<p>The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) is an international framework on sound chemicals management with the objective that “by the year 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health”. SAICM was adopted at the International Conference on Chemicals Management in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in February 2006. To prepare countries to be able to implement SAICM the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is currently running Pilot Projects in three developing countries and one county with economy in transition: Belarus, Pakistan, Tanzania and Panama. Between October and December 2007 we were doing a Minor Field Study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, interviewing people involved in the implementation of their Pilot Project which is running from 2006-2009. Our paper consists of two parts, one descriptive and one analysing. In the first part we describe the initiation, the formulation, the implementation and the evaluation of SAICM and the Pilot Project in Tanzania and in the second part we analyse opportunities and hindrances for a successful implementation of the Pilot Project and SAICM in Tanzania. How is the UN governing the implementation, what resources of finances, knowledge, institutions and time does Tanzania have and how is the implementation influenced by different actors interests? We argue that the there is mixture of the top-down and the bottom-up models and that this mixture is fruitful, we argue that Tanzania has enough finances, knowledge and time to implement SAICM but lack institutions, and finally that the different interests are not too various to harm the process.</p>

<p>As stocks have become a more common way for people to save their money, the range of financial information has had a substantial increase. To understand the assumptions that stock valuation and analysis are built upon, it is important for the reader to have an understanding for the models that are used by banks and institutions when recommendations are published.</p><p>The cash flow model, which is the most commonly used stock valuation tool, is based on CAPM. This model describes the relationship between an assets return and its risk in relation to an index. The risk parameter is called the beta value and has grown to be the dominating risk factor within financial economics literature.</p><p>The use of beta values has been widely discussed in the world of academics and some researchers claim that the degree of explanation brought about by the beta is so low that it should be discarded, others are faithful to the beta and believe that it still serves a purpose. As a result of this criticism other ways to calculate the beta have surfaced, models that take other factors of risk into consideration. One of these “adjusted betas” is the Bottom-up beta which considers a business financial structure, cost structure and the level of risk of the industry when calculating the beta value. This is where our study takes its starting point. The study aims to find out if the beta value can explain the unsystematic risk on the Swedish market. It further investigates whether the Bottom-up beta has a higher degree of explanation than the traditional beta calculated over different periods of time and with different intervals of result.</p><p>The results show that the Bottom-up beta to a high degree can explain the unsystematic risk on the Swedish market. It is however hard to rank the different beta values by falling degree of explanation since the differences between them can be caused by random elements. The study also shows that all methods for calculating beta values tend to underestimate the true beta value. Some differences in returns between high and low risk stocks have also been found where low risk stocks have performed a lot better than what CAPM recommends.</p> / <p>I takt med att aktieplaceringar blivit en allt vanligare sparform har utbudet av finansiell information ökat kraftigt. För att förstå vilka antaganden som ligger bakom de analyser och aktievärderingar som publiceras av banker och institutioner är det av vikt att läsaren förstår de underliggande modeller som används, samt de antaganden dessa gör. En modell som ligger till grund för det vanligaste värderingsverktyget, kassaflödesmodellen, är CAPM. Denna formel beskriver sambandet mellan en tillgångs avkastning och dess risk mätt i förhållande till ett index. Denna riskparameter benämns betavärdet och har vuxit fram till att bli det dominerande riskmåttet inom finansiell litteratur.</p><p>Betavärdets funktionalitet har under lång tid debatterats i den akademiska världen och vissa forskare hävdar att betavärdets förklaringsgrad är så lågt att det bör förkastas, medan andra forskare fortfarande är trogna betavärdet. Detta har resulterat i att alternativa beräkningssätt för betavärdet har kommit fram som söker involvera fler aspekter av risk i analysen. Ett sådant alternativt betavärde är Bottom-up betat som tar hänsyn till ett företags finansiella uppbyggnad, kostnadsstruktur samt branschens relativa risk. Det är i denna akademiska splittring gällande betavärdet som vår studie tar vid. Studiens problem är att undersöka huruvida betavärdet kan förklara den osystematiska risken på den svenska marknaden. Syftet är vidare att undersöka om Bottom-up betavärdet ger en högre förklaringskraft än traditionella betavärden beräknade över olika tidsperioder och med olika resultatintervall.</p><p>Undersökningen har en deduktiv ansats och tar sin grund i befintliga välgrundade teorier inom det finansiella området.</p><p>Framkomna resultat har visat att Bottom-up betat i hög utsträckning kan förklara den osystematiska risken på svenska marknaden. Det är dock svårt att rangordna betavärdena efter förklaringsgrad då skillnaderna dem emellan kan bero på slumpmässiga inslag. Vidare har studien funnit att samtliga metoder för att beräkna betavärdet tenderar till att underskatta betavärdets sanna storlek. Skillnader i avkastning mellan hög- och lågriskaktier har också skymtats där lågriskaktier presterat avsevärt bättre än vad CAPM förespråkar som rimligt.</p>

<p><em>It is in the interest of organizations to understand that the public demand for quick and easy accessibility is growing at a rapid pace. However, the transition from traditional marketing strategies to social media marketing is not a straightforward process, but more complex.The aim of the thesis is to, from a bottom-up perspective, draw conclusions from a comparative study of the social media praxes of Umeå-situated businesses and organizations.The study indicates that the transition into social media still continues, but that there has been a change in organizations’ mindsets. It also shows that the application of a bottom-up approach provides new ways of viewing and understanding activities within social media.It is in the interest of organizations to understand that the public demand for quick and easy accessibility is growing at a rapid pace. However, the transition from traditional marketing strategies to social media marketing is not a straightforward process, but more complex.The aim of the thesis is to, from a bottom-up perspective, draw conclusions from a comparative study of the social media praxes of Umeå-situated businesses and organizations.The study indicates that the transition into social media still continues, but that there has been a change in organizations’ mindsets. It also shows that the application of a bottom-up approach provides new ways of viewing and understanding activities within social media.</em></p>

As stocks have become a more common way for people to save their money, the range of financial information has had a substantial increase. To understand the assumptions that stock valuation and analysis are built upon, it is important for the reader to have an understanding for the models that are used by banks and institutions when recommendations are published. The cash flow model, which is the most commonly used stock valuation tool, is based on CAPM. This model describes the relationship between an assets return and its risk in relation to an index. The risk parameter is called the beta value and has grown to be the dominating risk factor within financial economics literature. The use of beta values has been widely discussed in the world of academics and some researchers claim that the degree of explanation brought about by the beta is so low that it should be discarded, others are faithful to the beta and believe that it still serves a purpose. As a result of this criticism other ways to calculate the beta have surfaced, models that take other factors of risk into consideration. One of these “adjusted betas” is the Bottom-up beta which considers a business financial structure, cost structure and the level of risk of the industry when calculating the beta value. This is where our study takes its starting point. The study aims to find out if the beta value can explain the unsystematic risk on the Swedish market. It further investigates whether the Bottom-up beta has a higher degree of explanation than the traditional beta calculated over different periods of time and with different intervals of result. The results show that the Bottom-up beta to a high degree can explain the unsystematic risk on the Swedish market. It is however hard to rank the different beta values by falling degree of explanation since the differences between them can be caused by random elements. The study also shows that all methods for calculating beta values tend to underestimate the true beta value. Some differences in returns between high and low risk stocks have also been found where low risk stocks have performed a lot better than what CAPM recommends. / I takt med att aktieplaceringar blivit en allt vanligare sparform har utbudet av finansiell information ökat kraftigt. För att förstå vilka antaganden som ligger bakom de analyser och aktievärderingar som publiceras av banker och institutioner är det av vikt att läsaren förstår de underliggande modeller som används, samt de antaganden dessa gör. En modell som ligger till grund för det vanligaste värderingsverktyget, kassaflödesmodellen, är CAPM. Denna formel beskriver sambandet mellan en tillgångs avkastning och dess risk mätt i förhållande till ett index. Denna riskparameter benämns betavärdet och har vuxit fram till att bli det dominerande riskmåttet inom finansiell litteratur. Betavärdets funktionalitet har under lång tid debatterats i den akademiska världen och vissa forskare hävdar att betavärdets förklaringsgrad är så lågt att det bör förkastas, medan andra forskare fortfarande är trogna betavärdet. Detta har resulterat i att alternativa beräkningssätt för betavärdet har kommit fram som söker involvera fler aspekter av risk i analysen. Ett sådant alternativt betavärde är Bottom-up betat som tar hänsyn till ett företags finansiella uppbyggnad, kostnadsstruktur samt branschens relativa risk. Det är i denna akademiska splittring gällande betavärdet som vår studie tar vid. Studiens problem är att undersöka huruvida betavärdet kan förklara den osystematiska risken på den svenska marknaden. Syftet är vidare att undersöka om Bottom-up betavärdet ger en högre förklaringskraft än traditionella betavärden beräknade över olika tidsperioder och med olika resultatintervall. Undersökningen har en deduktiv ansats och tar sin grund i befintliga välgrundade teorier inom det finansiella området. Framkomna resultat har visat att Bottom-up betat i hög utsträckning kan förklara den osystematiska risken på svenska marknaden. Det är dock svårt att rangordna betavärdena efter förklaringsgrad då skillnaderna dem emellan kan bero på slumpmässiga inslag. Vidare har studien funnit att samtliga metoder för att beräkna betavärdet tenderar till att underskatta betavärdets sanna storlek. Skillnader i avkastning mellan hög- och lågriskaktier har också skymtats där lågriskaktier presterat avsevärt bättre än vad CAPM förespråkar som rimligt.

<p>Our main results are that splay trees are faster for sorted insertion, where AVL trees are faster for random insertion. For searching, skip lists are faster than single class top-down splay trees, but two-class and multi-class top-down splay trees can behave better than skip lists.</p>

A language comprehension mechanism that immediately starts processing language as it is encountered is typically thought of as one that speeds and facilitates spoken language comprehension. However, there exist cases where the earliest parts of a word or phrase encode information that is somewhat at odds with the remainder of the word or phrase in full. Examples of these "potentially misleading" cases include compound words where the initial subpart of the compound belongs to a different syntactic category than the entire compound (e.g., "popcorn", "greyhound"), or noun phrases where the initial element of the phrase signals perceptual properties possessed by the referent of the noun phrase (e.g., some Chinese Cantonese classifier-noun phrases). Using a visual-world methodology, this dissertation explores the kinds of unintended or "impulsive" activation that are triggered when listeners encounter such cases, as well as how syntactic and contextual cues can constraining this impulsive activation. Experiment 1 examines whether hearing compound subparts (e.g., "pop-" in "popcorn") activates conceptual associates across syntactic categories, and Experiment 2 examines whether this activation is moderated by listeners' expectations about the syntactic structure of the sentences they encounter. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate the processing of compounds whose initial subparts correspond to colour terms (e.g., "greyhound"). Experiment 3 explores whether these colour subparts trigger the activation of phrasal-level descriptions of non-target objects in the visual display, and whether this activation is influenced by the presence/absence of motivation to use colour descriptions when naming screen objects. Experiment 4 further explores whether a perceptual mismatch between a target object and the colour term in its name increases this impulsive activation. Finally, Experiment 5 investigates whether listeners use the perceptual information encoded in pre-nominal classifiers in Cantonese Chinese to guide their consideration of referential candidates whose perceptual properties do or do not match the classifier semantics. The findings from this dissertation point to the highly interactive nature of spoken language comprehension, suggesting that the kinds of impulsive activation under current discussion are rampant and automatic, but can also be suppressed to varying degrees by the syntactic, semantic, and contextual cues available to the listener.

La problématique développée dans la thèse est d'estimer, dans une démarche prospective et dans un but d'anticipation, les impacts en puissance induits par les ruptures technologiques et comportementales qui ne font pas aujourd'hui l'objet de mesures dans les panels. Pour évaluer les modifications sur les appels de puissance du parc résidentiel engendrées par ces profondes transformations,un modèle paramétrique, bottom-up, techno-explicite et agrégatif est donc nécessaire. Celui-ci serait donc destiné à la reconstitution, de manière non tendancielle, de la courbe de charge électrique résidentielle. Il permettrait ainsi de conduire la simulation de différents scénarios d'évolution contrastés. L'élaboration d'un tel modèle constitue le sujet de ce doctorat.Pour répondre à cette problématique, nous proposons une méthode conceptuelle originale de reconstitution de courbe de charge. Sa mise en application centrée sur la génération de foisonnement d'origine comportementale a conduit à la modélisation d'un certain nombre de concepts. Ce travail a abouti à l'élaboration d'un algorithme stochastique destiné à représenter le déclenchement réalistedes appareils domestiques. Différents cas d'application ont pu être testés et les résultats en puissance ont été étudiés. Plus particulièrement pour analyser le foisonnement visible à un niveau agrégé, nous avons mis en place une méthodologie nouvelle basée sur une distance adaptée aux courbes de charge. Finalement, nous avons cherché à identifier des comportements réels d'usage des appareils. Pour cela, nous avons conduit différents travaux de classification de courbes de charge.

Enligt socialstyrelsens rekommendationer bör varje kommun uppföra genomförandeplaner för de invånare som har en insats genom Socialtjänstlagen (SoL). För att få en insats genom SoL skall en handläggare göra en utredning som ligger till underlag för ett eventuellt beviljande av insats. Syftet med studien är att beskriva och analysera hur informationen förmedlas mellan de personer som är delaktiga i uppförandet av biståndsbeslut och genomförandeplaner inom boendestöd. Vi har studerat detta genom att granska dokumentationen i boendestödsbeslut och intervjuat de personer som är med och upprättar dessa dokument.Frågorna som vi vill ha besvarade i studien är:• • •Hur sker implementeringen av ett biståndsbeslut? Vilken hänsyn tas till brukaren vid upprättandet av dokumentationen? Hur ser dokumentationen ut och hur förhåller sig genomförandeplanen till biståndsbeslutet?Implementeringen sker i ett ständigt informationsflöde mellan de inblandade aktörerna och det som i stor utsträckning styr vad som dokumenteras i genomförandeplanen är informationen och viljan från brukaren. Beslutet kan skilja gentemot genomförandeplanen p.g.a. att ny information har tillkommit när arbetet med uppförandet av genomförandeplanen pågått.

Previous studies in building energy assessmnet have made it clear that the largest potential energy efficiency improvements are conected to the retrofitting of existing buildings. But, lack of information about the building stock and associated modelling tools is one of the barriers to assessment of energy efficiency strategies in the building stocks. Therefore, a methodology has been developed to describe any building stock by the means of archetype buildings.  The aim has been to assess the effects of energy saving measures. The model which is used for the building energy simulation is called:  Energy, Carbon and Cost Assessment for Buildings Stocks (ECCABS). This model calculated the net energy demand aggregated in heating, cooling, lighting, hotwater and appliances.   This model has already been validated using the Swedish residential stock as a test case. The present work continues the development of the methodology by focusing on the UK building stock by discribing the UK building stock trough archetype buildings and their physical properties which are used as inputs to the ECCABS. In addition, this work seekes to check the adequacy of applying the ECCABS model to the UK building stock. The outputs which are the final energy use of the entire building stock are compared to data available in national and international sources.   The UK building stoch is described by a total of 252 archetype buildings. It is determined by considering nine building typologies, four climate zones, six periods of construction and two types of heating systems. The total final energy demand calculated by ECCABS for the residential sector is 578.83 TWh for the year 2010, which is 2.6 % higher than the statistics provided by the Department of Energy and Climate Change(DECC). In the non-residential sector the total final energy demand is 77.28 TWh for the year 2009, which is about 3.2% lower than the energy demand given by DECC. Potential reasons which could have affected the acuracy of the final resualts are discussed in this master thesis.

While previous research on African smallholder agriculture has been criticized of focusing on the sole factor of population pressure as driver of agricultural degradation or intensification, the present study tries to nuance this debate by providing empirically grounded research, exploring the dynamics behind local agro-ecological change. The thesis specifically studies the dynamics behind small-scale farmers’ crop choices in relation to their management of trees in cropland in Gera District, Ethiopia. Drawing on situated landscape interviews and focus group discussions with farmers combined with observations and interviews with agriculture officials, a contextual understanding of local agro-ecological processes emerged. While political ecology was used as an overarching framework, the concept of landesque capital served as an analytical tool to explore how external and local forces interact at the point of the land management decision. It was found that external factors sometimes have a reinforcing effect at the local scale, but when top-down interventions are incoherent with bottom-up priorities, a conflict occurs. In this way, local dynamics and external drivers constitute an interacting dialectic, with a set of unintentional synergies and trade-offs eventually forming agro-ecological landscape change. / Examining mismatches between management and the supply of ecosystem services in Ethiopian agroecosystems across scales in space and time