The aim of the diploma thesis is to analyze People's Republic of China and India from the point of view of their mineral and energy dependence, where mineral means the necessity to import raw materials for the industry, while energy corresponds to imports of energy resources, namely coal, oil and natural gas. The secondary aim is so called 3C-Analysis (Comparison, Competition, Cooperation), which compares these two economies and evaluates their mutual relationships. The thesis is divided into three main parts - China, India, 3C-Analysis. The subchapters focuse on partial analysis, which are the definition of strategic minerals based on the key industrial branches, the determination of causes of mineral resources dependence and problems outcoming from current structure of energy imports, as well as the analysis and evaluation of the steps leading to the dependence elimination. The text also contains information about the situation in industrial and energy sector of both countries and basic data of raw materials production, reserves, consumption and imports.

This thesis examines the dependence structures between commodity futures and corresponding commodity producer equity indices in bearish, bullish and normal market conditions. We study commodity futures and producer indices in the energy, precious metals, gold and agriculture commodity markets using daily return data that ranges from 16 December 2005 to 28 June 2019. We employ the cross-quantilogram approach developed by Han et al. (2016) to examine dependence structures in the full quantile range, which represents different market states. Furthermore, we control for different lag structures, uncertainties and time-varying dependence structures. From our results we conclude the following: 1) There are time-varying asymmetric and symmetric dependencies in different commodity markets. There is asymmetric dependence between commodity futures and producer indices in the precious metals, gold and agricultural markets. In the oil market, the relationship is symmetrical. No relationship is found in the natural gas market. 2) Heterogenous dependence structures are identified in the gold, precious metals and agricultural commodity markets. The oil market uncovers homogenous dependence structures. 3) The observed spillover in all markets occur in the very short run, at one day, and dissipates after a week and additionally after a month. Our results provide new information regarding commodity diversification attributes which can be useful to investors. Our results also provide important policy implications: Since volatility spillovers between commodity futures and producer indices may deter investors from including commodities in their portfolios, as they might lose their diversifier qualities, it is important to enforce policies that will prevent the spillovers between the assets. Further, regulations of the commodity futures markets could be an alternative to reduce the spillovers.

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Yes / In this paper, we will consider the selective maintenance problem for multistate series systems with stochastic dependent components. In multistate systems, the health state of a component may vary from perfect functioning to complete failure. The stochastic dependence (S-dependence) between components is discussed and categorized into two types in multistate context. First, the failure of a component can immediately cause complete failures of some other components in the system. Second, as components deteriorate, the reduced working performance rate of a multistate component affects the state as well as the degradation rate of its subsequent components in series structure. The system reliability is evaluated using an approach based on stochastic process. A cost-based selective maintenance model is developed for the multistate system with S-dependent components to maximize the total system profit, which includes the production gain and loss in the next mission as well as possible maintenance costs for the system. Analyses of systems with independent and dependent components are provided. It is observed that ignoring S-dependence in the system may lead to alternative maintenance decision making and an optimistic estimation of the system performance.

The U.S. Coast Guard maintains a network structure to connect its nation-wide assets. This paper analyzes and models four highly aggregate traces of the traffic to/from the Coast Guard Data Network ship-shore nodes, so that the models may be used to predict future system demand. These internet traces (polled at 5â 40â intervals) are shown to adhere to a Gaussian distribution upon detrending, which imposes limits to the exponential distribution of higher time-resolution traces. Wavelet estimation of the Hurst-parameter is shown to outperform estimation by another common method (Sample-Variances). The First Differences method of detrending proved problematic to this analysis and is shown to decorrelate AR(1) processes where 0.65< phi1 <1.35 and correlate AR(1) processes with phi1 <-0.25. The Hannan-Rissanen method for estimating (phi,theta) is employed to analyze this series and a one-step ahead forecast is generated. / Master of Science

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Dynamic analysis of binary files is an area of computer science that has many purposes. It is useful when it comes to debugging software in a development environment and the developer needs to know which statements affected the value of a specific variable. But it is also useful when analyzing a software for potential vulnerabilities, where data controlled by a malicious user could potentially result in the software executing adverse commands or executing malicious code. In this thesis a tool has been developed to perform dynamic analysis of x86 binaries in order to generate dynamic control-dependence graphs over the execution. These graphs can be used to determine which conditional statements that resulted in a certain outcome. The tool has been developed for x86 Linux systems using the dynamic binary instrumentation framework PIN, developed and maintained by Intel. Techniques for utilizing the additional information about the control flow for a program available during the dynamic analysis in order to improve the control flow information have been implemented and tested. The basic theory of dynamic analysis as well as dynamic slicing is discussed, and a basic overview of the implementation of a dynamic analysis tool is presented. The impact on the performance of the dynamic analysis tool for the techniques used to improve the control flow graph is significant, but approaches to improving the performance are discussed.

Bakgrund: Trycksår är ett välkänt begrepp i vården och är vanligt förekommande runtom i världen. Trycksår visar sig vara smärtsamma och påfrestande för personen som är drabbad och att leva med ett trycksår kan utvecklas till ett lidande för personen. Syfte: Att utifrån Erikssons lidandebegrepp beskriva personers erfarenheter i samband med trycksår. Metod: En litteraturöversikt där kvalitativa artiklar analyserades deduktivt. Sökningarna resulterade i totalt åtta artiklar som analyserades utifrån Erikssons lidandebegrepp; sjukdomslidande, vårdlidande och livsslidande. Resultat: Sjukdomslidande visade att smärta i samband med trycksår var representerat för flera personer.  Även skam och genans på grund av trycksåret och dess odör beskrevs. I kategorin vårdlidande beskrevs nonchalans samt brister i kommunikation och information vilket resulterade i kritik mot sjukvård och vårdpersonal. Livslidandet yttrade sig i livsförändringar och bidrog till en social isolering. Slutsats: Personers lidande till följd av deras trycksår visade sig vara komplext men också vanligt förekommande. Därför är det viktigt att vårdpersonal har strategier för att identifiera lidande och då med hjälp av Erikssons lidandeteori. När vårdpersonalen vet vilket lidande personer upplever kan åtgärderna riktas specifikt och individanpassas. Vid exempelvis outhärdlig smärta bör då fokus ligga på att få smärtan hanterbar för personen. / Background: Pressure ulcer is a well-known concept worldwide in the care environment. Pressure ulcers are painful and stressful and it can create a suffering for the person living with it. Purpose: To describe the suffering a person is experiencing when having a pressure ulcer based on Eriksson’s suffering concept. Method: A qualitative literature review with a deductive analysis. Eight articles where found which were analyzed by Eriksson’s suffering concept; suffering in sickness, suffering in care and suffering which affect life. Result: Suffering in sickness showed that pain, shame and embarrassment was common reported.  Suffering in care resulted in reported critic against healthcare and caregivers because of lack of communication and information. Suffering which affect life created a change of life and social isolation. Conclusion: The persons’ experiences of suffering, as a result of pressure ulcers, are complex and hard to define but also common to see. Caregivers therefore needs to create strategies to identify the suffering with directions from Eriksson´s suffering concept. When the caregiver knows which suffering the person experiencing arrangements can be specific directed and individualized. For example, when someone experiencing unbearable pain, focus should be to get the pain manageable for the person.

Banking is a risk and return business; in order to obtain the desired returns, banks are required to take on risks. Following the demise of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the Basel III Accord proposed considerable increases in capital charges for banks. Whilst this ensures greater economic stability, banks now face an increasing risk of becoming capital inefficient. Furthermore, capital analysts are not only required to estimate capital requirements for individual business lines, but also for the organization as a whole. Copulas are a popular technique to model joint multi-dimensional problems, as they can be applied as a mechanism that models relationships among multivariate distributions. Firstly, a review of the Basel Capital Accord will be provided. Secondly, well known risk measures as proposed under the Basel Accord will be investigated. The penultimate chapter is dedicated to the theory of copulas as well as other measures of dependence. The final chapter presents a practical illustration of how business line losses can be simulated by using the Gaussian, Cauchy, Student t and Clayton copulas in order to determine capital requirements using 95% VaR, 99% VaR, 95% ETL, 99% ETL and StressVaR. The resultant capital estimates will always be a function of the choice of copula, the choice of risk measure and the correlation inputs into the copula calibration algorithm. The choice of copula, the choice of risk measure and the conservativeness of correlation inputs will be determined by the organization’s risk appetite. / Sc (Applied Mathematics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014