<p>Software evolution is a crucial activity for software organizations. A specifc type of software evolution is the integration of previously isolated systems. The need for integration is often a consequence of different organizational changes, including merging of previously separate organizations. One goal of software integration is to increase the value to users of several systems by combining their functionality, another is to reduce functionality overlap. If the systems are completely owned and controlled in-house, there is an additional advantage in rationalizing the use of internal resources by decreasing the amount of software with essentially the same purpose. Despite in-house integration being common, this topic has received little attention from researchers. This thesis contributes to an increasing understanding of the problems associated with in-house integration and provides guidelines to the more efficient utilization of the existing systems and the personnel.</p><p>In the thesis, we combine two perspectives: software architecture and processes. The perspective of software architecture is used to show how compatibility analysis and development of integration alternatives can be performed rapidly at a high level of abstraction. The software process perspective has led to the identification of important characteristics and practices of the integration process. The guidelines provided in the thesis will help those performing future in-house integration to make well-founded decisions timely and efficiently.</p><p>The contributions are based on several integration projects in industry, which have been studied systematically in order to collect, evaluate and generalize their experiences.</p>

Chesnutt's short stories collection The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). Charles Chesnutt wrote two short stories which are "The Sheriff's Children" and "Her Virginia Mammy." He wrote them with white audiences in mind. In “The Sheriff’s Children,” Chesnutt presents Tom as a protagonist, his father Sheriff Campbell, and his half-sister Polly. In “Her Virginia Mammy,” he mentions Clara as a protagonist, her love Dr. Winthrop, and her mother Mrs. Harper. Chesnutt records their struggles in Post-Reconstruction North Carolina. He romanticized his characters’ difficult ethical decisions related to racial identity to illustrate more dramatically the consequences of their oppression. “The Sheriff’s Children” and “Her Virginia Mammy” both illustrate the ethical dilemmas of their protagonists, demonstrating to Chesnutt’s white readers the struggles and losses of black and biracial families.

This dissertation is centered around two comprehensive themes: the extraction of information embedded in equity index option prices, and how to use this information in order to be able to make optimal decisions in the equity index option markets. These problems are important for decision makers in the equity index options markets, since they are continuously faced with making decisions under uncertainty given observed market prices. The methods developed in this dissertation provide robust tools that can be used by practitioners in order to improve the quality of the decisions that they make. In order to be able to extract information embedded in option prices, the dissertation develops two different methods for estimation of stable option implied surfaces which are consistent with observed market prices. This is a difficult and ill-posed inverse problem which is complicated by the fact that observed option prices contain a large amount of noise stemming from market micro structure effects. Producing estimated surfaces that are stable over time is important since otherwise risk measurement of derivatives portfolios, pricing of exotic options and calculation of hedge parameters will be prone to include significant errors. The first method that we develop leads to an optimization problem which is formulated as a convex quadratic program with linear constraints which can be solved very efficiently. The second estimation method that we develop in the dissertation makes it possible to produce local volatility surfaces of high quality, which are consistent with market prices and stable over time. The high quality of the surfaces estimated with the second method is the crucial input to the research which has resulted in the last three papers of the dissertation. The stability of the estimated local volatility surfaces makes it possible to build a realistic dynamic model for the equity index derivatives market. This model forms the basis for the stochastic programming (SP) model for option hedging that we develop in the dissertation. We show that the SP model, which uses generated scenarios for the squared local volatility surface as input,  outperforms the traditional hedging methods that are described in the literature. Apart from having an accurate view of the variance of relevant risk factors, it is when building a dynamic model also important to have a good estimate of the expected values, and thereby risk premia, of those factors. We use a result from recently published research which lets us recover the real-world density from only a cross-section of observed option prices via a local volatility model. The recovered real-world densities are then used in order to identify and estimate liquidity premia that are embedded in option prices. We also use the recovered real-world densities in order to test how well the option market predicts the realized statistical characteristics of the underlying index. We compare the results with the performance of commonly used models for the underlying index. The results show that option prices contain a premium in the tails of the distribution. By removing the estimated premia from the tails, the resulting density predicts future realizations of the underlying index very well.

This study examines the effects of the discretion allowed in fair value accounting on manager selling decisions of Level 3 fair value assets and liabilities. Grounded in motivated reasoning and prospect theory, the discretion permitted for Level 3 fair value assets and liabilities is predicted to have behavioral consequences. The study employs a 2 X 2 between- participant design, manipulating a conservative level of the discretion used to ascertain the fair value (more or less conservative) and the volatility of the historically recognized fair value (low or high). Both graduate students and accounting professionals were asked to read a case scenario and make selling decisions regarding a pool of Level 3 fair value assets purchased six quarters ago. The results indicate that the discretion of the conservative level affects the asking price although the volatility of historically recognized fair values does not significantly influence accounting professionals’ selling choices. In a comparative analysis, as volatility increases, the difference in the asking price increases between the graduate student sample and the professional sample. Additionally, this study provides support that discretion of the conservative level does not affect the likelihood to sell the security, but rather affects the asking price and the lowest price willing to accept if participants were to sell the Level 3 fair value security. These findings contribute to the fair value accounting literature by providing new insights on the effects fair value discretion has on manager decision-making as well as contributing evidence to the fair value accounting relevance debate.

Objective: To describe a sample that received human rabies postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) in Virginia as a result of animal exposures in 2002 and 2003 and to determine the extent to which PEP decisions were appropriate.Methods: PEP surveillance data were requested from 35 Virginia health districts within 5 regions. Retrospective chart review was used to gather demographic, exposure and source animal data from patient records and animal exposure reports. Descriptive statistics are presented. True exposures and appropriateness of PEP were defined using the 2004 Virginia Rabies Control Guidelines and the Recommendations of the 1999 Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The 2003 sample was analyzed for appropriateness of PEP because it was more representative than the 2002 sample. Stepwise syntax was created in SPSS utilizing 3 key decision variables and the 2004 Virginia Rabies Control Guidelines Algorithm for PEP decisions to determine appropriateness of PEP. Results: The 2002 and 2003 sample consisted of 838 PEP records, (73.6%) of 1139 PEP reported to the Division of Zoonotic and Environmental Epidemiology (central office of the Virginia Department of Health). Most PEP patients were young (mean 32.3 years) and had true exposures during spring or summer that resulted from approaching and handling a potentially rabid animal. Over half of the source animals were not captured. For the analysis of appropriateness, 55.2% (270/489) of PEP was appropriate, 22.5% (110/489) was inappropriate and 22.3% (109/489) of PEP had missing data on key decision variables. Inappropriate PEP primarily resulted from not true exposures [79% (87/110)]. Group exposures represented 42% more inappropriate PEP than individual exposures.Conclusion: Much PEP could be avoided in Virginia if more source animals were captured. The majority of inappropriate PEP occurred because PEP was given for exposures that were not true. New educational strategies for health care providers, public health personnel and the public are recommended to reduce the number of inappropriate PEP. Standardization of data collection methods, linking human and source animal data, computerization and formation of a central database are recommended to improve human rabies PEP surveillance in Virginia.

The objectives of this thesis are: first, to investigate the impact of investor sentiment in UK financial markets in different investment intervals through the construction of separate sentiment measures for UK investors and UK institutional investors; second, to examine institutional herding behaviour by studying UK mutual fund data; third, to explore the causal relation between institutional herding and investor sentiment. The study uses US, German and UK financial market data and investor sentiment survey data from 1st January 1996 to 30th June 2011. The impact of investor sentiment on UK equity returns is studied both in general, and more specifically by distinguishing between tranquil and financial crisis periods. It is found that UK equity returns are significantly influenced by US individual and institutional sentiment and hardly at all by local UK investor sentiment. The sentiment contagion across borders is more pronounced in the shorter investment interval. The investigation of institutional herding behaviour is conducted by examining return dispersions and the Beta dispersions of UK mutual funds. Little evidence of herding in return is found, however strong evidence of Beta herding is presented. The study also suggests that beta herding is not caused by market fundamental and macroeconomic factors, instead, it perhaps arises from investor sentiment. This is consistent between closed-end and open-ended funds. The relation between institutional herding and investor sentiment is investigated by examining the measures of herding against the measures of investor sentiment in the UK and US. It suggests that UK institutional herding is influenced by investor sentiment, and UK institutional sentiment has a greater impact as compared to UK market sentiment. Open-end fund managers are more likely to be affected by individual investor sentiment, whereas closed-end fund managers herd on institutional sentiment.

In his thesis, the author thoroughly deals with the issue of the co called case positivism in the Czech penal courts decision practice, i.e. an issue that so far has not been paid attention to in the professional penal law literature. The case positivism can be defined as an unwelcome phenomenon, when during their decision the courts indiscriminately apply certain interpretation conclusions, to which, in connection to the decisions in specific cases, came the previous judicial practice, while these conclusion are effectively treated as legal norms, and, as such, they therefore have influence on the result of the court decision. In the first chapter, the author deals with the sources of the case positivism, notably with the prime source, which is the legal sentence of a judicial decision, i.e. the sentence that precedes the very text of the published decision, and which is to contain the basis of the legal problem dealt with in the decision. The second chapter is dedicated to individual specific examples from the decision practice of the Czech penal courts, and the explanation of the term decontextualization of the legal sentence. In the next chapter the reason why the case positivism is an unwelcome phenomenon in the practice is dealt with thoroughly. According to the author, inter alia, it is the...

This thesis is focused on ethical aspects of interaction between players and virtual computer game worlds, specifically on reception of situations where player faces possibility or necessity to make a moral choice that influences the future development of the game. The goal of this thesis is to find out how seriously players approach these decisions, whether they take their impact on the game world into account, what criteria they apply when deciding and what other influences affect their decisions. Another related theme is identification with the game avatar and its influence on moral decisions. This work is based on qualitative research realized with a group of five players of computer game Mass Effect 2. During the research they answered questions regarding their decisions in particular situations as well as their general approach to decisions in the game. The research is based on recent works on the related topics of game studies. Outcomes of the research are analysed by the grounded theory method. Using its procedures the answers are decomposed into basic concepts which are then put together again in mutual context. As a conclusion of the thesis the grounded theory formulated based on these analytical procedures is presented. Future thematically related research areas are also suggested.

The court decisions on child's custody - summary The upbringing of children is one of the basic institutes of parenthood. As every legal institute even this one can be approached from different perspectives of legal regulation. This thesis is focused on aspects and consequences of court proceedings and decisions on the child's custody issues in relation with the divorce or separation of parents - as regulated in Sections 26 and 50 of the Act no. 94/1963 Coll., Family Act, as amended. I have chosen this particular topic for personal reasones. From the formal point of view, the thesis is divided into six chapters. In the first chapter, sources of the law and main terms are defined. Furthermore, the current legal regulation of the court's decision on the child's custody is compared to the legal framework, which is yet to come into effect, and in a more details the judicial application of the regulation is analyzed considering the legal and factual relations with the divorce and the parents separation. The second chapter and the third chapter are focused on the outline of the substantive law - the second chapter on the current legal framework, the third chapter on the rules set down in the new civil code. The fourth chapter contains the overview of the procedural regulations and institutions. The fifth chapter...

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what barriers and drivers influences the internationalization of private Swedish cleantech firms. The model of a multiple case study was chosen together with a qualitative method and an abductive approach. This was done by acquiring primary information from seven private cleantech companies, all located in Sweden and active in international markets. Furthermore, the theoretical framework presented the Uppsala model, network perspective, international new ventures, born globals, transaction cost theory and the OLI-model. With this theoretical framework, a conceptual model was created which shows how the parts are connected. In the empirical chapter, the primary data is presented to visualize what each individual company said regarding the different constructs of internationalization, drivers, barriers and internationalization decisions. Moreover, the analysis chapter visualizes the similarities and the dissimilarities between the theory and the empirical findings. The thesis concludes that there are both general, as well as specific barriers and drivers that are influential in the internationalization process of private Swedish cleantech firms. These are shown to influence the internationalization decision of managers to take an incremental approach to internationalization. The authors of the thesis also present the view that Swedish cleantech companies are generally too small, lack the financial resources and managerial drive needed to internationalize. The authors also present the theoretical and practical implications and provide recommendations for future research.