The basic idea of the diploma thesis is to analyze the functionality of alliances in the global economic environment. Thesis specializes on the particular type of alliance - airline alliance. It is structurally divided into three separated chapters. The first chapter follows the basic determinants of the alliances functioning, their structure, composition and typology. Its aim is to explain the most important factors necessary for understanding the main meaning of the chapters. It focuses on the main advantages and disadvantages of the companies involved in alliances. The second chapter focuses on the implementation of alliances in airline industry. It monitors their historical development, legislative and regulatory environment in which the alliances were established and exist. It focuses on mapping the European and American area. The third chapter compares advantages and disadvantages of large and small members of Star Alliance within the European, American and Asian market. It compares them on the level of regional comparison, and then based on comparative fundamental and technical analyses.

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Gérard Philipe est le seul acteur de sa génération, celle émergée à la Libération, à avoir acquis le rang de star. L'objectif de cette thèse est de comprendre l'ampleur du phénomène, comment et pourquoi, lui et pas les autres acteurs. En me référant au contexte de l'époque et inspirée par l'Histoire culturelle et les star studies, je propose l'analyse de sa persona cinématographique, sa construction médiatique, son image d'homme à la ville. Par la suite, j'émets donc l'hypothèse que Gérard Philipe est devenu une star car il a offert une figure nouvelle de masculinité juvénile et engagée, en opposition avec les normes genrées dominantes dans la société et le star-système en France. / After World War II, Gerard Philipe is the only actor of the young generation emerged after the war to become a star. The aim of this thesis is to understand why and how the process took place. Exploring the historic context and inspired by «Histoire culturelle» and the star studies, I try to examine his cinematographic persona, his representation in media, the image of the man in the city. I submit the hypothesis that Gerard Philipe became a star because he offered a figure of young manliness opposed to dominant gender standards in French society and star system.

This thesis researches the problems concerning the specification and implementation of the temporal requirements in data warehouses. The thesis focuses on two areas, firstly, the methods for identifying and capturing the business information needs and associated temporal requirements at the conceptual level and; secondly, methods for classifying and implementing the requirements at the logical level using the relational model. At the conceptual level, eight candidate methodologies were investigated to examine their suitability for the creation of data models that are appropriate for a data warehouse. The methods were evaluated to assess their representation of time, their ability to reflect the dimensional nature of data warehouse models and their simplicity of use. The research found that none of the methods under review fully satisfied the criteria. At the logical level, the research concluded that the methods widely used in current practice result in data structures that are either incapable of answering some very basic questions involving history or that return inaccurate results. Specific proposals are made in three areas. Firstly, a new conceptual model is described that is designed to capture the information requirements for dimensional models and has full support for time. Secondly, a new approach at the logical level is proposed. It provides the data structures that enable the requirements captured in the conceptual model to be implemented, thus enabling the historical questions to be answered simply and accurately. Thirdly, a set of rules is developed to help minimise the inaccuracy caused by time. A guide has been produced that provides practitioners with the tools and instructions on how to implement data warehouses using the methods developed in the thesis.

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Thesis (Sc.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND AERO. / Vita. / Bibliography: p. 232-237. / by W. Michael Bowles. / Sc.D.

The focus of this thesis is the study of stellar populations of extra-galactic glob- ular clusters (GCs) by measuring spectral indices and comparing them to simple stellar population models. We present the study of GCs in the context of tracing elliptical galaxy star formation, chemical enrichment and mass assembly. In this thesis we set out to test how can be determined about a galaxy's formation history by studying the spectra of a small sample of GCs. Are the stellar population parameters of the GCs strongly linked with the formation history of the host galaxy? We present spectra and Lick index measurements for GCs associated with 3 el- liptical galaxies, NGC 1052, NGC 3379 and NGC 4649. We derive ages, metallicities and a-element abundance ratios for these GCs using the x2 minimisation approach of Proctor & Sansom (2002). The metallicities we derive are quite consistent, for old GCs, with those derived by empirical calibrations such as Brodie & Huchra (1990) and Strader & Brodie (2004). For each galaxy the GCs observed span a large range in metallicity from approximately [Z/H]=�2 to solar. We find that the majority of GCs are more than 10 Gyrs old and that we can- not distinguish any finer, age details amongst the old GC populations. However, amongst our three samples we find two age distributions contrary to our expecta- tions. From our sample of 16 GCs associated with the 1-2 Gyr old merger remnant NGC 1052, we find no young GCs. If a significant population of GCs formed during this merger we would expect those GCs to have low mass-to-light ratios and be included in our sample of bright GCs. We find 4 young GCs in our sample of 38 around NGC 4649, an old massive cluster elliptical. There are no signs of recent star formation and therefore we do not expect any GCs to have formed within the galaxy. These results seem to indicate that the GC systems of elliptical galaxies are not strongly associated with recent field star formation. We find a correlation between the α-element abundance ratio and the metallicity for all three samples. Using Thomas, Maraston & Korn (2004) models, we measure much higher α abundance ratios for low metallicity GCs than high metallicity GCs. With current data and models we are limited in both the accuracy and the detail with which we can probe this relationship. We suggest that there are some difficulties reconciling measured GC parameters with our expectations and propose some future work which could help to resolve these and other issues.

We give a construction of an eigenstate for a non-critical level of the Hamiltonian function, and investigate the contribution of Morse critical points to the spectral decomposition. We compare the rigorous result with the series obtained by a perturbation theory. As an example the relation to the spectral asymptotics is discussed.

In the standard theory of pulsar spin-up, a neutron star (NS) in a binary system accretes matter from its companion star; this serves to transfer angular momentum to the NS, increasing the spin frequency of the pulsar. Measurement of the orbital parameters and system geometry, and in particular the final system masses, thus provide important constraints for theories regarding binary evolution. We present results from an investigation of three binary pulsar systems. PSR J1802-2124 is in an intermediate-mass pulsar binary system with a massive white dwarf companion in a compact orbit with a period of 16.8 hours. We have per-formed timing analysis on almost five years of data in order to determine the amount of Shapiro delay experienced by the incoming pulsar signal as it traverses the potential well of the companion star on its way to Earth. We find the pulsar in this system to have a relatively low mass at 1.24 ± 0.11 M®, and the companion mass to be 0.79 ± 0.04111.).We argue that the full set of system properties indicates that the system underwent a common-envelope phase in its evolutionary history. The double pulsar system PSR 0737-3039A/B is a highly relativistic double neutron star (DNS) binary, with a 2.4-hour orbital period. The low mass of the second-formed NS, as well the low system eccentricity and proper motion, have suggested a different evolutionary scenario compared to other known DNS systems. We describe analysis of the pulse profile shape over six years of observations, and present the constraints this provides on the system geometry. We find the recycled pulsar in this system, PSR 0737-3039A,to have a low misalignment angle between its spin and orbital angular momentum axes, with a 95.4% upper limit of 14 °, assuming emission from both magnetic poles. This tight constraint lends credence to the idea that the supernova that formed the second pulsar was relatively symmetric, possibly involving electron captures onto an 0-Ne-Mg core. We have also conducted timing analysis of PSR J1756-2251 using four years of data, and have obtained tight constraints on the component masses and orbital parameters in this DNS system. We have measured four post-Keplerian timing parameters for this pulsar; the Shapiro delay s parameter, with a 5% measured uncertainty, is consistent at just above the la level with the predictions of general relativity. The pulsar in this system has a fairly typical NS mass of 1.312 ± O.017M®, and the companion NS to be relatively light, with a mass of 1.2581017 Mo. This, together with the somewhat low orbital eccentricity of this system (e 0.18), suggests a similar evolution to that of the double pulsar. We investigate this further, through a similar pulse profile analysis to that performed with PSR J0737-3039A, with the goal of constraining the geometry of this system.

Elevated circulating Ang II activates neurons in the forebrain cardiovascular regulatory areas to cause sympatho-excitation and hypertension. We hypothesized that circulating Ang II causes neuronal activation in the SFO and thereby activates efferent pathways to the PVN, and chronically causes activation of aldosterone production in magnocellular neurons in PVN and SON, which amplifies neuronal activation in the PVN and central sympatho-excitatory pathways. The aim of the present study was to determine the pattern of neuronal activation in forebrain nuclei by circulating Ang II and to elucidate where in the hypothalamus Ang II may stimulate aldosterone biosynthesis. Dose related effects of circulating Ang II on BP were first assessed. Wistar rats instrumented with telemetry probes were infused subcutaneously with Ang II 150 and 500 ng/kg/min for 14 days. The subcutaneous infusion of Ang II at 150 ng/kg/min increased blood pressure gradually up to 20 mmHg and at 500 ng/kg/min up to 60 mmHg. Ang II at 500 ng/kg/min increased plasma Ang II by 4-fold. To assess effects of circulating Ang II on CNS pathways, Wistar rats were implanted subcutaneously with minipumps infusing 150 and 500 ng/kg/min Ang II for 1, 4 and 14 days. Three patterns of neuronal activation were observed by sc infusion of Ang II. The SFO was activated during the first day and remained activated for 4 days, but at 14 days showed diminished activation. MnPO did not show significant activation during the first day but, after several days the activation was high and then less by 14 days. Parvocellular PVN (pPVN), magnocellular PVN (mPVN) and SON showed an initial activation that increased over time. Chronic intracerebroventricular infusion of an aldosterone synthase inhibitor or a mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) blocker attenuated the increase in Fra expression in PVN but not SON, and prevented the decrease in SFO after 14 days infusion of Ang II. A significant increase in mRNA expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR), a rate limiting enzyme in aldosterone production was found in glia cells of PVN and SFO assessed by rt-PCR after 3 days subcutaneous infusion of Ang II at 500 ng/kg/min. Total expression of aldosterone synthase (CYP11B2) mRNA was increased in SFO, MnPO, SON and PVN after 3 days of infusion of Ang II. After 14 days no significant changes were observed in the expression of StAR or CYP11B2 mRNA. In comparison, in adrenal StAR mRNA expression increased after 3 days but no longer after 14 days. In contrast, CYP11B2 mRNA expression in adrenal increased after both 3 and 14 days of infusion. These findings may support our hypothesis that chronic elevation of circulating Ang II increases neuronal activity in CVOs, presumably leading to activation of the PVN and SON to induce an increase in aldosterone production in magnocelular PVN and SON. In the second phase activation of CVOs appears to diminish, but an aldosterone-dependent amplifying mechanisms, causes sustained activation of the PVN and thereby hypertension.

Heavy quarkonium production is not fully understood, but often described by two different models, the Color Singlet Model (CSM), and the Color Octet Model (COM). Previous measurements at the Tevatron collider by the CDF and D0 experiments are not fully in agreement with predicted observables from either model. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC (STAR) is well suited to further explore heavy quarkonium production. The Heavy Flavor program in STAR encompasses various heavy-flavor analyses, taking advantage of its large solid-angle acceptance, including measurements that explore the properties of heavy quarkonium production using J/ψ and Upsilon (Υ) reconstructions via the di-electron channel, in p+p, d+Au, Cu+Cu, and Au+Au collision systems. This thesis presents results of reconstructed Upsilon (Υ) to study the Upsilon(nS) [n = 1, 2, 3] line- shape and measurements of the production-related observables of spin-alignment (‘polarization’) and Upsilon + hadron correlations (Υ + h) to investigate the Upsilon production mechanism, using triggered data from Run-8 (2008) d+Au and Run-9 (2009) p+p collisions at sqrt(sN N) = 200 GeV, detected at STAR. The result of the spin-alignment measurement is α = 1 ± 0.3 with χ^2 /n.d.f. = 18.71/7 indicating a large (transverse) polarization. The measurement of hadronic activity near the vicinity of an Upsilon, within current uncertainties, is in reasonable agreement with both CSM and COM predictions from PYTHIA, but slightly favors the COM prediction for the near-side Υ + h correlation.