Thesis Outline. The thesis is broken down into seven chapters. Chapter one introduces the study and outlines its background, setting the stage for what follows. Specifically, it addresses the research problem and questions, states the overall thesis aim and specific objectives. Chapter two presents key literature on franchising and the relationship between franchisors and franchisees in the hotel industry. It moves from the general conceptualization of franchising to specific issues of how to create and maintain good relationships between franchisors and franchisees in the hotel industry. It considers definitions of hotel franchising and how to develop a working definition to comply with the aim of the thesis. It critically reviews relevant literature on the advantages and disadvantages of hotel franchising. It identifies the major franchisors in the hotel industry. The development of a special relationship between the franchisor and the franchisee is explored with agency theory, resource scarcity theory, social capital theory and psychological contract, each of which is discussed in the context of franchising. It highlights the different aspects of the lifecycle of hotel franchising. It discusses services provided by the franchisor ranging from selecting partners in the hotel franchise relationship to on-going franchise support. A suggested conceptual framework is presented. This thesis emphasizes that hotel franchising literature is extremely limited. As a result, this section will try to apply existing literature to the hotel industry. Chapter three outlines the epistemological and theoretical perspectives of the research and provides a justification for choosing the research design and methodology. The chapter then describes the phases of the methodology employed in this research which adopts a multiple case study approach. This methodology includes two research methods in order to meet the research objectives; semi-structured interviews with hotel franchisors-franchisees and document analysis. Chapter four analyses the transcribed interviews. This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the results from interviews conducted with hotel franchisor and their franchisees in relation to the relationship themes facing hotel franchise relationships. These themes include: application phase, pre- opening phase, opening phase and on-going franchise support. It presents the perspectives of the franchisor and franchisees towards the aforementioned issues. The chapter concludes...
Thesis Outline. This thesis studies the non-equilibrium dynamics of composite quantum systems following the quench described in the introduction at early times specifically. The time scales of interest are well before the validity of ETH and even hydrodynam- ics, so the analysis is based on the evolution of energy, the von Neumann and relative entropies, as well as the information spread between different parts of the system. This was initially motivated by an observation in numerical simula- tions of a peculiar early-time energy increase in the hotter of two quench-coupled systems. This thesis not only provides a detailed explanation of this quantum phenomenon but also explores how it can be used for experimentally measuring quantum correlations, both as a feature for detecting a lab realization of an SYK system as well as the implications it has on the formation of black holes. Those results have been published in three different papers [71, 72, 73] plus one yet un- published manuscript. Before elaborating on them we provided a brief overview of each of the four chapters. In the first Chapter 2, we introduce this paradoxical early time rise in energy in the hotter of the two baths and the quantum thermodynamic approach to studying post-quench dynamics. To understand the essence of this phenomenon, without the interference of model-dependent peculiarities, we use the 1D free fermion model as a case study. Conveniently, in the time regime of interest, we obtain analytical expressions for the energy and for the von Neumann entropies, which is an additional benefit of this model. In addition to the theoretical study, we have suggested an experimentally realizable quench protocol that can measure entanglement between two subsystems using the energy increase and its relation to von Neumann entropy. In this quench, one starts with two originally independent systems of free fermions A and B initially prepared in quantum thermal states at temperatures TA and TB. At low temperatures, when quenched, the increasing entanglement contribution to the von Neumann entropy is dominant over the decreasing thermal one. As a consequence the von Neumann entropy of each subsystem increases for a certain period after the subsystems are coupled. If in this period one decouples the subsystems there is an energy transfer to the system in the amount set by the von Neumann entropy accumulated during the joint evolution of A and B. This energy transfer appears as work produced by the quench to decou...
Thesis Outline. The remainder of this thesis is organized as follows. In Chapter 2 we present our wab based consensus protocols, namely B -Consensus and R -Consensus, in Sec- tion 2.2. Also in Chapter 2, we present our multicoordinated consensus algorithm, in Section 2.3. In Chapter 3 we focus on the generalized consensus problem. In specific, in Section 3.4 we present our multicoordinated generalized consensus pro- tocol, Multicoordinated Paxos. In Section 3.5 we show how to instantiate Multico- ordinated Paxos to solve the generic broadcast problem. In Chapter 4 we deal with agreement among agents organized in groups and present our basic and extended protocols for such a scenario. We present our last contribution, the log service spec- ification and implementations, in Chapter 5. Finally, in Chapter 6, we conclude this thesis and point some directions for future works. Chapter 2 Multicoordinated Consensus
2.1 Consensus and the FLP Impossibility Result Distributed problems and algorithms are commonly described in terms of a task to be attained by homogeneous agents. The standard specification of the consensus problem, for example, states that “a set of agents must eventually agree on a value, in spite of a maximum number of failures”. As a result, algorithms for such prob- lems are also given in terms of homogeneous agents with similar behavior. Because processes play different roles in real systems, we use a different approach and spec- ify problems and algorithms in terms of the roles which agents play. For example, in a client/server architecture, we refer to client agents and server agents, or to sender and receiver in a mailing system. In the case of consensus, we use three kinds of agents: proposer, learner, and acceptor. Because consensus subsumes many agreement problems, the same sets of agents may also make sense it their specifications and, hence, we will adopt the same terminology. To the best of our knowledge, specifications based on roles was introduced by Lamport [Lamport, 1998]. In the consensus problem, agents must agree on a single value out of a given set of proposals. Proposer agents issue proposals out of which one will become the decision. Once a decision is reached, learners must become aware of its value. In the context of a common distributed application, state machine replication, pro- posers can be thought of as clients issuing commands and learners as the application servers that execute the decided commands. For this reason, we interchang...
Thesis Outline. In this chapter, we have given an overview of the inflation theory, the problems that solve, and how the perturbations are generated. To explain it, we have developed the mechanism of gravitational particle creation for scalar fields. At the end of the section we have introduced the standard model Xxxxx field and its running, which combined with its quantum fluctuations during inflation, it leads us to the problem of the stability of the electroweak vacuum. The rest of the thesis is going to be structured as follows: • In chapter 2, we consider the effect of the Xxxxxxx-Xxxxxxx radiation on the inflaton in the situation where it is coupled to a large number of spectator fields. We argue that this will lead to two significant effects - a thermal contri- bution to the potential and a gradual change in parameters in the Lagrangian, which results from thermodynamic and energy conservation arguments. We present a scenario of hilltop inflation, where the field starts trapped at the origin, before slowly experiencing a phase transition during which the field, extremely slowly, moves towards its zero temperature expectation value. We show that it is possible to obtain enough e-folds of expansion as well as the correct spectrum of perturbations without hugely fine-tuned parameters in the potential (albeit with many spectator fields). We also comment on how initial conditions for inflation can arise naturally in this situation. This chapter is based on the work published in [40]. • In chapter 3, we study the (Xxxxx-Xxxxxxx-)Xxxxx quartic coupling which be- comes negative at high energies rendering our current electroweak vacuum metastable, but with an instability timescale much longer than the age of the current universe. During cosmological inflation, unless there is a non-minimal coupling to gravity, the Xxxxx field is pushed away from the origin of its po- tential due to quantum fluctuations. It is therefore a mystery how we have remained in our current vacuum if we went through such a period of inflation. In this chapter, we study the effect of top quarks created gravitationally during inflation and their effect upon the Xxxxx potential using only general relativity with minimal couplings and Standard Model particle physics. We show how the evolution of the Xxxxx field during inflation is modified concluding that this effect is non-negligible for scales of inflation close to or larger than the stability scale but small for scales where the Xxxxx is stable. Als...
Thesis Outline. The given thesis work consists of six chapters. The present chapter described the background of the study specifically focusing on the Kazakhstani context, identified the research problem and formulated the purpose statement with the research questions. Furthermore, this chapter provided the definitions of central terms. The significance and contribution of the study were also detailed. The second chapter, the literature review, presents a critical review of studies conducted in the field of school bullying across its four subtypes, which are physical, verbal, relational and cyber and presents a conceptual framework guiding this study. Moreover, the Literature Review chapter discusses the problem of bullying in relation to children who are identified as gifted and talented and focuses on the differences in terms of age, ethnicity, residence and overall academic achievement. The next chapter is the methodology, which presents the research design of the current thesis and provides the rationale for choosing the research site, participants and the research instrument. The methodology chapter also describes the research site, sample and sampling procedures, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, data analysis methods, ethical concerns and risks and possible limitations of the present study. The fourth chapter is the Findings, which presents the results of the survey used with participants, and it is followed by the discussion chapter, which interprets and discusses the analysis of the findings. The Discussion chapter answers the research questions and links the findings to theory as well. The final chapter, the Conclusion, summarizes the main findings, presents the limitations of the present study and proposes implications for future studies.
Thesis Outline. The second chapter will further discuss the reasons why it is desirable to use simulation before a control system is set up in an actual plant. In the third chapter we will describe the different parts involved in the communication between Advant Control Builder and Simulink. The forth chapter describes the different types of communication that is needed for the parts to communicate with each other. In chapter five we explain how a user will see the communication. The sixth chapter describes the functions used for the communication between Simulink and Matlab. In the seventh chapter the functionality and the implementation of the Gateway program are described. We have also investigated the performance of our implementations and the obtained results will be presented in chapter eight. Chapter nine describes how a new system is created in Simulink. The tenth chapter consists of a User Manual for the Gateway. In chapter eleven some conclusions are drawn and in chapter twelve we will describe future possibilities and extensions of our master thesis.
Thesis Outline. The outline of this document is as follows. Chapter 2 describes threats in the web metering environment and proposes design and analysis requirements from security and functional perspectives. Chapter 3 proposes a classification for web metering schemes. Chapter 4 describes previous web metering schemes and provides gap analysis with regard to the proposed requirements and desiderata. Chapter 5 further researches privacy issues and solutions, and analyses web metering schemes. Chapter 6 proposes a novel privacy-preserving scheme using user hardware. Chapter 7 proposes transparent schemes that securely reuse authentication protocols. Chapters 8 and 9 propose a privacy-preserving scheme with different scenarios, that run transparently to the user and enhances the accuracy of web metering results. Chapter 10 provides a summary and conclusions. Part I Chapter 2 2.1 Introduction 32 2.2 Threats 33 2.3 Web Metering Requirements 39 2.3.1 Integrity 39 2.3.2 Privacy 41 2.3.3 Accuracy 42
Thesis Outline. A comprehensive study of the young stellar object L1489 IRS is presented in chapter 2. In this chapter we introduce several of the tools and techniques which we employ throughout this thesis. We take a physical model from the literature of L1489 IRS, which we customize so that we can accommodate observational fea- tures such as the envelope geometry and we introduce a parameterized description of the velocity field. The reason why we study this particular object is because of its unusual properties. First of all it has a very large size and an elongated disk-like appearance. Secondly, both infall and rotational velocity components are measured, and therefore this source is a good candidate for testing our veloc- ity model. Our model is compared to single-dish spectra and because we have a large number of free parameters, we use a stochastic search algorithm to obtain the best fit. The minimization technique used in this chapter is based on Voronoi tessellation of the parameter space. In chapter 3 we use a similar, but more ad- vanced search algorithm, whereas the Voronoi tessellation is revisited in chapter 7, this time as a mean of radiation transfer gridding. Our velocity model is elaborated upon in chapter 3. The scope of this chapter is to evaluate general applicability of the velocity model and to test how well the best fit parameters of our model describe the actual velocity field of a particular source. A hydrodynamical simulation of the formation of a star and a circumstel- lar disk provides a continuous velocity field, temperature and density distribution. Synthetic observations are then calculated from our hydrodynamical solution and the velocity model which was introduced in chapter 2 is fitted to these in a simi- lar way as we did for L1489 IRS. We show that the best-fit parameters describe a velocity field which is in reasonable agreement with the velocity field in the sim- ulation. In this chapter we use a genetic optimization algorithm to obtain the best fit. This algorithm proves to be very reliable and works well for our purpose. In chapter 4 we return to L1489 IRS, for a more detailed study. High- resolution interferometric data were acquired with the Submillimeter Array of the central, dense parts of this source. The aim of this chapter is to investigate whether it is possible to separate a possible protoplanetary disk from the envelope using kinematic arguments. We use the model derived in chapter 2 but with the addi- tion of a Kepleria...
Thesis Outline. The study described the level of awareness of the dangers and impacts of informal e-waste recycling. The thesis comprises seven chapters. The present chapter gives a general overview of the topic and presents the research aims, methods and steps used in the study. Chapter 2 presents the Health Risks Awareness level of the informal e-waste workers on the dangers associated with their daily jobs. The awareness level was determined by assessing the knowledge, attitude, and work practices of the e-waste workers compared to their counterparts in the same informal sector. Chapter 3 unveils impact of informal Electronic Waste Recycling activities on Metal Concentrations in Soils and Dusts. Chapter 4 also unveils Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) Concentrations in Soils and Dusts as a result of various activities at Informal Electronic Waste Recycling sites. The environmental impact of the recycling was determined by detailed analysis of effects of various e-waste recycling activities in different types of samples – soil, floor dust, roadside dust, and direct dust from the electronics. Based on the findings, the health effects were assessed. Chapter 5 presents the current prevalence and injury patterns of e-waste workers. Chapter 6 estimates the health risks exposure to e-waste mixture chemicals (PBDE) on the e-waste workers, the synthesis of the findings, and discusses strategies appropriate effective e-waste management in informal sector.
Thesis Outline. This document is organized as follows:
