The World Energy Outlook (WEO), an annual publication from the International Energy Agency (IEA), is often considered to be the most authoritative source of future energy scenarios for policy decision makers. The demand and supply scenarios for oil, one of the most irreplaceable resources in the global energy system, are central in each report. For the last decade, the outlook for oil supply in 2030 in the main IEA scenario has been reduced by almost 20 million barrels per day. The aim of this study is to examine the revisions to the oil supply scenarios, both at global and individual country level, and note if and how the IEA has motivated these revisions. The accuracy of past WEO scenarios is quantified by track record analysis and the latest WEO scenario is assessed in detail in relation to current scientific literature. Finally, implications of the latest WEO scenario for the long term oil supply are assessed. It is noted that the IEA generally motivate upward revisions to their scenarios, while downward revisions are often left unmentioned. Some recent revisions are attributed to the financial crises of 2008 and the largest revision in absolute terms is the gradual downward revision of OPEC production motivated by an underestimation of key producing countries’ will and ability to expand capacity. The track record analysis indicates that the accuracy of the IEA scenarios has increased on a five year prediction basis following the extended methodology applied in the WEO 2008. The analysis also shows that the accuracy of scenarios decrease with time. On a ten year horizon, the mean absolute error for the IEA aggregate ‘World oil supply” was estimated to 8.2%. The WEO2013 ‘New Policies Scenario’, with a time frame of 2012-2035, was assessed using decline and depletion rate analysis, and compared to empirically proven rates. The scenario was found to provide a realistic but optimistic view of the future of oil supply. An alternative scenario, with depletion rates in line with the fastest observed regional rates, resulted in somewhat lower production rates throughout the scenario time frame. A long term extrapolation to year 2100 of the WEO 2013 scenario, based strictly on resource and production data from the WEO reports, indicated that oil supply will reach a peak in 2035 and then enter decline for the remainder of the century. A sensitivity analysis showed that changes to the assumed resource base only moves the peak by a few years, but has a significant effect on the rate of the following decline.

The primary goal of this thesis is to provide a comparative analysis of the institutional and organizational mechanisms designed to monitor and control political corruption at the national level. The paper will provide comparisons of these arraignments and control systems across three nations. The thesis will identify differences across countries in terms of organizational and institutional political corruption control mechanisms, and use the CPI index to suggest and identify those control mechanisms that appear to be present in nations with low CPI measurements. Finally, the thesis will conclude with the discussion concerning the future prospects for controlling political corruption in Turkey based on the comparative analysis described above.

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This thesis is an exploration of the symbolic dimensions of activism in the SOA Watch movement, which seeks to close the School of the Americas (SOA), a U.S. training facility for Latin American military and police. Through historical analysis, participant observation, and ethnographic interviews with activists, I examine the practices of activism in the SOA Watch movement and the systems of meaning that inform them. As activists in the movement engage a system of power they seek to change, they construct and locate this system in space and time. By inserting themselves into the history and geography of the SOA through practices of resistance, activists construct and enact their own agency.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This study involved an evaluation of basic electricity project-construction ideas to determine their suitability for classroom use in achieving the objectives of industrial arts.

This project responds to increasing efforts in higher education to retain students, i.e., keep them enrolled until graduation, through various initiatives. Building upon the arguments of composition scholars Matthew McCurrie (2009), Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (2010), and Pegeen Reichert Powell (2013), who propose that retention efforts can overlook students’ needs, goals, and lived experiences, this study evaluates whether retention initiatives communicate a definition of success that ignores and/or aligns with how students value success. This project draws on an historical overview of US success ideology to contextualize a case study of Georgia State University, a leading institution in the country for raising its retention rates. Georgia State’s Strategic Plan and celebrated retention initiatives are then analyzed to determine how the institution defines success; that analysis is compared with data gathered from focus groups and interviews. Ultimately, this study suggests that the definition of success is not necessarily where students and universities diverge; rather, the data gathered has revealed that far more conflicting are the ideas students and universities possess for how to achieve success. This project argues that while historically success has been valued as the achievement of social and financial upward mobility, Georgia State’s framing of student success communicates, more narrowly, the value of efficient mobility. From the analysis of students’ perspectives, a framework is provided to show how a focus on efficiency provokes a shift in methods for how universities support students’ pursuit of success, a shift from what this author terms facilitative methods to methods that can be more dictative of students’ college experiences. This framework is used to argue that dictative methods of support risk removing agency from and present new challenges for students whose lifestyles and responsibilities conflict with their universities’ preferred path towards graduation; often these students are commuters, non-traditional and/or are students from low-income households. This dissertation concludes by providing a model for writing program administrators to consider how they can work toward promoting more facilitative, and thus more inclusive, retention practices.

The aim of the thesisis an analysis of EU credit rating agencies legal regulation in comparison with regulation in the USA. This analysis outlines the crucial and less important aspects of regulation in EU and USA. One of Chapters of this study is also describing the reflection of EU credit rating agencies regulation to Czech law. The thesis is composed of five chapters. First of them explains basic context and position of credit rating agencies. Chapter two is focused on EU legislation. Chapter Three briefly describes the position of credit rating agencies in the Czech Republic. Chapter Four illustrates the credit rating agencies legal regulation in USA. The text is mainly focused on Two of the EU regulations and, regarding the US legislation, on the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act, part of the Dodd - Frank Act and some of the more important rules conducted by Security Exchange Commission. The comparison of both legal systems is placed in Chapter Five and completed with commentary.

Matthew 18:18-20 is an important section of the discourse of Matthew 18 and one of the most important passages for Matthew's theology. The near identical wording of Mt. 18:18 to Mt. 16:19b-c gives this section even further importance. Mt. 16:17-19 has long been a source of disagreement about the place of Peter or the structure of the church in early Christianity, so the connection of Mt. 18:18 to Mt. 16:19b-c closely ties one important passage of Matthew to another. This thesis proposes a new interpretation for Mt. 18:18-20 and also for Mt. 16:19b-c, though the primary aim of the thesis is directed to the new interpretation of Mt. 18:18-20. The entire section of Mt. 18:18-20 is an expression of a central and repeated emphasis of Matthew's theology, his emphasis on divine causation in human behavior. The heaven-first order of binding and loosing in Mt. 18:18 expresses the conviction that God causes a person to repent (which does not deny there also being human causation). When the sinner of Mt. 18:15 looses his sin from himself through repentance, and when disciples respond by treating him as if his sin were loosed, such loosing has already occurred in heaven because God caused the person to repent. When the sinner holds fast to his sin and thus is treated by disciples in kind as if his sin were indeed bound to him, this is so because of the absence of such divine influence to repentance or because of the withdrawal of such influence in cases where the sinner has resisted it. It is thus appropriate to say that what has been loosed or bound on earth has already been loosed or bound in heaven. This explains the periphrastic future perfect verbal forms of Mt. 16:19b-c and 18:18. Matthew moves from the focus primarily on sin in Mt. 18:18 to a focus on conflict in Mt. 18:19. When two persons reconcile and thus resolve conflict, such reconciliation will have been divinely caused. The apodosis of Mt. 18:19 gives information about the cause of the event of the protasis. Something similar happens in Mt. 18:20, where the presence of the exalted Jesus mediates the presence of God, who works together with the exalted Jesus to bring reconciliation for the name of Jesus. Such an interpretation is the basis for renaming the discourse. It is a repentance discourse. This proposal for Mt. 18:18-20 avoids problems that have plagued previous interpretations of these verses. It does justice to the periphrastic future verbal forms and respects the linguistic evidence of Mt. 18:18-20. It also allows the interpreter to find a triad of triads structure that aligns the repentance discourse with the structure of the preceding discourses and with Matthew's use of triads in non-discourse material. Further, though this proposal is defensible on its own, it is also in continuity with Matthew's emphases on reconciliation and divine causation prior to Mt. 18. The results of this study are significant for source and redaction critical assessment of Mt. 18, for understanding Matthew's theology, and for understanding his conception of righteousness.

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies / Soo-Hye Han / At the turn of the 21st century, an ideological movement defined by many as the modesty movement helped push sexual abstinence as a controversial yet significant public issue in the United States. Concerned with a "hyper-sexualized" culture, modesty advocates urged young women to make a pledge to remain pure until marriage. Following the the growth of the movement, feminist scholars have been critical of the movement and the potentially detrimental consequences of purity pledges on young women's identity, sexuality, and sexual agency. This study takes a step back from this critical view of purity pledges and listens to young women's lived experience of making a purity pledge and living a life of purity. Specifically, this study asks how purity pledgers understand and enact purity and how they perceive their sexuality and sexual agency. To answer these questions, qualitative interviews were conducted with nine young women who at some point in their life made a purity pledge. A thematic analysis revealed three major themes: 1) living a pure life is situated within multifaceted perspectives on purity, 2) living a life of purity consists of negotiating multiple "selves," and 3) living a life of purity grants and reinforces a sense of agency. A composite description illustrates that religious messages, parents, peers, and sex education classes continue to influence their understanding of purity and sexuality. This project concludes with a discussion of theoretical implications surrounding the idea of a "crystallized self" and practical implications of this study on an organizational, familial, and personal level.