The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan’s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy. The arena of the political and civil society grew stronger after the US war on Iraq in 2003 and as effect new institutions such as political parties, opposition, election, political governance and alliances arose.

Forest soils with low bulk densities are often considered less susceptible to compaction than soils with higher bulk densities. The objective of this study was to determine if soil strength controlled the compression of soils with low bulk density. Four soils were selected for this evaluation. Three of these were andic soils with low bulk density and the fourth soil was a more dense, cohesive soil. Undisturbed samples of saturated and partly saturated soil were compressed in a one-dimensional consolidation test apparatus. Measurements with separate samples were at one of 7 normal stresses between 0.033 and 1.96 MPa. Shear strength of saturated soil was measured in direct shear tests. Primary consolidation of saturated soil was completed in less than one minute at all normal stresses. Shear stress and bulk density increased continuously during shear strain. The compression index of the cohesive soil was significantly larger (p<0.05) than that of the andic soils. The shear strength of andic soils (average cohesion intercept of 0.016 MPa and friction angle of 33.3°) was significantly higher (p<0.05) than the cohesive soil (cohesion intercept of 0.028 MPa and friction angle of 28.9°). When saturated, the cohesive soil was more compressible than the andic soils because of lower soil strength. A nonlinear model of soil compression was developed that accurately predicted the compressed density of saturated and partly saturated soil as a function of normal stress, initial bulk density of undisturbed samples, and degree of saturation. As degree of saturation decreased, the compressibility of the cohesive soil decreased more rapidly than it did for the andic soils. As a result, bulk density of dry cohesive soil increased less than it did for dry andic soils. Differences in the compressibility of soils were attributed to texture and clay mineralogy. The differences in the compressibility of these soils were much smaller than were the differences in bulk density. Decreasing water content affected the compressibility of the cohesive soil more than it affected the andic soils. Because soil strength controls the compressibility of these forest soils regardless of bulk density, it will also determine the susceptibility of soils to compaction by machines. / Graduation date: 1991

This paper develops a framework that analyzes how mergers and acquisitions in Alberta’s oil and gas industry affect stock prices. In this experiment, a multivariate regression is applied to several industry-specific variables to determine if they have impacts on the abnormal stock returns of acquirers. The results show that abnormal returns 5 days prior to the public announcement of the transaction are, in fact, driven by several industry-specific variables. However, the returns immediately after the M & A announcements are similar to previous research done in other industries. Acquirers’ gains 2 days after the announcement are essentially unaffected by the transaction. After a 90-day period, the share performances of acquiring firms tend to beat the index by 7% on average, but this is not thoroughly explained by the variables in the regression analysis.

In this dissertation, I analyze the effects of competition in education markets. In my first essay, I analyze the effects of different concentration measures on school personnel salaries. I find evidence that principals have more bargaining power over their salaries than teachers in Washington that through rent-sharing, principals start getting positive returns from increasing concentration at lower levels of concentration than that of teachers. Moreover, I present that the pattern of teacher salaries versus concentration in Washington is similar to that in Texas, but the inflection point in Washington is at substantially lower levels of concentration-a finding which can be attributed to Washington's being a union state versus Texas's being a right-to-work-state. In my second essay, I examine the effects of various measures of competition on school district cost inefficiency in a stochastic frontier framework. My results show that cost frontier is U-shaped in Texas with large positive returns to the scale over a relatively big range and mild diseconomies of scale over an extended range. In addition, I find that school district cost inefficiency increases significantly when market concentration increases. Furthermore, I present the competitive effect/scale effect trade-off through a couple of simulation exercises. The findings from both of my studies show that the effects of competition are barely sensitive to measuring the competition with different sets of relevant competitors. On the other hand, sensitivity of the effects of competition to using different definitions of the education markets is significant. Yet, the range of these estimated effects is relatively small, and the sign and the significance of the effect of competition generally do not change when a meaningful definition of education markets is employed to measure concentration. Furthermore, I present that the concentration measures employed in my essays are endogenous. I control for the endogeneity with several instrumental variables including degrees of lagged educational outputs in the neighboring schools, lagged education market characteristics, and counts of streams. My results imply that the hypothesized effects of competition may be underestimated due to the endogeneity. While the plausibility of competitive effect's being underestimated bolsters the importance of the competitive effects I find, it also strengthens my criticism of using uni-dimensional concentration indices as indicators of competition in the education markets.

Les entreprises dans l'industrie du commerce au détail ont vu leur rôle et leur influence augmenter depuis les vingt dernières années. Considérées auparavant comme de simples marchands face aux manufacturiers, ce sont maintenant des joueurs importants dans la chaîne d'approvisionnement au point qu'ils en sont devenus les donneurs d'ordre. Ces entreprises, qui ont des fournisseurs à travers le monde font face à des questions classiques d'approvisionnement: Est-ce que l'entreprise devrait acheter en grande quantité pour bénéficier des économies d'échelle en transport tout en risquant de stocker en trop grande quantité? Devrait-elle plutôt commander par petits lots pour ne pas avoir besoin de stocker, mais à un coût de transport plus élevé? Ce que j'explore ici est une approche appliquée depuis un certain temps dans l'industrie du commerce au détail, mais qui est peu traitée dans la littérature scientifique. Elle consiste à coordonner les commandes de plusieurs fournisseurs pour les grouper dans un même conteneur. Cette consolidation de commandes permet à la fois de commander des quantités en petits lots tout en contrôlant les coûts de transports. Ce mémoire est une étude de cas sur la réingénierie de processus d'une entreprise dans le commerce au détail. Il présente un modèle mathématique classique, le « bin packing », qui permet de modéliser cette pratique et de la comparer avec une politique de transport dédié (Full container load ou FCL) ou par un service de consolidation de fret (less than container load ou LCL). À partir d'une simulation Monte-Carlo, nous démontrons que la consolidation de commandes peut donner des réductions de coût total d'approvisionnement de 4,6% comparé au service LCL et 7,48% par rapport à une politique de commande dédié. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Consolidation de commandes, Chaîne d'approvisionnement, Commerce de détail, Réingénierie des processus, bin packing.

Basic diffusion analytical solutions of one-dimensional consolidation are presented for the case of a semi-infinite domain. Typical tractions considered include instantaneous loads of the medium with a free boundary pressure, as well as the case of a permeable membrane located at the forced boundary. <br /><br /> Two-dimensional boundary value problems for a porous half-space, described by the widely recognized Biot's equations of poroelasticity, including inertia effects is discussed. In this poroelastic version of Lamb's problem in the classical theory of linear elastic waves, the surface of a porous half-space is subjected to a prescribed line traction. The following two broadly applicable cases are considered: 1) A steady state harmonic load, 2) An impulsive load (Dirac delta function time dependence). A general analytical solution of the problem in the Fourier -- Laplace space was obtained by the application of the standard Helmholtz potential decomposition, which reduces the problem to a system of wave equations for three unknown potentials, which correspond to three types of motion: P1, slow P2 wave, and the shear wave S. The possibilities of, and procedure for, obtaining analytic solutions in the physical space subsequently are discussed in detail. When viscous dissipation effects are taken into account, a steady-state harmonic line traction solution can be represented in the form of well convergent integrals, while for the case when viscous dissipation is ignored, closed form analytic solutions can be obtained for impulsive forcing with the application of the Cagniard -- de Hoop inversion technique. Numerical studies of the dispersion relation of the Rayleigh, or surface, wave for cases in which the dissipation is not negligible are presented.

In recent years Mexico has been confronted with accelerating levels of violence related to drug trafficking organizations and counter-drug efforts. This paper examines the consequences of Mexico’s current drug trafficking situation on the country’s fledging democracy. In particular, the impact of the drug war on Mexico’s democratic consolidation is evaluated through civil-military relations, the judicial system, and the press. Conclusions about the prospects for Mexico’s nascent democracy are then examined.

Annonseringstjänster på nätet finns idag för alla möjliga ändamål. På grund av detta ökar även bedrägerier och annonser med tvivelaktigt innehåll, för att undvika att sådana annonser publiceras är det viktigt att annonseringsföretagen granskar sina annonser innan dem publiceras. Detta examensarbete har utförts på ett annonseringsföretag som behandlar jobbannonser. Företaget är stationerat någonstans i Europa. Eftersom annonserna granskas av ett externt företag vars tjänster annonseringsföretaget hyr in så är tanken med examensarbetet att skapa en förståelse för hur arbetsprocessen fungerar på granskningsföretaget samt identifiera vad som kan förbättras med det granskningsverktyg som används för att granska annonser idag. Detta har utförts genom kontextuella intervjuer på plats hos granskningsföretaget. Resultatet av dessa har sedan visualiserats i fem olika arbetsmodeller: (flödesmodellen), (sekvensmodellen), (artefaktmodellen), (den kulturella modellen) samt (den fysiska modellen) Beyer och Holtzblatt (1998). Tanken med dessa modeller är att de ska agera som en grund när nya designbeslut fattas och bidra med en förståelse för hur arbetet fungerar hos granskningsföretaget. Rapporten kommer för övrigt presentera en del designförslag som framkommit av de fakta som finns i arbetsmodellerna vilka kan förbättra den nuvarande lösningen. All information i denna rapport är tänkt att fungera som ett stöd för annonseringsföretaget när dem designar nya lösningar som rör granskningen av jobbannonser. / Advertising Services on the Internet today are available for all kinds of purposes. Because of this it also increases fraud and ads with questionable content, to avoid that such advertisements are published, it is important that the advertising companies review their ads before they are published. This thesis has been carried out in an advertising company, dealing with job offers. The company is stationed somewhere in Europe. The ads are scrutinized by an external company whose the services advertising firm hires, the idea of the thesis is to create an understanding of how the work works on the audit firm, and to identify what can be improved with the assessment tools used to examine the ads today. This has been done through contextual interviews on-site at the audit firm. The results of these has then been visualized in five different work models: (flow model), (sequence model), (artifact model), (the cultural model) and (the physical model), Beyer and Holtzblatt (1998). The idea behind these models is that they should act as a basis for new design decisions and contribute to an understanding of how the work of the audit firm is done. The report will also present some design proposals that emerged from the facts found in the work models, which can improve the current solution. All information in this report is intended to act as a support for the advertising company when they are designing new solutions related to the review of job announcements.

Basic diffusion analytical solutions of one-dimensional consolidation are presented for the case of a semi-infinite domain. Typical tractions considered include instantaneous loads of the medium with a free boundary pressure, as well as the case of a permeable membrane located at the forced boundary. <br /><br /> Two-dimensional boundary value problems for a porous half-space, described by the widely recognized Biot's equations of poroelasticity, including inertia effects is discussed. In this poroelastic version of Lamb's problem in the classical theory of linear elastic waves, the surface of a porous half-space is subjected to a prescribed line traction. The following two broadly applicable cases are considered: 1) A steady state harmonic load, 2) An impulsive load (Dirac delta function time dependence). A general analytical solution of the problem in the Fourier -- Laplace space was obtained by the application of the standard Helmholtz potential decomposition, which reduces the problem to a system of wave equations for three unknown potentials, which correspond to three types of motion: P1, slow P2 wave, and the shear wave S. The possibilities of, and procedure for, obtaining analytic solutions in the physical space subsequently are discussed in detail. When viscous dissipation effects are taken into account, a steady-state harmonic line traction solution can be represented in the form of well convergent integrals, while for the case when viscous dissipation is ignored, closed form analytic solutions can be obtained for impulsive forcing with the application of the Cagniard -- de Hoop inversion technique. Numerical studies of the dispersion relation of the Rayleigh, or surface, wave for cases in which the dissipation is not negligible are presented.

This thesis describes a numerical modelling methodology to interpret dynamic fluctuations in pore-pressures to isolate the effects of loading associated with changes in total soil moisture (site water balance) alone. The methodology is required to enhance the data-interpretation and performance-assessment for potential applications of a novel piezometer-based, large-scale, geological weighing lysimeter. This interpretative methodology is based on a method of superimposing computer-based numerical analyses of independent causes of pore-pressure transients to separate the different pore-pressure responses. Finite element coupled load-deformation and seepage numerical models were used to simulate field-observed piezometric responses to water table fluctuations and loading induced by surface water balance (using meteorological data).<p> Transient pore-pressures in a deep clay-till-aquitard arising from variations in the water table within a surface-aquifer were modelled and removed from the measured pore-pressure record (corrected for earth tide and barometric effects) to isolate and identify pore-pressure fluctuations arising from loading associated with site water balance. These estimates were compared to simulated pore-pressure responses to an independently measured water balance using meteorological instrumentation. The simulations and observations of the pore-pressure responses to surface water balance were in good agreement over the dry years of a 9-year period. Some periods of significant differences did occur during wet years in which runoff, which is not accounted for in the current analyses, may have occurred.<p> The identification of pore-pressure response to total soil moisture loading using the developed numerical modelling methodology enhances the potential for the deployment of the piezometer-based geological weighing lysimeter for different applications which include real-time monitoring of site water balance and hydrological events such as precipitation and flooding. Interestingly, the disparity occurring during the wet years even suggests the potential to adapt the method to monitor runoff (net lateral flow).<p> The methodology also demonstrated the capability to accurately estimate in situ elastic and hydraulic parameters. Calibration of the model yielded equivalent properties of the aquitard (hydraulic conductivity, Kv, of 2.1E-5 m/day and specific storage, Ss, of 1.36E-5 /m) for a Skemptons B-bar coefficient of 0.91 for an assumed porosity of 0.26. Sensitivity tests also provided insight into the consolidation and pressure propagation (swelling) behaviour of the aquitard under parametric variations. The parameters obtained are consistent with range of values reported for glacial clay till soil. Therefore, this work also provides a unique case history of a method for determining, large scale, in situ material properties for geo-engineers and scientists to explore by simply using piezometric and meteorological data.