The basic principle of patent law is to provide the innovator a negative right to exclude others from making, using, exercising, offering to dispose of and marketing the invention within a limited statutory period. Two aspects of patent theory have polarised research since the Schumpetian era; namely, the balance between this individual right and the societal loss and the level of patent protection that incentivises innovation. Only in recent times has there been research activity on the problem of the shortened patent life and optimal patent design. This empirical study sought to determine the optimal patent protection; thus patent breadth and patent length that create patent value for touch-screen handsets without increasing societal loss. In previous literature mathematical modeling was used as a methodology to determine the optimal patent breadth and patent length. In this study, a quantitative method was used with empirical evidence collected from all patent attorneys practicing in South Africa. The study provides empirical evidence that patent breadth and patent length should vary based on product sectors as a „one-size-fits-all‟ patent protection approach is outdated in product sectors characterised by rapid technological innovation. From the study results it was concluded that long-lived narrow patents are optimal for touch-screen handsets. Lastly, that there are more underlying factors that contribute to patent value in touch-screen handsets that should be investigated further. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

With the contribution of intraspecific trait variation (ITV) to ecological processes being increasingly appreciated, its role in defining niche characteristics arises as a topic of interest. I hypothesised that species with a high magnitude of ITV would occupy a larger climate niche breadth than species with little ITV. Trait and occurrence data for 211 angiosperm tree species across Puerto Rico was used to investigate this hypothesis. Multiple indices for climate niche breadth (NB) and intraspecific variation were calculated, after which regression tests were performed to identify and characterise any relationships between NB and ITV. I found consistent positive correlations between niche breadth and intraspecific variation values (a single negative result was present), supporting the hypothesis that ITV of functional traits has a positive influence on climate niche breadth. These results highlight the contribution of ITV to species distribution, though the mechanisms behind this relationship are unclear and present a question for future study.

Vi undersöker sambandet mellan volatilitet och institutionell breadth of ownership på Stockholmsbörsen mellan 2010 och 2018. Denna undersökning är unik eftersom vi använder breadth of ownership som mått på institutionellt ägande. Den från litteraturen formade hypotesen att institutionellt ägande bör ha en dämpande effekt på volatiliteten motbevisades. Vi fann istället att större breadth of ownership förknippas med högre volatilitet i medelstora och stora företag, medan sambandet inte var signifikant i små företag. Vidare såg vi att småbolag som lämnat utdelning förknippades med en högre volatilitet. Vi menar att dessa observationer till stor del kan förklaras av att institutioner skapar volatilitet i aktier de äger som följd av ökade handelsvolymer. / This paper investigates the relationship between stock return volatility and institutional breadth of ownership on the Swedish stock market during the period from 2010 to 2018. Our paper is unique in its form since we are using institutional breadth of ownership as a proxy for institutional ownership. The hypothesis is based on prior literature that suggests institutional ownership and volatility should be negatively correlated. Instead we found the relationship to be positive in medium and large firms, and not significant in small firms. Furthermore, we found that small firms that pay dividends have had a significant positive relation to volatility. We suggest that these observations largely can be explained by institutional investors increasing trading volumes, and as an extension increasing volatility.

This dissertation explores geographic and diachronic variation in Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Paleoindian (12,500-7000 14C years before present) forager exploitation of animal resources in order to explore how use of different habitats influenced land-use and subsistence strategies. To accomplish this goal, this study documented the full range of variability in the Paleoindian record using a combination of published data and new data. These patterns were then compared to explicit predictions derived from behavioral ecology and animal ethology and biology studies. The results, presented in this dissertation, allow the testing of several, often contradictory, important subsistence-settlement hypotheses in current Paleoindian research, specifically the ongoing debate about Paleoindian diet breadth and human causes of megafaunal extinction. Overall, there appears to be a covariance between environmental zone and forager land use. Paleoindian foragers structured their land use according to the presence and nature of a number of important resources within major environmental zones. Specifically, this study finds sites in grassland settings with low diversity of resources have lower artifact densities and are often dominated by exotic lithic raw materials. In these same areas prehistoric groups made almost exclusive use of large fauna. Sites in foothill/mountain or alluvial valley settings with ecologically high density and high diversity have higher proportions of short-term camps than do other areas and those camps have higher artifact density than do other types of sites. These sites exhibit a mixed use of small- and medium-sized game. Overall this study shows Paleoindian hunters had only modest impact on prey species.

This article reviews some of the theoretical notions and empirical phenomena which figure in current formal-semantic theories of focus. It also develops the connection between “alternative semantics” and “givenness” accounts of focus interpretation.

Climate change is expected to have a profound impact on freshwater fish communities, especially at higher latitudes. In this study I investigated potential effects of climate change on the niche structure of Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis) by looking at their diet across a latitudinal gradient and at varying light climate. Dietary niche width of Eurasian perch did not differ significantly between boreal and temperate latitudes. Additionally, no significant difference in the prevalence of specialist individuals was found along the latitudinal gradient and water transparency levels. Habitat was the main factor that significantly affected niche width and level of specialization with both being significantly higher in the littoral habitat. Taken together my results suggest that climate change might indirectly affect niche patterns by altering fish densities through changes in productivity resulting in niche and specialization variation among habitats.

No description available.

Vi undersöker i denna uppsats om det finns “alphabetic bias” på Stockholmsbörsen. Praxis inom finans är att aktielistor visas i alfabetisk ordning. Studien undersöker om det finns något samband mellan Tobins Q och företagsnamnets placering i den alfabetiska ordningen. Vi undersöker också om det finns något samband mellan marknadsvärde och företagsnamnets placering i den alfabetiska ordningen. Kapaciteten för att inta information kan variera mellan åldersgrupper, därför undersöker även studien om det finns något samband mellan Tobins Q och åldersgrupper. Om det finns ett samband kan det visa att aktielistornas struktur skapar irrationalitet och ineffektiva placeringar. På den amerikanska aktie- och fondmarknaden har det visats att aktielistornas struktur skapar “alphabetic bias”. Efter att investeringssparkonto introducerades som sparform antar vi att nya individer kommer inträda på marknaden med minskad kunskap inom aktiehandel. Därför undersöker studien även en tvåårsperiod före samt efter investeringssparkonto introducering och jämför skillnader i resultatet. Studiens urval består av 249 företag noterade på Nasdaq OMX Stockholm för tidsperioden 2010-2013 och samtliga Svenska aktieägare över 18 år. Vår studie visar att det finns ett negativt samband mellan Tobins Q och företagsnamnets placering i den alfabetiska listan. Studien visar även att det inte finns något samband mellan marknadsvärde och företagsnamnets placering i alfabetet. Vidare visar vår studie att det finns ett negativt samband mellan Tobins Q och investerare i ålder 65+. Studiens resultat indikerar även ett positivt samband mellan Tobins Q och “breadth of ownership” efter att investeringssparkonto introducerades som sparform. Det vill säga att vi finner belägg för att praxis med alfabetisk ordning bidrar till irrationalitet och ineffektiva placeringar på Stockholmsbörsen. / In this report we investigate ”alphabetic bias” on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The report investigates whether there is any correlation between Tobin Q and the company name´s placing in the alphabetical order. We also investigate whether there is any correlation between market capitalization and the company name placing in the alphabetical order.  The report also investigates whether there are any correlations between Tobin's Q and age-groups. The study’s selection includes 249 companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm during the period 2010-2013 and all Swedish shareholders over 18 years old.   Our report shows that there is a negative correlation between Tobin Q and the company name in the alphabetical list. The study also shows that there is none correlation between the market capitalization and the company names placing in the alphabet. Furthermore, our study shows that there is a negative relationship between Tobin Q and investors 65+. The study’s result indicates a positive relationship between Tobin Q and breadth of ownership after the investment saving account was introduced.

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of studies in depth utilizing selected materials which had been developed for teaching high school American history.

Modern applications generate a massive amount of data that is challenging to process or analyse. Graph algorithms have emerged as a solution for the analysis of this data because they can represent the entities participating in the generation of large scale datasets in terms of vertices and their relationships in terms of edges. Graph analysis algorithms are used for finding patterns within these relationships, aiming to extract information to be further analysed. The breadth-first search (BFS) is one of the main graph search algorithms used for graph analysis and its optimisation has been widely researched using different parallel computers. However, the BFS parallelisation has been shown to be chal- lenging because of its inherent characteristics, including irregular memory access patterns, data dependencies and workload imbalance, that limit its scalability. This thesis investigates the optimisation of the BFS on the Xeon Phi, which is a modern parallel architecture provided with an advanced vector processor using a self-created development framework integrated with the Graph 500 benchmark. As a result, optimised parallel versions of two high-level algorithms for BFS were created using vectorisation, starting with the conventional top-down BFS algorithm and, building on this, leading to the hybrid BFS algorithm. The best implementations resulted in speedups of 1.37x and 1.33x, for a one million vertices graph, compared to the state-of-the-art, respectively. The hybrid BFS algorithm can be further used by other graph analysis algorithms and the lessons learned from vectorisation can be applied to other algorithms targeting the existing and future models of the Xeon Phi and other advanced vector architectures.