In an effort to bolster Old Town Alexandria Virginia's burgeoning reputation as a mecca for the arts, I chose to design a dance center, set in what is currently a large parking lot adjacent to King Street's terminus at the Potomac River. Given the importance of movement to my site, especially in terms of pedestrians and the Potomac River, a dance center is a fitting building type. To aid in crafting a cohesive building that spoke to both the demands of the site and the programmatic needs of a dance center, I looked to movement as the answer to all design quandaries: movement as thesis. I developed a stepped parti- a concept informed by strategies to invite, accommodate, and glorify movement. All elements of the building reinforce this parti to create a holistic building. The building follows the ascension of a primary staircase, and is supported by a multitude of columns, simultaneously reminiscent of a corps de ballet and an enchanted forest, both staples in the classical story ballet. / Master of Architecture

This paper examines the informational role a Property & Casualty (P&C) insurers’ loss accrual (an estimate of expected losses) provides in a merger. This accrual is the largest liability for an insurer and an accurate evaluation of this liability is important in valuing a merger. Our focus is on one specific aspect of the loss accrual. This is the loss accrual’s transparency (or how easy is it to be modeled) and used in a valuation exercise. We propose a two-stage methodology to examine how transparency affects the valuation of acquirers in mergers. In the first stage, we use an event study to measure the acquirer’s cumulative abnormal stock return following the merger announcement. This is a measure of how the market values the transaction.  In the second stage, we then investigate whether, and to what extent, the merger parties’ loss accrual transparencies are related to the market’s valuation of the acquirer. / Business Administration/Accounting

Yes / Purpose – Drawing on signalling theory and focusing on independent restaurants, this research investigates how business signals (transparency information and exposure) affect business transparency, food authenticity, and ultimately purchase intentions. Design/methodology/approach – Using a 2x2 between-subject experimental design, Study 1 examines the recipe and an internet-famous restaurant, and Study 2 assesses the food supply chain and a celebrity-owned restaurant. Analysis of covariance and PROCESS is used to analyse the data. Findings – The results suggest that while revealing information on recipes and food supply chains positively affects business transparency, exposure has no significant impact. Additionally, secret recipes and revealed food supply chains contribute to higher food authenticity whilst being a celebrity owner or internet-famous restaurant negatively affects food authenticity. Research implications – Restaurant managers must be strategic and selective about the kinds of business signals they wish to reveal to customers. Secret recipes lead to higher food authenticity; whereas the revealed recipes and revealed food supply chains elicit higher business transparency. Independent restaurants should not rely on celebrity owners or seek internet fame, as neither type of exposure contributes to transparency or authenticity. Originality – This study advances the theoretical understanding of signalling theory relating to the determinants of transparency and food authenticity in a hospitality context. Contrary to previous studies, it reveals that exposure, as a transparency signal, has no impact on either business transparency or food authenticity. It extends knowledge and understanding of different types of independent restaurants, especially internet-famous restaurants.

This dissertation studies the effect of a transparency reform on legislators' behavior. In order to specify how and why the transparency reform would have an impact, it builds a theoretical framework based on a theory of legislative behavior. The expectations are tested against the behavior of the Chilean Lower House legislators before and after a transparency reform. The theoretical expectations derive from a theory of legislative behavior based on reelection-oriented legislators organized in parties. This theoretical framework has two central features. First, position avoidance is taken explicitly into account. Second, from previous work on comparative representation, legislators may establish programmatic and non-programmatic linkages with their constituencies. In line with the literature, legislators who follow a programmatic linkage strategy are expected to adopt positions closer to their electoral constituency. Furthermore, as legislators build such positions from their roll call, I expect that legislators, when cross pressured between their party and their constituency, will be more likely to side with their constituency. I argue that cross-pressured legislators may also avoid taking a position, as it does not influence observed party unity and does not imply voting against the constituency. Thus, reliance on position avoidance introduces a wedge between the public position taken by legislators and their effective position which has not been previously studied. I tested my hypotheses with observational data of the behavior of the Chilean Lower House members as a transparency reform took place in 2004, halfway through the legislative term. The case provides additional advantages to empirical assessment of my hypotheses, as legislators are allowed to abstain during any vote, and this option is recorded. The results provide evidence of the complex impact of transparency reform on legislators' behavior. There is some evidence of a positive impact of transparency as it provides incentives for legislators to adopt public positions closer to their electoral constituencies. But the results on the use of position avoidance raise concerns as the observed moderation may partly be the result of obfuscation rather than of improved responsiveness. In particular, the strategic use of abstentions enables legislators to build a moderate reputation without having to support their constituencies´ preferences on all issues.

Coherent atomic states prepared by laser field can have quantum interference between the different transition amplitudes. Therefore, the medium susceptibility and optical response can be engineered, leading to many interesting phenomena, such as coherent population trapping (CPT), electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), and lasing without inversion (LWI). We studied the coherence effects in various prototype atomic systems, and found many interesting applications. We solved the slow light bandwidth problem by decomposing the pulse and matching each frequency to its EIT window using a magnetic field gradient. We also considered the probe field deflection induced by the driving field distribution in EIT, and showed that even a broadband pulse can be deflected without serious spreading. In the fast light area, we examined the effects of noise and parameter deviations in a bichromatic Raman type white light cavity. Taking advantage of the adjustable absorption of EIT, we showed that EIT in a laser cavity can have either first-order or second-order phase transitions. Last but not least, we show that the adiabatic population transfer can be used to reverse the weak measurement of an arbitrary field with finite photon number.

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Concepts in transparency have evolved, given the improvements in constructive technologies, new theories in architecture, and social behavior. In this thesis, I will try to articulate the transition in the concepts of transparency, initiating with literal and phenomenal transparency that Colin Rowe and Slutzky discussed in their essay, Transparency, Literal and Phenomenal and propose ambiguous space, a new understanding of transparency through current case studies in architecture.

The goal of the present work is the development of a numerical method for compressible viscous flows on mixed unstructured grids. The discretisation is based on a vertex-centred finite-volume method. The concept of grid transparency is developed as a framework for the discretisation on mixed unstructured grids. A grid-transparent method does not require information on the cell types. For this reason, the numerical method developed in the present work can be applied to triangular, quadrilateral, and mixed grids without modification. The inviscid fluxes are discretised using the approximate Riemann solver of Roe. A limited linear-reconstruction method leads to monotonic capturing of shock waves and second-order accuracy in smooth regions of the flow. The discretisation of the viscous fluxes on triangular and quadrilateral grids is first studied by reference to Laplace's equation. A variety of schemes are evaluated against several criteria. The chosen discretisation is then extended to the viscous fluxes in the Navier-Stokes equations. A careful study of the various terms allows a form to be developed which may be regarded as a thin-shear-layer approximation. In contrast to previous implementations, however, the present approximation does not require knowledge of normal and tangential coordinate directions near solid surfaces. The effects of turbulence are modelled through the eddy-viscosity hypothesis and the one-equation model of Spalart and Allmaras. The discrete equations are marched to the steady-state solution by an explicit Runge-Kutta method with local time-stepping. The turbulence-model equation is solved by a point-implicit method. To accelerate the convergence rate, an agglomeration multigrid method is employed. In contrast to previous implementations, the governing equations are entirely rediscretised on the coarse grid levels. The solution method is applied to various inviscid, laminar, and turbulent flows. The performance of the multigrid method is compared for triangular and quadrilateral grids. Care is taken to assess numerical errors through grid-refinement studies or comparisons with analytical solutions or experimental data. The main contributions of the present work are the careful development of a solution method for compressible viscous flows on mixed unstructured grids and the comparison of the impact of triangular, quadrilateral, and mixed grids on convergence rates and solution quality.

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This thesis aims to map the history and development of fundraising in the world, particularly in the United States. It also describes the modern theoretical concepts, which are currently being used for the preparation and planning of fundraising strategy. The practical section consists of analysis of the Czech branch of the global organization Transparency International and the evaluation of its fundraising strategy with a focus on individual and corporate donors.