The red-headed woodpecker is a primary cavity excavator found throughout the Eastern Deciduous Forest and parts of the Great Plains. Although widespread, the red-headed woodpecker is generally considered uncommon, with patchily distributed populations. Over the past 50 years, this species has experienced precipitous, range-wide declines. The red-headed woodpecker uses a variety of cover types to meet resource needs across the annual cycle, ranging from oak savannas and wetlands, to mature beech forests and urban parks. Given their apparent adaptability to such a wide range of habitats, causes of declines are perplexing. To understand and stem declines, recent studies have focused on quantifying this species’ habitat requirements. Most of these studies have focused on a single cover type, often open forests, during the breeding season. However, effective management requires comprehensive knowledge of red-headed woodpecker habitat needs in a variety of cover types across the annual cycle. My thesis seeks to address this knowledge gap. I studied red-headed woodpecker habitat selection during both the breeding and non-breeding seasons at Fort A.P. Hill (FAPH) in Caroline County, Virginia. FAPH contains a variety of cover types that red-headed woodpeckers are known to use for breeding and overwintering, including: wetlands, open forests and closed forests. In Chapter 1, I investigated winter roost-site selection of red-headed woodpeckers in a burned forest stand. My study was the first to quantify winter habitat selection for this species. My aim was to identify variables driving winter roost-site selection at two relevant spatial scales, and estimate their parameter weights using logistic regression. I found that red-headed woodpeckers preferred habitat around the roost tree that contained a higher basal area of snags and mast-producing trees. They differentially selected roost trees based on taxon and decay state. My results indicate that managers should adopt practices that promote snag generation and retention, and mature oak recruitment. In chapter 2, I focused on red-headed woodpecker breeding season habitat requirements, as many other studies have done. However, unlike other studies that investigated habitat selection within a single cover type, I found and characterized nest-sites in three distinct cover types (wetlands, closed forests, open forests). I used a comparative approach to identify cover-type specific nest-habitat thresholds at the landscape, patch and tree scales using boosted regression trees (BRT). Although models at the landscape scale inadequately discriminated between nest and available sites, models at the patch and tree scales achieved excellent discrimination ability. I found that red-headed woodpeckers are consistent in their preference for a number of habitat features at the patch (high medium/large snag density, open canopy) and tree (large diameter tree with less bark) scales, irrespective of cover type context. However, I also found cover-type specific habitat preferences at the patch scale, indicating red-headed woodpeckers are flexible in their selection of features surrounding the nest and responsive to the broader habitat context. My findings suggest that there are a number of habitat features that facilitate breeding for red-headed woodpeckers generally, and management that promotes these features will be effective in a variety of habitat contexts. They also indicate that management can be tailored to provide the most suitable habitat for each of these three commonly used cover types. Together, Chapters 1 and Chapter 2 expand our knowledge of this declining keystone species’ habitat needs across the full annual cycle. But there is still much to know. The choices of habitat selection have consequences. Determining the conditions under which habitat features function to either help or harm populations is a necessary next step. While not a part of this thesis, I am currently investigating the factors that drive nest success among cover types, linking breeding-site selection to population dynamics. I also have behavioral data that will help reveal the mechanisms that either facilitate or constrain the exploitation of food resources across cover types. Finally, the red-headed woodpecker is a facultative migrant that often shifts habitat associations to take advantage of seasonally available resources. Data from my point count surveys—conducted over two successive winter and summer seasons—allow for development of dynamic occupancy models. Modeling shifts in occupancy across seasons will show the habitat factors underlying seasonal shifts. Site-specific differences in colonization, extinction and frequency of occupancy, within seasons but across years, will further our understanding of what constitutes habitat quality for this species, in both the breeding and non-breeding seasons.

Students assessment of the quality of teaching is part of the quality assessment of the university and as well it's the management tool used to manage the educational process at the university. The dissertation focuses on student evaluation of teaching process at medical faculties of the Charles Univerzity in Prague. The target of the dissertation is to find out student's and teacher's opinion about the student's teaching evaluation to be one of the quality assesment tools to rate universities, describe teaching evaluation at medical faculties being researched and to analyze annual reports and long-term purposes of selected medical faculties from the student's teaching evaluation point of view. Theoretical part of dissertation is divided in two chapters. The first one is defining the term college and deals with the quality at universities and finally deals with the annual reports of universities.Second chapter elaborates in detail the issue of students assessment of teaching at universities based on the study of professional literature. In the practical part of the dissertation research file is being listed, as well as the results of pre-research and short madical faculties description. For the research survey purposes following methods has been used: questionnaire survey, dialogues and text...

Two new spatio-temporal hidden Markov models (HMM) are introduced in this thesis, with the purpose of capturing the persistent, spatially non-homogeneous nature of climate influence on annual rainfall series observed in Australia. The models extend the two-state HMM applied by Thyer (2001) by relaxing the assumption that all sites are under the same climate control. The Switch HMM (SHMM) allows at-site anomalous states, whilst still maintaining a regional control. The Regional HMM (RHMM), on the other hand, allows sites to be partitioned into different Markovian state regions. The analyses were conducted using a Bayesian framework to explicitly account for parameter uncertainty and select between competing hypotheses. Bayesian model averaging was used for comparison of the HMM and its generalisations. The HMM, SHMM and RHMM were applied to four groupings of four sites located on the Eastern coast of Australia, an area that has previously shown evidence of interannual persistence. In the majority of case studies, the RHMM variants showed greatest posterior weight, indicating that the data favoured the multiple region RHMM over the single region HMM or the SHMM variants. In no cases does the HMM produce the maximum marginal likelihood when compared to the SHMM and RHMM. The HMM state series and preferred model variants were sensitive to the parameterisation of the small-scale site-to-site correlation structure. Several parameterisations of the small-scale Gaussian correlation were trialled, namely Fitted Correlation, Exponential Decay Correlation, Empirical and Zero Correlation. Significantly, it was shown that annual rainfall data outliers can have a large effect on inference for a model that uses Gaussian distributions. The practical value of this modelling is demonstrated by the conditioning of the event based point rainfall model DRIP on the hidden state series of the HMM variants. Short timescale models typically underestimate annual variability because there is no explicit structure to incorporate long-term persistence. The two-state conditioned DRIP model was shown to reproduce the annual variability observed to a greater degree than the single state DRIP. / PhD Doctorate

<p>Bakgrund: Under slutet av 1900-talet uppstod ett intresse bland svenska företag att redovisa miljöinformation. I dag finns endast lagstadgade krav på att företag som bedriver tillstånds- eller anmälningspliktig verksamhet enligt miljöbalken skall ange detta samt ett antal andra relaterade uppgifter i årsredovisningens förvaltningsberättelse. Miljöredovisning är annars inte reglerat enligt svensk lag och det finns inte inom området någon enhetlig praxis. Hur redovisar de börsnoterad företagen miljöinformation? Följer de lagens krav? Använder sig företagen av de riktlinjer och standarder som finns, vid utformningen av sin miljöinformation?</p><p>Syfte: är att undersöka hur svenska börsföretag 2004 har redovisat miljöinformation i sina årsrapporter, samt eventuella separata miljö- eller hållbarhetsredovisningar.</p><p>Genomförande: Kvantitativ undersökning (dokumentundersökning) av 270 svenska börsföretags årsredovisningar</p><p>Resultat: De lagstadgade kraven som ställs på redovisning av miljöinformation följs illa, 69 procent bryter på något sätt mot kraven. Inte i något fall har detta kommenterats av revisorn i revisionsberättelsen. På grund av bristen av enhetliga riktlinjer redovisas miljöinformation på varierande sätt i företagen, vilket försvårar jämförbarheten företagen emellan. Den miljöinformation som redovisas håller generellt, med några undantag, hög kvalitet och är relevant i sin karaktär.</p> / <p>Background: During the late 20th century an interest for environmental accounting arose among the Swedish companies. Today there only exist legislated demands for companies that run businesses that require a permit, or require a report, according to the Swedish environmental Act. There is no other legislation or regulation in the field of environmental accounting. How do the listed companies in Sweden design their environmental accounting? Do they follow the law? To what extent do they use the guidelines and standards available when they put their environmental information together?</p><p>Aim: The aim of this thesis is to investigate how Swedish companies declares environmental information in their annual reports, and if any, in their environmental or sustainability reports.</p><p>Completion: A quantitative survey of annual reports from 270 Swedish listed companies.</p><p>Results: The legislated demands are scarcely followed, 69 per cent of the companies have broken against at least one of the demands. Due to the lack of uniformed guidelines, there is a remarkable difference in the information provided and therefore the comparability decreases. The environmental information provided is, in most cases, of high quality and is relevant as well.</p>

<p>Background: Sweden is a country with 30 million memberships in different non- profit organizations. In total these organizations employees about 400 000 people, through employment and voluntary work. The complete turnover for non- profit organizations is 100 billion Swedish crowns per year. It has only since 2001 been compulsory to follow the Swedish account rules BFL and ÅRL. Trade unions are one type of non-profit organizations with the main purpose to care for the interest of its members concerning their working condition. It is of high complication to show the achievements and goal accomplishment of a trade union through its annual report, when rules established for profit- organizations are followed. Members of a trade union should for example be more interested in information that shows if compensation has been paid out for means of a strike than information about profit for the year.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to describe how annual reports in trade unions are presented, what affects them and how it could be presented better.</p><p>Method: The essay is based on two parts of investigation, both characterized in an explorative approach. The first investigation consists of ten annual reports from different trade unions. The second investigation was based on eight interviews with people who establish annual reports for trade unions.</p><p>Conclusions: Annual reports of trade unions should be established with comparability and reliability in mind. A possibility to take these qualitative characteristics in consideration is to establish a common use of terminology and make goals more quantitative. In trade unions today there is no cooperation through any branch organization. Instead the auditor has great influence on the design of the annual report. It should be of interest for branch organizations to take part of the development of good accounting practice (god redovisningssed) to accomplish better annual reports. The focus of an annual report lies on goal accomplishment for the members, but also voluntary staff and the ambient society should be considered. The authors suggest several key ratios aimed for the three different stakeholders. Key ratios could be divided into two different settings; Classical key ratios, which are possible to compare over time and between different trade unions, and Unique key ratios, which are focusing on separated situations in the trade union.</p>

<p>We have in this master thesis chosen to evaluate limit us to the non-profit fundraising associations. The evaluation is based on what Vedung(1998) the side-effect model, where we have the purposes of the law as the point of departure, to see that these law purposes are fulfilled. With this model we have also seen if there are any side-effects that were not foreseen.</p><p>In the analysis we have compared the non-profit associations’ annual reports with each other and with one profit making limited company. The evaluation shows that the annual reports are now more alike than before, both between each other and with the profit making limited company. However there is still room for the associations to use the annual report in a marketing-oriented way, to “sell” themselves to the stakeholders. Before 2001 it was almost impossible to compare the non-profit associations’ annual reports. The profit making limited companies annual reports are much more focused on numbers, this probably has to do with that the stakeholders’ wishes return on investment. A donor to a non-profit association rather wants to know that his/her money have done someone’s life to the better.</p><p>Our conclusions in this master thesis are that the new accounting law have affected the non-profit associations’ annual reports, this when they now are obligated to form its accounting according to ÅRL. But in the same time we also believe that the law not only has affected how the annual reports are formed. The expectations from the stakeholders, the accountants etc. also forms how they arrange the annual report, have also been affected. If any side effects that have arisen since the law changed among the non-profit associations’ annual reports are not easy to find. This is because it is still differences between a profit making limited company and a non-profit association, but they are now under the same annual report rules.</p> / <p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att utvärdera om årsredovisningarna hos ideella föreningar har påverkats efter att man 2001 valde att skriva om bokföringslagen så den nu gäller ett större antal företag. Anledningen till att man valde att ändra bokföringslagen var att få normgivningen mer enhetlig och generell. Innan 2001 var normgivningen spridd på flera olika lager, vilket ledde till att allt blev mer komplicerat än vad det behövde vara, menade vissa.</p><p>Vi har i denna uppsats valt att utvärdera ideella insamlingsorganisationer för att avgränsa oss. Utvärderingen utgår från vad Vedung (1998) kallar bieffektmodellen, där vi har som utgångspunkt syften med lagen, för att se om dessa syften levdes upp till. Vi har även i och med denna modell sett på om det blev sidoeffekter av lagen, som inte var meningen från början.</p><p>I analysen jämför vi de ideella föreningarnas årsredovisning med varandra och med ett vinstdrivande företag. Utvärderingen visar på att årsredovisningarna nu är mer lika varandra, både mellan varandra och med ett vinstdrivande företag. Dock finns det ett utrymme i årsredovisningen som föreningarna använder på ett reklaminriktat sätt, för att sälja in sig till intressenterna. Innan 2001 var det i princip omöjligt att jämföra de ideella föreningarnas årsredovisningar. Det vinstdrivande företagets årsredovisning är mycket mer inriktat på siffror och detta har antagligen att göra med att deras intressenter är vinstintresserade. En bidragsgivare till en ideell förening vill förmodligen istället veta att det man har skänkt pengar till har gjort att någon har det bättre nu.</p><p>Våra slutsatser i uppsatsen är att bokföringslagen har påverkat de ideella föreningarnas årsredovisningar, detta då de nu är tvingade till en mall enligt ÅRL. Men samtidigt tror vi att inte bara lagen har påverkat hur årsredovisningarna utformas. Förväntningar från intressenterna, samma revisor eller andra mallar på hur de kan lägga upp årsredovisningar påverkar även det. Sidoeffekter som har uppstått i och med att lagen ändrades är att årsredovisningarna hos ideella föreningar inte är helt enkla att läsa av. Detta då det i grunden ändå är skillnader mellan ett vinstdrivande företag och en ideell förening, men att de nu går under samma redovisningsregler.</p>

Background: To maintain or increase the trust in the market, companies can disclose more voluntary information in the annual reports. According to prior research the annual report is the primary source of information for small shareholders and investors. Thus, it is of interest to investigate why companies chose to report the voluntary information inquired by this group. Purpose: We investigate some company-specific factors to decide whether these determine the extent of voluntary information, particularly inquired by small shareholders and investors, in the annual reports of listed Swedish companies. We also aim to discuss underlying causes for our result. Procedure: With statistical methods we have tested hypotheses on relations between company-specific factors and the extent of voluntary information in the annual reports. Results: It is significant that profitability, industry type and quotation status have relations with the extent of voluntary information inquired by small shareholders and investors. No relations have been found between the extent of voluntary disclosure and company-size, ownership dispersion, investments in tangible assets or share issues.

We have in this master thesis chosen to evaluate limit us to the non-profit fundraising associations. The evaluation is based on what Vedung(1998) the side-effect model, where we have the purposes of the law as the point of departure, to see that these law purposes are fulfilled. With this model we have also seen if there are any side-effects that were not foreseen. In the analysis we have compared the non-profit associations’ annual reports with each other and with one profit making limited company. The evaluation shows that the annual reports are now more alike than before, both between each other and with the profit making limited company. However there is still room for the associations to use the annual report in a marketing-oriented way, to “sell” themselves to the stakeholders. Before 2001 it was almost impossible to compare the non-profit associations’ annual reports. The profit making limited companies annual reports are much more focused on numbers, this probably has to do with that the stakeholders’ wishes return on investment. A donor to a non-profit association rather wants to know that his/her money have done someone’s life to the better. Our conclusions in this master thesis are that the new accounting law have affected the non-profit associations’ annual reports, this when they now are obligated to form its accounting according to ÅRL. But in the same time we also believe that the law not only has affected how the annual reports are formed. The expectations from the stakeholders, the accountants etc. also forms how they arrange the annual report, have also been affected. If any side effects that have arisen since the law changed among the non-profit associations’ annual reports are not easy to find. This is because it is still differences between a profit making limited company and a non-profit association, but they are now under the same annual report rules. / Syftet med uppsatsen är att utvärdera om årsredovisningarna hos ideella föreningar har påverkats efter att man 2001 valde att skriva om bokföringslagen så den nu gäller ett större antal företag. Anledningen till att man valde att ändra bokföringslagen var att få normgivningen mer enhetlig och generell. Innan 2001 var normgivningen spridd på flera olika lager, vilket ledde till att allt blev mer komplicerat än vad det behövde vara, menade vissa. Vi har i denna uppsats valt att utvärdera ideella insamlingsorganisationer för att avgränsa oss. Utvärderingen utgår från vad Vedung (1998) kallar bieffektmodellen, där vi har som utgångspunkt syften med lagen, för att se om dessa syften levdes upp till. Vi har även i och med denna modell sett på om det blev sidoeffekter av lagen, som inte var meningen från början. I analysen jämför vi de ideella föreningarnas årsredovisning med varandra och med ett vinstdrivande företag. Utvärderingen visar på att årsredovisningarna nu är mer lika varandra, både mellan varandra och med ett vinstdrivande företag. Dock finns det ett utrymme i årsredovisningen som föreningarna använder på ett reklaminriktat sätt, för att sälja in sig till intressenterna. Innan 2001 var det i princip omöjligt att jämföra de ideella föreningarnas årsredovisningar. Det vinstdrivande företagets årsredovisning är mycket mer inriktat på siffror och detta har antagligen att göra med att deras intressenter är vinstintresserade. En bidragsgivare till en ideell förening vill förmodligen istället veta att det man har skänkt pengar till har gjort att någon har det bättre nu. Våra slutsatser i uppsatsen är att bokföringslagen har påverkat de ideella föreningarnas årsredovisningar, detta då de nu är tvingade till en mall enligt ÅRL. Men samtidigt tror vi att inte bara lagen har påverkat hur årsredovisningarna utformas. Förväntningar från intressenterna, samma revisor eller andra mallar på hur de kan lägga upp årsredovisningar påverkar även det. Sidoeffekter som har uppstått i och med att lagen ändrades är att årsredovisningarna hos ideella föreningar inte är helt enkla att läsa av. Detta då det i grunden ändå är skillnader mellan ett vinstdrivande företag och en ideell förening, men att de nu går under samma redovisningsregler.

The Institute of Resource Ecology (IRE) is one of the currently eight institutes of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The research activities are fully integrated into the program “Nuclear Safety Research” of the Helmholtz Association and focused on the topics “Safety of Nuclear Waste Disposal” and “Safety Research for Nuclear Reactors”. With the integration of the division of “Reactor Safety” from the former “Institute of Safety Research” nuclear research at HZDR is now mainly concentrated within this institute. In addition, various activities have been started investigating chemical and environmental aspects of processing and recycling of strategic metals, namely rare earth elements. Here, a knowledge transfer from the nuclear to the non-nuclear community, branching thermodynamics and spectroscopy, has been established. This also strengthens links to the recently established “Helmholtz-Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology”.

The backdrop of this dissertation is one ubiquitous element of everyday life: the stock market. Traditionally, accounting and stock markets are logically coordinate entities and this thesis analyzes how accounting supports private investors in their role as shareholders – as investors in shares and owners of companies. This analysis is carried out in four independent essays. The first two essays analyze the privatization of Telia, a former state-owned Telecommunication Company in Sweden that went public in 2000. The field material for the two essays consisted of newspaper articles, government bills and interviews. Qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrate how accounting is used among different actors to realize the privatization. Theoretically, the first two essays lend themselves to the governmentality debate as introduced to accounting research by Miller and Rose (1990). The third and fourth essays are analyses of annual general meetings (AGMs). The field material was generated from a study of participants at 36 AGMs during the spring of 2004. The choice of these two seemingly unrelated cases was done deliberately. Both cases are stock market events that typically involve an audience of a large number of non-professional investors. In the privatization of Telia over 1 million people took part in the offer. The AGMs are typically seen as the single event by which non-professional investors have an opportunity to meet with top management. Thus, each event represents an instance in which accounting is confronted by a predominantly non-professional audience. The contribution of this study is two-fold. First, earlier work inspired by the Miller and Rose framework (1990) has favored an analysis of the programmatic. This study develops the technological aspect of the theoretical framework by means of a rich empirical description. In addition the two essays on the privatization of Telia contribute with an analysis of how once a specific technology translates to become and becomes understood at the site of intervention. Second, the two studies of AGMs contest earlier criticism against the meeting as a corporate governance mechanism detached from the overall corporate governance system. The argument here is that the AGM offers a valuable setting for private investors to discuss stewardship issues. That this opportunity is taken advantage of is suggested by the present field material.