This thesis aims at examining processes in capitalist food production through a case study of Vion’s Halls factory in Broxburn, Scotland, which closed in 2012. The researcher uses his position as a former employee to receive interviews with former workers at the factory to gain knowledge about what happened in the factory and how that relates to bigger developments in the economy. Concepts such as buyers-driven supply chains, absolute and relative value production and flexible accumulation are guiding the interviews, using parts of the extended case method. Through this theoretical approach, the intention is to reach a better understanding of the local process and its interplay with broader developments and at the same time hopes to contribute to the theoretical field. No solid conclusion about the relationship of power in the supply chain could be gained from the interviews even if, in line with other studies, it indicates a move toward a buyers-driven supply chain with production for the retailers’ labels instead of its own brand. This was not followed by changes in the form of production with more flexibility and adaptations to rapidly changing markets, as was the case in the clothing industry. Instead, the Fordist method of standardized mass production appears to be utilized. A picture emerges of how Vion tries to counteract falling profits by intensifying the work process and extending the hours of production. This was made partly through aggressive management and the employment of skilled agency workers, getting more produced with fewer workers and without any substantial investments in new machines or technology.

To gain an understanding of the ecology of drift algae in the Indian River Lagoon system along the east coast of central Florida, four questions were addressed: 1) What is the composition and rate of accumulation of drift? 2) How much movement and turnover occurs within drift accumulations? 3) Do growth rates differ for drift versus attached algae? 4) Is there a difference in photosynthetic performance in drift versus attached algal species? Manipulative field and laboratory experiments were conducted to address these questions with the green macroalga Codium decorticatum and the red macroalga Gracilaria tikvahiae. Changes in pigment concentration and biomass were used as indicators of acclimation from an attached to drift state in Gracilaria tikvahiae and Codium decorticatum. Short-term physiological changes as demonstrated by electron transport rate (ETR) were also used as indications of acclimation from an attached to drift state in C. decorticatum. Composition and rate of accumulation of drift varied by season. While both transport and turnover of drift occurred, turnover within drift accumulations occurred at low rates and was significantly lower in the spring during decreased flow rates. There were no significant differences in growth or pigment concentrations in drift versus attached G. tikvahiae or C. decorticatum. In addition, there were no apparent physiological acclimations to a drift state in C. decorticatum.

Aquarius/SAC-D is a joint mission by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), Argentine Space Agency. The satellite was launched in June 2011 and the prime remote sensing instrument is also named Aquarius (AQ). The main objective of this science program is to provide Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) maps of the global oceans every 7 days for understanding the Earth’s hydrologic cycle and for assessing long-term global climate change. The Aquarius instrument was built jointly by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is an active/passive L-band remote sensor that measures ocean brightness temperature (Tb) and radar backscatter, and these quantities are used to infer sea surface salinity. Other environmental parameters (e.g., sea surface temperature, wind speed and rain) also affect the microwave emitted radiance or brightness temperature. The SSS geophysical retrieval algorithm considers all these environmental parameters and makes the Tb corrections before retrieving SSS. Instantaneous rainfall can cause increase roughness that raises the ocean surface Tb. Further short term rain accumulation can produce a fresh water lens that floats on the ocean surface and dilutes the surface salinity. iv This thesis presents results of a study to develop an oceanic rain accumulation (RA) product that may be valuable to remote sensing engineers and algorithm developers and Aquarius scientists. The use of this RA product, along with in situ ocean salinity measurements from buoys, may be used to mitigate the effects of rain on the SSS retrieval

Although most processes governing the surface mass balance on mountain glaciers are well understood, the causes and extent of spatial variability in accumulation remain poorly constrained. In the present study, the EBFM distributed mass balance model is newly coupled to terrain based modelling routines estimating mass redistribution by snowdrift, preferential deposition, and avalanching (ST-EBFM) in order to model winter balance on Storglaciären, Sweden. STEBFM improves the spatial accuracy of winter balance simulations and proves to be a versatile and computationally inexpensive model. Accumulation on Storglaciären is primarily driven by direct precipitation, which seems locally increased due to small scale orographic effects. Wind driven snow transport leads to significant deposition in the accumulation zone and slight erosion in the ablation zone. The pattern is generally consistent from year to year. Avalanching is the smallest contributor to winter balance, but cannot be neglected. The physical complexity of avalanches and high year to year variability render simulations of the process somewhat uncertain, but observations seem to confirm the large impact that the process can have on the glacier at very localised scales. The role of mass transporting processes in maintaining the current mass equilibrium on Storglaciären highlights the necessity to understand the links between climatic predictors and accumulation in order to accurately assess climate sensitivity.

This thesis studies currency premia and their connections with macroeconomics. In the first essay, I link currency premia to capital-output ratios and the well-known “Lucas Paradox”. The “Lucas Paradox” states that there are large and persistent differences in capital-output ratios across countries, suggesting capital is not flowing to countries where it is relatively scarce. In the data, capital-output ratios vary a lot cross-sectionally even within developed countries, and they are negatively correlated with currency risk premia and risk-free rates. To rationalize these patterns, I build a quantitative multi-country model of capital accumulation with external habit and heterogeneous exposures to a global productivity shock. I show that currency risk in this model generates cross-country variations in risk-free rates and capital-output ratios that are consistent with the data. I estimate the model using GDP data from countries issuing the G10 currencies and find two main results: (1) The heterogenous loadings that I extract from GDP data alone are highly correlated with capital-output ratios; and (2) when I feed the estimated loadings into the model, model-generated capital-output ratios account for roughly 55% of the cross-country variation in the data. I conclude that variation in currency risk and therefore currency risk premia have significant effects on the real economy. In the second essay, I identify a quantitative puzzle when using canonical consumption-based asset pricing models to match currency premia under complete markets. Canonical long-run risk and habit models induce a strong, negative correlation between the variance and the mean of the log stochastic discount factor to address the well-known equity premium puzzle. When applied to an open economy with complete markets, this key feature requires that differences in currency returns should arise primarily from predictable appreciations, a requirement that is at odds with the data. We term this tension between a high equity premium, smooth risk-free rates, and largely unpredictable exchange rates the currency premium puzzle and argue it is the underlying reason why existing international asset pricing models have struggled to simultaneously match data on currency returns, equity returns, and risk-free rates. In the third essay, I show that perturbation methods lead to significant computational errors when used to solve international risk-sharing models with Epstein and Zin (1989) preferences. In particular, if countries feature different sizes, the simulating results violate law of iterated expectations. Even under symmetric setups, the errors along a typical simulation path are non-negligible. I conclude that perturbation-based solutions of EZ risk-sharing models should be used with caution.

The present study examines the joint roles of leadership and stressors for presenteeism of scientific staff. Leaders may have an impact on employees’ health, both directly through interpersonal interactions and by shaping their working conditions. In the field of science, this impact could be special because of the mentoring relationships between the employees (e.g., PhD students) and their supervisors (e.g., professors). Based on the job demands-resources framework (JD-R), we hypothesized that the pressure to be present at the workplace induced by supervisors (supervisorial pressure) is directly related to employees’ presenteeism as well as indirectly via perceptions of time pressure. The conservation of resources theory (COR) states that resource loss resulting from having to deal with job demands weakens the resource pool and therefore the capacity to deal with other job demands. Thus, we hypothesized that accumulation of work moderates the relationship between supervisorial pressure and time pressure, such that the relationship is stronger when accumulation of work is high compared to if accumulation of work is low. Cross-sectional data were obtained from 212 PhD students and postdocs of 30 scientific institutions in Germany. Analysis was performed using the SPSS macro PROCESS (Hayes, 2013). Supervisorial pressure was directly associated with higher presenteeism of employees and indirectly through increased time pressure. Moreover, supervisorial pressure and accumulation of work interacted to predict time pressure, but in an unexpected way. The positive relationship between supervisorial pressure and time pressure is stronger when accumulation is low compared to if accumulation of work is high. It seems possible that job stressors do not accumulate but substitute each other. Threshold models might explain the findings. Moreover, specific patterns of interacting job demands for scientific staff should be considered in absence management.

A large pilot-scale free water surface (FWS) constructed wetland polishing effluent from an annual (spring) discharge municipal lagoon was operated for ten years followed by eleven years of dormancy and then restarted with an increase in operating depth. No significant effect of system aging was observed on Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), total phosphorus (TP), and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) removal efficiencies, although internal TP water column concentrations in the first wetland and pond cells increased with time due to resuspension of accumulated sediments. Nitrate and ammonium removal efficiencies were higher during the start-up period due to plant establishment, while organic nitrogen and nitrate removal efficiencies increased during the restart period, likely due to a combination of the increased operating depth and accumulated sediments. No seasonal temperature effect was observed for nitrate or BOD removal efficiency, however, TP removal efficiencies increased with increasing influent concentrations due to seasonal algae growth. TSS removal efficiency increased significantly during the restart period, most likely due to an increase in the operating depth. Phosphorus was found to be mostly stored in the soil, followed by sediment and plants, while nitrogen was found to be stored more in plants, followed by soil and sediment. The wetland system was shown to be effective at the long-term removal of organic matter (BOD5 < 10 mg/L) and TP (87% average removal efficiency), while TSS removal efficiency increased to 97% with an increase in operating depth from 25 to 50 cm.

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