Globalization in business has become increasingly common, so stronger company that is seeking for growth tends to merge and acquire other companies since it is more beneficial to take over an existing firm's operations and niche compared to expanding on its own. Integration shortly after merger and acquisition is key to a company¡¦s long-term success, because top-management team must alter an organization¡¦s structure and establish new strategies to adjust to the rapid changing environment. Therefore, we can conclude that the role of top-management teams during the process of mergers and acquisitions is critical. After merger and acquisition, whether or not the top-management team of the target firm should be replaced remains a good question. Not only should the working ability and the accomplishment of the top-management teams be considered, but other internal and external reasons that might affect this alteration should also be considered. This research looks to discuss why the top-management team for the target firm should or should not remain in the office. We¡¦ve selected acquisition firm and target firm from the listed companies at the stock exchange market, over-the-counter market, and emerging stock market in 1997 to 2006 to be our study sample. We will try to figure out the retained ratio for the top management teams by using regression model analysis. The result of this study shows that the type of M & A, the experience of the acquisition firm, and the type of industry they are in have great impact on the retained ratio of the top-management teams.

This study aims to conduct a descriptive analysis of inflation targeting in Mongolia. In this context, I will assess whether the current inflation targeting practice of Mongolia is classified as a fully-fledged, eclectic, or inflation targeting lite regime. Then I will verify that Mongolia validates the prerequisites necessary for the implementation of fully fledged inflation targeting. Finally, I will proceed to a VAR model analysis aiming to describe the determinants of inflation. The results show that the inflation targeting practice of Mongolia falls in inflation targeting lite countries categorization and most of the prerequisites to adopt fully fledged inflation targeting have not been fulfilled. It would require significant improvement in the independence of the Bank of Mongolia’s operation and monetary policy decision making, modeling capabilities within the Bank of Mongolia, and financial stability. Finally, the VAR model results show a relationship among the variables, CPI, money supply, exchange rate, and GDP in Mongolia. The principal finding is that the money supply and exchange rate are more important in explaining variation in CPI than GDP in Mongolia.

Any model of access control has two fundamental aims: to ensure that resources are protected from inappropriate access and to ensure that access by authorised users is appropriate. Traditionally, approaches to access control have fallen into one of two categories: discretionary access control (DAC) or mandatory access control (MAC). More recently, role-based access control (RBAC) has offered the potential for a more manageable and flexible alternative. Typically, though, whichever model is adopted, any changes in the access control policy will have to be brought about via the intervention of a trusted administrator. In an ever-more connected world, with a drive towards autonomic computing, it is inevitable that a need for systems that support automatic policy updates in response to changes in the environment or user actions will emerge. Indeed, data management guidelines and legislation are often written at such a high level of abstraction that there is almost an implicit assumption that policies should react to contextual changes. Furthermore, as access control policies become more complicated, there is a clear need to express and reason about such entities at a higher level of abstraction for any meaningful analysis to be tractable, especially when consideration of complex state is involved. This thesis describes research conducted in formalising an approach to access control, termed evolving access control (EAC), that can support the automatic evolution of policies based on observed changes in the environment as dictated by high-level requirements embodied in a metapolicy. The contribution of this research is a formal, conceptual model of EAC which supports the construction, analysis and deployment of metapolicies and policies. The formal EAC model provides a framework to construct and describe metapolicies and to reason about how they manage the evolution of policies. Additionally, the model is used to analyse metapolicies for desirable properties, and to verify that policies adhere to the high-level requirements of the metapolicy. Furthermore, the model also allows the translation of verified policies to machine-readable representations, which can then be deployed in a system that supports fine-grained, dynamic access control.

The purpose of this study is to inform instruction by increasing the body of knowledge regarding the relationship between college physics students' knowledge about models in science and their conceptual understanding with regard to electricity and magnetism. The data for this study was obtained through the administration of two instruments: Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism, a multiple choice assessment, and Student Understanding of Models in Science, a Likert-scale survey. Both traditional statistics and an innovative technique called Model Analysis were used to analyze the data. Analysis of the data revealed that there is a relationship between student understanding of models in science and conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism topics. However, the results of this study also suggest that without specific instruction on models in science, overall understanding of models in science does not improve after a traditional electricity and magnetism course. Additionally, this study demonstrated that not only does student conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism topics improve after a traditionally taught electricity and magnetism course, but also, students demonstrate more sophistication in their understanding of some electricity and magnetism topics. In the latter case, students showed improvement in their application of the expert rather than the naïve or null model of electricity and magnetism topics.

This is a 15 credits thesis in mechanical engineering performed at the PLM Solutions group at the Rocktec division within Atlas Copco Rock Drills AB, Örebro, during spring 2012. When designers working with 3D CAD modeling uses different work methods in Pro/ENGINEER (Pro/E) it sometimes results in problems. It is also a problem when designers do not follow the specific work methods defined by Atlas Copco.   The purpose of this thesis was to identify the most common problems with 3D models at Atlas Copco Rock Drills AB (RDE) Örebro related to work methods, for example why models crash, why they cannot be checked in to Pro/Intralink or why there are unstable references. The objective was to present a work method to avoid one or two of the most severe problems identified at RDE Örebro.   To achieve the objective I started with going through the CAD support call data base, to find out in what areas the organization needed help from the CAD support. The result shows that the engineers request most support in how to use both the modeling and the drawing modules in Pro/E. I also came up with a suggestion for redesign of the CAD support call data base system, that could reduce the time needed for this kind of analysis from days to minutes.   Thereafter a number of engineers, all with high skills in Pro/E, were selected for personal interviews. The topic was to identify any lack in defined work methods in Pro/E causing problems that are taking long time to correct. The result shows that the biggest issue for the users is references. I also performed a benchmarking with two other companies within the Atlas Copco Group looking at their CAD guidelines regarding the issues found during the interviews.   Thirdly, one assembly each from six different departments were selected and sent to PTC for an in depth analysis with their software tool Expert Model Analysis. The goal was to find any systematic issues regarding work methods in Pro/E. The analysis confirmed what the engineers earlier had brought up as the main issues, namely, references, mass/weight handling and structure in the model tree. / Detta är en 15 hp examensarbete i maskinteknik som utförs på PLM Solutions Group på Rocktec divisionen inom Atlas Copco Rock Drills AB i Örebro, under våren 2012.När konstruktörerna arbetar med 3D CAD modellering använder de olika arbetsmetoder i Pro/ENGINEER (Pro/E) vilket ibland leder till problem. Det är också ett problem när konstruktörerna inte följer de arbetsmetoder som definierats av Atlas Copco.Syftet med detta examensarbete var att identifiera de vanligaste problemen med 3D-modeller på Atlas Copco Rock Drills AB (RDE) i Örebro relaterat till arbetsmetoder, till exempel varför modellerna kraschar, varför de inte kan checkas in i Pro/Intralink eller varför det finns instabila referenser. Målet var att presentera en arbetsmetod för att undvika ett eller två av de mest allvarliga problemen identifierade vid RDE Örebro. För att uppnå målet började jag med att gå igenom CAD-supportens samtalsdatabas, för att ta reda på inom vilka områden användarna behövde hjälp från CAD-support. Resultatet visar att konstruktörerna behöver mest hjälp med hur man använder både modellerings- och ritningsmodulerna i Pro/E. Jag tog också fram ett förslag till hur CAD-supportens samtalsdatabas kan göras om, som skulle kunna minska tiden som behövs för denna typ av analys från dagar till minuter. Därefter valdes ett antal ingenjörer ut, alla med hög kompetens inom Pro/E, för personliga intervjuer. Syftet var att identifiera eventuella brist i befintliga arbetsmetoder i Pro/E, vilka orsakar problem som tar lång tid att rätta till. Resultatet visar att det största problemet för användarna är referenser. Jag utförde också en benchmarking med två andra bolag inom Atlas Copco-gruppen genom att jämföra deras CAD rekommendationer kring de problem som kom fram under de tidigare intervjuerna. Som tredje del i examensarbetet valdes en CAD-modell från vardera sex olika avdelningar och skickades till PTC för en fördjupad analys med deras program Expert Model Analysis (XMA). Målet var att hitta systematiska problem gällande arbetsmetoder i Pro/E. XMA-analysen bekräftade vad ingenjörerna tidigare hade fört fram som de viktigaste frågorna, nämligen referenser, massa/vikt hantering och struktur i modellen trädet.

This paper evaluates how a firm uses vendor managed inventory (VMI) to manage inventories under costs constraint in uncertainly industrial environment and various demand. The emphasis of this research is to discuss the impacts how demand variation influences the effects of the firm executing VMI and how different supplier levels (ABC) affects firm¡¦s VMI strategy. This research built a cost model which contained construction cost, overhead cost, inventory cost, and shortage cost and compared the profits ex-using VMI with the profits using VMI. Furthermore, use the same model to find out the most proper VMI decisions in different supplier levels¡¦ conditions. This paper obtained some conclusions. First, the firm using VMI under uncertain demand would take more advantages than under certain demand. Second, we can find the best VMI strategy of a firm.

Internal convective cooling is a method by which components, such as gas turbine blades, are protected from damage caused by elevated temperatures. Heat pipes are structures that transport and dissipate large quantities of pressurized thermal energy. The thermal energy is transported from a heat source to a thermal sink via evaporative cooling. A radially rotating high temperature heat pipe employs centrifugal force to return or drive the working saturated-vapor mixture from the condenser section to the evaporator section. A rotating heat rig is being developed at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in order to gain a better understanding of the interaction between thermal Conductivity, rotational speed, operating temperatures and thermal loads. As a part of its development, this study will focus on identifying key factors that maximize the first critical speeds on rotating heat pipe assemblies having non-uniform temperature distributions. It was found that in order to avoid reaching the first critical speed the use of double bearings should be implemented. Since the temperature of the heat pipe will be non-uniform, this will have a minimal effect on the critical speed of the rotating rig. The first phase of the construction of the rotating rig will be stable and will provide valuable test data without reaching any critical speeds.

Background: Canine hypothyroidism is thought to cause abnormalities in glucose homeostasis, but the effect on glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity has not been determined to date. Hypothesis/Objectives: The purpose of the study was to investigate whether hypothyroidism has an effect on glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in dogs. We hypothesized that hypothyroidism causes insulin resistance. Animals: Sixteen euthyroid bitches were randomly selected and allocated into two groups. In 8 dogs, hypothyroidism was induced by administration of 1 mCi/kg I-131. Experiments were performed on non-anesthetized, fasted dogs in anestrous approximately 12 months after hypothyroidism was induced. Methods: The insulin-modified frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance test (FSIGT) and minimal model analysis were used to determine basal insulin and glucose concentrations, acute insulin response to glucose (AIRg), insulin sensitivity (SI), glucose effectiveness (SG) and the disposition index (DI). Results: In the hypothyroid group, basal glucose concentrations were mildly decreased (P = 0.0079), whereas basal insulin was increased (P = 0.019). Insulin sensitivity was reduced in the hypothyroid group (P<0.001), whereas AIRg was higher (P=0.01). Other parameters were not different between groups. Conclusions/Clinical Importance: Hypothyroidism negatively affects glucose homeostasis by inducing insulin resistance. In hypothyroid dogs, the disposition index (insulin sensitivity x insulin secretion) remained unchanged due to a compensatory increase in insulin secretion, thereby maintaining glucose tolerance. In cases with impaired insulin secretion, such as canine diabetes mellitus, concurrent hypothyroidism can have important clinical implications in the successful management of the disease. / Master of Science

Lake Erie supports one of the world's largest freshwater commercial fisheries. Bycatch has become a concern in current fisheries management. This study focused on four species in Lake Erie that include two major commercial and recreational species, walleye (Sander vitreus) and yellow perch (Perca flavescens); an invasive species, white perch (Morone americana); and an endangered species, lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens). The analyses were based on two datasets, the Partnership Index Fishing Survey (PIS) data and the commercial gillnet logbook data. The bycatch of walleye, yellow perch and white perch was predicted by a delta model developed on the PIS data. Discards were estimated as the difference between predicted bycatch and landed bycatch. Results highlighted bycatch and discard hotspots for these three species that have great management implications. Three classification tree models, a conditional inference tree and two exhaustive search-based trees, were constructed using the PIS data to estimate the probability of obtaining lake sturgeon bycach under specific environmental and gillnet fishing conditions. Lake sturgeon bycatch was most likely to be observed in the west basin of Lake Erie. The AdaBoost algorithm was applied in conjunction with the generalized linear/additive models to analyze catch rates of walleye, yellow perch and white perch. Three- and five-fold cross-validations were conducted to evaluate the performance of each candidate model. Results indicated that the Delta-AdaBoost model yielded the smallest training error and test error on average. I recommend the Delta-AdaBoost model for catch and bycatch analyses when data contain a high percentage of zeros. / Master of Science

No description available.