Prior research suggests that the use of accounting information differs substantially by investor class. My analysis extends this line of research to the area of SEC Form 8-K filings. Prior research also provides mixed evidence on the informativeness of these filings. I hypothesize that the method of the disclosure is an important factor in evaluating 8-K usefulness to varying types of investors. Specifically, the timing, venue, and packaging of these accounting disclosures affect their use by investors. Regulation Fair Disclosure (2000) considers both press releases and 8-K filings as broad-based disclosures that do not favor any investor class. I, however, identify five unique informational settings in which 8-K filings occur. The five settings are: a concurrent 8-K event and filing (with or without a press release), a filing which precedes the press release, a press release that precedes the filing, an 8-K event that precedes a filing and/or press release, and the 8-K event alone. I examine the similarities and differences in trading by small and large investors across these settings. The identification of these empirical regularities with respect to disclosure form should be particularly useful to policy makers seeking to implement level playing field objectives with respect to public disclosures. My findings show that the relative trading activity to 8-K filings is different by the type of disclosure. Differential trading activity was found to be more pronounced in disclosure settings that contained a public announcement. In addition, the type of Form 8-K disclosure also had an effect on the differential trading activity. Form 8-K filings of acquisition or disposition of assets were associated with the most pronounced responses. My findings show the differential trading activity to these filings differs from other accounting events such as earnings announcements and annual report filings.

From Jimmy Carter’s self-identification as a “born again Christian” in the 1976 presidential campaign to George W. Bush’s declaration of “Christ” as his favorite political philosopher “because he changed my heart” in a Republican primary debate of the 2000 campaign, presidential speeches and campaigns are often laced with religious language. Such an observation is nothing new. However, many scholars and political observers do not know what to make of such religious references. Such language is often dismissed as either shameless pandering to religious constituencies or something hopelessly out of place in American politics. This dissertation attempts a deeper analysis of this controversial subject by identifying how presidents use the rhetorical resources of religion by employing religious argument patterns stemming from the Jewish and Christian religious traditions in presidential speeches. Specifically, this dissertation explores how the last five presidents (Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush) have used such religious rhetorical forms in attempts to strike a symbolic chord within the larger American public. The religious rhetorical forms explored herein, if employed judiciously, can serve as political shibboleths—or passwords—which indicate a basic level of identification with the public thanks to the basic elements, such as transformation, atonement, and renewal, which comprise the mythical core of these forms.

In this paper we consider the hypo-ellipticity of differential forms on a closed manifold.The main results show that there are some topological obstruct for the existence of the differential forms with hypoellipticity.

No description available.

Uppsatsen är en reflekterande text över ett verk gjort som examensarbete vid Högskolan i Skövde. Verket är en film samt fyra konceptbilder som skapades med syftet att undersöka hur en förenklad grafisk stil påverkar produktionen av ett tänkt spel. Verket skulle även undersöka förenklingarnas påverkan på hur grafiken uppfattas. I samband med ny teknik och nya spelkonsoler följer en trend att skapa så tekniskt avancerade spel som möjligt. Verkligheten används ofta som mall för att betygssätta grafik. Med denna trend medföljer ökad komplexitet i själva spelproduktionen. Flera rollers expertis krävs för att hänga med i denna utveckling och utvecklingstiderna ökar. Som litet spelföretag kan det därför vara av yttersta vikt att fokusera på andra grafiska kvalitéer i sina spel. Med detta i åtanke skapades en ny grafisk profil för spelet Fret Nice som idag är en spelprototyp skapad av mig själv och Mårten Brüggemann 2007.

Automotive design is a specialized discipline in which designers are challenged to create emotionally appealing designs. From a practice perspective, this requires that designers apply their hermeneutic as well as reflective design thinking skills. However, due to the increasing demand for new car models, it is not always possible to keep generating new car designs without some form of assistive means. Therefore, it is common practice to use Automated Morphing Systems (AMS) to facilitate and accelerate the design process in the automotive industry. However, AMS, which is an efficient algorithmic driven tool for form generation, lacks the emotional knowledge of human beings, as well as the ability to introduce a “creative” and preferably a “winning” design. The purpose of this research is to study designers' reasoning about product (automotive) form, their form generation activity, and the implications of these. The research objective is to understand how designers generate forms driven by their implicit values, beliefs and attitudes towards designing, and how these are supported by their visualization and representation skills. Four research questions have been formulated in order to get a firm answer posed in this research. Generation of measurable and testable data – which involved both qualitative and quantitative research to gather and analyze implicit and explicit designer’s knowledge – constituted the main empirical effort for this thesis. A design research methodology framework consisting of three different parts was used in this data gathering exercise. These parts are: descriptive study I, prescriptive study, and descriptive study II. They involved methods such as surveys, observation studies and evaluation studies. Master’s students’ evaluations as well as the designers’ own interpretations of their sketches – which represent the sequence of morphed forms – were considered essential aspects of the empirical studies. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows: Approaches in form development among designers vary due to their experiences, which affect their sketching abilities, activities, and implicit thinking patterns. In their sketching and form development activities, designers emphasize the most informative views, such as façade and three quarter front views, compared to other views of the car. Rather than adopt a uniform transformation strategy which includes the entire car, they also select what elements to morph. In manual form generation, designers contribute with their personal and creative input in the development of the forms of the overall car, its selected items, and regions that determine the overall character of the car. Major differences in the morphing approaches applied by designers and automated CAD systems reside in the recognition and interpretation of the meaning of form elements. Considering the inability of AMS to morph selectively and inconsistently, as well as to introduce ambiguity and variance, it is suggested here that AMS may be useful only for convergent transformation, which typically occurs during the later stages of the styling process. Although perceptions vary according to how representations are presented in the morphing process, the Perceptual Product Experience (PPE) framework can still be considered a useful tool for establishing familiarity, for understanding quality characteristics and the nature of the product, and, finally, for determining meanings and assessing the values of form elements. In conclusion, the work presents a descriptive model for practice-based design thinking about form development in automotive design. Manual interpolative morphing has been the focal area of study. The study categorizes meaning with respect to designer perception. Based on the study of manual morphing exercises, a new methodology of analyzing form syntactics, pragmatics and semantics related to design thinking, form development, and automotive design has been developed.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;">Jag har arbetat med att producera ett informationsmaterial för nya hyresgäster hos hyresvärden Ydewalls i Katrineholm. Jag har använt mina kunskaper inom informationsdesign, textdesign och grafisk form för att utforma materialet. </span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span>Syftet med informationsmaterialet är att ge de nya hyresgästerna den information som de kan tänkas behöva under tiden de bor i lägenheten. Ydewalls vill genom att förbättra sitt material minska antalet onödiga förfrågningar från hyresgästerna.</span></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jag har arbetat efter min huvudfråga: hur skapas ett informationsmaterial utifrån de principer som finns inom informationsdesign? För att få svar på min fråga använde jag mig av metoder som litteraturstudier, komparation, deskription, enkätundersökning samt utprovningar. </span></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span>Genom att göra medvetna val inom typografi, rubriksättning, text och bilder har jag kunnat framställa ett enhetligt informationsmaterial som är informativt, läsbart och har hög läslighet. </span></span>

Cities and their characteristics of energy use play an important role in climate change. While there is abundant research about the impact of energy use on transportation the impact of urban form and housing characteristics on residential energy use has not been considered widely. There is certainly a need to take a closer look about the residential energy use and housing relationships to identify planning implications. This study examines the relationship between various urban form, housing characteristics and the energy use that result from residential electricity and fuel use. Ordinary least squares regression methods are used to measure the correlations between energy consumption and variables describing housing and urban form characteristics in the metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. After controlling for differences in energy price and income, a positive relationship between residential energy consumption and a history of greater rates of land conversion was found. This study also finds significantly higher energy use associated with a greater incidence of detached single-family housing when compared against high-rise buildings. A correlation between increased rate of row housing and lower energy use was found as well. This study can contribute to a literature that can help planners to create more environmentally- friendly cities by contributing to the understanding of the impacts that certain energy- related housing characteristics have on the sustainability of a city. The literature regarding smart growth and new urbanism should explore potential impacts on household energy consumption in its discussion of urban planning along with considering impacts on transportation related energy use.

This study examines the problem of form and substance in Canadian tax jurisprudence, which has been characterized by a troubling equivocation between formalistic and substantive approaches in cases involving tax avoidance transactions with the current period of jurisprudence dominated by formalism. The vacillation of Canadian jurisprudence contrasts with the consistently substantive tax jurisprudence of the United States. The latter situation discloses an unresolved doctrinal tension in Canadian tax jurisprudence between two viable doctrinal alternatives. This study seeks to resolve the problem of form and substance by finding the right answer to the problem by examining the tax policy, political, and legal philosophical implications of formalistic jurisprudence along with the manner in which the legal system as a whole (i.e. jurisprudence outside of tax law) rationally employs both form and substance for distinct purposes to solve distinct kinds of legal problems. Using the principles that are implied in the practices of the legal system as a whole, a right answer to the form and substance problem — one that is horizontally consistent or integral with the whole — suggest itself, namely that substantive, judge-made standards are the right solution to the problem of form and substance in Canadian tax jurisprudence and that formalism in tax jurisprudence is a legal aberration in the Canadian legal system.

Detta examensarbete har gått ut på att arbeta fram en lättläst och lättförståelig elfaktura eftersom dessa slags fakturor upplevs som krångliga och svårförståeliga. Utifrån de kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoderna enkätundersökning, intervju och fokusgrupp har detta varit möjligt. Mina frågeställningar var ”Hur kan man, med hjälp av form och principerna för lättläst, förenkla texten i elfakturor, utan att någon viktig information går förlorad?” och ”Hur kan läsflödet samt överblicken i en elfaktura förbättras?”. Utifrån teorierna arbetade jag fram ett gestaltningsförslag som min fokusgrupp fick ta del av och därefter gjordes ändringar utifrån deras åsikter. Mitt slutliga gestaltningsförslag visar på hur en lättläst och lättförståelig elfaktura, utan att viktig information gått förlorad, kan se ut. / The purpose of this thesis was to develop a clear and comprehensible electricity bill since these kinds of bills are perceived as complicated and difficult to understand. Based on the quantitative and qualitative methods using survey, interview and focus group, it was made possible. My question formulation was "How can you, using the form and principles of readability, simplify the text in an electricity bill without losing important information?" and "How can the flow in reading and the oversight of an electricity bill get improved?". Based on the theories, I worked up a design proposal that my focus group had access to, and based on their opinions I made relevant ​​changes. My final design proposal shows how a readable and comprehensible electricity bill, with no important information is lost, can look like.