The thesis "Business valuation of Pardubický pivovar a.s." is divided into six parts. The first part is devoted to the description of the business. In the next parts follow strategic and financial analysis. In the fourth part are analysed and forecasted value drivers resulting in building a financial plan of the business. The valuation is made consequently by DCF entity method using parametric formula for terminal value. Last part is devoted to the theoretical concept of determining beta by bottom-up approach with a simple example.

The study investigated the communication practices of the Kodumela Peanut-butter development project (KPDP). The project was initiated and established by unemployed women of Puleng village. The research made use of unstructured interviews, participant observation and unobtrusive measures to gather information about the communication practices at the KPDP. It has been noted that the education level of most of these women is low, and they cannot understand, read and write English. The language of communication is Pedi. This language is used during meetings and during informal discussions within the project. The investigation has shown that oral communication dominates other in this project. The KPDP members prefer using participatory communication, as it allows all members to actively participate by means of asking and responding to questions raised. The project makes minimum use of other means of communication such as written communication because most members are illiterate. The financial donors who have assisted the KPDP to become what it is today monitor the day to day running of the project. The women who started the project together with the donors have a smooth running communication system in place for communicating with their donors. The communication system is based on mutual trust and respect for both parties. The donors respect the beneficiaries’ needs, and assist them according to their needs. The bottom-up communication flow has kept the project going. The research report recommends that the women in the project who are responsible for running the day-to-day business of the project attend a literacy program, which will assist them in running the project more efficiently and effectively if they want to compete on the national and international market. The project is doing extremely well at community level but its members want the project to grow bigger not just at community level but at national level as well. Their illiteracy has become a barrier in communicating with people outside the project who are interested in their project. / Dissertation (MA (Development Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / unrestricted

Living cells are highly complex, making it an extremely challenging task to understand how they function. A possible solution is the bottom-up assembly of non-living components and building up life-like features from scratch, i.e., using synthetic cells as a tool to understand the basic characteristics of life. One such chassis for synthetic cells are liposomes, which, like the cell membrane of living cells, are made of phospholipids. As living cells grow, lipids are incorporated into their membrane in order to cope up with the volume increase of the cell. In a similar fashion, a variety of ways are currently being investigated to achieve growth of synthetic cells. Few examples include incorporation of fatty acids from the surrounding environment, reconstituting the enzymes for fatty acid or lipid biosynthesis in the liposome, or by carrying out the synthesis of artificial membrane components through the external addition of precursor molecules. Here, we demonstrate the membrane-tension mediated growth of giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) by fusing sub-micrometre-sized feeder vesicles to them. We use a recently developed microfluidic technique, octanol-assisted liposome assembly (OLA), to produce cell-sized (~10 μm) GUVs on-chip. Following the density-based separation of the liposomes from the waste product (1-octanol droplets), we supply small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs, ~30 nm in diameter) which act as a lipid reserve for growth by fusing with the GUVs. The lipids molecules, being very stable in bilayer conformation, require energy to reorient themselves and undergo membrane fusion. We show that increased membrane tension of GUVs can act as a sole driver to carry out multiple fusion events and cause significant growth. By placing a mass population (>1000) of GUVs in a sufficiently hypotonic solution (delta c 3−5 mM), we build up the membrane tension (~10 mN/m) driving multiple SUV-GUV fusionevents, eventually doubling the volume of a part of the population. We probe a variety of lipid compositions, including hybrid (composed of lipids and fatty acids) GUVs and find the growth to be dependent on the lipid composition. Maximum growth is obtained when using a hybrid system, as compared to pure lipids. Our results show the possibility to use a protein-freeminimal system to induce growth in a minimalistic manner and the demonstrated highthroughput microfluidic approach may have useful implications towards realizing an autonomous entity capable of undergoing a continuous growth-division cycle.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(エネルギー科学) / 甲第22673号 / エネ博第405号 / 新制||エネ||77(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院エネルギー科学研究科エネルギー応用科学専攻 / (主査)教授 平藤 哲司, 教授 馬渕 守, 教授 土井 俊哉 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Energy Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

The aim of this study is to contribute to today´s knowledge about stocks of electronic products on the organisational level. This is done by using a bottom-up MFA on laptops and smartphones in a chosen organisation, the data collected for this study is done by both semi-structured interviews and literature searches. Investigating the associated metals in the laptops and smartphones is also an aim of this study. Having knowledge of the existing stocks and flows of materials is important for the prospects of urban mining. This study takes a circular economy aspect of the current state of stocks and flows of materials. Circulation of materials within society is an effective approach to saving resources rather than just recycling the materials since not all materials can be retrieved through recycling processes. The results show that there is a significant stock of metals embedded in the laptops and smartphones in the organisation. Metals found include Aluminium, Magnesium, Copper, Iron, Nickel, Tin, Gold, Silver, Palladium, Zinc, Lead, Cobalt, Barium and Neodymium. The results also indicates that some of the laptop stock is in hibernation and so is the associated metals in these laptops. These stocks could be of big importance for future sources of metal resources, but more studies are needed to fully understand the stocks of metals in society and how much of these stocks that are in hibernation. / Gruvan i garderoben

The increasingly entangled correlation between media, sport and activism in the United States has generated an upsurge in new media research that focuses on athletes’ political social media posts from an ‘outsider’s’ perspective. To clearer comprehend the complex relationship of media, sport and activism from an ‘insider’s’ perspective, this thesis aims to converse with collegiate athletes in the United States about how they experience their personalized politics on social media, as well as it observes the collegiate athletes’ activist practices on particularly Twitter and Facebook. As an auxiliary ‘prop’, I utilize former NFL (National Football League) player Colin Kaepernick’s approach to athlete activism to start the discussions about the topic with the collegiate athletes. Kaepernick’s kneel during the national anthem in 2016, prior to a football game displayed on national television, gained a variety of negative responses, but also sparked a difference in conversations about the politization of sport, and ultimately lead to a swift re-appearance of athlete activism on social media (Serazio and Thorson, 2020). Thus, by collecting interview data and observations of the media practices of collegiate athletes, the analysis draws on bottom-up framing and practice theory to better understand how such sportspersons experience the intersection between sports and politics on social media, the implications of athlete activism, and the media practices involved in such performance. Ultimately, the results of this study suggest that appearances of tensions, anxieties and pressures subsist in collegiate athletes’ activism practices on social media, making it an auspicious site for further research seeking to investigate the intersection of media, sport, and activism.

This paper presents the complexity of peacebuilding by looking at different types of peacebuilding models. To understand the peacebuilding models, this paper reviews different scholarly pieces of literature on the topic of peacebuilding. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the case of Somalia to determine the suitable peacebuilding model for Somalia. Somalia has faced one of the longest civil wars in Africa after the collapse of the government. To propose suitable peacebuilding for Somalia, the paper reviews different types of peacebuilding attempts that were conducted in Somalia by both international organizations and local peacemakers. These processes include an UN-led top-down approach and a bottom-up approach initiated by elders and local respected individuals. From reviewing different types of peacebuilding literature, the finding reveals conflict resolution specifically Ramsbotham et al (2011) as the best suitable peacebuilding model for Somalia.

Purpose The goal of this research is to define top-down and bottom-up approaches as well as the communication processes and the information flow to see how it is used and matched with day-to-day activities in several retail stores. To meet this goal, the following research questions have been formulated: ● How do organizations use information strategies such as top-down and bottom-up management? ● What are the means to be used in information strategies so that the envisaged objectives can be achieved?  Method To meet that objective, a study has been performed on seven store managers from seven different retail shops through interviews from which the empirical data has been gathered. The latter has been combined with a theoretical framework to achieve the purpose. Findings Based on the empirical results taken from the seven store managers, the authors were able to see and understand how each of them was using information strategies and what were the challenges and improvements related to it. Limitations The authors chose to limit their research to the retail industry in Sweden, therefore the outcome of this study cannot be applied to other industries or countries. Moreover, the interviews have been only given to store managers, which implies that the employees’ perspective on the subject is not analyzed here.

Over the last three years, Heimstaden, a real-estate company based in Sweden, has gone through a complex process of redefinition of its identity, defining values and principles. This process is especially delicate in one of the neighborhoods managed by the company, Flogsta, where Heimstaden owns and administrates 2014 student apartments. In the context of this identity definition process, this study analyzes the communication strategies and the organizational identity transmission practices within the company, focusing on the local-level employees’ understanding and experience of Heimstaden’s identity and strategies. From a theoretical standpoint, the research parts from Hallahan, Holtzhausen, van Ruler, Verčič and Sriramesh´s (2007) initial ideas on strategic communication, and implements van Ruler´s (2018) approach to the role that communication plays within strategic communication, as well as to the dichotomy between one-way vs two-way strategies of communication. The analysis also incorporates Schinoff, Corley and Roger’s (2016) views of organizational identity. The research consists of 6 semi-structured interviews with Heimstaden employees. In addition to that, participant observations were also carried out daily over a period of 5 months, due to my position as a Heimstaden employee stationed in Uppsala. The findings of the study reveal that many of the one-way communication strategies currently in use within Heimstaden, are failing at making the local-level employees aware and participant of the company’s identity and changes. Consequently, this study identifies great differences in the way that local-level employees relate to the company’s new identity and principles with respect to the way in which top-level employees do. These differences, in turn, generate that the company’s identity and new way of doing things is not projected properly towards the clients, generating, arguably, reputational problems for Heimstaden in the studied area.

This study investigates the potential benefits of reading strategy instruction in the English classroom in an L2 learner context. We examined the effects of reading strategy instruction on reading comprehension for L2 learners and investigated howreading strategies should be taught in the context of Swedish upper secondary school. To this end, six empirical studies were evaluated. We found that reading strategy instruction had a positive impact on reading comprehension in general, but that it was especially effective for certain student groups. Namely, intermediate learners benefitted more than other groups, while the weakest students improved the least in response to instruction. Furthermore, the research we examined suggests that it may be advantageous to focus on teaching a single strategy at a time. However, it is important to eventually expand students’ range ofstrategies long-term, since many pupils tend to over-rely on problem-solving strategies to the detriment of their progress in reading. Thus, emphasizing the less frequently used support strategies during instruction may help students read moreefficiently. Additionally, for reading strategies to best benefit learners, they should be taught in a clear, step-by-step manner. Finally, we argue that using aspects of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory to inform lesson plans would greatly benefit students, especially those who are less proficient. Due to the lack of research in the increasingly heterogeneous Western world, future research should investigate how reading strategy instruction behaves in a multicultural context in the West.