In 2013, the Dominican state ruled to uphold a 2010 constitutional amendment that stripped thousands of Dominicans of Haitian origin of their citizenship and forced them to leave the country during summer 2015. About 2,200 of these people became displaced in Anse-à-Pitres, where most took up residence in temporary camps. I use the term forced migrants or displaced persons interchangeably to refer to these people. Many endure challenges in meeting their daily survival needs in Haiti, a country with extreme poverty, considerable political instability, and still in the process of rebuilding itself from the devastating earthquake of 2010. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic field- work in Anse-à-Pitres, I examine how these displaced people, in the face of statelessness and amid their precarious social and economic conditions, create survival strategies by drawing upon everyday labor mobility and informal economic activities within and across their communities. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the involvement of these displaced people in community life through socio-economic practices attests to a sense of belonging and produces a form of substantive citizenship in their absence of legal citizenship. This kind of substantive citizenship is also shaped by the ability of the displaced people to re-define life goals, participate in local meetings with the local state and organizations on the ground, and challenge systems of power that seek to impose their choices upon them. In this dissertation, I argue against construing the displaced people as hopeless by focusing on the forms of power and agency that they exercise in and over their lives, which make them agents of their self-development.

Durant la période de l’Occupation de la France, la frontière franco-suisse est bien gardée par les Allemands, secondés par les douaniers français, et les Suisses. Ses franchissements sont sévèrement réglementés. Les autorisations sont délivrées au compte-goutte. Elle se veut une barrière hermétique pour lutter par exemple, du côté allemand, contre la fuite de prisonniers de guerre ou de gens persécutés, l’espionnage, le marché noir, et, du côté suisse, contre l’afflux de réfugiés clandestins et la contrebande. Elle est doublée d’une zone interdite, sur sol français, dans laquelle il faut montrer patte blanche pour circuler. En principe donc, l’espace à proximité de la frontière est supposé être un no man’s land mort, occupé uniquement par les sentinelles.Mais, dans la réalité, cet objectif est bien loin d’être atteint. L’espace de la frontière est le lieu d’une intense activité clandestine. L’élément clé en est le passeur. Ce dernier est généralement soutenu par les « by-standers », soit les frontaliers qui, sans franchir eux-mêmes la frontière, leur offrent une assistance logistique (hébergement, nourriture, …). Grâce à ces réseaux, une masse hétéroclite de personnes et de choses, voire d’animaux, franchissent la frontière dans les deux sens : réfugiés juifs, prisonniers de guerre français ou polonais, espions suisses et alliés, résistants et maquisards français, marchandises de tous genres, courrier, etc.La mission du Service de renseignements suisse (SR) est de fournir au commandant en chef de l’armée et à l’Etat-major général les informations dont ils ont besoin pour prendre leurs décisions. L’acquisition de l’information est en théorie la tâche des postes extérieurs répartis le long de la frontière, ainsi que des centrales de collecte. Parmi les différentes méthodes employées pour rassembler les renseignements figurent l’étude des rapports des attachés militaires à l’étranger, l’exploitation des lignes de renseignement, mais aussi l’envoi de l’autre côté de la frontière suisse d’agents en mission.Les bons résultats du SR obtenus entre 1940 et 1944 sont dus en grande partie à la collaboration mise en place, à tous les niveaux, avec les services de renseignement étrangers et les réseaux de résistance. La Suisse a en effet été choisie par bon nombre d’organisations alliées comme plaque-tournante pour leurs réseaux de renseignement. Les informations convergent de toute l’Europe vers les représentations diplomatiques établies en Suisse avant d’être transmises par celles-ci, via des postes émetteurs, à destination de Londres, Moscou ou Washington.Que ce soit au niveau du commandement du SR ou des postes extérieurs, les hommes de Roger Masson tirent avantage de ce flux et établissent un rapport de donnant-donnant avec les réseaux étrangers. En échange d’informations pouvant intéresser la défense nationale, ils organisent le franchissement de la frontière aux agents étrangers et laissent les agents de la communauté internationale du renseignement vaquer à leurs occupations en toute impunité sur le territoire helvétique.Le SR est parfaitement intégré dans la communauté internationale du renseignement établie sur le territoire suisse durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sur le terrain, il partage ses agents et ses passeurs avec les réseaux étrangers. / The Franco-Swiss border was well guarded during the French occupation, on the one side by the Germans, seconded by the French customs and on the other, by the Swiss. Border crossings were strictly controlled and the border was supposed to be water-tight. The French side of the border was doubled by a first zone accessible only by special authorisation, and a second forbidden zone 1 to 3 km wide stretching along the frontier. In the minds of the German occupying forces, this corridor along the border was supposed to be a no man’s land in which only the border guards patrolled.This ideal was a long way from being the achieved, since the corridor was the scene of intense clandestine activity. The key player was the ‘passeur’ who smuggled across the border and who was usually assisted by by-standers, residents on both sides of the border-zone who did not cross the border themselves, but who supplied the logistical support of safe houses, food etc… Thanks to this network of smugglers and by-standers, a heterogeneous mass of people, objects and even animals crossed the border in both directions – French and Polish POWs, Jewish refugees, Allied airmen, Swiss and Allied spies, French resistance fighters, post, and all sorts of merchandise…The Swiss Intelligence Service (SR) was tasked with supplying the commander-in-chief and the AHQ with the information which would allow them to lead the army. The collection of information was in theory the task of the outposts spread along the border as well as of the central stations. Amongst the various methods used to collect the raw information – such as the questioning of travellers and deserters, the study of reports issued by Swiss military attachés abroad and the exploitation of intelligence lines– the SR sent agents on missions beyond the Swiss borders.Part of the mechanism which allowed the SR to be well informed between 1940 and 1944, was its collaboration at all levels with the foreign secret services and the resistance networks. In fact a number of Allied organisations chose Switzerland as the hub of their intelligence networks. Information converged from all over Europe towards the embassies and consulates established in Switzerland, and these in turn transmitted it via radio emitters from their delegations, or via clandestine ones, to London, Moscow or Washington.Whether it was at the level of the head of the SR, or of the listening posts, Roger Masson’s men took advantage of this flow and set up relationships on a give and take basis with the foreign networks. In exchange for information affecting the security of the nation, they organized the border crossings of foreign agents and of documents coming from abroad, and allowed the international intelligence community agents to go about their business with almost total impunity on Swiss soil.The SR was perfectly integrated into the international ‘intelligence community’ established on Swiss soil during World War II. In the field, it ‘shared’ its agents and smugglers with the foreign networks.

"December 2003" / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 349-387) / 387 leaves : maps ; 30 cm / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of Politics, 2005

<p>Part 1: The bandwidth of the ultrasound Doppler signal is proposed as a classification function of blood and tissue signal in transthoracial echocardiography of the left ventricle. The new echocardiographic mode, Bandwidth Imaging, utilizes the difference in motion between tissue and blood. Specifically, Bandwidth Imaging is the absolute value of the normalized autocorrelation function with lag one. Bandwidth Imaging is therefore linearly dependent on the the square of the bandwidth estimated from the Doppler spectrum. A 2-tap Finite Impulse Response high-pass filter is used prior to autocorrelation calculation to account for the high level of DC clutter noise in the apical regions. Reasonable pulse strategies are discussed and several images of Bandwidth Imaging are included. An in vivo experiment is presented, where the apparent error rate of Bandwidth Imaging is compared with apparent error rate of Second-Harmonic Imaging on 15 healthy men. The apparent error rate is calculated from signal from all myocardial wall segments defined in \cite{Cer02}. The ground truth of the position of the myocardial wall segments is determined by manual tracing of endocardium in Second-Harmonic Imaging. A hypotheses test of Bandwidth Imaging having lower apparent error rate than</p><p>Second-Harmonic Imaging is proved for a p-value of 0.94 in 3 segments of end diastole and 1 segment in end systole on non averaged data. When data is averaged by a structural element of 5 radial, 3 lateral and 4 temporal samples, the numbers of segments are increased to 9 in end diastole and to 6 in end systole. These segments are mostly located in apical and anterior wall regions. Further, a global measure GM is defined as the proportion of misclassified area in the regions close to endocardium in an image. The hypothesis test of Second-Harmonic Imaging having lower GM than Bandwidth Imaging is proved for a p-value of 0.94 in the four-chamber view in end systole in any type of averaging. On the other side, the hypothesis test of Bandwidth Imaging having lower GM than Second-Harmonic Imaging is proved for a p-value of 0.94 in long-axis view in end diastole in any type of averaging. Moreover, if images are averaged by the above structural element the test indicates that Bandwidth Imaging has a lower apparent error rate than Second-Harmonic Imaging in all views and times (end diastole or end systole), except in four-chamber view in end systole. This experiment indicates that Bandwidth Imaging can supply additional information for automatic border detection routines on endocardium.</p><p>Part 2: Knowledge Based Imaging is suggested as a method to distinguish blood from tissue signal in transthoracial echocardiography. This method utilizes the maximum likelihood function to classify blood and tissue signal. Knowledge Based Imaging uses the same pulse strategy as Bandwidth Imaging, but is significantly more difficult to implement. Therefore, Knowledge Based Imaging and Bandwidth Imaging are compared with Fundamental Imaging by a computer simulation based on a parametric model of the signal. The rate apparent error rate is calculated in any reasonable tissue to blood signal ratio, tissue to white noise ratio and clutter to white noise ratio. Fundamental Imaging classifies well when tissue to blood signal ratio is high and tissue to white noise ratio is higher than clutter to white noise ratio. Knowledge Based Imaging classifies also well in this environment. In addition, Knowledge Based Imaging classifies well whenever blood to white noise ratio is above 30 dB. This is the case, even when clutter to white noise ratio is higher than tissue to white noise ratio and tissue to blood signal ratio is zero. Bandwidth Imaging performs similar to Knowledge Based Imaging, but blood to white noise ratio has to be 20 dB higher for a reasonable classification. Also the highpass filter coefficient prior to Bandwidth Imaging calculation is discussed by the simulations. Some images of different parameter settings of Knowledge Based Imaging are visually compared with Second-Harmonic Imaging, Fundamental Imaging and Bandwidth Imaging. Changing parameters of Knowledge Based Imaging can make the image look similar to both Bandwidth Imaging and Fundamental Imaging.</p>

<p>I en pågående globalisering, skapas fler och fler unioner eller liknande handelsavtal, där syftet är att främja den egna regionen och dess markand. Möjligheterna är enorma för företagen inom dessa regioner, då alla barriärer är borta och landsgränserna utsuddade. Detta skapar även hårdare konkurrens och aktörer från andra delar av världen vill komma in på dessa marknader och ta del av vinsterna. Det snabbaste och enklaste sättet att ta sig in på marknaderna är genom förvärv, då befintliga etablerade företag köps upp. Frågan är huruvida dessa regioners marknader reagerar, då ett företag som kommer utifrån regionen köper upp ett företag inom regionen eller om förvärvet sker inom regionen.</p><p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om det finns någon mätbar skillnad i den abnormala avkastningen vid gränsöverskridande förvärv, som kan härledas till uppköparens ursprung. Fokus ligger på skillnaden mellan företag från den Europeiska Unionen och företag utanför gemenskapen. Vidare skall denna uppsats undersöka lönsamhetsutvecklingen efter genomfört uppköp.</p><p>Den metoden som har valts för att studera problemet är en eventstudie, som anses vara det mest lämpade vid undersökning av den abnormala avkastningen. En intervju har även genomförts, för att få mer djup i undersökningen och en lönsamhetsundersökning, för att utläsa effekterna hos budföretaget efter förvärvet. I lönsamhetsundersökningen har tre nyckeltal undersökts avkastning på eget kapital, P/E-talet och avkastning på totala tillgångar.</p><p>Resultatet utav studien visade på att avkastningen hos målföretagen som hade köpare från ett land utanför den Europeiska Unionen var störst. Detta betyder även att de förväntas generera högre lönsamhet enligt den effektiva markandshypotesen. En anledning till att gruppen med icke-EU företag genererade en större överavkastning kan vara att de ”delar med sig” av de förväntade framtida vinsterna i större utsträckning varpå deras budpremie var högre. Vid gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv konkurrerar fler potentiella köpare om företaget vilket driver upp budpremien. Att Sverige inte ingår i eurosamarbetet kan vara en anledning till att färre företag inom unionen konkurrerar om att köpa svenska företag varpå premien och därmed överavkastningen i denna grupp är lägre.</p><p>Lönsamhetsundersökningen visade på att gruppen med företag från den Europeiska Unionen upplever en minskning av alla de tre nyckeltalen efter det genomförda förvärvet. Gruppen med företag från utanför unionen å andra sidan upplever en ökning av både avkastning på eget kapital och avkastning på totala tillgångar i perioderna efter förvärvet, vilket visar på att förvärvet varit mer lönsamt för dem. Resultatet från lönsamhetsundersökningen stödjer resultatet från evenstudien då gruppen med företag utanför unionen lyckats generera den största lönsamheten varpå den högre premien från dessa företag var berättigad.</p>

<p>Among the challenges that companies may face during the post M&A phase, cultural integration can be seen as one of the trickiest tasks. Cultural differences which are inevitable in any deal are always there. The link between how people from autonomous groups live together and the deal result is an interesting topic that needs to be investigated. Since we have an interest in developing the understanding of cultural differences during integration process in cross-border M&As, the research question “How do cultural differences arise in cross-border M&As during the integration process and do they impact the deal result?” is formulated.</p><p>This thesis presents a model that demonstrates elements of cultural differences from three levels, national, organizational and personal. In this model, these levels can be seen as interrelated to each other in which the inner layer is impacted by the outer one. As a result, personal culture, as the most inner layer, is doubly impacted by the other two, national and organizational levels. Given that the scope of our thesis is for cross-border M&As, after investigating these three levels of culture, we found that organizational and personal differences are real in any M&As no matter domestic or cross-border deals. Differences at national level, on the contrary, are the first element that should be mentioned as a root of cultural differences in companies from different nationalities.</p><p>From the understanding about emergence of cultural differences, we further study to see if they leave any effect on the deal result. In the empirical section, from the cultural gap analysis of each case, it was surprising to see that the relationship between cultural gap and deal result of two of four cases, are opposite to Rankine´s theory. At this point, we can see that M&As between companies similar in culture is not always successful or that failure between organizations having significantly different cultures is not always true, and then the empirical study on the acculturation dynamics made the further explanation that cultural differences are not the critical factor leading to success or failure, but rather how participants in integration perceive and respond to the cultural differences will impact the deal result.</p>

Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Considering the impact of transaction costs on trade volumes and prices in Europe, in our thesis, we carried out an overview of the costs of crossing borders and an assessment of the degree of fragmentation of the product market in this world area. Throughout the analysis, we paid attention to the country and/ or industry dimension and at how country- and sector-specific patterns affect the European product market integration process. A special attention is also devoted to the model specifications and estimation techniques. Having discussed extensively the foundations of the gravity equation and the properties of the gravity model with the aim of empirical works in the first chapter of our dissertation, chapter two provides a first assessment of the extent of the integration in Europe by measuring the trade intensity via an augmented gravity equation. The study measures the impact of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on Members’ trade in the European zone and highlights that despite the ongoing enlargement process of its free trade area, the European zone displays rather weak RTAs impacts - in comparison with what one could expect -. The chapter also highlights a number of caveats and difficulties when one wants to accurately measure the extent of trade creation brought about the RTAs in Europe. In particular, the existence of zero observations (non observed commodity flows) between country pairs might have important drawbacks in the estimations. Since disaggregated trade data can be very insightful, chapter three implements such an analysis. Using a gravity-like equation as well, it provides a border effect estimations carried out in a multi-country and multi-sector context. Our findings reveal that remaining technical barriers to trade, market structure and degree of product differentiation play an important role in the explanation of border effects. Furthermore, our results succeed to derive a strongly negative impact of nominal exchange rate volatility on trade, whereas traditional gravity specifications fail to identify this clearly – when regional dummies are introduced-. Hence, chapter two and three provide an overview, via the trade channel, of the degree of integration of the product market in Europe: While European agreements (EAs) in terms of trade are effective, bilateral trade relationships face steady impediments. As expected, intra-EAs trade increases and exports from Member States to non Member States decline. The trade obstacles have many sources. In particular, volatility of the nominal exchange rate is found to have trade-reducing effects. Our results also underscore the interest of using sector disaggregated date since we find that the degree of product differentiation and the market structure enter in the explanation of border effects. Moreover, the various approaches to harmonize the remaining technical barriers to trade on sector desegregation basis were found to act in reducing on the European Union border effect. As for chapter four, it re-visits the issue of price convergence within the EMU. Specifically, we test whether the Law of One Price (LOOP) can be validated over the period 1984-2004. Our results fail to support the LOOP for a large majority of sectors and countries under examination. Furthermore, our findings reveal half-lives of deviation from the LOOP suggesting a price adjustment which is globally less slow that commonly estimated in the literature. Indeed, the EMU is anticipated to affect the behaviour of trading firms that should result in a faster cross-border transmission of price movements across Member States. When attempting to explain the factors at work in the LOOP failure, we highlight that beside the European convergence process, the arbitrage channel explain a non negligible part of the country mean reversion in terms of relative prices. Nevertheless, mixed evidence is found for the impact of cross- country and cross-sector variables.

<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <p align="left">This study looks at the effect of a cross-cultural instructional approach on the learners&rsquo / conceptions of lightning and attitude towards science. It explored Basotho conceptions of lightning and thunder under the following themes: nature of lightning, protection against lightning, animalistic/humanistic behaviour of lighting and nature of wounds inflicted by lightning.</p> </font></p>

Part 1: The bandwidth of the ultrasound Doppler signal is proposed as a classification function of blood and tissue signal in transthoracial echocardiography of the left ventricle. The new echocardiographic mode, Bandwidth Imaging, utilizes the difference in motion between tissue and blood. Specifically, Bandwidth Imaging is the absolute value of the normalized autocorrelation function with lag one. Bandwidth Imaging is therefore linearly dependent on the the square of the bandwidth estimated from the Doppler spectrum. A 2-tap Finite Impulse Response high-pass filter is used prior to autocorrelation calculation to account for the high level of DC clutter noise in the apical regions. Reasonable pulse strategies are discussed and several images of Bandwidth Imaging are included. An in vivo experiment is presented, where the apparent error rate of Bandwidth Imaging is compared with apparent error rate of Second-Harmonic Imaging on 15 healthy men. The apparent error rate is calculated from signal from all myocardial wall segments defined in \cite{Cer02}. The ground truth of the position of the myocardial wall segments is determined by manual tracing of endocardium in Second-Harmonic Imaging. A hypotheses test of Bandwidth Imaging having lower apparent error rate than Second-Harmonic Imaging is proved for a p-value of 0.94 in 3 segments of end diastole and 1 segment in end systole on non averaged data. When data is averaged by a structural element of 5 radial, 3 lateral and 4 temporal samples, the numbers of segments are increased to 9 in end diastole and to 6 in end systole. These segments are mostly located in apical and anterior wall regions. Further, a global measure GM is defined as the proportion of misclassified area in the regions close to endocardium in an image. The hypothesis test of Second-Harmonic Imaging having lower GM than Bandwidth Imaging is proved for a p-value of 0.94 in the four-chamber view in end systole in any type of averaging. On the other side, the hypothesis test of Bandwidth Imaging having lower GM than Second-Harmonic Imaging is proved for a p-value of 0.94 in long-axis view in end diastole in any type of averaging. Moreover, if images are averaged by the above structural element the test indicates that Bandwidth Imaging has a lower apparent error rate than Second-Harmonic Imaging in all views and times (end diastole or end systole), except in four-chamber view in end systole. This experiment indicates that Bandwidth Imaging can supply additional information for automatic border detection routines on endocardium. Part 2: Knowledge Based Imaging is suggested as a method to distinguish blood from tissue signal in transthoracial echocardiography. This method utilizes the maximum likelihood function to classify blood and tissue signal. Knowledge Based Imaging uses the same pulse strategy as Bandwidth Imaging, but is significantly more difficult to implement. Therefore, Knowledge Based Imaging and Bandwidth Imaging are compared with Fundamental Imaging by a computer simulation based on a parametric model of the signal. The rate apparent error rate is calculated in any reasonable tissue to blood signal ratio, tissue to white noise ratio and clutter to white noise ratio. Fundamental Imaging classifies well when tissue to blood signal ratio is high and tissue to white noise ratio is higher than clutter to white noise ratio. Knowledge Based Imaging classifies also well in this environment. In addition, Knowledge Based Imaging classifies well whenever blood to white noise ratio is above 30 dB. This is the case, even when clutter to white noise ratio is higher than tissue to white noise ratio and tissue to blood signal ratio is zero. Bandwidth Imaging performs similar to Knowledge Based Imaging, but blood to white noise ratio has to be 20 dB higher for a reasonable classification. Also the highpass filter coefficient prior to Bandwidth Imaging calculation is discussed by the simulations. Some images of different parameter settings of Knowledge Based Imaging are visually compared with Second-Harmonic Imaging, Fundamental Imaging and Bandwidth Imaging. Changing parameters of Knowledge Based Imaging can make the image look similar to both Bandwidth Imaging and Fundamental Imaging.