IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) include conditional loans granted to developing countries to help them repay their debts while requiring them to undergo specific economic and political reforms. The most common SAP measures include the devaluation of currency, the reduction of public sector size and activities, the removal of subsidies, and the liberalization of trade. While the social impacts of these policies have already been acknowledged and to some degree mitigated, this paper examines their environmental impacts. The various impacts of structural adjustment on the environment are discussed in the framework of four main aspects of SAPs: export promotion, trade liberalization, the shrinking of the state, and increased poverty. <p> This paper argues that the macroeconomic policies promoted by structural adjustment have several direct and indirect impacts on the environment of borrowing countries. Further, without careful consideration of the environmental impacts, degradation is often the result. However, the fundamentally different perspectives and values on debt and development used by the IMF and World Bank and their critics may explain the differences in their conclusions on adjustment. As the IMF and the World Bank are currently experiencing a shift in the way they interact with borrowing countries to emphasize poverty reduction and country ownership of policies, it is possible that this will allow for more systematic and integrated approaches to addressing debt as well as long-term development. In order to minimize unintended harm to the natural resource base of these countries, economic, social and environmental issues should be addressed together. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

New financial institutions of BRICS are a new phenomenon in the context of international global finances. Since the beginning of the debate about creation of the BRICS financial institutions, a wide debate has emerged around the phenomenon, both in the academic and political spheres. The key element of the debate was the question, what role can BRICS play in the system of global governance. This thesis analyzes the phenomenon of the New Financial Institutions BRICS through the theoretical concept of the contested multilateralism and emphasizes that the new practices and rules of the given institutions lead to the creation of a regime complex in the field of international finance. Subsequently, the work through the method of content analysis of selected media explores the motivation of one of the BRICS member states, specifically Russia, to create these institutions. During the process of institution-building, motivations and objectives of Russia were not clear. This work aims to identify this motivation, which should contribute to a deeper understanding of possibilities for future development of the New Development Bank and The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement.

With today's global distribution of movies, series, documentaries, and more, the need for a standardised system for storing content has emerged. Over-the-top media services such as Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Prime are storing large amounts of content, and by providing it internationally, the content multiplies when it has to conform to regional standards and regulations. The organisation Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has, in the light of this, created a standard called the Interoperable Master Format (IMF). This component-based media lowers storage costs drastically by only storing and managing the media elements that are unique between versions. In management of media content, one of the tasks is verification, a process where the content is checked for errors. By incorporation this process into an IMF workflow, the efficiency could be considerably improved. The objective of this thesis is to explore the use of IMF today and design a tool used for verification of IMF package data, solving present problems in the verification workflow. By looking more deeply into the IMF standard and the needs of people working with verification, a prototype could be created that attends to the needs of the user while simultaneously conforming to the IMF workflow. The prototype was received well by design experts and there is a potential of the further development of it.

No description available.

Syftet med denna studie är att visa på hur två olika paradigmskiften inom Världsbanken påverkat dess policy.

No / This paper assesses the economic and political determinants of IMF and World Bank program loans to the Middle East and North Africa. First we assess what is already known about the geo-political influences on aid flows to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the potential for this to operate via the IMF and World Bank. From this we conclude that there is scope for IMF and World Bank lending in the region to respond to the political interests of their major shareholders, particularly the United States. We support these arguments with both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of the determinants of World Bank and IMF program lending to the region, focusing on both economic need in the MENA countries and the politics of donor interest before concluding.

<p>The aim of the thesis is to discuss possible effects of an increase in African – Chinese relation above the historically more dominant Western – African dependency. There has recently both been an increase in trading between Africa and China and an increase in Chinese funded development on the African continent. But will Chinese aid over Western actually make that big a difference for Africa? African intellectuals see Chinese involvement as a way to break free from the neo-colonial ties to the West. A fair south-south relationship between Africa and China would indeed have that result but few indicators prove that that would be the case today. The trading interest from China is very similar to that from Western parties, a few valuable goods constitutes the major part of African nations export industry. A rapid growth in trading between China and Africa is not likely to bring African nations from the pattern they are historically used to having against western parties but to form a new trend of dependency towards Chinese interest. (Tull, 2006, s. 471) </p><p>To explain this relation between the African continent and both Western and Chinese interests dependency theory will be used. To fully explain dependency theory one will not only have to look at trading and exploatation of natural resources but also on a transference of social values and foreing involvment in African communities. To achieve this a series of interviews were conducted in Babati during the later parts of February and early March in 2010. This in coagency with an text analys provides a foundation for discussion about the implications  Chinese aid will have on the African dependency towards Western interests. </p><p>What can be extracted from this is that Chinese aid most likely will not lift Africa out of dependency in it’s current form. Trading interests from Chinese parties are to similar to the explotiative west to make a huge difference. African natural resources are traded against low-cost mass produced units and to  small of an profit is made for the African parties to make the exhange fair. But with the rise of China and the fact that China today finances a big part of the United States government a global power shift will occur and the traditional hegemoninc power structure will most likely change into an multi polar world order.  This change is important to study closer to understand what the effects might be for the African continent’s depenency towards foreign interests and specially the relation between China and USA is important though they are the biggests actors today in development work on the African continent.</p>

The aim of the thesis is to discuss possible effects of an increase in African – Chinese relation above the historically more dominant Western – African dependency. There has recently both been an increase in trading between Africa and China and an increase in Chinese funded development on the African continent. But will Chinese aid over Western actually make that big a difference for Africa? African intellectuals see Chinese involvement as a way to break free from the neo-colonial ties to the West. A fair south-south relationship between Africa and China would indeed have that result but few indicators prove that that would be the case today. The trading interest from China is very similar to that from Western parties, a few valuable goods constitutes the major part of African nations export industry. A rapid growth in trading between China and Africa is not likely to bring African nations from the pattern they are historically used to having against western parties but to form a new trend of dependency towards Chinese interest. (Tull, 2006, s. 471)  To explain this relation between the African continent and both Western and Chinese interests dependency theory will be used. To fully explain dependency theory one will not only have to look at trading and exploatation of natural resources but also on a transference of social values and foreing involvment in African communities. To achieve this a series of interviews were conducted in Babati during the later parts of February and early March in 2010. This in coagency with an text analys provides a foundation for discussion about the implications  Chinese aid will have on the African dependency towards Western interests.  What can be extracted from this is that Chinese aid most likely will not lift Africa out of dependency in it’s current form. Trading interests from Chinese parties are to similar to the explotiative west to make a huge difference. African natural resources are traded against low-cost mass produced units and to  small of an profit is made for the African parties to make the exhange fair. But with the rise of China and the fact that China today finances a big part of the United States government a global power shift will occur and the traditional hegemoninc power structure will most likely change into an multi polar world order.  This change is important to study closer to understand what the effects might be for the African continent’s depenency towards foreign interests and specially the relation between China and USA is important though they are the biggests actors today in development work on the African continent.

Les méthodes d'induction électromagnétique permettent de caractériser la conductivité électrique des matériaux, dont les corps planétaires telluriques, depuis les couches superficielles de la croûte jusqu'aux zones les plus internes, dans le manteau inférieur. Pour une source de champ électromagnétique donnée, des courants sont induits dans les matériaux qui y sont soumis. Avec l'essor des données magnétiques satellitaires, de nouvelles méthodes d'analyse des données magnétiques permettent d'obtenir des images unidimensionnelles de la structure électrique de ces corps car la structure spatio-temporelle de la source électromagnétique en est bien connue. Les travaux de mon doctorat ont eu pour but de mettre en place une nouvelle méthode d'analyse permettant de déterminer des modèles de structure interne globaux pour n'importe quel corps du système solaire pour lequel on dispose de longues séries temporelles magnétiques satellitaires. Après avoir testé cette méthode sur des modèles synthétiques et l'avoir appliqué au cas de données réelles terrestre pour lesquelles des études d'induction électromagnétiques antérieurs permettent d'avoir un a priori sur le modèle de conductivité électrique attendu, nous avons obtenu les premiers modèles de conductivité électrique martien en utilisant les données magnétiques du satellite Mars Global Surveyor. Ces résultats nous ont permis de valider des modèles de structure interne antérieurs établis à partir d'analyses géochimiques et minéralogiques des météorites martiennes. Cette méthode innovante est aujourd'hui la seule capable d'obtenir une image électrique des manteaux telluriques à partir de données magnétiques satellitaires pour des corps autres que la Terre ou la Lune et pour lesquels aucun a priori sur la structure spatio-temporelle du champ électromagnétique inducteur externe n'est nécessaire. / My Ph.D. work consists in the investigation of satellite magnetic data to infer the deep internal conductivity distribution. I developed a new global electromagnetic induction method applied to planetary magnetic datasets without strong a priori hypothesis on the external inducing source field. My method is based on a spectral correction of gapped data magnetic time series to restore the time spectral content of the source field. This external source depends on the planetary environment and is therefore different for each planetary bodies. The method aims at recovering with a maximum accuracy internal and external spherical harmonic coefficients of transients fields, whose ratio is used as a transfer function to retrieve the internal distribution of electrical conductivity. While for the Earth, a good proxy of the source field activity is the Dst index, no such proxy exists for other planets. Hence, for our study of Mars transient magnetic field from MGS, one of the major part of my work is the determination of an appropriate continuous proxy for the external variability. On Earth the external electromagnetic source is well known, and may be described by a spherical harmonic geometry dominated by the dipole term. This source field may be characterized using a magnetic activity index named the Dst index. The method has been tested on synthetic data generated within the framework of SWARM mission. This mission consists of a 3 satellites constellation. One of the main objectives is to infer the 3D electrical distribution in the deep Earth. SWARM synthetic data consist in a time series of spherical harmonic (SH) coefficients, external and internal, generated from a simple non-realistic 3D model. In this model, several regional and local conductors, in a radially symmetric 3 layers model have been embedded. Using this dataset, our method give satisfactory results. We have been able to obtain the external and internal SH coefficients - for the first SH degree, which is known to be the most energetic degree of the external source - using only one of the 3 synthetic time series. Then, the method has been used on real data from Ørsted. In this case, we had to pre-process the data to correct from ionospheric and aligned currents contributions. We developed a statistical analysis to remove the ionospheric field using 2 geomagnetic indices : AL and Kp. Hence, we have enlarged data toward higher and lower latitudinal zones than what has been done in previous works. Finally, we have been able to obtain 1D conductivity models, which fits reasonably with existing conductivity data in the deep Earth. Finally, we worked on Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) data. One of the most time consuming parts of this work was the determination of an appropriate continuous proxy for the external variability in the vicinity of Mars. Without any measurements of the IMF (Interplanetary Magnetic Field) during MGS sciences acquisition, we have used ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) data. This satellite orbits around the L1 point of the Sun-Earth system, measuring solar wind magnetic characteristics. We have time-shifted ACE data to Mars position for 4 temporal windows where Mars and Earth were closed to the same Parker's spiral's arm, and finally determined a proxy explaining the major part of the variability observed in Mars data. Despite numerous gaps in MGS data, we have been able to establish the 1D conductivity distribution, fitting reasonably existing geochemical models. Although the method may be unstable for some cases, we obtained satisfactory results for in depth conductivity of the planet.

Einführung: Zu den Immobilisationsmethoden bei Kieferfrakturen gehören die selbstbohrenden Schrauben (IMF-Schrauben). Diese könnten – wie jeder chirurgische Eingriff – zu Komplikationen führen. Eine dieser Komplikationen ist die Zahnwurzelverletzung. In dieser retrospektiven Studie werden die Patienten, bei denen im Rahmen der Versorgung von Unterkieferfrakturen in der Klinik der MKG-Uniklinik-Dresden im Zeitraum von 2011 bis 2015 IMF-Schrauben eingesetzt wurden, klinisch und radiologisch untersucht. Material und Methoden: Ausgewertet wurden die Patientenunterlagen und Röntgenaufnahmen. Bei der Nachuntersuchung wurden sowohl die subjektiven als auch die objektiven Auffälligkeiten der in Nähe der Schrauben stehenden Zähne erhoben. Der Lockerungsgrad, die Zahnverfärbung, die Perkussionsempfindlichkeit sowie die Vitalität der Zähne wurden geprüft. Bei klinisch behandlungsbedürftigen Befunden wurde eine Röntgendiagnostik durchgeführt und die Behandlung in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Hauszahnarzt veranlasst. Ergebnisse: 157 Patienten (49 Frauen/108 Männer) wurden in die Studie eingeschlossen. 633 Schrauben wurden insgesamt inseriert. Davon hatten 563 einen radiologischen Kontakt mit Zähnen. Von diesen Patienten wurden 34,3 % nachuntersucht. Die Nachbeobachtungszeit betrug von 33,3 Monate im Durchschnitt. Es kam bei 27 Schrauben zu einem radiologischen Wurzeldefekt (4,8 %), wovon sechs Fälle behandlungsbedürftig waren: ein avitaler Zahn, eine Pulpaverkalkung, eine interne Pulparesorption und drei Wurzelfrakturen. Im Rahmen der Behandlung dieser Fälle erfolgten eine Zahnextraktion, eine Wurzelkanalbehandlung und vier Zähne werden durch Hauszahnarzt beobachtet. Schlussfolgerung: Die IMF-Schrauben sind eine zuverlässige Methode zur Okklusionssicherung, die aber zu Zahnwurzelverletzungen führen könnte. Hier empfiehlt sich die klinische und radiologische Nachuntersuchung und die Einleitung einer entsprechenden Therapie falls erforderlich. Es ist wichtig, die Schrauben mit dosierter Kraft zwischen den Eckzähnen und ersten Molaren auf Höhe der mukogingivalen Linie einzubringen, um Zahnwurzel-, Nerv- und Kieferhöhlenverletzungen zu vermeiden.