With the increased technological advances of thermal imagers, existing theoretical models are not capable of predicting the advantages of advanced thermal imagers. The advanced thermal imager contains a staring focal plane array, which may be sensitive to multiple spectra, and light enough to be mounted on a rifle. Research was conducted to address portions of these three areas. Psychophysical experiments were conducted to model the impact of insufficient sampling on human observer performance for the identification of military vehicles. An information comparison metric was proposed for the comparison of different spectral images. The impact of dead pixels and thermal imager noise on the comparison metric were measured. A human performance model was then developed to predict a humans ability to identify small handheld objects. The impacts of these models on current and future research were discussed.

This research is to study the fundamental theory of Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) through numerical simulation and experimental analysis. The basic principle of SAS is to enhance the capability of spatial resolution by moving the transducer element to increase aperture so that it achieves a better resolution. The factors affecting the capability of resolution include the actual size of the transducers, frequency and its bandwidth, pulse length, and moving speeds. The effects of various factors on the resolution were examined through numerical simulation. The results have shown that the smaller the true size of the transducer, the better the resolution. Moreover, when the bandwidth is increased, the resolution also increases. The SAS is sensitive to the speed of movement due to the fact that data acquisition may be limited, therefore the speed can not be too high, e.g., less than 1.5 m/s. The experiment was carried out in a water tank of size 4 m x 3.5 m x 2 m. The transducers of AST MK VI 192 kHz were employed to transmit and receive signals. Copper spheres of various sizes (3 cm, 6 cm, 8 cm diameter) were used as targets. The data were obtained and analyzed, and the results have shown that the resolution may be achieved by SAS analysis, establishing the fundamental principle and offering opportunity for future study.

We consider the topic of target tracking in this thesis. Target tracking is one of the applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Clustering approach prolongs sensor¡¦s lifetime and provides better data aggregation for WSNs. Most previous researches assumed that cluster regions are disjointed, while others assigned overlapping cluster regions, and utilized them in some applications, including inter-cluster routing and time synchronization. However, in overlapping clustering, processing of redundant sensing data may impair system performance. We present a regular distributed overlapping WSN in this thesis. The network is based on two kinds of sensors: (1) high-capability sensors, which are assigned as cluster heads (CHs), responsible for data processing and inter-cluster communication, (2) normal sensors, which are in a larger number when comparing with the high-capability sensors, the function of normal sensors are to provide data to the CHs. We define several operating modes of CHs and sensors. WSN works more efficient under the settings. Since a target may be located in the overlapping region, redundant data processing problem exists. To solve the problem, we utilize Cholesky decomposition to decorrelate the measurement noise covariance matrices. The correlation will be eliminated during the process. In addition, we modify extended information filter (EIF) and adapt to the decorrelated data. The CHs track the target, fuse the information from other CHs, and implement distributed positioning. The simulations are based on ultra-wideband (UWB) environment, we have verified that the proposed scheme works more efficient under the setting of different modes. The performance with decorrelated measurement is better than that with correlated ones.

The purpose of this study was to examine the marketing strategy used by Pernond Ricard to promote popular liquors in the low¡Bmid and high price categories¡Cthe study divided 9 products into 3 price segments¡Cthis research study used individual in-depth interviews in order to understand the marketing strategy and operational practices of the business model¡CAnalyses indicated that their marketing strategy STP and 4Ps¡Athe key elements of their marketing strategy are people¡Bpromotion¡Bchannel¡Bproduct and price strategies¡C Finally¡Asuggestions for Pernond Ricards¡¦ marketing strategy are as follows¡G (1) Different price segmentation should be more focused on different target groups¡C (2) Must understand the local consumer¡¦s behavior and usage habits in order to satisfy their needs¡C (3) Customize their products and services for each individual target customer segment¡C Lastly¡Athis research study will propose the marketing strategy and suggestions for future research directions¡C

Nowadays, X86 CPU all have superscalar computing ability. Superscalar architecture can fetch, execute and commit more than one instruction per cycle. And it helps a lot to explore more instruction level parallelism. If a superscalar processor fetches instructions inefficiently, its performance speedup ratio will be limit. Program flow is not continuous. It is one of main reasons that Front-End can¡¦t fetch efficiently. And it is useless to get more speedup by enlarging fetch capacity of Front-End or other units. In this thesis, we present a new structure of branch target buffer and instruction stream buffer. They have abilities to predict advance branch information and reassemble cache lines. Front-End could fetch more valid instructions in a cycle by reassembling original line and line which contains instructions of the next basic block. The simulation and implement results show that we can get 43.2% speedup in fetch efficiency with 64 bytes cache line size and 6 fetch capacities. And 3.6 valid instructions per cycle with ABP buffer which buffers 4 cache line.

The research aims to design an experimental testing mechanism and process for measuring the scattering strength and the pattern induced by an underwater target. The experimental data are to compare with existing theoretical results to insure the integrity of experimental design. The experiment is conducted in a water tank of dimension 4m x 3.5 m x 2m. The main work is to measure the sound field scattered by a copper sphere of diameter 60mm. There are two types of sources employed in this analysis: one is omni-directional, 70kHz CTG-0708 transducer, and the other is directive, 192 kHz iTP-192k transducer. Both transducers transmit sine waves with the pulse lengths roughly equal to 0.143 msec (equivalent to 10 waves) and 0.333 msec (equivalent to 64 waves), respectively. The scattering field theory is based on the formulation developed by Hickling (JASA, 34, 1962, pp.1582-1592). The experimental process has demonstrated that it is more difficult to measure the forward scattering field than the backward scattering field, due to the fact that the forward scattering field is likely to be mingled with the direct waves. To deal with this problem, the treatment developed by L. Ding¡]JASA, 101,1997, pp.3398-3404¡^has been invoked, in that the direct waves may be filtered by phase shift. This procedure requires the special concern on synchronism of sound source in order to avoid the variation of scattering signals. The comparison between experimental and theoretical results shows that the discrepancy in the forward scattering sector is within 3 to 4 dB, while in the backscattering sector, it is within 1 to 2 dB; however, generally speaking, the variation of the curves show a good agreement. These results indicate that the design of this experiment is basically practicable, and with further improvements, it could be applied to measure other underwater targets. As a whole, the thesis is composed by basic theory deduction, experimental instrumentation, mechanism design, and experiment data analysis. The emphases place on the design and observation of the scattering experiment, data analysis, and further improvement.

Since the construction industry in Taiwan started declining at the beginning of 1990s, many firms withdrew from this industry. Most of the surviving firms downsized their organization, and expanded their business to other markets or industries for continuous operation. However, after our survey, we find that there are construction companies who focus on original industry and market but still make good profit under the severe recession. Tunghuei Construction Company, who sells single houses in HsiaoKung Area of Kaohsiung, is just the best example. The ROI every year of Tunghuei Construction Company in past 10 years was over 20%, except 1999(The ROI of 1999 was 15.8%). Among the past decade, there are five years in which Tunghuei's ROI was over 30%. This is a very rare example of Taiwan's construction industry. The manager of Tunghuei Construction Company indicates that the company's success is because of "target marketing". After analyzing the environment of the construction industry in Taiwan, we find it an monopolistic-competitive market that is very good for target marketing and just fits the concept of Tunghuei Construction Company very well. After studying Tunghuei Construction Company, we find that it has its own strategic developing model of target marketing, which matches normal academic definition. Tunghuei uses geographic and behavioral variables to segment market, and decides to sell cheap single houses in HsiaoKung, which is more competitive than multi-storey buildings and similar products. Sample houses, advertising billboards, and handbill mailing are three main promotion ways of Tunghuei. Talking about distribution, Tunghuei uses bonus system to make old customers help promotion, in addition to salesmen. Tunghuei also pays much attention to public relationship by helping hold activities of the schools and community in HsiaoKung. In recent ten years, Tunghuei sold all the houses in every case with reasonable profit. Besides, over 80% of Tunghuei's customers feel satisfied with its products according to the result of the questionnaire survey. By studying the successful experience of Tunghuei Construction Company's target marketing widely and deep, we hope to do something for Taiwan's construction industry.

The boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis grandis Boheman) is currently under eradication in the U.S. The eradication program is implemented by means of area-wide applications of malathion ULV. Frequent applications of this insecticide result in high mortality of many beneficial insects, and a greater risk of secondary pest outbreaks. Notable among the latter are the outbreaks of beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua H?bner) and cotton aphid (Aphis gossypii Glover) in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in 1995. The present study (i) compared densities of beneficial and pest insect and spider populations between cotton fields in eradication and non-eradication areas; (ii) evaluated the use of beneficial cotton arthropod population densities as indicators of pest damage risks from cotton aphid, beet armyworm, bollworm (Helicoverpa zea Boddie), and other worms (Estigmene acrea Drury, Pseudoplusia includens Walker, and Trichoplusia ni H?bner); and (iii) evaluated the effects of malathion ULV on the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta Buren) a key arthropod predator in cotton agroecosystems. Studies were conducted in central Texas, in the vicinities of College Station and Dallas, during 2002 and 2003. Results showed that a majority of cotton predators were negatively impacted by malathion ULV applications. However, convergent lady beetle (Hippodamia convergens Gu?rin-M?neville) densities were greater in active eradication fields than inactive fields. Stepwise regression analyses identified densities of lacewing (Chrysoperla carnea Stephens) larvae and lady beetle larvae (H. convergens, Coleomegilla maculata De Geer, Harmonia axyridis Pallas, and Coccinella septempunctata L.) as predictors of cotton aphid density, and density of total spiders as predictors of bollworm density. Predictors of beet armyworm or other worm densities could not be determined. This study demonstrated malathion ULV was highly toxic to fire ants, and could repel ants from treated surfaces. Malathion ULV reduced the number of foraging fire ants in the cotton canopy for three weeks and reduced fire ant predation of beet armyworm eggs. Predictors of secondary pest densities have been suggested which, if utilized, may help to prevent the occurrence of secondary pest outbreaks under boll weevil eradication. Validation of these predictors should be preformed before implementing them into an eradication program.

In decentralized data fusion system, if the probability model of the noise is Gaussian and the innovation informations from the sensors are uncorrlated,the information filtering technique can be the best method to fuse the information from different sensors. However, in the realistic environments, information filter cannot provide the best solution of state estimation and data integration when the noises are non-Gaussian and correlated. Since particle filter are capable of dealing with non-linear and non-Gaussian problems, it is an intuitive approach to replace the information filter by particle filter with some suitable data fusion techniques.In this thesis, we investigate a decentralized data fusion system with improved particle filters for target tracking. In order to achieve better tracking performance, the Iterated Extended Kalman Filter framework is used to incorporate the newest observations into the proposal distribution of the particle filter. In our proposed architecture, each sensor consists of one particle filter, which is used in generating the local statistics of the system state. Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is adopted to approximate the posterior distribution of the weighted particles in the filters, thereby more compact representations of the distribution for transmmision can be obtained. To achieve information sharing and integration, the GMM-Covariance Intersection algorithm is used in formulating the decentralized fusion solutions. Simulation resluts of target tracking cases in a sensor system with two sensor nodes are given to show the effectiveness and superiorty of the proposed architecture.

The lifestyles and demands of automobiles for some auto consumers have changed significantly in recent years. There are more auto consumers who prefer purchasing larger vehicles with more interior space and capacity. To satisfy these auto consumers¡¦ needs and wants, more automakers start manufacturing full-sized vehicles such as Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV) and Multi-Purpose Vehicles (MPV). In fact, most SUVs in Taiwan will have two rows of seats and can carry five passengers. On the other hand, most MPVs in Taiwan will have three rows of seating arrangement with seven-passenger capacity. However, Toyota WISH is one of the most popular MPVs in Taiwan auto market but WISH should be considered as a ¡§Mini MPV¡¨. This research study will be focused on a Mini MPV called Toyota WISH. First, it is very important to understand the definition of Mini MPVs in the auto market. Secondly, there 7 major Mini MPVs in the Taiwan auto market, including Toyota WISH, Mazda5, Nissan Grand Livina, Mitsubishi Savrin, Ford i-Max, Kia Euro Carens, and Hyundai Santa Fe. Thirdly, Toyota has become the most leading automaker in terms of its market shares in total and Toyota WISH is also one of the most popular Mini MPVs in Taiwan auto market based on its sales volumes. Lastly, this research study will examine the primary purchasing reasons from some Toyota WISH owners. After conducting this research study, it is clearly to see that Toyota WISH has its own target customers who are mostly mature male adults between ages at early 40s to late 50s and they are usually married with children. Nevertheless, while collecting all the statistical numbers, the precise and accurate automobile sales figures are the most difficult parts to obtain in Taiwan auto market.