This dissertation examines the characterization of transient investors by financial analysts. Transient investors have been portrayed in the literature as either 1) informed investors or 2) poor monitors. No research to date, however, has examined how financial analysts, who are important information intermediaries, characterize transient investors. A view of transient investors through the lens of a financial analyst is obtained through examining how the presence of transient owners in a firm affects financial analysts' decision making. Specifically, this study examines how transient ownership affects both the propensity of analysts to herd when issuing earnings forecasts for a given firm as well as the incidence with which analysts revise their forecasts when the firm issues earnings guidance. Empirical tests show that financial analysts exhibit a greater propensity to herd when there are transient investors present. The proposed reason for this effect is analysts are herding due to reputational concerns. Further testing, however, does not show that the relation between transient ownership and analyst herding is owed to poor monitoring behavior of transient-owned firms. In contrast, evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the firm information environment of transient-owned firms is an important cause of analyst herding. In summary, evidence is consistent with the informed investor portrayal of transient investors and there is no evidence indicating financial analysts view transient owners as poor monitors. Finally, when the decision of analysts to issue revised forecasts is examined, it is found that having a higher percentage of the firm owned by dedicated or long-term investors increased the propensity of analysts to issue a revised forecast. Thus, while my analysis is inconsistent with a poor monitoring portrayal of transient investors, results suggest that a dedicated investor base can enhance the perceived credibility of firm disclosures. / Ph. D.

This dissertation explores the discursive production of, and response to, environmental disaster. The project is contextualized through the case of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. By interrupting traditional perceptions of environmental disaster, this project frames socio-environmental disasters as a normal and increasingly experienced part of global hydrocarbon capitalism. The project purports that disaster is embedded within the current global economy and the high-]modernist ideologies that underlie it. As such, the strategies and techniques employed to respond to environmental disaster are intimately bound up within the same systemic processes that have created them in the first place. Moreover, because instrumentalist responses are quickly employed to mitigate disaster, the systemic factors productive of disaster remain concealed. Environmental disaster is thus a process of hydrocarbon capitalism rather than a product of it; as such it can, among other categories, be understood as manageable, profitable, and litigable. This research also highlights the normalization of chronic socio-environmental disaster though sensationalistic perspectives on acute disaster. This project explores the potential for resistance through artistic endeavors, highlighting how the discursive processes that construct traditional power/knowledge formations of environmental disaster might be subverted through non-traditional means. While the framework of eco-governmentality is especially useful in highlighting the problematic social relationships to nature, the project nonetheless acknowledges that counter-discourses for are likely to be appropriated by industry for the purpose of new enterprise and profit. / Ph. D.

the Horizon separates the ground, sky the inhabitable space, space the separation of opposites the Horizon exists where opposites meet the contradiction emphasizes the existence of the Horizon architectural elements emphasize this place of meeting using elements of repetition, reflection, and separation / Master of Architecture

A house in the mid-west located on the prairie. A "get-away" from the busy city of Chicago, a place of quiet repose. View of the horizontal is intensified by various planes of crops and the plinth. Fields of crops descend in height to allow the house to rise up and breathe. A simple grid provides inspiration and gives structure. A house full of screens provides changing spaces and adjustable levels of privacy and protection. Views of one screen layered with another provide changing patterns. / Master of Architecture

This thesis is an eutopian project: it examines what is with a sense of what should be to see what must be done. The project is a rerouting of Interstate 581 in Roanoke, Virginia through a reinforced concrete tunnel from the Orange Avenue exit to the Elm Avenue exit with towers placed at intervals along the tunnel to provide light. A reinforced concrete pedestrian bridge links the towers and provides a path from downtown Roanoke to the Civic Center. / Master of Architecture

This is a long building comprised of a series of five rooms set in a field and open to the sky and the surrounding landscape in varying degrees. It is a building that makes a place that encourages manâ s contemplation of the world and the role he and his works play within it. I believe there is no one correct reading of, or meaning to, the work, just as there is no one correct answer to such a broad and complex issue on which individual perspectives can often be very personal and given to unanticipated changes. After all, the world is a very fluid place and the ambiguities of meaning are many. Because of this complexity as well as my own personal desire to make work that can support a number of different readings, the elements of the building have been abstracted to their essential characteristics and identities in order to free up their symbolic potentials. The architectural elements are open vessel into which one can pour their own thoughts and feelings and questions on the matter. I have done my best to communicate my own thoughts on the work, as both they and it stand now, in the text to follow. / Master of Architecture

We present a new trajectory generation algorithm for autonomous guidance and control of unmanned vehicles from a given starting point to a given target location. We build and update incomplete a priori maps of the operating environment in real time using onboard sensors and compute level sets on the map reflecting the minimal cost of traversal from the current vehicle location to the goal. We convert the trajectory generation problem into a finite-time-horizon optimal control problem using the computed level sets as terminal costs in a receding horizon framework and transform it into a simpler nonlinear programming problem by discretization of the candidate control and state histories. We ensure feasibility of the generated trajectories by constraining the solution of the optimization problem using a simplified vehicle model. We provide strong performance guarantees by checking for stability of the algorithm through the test of matching conditions at the end of each iteration. The algorithm thus explicitly incorporates the vehicle dynamics and constraints and generates trajectories realizable by the vehicle in the field. Successful preliminary field demonstrations and complete simulation results for a marine unmanned surface vehicle demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach for fast operations in poorly characterized riverine environments. / Master of Science

Using the setting of earnings conference calls, this paper investigates the temporal focus of management presentation during those calls, i.e., the extent to which managers allocate their discussions to future firm prospects relative to past firm performance. I find a negative association between firms' past performance and the future focus of management presentation. Moreover, the association is less negative for firms with more long-term investors and is more negative for firms with high litigation risk. Additionally, I find that the temporal focus of management presentation is positively associated with that of analyst questions. I also find that managers' future focus is positively associated with the number of analysts following the firm but negatively associated with forecast quality of analyst reports (lower accuracy and higher dispersion). Finally, I find the future discussions in management presentation is positively associated with the time that analysts took to release the next quarter's forecasts. / Ph. D. / In recent years, it has become a common practice for public companies to hold earnings conference calls right after the release of their quarterly earnings results. Earnings conference calls are also publically accessible. Thus, earnings conference calls are believed to contain timely and important information to investors, analysts, and other interested parties. During the calls, managers first highlight the company’s financial performance and discuss its future prospects, and then answer some questions asked by call participants (primarily financial analysts). This paper investigates how managers allocate their effort to discuss the company’s future firm prospects (i.e., future focus) based on its quarterly earning results (past firm performance). I find managers are more likely to discuss future firm prospects when they have a bad quarter; and are more likely to discuss past results when they have a good quarter. In other words, there is a negative association between firms’ past performance and the future focus of management discussion. Moreover, I find the association is less negative for firms with more long-term investors and is more negative for firms with high litigation risk. Additionally, I find that when managers allocate more discussions on the future, analysts tend to ask more questions about the future. I also find that managers’ future focus is positively associated with the number of analysts following the firm but negatively associated with forecast quality of analyst reports. Finally, I find that managers’ future focus is positively associated with the time that analysts took to release the next quarter’s forecasts.

L’œuvre de Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio a déjà donné lieu à de nombreuses investigations, mais celles-ci n’apportent que de rares lumières sur le lecteur potentiel, figure pourtant essentielle du phénomène littéraire. Le rôle de ce lecteur en tant que récepteur de l’œuvre possède une importance particulière dans la qualité de l’acte de communication, car il reçoit le livre avec la somme de ses préjugés et de ses aspirations ; il participe à la production du sens et au développement des thèmes qui parcourent l’œuvre de l’écrivain. Quelle est l’image de lecteur virtuel telle qu’elle est projetée dans le texte de Le Clézio ? Quel est son rôle dans la création de l’œuvre ? Et comment l’auteur s’arrange-t-il pour réduire le plus possible la distance qui risque de s’établir entre l’écriture et la lecture ? Nous tenterons de répondre à ces questions en effectuant une analyse sémiostylistique des recueils de nouvelles de l’écrivain : La fièvre, Mondo et autres histoires, La ronde et autres faits divers, Printemps et autres saisons et Cœur brûle et autres romances. / The work of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has already been the subject of numerous investigations, but they provide little lights on the potential reader who is nevertheless an essential literary phenomenon. The role of the reader as receiver of the work has a particular importance on the quality of the act of communication because he receives the book with the sum of his prejudices and aspirations. He participates in the production of meaning and development of themes that run through the work of the writer. What is the virtual reader’s image as projected in the text of Le Clézio? What is his role in creating the work? And how does the author manage to minimize the distance between writing and reading? We try to answer these questions by making a sémiostylistique analysis on short story cycles of the writer : Fever, Mondo and Other Stories, The Round and Other cold Hard Facts, Spring and other seasons and Burn Heart and Other Romances.

Afin de limiter les impacts du changement climatique sur la planète, les experts du Groupe Intergouvernemental d’experts sur l’Evolution du Climat (GIEC) préconisent une division par deux des émissions mondiales de gaz à effet de serre à l’horizon 2050. Cet objectif impose une division par quatre (i.e. facteur 4) des émissions de gaz à effet de serre des pays industrialisés comme la France. Le secteur des transports peut-il se plier à cette exigence ?A l’aide du modèle TILT (Transport Issues in the Long Term), centré sur les relations macroéconomiques entre croissance économique, technologies, mobilité et émissions de CO2, cette thèse recherche les conditions à réunir pour que soit atteint, en France, le « facteur 4 ». Si les progrès techniques annoncés par les ingénieurs sont au rendez-vous, nous pouvons atteindre un facteur 2. L’autre moitié du chemin doit donc être réalisée par une modification des comportements des individus et des entreprises. Trois familles de scénarios sont proposées pour en illustrer le contenu de ces évolutions. / In France an objective of dividing greenhouse gas emissions by four, from the 1990 level, by 2050 has been set. Are these ambitions out of our reach? What will the price to pay for this objective be?We have built a long-term backcasting transport demand model (TILT, Transport Issues in the Long Term). This model is centered on defined behavior types -in which the speed-GDP elasticity plays a key role- in order to determine demand estimations. This model lets us understand past tendencies -the coupling between growth and personal and freight mobility and adapt behavioral hypothesis -linked to the evolution of public policies- in order to show how a 75% reduction objective can be attained.The main results are an estimation of CO2 emissions for the transport sector taking into account technical progress and demand. These results are presented as three scenario families named: Pegasus, Chronos and Hestia. Each family corresponds to a growing degree of constraint on mobility.It is possible to divide greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector by four. Technical progress is able to lead to more than half of these reductions. The interest of these scenarios is to show that there exist different paths –through organizational change- to getting the other half of the reductions.