A parallel-type independently controllable transmission mechanism (PT-ICT) comprises of two planetary gear trains and two transmission-connecting members. It also includes an input shaft connecting to the input power source, a controller shaft connecting to the controller, an output shaft connecting to the output end, and a free-transmission end connecting to a secondary input source or output end. The controller can independently manipulate the transmitted output speed that is not affected by the variation of the Input speed. Adjusting the free-transmission¡¦s torque can reduce the power of the controller. This study proposes a new structural arrangement of the PT-ICT, and a corresponding test-bed for kinematic and dynamic experiments is also constructed. It first analyzes the theoretical expressions of angular speeds, torques, and power flows introduced on each rotational shaft. And then for the purpose of verifying the validity of the analytical theoretical results, this study also builds a 3D model configuration with its prototype of the PT-ICT is also built to perform kinematic and dynamic experiments. It shows that experimental results are in agreement with the design values. It is expected that applying the proposed PT-ICT mechanism to wind turbines in a variable wind farm can achieve high quality electricity output, extend workable wind speed range, and have no need of using any frequency converters.

Despite the launching of e-service by household registration offices, there have been few studies and examples associated with the organization streamlining. This study constructs a research framework for changes in Taiwan¡¦s first household registration office organization structure resulting from township/city consolidation, as well as the resulting work stress, and explores the correlation between members¡¦ cognition concerning their organization¡¦s merger and their work stress after the merger with organizations possessing similar functions. This study is a qualitative research, in which the staff members of Donggang Household Registration Office, Pingtung County, are taken as the subjects for in-depth interviews. Interview data analysis and research hypothesis are employed for verification. This case study focuses on structural change. An examination of the potential stress factors after organization structure change finds that, after the merger, the staff members did not have to learn new skills, nor were their work routines or workplace locations changed, in adapting to the new organization. Only high-level supervisors were impacted because fewer of them were needed after the merger. Accordingly, the merger of household registration offices with similar functions did not have a significant effect on work stress for most staff members.

In August, 2004, the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan passed landmark constitutional amendment proposals to cut the number of legislative seats in half, and adopt a "single-district, two-vote" system. In May, 2005, the parliamentary electorate system in Taiwan was officially changed from a single-nontransferable voting system (SNTV) to a single-member district parallel voting system. The new voting system was introduced in January, 2008. Under SNTV, the seats won in Kaohsiung County¡¥s legislator election were in proportion to the two political parties. However, the result of the first election after the electorate system changed showed a landslide victory of the KMT (Kuomingtang). The DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) should not have suffered such defeat in the election with the strength and power that their political factions have in Kaohsiung County. Many factors are for certain involved in winning or losing an election, and the focus of this thesis will be on the changes of political factions and how they can influent vote results. Under SNTV, the most influential and powerful political factions in Kaohsiung County were the Red Party, the White Party, and the Black Party. Under the new electoral system, however, as only one candidate will be elected, the political factions, as well as the candidates, have started changing their ways of thinking in terms of whom they should support. The candidates have been paying much more attention to the local political factions. Taking their own interests into consideration, the local political factions have also changed the way they intend to manipulate the vote results. The awakening of the local political factions indirectly made impacts on the result of the Seventh legislator election. In the future, the results of various elections may very well be influenced by the changes of the local political factions. To gain a clearer view of the changes of Kaohsiung County¡¥s political factions under the new voting system, the thesis will first describe the similarities and differences between SNTV and single-member district parallel voting system. It will then discuss the formation and development of Taiwan and Kaohsiung County¡¥s local political factions. The different electoral tactics of the KMT and the DPP under the two voting systems will then be analyzed, following by the examination of the voting results.

Abstract An Examination of Linkages Between Personality, Leader-Member Exchange, and the Psychological Contract By Mark George Kunze 2005 Committee Chair: Dr. Edward Miles Major Department: Management While previous research has focused mainly on relationships between various personality variables and either leader-member exchange or psychological contract violation, none has yet to examine how these constructs are linked. A model of these proposed relationships is developed based on theory drawn from literature in the areas of social psychology, leader-member exchange, and psychological contracts. The present research used structural equation modeling to examine the strength of the relationship between the personality variables of negative affect, positive affect, self-monitoring, and trait cynicism with respect to leader-member exchange and perceptions of psychological contract violation. Positive affect and negative affect were found to significantly relate to both LMX and the perception of psychological contract violation. Trait cynicism was not significantly related to LMX and only weakly related to perceptions of psychological contract violation. It was hypothesized that LMX would partially mediate the relationships between the individual personality factors and perceptions of psychological contract violation; however, the data did not support this hypothesis. While self-monitoring was hypothesized to moderate the relationship of positive affect, negative affect, and trait cynicism with LMX, the moderating effect was found to be significant only for the negative affect/LMX relationship.

Internationalization of post secondary institutions has been suggested as one of the most critical undertakings of higher education today. Despite growing interest in this phenomenon as an institutional initiative, relatively few studies consider internationalization from the perspective of faculty members whom some have identified as key catalysts of the internationalization process. Using a phenomenological research approach to examine the experience of five faculty members actively engaged in the internationalization process of their Canadian university I seek to understand how participants define internationalization, what motivates them to engage in this process and how the institutional and individual efforts to internationalize influence each other. I compare faculty motivations with institutional positions through an analysis of strategic institutional documents using de Wit’s (2002) internationalization rationale categories. Results suggest that institutional internationalization might be more effective in engaging faculty members when faculty perspectives and priorities are considered in the development of institutional strategies.

Organisations of today demand efficiency, rationality and personal sacrifice to achieve company goals and profit margins. The integral part that leader relations play in organisations is becoming more evident in the current economic climate. It is therefore vital that organisations focus on good relations in order to achieve engagement, resulting in lower levels of turnover intention. Organisations can be viewed as positive when leaders focus on the importance of people to enhance performance and employee wellness. The general objective of this study was to determine the relationship between leader member-exchange, role clarity, psychological empowerment, engagement and turnover intention. A specific financial institution within the Gauteng province was selected and regional managers, branch managers and consultants participated in the research. A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data. The Leader-Member Exchange questionnaire, Role Conflict and Ambiguity Questionnaire, Measuring Empowerment Questionnaire, Engagement Questionnaire and Intention to- leave Scale were administered. Statistical analysis was carried out by means of SPSS and AMOS. Factor analysis indicated a one factor structure for LMX7, MRCAQ, WEQ, TIS and a four factors structure for MEQ. The scales all showed acceptable reliabilities. The results showed that LMX, role clarity, psychological empowerment, work engagement, and turnover intention were related. Role clarity mediated the relationship between LMX and psychological empowerment, while psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between role clarity and work engagement as well as turnover intention. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011

Organisations of today demand efficiency, rationality and personal sacrifice to achieve company goals and profit margins. The integral part that leader relations play in organisations is becoming more evident in the current economic climate. It is therefore vital that organisations focus on good relations in order to achieve engagement, resulting in lower levels of turnover intention. Organisations can be viewed as positive when leaders focus on the importance of people to enhance performance and employee wellness. The general objective of this study was to determine the relationship between leader member-exchange, role clarity, psychological empowerment, engagement and turnover intention. A specific financial institution within the Gauteng province was selected and regional managers, branch managers and consultants participated in the research. A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data. The Leader-Member Exchange questionnaire, Role Conflict and Ambiguity Questionnaire, Measuring Empowerment Questionnaire, Engagement Questionnaire and Intention to- leave Scale were administered. Statistical analysis was carried out by means of SPSS and AMOS. Factor analysis indicated a one factor structure for LMX7, MRCAQ, WEQ, TIS and a four factors structure for MEQ. The scales all showed acceptable reliabilities. The results showed that LMX, role clarity, psychological empowerment, work engagement, and turnover intention were related. Role clarity mediated the relationship between LMX and psychological empowerment, while psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between role clarity and work engagement as well as turnover intention. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011

The steady state response of thin-walled members subjected to harmonic forces is investigated in the present study. The governing differential equations of motion and associated boundary conditions are derived from the Hamilton variational principle. The harmonic form of the applied forces is exploited to eliminate the need to discretize the problem in the time domain, resulting in computational efficiency. The formulation is based on a generalization of the Timoshenko-Vlasov beam theory and accounts for warping effects, shear deformation effects due to bending and non-uniform warping, translational and rotary inertial effects and captures flexural-torsional coupling arising in asymmetric cross-sections. Six of the resulting seven field equations are observed to be fully coupled for asymmetric cross-sections while the equation of longitudinal motion is observed to be uncoupled. Separate closed form solutions are provided for the cases of (i) doubly symmetric cross sections, (ii) monosymmetric cross-sections, and (iii) asymmetric cross-sections. The closed-form solutions are provided for cantilever and simply-supported boundary conditions. A family of shape functions is then developed based on the exact solution of the homogeneous field equations and then used to formulate a series of super-convergent finite beam elements. The resulting two-noded beam elements are shown to successfully capture the static and dynamic responses of thin-walled members. The finite elements developed involve no special discretization errors normally encountered in other finite element formulations and provide results in excellent agreement with those based on other established finite elements with a minimal number of degrees of freedom. The formulation is also capable to predict the natural frequencies and mode-shapes of the structural members. Comparisons with non-shear deformable beam solutions demonstrate the importance of shear deformation effects within short-span members subjected to harmonic loads with higher exciting frequencies. Comparisons with shell element solution results demonstrate that distortional effects are more pronounced in cantilevers with short spans. A generalized stress extraction scheme from the finite element formulation is then developed. Also, a generalization of the analysis procedure to accommodate multiple loads with distinct exciting frequencies is established. The study is concluded with design examples which illustrate the applicability of the formulation, in conjunction with established principles of fatigue design, in determining the fatigue life of steel members subjected to multiple harmonic forces.

Internationalization of post secondary institutions has been suggested as one of the most critical undertakings of higher education today. Despite growing interest in this phenomenon as an institutional initiative, relatively few studies consider internationalization from the perspective of faculty members whom some have identified as key catalysts of the internationalization process. Using a phenomenological research approach to examine the experience of five faculty members actively engaged in the internationalization process of their Canadian university I seek to understand how participants define internationalization, what motivates them to engage in this process and how the institutional and individual efforts to internationalize influence each other. I compare faculty motivations with institutional positions through an analysis of strategic institutional documents using de Wit’s (2002) internationalization rationale categories. Results suggest that institutional internationalization might be more effective in engaging faculty members when faculty perspectives and priorities are considered in the development of institutional strategies.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR R/C BUILDING VULNERABILITY INDEX AND MEMBER IMPORTANCE CALCULATION Turkey has many active faults which have the potential to generate large earthquakes. Recent earthquakes showed that the buildings in Turkey are not well designed and vulnerable to earthquakes. Previous studies on the subject showed that many structures in Turkey need to be strengthened before the next major earthquake to minimize property loss and casualties. A number of fast and approximate (mostly empirical) methods have been developed in the past to process large building stock. However, there are some important and special structures that do not fit with the general building stock and needs special consideration (e.g., disaster management center, governmental buildings, hospitals, tall structures, etc.). This study targets to evaluate those important and special structures in a detailed, fast, and correct manner. The developed software, which constitutes an important part of this study, does process the building information several times to determine member-based importance factors. The vulnerability index of the building will be determined using the importance of each load-carrying member and how much each member is forced with respect to its capacity. In order to augment user perception, a functional graphical user-interface is designed. Software is equipped with modules that generate input files for SAP2000 analysis program, conduct dynamic and static analysis automatically, and postprocess the generated analysis results which enable the engineer to make a decision on the vulnerability of the structure. Program is written in C++, using object-oriented programming technique. The main difference between this and similar studies is the generator program which automatically generates 3D-FE models and post-processes nonlinear analysis results for an effective decision mechanism. In this way, more realistic results can be obtained much faster. As future studies, new routines are planned to be implemented to the graphical user interface of the program which will suggest smart and engineered retrofit/strengthening alternatives to the user.