There is no clear consensus about whether green investments perform better, worse orequal to conventional brown investments. With the rising popularity of socialinvestments, it becomes increasingly important to understand these investments. Therecent launch of the MSCI Climate Paris Aligned Indices (CPAI) aim to illustrate thedevelopment of an economy that is in line with the requirements and goals of the ParisAgreement from 2015. In this research we aim to find out whether the MSCI Europe,USA and EM Climate Paris Aligned Indices outperform their parent indices. We do thisby comparing performance measures such as the net return, standard deviation of netreturns and Sharpe ratio. We further conduct an ordinary least squares regression to testwhether the betas and Jensen´s alphas of the CPAI differ significantly from their parentindices.The results show that only the USA CPAI clearly outperforms its parent index. This isdue to it having a higher Sharpe Ratio and Jensen’s alpha as well as higher monthly netreturns and a lower standard deviation compared to its parent index. The regressionshows that it does perform better than the parent index. The results for the EM CPAIshow that it performs in a similar way as its parent index. It has a higher monthly netreturn but also slightly higher standard deviation which leads to an equally large Sharperatio. Neither the estimated Jensen’s alpha nor the beta are significantly different fromthose of its parent index and thus the hypothesis of it performing equally as well as itsparent index cannot not be rejected. Lastly, the Europe CPAI has a higher Sharpe ratio,Jensen’s alpha and monthly net returns than its parent index, but it also exhibits a higherstandard deviation. The regression indicated that it performs in a similar way as itsparent index, no difference could be proven. In conclusion, this means that all CPAIperform at least equally as well as their parent indices, if not better.

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / There is a major urban housing crisis in South Africa expressing itself in the failure of the government to provide low-income housing to urban residents. Considering this crisis, the specific purpose of this study was to examine the challenges to effective distribution of low-income housing with specific reference to the Delft Symphony community, focussing on the epoch from the years 2000-2015. The study was motivated by the fact that while there is an abundance of research conducted in the Cape flats, research focusing on the Delft Symphony community (DS community) is scanty especially on low-income housing distribution. This research gap became the focus of this thesis. To understand the challenges to effective distribution of low-income housing, this study was grounded in two theories namely the theory of justice and the self-help housing theory. The study employed qualitative methods in which semi-structured and in-depth interviews were conducted to collect the necessary data. This research used twenty-eight (28) key informants, and these were selected through snowball and stratified samplings. Qualitative data were analysed using content and thematic analysis. The findings revealed that government internal bureaucratic procedures and due processes such as the land approval process seem to contribute to the sluggish distribution of low-income housing in the DS community. The study also found that the low-income housing processes in the DS community are seemingly driven by politics manifesting in the allocation of houses based on political affiliations. The main recommendation from this study is that to improve the distribution of low-income housing, there is a need for the government to revitalise transparency and reduce bureaucratic delays in the processes of low-income housing.

Advertising and media creates and maintains standardized norms and beauty ideals for how women should look and it is often not realistic or representative of ordinary women. Consumers are now demanding representation of women who differs from the unreachable ideals and show how ordinary women actually look. Despite various companies try to include different types of women, they are met with criticism. It becomes clear that it is difficult for companies to represent ordinary women. Instead of using models to represent “ordinary” women Cellbes has their customers as models. How these women are portrayed and perceived and whether they differ from the traditional portrayal of women in advertising is examined in our study. This is with the aim of examining how "ordinary" women are communicated and understood from a consumer-cultural perspective, based on the commercial female representation that addresses women with "ordinariness" as a selling point.A critical discourse analysis combined with a netnographic case study have been applied as the design of the study. The gathered material consists of advertising images with associated texts and comments as well as a discussion in chat format. The material has been collected through screenshots from Cellbes’ website, Facebook and Instagram as well as from a focus group. The result was thematized from the identified discourses regarding the female representation. The themes identified are the following: solidarity, ambassadors, bodies, age, motherhood, exclusion and the reality effect. Within the various discourses, the result was analyzed and discussed related to previous research and the theoretical framework. "Ordinary" women are portrayed in commercial use with meaning-bearing signs that indicate their "ordinarity". Cellbes establish women in reality by letting their personalities appear in the images. Cellbes portrays “ordinary” women as larger and older than previous norms and ideals, which the viewers of the images appreciate and can partially identify with. To some extent, viewers are still influenced by the traditional portrayal, as they willingly identify themselves with models that are younger than themselves. Cellbes portrays "ordinary" women more deviant than the viewer's perception of ordinary women. In order for the representation to be accepted by the viewers it is necessary to highlight one, different from the traditional portrayal, attribute at a time. / Reklam och media skapar och upprätthåller normer och skönhetsideal för hur kvinnor ska se ut. Skönhetsidealen som massmedia har förmedlat är ofta inte realistiska eller representativa för “vanliga” kvinnor. Konsumenter efterfrågar nu kvinnor som strider mot de ouppnåeliga idealen och visar upp hur “vanliga” kvinnor ser ut. Trots olika företags försök att inkludera olika typer av kvinnor möts de av kritik. Det blir tydligt att det finns en svårighet för företagen att representera “vanliga” kvinnor. Istället för att använda modeller som ska representera den “vanliga” kvinnan har företaget Cellbes använt sig av konsumenter som fått agera modeller. Hur dessa kvinnor framställs och uppfattas samt om det skiljer sig från den traditionella framställningen av kvinnan i reklam undersöks i vår studie. Detta med syftet att utifrån den kommersiella kvinnliga representationen som vänder sig till kvinnor, med “vanlighet” som försäljningsargument, undersöka hur “vanliga” kvinnor kommuniceras och förstås ur ett konsumentkulturellt perspektiv.En kritisk diskursanalys i kombination med en netnografisk fallstudie har tillämpats för studiens utformning. Det bearbetade materialet består av reklambilder med tillhörande texter och kommentarer samt en diskussion i chattformat. Materialet har samlats in genom skärmdumpar från Cellbes hemsida, Facebook och Instagram samt från en fokusgrupp. Resultatet tematiserades utifrån identifierade diskurser gällande den kvinnliga framställningen. De teman som identifierats är följande: gemenskap, ambassadörer, kroppar, ålder, moderskap, exkludering och realitetseffekten. Under de olika diskurserna analyserades och diskuterades resultatet utifrån tidigare forskning och teoretiskt ramverk. “Vanliga” kvinnor framställs kommersiellt med meningsbärande tecken som tyder på deras “vanlighet”. Cellbes förankrar kvinnorna i verkligheten genom att låta deras personligheter synas i bilderna. Cellbes framställer “vanliga” kvinnor som större och äldre än tidigare normer och ideal, vilket betraktarna av bilderna uppskattar och delvis kan identifiera sig med. I viss mån präglas betraktarna fortfarande av den traditionella framställningen då de gärna identifierar sig med modeller som är yngre än de själva. Cellbes framställer “vanliga” kvinnor mer avvikande än vad som stämmer överens med betraktarnas egna uppfattningar av “vanliga” kvinnor. För att framställningen ska accepteras av betraktarna gäller det att framställa ett, från den traditionella framställningen, avvikande attribut i taget.

This diploma thesis examines various linear regression methods and their use to establish regression relationships between the compressive strength of concrete determined by the indirect method and by the crushing of the specimens in the press. It deals mainly with the uncertainty of values measured by the indirect method, which is neglected by the usually used ordinary least squares regression method. It also deals with the weighted least squares method, suitable for so-called heteroskedastic data. It compares different regression methods on several sets of previously measured data. The final part of the work examines the effect of removing too influential points identified by Cook's distance, which may skew the regression results.

The solving of stiff systems is still a contemporary sophisticated problem. The basic problem is the absence of precise definition of stiff systems. A question is also how to detect the stiffness in a given system of differential equations. Implicit numerical methods are commonly used for solving stiff systems. The stability domains of these methods are relatively large but the order of them is low.   The thesis deals with numerical solution of ordinary differential equations, especially numerical calculations using Taylor series methods. The source of stiffness is analyzed and the possibility how to reduce stiffness             in systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is introduced. The possibility of detection stiff systems using explicit Taylor series terms is analyzed. The stability domains of explicit and implicit Taylor series are presented. The solutions of stiff systems using implicit Taylor series method are presented in many examples. The multiple arithmetic must be used in many cases. The new suitable parallel algorithm based on implicit Taylor series method with recurrent calculation of Taylor series terms and Newton iteration method (ITMRN) is proposed.

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This essay sets out to examine my own practical knowledge as a socioculturally inspired preschool teacher conditioned by a capitalist ideology. Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology,as something reproduced by daily human actions, is used and the focus rests on language, or rather language use, especially in relation to the ‘autistic child’ as met in the preschool context. The analysis is supported by two specific traditions of thought: ordinary language philosophy – represented foremostly by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond – and Marxist psychoanalysis, as particularly developed by Slavoj Žižek. The overall conclusion is that the preschool’s practical treatment of the autistic child can be read as a reaction to both ideological resistance and ideological disclosure. The autistic child is interpreted as representing a certain kind of imagination which is considered a threat in the capitalist/sociocultural preschool discourse. A discourse whose conditional criteria the essay also more thoroughly aims to uncover, using said traditions of thought.

This thesis presents a numerical approach based on generalized fractional-order Chebyshev wavelets for solving fractional-order optimal control problems. The exact value of the Riemann– Liouville fractional integral operator of the generalized fractional-order Chebyshev wavelets is computed by applying the regularized beta function. We apply the given wavelets, the exact formula, and the collocation method to transform the studied problem into a new optimization problem. The convergence analysis of the proposed method is provided. The present method is extended for solving fractional-order, distributed-order, and variable-order optimal control problems. Illustrative examples are considered to show the advantage of this method in comparison with the existing methods in the literature.

Using an explicit integration method in physically based animations has many advantages including conceptual and computational simplicity, however, it re- quires small time steps to ensure low numerical instability. Simulations with large numbers of individually interacting components such as cloth, hair, and fluid models, are limited by the sections of particles most susceptible to error. This results in the need for smaller time steps than required for the majority of the system. These sections can be diverse and dynamic, quickly changing in size and location based on forces in the system. Identifying and handling these trou- blesome sections could allow for a larger time step to be selected, while preventing a breakdown in the simulation. This thesis presents Smarticles (smart particles), a method of individually de- tecting particles exhibiting signs of instability and stabilizing them with minimal adverse effects to visual accuracy. As a result, higher levels of error introduced from large time steps can be tolerated with minimal overhead. Two separate approaches to Smarticles were implemented. They attempt to find oscillating particles by analyzing a particle’s (1) past behavior and (2) behavior with re- spect to its neighbors along a strand. Both versions of Smarticles attempt to correct unstable particles using velocity dampening. Smarticles was applied to a two dimensional hair simulation modeled as a continuum using smooth particle hydrodynamic. Hair strands are formed by linking particles together using one of two methods: position based dynamics or mass-spring forces. Both versions of Smarticles, as well as a control of normal particles, were directly compared and evaluated based on stability and visual fluidity. Hair particles were exposed to various forms of external forces under increasing time step lengths. Testing showed that both versions of Smarticles working together allowed an average increase of 18.62% in the time step length for hair linked with position based dynamics. In addition, Smarticles was able to significantly reduce visible instability at even larger time steps. While these results suggest Smarticles is successful, the method used to correct particle instability may jeopardize other important aspects of the simulation. A more accurate correction method would likely need to be developed to make Smarticles an advantageous method.

The evolution of third-party logistics has sparked much academic interest over the years, with researchers looking at how the industry has grown and the factors that have contributed to it. The primary goal of this thesis is to examine the factors that have driven third-party logistics companies’ growth in Sweden for eighteen years (2002–2020). Growth in this thesis is considered as the growth of net sales. A total of 924 observations of ninety-five active third-party logistics companies operating in the Swedish market are analyzed in this thesis. An Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) linear regression analysis is carried out to examine the growth factors of third-party logistics companies in Sweden, taking into consideration the direct effect of the variables, number of employees, liabilities, operating profit, Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT), accessibility, technology, reverse logistics, service offer, customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, and distribution systems on the growth of net sales. Results from the OLS model shows that the size of the company, profitability, and the company's level of competence, has a significant positive influence on third-party logistics (3PL) company's growth.