Cette thèse porte sur la question de la figuration des signes du Zodiaque entre Antiquité et Moyen Âge et en particulier dans les églises entre le XIe et le XIIIe siècle. Le cœur de cette thèse est l’analyse d’un corpus de 260 occurrences des signes du Zodiaque et Occupations des mois, qu’ils soient associés ou non, au sein de la décoration ecclésiale entre le XIe siècle et la fin du XIIIe siècle. Cette période correspond à la « renaissance » et à l’essor de la figuration du Zodiaque dans un tel contexte. L’étude est organisée en trois parties. La première est consacrée à l’historiographie, à la présentation du corpus réuni, puis aux origines, réappropriations et transmissions de la tradition zodiacale entre Antiquité et Moyen Âge. La deuxième partie envisage la répartition du Zodiaque dans l’édifice ecclésial. Sa place dans le décor extérieur et en lien avec le thème de la Porta coeli est discutée avant de passer à sa place dans la structuration du décor intérieur. Du sol à la voûte en passant par les chapiteaux, piliers et arcs, la distribution des signes du Zodiaque dans l’espace ecclésial est analysée au regard des dynamiques liées aux notions de transitus et d’iter et à une certaine polarisation du lieu ecclésial. La troisième partie commence par aborder les enjeux de la figuration des signes zodiacaux dans leurs rapports dynamiques avec les Occupations des mois. Ensuite, la re-sémantisation chrétienne de chacun des signes du Zodiaque est observée grâce à une mise en série des occurrences du corpus. Enfin, l’ensemble se conclut par une approche synthétique mettant en lumière les articulations entre ciel et terre traduites par le biais des signes zodiacaux et leur pendant mensuel/terrestre. Leur insertion dans un contexte iconographique plus large lié à l’histoire chrétienne et selon une perspective eschatologique est considérée afin de montrer que les signes du Zodiaque sont comme des opérateurs entre terre et ciel, à la fois dans le lieu ecclésial tendu vers son modèle céleste et dans un contexte iconographique articulant charnel et spirituel, humain et divin. / This dissertation deals with the iconography of the Zodiac between Antiquity and Middle Age, in particular in churches between the XIth and the XIIIth century. The heart of the dissertation is the analysis of a corpus of 260 items. These items concern the figuration of the signs of the Zodiac and the Labors of the months, whether or not combinated, within ecclesial ornamentation between the XIth and the XIIIth century. This period corresponds to the “renaissance” and to the growth of the figuration of the Zodiac in this context. The study is divided into three parts. The first section deals with historiography and with the presentation of the corpus. Then, the origins, re-appropriations and transmissions of the zodiacal tradition between Antiquity and Middle Ages are discussed. The second section considers the distribution of the Zodiac in church. Its role in exterior ornamentation relating to the theme of the Porta coeli and its role in the structuring of intern ornamentation are observed. From the floor to the vault, through capitals, pillars and arches, distribution of the Zodiac in ecclesial space is analyzed in the light of the notions of transitus and iter and in the light of a certain focusing of the ecclesial place. The third section begins with the stakes of the figuration of the zodiacal signs and their dynamic relationship with the Labors of the months. Then, the “re-sémantisation” of each of the zodiacal signs is observed. Finally, the last chapter is an overall view of the connections between heavens and earth which find expression in signs of the Zodiac and the Labors of the months. Their place is considerated according to their iconographical context linked to Christian history and from an eschatological perspective. Signs of the Zodiac are like operators between heavens and earth, both in the ecclesial space tented towards its celestial model and in an iconographical context which connect caro and spiritus, the Human and the Divine.

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Auf der Suche nach kreativen Ideen für ein Kalenderlayout, mit dem unverkennbar die SLUB assoziiert wird, hat die SLUB im September 2008 eine Kooperation mit der Akademie für Informations- und Kommunikations-Design (AIK) vereinbart. Im Rahmen eines an der AIK als Abschlussarbeit im Schuljahr 2008/2009 durchgeführten Kompetenzprojektes, dem „Gesellenstück“ zum Nachweis der beruflichen Kompetenz, setzten sich drei angehende gestaltungstechnische Assistentinnen der Fachrichtung Grafik mit der Thematik auseinander und legten abschließend drei von der Herangehensweise sehr differenzierte Kalenderlayouts vor.

Der 'Hundertjährige Kalender' basiert auf Wetteraufzeichnungen von Mauritius Knauer (1613-1664 ), der als Abt im oberfränkischen Zisterzienserkloster Langheim wirkte. Die zwischen März 1652 und März 1659 fast täglich notierten Beobachtungen ermöglichen eine statistische Auswertung und die - teilweise sogar quantitative - Gegenüberstellung damaliger und heutiger Wetterverhältnisse. Vergleiche mit Niederschriften weiterer zeitgenössischer Autoren belegen den wissenschaftlichen Wert der Knauerschen Aufzeichnungen. Der Beobachtungszeitraum fällt in die 'kleine Eiszeit' und zeichnet sich durch eine Reihe sehr strenger Winter aus. / The 'Hundred Year''s Calendar' is based on weather recordings of Mauritius Knauer (1613-1664 ), which worked as an abbot in the upper-Frankish Cistercian monastery Langheim. Between March 1652 and March 1659 almost daily noted observations enable a statistical analysis and - partly even quantitative - the confrontation weather conditions at that time and of today''s. Comparisons with notes of further contemporary authors show the scientific value of the Knauer recordings. The observation period falls into the 'little ice age' and is characterised by a series very severe winter.

Die aktuelle Ausgabe des Newsletter für Freunde, Absolventen und Ehemalige der Technischen Universität Chemnitz.

Rechargeable batteries that are powering our everyday electronics go through their lifetime with countless charge/discharge cycles, after a few years the capacity has dropped noticeably. But how about batteries that are working as a back-up power system for when connection to the AC mains is not possible, they might only perform a handful of cycles but does this mean they last forever? On behalf of Getinge AB, this bachelor thesis aims to explore the subject named as ‘calendar aging’. Focus of the project has been mainly the impact of charging capacity, State of charge, on battery life for calendar aging and secondly the impact of heat on battery. Elevated environmental temperature during calendar aging test would imply acceleration in battery aging. The study is made with partly literature study and partly experimental testing on batteries during relatively limited time, though the results could be benchmarked with likely studies by others. The test was to investigate 12 units of NMC Li-ion batteries charged to 3 different levels of State of charge, 90 %, 95 % and 100 %, where 2 from each State of charge level were in a controlled heated environment and the other 2 were at room temperature. The test was in progress for 8 weeks and every two weeks measurement and data logging were collected and, if required, the batteries were recharged to origin voltage level. All data was documented in  and analyzed in Excel.  The results acquired were not significant enough to draw any conclusions but did show some tendency as would be expected from the literature studied during the time of the project. Future work is recommended to continue the test in this project to acquire more useful results. Further improvements in testing equipment should also be considered.

<p>This dissertation studies the impact of mutual fund managers' beliefs on fund performance in the first chapter and focuses on the impact of firm behavior on stock performance in the second chapter. </p> <p><br></p> <p>In the first chapter, I utilize the Revealed Preference Theory to recover fund manager belief formation directly from their actual trading activities. By relating stock holdings in a fund's portfolio to past factor returns, I document three facts about managers' belief formation: 1. In contrast to belief extrapolation, a substantial fraction of mutual fund managers act as contrarian investors who expect lower factor returns after a good factor performance; 2. Whether a fund trades in an extrapolative or contrarian way is due to its managers' expectation biases rather than fund style investment strategy, fund catering strategy or fund risk preference; and 3. Contrarian managers generate superior performance, are more experienced investors, charge higher expense ratios, and manage smaller US equity funds. The top (contrarian) managers significantly outperform the bottom (extrapolative) managers by a return of 3.4% per annum after adjusting by FFC4 factor models.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The second chapter is co-authored paper with Yan Liu and Feng Zhang. In this chapter, we systematically replicate the bulk of long-run event studies conducted in the last three decades from 1990 to 2020 using extended samples and four long-run performance measures. The final sample contains 62 papers of long-run event studies and 148 corporate events. Our findings suggest that long-run return anomalies documented in the last three decades are not robust, and firms do not earn long-run abnormal returns following various types of corporate events. Only 2% of the 148 corporate events we replicate earn post-event abnormal returns that are statistically significant at the 5% level based on all the four performance measures, and the fraction further shrinks to 0% at the 1% significance level. Viewed together, our findings suggest that these long-run abnormal returns after corporate events are likely the result of data mining or "p-hacking".</p>

As the era of digitalization dawns, the need to integrate separate silos into a synchronized connected system is becoming of ever greater significance. This thesis focuses on the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) and the Digitala vetenskapliga arkive (DiVA) as examples of separate silos. The thesis presents several methods of automating document handling associated with a degree project. It exploits the fact that students will submit their thesis to their examiner via Canvas. Canvas is the LMS platform used by students to submit all their coursework. When the examiner approves the thesis, it will be archived in DiVA and optionally published on DiVA. DiVA is an institutional repository used for research publications and student theses. When manually archiving and publishing student theses on DiVA several fields need to be filled in. These fields provide meta data for the thesis itself. The content of these fields (author, title, keywords, abstract, …) can be used when searching via the DiVA portal. It might not seem like a massive task to enter this meta data for an individual thesis; however, given the number of theses that are submitted every year, this process takes a large amount of time and effort. Moreover, it is important to enter this data correctly, which is difficult when manually doing this task. Therefore, this thesis project seeks to automate this process for future theses. The proposed solution parses PDF documents and uses information from the LMS in order to automatically generate a cover for the thesis and fill in the required DiVA meta data. Additionally, information for inserting an announcement of the student's oral thesis presentation into a calendar system will be provided. Moreover, the data in each case will be checked for correctness and consistency. Manually filling in DiVA fields in order to publish theses has been a quite demanding and time-consuming process. Thus, there is often a delay before a thesis is published on DiVA. Therefore, this thesis project’s goal is to provide KTH with an automated means to handle thesis archiving and publication on DiVA, while doing so more efficiently, and with fewer errors. The correctness of the extracted meta data will be evaluated by comparing the results to the previously entered meta data for theses that have previously been achieved in DiVA. The automated process has been calculated to take roughly 50 seconds to prepare the information needed to publish a thesis to DiVA with ~71% accuracy, compared with 1 hour and 34% accuracy in the previous manual method. / När digitaliseringens tid uppstår, så blir behovet av att integrera separata silor i ett synkroniserat anslutet system större. Denna avhandling fokuserar på Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) och Digitala vetenskapliga arkivet (DiVA) som är exempel på separata silor. Avhandlingen presenterar flera metoder för automatisering av dokumenthantering för examensarbeten. Projektet utnyttjar det faktum att eleverna kommer att skicka sin avhandling till sin examinator via Canvas. Canvas är den LMS-plattform som används av eleverna för att lämna in sitt kursarbete. När examinatorn godkänner avhandlingen kommer den att arkiveras i DiVA och eventuellt publiceras på DiVA. DiVA är ett institutionellt arkiv som används för forskningspublikationer och studentavhandlingar. När man manuellt arkiverar och publicerar studentuppsatser på DiVA måste flera fält fyllas i. Dessa fält ger metadata för själva avhandlingen. Innehållet i dessa fält (författare, titel, nyckelord, abstrakt, ...) kan användas vid sökning via DiVA-portalen. Även om det inte är en stor uppgift att skriva in denna metadata för en individuell uppsats så blir det en mycket tidskrävande process för många examensarbeten. Dessutom är det viktigt att ange dessa uppgifter korrekt, vilket är svårt när man manuellt utför den här uppgiften. Därför syftar detta avhandlingsprojekt till att automatisera denna process för framtida avhandlingar. Lösningen som presenteras i denna avhandling kommer att analysera PDF-dokument och använda annan information från LMS för att automatiskt skapa en fram- och baksida för avhandlingen och fylla i de nödvändiga DiVA-metadata. Grunden för införandet av denna data i ett kalendersystem för att ge ett meddelande om studentens presentation kommer också att ges. Dessutom kontrolleras uppgifterna för korrekthet. Manuell fyllning av DiVA-fält för att publicera avhandlingar har varit en ganska arbetsam och tidskrävande process. Således är det ofta en fördröjning innan en avhandling publiceras på DiVA. Därför ska detta projektet ge KTH ett automatiserat system att hantera avhandlingar och publicering på DiVA, samtidigt som det gör det mer effektivt och med färre fel. Korrektheten hos de extraherade metadatan kommer att utvärderas genom att jämföra resultaten med de tidigare inmatade metadatan för examensarbeten som redan ligger uppe på DiVA.  Den automatiska processen tar ungefär 50 sekunder att förbereda information för att publicera en avhandling till DiVA med ~ 71% noggrannhet jämfört med 1 timme och 34% noggrannhet i tidigare manuell metod.

In this dissertation, new approaches that utilize the one-way cryptographic hash functions in designing improved network security protocols are investigated. The proposed approaches are designed to be scalable and easy to implement in modern technology. The first contribution explores session cookies with emphasis on the threat of session hijacking attacks resulting from session cookie theft or sniffing. In the proposed scheme, these cookies are replaced by easily computed authentication credentials using Lamport's well-known one-time passwords. The basic idea in this scheme revolves around utilizing sparse caching units, where authentication credentials pertaining to cookies are stored and fetched once needed, thereby, mitigating computational overhead generally associated with one-way hash constructions. The second and third proposed schemes rely on dividing the one-way hash construction into a hierarchical two-tier construction. Each tier component is responsible for some aspect of authentication generated by using two different hash functions. By utilizing different cryptographic hash functions arranged in two tiers, the hierarchical two-tier protocol (our second contribution) gives significant performance improvement over previously proposed solutions for securing Internet cookies. Through indexing authentication credentials by their position within the hash chain in a multi-dimensional chain, the third contribution achieves improved performance. In the fourth proposed scheme, an attempt is made to apply the one-way hash construction to achieve user and broadcast authentication in wireless sensor networks. Due to known energy and memory constraints, the one-way hash scheme is modified to mitigate computational overhead so it can be easily applied in this particular setting. The fifth scheme tries to reap the benefits of the sparse cache-supported scheme and the hierarchical scheme. The resulting hybrid approach achieves efficient performance at the lowest cost of caching possible. In the sixth proposal, an authentication scheme tailored for the multi-server single sign-on (SSO) environment is presented. The scheme utilizes the one-way hash construction in a Merkle Hash Tree and a hash calendar to avoid impersonation and session hijacking attacks. The scheme also explores the optimal configuration of the one-way hash chain in this particular environment. All the proposed protocols are validated by extensive experimental analyses. These analyses are obtained by running simulations depicting the many scenarios envisioned. Additionally, these simulations are supported by relevant analytical models derived by mathematical formulas taking into consideration the environment under investigation.

Poor quality of information and forecasting create a number of problems for manufacturing companies, such as poor planning of products and insufficient service levels, which leads to increased inventory and stock holding or stockouts and increased total costs. Cussons (UK) Limited is experiencing precisely these problems. Apart from these problems normally associated with forecasting demand for fast moving consumer goods there is an additional problem of reconciling the Western calendar with the Muslim calendar, and a recognition of the effects that Muslim religious holidays, as opposed to Christian religious holidays, have on demand. Muslim religious holidays rotate backwards with regard to the Western calendar, but in fact they occur at known dates and therefore the effect they have on demand for products can be taken into consideration when attempting to forecast demand. An additional problem that influences Cussons' sales in the market is the seasonal pattern of demand. Due to this, there is an increase in demand for Cussons' products during summer months. From the analysis of both data sets it was identified that the warehouse movement data is less variable and more reliable for business forecasting than order data. In this thesis, these forecasting problems are examined as a case study, focusing on these particular problems. To overcome these problems and to improve business forecasting of Cussons' products in the Middle East market, a forecasting strategy has been suggested which will enable Cusson's to reduce the inventories throughout the supply chain and to improve their customer's service. / Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Cussons (UK)Limited.