This study examines the potential effects of categorical increases in production expenditures on farm income performance according to farm standing. The objective of this study is to expose differences in anticipated net farm income return from production expenditure investments and the optimal expense allocation strategy for each performance level. Studying farm performance through segregation by utilizing a two-tier analysis and quantile regression acknowledges the possibility that managerial strategy can differ based on managerial ability. Study outcomes are useful to farm managers because they offer more prescription style results and interpretations than found in other farm performance studies. Study findings show that as managerial proficiency increases so does a manager’s ability to extract higher returns from additional expenditures in certain input categories. Additionally, better managers are able to produce higher returns from more investment sources than their lower performing peers. Overall, study results and interpretations point to the importance of farm management ability as the key input for improving farm performance.

This thesis examines School Generated Funding (SGF) within the Toronto District School (TDSB) to see if SGF is reinforcing a two-tier education system. Five sources of data were analyzed: The SGF Record of the TDSB from 2008-2009, The Preliminary School Budget from 2010-2011, EQAO test results from 2008 to 2009, The Learning Opportunity Index (LOI) from 2009, and three socio-economic status factors (income, education and occupation) using the Toronto Wards Profiles. Using the SGF record, twenty green schools (schools that raised the most SGF, amounting to $4,043,837) were compared, using the five sources of data against twenty red schools (schools that raised the least amount of SGF, amounting to $109,885). Two recommendations have been suggested: SGF be capped at a median amount throughout the TDSB and extra funding be put into a funding account for the TDSB to disperse to schools that need it.

Many medical imaging applications have been developed so far; however, many of them do not support collaboration and are not remotely accessible (i.e., Telemedicine). Medical imaging applications are not practical for use in clinical workflows unless they are able to communicate with the Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS). This thesis presents an approach based on a three-tier architecture and provides several components to transform medical imaging applications into collaborative, PACS-based, telemedical systems. A novel method is presented to support PACS connectivity. The method is to use the Digital Imaging and COmmunication in Medicine (DICOM) protocol and enhance transmission time by employing a combination of parallelism and compression methods. Experimental results show up to 1.63 speedup over Local Area Networks (LANs) and up to 16.34 speedup over Wide Area Networks (WANs) compared to the current method of medical data transmission.

The thesis deals with pricing strategies for multichannel retailers, especially traditional stores which additionally manage an online shop. The problem of integrating two sales channels and applying a well-suited pricing strategy is still an emergent question. This work develops a stochastic model to represent consumer behavior on pricing. On the one hand the model contains two probability functions which render consumers' reservation prices for each individual channel. On the other hand the stochastic model is based on numerous distributions which represent switching probabilities from and to each separate channel. The various distribution functions will be estimated from the results of a survey. To highlight differences of pricing strategies due to several product categories a cross comparisons of books, clothes and digital cameras will be presented. The results show that there are differences in multichannel pricing of the various products. These inequalities stem from consumers' perceptions of the sales channels. For each product a separate sales channel is preferred by consumers. Therefore, one channel exhibits some advantage versus the alternative channels. This advantage is reflected in different pricing strategies. Further appropriate marketing strategies could help a firm to counter discounting by its competitors. So firms should keep an eye on the reservation price structure of its consumers as well as their demanded marketing activities. (author's abstract)

Sammanfattning – ”Finansinspektionens krav på högre kärnprimärkapital: En studie av de svenska storbankerna” Datum: 2013-05-31 Nivå: Kandidatuppsats i företagsekonomi, 15 ECTS Institution: Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik, EST, Mälardalens Högskola Författare: Frida Hoffmann & Kajsa Ljungqvist Jansson Titel: Finansinspektionens krav på högre kärnprimärkapital: En studie av de svenska storbankerna Handledare: Staffan Boström Nyckelord: Kärnprimärkapital, de svenska storbankerna, Finansinspektionen Frågeställning: Vilka strategier har de svenska storbankerna använt sig av för att uppnå kravet på högre kärnprimärkapital samt fördela kostnaderna som medföljer? Vilka konsekvenser har det hittills fått för bankerna då de redan börjat anpassa sig till kravet? Syfte: Syftet med studien är att beskriva vilka strategier som legat till grund för att de fyra svenska storbankerna skall klara av det högre kravet på kärnprimärkapital som Finansinspektionen ställer. Undersökningen ämnar även utvärdera vilka konsekvenser förändringarna har fått hittills för bankerna och vem som har belastats med kostnaden för det ökade kärnprimärkapitalet. Metod: Metoden som använts var av kvalitativ karaktär där sekundärdata som samlats in varit från böcker, rapporter och artiklar. Primärdata har samlats in från personliga intervjuer och analyserades sedan med hjälp av sekundära datan. Slutsats: De svenska storbankerna har implementerat tydliga strategier för att uppfylla Finansinspektionens krav. Det visade sig att de banker som använt sig av att se över sin prissättning också var de banker som ligger i topp vad gäller kärnprimärkapitalrelationen. Konsekvensen av det nya kravet har blivit ett större fokus på att ha rätt kunder samt kostnadsfokus för att på så vis täcka upp för de kostnader som kravet medför. / Abstract – “The higher demand on Core tier 1 capital from Finansinspektionen:                 study of the major Swedish banks”  Date: 2013-05-31 Level: Bachelor thesis in business administration, 15 ECTS Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering Authors: Frida Hoffmann & Kajsa Ljungqvist Jansson Title: The higher demand on Core tier 1 capital from Finansinspektionen: study of the major Swedish banks Tuthor: Staffan Boström Keywords: Core tier 1 capital, the four major Swedish banks, Finansinspektionen Research Question: What strategies have the four major Swedish banks used to fulfill the recommendations from Finansinspektionen regarding higher level of Core tier 1 capital and how have they allocated the costs included? What consequences have the banks experienced so far as they have started to adjust to the new requirements? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe what strategies have formed the basis of the four major Swedish banks to manage with the increasing demands on the Core tier 1 capital from Finansinspektionen. The study also intends to evaluate what consequences the changes have had so far and who have been charged with the costs that the demand brings. Method: The method used was of a qualitative nature where the secondary data collected was from books and reports. The primary data collected was from personal interviews and was then later analyzed using the secondary data collected. Conclusion: All of the major Swedish banks now meet the requirements that Finansinspektionen imposes on its Core tier 1 capital. The numbers that differ between banks depends on what strategy has been used. It was found during the study that the banks that revised their pricing was also the banks that are at the top in terms of Core tier 1 capital ratio. The consequence of the new requirement appears to have been a greater focus on having the right customers and the right cost to manage the costs that the new requirement brings.

Abstract With the phenomenal growth of electronic data and information, there are many demands for the development of efficient and effective systems (tools) to perform the issue of data mining tasks on multidimensional databases. Association rules describe associations between items in the same transactions (intra) or in different transactions (inter). Association mining attempts to find interesting or useful association rules in databases: this is the crucial issue for the application of data mining in the real world. Association mining can be used in many application areas, such as the discovery of associations between customers’ locations and shopping behaviours in market basket analysis. Association mining includes two phases. The first phase, called pattern mining, is the discovery of frequent patterns. The second phase, called rule generation, is the discovery of interesting and useful association rules in the discovered patterns. The first phase, however, often takes a long time to find all frequent patterns; these also include much noise. The second phase is also a time consuming activity that can generate many redundant rules. To improve the quality of association mining in databases, this thesis provides an alternative technique, granule-based association mining, for knowledge discovery in databases, where a granule refers to a predicate that describes common features of a group of transactions. The new technique first transfers transaction databases into basic decision tables, then uses multi-tier structures to integrate pattern mining and rule generation in one phase for both intra and inter transaction association rule mining. To evaluate the proposed new technique, this research defines the concept of meaningless rules by considering the co-relations between data-dimensions for intratransaction-association rule mining. It also uses precision to evaluate the effectiveness of intertransaction association rules. The experimental results show that the proposed technique is promising.

Zugl.: Siegen, Univ., Diss., 2008

Check, Connect, Expect (CCE) is a secondary tier behavioral intervention for at-risk students who require targeted behavioral support in addition to school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports. A full-time coach in the CCE intervention provided behavioral supports including daily check-in and check-out procedures, as well as targeted social skills instruction. This study extended CCE to a self-contained elementary school for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Twenty-two students participated in the 17-week study that involved a four week baseline phase, followed by a 13-week intervention phase. The following research questions were addressed: (a) How did CCE affect student behavior?; (b) How did CCE affect student weekly academic engagement?; (c) How did CCE affect student weekly math calculation and oral reading fluency growth?; (d) How did severity of behavior predict student response to CCE?; (e) How did function maintaining the behavior predict student response to CCE?; (f) How did relationship strength with the coach predict student response to CCE?; and (g) How socially valid was CCE for teachers, paraprofessionals, and students? Two growth curve models were used to analyze the academic and behavioral data. Overall, students displayed significant behavioral growth during the intervention phase and positive growth in the areas of academic engagement and achievement. Severity of behavior, function, and relationship strength were not significant predictors of student response to the CCE intervention. Future directions, limitations, and implications for practice are discussed.

The Class Pass Intervention (CPI) is designed to be implemented within school-wide PBIS to decrease disruptive behavior and teach an appropriate replacement behavior for students needing Tier 2 intervention. The purpose of the present study was to extend the literature on the CPI by further evaluating the impact of the first component of the CPI on disruptive behavior and academic engagement of elementary school children with disabilities engaging in mild to moderate disruptive behavior. Three students and their respective teachers participated in the study. A multiple baseline across participants design with an embedded reversal was used to demonstrate the impact of the CPI on student behavior during a targeted problematic routine. The results indicated that the CPI was effective in decreasing disruptive behavior and increasing academic engagement for all participating students. Results were maintained for one participant while fading the magnitude of the intervention. Students and teachers rated CPI as effective and acceptable.

Monistic structure of joint-stock company This thesis is concerned with monistic structure of joint-stock company in the Czech Republic. It seeks to characterize the legislation relating to this legal institute, which is quite new in the Czech legal system. To be able to evaluate this legislation, the thesis provides the reader with a broader range of information concerning this topic. Therefore, on the basis of these pieces of information, the thesis analyzes the Czech legislation in force that regulates monistic structure of companies. The aim of the text is to provide different views on this issue, various interpretations and proposals on the future development of this legislation. First the thesis gives general information on corporate governance systems, i. e. a monistic structure and a dualistic one, which are subsequently compared. Remaining part of the thesis deals with the structure chosen as a topic for this text. Second part is concerned with regulations of monistic structure in foreign countries and their legal systems. The purpose is to outline basic aspects of traditional monistic structures - monistic structures in countries that have influenced the form of this type of corporate governance system the most. As the monistic system of corporate governance is spread out especially in the...