFCD). This project focused on confirming the contemporary occurrence and identifying the potential source(s) of Cd, Cu, and Pb by comparing new water sample data with that of previous studies The analysis of previous data identified an interesting correlation between high water hardness and elevated lead levels. The new results from this study suggest that there continues to be a source of these metals in the upper parts of Reach 6 of the SAR. Moreover, the limited data obtained in this study suggests that the source of the contamination is upstream to the northeast of the primary sampling site, possibly on private lands. Future, more comprehensive studies will be required to determine whether Reach 6 of the SAR should remain on the 303(d) list. Source identification if necessary, will be a further challenge.

The thesis deals with the issues that are tied with reading and mathematical literacy. The literacy is being considered by solved exrcises at the second grade of elementary school. The purpose of this work is to bring nearer the connectedness between reading literacy and other subjects - in this case mainly math. The work is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the theory, in which there is outline of the description of reading and mathematical literacy, verbal exercises and what is the function of working sheets. The second part is practical. There are put created working sheets with chosen topics from math, which were given to the pupils at the elementary school. The cooperation with pupils wihtin filling the working sheets can be also found in this thesis. The analysis of this literacy and processes of solving are attached in the end.

我國欲成為亞太金融中心，若檢視其可能須俱備之要件，其中不可或缺之 一環是「與金融業務有關之法令規章須符合國際規範慣例」。欲提昇臺灣 金融市場之法規以適合國際規範之標準，首要之務應是了解各相關體系之 遊戲規則，以選擇最適於我國發展的對象以積極爭取之，並結合外交上之 拓展與努力方能竟其功。故研究金融服務業之國際規範實有其必要性。本 研究以金融業之國際規範為研究對象而以證券業為附題，主要是希望在我 國面對國際規範下而於知法、適法及用法的過程中提供此一研究心得，依 金融服務業之立場，對於我國欲加強與金融服務業國際組織互動之目標， 提出一階段性之建議以資參考。 本研究第二章中介紹欲檢視金融服務 業是否適用GATS規範時所應採取的步驟，並按此一步驟以分析金融服務業 所受之各項約束與義務，俾以擬訂出金融服務業適用之整體規範（將一般 性規範和特定業別之規定合而為一）。此外，並將各國承諾情形透過承諾 表之比較，以備我國參考。 OECD之規範下涉及金融服務業之規定， 可分為兩大體系：除規範交易之經常無形法典和資本自由化法典之修正外 ，尚包括多國籍企業暨投資宣言下所衍生之國民待遇等四項原則。本研究 第三章除針對兩大體系分別作介紹之外，並將OECD各會員國之證券市場法 制之趨勢作一整理介紹，以了解OECD法典規範對各國證券業之影響；並藉 由對先進國家證券法規發展現況之了解，以供我國證券主管機關之參考。 第四章則以歐市金融統合為研究對象，首先對歐市統合之背景、法規 及統合理由作一概述，以了解金融統合之背景。其次，對金融統合所涉及 之範圍作一定義，並依此一定義為架構以說明各項金融統合工作之內容， 以了解在統合過程中各國所應調和之努力。最後並就金融統合之未來發展 及可能的影響作一評估，以供我國相關業者之參考 在第五章中則對於 GATS、OECD和EC三大體系做一比較，以藉此了解我國於括展國際經貿活動 時可發展之方向。並說明我國於此一方向下所受之影響。此外，並就加入 GATS對我國證勸市場於國際化之發展及法制因應之影響做討論，並謀求其 因應之道。

Probabilistic simultaneous polynomial reconstruction algorithm of Bleichenbacher-Kiayias-Yung is extended to the polynomials whose degrees are allowed to be distinct. Furthermore, it is observed that probability of the algorithm can be increased. Specifically, for a finite field $F$, we present a probabilistic algorithm which can recover polynomials $p_1,ldots, p_r in F[x]$ of degree less than $k_1,k_2,ldots,k_r$, respectively with given field evaluations $p_l(z_i) = y_{i,l}$ for all $i in I$, $|I|=t$ and $l in [r]$ with probability at least $1 - (n - t)/|F|$ and with time complexity at most $O((nr)^3)$. Next, by using this algorithm, we present a probabilistic decoder for interleaved Reed-Solomon codes. It is observed that interleaved Reed-Solomon codes over $F$ with rate $R$ can be decoded up to burst error rate $frac{r}{r+1}(1 - R)$ probabilistically for an interleaving parameter $r$. It is proved that a Reed-Solomon code RS$(n / k)$ can be decoded up to error rate $frac{r}{r+1}(1 - R&#039 / )$ for $R&#039 / = frac{(k-1)(r+1)+2}{2n}$ when probabilistic interleaved Reed-Solomon decoders are applied. Similarly, for a finite field $F_{q^2}$, it is proved that $q$-folded Hermitian codes over $F_{q^{2q}}$ with rate $R$ can be decoded up to error rate $frac{q}{q+1}(1 - R)$ probabilistically. On the other hand, it is observed that interleaved codes whose subcodes would have different minimum distances can be list decodable up to radius of minimum of list decoding radiuses of subcodes. Specifically, we present a list decoding algorithm for $C$, which is interleaving of $C_1,ldots, C_b$ whose minimum distances would be different, decoding up to radius of minimum of list decoding radiuses of $C_1,ldots, C_b$ with list size polynomial in the maximum of list sizes of $C_1,ldots, C_b$ and with time complexity polynomial in list size of $C$ and $b$. Next, by using this list decoding algorithm for interleaved codes, we obtained new list decoding algorithm for $qh$-folded Hermitian codes for $q$ standing for field size the code defined and $h$ is any positive integer. The decoding algorithm list decodes $qh$-folded Hermitian codes for radius that is generally better than radius of Guruswami-Sudan algorithm, with time complexity and list size polynomial in list size of $h$-folded Reed-Solomon codes defined over $F_{q^2}$.

This paper main goal is to introduce the basic language and programming styles of the mathematical software Mathematica (5.2), and applies it to solve problems in algebra, calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics. We hope readers can enhance the interest of learning mathematics by the aid of software, verify the common theorem using the software, and solving mathematical problems.

The objective of this research is to investigate improved methods for distributing certificate revocation lists (CRLs) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). VANETs are a subset of mobile ad hoc networks composed of network-equipped vehicles and infrastructure points, which will allow vehicles to communicate with other vehicles and with roadside infrastructure points. While sharing some of the same limitations of mobile ad hoc networks, such as lack of infrastructure and limited communications range, VANETs have several dissimilarities that make them a much different research area. The main differences include the size of the network, the speed of the vehicles, and the network security concerns. Confidentiality, authenticity, integrity, and availability are some of the standard goals of network security. While confidentiality and authenticity at times seem in opposition to each other, VANET researchers have developed many methods for enhancing confidentiality while at the same time providing authenticity. The method agreed upon for confidentiality and authenticity by most researchers and the IEEE 1609 working group is a public key infrastructure (PKI) system. An important part of any PKI system is the revocation of certificates. The revocation process, as well as the distribution of revocation information, is an open research problem for VANETs. This research develops new methods of CRL distribution and compares them to existing methods proposed by other researchers. The new methods show improved performance in various vehicle traffic densities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Computer Science and Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Applications must be able to synchronize accesses to operating system (OS) resources in order to ensure correctness in the face of concurrency and system failures. This thesis proposes system transactions, with which the programmer specifies atomic updates to heterogeneous system resources and the OS guarantees atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID). This thesis provides a model for system transactions as a concurrency control mechanism. System transactions efficiently and cleanly solve long-standing concurrency problems that are difficult to address with other techniques. For example, malicious users can exploit race conditions between distinct system calls in privileged applications, gaining administrative access to a system. Programmers can eliminate these vulnerabilities by eliminating these race conditions with system transactions. Similarly, failed software installations can leave a system unusable. System transactions can roll back an unsuccessful software installation without disturbing concurrent, independent updates to the file system. This thesis describes the design and implementation of TxOS, a variant of Linux 2.6.22 that implements system transactions. The thesis contributes new implementation techniques that yield fast, serializable transactions with strong isolation and fairness between system transactions and non-transactional activity. Using system transactions, programmers can build applications with better performance or stronger correctness guarantees from simpler code. For instance, wrapping an installation of OpenSSH in a system transaction guarantees that a failed installation will be rolled back completely. These atomicity properties are provided by the OS, requiring no modification to the installer itself and adding only 10% performance overhead. The prototype implementation of system transactions also minimizes non-transactional overheads. For instance, a non-transactional compilation of Linux incurs negligible (less than 2%) overhead on TxOS. Finally, this thesis describes a new lock-free linked list algorithm, called OLF, for optimistic, lock-free lists. OLF addresses key limitations of prior algorithms, which sacrifice functionality for performance. Prior lock-free list algorithms can safely insert or delete a single item, but cannot atomically compose multiple operations (e.g., atomically move an item between two lists). OLF provides both arbitrary composition of list operations as well as performance scalability close to previous lock-free list designs. OLF also removes previous requirements for dynamic memory allocation and garbage collection of list nodes, making it suitable for low-level system software, such as the Linux kernel. We replace lists in the Linux kernel's directory cache with OLF lists, which currently requires a coarse-grained lock to ensure invariants across multiple lists. OLF lists in the Linux kernel improve performance of a filesystem metadata microbenchmark by 3x over unmodified Linux at 8 CPUs. The TxOS prototype demonstrates that a mature OS running on commodity hardware can provide system transactions at a reasonable performance cost. As a practical OS abstraction for application developers, system transactions facilitate writing correct application code in the presence of concurrency and system failures. The OLF algorithm demonstrates that application developers can have both the functionality of locks and the performance scalability of a lock-free linked list. / text

Keynote address delivered at the Archives Association of British Columbia in May 1998.