Skuggor i 3D-miljöer är ett mycket efterforskat område, och detta arbete koncentrerar sig på shadow map-algoritmen. Det finns ett problem med denna algoritm, för då en shadow map projiceras på en yta som är större än sig själv så bildas stora trappstegseffekter, vilket kallas aliasing. Problemet som har undersökts är hur olika shadow map-algoritmer i en miljö med långa skuggor beter sig, där ett minimerat antal artefakter så som brus och aliasing är synligt. För detta undersöktes Percentage-Closer Filtering (PCF), som är en variant av shadow map, med olika samplingstekniker – och även en vidarebyggnad med Percentage-Closer Soft Shadow (PCSS) implementerades. Mätningar av realism och brusmängd genomfördes med en användarstudie. Prestandan mättes i klockcykler. Resultatet visade att PCF med samplingstekniken Edge Tap Smoothing kan vara den algoritm som lämpar sig bäst i situationer med långa skuggor i en 3D-miljö; detta för att den interpolerar mellan de projicerade texlarna.

Purpose: The purpose is to investigate the size of the shadow economy within the EU, by studying undeclared work, bribery and tax evasion in 28 Member States in 2013, and answer the question how to better combat shadow economy. Research design: The study is a quantitative research as it uses data from existing surveys and a report. The collected data is analyzed by multiplying the number of respondents with the percentage of the issue in each Member State. Calculating all three issues for 28 Member States presents the size of the shadow economy in the EU in 2013. Findings: Research has found that shadow economy is present within the EU. The study shows that the size of shadow economy in 2013 is 17,6 %. Amongst the three issues, tax evasion was more extensive than the other two issues. Besides regulation, there are other considerable factors that contribute to the gap in the shadow economy. The findings show that EU has taken measures to combat these issues. However, the study finds other measures to be needed to combat shadow economy. Contribution: This study contributes to the research of shadow economy within the EU by focusing on three issues: undeclared work, bribery and tax evasion. The study is supposed to raise awareness to not neglect the issues but rather combat them in a cross-border effort as shadow economy is not only affecting each Member States at national level but also at EU-level.

This thesis deals with the measurement of tax evasion. The first part deals with the theory of tax evasion, its general, legislative and economic definition and its consequences. A special subsection is devoted to relation of the tax evasion and the shadow economy. The second part deals with the theory of tax evasion measurement and the last chapter focuses on shadow economy volume measurement and tax evasion measurement in the Czech Republic.

Both the ECB and the Fed implemented various unconventional measures in response to the last crisis. While the ECB's policies were based on direct lending to banks, the FED adopted large-scale asset purchases. According to the empirical evidence these policies had economically beneficial effects in the US and the Eurozone but these measures have also certain spillovers which scope and exact impacts are quite difficult to estimate. There have been already many papers focusing on cross-border impacts of the FED's policies, but far less studied the spillovers of the ECB's policies. This work provides a theoretical background concerning the unconventional monetary policies implemented by the ECB and the FED after 2008 and analyse the impacts of ECB's policies on six particular countries outside euro area. The Impulse Responses of output, inflation, domestic interest rate and exchange rate are analyzed via block-restricted VAR model. My results confirm that euro area monetary policy does have an impact on non-euro area countries, although the response of macroeconomic variables in analysed countries are heterogeneous and also differ in the period before and after September 2008. Countries seem to be indeed affected more by conventional monetary policies until September 2008, but the euro-area monetary policy spills over via unconventional policies after September 2008. Overall, the ECB's policies affect economic activity outside euro area, but does not have significant impact on inflation. Furthermore, the exchange rate just initially drops in response to monetary tightening, but this reaction usually does not last for more than four months.

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Shadow banking in the view of legal regulation Abstract This diploma thesis deals with shadow banking in the view of legal regulation focusing on the Czech territory. Although the shadow banking sector amounts almost to the same extent as the traditional banking, its legal regulation is barely discussed in the Czech Republic. So this work aims at stimulation of that kind of debate. Shadow banking contributes to more effective redistribution of the financial means between investors and debtors. Nevertheless, due to its nature it involves significant systemic risks, which played a crucial role during the spread of the mortgage crisis in 2007-08. Therefore this area has to be regulated. In the first part the thesis explains the term shadow banking including the entities and activities, which are able to be classified within this sector, and the risks, which it carries. In the second part the work deals with the current legal regulation of this area and points to the advantages and the deficiencies. Finally, in the third part it provides with the proposals regarding the deficiencies. Particularly the thesis proceeds from study and research of the documents published by the supervision bodies of the financial stability area and from the applicable provisions relevant to the shadow banking. Concerning this I am...

Organisationer möter nya utmaningar då IT möjliggör för delning av information att ske i stora mängder och i hög hastighet. De alltmer utsuddade gränserna mellan privatliv och arbetsliv leder till att privat teknik används för arbetsrelaterade syften, så kallad shadow IT [SIT]. För att anskaffa sig konkurrensfördelar ställs krav på organisationer att hantera informationsteknologier, men också en av de största tillgångarna organisationer besitter: medarbetarnas kunskap. Denna uppsats ämnar till att undersöka relationen mellan shadow IT och tyst kunskap. SECI-modellen som innehåller konverteringar mellan tyst och explicit kunskap har använts som ett verktyg för att undersöka kunskapsdimensioner (socialisering, internalisering, kombination och externalisering) och hur dessa förhåller sig till SIT. Inom ramen för denna kvalitativa studie har 7 intervjuer genomförts, varav 3 telefonintervjuer och 4 besöksintervjuer. Resultatet visar att kunskapkonverteringarna residerar i olika informationstyper, där indikationer visar att shadow it [SIT] är kopplat till tyst kunskap och target IT [TIT] är kopplat till explicit kunskap. SIT spelar en stor roll i socialiseringsprocessen på grund av teknikens förmåga att bygga relationer som kan ligga till grund för delningen av tyst kunskap. SIT utgör vidare en plattform för internalisering genom att skapa ett forum för att skapa och dela arbetsmaterial på ett informellt sätt. Utan SIT finns det en risk att delningen av tyst kunskap inte skulle ske i samma utsträckning, vilket är något organisationer måste ta i beaktning. I och med SITs inbyggda ‘sense of urgency’-design kan kunskapskonverteringar även ske i en hög hastighet då medarbetarna behandlar förfrågningar mer brådskande. / Organizations face new challenges as IT enables information sharing in large quantities and at a high speed. The increasingly blurred boundaries between private and working life lead to usage of private technology for work-related purposes, so called shadow IT [SIT]. In order to gain competitive advantages organizations must manage its information technologies, but also one of the largest assets an organization possess: the knowledge that resides within their employees. This paper aims to explore the relationship between shadow IT and tacit knowledge. The SECI-model that contains conversions between tacit and explicit knowledge has been used as a tool for exploring knowledge dimensions (socialization, internalization, combination and externalization) and how these relate to SIT. Within the framework of this qualitative study, 7 interviews have been conducted, of which 3 telephone interviews and 4 visit interviews. The result shows that the knowledge conversation resides in various information concepts, where indications show that shadow IT [SIT] is linked to tacit knowledge and target IT [TIT] is linked to explicit knowledge. SIT plays a major role in the socialization process due to its ability to build relationships that can form the basis for tacit knowledge sharing. SIT further provides a platform for internalizing by creating a forum for creating and sharing work materials in a informative manner. Without SIT, the sharing of tacit knowledge might not happen to the same extent, which is something organization must take into consideration. Due to the build-in ‘sense of urgency’-design in SIT, knowledge conversions can also happen at a high rate since employees process request more urgently.

Without light, there can be no shadows.  Architectural decisions can be structured in such a way as to filter, manipulate, or diffuse light to create an array of conditions in which both light and shadow become part of the architecture itself.  Light and shadow create spaces within a place, or a place inside of a space.  They can define, emphasize, and disguise. / Master of Architecture

Interactively simulating visual appearance of natural objects under natural illumination is a fundamental problem in computer graphics. 3D computer games, geometry modeling, training and simulation, electronic commerce, visualization, lighting design, digital libraries, geographical information systems, economic and medical image processing are typical candidate applications. Recent advances in graphics hardware have enabled real-time rasterization of complex scenes under artificial lighting environment. Meanwhile, pre-computation based soft shadow algorithms are proven effective under low-frequency lighting environment. Under the most practical yet popular all-frequency natural lighting environment, however, real-time rendering of dynamic scenes still remains a challenging problem. In this dissertation, we propose a systematic approach to render dynamic glossy objects under the general all-frequency lighting environment. In our framework, lighting integration is reduced to two rather basic mathematical operations, efficiently computing multi-function product and product integral. The main contribution of our work is a novel mathematical representation and analysis of multi-function product and product integral in the wavelet domain. We show that, multi-function product integral in the primal is equivalent to summation of the product of basis coefficients and integral coefficients. In the dissertation, we give a novel Generalized Haar Integral Coefficient Theorem. We also present a set of efficient algorithms to compute multi-function product and product integral. In the dissertation, we demonstrate practical applications of these algorithms in the interactive rendering of dynamic glossy objects under distant time-variant all-frequency environment lighting with arbitrary view conditions. At each vertex, the shading integral is formulated as the product integral of multiple operand functions. By approximating operand functions in the wavelet domain, we demonstrate rendering dynamic glossy scenes interactively, which is orders of magnitude faster than previous work. As an important enhancement to the popular Pre-computation Based Radiance Transfer (PRT) approach, we present a novel Just-in-time Radiance Transfer (JRT) technique, and demonstrate its application in real-time realistic rendering of dynamic all-frequency shadows under general lighting environment. Our work is a significant step towards real-time rendering of arbitrary scenes under general lighting environment. It is also of great importance to general numerical analysis and signal processing.

The shadow economy is a topic that has been around for many years now. The increasing regulations on cash and the endeavours public authorities made to enlarge the tax base show a clear intention from the public sector to pursue any activity that is carried out outside the borders of what is taxable. This paper uses the Currency Demand Approach (CDA) to estimate the monetary base M0 for Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain and for each year from 2002 to 2021 and, subsequently, calculate the size of the shadow economy as a percentage of GDP. To estimate the CDA equation, we employed fixed effects panel data regression. The results show an average shadow economy value of 9,33% for Greece; 13,43% for Italy; 10,78% for Portugal; and 11,11% for Spain. The results have also been compared with those of previous studies that have estimated the shadow economy of other countries using the MIMIC approach, showing that the CDA tends to give lower estimates. Additionally, a common trend was found for the studied countries since after the financial crisis of 2008 and 2014, all of them reached peak values in their shadow economies.