Dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), titration alkalinity (TA), and nitrate + nitrite (N+N) are measured from seasonal cruises at the time-series site SEATS in the northern South China Sea (18¢XN 116¢XE) between March 2002 and November 2004. The most distinctive feature of the annual nDIC (DIC normalized to a constant salinity of 33.8) cycle is an increase in wintertime and a decrease in summertime (March¡VAugust). The nDIC drawdown (-3.15 ¡Ó 2.23 mmol m-2 day-1) at summertime is mainly attributed to biological uptake of DIC. The other terms in the DIC budget calculation, i.e. the carbon fluxes of air-sea CO2 gas exchange, horizontal advection and vertical diffusion, are estimated to be -0.48 ¡Ó 0.31, -0.70 ¡Ó 0.86, and 2.50 ¡Ó 0.59 mmol m-2 day-1, respectively. Accordingly, results from the DIC budget calculation reveals a net community production (NCP) of -4.47 ¡Ó 1.98 mmol m-2 day-1. This calculated NCP from our data is in good agreement with the export and new production previously reported in the South China Sea. The consistency demonstrates that carbon system is almost in a steady state during summertime at SEATS. According to the Refield C : N ratio of 106 : 16, a flux of 0.67 ¡Ó 0.30 mmol m-2 day-1 of bioavailable nitrogen (Nbio) is needed to sustain the calculated NCP. The source terms in the Nbio budget calculation, i.e. the nitrogen fluxes of vertical diffusion, wet deposition, dry deposition and the contribution from the putative nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria Trichodesmium and Richelia intra., are estimated to be 0.20 ¡Ó 0.04, 0.03 ¡Ó 0.01, 0.04 ~ 0.08, and 0.02 ~ 0.13 mmol m-2 day-1, respectively. It thus seems that all the source terms can only collectively account for 50 ~ 70% Nbio needed to support the estimated NCP. With this regard, unicellular cyanobacteria, which have been reported as an important N2-fixer in the subtropical North Pacific and identified by the nitrogenase genes (nifH) in the small size (less than 10

Bargaining is a frequent activity in the shopping process, and it becomes a trend in electronic trading. In order to facilitate the on-line automatic bargaining activity, we develop three algorithms on the multi-agent system in this thesis. The first algorithm is the pattern generalization algorithm used for generalizing common patterns from transaction records. The second one is the pattern matching algorithm used on-line for identifying possible bargaining patterns from the pattern bases. To deal with the situation that there is no matched pattern, we design the dynamic price issuing algorithm using the utility theory to determine the seller¡¦s price and the timing a deal should be closed. We conducted a series of field experiments to evaluate the proposed algorithms on different seller¡¦s risk perspectives and compared the performance with conventional bargaining methods. The results show that the proposed methods obtain encouraging performance. The major contribution of this research is the initiation efforts on developing data mining algorithms for facilitating the price bargaining process for e-commerce.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-170).

Thesis (M.S.)--California Polytechnic State University, 2009. / Mode of access: Internet. Title from PDF title page; viewed on December 1, 2009. Major professor: Dr. Lily Laiho. "Presented to the faculty of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California." "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering." "June 2009." Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-150).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xiii, 192 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-169).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-98).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-132).

published_or_final_version / Statistics and Actuarial Science / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy