What is the measure of the effectiveness of corporate governance? What is the relationship between corporate governance and performance? This thesis sheds light on these questions by examining the consequences of two kinds of corporate governance monitoring mechanisms, religion as an external mechanism and independent directors as an internal mechanism. Though recent work in finance and accounting provide evidence that religion is an effective external monitoring mechanism, whether it has pricing effects has yet to be examined. I explore this issue by investigating the relation between the degree of religiosity surrounding a firm’s headquarters and the firm’s cost of equity capital in Chapter 2. I find that firms located in more religious counties of the U.S. exhibit a lower cost of equity capital. The effects are also more pronounced for firms and during periods lacking alternative regulation mechanisms. Finally, I find that the effects of religion on the firm’s cost of equity capital are more pronounced for firms with greater information asymmetry. The second part of my thesis is motivated by the considerable debate on whether board independence is an effective internal monitoring mechanism. I offer a new perspective by examining the relationship between firm risk and board independence. I find that board independence is associated with a significantly lower level of idiosyncratic risk. Further tests suggest that firms’ idiosyncratic risk is negatively related to the independence of audit committees and nominating committees, but positively related to the independence of compensation committees. In addition, I find that firms with greater board independence display lower degrees of operating risk exposure, and are less prone to stock price crashes. My thesis makes several important contributions to the literature. First, my thesis shows that studying the important social factors that influence different agents and determine the deeds of collective groups may be important for corporate governance research and practice. Furthermore, my results provide robust evidence supporting the view that religion facilitates economic development. Finally, my findings provide an explanation for the insignificant relationship between board independence and firm performance documented by recent literature. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2011-07-29 10:45:05.376

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This research examines travel characteristics of cyclists on active transportation (AT) paths in the City of Winnipeg and develops expansion factors to be applied to short duration cyclist volume counts conducted in Winnipeg, MB. The expansion factors will be applied to short duration counts to estimate seasonal average daily traffic (SADT) volumes in Winnipeg and normalize counts taken on different days with different conditions that could affect levels of cycling in a jurisdiction. This will help answer critical questions regarding cycling in a jurisdiction and allow transportation professionals promote the safe and equitable accommodation of cyclists in our transportation system. This thesis (1) determines which months should be included in the SADT calculation for Winnipeg and selects a method of expansion based on ten years of historical weather data and one year of cyclist volume data; and (2) develops expansion factors which can be applied to short duration counts in order to estimate SADT.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Nov. 20, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-133). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Bibliography references included. Also available via the Internet.

The thesis deals with server monitoring, focusing on the server logs and storage devices in the form of modules into the KNOTIS information system. An administrator is warned of unusual activities or possible disk failures that may lead to data loss. It describes automatic data collection, data processing and user interface that is developed in the web environment and allows you to set different server monitoring parameters. SMART technology has been used to obtain the status of disk units. The thesis works with the use of disk arrays and LVM technology. It monitors also the most important server logs, such as auth.log, syslog, kern.log and apache's log files.

Existing endpoint security monitors use agents that must be installed on every computing host or endpoint. However, as the number of monitored hosts increases, agents installation, con figuration and maintenance become arduous and requires more efforts. Moreover, installed agents can increase the security threat footprint and several companies impose restrictions on using agents on every computing system. This work provides a generic agentless endpoint framework for security monitoring of computing systems. The computing hosts are accessed by the monitoring framework running on a central server. Since the monitoring framework is separate from the computing hosts for which the monitoring is being performed, the various security models of the framework can perform data retrieval and analysis without utilizing agents executing within the computing hosts. The monitoring framework retrieves transparently raw data from the monitored computing hosts that are then fed to the security modules integrated with the framework. These modules analyze the received data to perform security monitoring of the target computing hosts. As a use case, a real-time intrusion detection model has been implemented to detect abnormal behaviors on computing hosts based on the data collected using the introduced framework. / Graduate

When L-band radio waves of space based systems such as Global Positioning System (GPS) travel trough the ionosphere and plasmasphere their ray paths are perturbed due to the free electrons. Since the last decade these integrated measurements are used to map the ionosphere for navigational and scientific investigations. In November 2001 a polar plasma convection like ionospheric event has been recognised in vertical TEC maps produced with GPS data. This event on the one hand is shortly compared with the behaviour of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) to which it may be related according to former publications. On the other hand the 3-dimensional tomography applying also GPS data is tested on its capability to reconstruct this ionospheric event in the European sector. The different mappings of the two monitoring methods are compared. / Wenn L-Band-Radiowellen raumgestützter Navigationssysteme wie das Global Positioning System (GPS) die Ionosphäre oder Plasmasphäre durchlaufen, werden Ihre Strahlwege durch die freien Elektronen verändert. Seit dem letzten Jahrzehnt verwendet man diese integrierten Messungen, um die Ionosphäre im Interesse der Navigation und der Wissenschaft abzubilden. Am Beispiel eines Ereignisses vom November 2001 wurde eine polare Plasmakonvektion in der Ionosphäre durch vertikale TEC –Karten (Total Electron Content), die ebenfalls mit Hilfe von GPS Daten erstellt werden, abgebildet. Einerseits wurde das Ereignis der Plasmakonvektion mit dem Verhalten des Interplanetaren Magnetischen Feldes (IMF) kurz verglichen und auf ihren Zusammenhang hin untersucht. Auf der anderen Seite wurde anhand dieses Ereignisses die Methode einer über den europäischen Raum aufgespannten auf GPS–Daten basierenden 3-dimensionale Tomographie auf ihre Reproduzierbarkeit hin geprüft. Die zwei verschiedenen Methoden des Ionosphärenmonitorings werden verglichen.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / The DCS invested in the ICT solution to drive their Enterprise Architectural strategic and objective goals. Government departments uses ICT on their day to day business activities and to pursue for competitive progression compare to other parts of the world. The challenges are entirely depending on the user adoption of new technology. Other challenges that might delay the progress in government department would be the financial constraints and the socio inequality among our community in the developing countries. Government has a growth in e-government ICT’s infrastructure used in everyday activities and online functionality. These emerge from private entities that the government does business with, to force them to move away from manual function to electronic function and processes. Electronic monitoring system has been there in some parts of the world. Hence the South African government has opt to make use of this tool as it has been have a success results in some parts of the world. Even though there are some challenge the department has decided to implement EM system for monitoring of parolees. This study explores the factors that influence the adoption of electronic monitoring systems of parolees in the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) in South Africa, which will assist the DCS to monitor parolees effectively under budgetary constraints. Also to overcome the challenges of overcrowding, saving more cost of building more new facilities.

The monitoring of continental and global scale net primary production remains a major focus of satellite-based remote sensing. Potential benefits which follow are diverse and include contributions to, and improved scientific understanding of, ecological systems, rangeland management, famine warning, agricultural commodity trading, and the study of global climate change.A NOAA-AVHRR data set containing monthly observations of green vegetation cover over a ten year period was acquired and analysed, to extract information on seasonal conditions. The data were supplied as a vegetation index, commonly known as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), with a spatial resolution of approximately five km. The data set was acquired from three different satellites, and calibration problems were known to exist. A new technique was developed to estimate, and subsequently remove, the calibration bias present in the data.Monthly rainfall measurements were used as surrogate ground truth to validate the NDVI data. For regions of native vegetation, linear models relating NDVI to previous rainfall were derived, using transfer function techniques in common use in systems engineering. The models demonstrate that, in mid-latitude regions, the NDVI is a linear function of rainfall recorded over the preceding seven or eight months.Annual summaries of the image data were developed to highlight the amount and timing of plant growth. Three fundamental questions were posed as an aid to the development of the summary technique: where, when and how much? These summaries highlight the extraordinary spatial and temporal variations in plant growth, and hence rainfall, over much of Western Australia each year.Standard analysis techniques used in time series analysis, such as classical decomposition, were successfully applied to the analysis of NDVI time series. These techniques highlighted ++ / structural differences in the image data, due to land use, climatic factors and vegetation type.Overall, the results of the research undertaken in this study, using NOAA-AVHRR data in Western Australia, demonstrate that vegetation indices acquired from satellite platforms can be used to monitor continental scale seasonal conditions in an effective manner. As a consequence of these results, further research using this type of data is proposed in rangeland management and climate change modelling.