The Small and Medium-size Enterprises are the key bone of the economy of many nations. The usual definition of SME’s, make up 99.8% of the approximately 19 million enterprises of the European Union (ISO, 2002) and Sweden is not an exception. That is why SME’s faces the strategic challenge of achieving sustained profitable growth. To meet this challenge, SME’s must develop capabilities to integrate their systems. Since ICT gives so many advantages to support the Supply Chain, and MRPII software’s have become a very popular tool in the last thirty years; Our purpose is to answer the following research question: How can MRP II-type computer systems be used effectively to support the manufacturing and organizational integration? The research started with on-site observations and interviews but the development of a model and a survey was needed. After, we linked the research with an already accepted model. The results show how important the human aspect and the accuracy are in the effective usage of an MRP II. It also demonstrates that the MRP II philosophy must be accepted to use the MRP II software profitably. Nevertheless, we modeled the vicious cycle that our case company might deal with, tried to find the root cause and give recommendations to break it. / Små och Mellan- stora företag är många nationers byggstenar. Den vanligaste definitionen av SME´s utgör 99,8% av de uppskattningsvis 19 miljoner företag inom Europeiska Unionen (ISO, 2002) och Sverige är inget undantag. Det är anledningen till att SME´s möter den strategiska utmaningen att uppnå ihållande och vinstgivande tillväxt. För att ta sig an denna utmaningen måste SME´s utveckla förmågor att integrera sina system. Eftersom ICT ger så många fördelar att stödja utbudskedjan, och eftersom MRP II mjukvaror har kommit att bli ett populärt verktyg de senaste trettio åren, kommer vårt syfte bli att svara på följande fråga: Hur kan datasystem av typen MRP II användas för att på ett effektivt sätt underlätta integrering av tillverkning och organisation? Undersökningen startade med observationer samt intervjuer på plats, men utförandet av en statistisk undersökning och en modell var nödvändig efter det att vi redan hade kopplat ihop arbetet med en redan accepterad modell. Reasultaten visar hur viktig den mänskliga faktorn samt exaktheten är i användandet av en MRP II. Den visar också att MRP II filosofin måste vara accepterad innan man kan använda MRP II mjukvaran på ett fördelaktigt sätt. Likväl har vi illustrerat den onda cirkeln som vårt företag måste försöka ta sig ur, försökt hitta den underliggande orsaken och slutligen att ge rekommendationer för att bryta den.

Remotely-controlled technologies are no longer limited to military applications, such as unmanned military airborne weapons or explosive diffuser robots. Nowadays we can see more and more of remotely controlled devices used as medical equipment, toys, and so forth. One of the most recent areas of interest is robotic telepresence, also known as Mobile Robot Presence (MRP), which provides the ability to interact socially and professionally with other people and even objects in remote locations. One of the known issues with using remotely-controlled devices is the cognitive overload which their operators (pilots) experience and MRP pilots are no exception. However, despite vast research on different ways to address this in military or medical scenarios, little has been done regarding MRPs. This thesis study aims to make a contribution in closing that gap by suggesting a method, developing a prototype implementing it; then conducting an empirical assessment of the method and the prototype as a part of a broader study on MRP, supported by Swedish Research Council. I have suggested a method comprised of a Secondary-task (ST) method and Subjective Rating Scales (SRS), in which the latter act as an evaluation method for the former. Both of them were used in an overarching study in search for the best control device amongst four chosen devices. I collected and analyzed secondary task performance data (e.g. response time, error rates), subjective user ratings, explicit rankings, and observations recordings. My analysis of the collected data shows that using a monitoring and response face recognition secondary task is a plausible method for the assessment of MRP pilot’s cognitive load.

The diploma thesis deals with the influences on business planning, to which companies adapt in effort to succeed in a dynamic production and market environment. The influencing effect causing changes in the production company and the ability to react flexibly can eliminate possible losses or outages in production. However, adaptation leads to significant interventions throughout the company's value chain. The theoretical part presents the possibilities of business planning, which can have a significantly useful impact on management of the order across the pre-production and production stages. In the practical part, simulation models are demonstrated proofing nagative influencing effects. Then the methodology is compiled, witch leads the future user, how to limit or eliminate both internal and external disturbing effects.

No description available.

Un cycle réformiste et républicain est initié après les expériences de la guerre et de la Résistance. Le programme coordonné dès 1944 par le Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR) apparaît ici comme une réponse à la carence de démocratie politique créée par le gouvernement de Vichy et l’occupation allemande. Le moment de la reconstruction ne pourra se contenter d’être un simple retour à la situation d’avant-guerre. Les nationalisations, la mise en place d’une sécurité sociale, la liberté syndicale sont les jalons de ce programme réformiste auquel le MRP et la SFIO adhèrent pleinement. A partir de 1944, ils deviennent deux composantes majeures du paysage politique français et sont les pivots de tous les gouvernements de la IVe République jusqu’en 1951. Malgré des cultures politiques très différentes, ils collaborent à la refondation des institutions républicaines et posent le cadre de ce qui sera l’État providence. Les difficultés du « compromis républicain » n’en sont pas moins réelles. Elles se lisent entre autre au sein des commissions parlementaires, possibles lieux de réformes. Majorité gouvernementale fragile et instabilité ministérielle chronique paralysent le pouvoir. Les guerres de décolonisation condamnent finalement le régime en 1958. Dans cet intervalle relativement long, la SFIO et le MRP ont poursuivi et réalisé un programme ambitieux de réformes. Ils se sont aussi affrontés sur le terrain de la laïcité et de l’école. In fine, leurs actions communes, leurs accords, leurs divergences profondes et leurs contradictions interrogent sur la manière dont la IVe république a participé à la transformation du modèle républicain. / The experience of war and Resistance has initiated a “reformist” and republican cycle. The National Council of Resistance (CNR) has coordinated in 1944 a program as an answer to the lack of political democracy, which resulted of the government of Vichy and the German occupation. Going back to the pre-war situation would not be enough to rebuild. The MRP and the SFIO plainly joined the “reformist” program, based on nationalizations, the creation of a welfare insurance and trade union freedom. From 1944 to 1951, they both became a major part of the French political landscape, backbone of all major governments of the IVth Republic. Setting aside their entirely different political cultures, they worked together for a renewal of the republican institutions, making the welfare state a future reality. Thus, it still has been difficult to set this « republican agreement » on track. The study of the parliamentary committee as a place of reformism easily acknowledge that statement. Moreover, weak government majority, added to a chronical instability of the ministries, seemed to paralyse the decision making process. Eventually, in 1958, the wars of decolonization put an end to it. During this period, ambitious reforms were conceived and applied, leaded by the MRP and the SFIO together. They nonetheless had to face each other about subjects of dissension, such as secularism and school. As a consequence, the question of how the IVth Republic of France changed its republican model can be asked, given the joint actions, contradictions, agreements and disagreements of those two parties.

Les pyréthrinoïdes et les organophosphorés sont des pesticides très utilisés, à l’origine d’une imprégnation forte de la population, exposée à ces contaminants principalement via l’alimentation. De plus en plus d’études scientifiques suggèrent des liens entre l’exposition à ces composés et des maladies chroniques ou des troubles du développement de l’enfant. Paradoxalement, leur devenir biologique chez l’homme est mal connu. Certaines études suggèrent que ces insecticides sont susceptibles d’intéragir avec les transporteurs membranaires ABC et SLC, protéines localisées au niveau d’interfaces hémato-tissulaires qui prennent en charge de nombreux substrats endogènes, médicaments et contaminants de l’environnement. L’objectif de notre étude a été de caractériser les effets d’insecticides des familles des pyréthrinoïdes et des organophosphorés sur l’activité de nombreux transporteurs ABC et SLC prenant en charge des médicaments (P-gp, BCRP, MRPs, OATP-1B1,-2B1,-1B3, OCT1-3, OAT1, OAT3, MATE1 et MATE2K) par une approche in vitro. Nous nous sommes également attachés à caractériser par des expérimentations in vitro et in silico, les mécanismes des interactions et les éléments structuraux des pesticides à l’origine de ces effets. Nous avons montré que de nombreux organophosphorés et pyréthrinoïdes étaient capables d’inhiber des transporteurs d’efflux (MRP, BCRP, P-gp) et d’influx (OATP1B1, OAT3, MATE1, OCT1-2) et de stimuler l’activité de certains OATPs. Les pesticides testés inhibaient très fortement l’activité des transporteurs de cations (OCT1 et OCT2) et ont pu bloquer le transport de catécholamines médiés par ces protéines. Une approche qSAR a permis de définir des paramètres physicochimiques associés aux effets modulateurs des pesticides et une approche d’amarrage moléculaire (docking) a mise en évidence les sites de liaisons de la P-gp impliquées dans ces interactions. Les conséquences des modulations de l’activité des transporteurs, en termes d’effets toxiques et d’interactions médicamenteuses, restent à définir pour les populations exposées à de fortes doses de pesticides. Toutefois, la contribution des interactions observées aux effets toxiques de ces insecticides est peu probable car nécessitant des concentrations nettement supérieures à celles atteintes dans le cadre d’une exposition environnementale de la population générale. / The general population is chronically exposed to pyrethroids and organophosphorus insecticides, mainly through alimentation. Several epidemiological studies have found an association between non-occupational exposure to these pesticides and chronic diseases and developmental disorders. Paradoxically, their biological fate in humans is poorly understood. Some studies suggest that these insecticides could interact with ABC and SLC membrane transporters. These membrane proteins, located at blood-tissue interfaces (liver, kidney, intestine ...), handle many endogenous substrates, drugs and pollutants. The objective of our study was to characterize, using an in vitro approach, the effects of pyrethroid and organophosphorus insecticides on the activity of numerous ABC and SLC human drug-transporters (P-gp, BCRP, MRPs, OATP-1B1, -2B1, -1B3, OCT1-3, OAT1, OAT3, MATE1 and MATE2K). We have also tried to analyze the mechanisms of interactions and the structural requirements for insecticides-mediated modulation of drug transporters activities using in vitro and in silico approach. We have shown that many organophosphorus and pyrethroids are able to inhibit ABC (MRP, BCRP, P-gp) and SLC (OATP1B1, OAT3, MATE1, OCT1-2) transporters and can stimulate the activity of some OATPs. Moreover, the tested pesticides inhibited very strongly the activity of OCT1 and OCT2 and blocked catecholamine transport mediated by these transporters. A qSAR approach allowed to define physicochemical parameters associated with the modulating effects of pesticides and a molecular docking approach revealed the P-gp binding sites involved in these interactions. The consequences of transporter activitie modulation, in terms of toxic effects and drug interactions, remain to be defined for populations exposed to high doses of pesticides, occurring notably in response to poisoning. However the alterations of these transporter activities by insecticides are unlikely to contribute to organophosphorus or pyrethroids toxicities of chronic low-dose exposure.

Phylogenetics is the research of ancestor-descendant relationships among different groups of organisms, for example, species or populations of interest. The datasets involved are usually sequence alignments of various subsets of taxa for various genes. A major task of phylogenetics is often to combine estimated gene trees from many loci sampled from the genes into an overall estimate species tree topology. Eventually, one can construct the tree of life that depicts the ancestor-descendant relationships for all known species around the world. If there is missing data or incomplete sampling in the datasets, then supertree methods can be used to assemble gene trees with different subsets of taxa into an estimated overall species tree topology. In this study, we assume that gene tree discordance is solely due to incomplete lineage sorting under the multispecies coalescent model (Degnan and Rosenberg, 2009). If there is missing data or incomplete sampling in the datasets, then supertree methods can be used to assemble gene trees with different subsets of taxa into an estimated species tree topology. In addition, we examine the performance of the most commonly used supertree method (Wilkinson et al., 2009), namely matrix representation with parsimony (MRP), to explore its statistical properties in this setting. In particular, we show that MRP is not statistically consistent. That is, an estimated species tree topology other than the true species tree topology is more likely to be returned by MRP as the number of gene trees increases. For some situations, using longer branch lengths, randomly deleting taxa or even introducing mutation can improve the performance of MRP so that the matching species tree topology is recovered more often. In conclusion, MRP is a supertree method that is able to handle large amounts of conflict in the input gene trees. However, MRP is not statistically consistent, when using gene trees arise from the multispecies coalescent model to estimate species trees.

南水北調中綫工程的完成是國家權力成功運作的結果，而本文希望透過檢視水源地之一十堰市在環境治理上的表現來刻畫地方政府的行爲模式。 經濟發展與環境保護歷來是地方政府需要面臨的雙重考驗，縱向上看，中央與地方也常因利益分歧造成政策執行上的扭曲。而這種中央-地方關係及經濟發展與環境保護的矛盾在水源地十堰市體現得尤為明顯。因爲作爲水源地它需要切實貫徹中央「保水質」的任務，但是「保水質」與「保護環境」有著不同的內涵和指向，其背後是中央與地方利益的較量。然而，更深層次的矛盾在於，作爲一個貧困地區，十堰市本身脫貧壓力巨大，發展經濟的意願强烈。爲了保護水源地，十堰市必須在經濟發展上做出犧牲。面對這一複雜情境，十堰市的領導人毅然選擇完成中央交辦的任務。 本文希望透過檢視十堰市政府與上級政府及地方行動者的互動來勾畫出地方政府的行爲模式，同時探討其行爲背後的原因。 / The south-to-north water transfer project is a great hydraulic engineering aiming at relieving water scarcity problem in Northern China. The Chinese central government plays an important role in building dams and transferring water through closed conduit. However, the more challenging problem is to guarantee the water quality of the water source area:Danjiankou Reservoir. As the main part of the reservoir is located in Shiyan city, it has no choice but to take responsibility of protecting environment and make sure that the water quality standard can be reached. Facing such arduous task, Shiyan spare no effort in reaching the goal, and some polluting industries are badly effected or even prohibited. As the result, the performance of Shiyan is appreciated by leaders of all levels, but these measures are controversial. Balancing between economic development and environmental protection is quite difficult, but as an extremely poor city, Shiyan City would rather protect aquatic environment for northern people than develop economy for local residents. So the performance of Shiyan city aroused my interest.This thesis tries to throw light on how Shiyan governed the environment and how it react to pressures from above and below, and why it happened. The conclusion is that Shiyan takes different strategies towards different actors, and the reason is related to performance evaluation system and promotion. And the results are based on field work, books ,journals and so on.

MCom / Department of Accountany / The relationship between the Equity Market Risk Premium (MRP) and macroeconomic variables has been a subject of extensive discussion in the finance literature. The MRP is a central component of the main asset pricing models which are used to estimate the cost of equity which is mainly used in investment appraisal, performance measurement and valuation of equity assets. Past studies have identified inflation rate, interest rate, foreign exchange rate and political risk as the key macroeconomic variables that determine the size of the MRP. The test of the impact of these variables on the MRP have however been based mainly on data from developed countries and a few emerging countries. To the researcher’s knowledge, there are no studies that have investigated the impact of these macroeconomic variables on the MRP in South Africa. It is necessary to test the impact of these variables in the context of South Africa as these variables vary across countries. Using time series secondary data that was obtained from the SARB database, JSE database and World Bank database for the period 2002 to 2017, this study investigated the impact of these variables on the MRP in South Africa. A total of 192 observations per series of the inflation rate, interest rate, foreign exchange rate, political risk, JSE-ALSI and 91-days Treasury bill was used in the study. The data used were tested for possible misspecification errors that could arise from using a time series secondary data and the regression model was fitted using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimator. The misspecification tests and models were both implemented on STATA 15 software. The results shows that inflation rate, interest rate and foreign exchange rate have a negative impact on the MRP whilst political risk has a positive impact on the MRP. Furthermore, the result shows that the inflation rate is the only variable amongst other variable tested that has a significant influence on the MRP for the study period. The study, therefore, concludes that inflation rate has the highest impact on the MRP in the context of South Africa. The study recommends that inflation rate should be monitored and kept within its target of 3-6% amongst other variables tested in order to increase investors’ confidence in the security market and also foster economic growth. The main limitations to the study were the limited data sources and insufficient funds. / NRF

Utvecklingen av teknologin i dagens industrier förändras snabbt och för att bibehålla verksamhetens konkurrenskraft är det viktigt att förstå kundernas behov. Prognostisering är förväntat framtida behov baserad på historisk data. En prognos kan hjälpa ett företag med att planera och budgetera för framtida produktions- och distributions behov, samt fatta beslut om lagerhållning och inköp av råvaror. Syftet med studien är att undersöka framtida materialbehov med hjälp av prognostisering samt öka förståelsen samtidigt. Målet med studien är att få fram en metod för att utföra prognoser i ett affärssystem. De frågor studien kommer att besvara är “Hur kan användning av prognoser minska ledtider och bundet kapital?” & “Hur kan affärssystemet SAP användas för prognoser av en specifik produktgrupp?”Genom en förstudie om ämnet och därefter en fallstudie hos Wexiödisk kommer informationen att tas. Studien består av primära källor i form av intervjuer och sekundära källor i form av dokumentinsamling. Resultaten studien kom fram till var bland annat transaktionskoder och dess användningsområde, förklaring och utvärdering av parametrarna tillhörande materialplanering 1-4 och prognos. Dessutom hur en grundläggande prognos kan utföras med historiska värden. Resultatet redovisar även skillnaden i bundet kapital med hjälp av prognostisering.Den generella slutsatsen från studien är att med en parameterlösning och arbetssätt för att utföra prognosen besvaras frågan “Hur kan affärssystemet SAP användas för prognoser av en specifik produktgrupp?”. Vidare förslag om forskning och optimering kring parametrarna ges även för att få en mer exakt slutgiltig prognos. / The development of technology in today's industries is changing rapidly and in order to maintain the competitiveness of the business it is important to understand the needs of the customers. Forecasting is expected future demand based on historical data. A forecast can help a company plan and budget for future production and distribution needs, as well as make decisions about stocking and purchasing raw materials.The purpose of the study is to investigate future material needs using forecasting and to gaina greater understanding at the same time. The goal of the study is to come up with a method for performing forecasts in a business system. The questions the study will answer are "How can the use of forecasts reduce lead times and tied up capital?" & "How can the business system SAP be used for forecasts of a specific product group?"Through a preliminary study on the subject and then a case study at Wexiödisk, which the information will be taken from. The study consists of primary sources in the form of interviews and secondary sources in the form of document collection.The results of the study showed among other things, transaction codes and their area of use, explanation and evaluation of the parameters associated with MRP 1-4 and forecasting. Also, how a basic forecast can be performed using historical values. The result also reports the difference in tied up capital with the help of forecasting.The general conclusion of the study is that with a parameter solution and working method to perform the forecast, the question "How can the business system SAP be used for forecasts of a specific product group?" is answered. Further suggestions about research and optimization around the parameters are also given to get a more accurate final forecast.