During the last decade, there has been severe critique directed at the auditing profession regarding its necessity and accuracy. Auditors have been accused of neglecting their duty to the public interest, which is overshadowed by their financial dependence on the audited companies. In light on several large audit failures, the users of the audit report have demanded more information be released regarding the company and the audit process. In response to this, several standard setting bodies have released new regulatory suggestions regarding the audit report. Among the revised regulations that are relevant to Sweden are the ISA 700 (revised) and the newly created ISA 701, both of which become effective starting December 2016. FAR, the Swedish Professional Institution for Authorized Accountants and Auditors, have expressed concerns regarding the effect of the implementation of the Key Audit Matters in combination with the Swedish confidentiality clause, by which auditors must abide. These revisions are meant to increase the informative value of the audit report for the users, where the main users of the audit report are non-professional investors. Due to this, along with lacking research on the topic of Swedish non-professional investors in this context, we have chosen to focus our thesis on the effects of the changes to the audit report in relation to the investment behavior of this specific group. Research Question: How is the Swedish adaptation of ISA 700 (revised) and ISA 701 likely to impact the perceived value of the new audit report to young Swedish nonprofessional investors? We have conducted an online questionnaire with an attached case, derived from a listed British company that has already made similar changes to their audit report format. Based on the responses of 100 young Swedish non-professional investors, we found that the new changes to the audit report, as we presented them, had positive effect on the young non-professional investors perception on the audit report. Of the respondents, 64% viewed the new audit report as significantly more informative than the current Swedish audit report. Both new information, in the form of the audit resolution paragraph, and useful information, in the form of the Key Audit Matters paragraph, statement of the audit firm, and movement of the audit opinion, was perceive by the respondents. In addition to this, we found that 63% of our sample would read the audit report in the future, as compared to 49% today. However, we are unsure of whether these positive effects will be observe following the Swedish implementation of the changes, due to FAR and Swedish auditors hesitation toward the Key Audit Matters.

In this thesis I cover the theoretical framework and the practice based implications of bringing the fundamental principles of a cybernetic art educational strategy, the Groundcourse, which was developed and taught during the 1960’s in England by Roy Ascott, into the virtual, three dimensional builder’s world of the metaverse; to be implemented there as a non-institutional, voluntary, self-directed, adult oriented learning system for avatars – one which is expected to be taught by avatar instructors who will formulate the specifics of their curriculum and their methods based upon the cardinal tenets of the Groundcourse, which have been summarized by Roy Ascott as a flexible structure, “within which everything can find its place, and every individual his way,” which would give dimension and substance to the will to create and to change. In order to be able to set the groundwork for the adaptation of the Groundcourse’s principles to my model I have conducted literature reviews in experiential learning theories, with an emphasis on self-directed learning; as well as cybernetic learning. These I have combined with a survey of play theory and virtual world studies, particularly those focusing upon the avatar and metaverse creativity. From all of these I have woven together a foundation which I have combined with a visual documentation which may serve as case studies for my proposal. The new knowledge embodied through this thesis is a learning system for the creative fields that is designed specifically for the residents of online virtual worlds, and yet has its foundations in an earlier, well established and well regarded model.

Memoria (licenciado en ciencias jurídicas y sociales) / Este trabajo examina la teoría de la elección pública como instrumento útil para el análisis del Decreto Ley N° 701 sobre Fomento Forestal, de 1974. Este marco conceptual permite comprender la gestación y mantención de la política de subsidios en materia forestal y el comportamiento de los actores que desempeñaban funciones públicas y que estuvieron involucrados en su dictación, así como los procesos de discusión de modificaciones en el Congreso, en particular, parlamentarios y grupos de interés. Para estos efectos, esta memoria se estructura en dos capítulos. El primero revisa el marco teórico general de la teoría de la elección pública, con especial énfasis en los postulados que la estructuran, que ponen al individuo –maximizador del interés individual, en todo ámbito de acción- como unidad básica de análisis. El foco de este apartado es el estudio del public choice en relación al proceso legislativo. Por su parte, el capítulo segundo analiza de manera pormenorizada la historia legislativa del Decreto Ley N° 701, desde la perspectiva que entrega el public choice, incluyendo su gestación en 1974, así como las dos modificaciones más importantes que ha tenido: la Ley N° 19.561 y Ley N° 20.488. Esta revisión permite vislumbrar la existencia de intereses particulares que se lograron plasmar y mantener en una política pública vigente por más de 40 años.

Den standardiserade revisionsberättelsen har under en längre tid kritiserats för att inte vara tillräckligt informativ. Detta har resulterat i att IAASB infört en helt ny standard, ISA 701. Införandet av ISA 701 innebär stora förändringar för revisorn som nu tvingas rapportera om Särskilt betydelsefulla områden, SBO. IAASB:s övergripande syfte är att SBO ska öka revisionens transparens gentemot användare av finansiella rapporter. Det finns dock vissa motsättningar inom ramen för revisionsprofessionen vilka riskerar att hindra revisorn från att genom rapporteringen av SBO öka revisionens transparens. Den problematik, bestående av intressekonflikter, revisorn utsätts för i kombination med att det är den första rapporteringsperioden har lett fram till studiens frågeställningar: (1) Hur resonerar praktiserande revisorer gällande sina möjligheter att öka revisionens transparens genom rapporteringen av SBO? (2) Hur väl efterlevs ISA 701 vid revisorns rapportering av SBO bland svenska noterade bolag? För att besvara studiens frågeställningar syftar studien till att undersöka och förklara revisorns inställning gällande utformningen av SBO, samt kartlägga och analysera den första rapporteringen av SBO i svenska noterade bolag och tillsammans öka förståelsen för SBO och dess inverkan på revisionens transparens. Genom en kombinerad forskningsansats med både kvalitativa och kvantitativa inslag har empiri från intervjuer med 6 revisorer som har en central roll vid utformningen kombinerats med en dokumentstudie där innehållet i 75 noterade bolags SBO-avsnitt kartlagts. Studiens resultat visar att revisorn i stor utsträckning upplever det möjligt att öka revisionens transparens även om det ständigt krävs en balansgång mellan transparens och faktorer som tystnadsplikt, vinstsyfte och relationen till klienten. Dokumentstudien visar att efterlevnaden i generella termer är hög. Studien har vidare lyckats identifiera vissa tendenser i rapporteringen. Vid situationer där stöd i form av årsredovisningen finns tenderar revisorn att lämna mer bolagsspecifik och uttömmande information medan revisorn lämnar mer försiktig och neutral information vid situationer där stöd istället saknas. Studien indikerar att revisorn har incitament att säkerställa att informationen i SBO avspeglar den utförda revisionen, i kombination med den höga efterlevnaden av ISA 701 förefaller således revisionens transparens gentemot omgivningen ökat. Trots denna slutsats är ett anmärkningsvärt resultat det faktum att revisorn är skeptisk till värdet av SBO. Trots omfattande förändringar av revisionsberättelsen upplever revisorn att intresset från användarna är fortsatt lågt, vilket kan komma att leda till transparensen och efterlevnaden i framtida rapporteringsperioder minskar.

This practiced-based thesis examines how a new Visual Communication methodology helps interaction designers to improve their future designs. This is achieved by engaging in creating visual interpretations from a lived experience that they need to design for, to reveal the phenomenological essence of what users have actually experienced, rather than what they say they have. This new Visual Phenomenological Methodology (VPM) places interaction designers into a specific communicational situation, in order to understand the phenomena of users’ lived experience ‘through their eyes.’ Thus immersed, interaction designers montage visual interpretations of what users saw/felt/did in the lived experience. The VPM facilitates interaction designers into designer-interpreters, who can interpret sensory data into a behavioural story of what its like to be the user in a lived experience. This thesis has developed the VPM across three peer reviewed, practice-based projects, using a synthesis of the pragmatic semiotics of Peirce, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, and visual communication techniques. Following the Frascaran view that the design discipline of Visual Communication (graphic design and illustration) is a positive facilitator of behavioural change, the VPM employs this hermeneutic-semiosis synthesis to facilitate interaction designers to develop a deeper and emergent understanding of the hidden motivations behind user behaviour. Through a contextual review into Visual Communication, Interaction Design, Phenomenology and Semiosis, this thesis develops the VPM from a theoretical concept, to a set of designer-friendly method cards that interaction designers can employ during their ideation phase. Throughout its development the VPM and its method cards were workshopped and peer reviewed by interaction designers. This thesis, over the following seven chapters, demonstrates how the VPM successfully provided Visual Communication design with a fresh way to re-influence Interaction Design, as a new contribution to knowledge.

This study investigates a multilingual, multi-genre data set of 13 post-9/11 popular culture videos, produced by performative artists from across global society, which use digital media aesthetics to defy hegemonic narratives relating to Islam and the War on Terror. The languages represented across the 13 texts are English, French, Spanish and Arabic; and the popular culture genres are hip-hop, comedy, punk and parkour. The texts are grouped thematically for analytical purposes into the following categories: 9/11, War on Terror, Clash of Civilisations, and Palestine. Using the sociological manifestation of narrative theory (Baker 2006, Somers 1994) as the conceptual framework, I firstly conduct a narrative analysis of the texts focusing on themes of temporality; character/identity; and multivalence, i.e. the co-existence of seemingly contradictory narratives within a single text (Stroud 2002). I argue that a combination of aesthetics and multivalence is deployed in all the videos, despite their creative and linguistic diversity, which functions to arrest viewers out of uncritical immersion in their normative (hegemonic) narrative environment, and open a space in the affective present for new meanings and values to enter. This technique or affective practice, which I term ‘aesthetic shock’, addresses a widespread critique of socio-narrative theory; namely, the failure to account for how social agents might subscribe to new narratives that contradict their existing worldview. Secondly, the socio-narrative framework is supplemented with recent scholarship on affect (Berlant 2011, Butler 2004) and Deleuzian philosophy (1987). This permits a deeper understanding of the texts as indicative of an epistemological groundswell that is symptomatic of our unfolding moment in history, whereby contradiction and aesthetics emerge as key narrative tools for resistance to the post-9/11 hegemonic order. The two models are connected from a translation studies vantage point by the notion of ‘renarration’ (Baker 2008), offering a unique angle on the flows, patterns of exchange, and evolving identity constructs in the digital media context. Following detailed exploration of the texts and their production contexts, consistent features are drawn out in an attempt to identify emerging patterns between them. These findings include the affective practice of what I term ‘conscious individualism’, the creation of intimate publics (Berlant 2011), and a united, pluralised front against the neoliberal economic agenda for which prominent public narratives such as Samuel Huntington’s reductive ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis (1996) act as a smokescreen. Ultimately, it is argued that the texts should be seen as deterritorialising sites of aesthetic activism; a means for the non-elites masses across global society to creatively capitalise on the affordances of the digital era, to assert themselves against oppressive cultural narratives and affirm new modes of thinking and being the world. Expressions of political resistance such as the 13 texts analysed in this study are becoming more visible and more vital across different linguacultures as the rationalist nation-state paradigm loses currency, evoking the possibility of futures other than that of capitalist progress. I contend that we must pay close attention to such narratives –both their message and their medium – if we are to achieve a more constructive and nuanced appreciation of the chaotic and contradictory world in which we live.

Conodonts are important biostratigraphic tools for the delineation and calibration of the geochronological boundaries within the Carboniferous and used generally as stage-boundary markers for the Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian). The studied successions in the Central and Eastern Taurides were mainly deposited in a shallow marine environment during the Carboniferous time and they comprise less abundant and diversified conodont fauna. The conodont fauna represented by twenty-four species belonging to ten genera have been described from the studied sections (AS / AAO / BSE and HB) in the Taurides (Turkey). Regarding the first occurrences and last occurrences of biostratigraphically significant species within these sections, the following zones have been established across the Lower Carboniferous successions: (1) Polygnathus inornatus Zone (Hastarian-Lower Tournaisian) / (2) Gnathodus cuneiformis &ndash / Polygnathus communis communis Zone (Ivorian-Upper Tournaisian) / (3) Polygnathus mehli mehli Zone (Ivorian-Upper Tournaisian) / (4) Gnathodus girtyi girtyi Zone (Brigantian-Upper Visean) / (5) Gnathodus girtyi simplex Zone (Pendelian-Lower Serpukhovian) / (6) Rhachistognathus muricatus Zone (Zapaltyubinsky-Upper Serpukhovian) and (7) Declinognathodus inaequalis - Declinognathodus noduliferus Zone (Bogdanovsky-Lower Bashkirian). Based on the recovered conodont assemblages, Visean - Serpukhovian boundary has been recognized by the first occurrence of Gnathodus girtyi simplex and the Mid-Carboniferous boundary is delineated by the first occurrence of Declinognathodus inaequalis, which is an index taxon for the basal part of the Bashkirian. Based on the microfacies studies it can be concluded that conodont elements essentially obtained from the crinoidal bioclastic packstone-grainstone, crinoidal packstone-grainstone, coated bioclastic grainstone, intraclastic grainstone and spiculite packstone facies in the studied sections. It can be concluded that that the occurrence of abundant crinoids are indicative criteria for the presence of conodonts. Additionally, geometric morphometric analyses of biostratigraphically important genus, Gnathodus, on the basis of data available in the literature emphasize the importance of numerical taxonomy and reveal that taxonomic revision of this genus is needed.

A titanium dioxide powder co-doped with boron and zirconium was prepared by mechanical ball milling. Photocatalytic performance of the powder was evaluated by degradation of methylene blue (MB) solution under UV illumination. XRD patterns were refined by Rietveld analysis method to obtain accurate lattice parameters and position of the atoms in the crystal structure of TiO2. XRD analysis indicated that the B and/or Zr doped TiO2 powders composed of anatase and did not exhibit any additional phase. Rietveld analysis suggested that dopant B and Zr elements were successfully weaved into crystal structure and distorted the lattice of TiO2. The highest distortion was obtained by co-doping. SEM investigations confirmed that mechanical ball milling technique led to a decrease in particle size of TiO2 powder. XPS analysis revealed that dopant B and Zr atoms did not appear in any form of compound including Ti and O elements. Results of photocatalytic activity test suggested that boron and zirconium co-doped TiO2 particles exhibited a better visible light response and photocatalytic activity than that of mono element doped TiO2 (i.e. B-TiO2 and Zr-TiO2) and undoped TiO2 particles. A 20% improvement in photocatalytic activity of reference TiO2 powder (powder ball milled without dopant addition) was achieved by B and Zr co-doping. The enhanced photocatalytic activity is attributed to synergistic effects of B-Zr co-doping the lattice of TiO2 as well as particle size reduction.

The present study aims to investigate the foraminiferal assemblages of the recent samples in terms of abundance and diversity, to determine the bathymetrical and the geographical distributions of the foraminiferal assemblages. This study further intends to put forward the responses of foraminifers to environmental factors (e.g. bathymetry, salinity, substrate, pollution, water currents, etc.) on the distribution of foraminifers. In this manner, foraminiferal fauna has been taxonomically identified and quantitatively analyzed in the 34 grab samples distributed at depths from 18 m. to 190 m. collected from the Gulf of iskenderun. Counting 300 individuals from each sample, the relative abundances of 151 benthic foraminiferal species belonging to suborders of Rotaliina, Miliolina, Textulariina, Spirillinina and Lagenina have been determined. The relative abundances of samples are dominated by Ammonia tepida / Adelosina cliarensis, Nonion sp.A, Textularia bocki, Reussella spinulosa, Cribroelphidium poeyanum, Adelosina pulchella, Buccella granulata, Elphidium advenum and Nonion depressulum that are also common in the western Mediterranean. Furthermore, the Lessepsian migrants / Peneroplis pertusus, Septoloculina angulata, Septloculina rotunda, Septoloculina tortuosa, Vertebralina striata and Amphistegina lobifera are abundant in only southeastern part of the gulf. Because of complex distribution scheme of benthic foraminifers, some statistical analysis (Cluster Analysis, DCA and CCA) have been applied to relative abundance (percentage) of the most abundant, ecologically important taxa in order to visualize assemblages and their representative species. Two main clusters, mainly controlled by CaCO3 and substrate, have been obtained. It is recognized that the distribution of benthic foraminiferal assemblages are not strongly depend on depth as it expected.

The main objective of this master&rsquo / s thesis is to analyze the place assigned to the phenomenon of desire by Hegel and Spinoza, and to show that the main difference between two philosophers in terms of their understanding of desire and human phenomenon consists in their understanding of the relation between the substance and particulars. In order to fulfill the requirements of this objective, what is focused on is, as different from a certain philosophical thought excluding desire from a true account of human phenomenon due to two aspects of desire, namely being an immediate drive and being purely self-referential, which are not regarded as being capable of explaining the specific distinctness of human being, how Spinoza and Hegel give an account of desire, and how they conceive mentioned aspects of desire. Throughout the thesis, first Spinoza&rsquo / s ontology, as it is elaborated in the Ethics, and the place of the phenomenon of desire in this ontology are explained. Then through an analysis of the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, it is argued that Hegel&rsquo / s conception of desire enables one to conceive the distinctive human institutions such as sociality, morality, and etc., as derivatives of desire. Finally it is argued that, since Hegel conceives the relation between the substance and particulars as a total detachment, he is able to give the spiritual dimension of human phenomenon in terms of desire. In this way moreover the specific distinctness of the human phenomenon is preserved in the philosophy of Hegel.