De ökade utmaningarna världen står inför och det växande intresset för hållbara investeringar gör att företagens sociala ansvar blir en allt viktigare fråga. Forskare menar att detta sociala ansvar som förväntas från intressenterna har blivit ett problem för företagen, och som följd av detta har rapportering av sådan verksamhet blivit vanligare. Då det inte finns någon klarhet i definitionen för vad CSR innebär så är det upp till företagen själva att tolka uttrycket vilket kan leda till stora skillnader i vad de väljer att prioritera i linje med deras moraliska kriterier och värderingar. Vissa företag har en tendens att anpassa CSR-arbetet för att skapa uppmärksamhet efter de fördelar som finns, andra som ett sätt att tillfredsställa sina intressenter. Detta kritiseras för att ske istället för att genuint arbeta med socialt ansvarsfulla handlingar och implementera dessa i organisationen. Syftet med denna studie var att studera det existerade sambandet mellan CSR-arbete och lönsamhet, med fokus på europeiska företag. Vidare har studien inriktat sig på att studera detta samband tillsammans med tre kontrollvariabler, storlek, sett till antal anställda, sektor och geografisk position.Urvalet i studien bestod av 352 europeiska företag fördelade inom 11 sektorer som är kategoriserade efter Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). Dessa har testats genom en stiganalys som är en sammansättning av bivariata- och multivariata regressionsanalyser, där även samtliga variabler inkluderades. Resultatet i studien indikerar bland annat att större företag arbetar mer med CSR men att det nödvändigtvis inte leder till högre lönsamhet. Vidare visar resultatet att sektor inte har någon betydelse för varken mängden CSR-arbete eller lönsamheten, resultatet visar snarare att sektor har en negativ effekt på lönsamheten. Slutligen visade studiens resultat att europeiska företags geografiska position inte innebär en större mängd CSR-arbete. Detta visar att oberoende av det land företaget är beläget i så innebär det nödvändigtvis inte mer CSR-arbete, samtidigt som resultatet visade att geografisk position kan ha en positiv inverkan på lönsamheten. / The increased challenge the world is facing and the growing interest and demands in sustainable investment make corporate social responsibility an increasingly and important questions for companies. Researchers even argue that this social responsibility that is expected from different stakeholders has become an issue for the companies, and as a result, reporting of such activities has become more common. Since there is no clear definition for what CSR means, it is up to the companies themselves to interpret the expression, which can lead to large differences in what they prioritize and work with. Some companies tend to adapt CSR in a way to draw attention to the benefits that exist, others as a way to satisfy their stakeholders. This is criticized for happening instead of genuinely working with socially responsible actions and implementing them in the organization. The purpose of this study was to examine the existing relationship between the CSR and profitability, focusing on European companies. Furthermore, the study has focused on examine this connection together with three control variables, firm size, in terms of number of employees, sector and geographical position.The selection in the study consisted of 352 European companies distributed in 11 sectors categorized according to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) which has been tested in a path analysis which is a composition of bivariate and multivariate regression analysis, including all the variables. The results of the study indicate that larger companies work more with CSR in their organization, but it does not necessarily lead to a higher profitability. Furthermore, the result show that the sector has no significance meaning for the amount of CSR work or profitability, the result rather shows that the sector has a negative effect on profitability. Finally, the result showed that the geographical position of the European companies does not involve a greater amount of CSR work. This shows that, irrespective of the country in which the company is located, it does not necessarily mean more work with CSR, while the result showed that geographical position can have a positive effect on the profitability.

Dans un pays en développement tel que Madagascar, l’appui de divers réseaux, notamment les réseaux sociaux de dirigeants, est important pour le développement économique du pays. Un travail de concert de ces réseaux de dirigeants avec toutes les institutions locales présentes va permettre d’aller dans le sens de cet essor économique. Les dirigeants de PME peuvent adhérer à ces réseaux patronaux pour faciliter l’exercice de leur fonction en évitant la solitude mais aussi pour acquérir d’autres compétences qui ne sont pas forcément à leur disposition. La perspective des liens inter personnels considérant l’engagement des individus dans l’interaction relate une analyse de positions sociales ou de liens informels et de sociabilité. Quant à la perspective de l’identification des individus qui prend en compte leur implication dans les relations relate une analyse à visée de production des règles et / ou normes et de différenciation des rôles. Ces deux perspectives ont mis en évidence les facteurs influant sur les conséquences de l’adhésion des dirigeants à un réseau social. Lorsque ces facteurs influents sont intégrés dans les relations sociales, ils renforcent à leur tour les relations tissées ainsi que l’adhésion à un réseau social, mais également ils agissent simultanément sur la position sociale et sur les aboutissements de telle relation et de l’adhésion à un réseau social. Cette thèse a pour objectif d’identifier la manière selon laquelle l’adhésion à un réseau social de dirigeants permet la réalisation des objectifs des dirigeants et du réseau social lui-même, d’examiner la manière selon laquelle l’adhésion à un réseau social de dirigeants agisse sur la position des dirigeants et de reconnaître les divers types de conséquences de telle position. La collecte des données a été effectuée auprès d’un réseau de dirigeant de PME à Madagascar. Basé sur un échantillon de 33 dirigeants de PME appartenant au Jeune Patronat de Madagascar, ce travail présente une évidence en indiquant que la motivation des dirigeants à la fois l’acceptation des valeurs et des objectifs organisationnels par rapport à l’acceptation des valeurs et objectifs du dirigeant jouent un rôle fort pour expliquer l’adhésion à un réseau social de dirigeants tandis qu’une position renforcée joue un rôle fort pour expliquer les conséquences de cette adhésion à un réseau social. Cette recherche considère l’adhésion comme une stratégie pour s’impliquer davantage dans le développement économique et contribuer à une compréhension approfondie de la manière selon laquelle l’adhésion influence les ressources acquises qui ne sont pas forcément connues d’avance. / In a developing country such as Madagascar, the support of diverse networks, in particular leaders' social networks, is important for the economic development of the country. A work of concert of these leaders' networks with all the present local institutions is going to allow to go to the sense of this economic boom. The leaders of SME can adhere to these leaders' networks to facilitate the exercise of their function by avoiding the solitude but also to acquire the other skills which are not necessarily at their disposal. The perspective of the links inters personal considering the commitment of the individuals in the interaction tells an analysis of social positions or informal links and sociability. As for the perspective of the identification of the individuals which takes into account their implication in the relations tell an analysis with aim of production of rules and / or standards and differentiation of the roles. These two perspectives put in evidence factors influencing the consequences of the membership of the leaders to a social network. When these influential factors are integrated into social relationships, they strengthen in turn the relations weaved as well as the membership to a social network, but also they act simultaneously on the social position and on the outcomes of such relation and the membership to a social network. This thesis has for objective to identify the way according to which the membership to a leaders' social network allows the realization of the objectives of the leaders and the social network itself, to examine the way according to which the membership to a leaders' social network acts on the position of the leaders and of recognizing the diverse types of consequences of such position. The data collection was made with leader's network of SME in Madagascar. Based on a sample of 33 leaders of SME belonging to the Young Employers of Madagascar, this work presents an evidence by indicating that the motivation of the leaders at the same time the acceptance of the values and the organizational objectives with regard to the acceptance of the values and the objectives of the leader play a strong role to explain the membership to a leaders' social network whereas a strengthened position plays a strong role to explain the consequences of this membership to a social network. This search considers the membership as a strategy to get involved more in the economic development and contribute to a detailed understanding of the way according to which the membership influences the acquired resources which are not necessarily known beforehand.

Le sujet de la thèse vise à développer un imageur neutron portable présentant des performances de détection compatibles avec les besoins de la recherche et de l’industrie nucléaire, notamment ceux du démantèlement. Cette thèse se décompose en trois axes principaux de recherche, précédés d’une phase de recherche bibliographique. Suite à cette dernière, l’approche de localisation retenue est l‘imagerie de neutrons rapides par encodage spatial. Les détecteurs de neutrons ont été étudiés et plusieurs choix, adaptés à cette problématique, ont été retenus pour la suite de l’étude. Le premier axe est consacré aux études sur le développement d’un détecteur de neutrons sensible à la position. Le deuxième axe est lié à la conception et au prototypage d’un imageur neutronique, se reposant sur un masque codé et un détecteur Timepix modifié par une couche de paraffine. Le dernier axe concerne le déploiement et la caractérisation expérimentale de ce prototype. / The subject of the thesis aims at developing a portable neutron imager with detection performance compatible with the needs of the nuclear research and industry, in particular those of decommissioning. This thesis is divided into three main areas of research, preceded by a bibliographic research phase. Following the latter, the localization approach adopted is spatial encoding fast neutron imaging. Neutron detectors were studied and several choices adapted to this challenge were selected for the continuation of the study. The first axis is dedicated to the studies on the development of a position-sensitive neutron detector. The second axis is related to the design and prototyping of a portable neutron imager, based on a coded aperture and a Timepix detector enhanced with a paraffin layer. The last axis concerns the deployment and experimental characterization of this prototype.

The GIS Industry has digitised cadastre from the best available paper maps over the last few decades, incorporating the inherent errors in those paper maps and in the digitising process. The advent of Global Positioning Systems, modern surveying instruments and advances in the computing industry has made it desirable and affordable to upgrade the placement, in terms of absolute and relative position) of these digital cadastres. The Utility Industry has used GIS software to place their assets relative to these digital cadastres, and are now finding their assets placed incorrectly when viewed against these upgraded digital cadastres. This thesis examines the processes developed in the software program called the ???Spatial Adjustment Engine???, and documents a holistic approach to semi-automating the upgrading of the digital cadastre and the subsequent upgrading of the utility assets. This thesis also documents the various pilot projects undertaken during the development of the Spatial Adjustment Engine, the topological scenarios found in each pilot, their solution, and provides a framework of definitions needed to explore this field further. The results of each pilot project are given in context, and lead to the conclusions. The conclusions indicate the processes and procedures implemented in the Spatial Adjustment Engine are a suitable mechanism for the upgrade of digital cadastre and of spatially dependant themes such as utility assets, zoning themes, annotation layers, and some road centreline themes.

<p>The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare narrations by five witnesses, who has written about atrocities against Christians from 1915 to 1919 in what is today south-eastern Turkey, but what was then the Ottoman Empire. I have focused on how the roles of perpetrators, victims, spectators and protectors are featured in the witness narrations. Four questions were posed in the study: Who are portrayed as perpetrators, victims, bystanders and protectors in the various witness narrations? How are these roles expressed in the witness narrations? What differences can be found among the five selected witness narrations from Mardin and Urfa, 1915-1919? What are the explanations of the differences in the witness narrations? The method I have used has been an analysis in which I compare how the different narrations capture the events of 1915-1919. I have used three factors to look at the explanations why there may be differences in the witness narrations. The three factors are nationality, position, and religious affiliation. In the comparison and the results of the witness narrations, I have found that the three factors affect the way the authors write about the events and that these factors help to explain the differences in the witness narrations. These factors are a part of the authors’ respective worldviews. Also, local differences, power constellations, and political factors meant that witness narrations differed.</p>

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare narrations by five witnesses, who has written about atrocities against Christians from 1915 to 1919 in what is today south-eastern Turkey, but what was then the Ottoman Empire. I have focused on how the roles of perpetrators, victims, spectators and protectors are featured in the witness narrations. Four questions were posed in the study: Who are portrayed as perpetrators, victims, bystanders and protectors in the various witness narrations? How are these roles expressed in the witness narrations? What differences can be found among the five selected witness narrations from Mardin and Urfa, 1915-1919? What are the explanations of the differences in the witness narrations? The method I have used has been an analysis in which I compare how the different narrations capture the events of 1915-1919. I have used three factors to look at the explanations why there may be differences in the witness narrations. The three factors are nationality, position, and religious affiliation. In the comparison and the results of the witness narrations, I have found that the three factors affect the way the authors write about the events and that these factors help to explain the differences in the witness narrations. These factors are a part of the authors’ respective worldviews. Also, local differences, power constellations, and political factors meant that witness narrations differed.

Information on the location of mobile nodes in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) has the potential to significantly improve network performance. This thesis uses node location information to develop new techniques for route discovery in on-demand routing protocols such as the Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), thus making an important contribution to enhancing the experience of using mobile networks. A Candidate Neighbours to Rebroadcast the Route Request (CNRR) approach has been proposed to reduce the deleterious impact, known as the broadcast storm, of RREQ packets flooding in traditional on-demand routing protocols. The main concept behind CNRR is specifying a set of neighbours which will rebroadcast the received RREQ. This is a departure from the traditional approach of all receiving nodes rebroadcasting RREQs and has the effect of reducing the problem of redundancy from which mobile networks suffer. The proposed protocol has been developed in two phases: Closest-CNRR and Furthest-CNRR. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms have a significant effect as they reduce the routing overhead of the AODV protocol by up to 28% compared to the C-CNRR, and by up to 17.5% compared to the F-CNRR. Notably, the proposed algorithms simultaneously achieve better throughput and less data dropping. The Link Stability and Energy Aware protocol (LSEA) has been developed to reduce the overhead while increasing network lifetimes. The LSEA helps to control the global dissemination of RREQs in the network by eliminating those nodes that have a residual energy level below a specific threshold value from participation in end-to-end routes. The proposed LSEA protocol significantly increases network lifetimes by up to 19% compared with other on-demand routing protocols while still managing to obtain the same packet delivery ratio and network throughput levels. Furthermore, merging the LSEA and CNRR concepts has the great advantage of reducing the dissemination of RREQs in the network without loss of reachability among the nodes. This increases network lifetimes, reduces the overhead and increases the amount of data sent and received. Accordingly, a Position-based Selective Neighbour (PSN) approach has been proposed which combines the advantages of zoning and link stability. The results show that the proposed technique has notable advantages over both the AODV and MAAODV as it improves delivery ratios by 24.6% and 18.8%, respectively.

Despite decades of effort by molecular systematists, the trees of life of eukaryotic organisms still remain partly unresolved or in conflict with each other. An ever increasing number of fully-sequenced genomes of various eukaryotes allows to consider gene and species phylogenies at genome-scale. However, such phylogenomics-based approaches also revealed that more taxa and more and more gene sequences are not the ultimate solution to fully resolve these conflicts, and that there is a need for sequence-independent phylogenetic meta-characters that are derived from genome sequences. Spliceosomal introns are characteristic features of eukaryotic nuclear genomes. The relatively rare changes of spliceosomal intron positions have already been used as genome-level markers, both for the estimation of intron evolution and phylogenies, however with variable success. In this thesis, a specific subset of these changes is introduced and established as a novel phylogenetic marker, termed near intron pair (NIP). These characters are inferred from homologous genes that contain mutually-exclusive intron presences at pairs of coding sequence (CDS) positions in close proximity. The idea that NIPs are powerful characters is based on the assumption that both very small exons and multiple intron gains at the same position are rare. To obtain sufficient numbers of NIP character data from genomic and alignment data sets in a consistent and flexible way, the implementation of a computational pipeline was a main goal of this work. Starting from orthologous (or more general: homologous) gene datasets comprising genomic sequences and corresponding CDS transcript annotations, the multiple alignment generation is an integral part of this pipeline. The alignment can be calculated at the amino acid level utilizing external tools (e.g. transAlign) and results in a codon alignment via back-translation. Guided by the multiple alignment, the positionally homologous intron positions should become apparent when mapped individually for each transcript. The pipeline proceeds at this stage to output portions of the intron-annotated alignment that contain at least one candidate of a NIP character. In a subsequent pipeline script, these collected so-called NIP region files are finally converted to binary state characters representing valid NIPs in dependence of quality filter constraints concerning, e.g., the amino acid alignment conservation around intron loci and splice sites, to name a few. The computational pipeline tools provide the researcher to elaborate on NIP character matrices that can be used for tree inference, e.g., using the maximum parsimony approach. In a first NIP-based application, the phylogenetic position of major orders of holometabolic insects (more specifically: the Coleoptera-Hymenoptera-Mecopterida trifurcation) was evaluated in a cladistic sense. As already suggested during a study on the eIF2gamma gene based on two NIP cases (Krauss et al. 2005), the genome-scale evaluation supported Hymenoptera as sister group to an assemblage of Coleoptera and Mecopterida, in agreement with other studies, but contradicting the previously established view. As part of the genome paper describing a new species of twisted-wing parasites (Strepsiptera), the NIP method was employed to help to resolve the phylogenetic position of them within (holometabolic) insects. Together with analyses of sequence patterns and a further meta-character, it revealed twisted-wing parasites as being the closest relatives of the mega-diverse beetles. NIP-based reconstructions of the metazoan tree covering a broad selection of representative animal species also identified some weaknesses of the NIP approach that may suffer e.g. from alignment/ortholog prediction artifacts (depending on the depth of range of taxa) and systematic biases (long branch attraction artifacts, due to unequal evolutionary rates of intron gain/loss and the use of the maximum parsimony method). In a further study, the identification of NIPs within the recently diverged genus Drosophila could be utilized to characterize recent intron gain events that apparently involved several cases of intron sliding and tandem exon duplication, albeit the mechanisms of gain for the majority of cases could not be elucidated. Finally, the NIP marker could be established as a novel phylogenetic marker, in particular dedicated to complementarily explore the wealth of genome data for phylogenetic purposes and to address open questions of intron evolution.

The GIS Industry has digitised cadastre from the best available paper maps over the last few decades, incorporating the inherent errors in those paper maps and in the digitising process. The advent of Global Positioning Systems, modern surveying instruments and advances in the computing industry has made it desirable and affordable to upgrade the placement, in terms of absolute and relative position) of these digital cadastres. The Utility Industry has used GIS software to place their assets relative to these digital cadastres, and are now finding their assets placed incorrectly when viewed against these upgraded digital cadastres. This thesis examines the processes developed in the software program called the ???Spatial Adjustment Engine???, and documents a holistic approach to semi-automating the upgrading of the digital cadastre and the subsequent upgrading of the utility assets. This thesis also documents the various pilot projects undertaken during the development of the Spatial Adjustment Engine, the topological scenarios found in each pilot, their solution, and provides a framework of definitions needed to explore this field further. The results of each pilot project are given in context, and lead to the conclusions. The conclusions indicate the processes and procedures implemented in the Spatial Adjustment Engine are a suitable mechanism for the upgrade of digital cadastre and of spatially dependant themes such as utility assets, zoning themes, annotation layers, and some road centreline themes.

The aim of this paper is to find an algorithm to establish and maintain a virtual enclosure around a mobile unit. The area may take any form and should be scalable up to and including national borders. The enclosure is managed on the mobile unit. The target system is Android. Smartphones, tablets and more recently, cameras is examples of mobile units. A modern mobile unit is part of a computer network. It is designed to be connected all the time. A mobile unit have the capability to handle large volumes of data, data that might be both sensitive and possess an economic value. Management of mobile units is vital to protect the data and insure security for the entire network. A mobile unit is a resource in the network. Each resource is defined by a set of parameters. One parameter that make a mobile unit special is the lack of physical boundaries to world. Typically, the first step in security is access control to resources. Therefore, the lack of physical access control has to be replaced by other means such as tracking the location of the mobile unit. In this paper I have studied the possibility of creating a virtual fence around the mobile unit. The mobile unit is free to move within the area enclosed by the virtual fence. The mobile unit alert all concerned parties if it crossed the fence and thus leave the enclosed area. The aim was to find a practical algorithm to establish and maintain a virtual fence around the mobile device. A grid-based algorithm was selected because it can handle small to very large areas. All data are collected in a table which makes the algorithm fast, regardless the size of the area. A grid enables management of multiple enclosures and relationships between them. Deeper analysis revealed that the mobile device is not able to position sufficiently often and accurately for the grid-based algorithm to handle small areas. A complementary method is needed for minimizing the need for positioning. To manage properties, such as geographical information, the selected algorithm is deemed to be well suited. / Telefon: 0734 097 404 Skype: di98jgu