This thesis consists of a critical introduction followed by a novel told in twentyfive chapters. The novel begins in the first person with the eighteen-year-old protagonist Kirtland Grant beginning a summer job as a door-to-door pest control salesman in Florida. Trained using Mormon missionary techniques, his office of relocated Utah boys, all of them Mormon, dodge angry homeowners and evade police in gated communities while insects root the brand-new houses from below and corrupt banking pushes the region toward collapse. With his departure date for a two-year Mormon mission looming at summer’s end, Kirt delves into Mormon doctrine and attempts to solidify his spiritual faith through a salesman’s experiment in finding God. As Kirt redoubles his efforts in faith and in sales in order to earn enough money to fund his mission, he finds himself in ethically dubious positions and comes to understand the questionable practices of the company for whom he has been selling. He simultaneously struggles to comprehend his own sexuality, and a sexual run-in with a young woman, which Kirt interprets as serious sin, triggers additional trauma and spiritual flailing. God does not commune with Kirt in any way Kirt can comprehend, and as the novel ends he is beaten, alone, but nevertheless, alive. Perhaps most critically, he has effectively quit his position in the pest control company and made a failed attempt at reconnecting with the young woman. The novel is an embodiment of the nature of belief, and examines our reliance on each other’s faith to prop up our own, whether it be faith in housing markets, pest control products, or God.

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<p>Special interest money enters politics in a number of ways: Politicians solicit contributions that help in their election campaigns; they enrich themselves while in office by accepting bribes; or, increasingly in many countries, they go through the "revolving door" and take up lucrative post-government jobs in companies that were affected by their decisions in office. The central argument I make in this dissertation is that these different types of special interest money can act as functional substitutes and that their prevalence is a strategic choice. I examine this strategic choice theoretically and empirically, and provide insights into the consequences it has for policy and voters. I focus on two main factors: First, what consequences does the legal environment have? Second, what is the effect of the political environment? </p><p>Chapter 1 lays the theoretical groundwork. I study a formal model of political competition that determines whether and how special interest money enters politics. I show that laws criminalizing bribery or restricting campaign contributions lead to substitution effects and make other types of special interest money more common, in particular the revolving door. I also study the effect of legal restrictions on equilibrium policy and demonstrate that it only moves policy towards the median voter under certain circumstances. Higher political competitiveness leads incumbents to solicit campaign contributions, whereas the absence of competitiveness provides leeway for personal enrichment.</p><p>I test the effect of the legal and the political environment on the types of special interest money empirically, using newly assembled data from the world's two largest democracies. Chapter 2 examines the effect of the degree of political competition on the choice between personal enrichment while in office and campaign spending in India. Making use of detailed mandatory asset disclosure data of state assembly members that run in consecutive elections, I show that candidates with ties to business groups increase their wealth to a higher degree when they are electorally secure. Conversely, they hold larger cash reserves, which are crucial in campaigns, the less electorally secure they are. Using a survey experiment, I show that the way special interest money is used matters to voters.</p><p>Chapter 3 asks where tougher regulations of money in politics comes from. I argue that political entrepreneurs running on an anti-corruption platform play an important role and provide a simple formal exposition of the conditions under which voters are willing to vote for them. The implications of the model are tested for one of the most successful electoral performances of an anti-corruption party of our time: the 2013 debut of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in state elections in Delhi in India. Analyzing three rounds of pre-election surveys with a total of more than 40,000 respondents and election outcomes at the polling-booth level, I provide empirical support for the central insights of the formal model.</p><p>Finally, in Chapter 4 I study the effect of stricter regulations of bribery and campaign contributions on the revolving door, exploiting regulatory variation among the 50 state legislatures of the United States. Using a series of multilevel regression models, I show that former legislators are more likely to go through the revolving door and become lobbyists in states that make politicians less dependent on campaign contributions from special interests and that make it harder to earn money while in office. This suggests that politicians' movement into the private sector upon exiting office can act as a substitute for other types of special interest money.</p> / Dissertation

Tato práce pojednává o hospodářských reformách v Čínské lidové republice, které byly provedeny v letech 1979 až 1989. Cílem je podat přehled o uskutečněných krocích čínské vlády v 80. letech a zhodnotit jejich výsledky. Tato práce analyzuje široké spektrum čínských reforem, věnuje se sektoru zemědělství, průmyslu, cenovému systému, bankovnímu a finančnímu systému, školství a největší pozornost je věnována zahraničnímu obchodu. U každé z těchto oblasti jsou vyjmenována základní opatření provedená v této první reformní etapě, která přispěla k celkové modernizaci čínské ekonomiky. Na závěr práce jsou ilustrovány výsledky čínských reforem na vybraných makroekonomických ukazatelích, zejména na růstu hrubého domácího produktu, na vývoji inflace, na vývoji příjmů a výdajů vládního sektoru a na platební bilanci. Hospodářské reformy v 80. letech, o kterých je tato práce, položily základ pozdějších ekonomických úspěchů Číny.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:34:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Elisa Fudaba Curcio Pereira.pdf: 811836 bytes, checksum: ca9450d3d91d947ae5793b42f1902b3f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-18 / Taxation on "direct sales" activities by Social Security is an issue that has provoked debate among legal experts and policy makers. Given this, this master's thesis is the result of research focused on the environment of direct sales or mail order. More specifically on the way of functional relationship between sales representatives and companies from the perspective of the Brazilian System of Social Security. Based on the absence of employment contract, the legal relation between direct sales companies and representatives defines its conditions as independent vendors. This was the starting point of the problematic, since these individual vendors are not included in the constitutional social protection of Social Security. / A tributação sobre venda direta pela Previdência Social é um assunto que tem provocado debates entre juristas e formuladores de políticas públicas. Diante desta realidade, desenvolveu-se o presente trabalho, a partir de uma pesquisa sobre o ambiente da venda direta ou venda por catálogo. Mais especificamente, quanto a forma de relação funcional entre os representantes de vendas e as empresas, sob a perspectiva do Sistema Brasileiro de Previdência Social. A relação das empresas de vendas diretas e dos representantes, juridicamente reconhecidos como vendedores ambulantes, profissionais autônomos, baseia-se na ausência de vínculo empregatício. Este foi o ponto de partida para a problematização, uma vez que estes vendedores autônomos, em sua maioria, não estão inseridos no arcabouço da proteção social constitucional da Previdência Social.

Reliability and redundancy of safety-critical network systems is a paramount issue in system engineering. Be it in evaluating existing network systems or solving optimization problems for designing network systems, it is important to consider reliability and redundancy. This dissertation is in collaboration with AIRBUS Group, France, and they are very interest in the optimal design of safety-critical aircraft architecture systems which have to consider reliability and redundancy. To address the problem of optimally designing such systems, we chose to focus on one specific aircraft architecture system the door management system. It checks if all doors are properly closed and the cabin has the correct pressure. It is a safety-critical system since it is part of the pressurization system of an aircraft. To optimally design the DMS while considering reliability, a suitable reliability evaluation algorithm is necessary. In this dissertation, we begin by proposing a suitable reliability evaluation algorithm for a type of non series-parallel network system which includes the DMS and which can be used in an optimization model. The reliability evaluation algorithm is based on a simplification of the probability principle of inclusion-exclusion formula for intersections of unions. The simplification exploits the presence of many repeated events and has many fewer terms, which significantly reduces the number of operations needed. We compare its computational efficiency against the sum of disjoint products method KDH88 for a simple artificial example and for the DMS. Afterwards, we introduce the first MILP model for the DMS with k-redundancy. As the model is too difficult to be solved efficiently by standard MILP solvers, we discuss the issues of solving the model with general solving methods such as branch-and-bound and branch-and-price. We introduce specialized branching rules and new heuristics to solve the DMS problem with k-redundancy more efficiently and show results of computational tests which compare the specialized solving algorithms with general solving algorithms for example instances of the DMS problem. Lastly, we discuss the problems of considering reliability in MI(N)LP models for the DMS and how the new reliability evaluation algorithm can be used. In this discussion, we give different MI(N)LP models for the DMS problem with redundancy and reliability. Moreover, we propose a new heuristic for the DMS problem with redundancy and reliability. It is based on branch-and-bound, the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition and on the new reliability evaluation algorithm. We show results of computational tests of the new heuristic for example instances of the DMS problem and discuss its validity.

Depuis les années 70, la notion d’engagement a été définie comme le lien qu’un individu réalise avec ses actions. Ce lien pourrait être renforcé par la situation dans laquelle l’individu agit. Les conséquences se mesureraient autant d’un point de vue cognitif que comportemental. Le milieu social dans lequel grandit l’individu est susceptible d’entrer en jeu dans l’acquisition des compétences nécessaires à l’engagement. Dans une vision bioécologique du développement, les milieux familial et scolaire amèneraient l’enfant à émettre ces compétences. Pour tester cette hypothèse, sept études ont été réalisées. Elles ont permis de tester le rôle des pratiques éducatives parentales perçues par l’enfant ainsi que l’adaptation psychosociale de l’enfant décrite par l’enseignant en tant que modérateur de l’engagement. Trois méthodes, transversale, longitudinale et méta-analytique ont été utilisées pour rendre au mieux compte de l’effet du développement de l’enfant au cours du temps. Elles nous ont permis de confirmer un effet du style éducatif parental perçu par l’enfant et du profil d’adaptation psychosociale décrite par l’enseignant sur l’efficacité d’une situation de pied dans la porte. Ces résultats sont discutés en termes de l’acquisition de l’indépendance dans la prise de décision de l’enfant en lien avec son environnement social. / Since the 70s, commitment is defined as the link that person makes with his actions. This link could be enhanced by the situation in which the person acts. The consequences seem possible to be measured as much from a cognitive as from a behavioral level. The social environment in which the individual grows up seems to have an impact on the acquisitions of competences required for such a commitment. In a bioecological vision of the development, the child acquires these competences thanks to family and school. To check this, a total of seven studies were made. They allowed a test of the moderating role of the parental educational practices from a child’s point of view and the psychosocial adaptation of the child described by the teacher like moderator on a commitment. Three methods, one transversal, one longitudinal and one meta-analytic method were used to account for the effect of children’s development in life span. This permitted us to confirm an effect of parenting style from the child’s point of view and the psychosocial adaptation profile described by the teacher on the efficiency of the foot in the door paradigm. Results are discussed in terms of relation of child’s acquisition of independency in decision making in to his social environment.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Ill., 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-224).

De flytande hus som producerades av Aquavilla AB i början av sekelskiftet har problem med otätheter i konstruktionen. Detta har gjort att boende i Aquavillorna i förekommande fall har klagat över drag och att värmen inte går att få upp ordentligt i husen. Frågeställningen för detta examensarbete blir således: Hur ska man göra för att få en erforderlig täthet i nästa generation Aquavillor och hur får man in en kontroll av tätheten i produktionen? Metoden som användes var trycktäthetsprovning på tre Aquavillor för att få en uppfattning om hur pass otäta de är och med en värmekamera ta reda på var otätheterna finns. Utöver detta utfördes även en litteraturstudie och diskussioner med personer erfarna inom lufttätning fördes för att kunna föreslå förbättringar i konstruktionen för att förhindra luftläckage. I en byggnad med FTX-system som är otät kommer inte ventilationssystemet kunna utnyttjas som det ska, då frånluften istället för att värma upp den inkommande kalla uteluften, kommer att passera genom otätheter i klimatskalet. Detta medför stora energikostnader som kan undvikas med ett tätare hus. Utrymmen vari det läcker in luft blir kalla och påverkar den termiska komforten negativt. Aquavillornas klimatskärm är baserad på Casabonasystemet, en konstruktion av stålreglar och hård, bärande värmeisolering. Den okonventionella metoden för väggarnas uppbyggnad har varit nödvändig för att hålla vikten nere, men också bidragit till att göra byggnaden otät. Utförandet av tätning kring spotlights, lampknappar/eldosor och fönster verkar vara obefintligt eller slarvigt gjort. Att lokalisera otätheter görs bäst med en trycksatt byggnad, för att sedan gå igenom den med en värmekamera, anemometer eller spårgas. Metoderna har olika fördelar som enkelhet och låg kostnad.

The elevator is a common vertical transportation in our life. The elevator door system includes a door driven system, a door coupling, a door safety, and two door locks. The purpose of this work is to develop a systematic methodology for the design of the elevator door system. First, basic characteristics of the elevator door system are deduced, and all possible variants of function structures are synthesized by functional analysis method. Next, a system of kinematic notation is used to generate the principle solutions of each function in the function structure. Finally, all design concept variant can be created by using morphological chart method. Several design concept can be created for new elevator door system.