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This thesis is devoted to the keyboard concerto in the second half of the 18th century. The main focus is Johann Baptist Vanhal and selection of his keyboard concertos, the analysis should clarify the position in contemporary production. Comparative context consists of works by four composers - G. Ch. Wagenseil, J. G. Lang, J. S. Schröter and L. Kozeluh. The work includes an introduction to the methodological problems of concerto form and theoretical reflection of period opinion on the issue of the concert.

The research aims to combine various quantity models to set up a working platform that can apply to the wealth management business, including the analysis of product¡¦s return, reflection of investors' idiosyncrasy and construction of investment portfolio, building a succession of procedure hope to become the standard of the work. Regarding constructing the model, the style analysis, Black-Litterman Model and risk budget three quantitative method were adopted for three major pillars of wealth management factor model to disassemble the return of funds, allocate the assets and optimize manager structure. The materials range is from 2003 to 2007, use style analysis to disassemble the return of 115 funds that sell in Taiwan into 14 index. Incorporate investor's expectancy of market performance and suggest the assets allocation by Black-Litterman model. Join 14 index funds and 14 enhance index funds, carry on the disposition of the optimizing manager structures with the risk budget to determine the suggested fund portfolio finally. By selecting the funds with best total return in the past year forms the contrasting portfolio to compare the investment style of portfolio and characteristic of return with the models. Finding in the experience, contrasting portfolio is superior to suggested portfolio in active return only, both portfolios are similar in total return. In further consideration of the trade-off effect of return and risk in both portfolios, the suggested portfolio of the model is better than the contrasting portfolio either in IR or in Sharpe Ratio. In addition, if investors choose funds on the basis of total return, it may cause the style of whole portfolio too centralized throw the total risk in high level.

The purpose of this study was to explore leadership effectiveness from the perspectives of the Full Range Leadership Model and Cognitive Style Theory within the framework of understanding both followers and leaders as individual's attitudes to leadership effectiveness. Leadership effectiveness was measured using newly developed self-report instrument, the Leadership Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ) with three scales of effectiveness as suggested by Yukl (2002), which were: 1) aims, 2) followers' attitude towards the leader and, 3) group processes. The Full Range leadership approaches were measured using Bass & Avolio's (1997) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Form 5X-Short, whilst cognitive style was gathered by using Allinson & Hayes's (1996) Cognitive Style Index (CSI). A two stage (questionnaire survey followed by semi structured interviews) mixed method study was undertaken. Questionnaire data was gathered from 331 followers and 172 leaders in Malaysian Government-Linked Companies, and 10 leaders involved in the interviews. Findings from the survey suggest that a transformational approach was correlated significantly and positively with effectiveness. Intuitive Cognitive Style also correlated significantly with leadership effectiveness. Findings from the semistructured interviews identified a few more characteristics of an effective leadership such as balance and appreciative, whilst new dimensions of cognitive style identified such as rational and holistic.

This essay has examined the children’s book author Sven Nordqvist’s use of rhetorical visual stylistic figures in four of his books: Var är min syster?, Hattjakten, Pannkakstårtan and Minus och stora världen. The main focus of the essay has been investigating aspects of his visual style that may have contributed to his great success. Some of the stylistic figures that we looked into are metaphor, synecdoche and paradox. The analysis has showed that the stylistic figures reinforce and invigorate the pictures as they are creating a fruitful visual reading experience for the readers. The results indicate that the rhetoric of Nordqvist’s visual stylistic figures probably has much to do with his success, being valuable sources of imaginative reading.

By means of return-based style analysis (RBSA), heterogeneous style sub-categories were identified within the TARR category of the South African unit trust market to create a framework for sub-categorisation. The study dealt with TARR funds and their place within the investment universe. The literature review emphasised the importance of asset allocation, which supports the use of RBSA to identify asset allocation. The literature review further provided a motivation for the semi-strong form of RBSA applied to the sample data. In the study, RBSA was applied to two groups within the sample data, namely funds that have data points for the full measurement period (Group 1) and funds that have less than 75 data points (Group 2). A four-phase process was applied to the sample data. The findings suggest the following:<ul><li> in general, return-based style analysis applied to each fund identifies the asset allocation for the fund and is valid; but it is emphasised that for specific periods, the explanatory power of the regression model may become questionable; </li><li> the collective results of return-based style analysis applied to the funds can be used to create a framework for sub-categorisation. The framework proposed was the result of nine out of a potential 54 funds. The explanatory power of the regression results was less questionable. The proposed framework was applied to the remaining 45 funds (Group 2), but there were indeed inconsistencies in the application; </li><li> the framework created did not raise any concerns as a result of the Group 1 analysis. However, it was questionable when applied to the Group 2 funds in its entirety; </li><li> sub-categorisation based on only the allocation to the domestic short-term asset class was definitely a criterion that was true irrelevant of which sample group it was applied to. </li></ul> / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Financial Management / unrestricted

There has been much debate among investors on the benefits cryptocurrencies can have for portfolios and how their prices moves in the market. It is not difficult to see that cryptocurrencies are very volatile, yet that does not prevent investors from pouring tons of money in crypto-investments that either generate huge returns or catastrophic losses. One of the main challenges with is cryptocurrenciesis determining how they move with the rest of the market with assets such as stocks. The objective of this thesis was to investigate whether or not crypto provides some diversification benefit and if individual cryptocurrencies move in the same manner with respect to eachother. Of special interest was if there is a relationship between the cryptocurrency market and the stock market. The cryptocurrencies chosen for this project were compared mostly to the stocks in the, very information technology-sector focused, Nasdaq 100 index along with a few other assets. This thesis was written in cooperation with Origin Group AB, an Umeå based startup firm specializing in development of cryptocurrency-related technologies, most notably blockchain. All data used comes from publicly available sources and mostly include prices for cryptocurrencies and stocks from which the daily and weekly returns were calculated. The main methods used for this thesis was four different portfolio strategies with different combinations of assets, Style analysis, and principal component analysis. The portfolio strategies showed some promise with varying tradeoffs between diversification and Sharpe-ratio but the results are a bit questionable due to the short investment period. The principal component analysis showed that the cryptocurrency price data is very noise and the currencies moves pretty much in unison in contrast to the industry sector divided Nasdaq 100, which seem to have a few more distinct directions of movement. The Style-analysis’ inconclusive results show signs of a very noisy dataset and that there may not be a clear linear relationship between conventional asset returns and those of crypto.

Research on creativity examines both the processes and products of creativity. An important avenue for analyzing creativity is by means of spontaneous improvisation, although there are major challenges to characterizing the output of improvisation due to the variable nature of the products. In the case of musical improvisation, structural approaches have used methodologies like musical transcription to look for recurring or variable musical features across a corpus of improvisations, while creativity-centered approaches have had experts make ratings of the novelty of the improvisations. One important concept missing from many analyses of improvisation is the idea that the products of a corpus can be organized into a series of “style types”, where each type differs from others in certain key structural features. Clustering methods provide a reliable quantitative means of examining the organization of style types within a diverse corpus of improvisations. In order to look at the potential of such methods, we examined a corpus of 72 vocal melodic improvisations produced by novice improvisers. We first classified the melodies acoustically using a multidimensional musical-classification scheme called CantoCore, which coded the melodies for 19 distinct features of musical structure. We next employed the simultaneous use of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and k-means cluster analysis with the data, and obtained three relatively discrete clusters of improvisations. Stylistic analysis of these clusters revealed that they differed in key features related to phrase structure and rhythm. Cluster analyses provide a promising means of describing and analyzing the products of creativity, including variable structures like spontaneous improvisations. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)