An application of fuzzy-set/ qualitative comparative analysis

This thesis is an extension in the literature stream of trade fair performance assessment in which the relationship between marketing efforts and performance outcomes is studied. The study starts with literature review on trade fair’s performance measurement and then it presents the conceptual framework grounded in Resource-Based View. This is an application of an alternative research methodology, Fuzzy-Set/ Qualitative Comparative Analysis to study performance assessment of Business-to-Consumer trade fairs. An extensive online questionnaire was sent to trade fair exhibitors’ contacts provided by Finnish Trade-fair Association (Messukeskus), to collect the data of trade fair’s marketing inputs and outcome measures. During the data processing phase, outcome and conditions were justified and calibrated then analyzed in R studio. As results, the thesis delivers two causality model solutions of High-performance outcome and Low-performance outcome at trade fairs. The discussion deliberates the insights from the solutions to document best practices in coordinating trade fair’s resources. In addition, the study emphasizes the importance of objective settings to achieve expected performance and promotes the application of FS/QCA in marketing performance studies

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationBuilding upon the existing theoretical framework and abundant empirical evidence supporting an association between socio-relational resources and health in the United States and other Western countries, this dissertation extended these analyses to the population of contemporary China, which is characterized with rapid economic development, a fast-growing population age 65 and above, epidemic rates of chronic diseases and conditions, and recent transformation of families' and communities' roles in providing long-term care for older adults. Individual level data from the 2010-2012 China Family Panel Studies and the 2007-2010 World Health Organization Study on Global Aging and Adult Health were utilized to empirically examine 1) whether different types of familial and extra familial socio-relational resources influence health behaviors, self-reported health status, and health care utilization among Chinese, as commonly observed in Western countries; 2) whether health behaviors and psychological pathways are contributory to the explanation of the association between socio-relational resources and health; and 3) whether socio-relational resources impact health differently across segments of the population. Mediation and moderation analysis, multilevel approach, and cross-lagged methods were performed to address these research questions. Results showed that social engagement, neighborhood social cohesion, social participation, and other types of socio-relational resources were protective against poor physical and mental health of adults and older adults, as previously observed in other cultures and contexts. Findings from mediation analyses also suggested that lifestyle and psychological wellbeing partially explained the main effects of social engagement on hypertension. Regarding health behaviors, results indicated that cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol consumption among middle aged and older Chinese men were regarded as social bonding activities, which resembles the "social smoking and drinking" phenomenon found in the existing literature. Moderation analyses also depicted the effects of stratification of socio-relational resources on health between men and women, and urban and rural residents

Ethnic Disparities in Prenatal Care Utilization in Vietnam

Prenatal care is credited with reducing neonatal, perinatal, and maternal mortality and morbidity. The main purpose of the thesis is to examine the ethnic disparities between majority and ethnic minority women in prenatal care usage. The thesis also analyzes the effects of age, education attainment, female employment, and region on prenatal care utilization in Vietnam. I employ the Demographic and Health Survey 2002 in Vietnam. Descriptive statistic and logistic regression are the two statistical tests employed in this research. Results exhibit evidence of ethnic disparities in type of prenatal care utilization. Although ethnic minority women are likely to enter prenatal checkups at the same time as ethnic majority women, they are less likely to receive three or more prenatal checkups. Ethnic minority women are also less likely to receive prenatal checkups from professionals. When giving birth, minority women are less likely to deliver with a professional birth attendant, in a hospital or health facility. When controlling for other independent variables, education attainment and region show significant effects on prenatal care usage. Uneducated women, or women with less than secondary education, and women residing outside the Red River Delta consumed less professional prenatal care usage

Theoretical Modelling and Experimental Studies of Synchrotron Radiation Induced Molecular Dissociation Processes

Siirretty Doriast

Catching-up Industrial Development of East Asian Economies and its Application to Vietnam

ٛ ٛ ٛ Abstract: This paper attempts to examine the catching-up process in industrial development of East Asian economies. For this purpose, RCA curve will be used to depict this process and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient will be employed as a supporting evidence for the catching-up. The paper shows that the evolving specialization patterns of East Asian economies are in accordance with the prediction of Catching-up Product Cycle (CPC). The specialization patterns of these economies differ according to their level of development. Japan has th

State and input simultaneous estimation for a class of time-delay systems with uncertainties

This brief addresses the problem of estimation of both the states and the unknown inputs of a class of systems that are subject to a time-varying delay in their state variables, to an unknown input, and also to an additive uncertain, nonlinear disturbance. Conditions are derived for the solvability of the design matrices of a reduced-order observer for state and input estimation, and for the stability of its dynamics. To improve computational efficiency, a delay-dependent asymptotic stability condition is then developed using the linear matrix inequality formulation. A design procedure is proposed and illustrated by a numerical example.<br /

Wind, Water, Wall-Woman

Excerpts from I-Blue, a book in progres

Dragon versus tiger baby preference: how does chinese zodiac influence fertility?

poste

Lotus Eye

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Observer-based control of multi-agent systems under decentralized information structure

This paper addresses the problem of decentralized implementation of a global state feedback controller for multi-agent systems. The system is assumed to be under the constraint of a complete decentralized information structure. The decentralization of the control task is achieved through the construction of low-order decentralized functional observers with the purpose of generating the required corresponding control signal for each local control station. A design procedure is developed for obtaining an approximate solution to the design of the observers. Stability analysis is provided for the global system using the proposed observer-based approach. A numerical example is given to illustrate the design procedure and cases when the observers\u27 order increases from the lowest value. <br /