Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T22:58:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo8878_1.pdf: 1423617 bytes, checksum: abceef3bbdba4b821e5c8d6861091fe3 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / A presente tese busca explicar por que usar a teoria dos Sistemas Dinâmicos para estudar o início da comunicação humana. Para esse objetivo um modelo é proposto, baseado na idéia de que a relação mãe-bebê é um sistema co-regulado e auto-organizado. Considerou-se que a aplicação de uma abordagem estritamente conceptual, não matemática de Sistemas Dinâmicos ao estudo do desenvolvimento da comunicação levou ao aparecimento de novas possibilidades para captura dos processos de mudanças os quais não são analisáveis apenas com parâmetros das correntes de pesquisas mais tradicionais na psicologia. Tais possibilidades foram exploradas através da análise de três dimensões do proposto modelo denominado EEA - Estabelecimento, Extensão e Abreviação. Essas dimensões, definidas como Níveis de Imediaticidade da Trocas, Dinâmicas das Trocas de Turnos e Níveis de Suavidade das Trocas foram analisadas a partir de dados longitudinais videografados, de cinco díades mãe-bebê. Foi concluído que o modelo EEA oferece recursos que ajudam a esclarecer os processos que emergem na constante dinâmica de reorganização das ações que expressam o desenvolvimento da comunicação mãe-bebê

The thesis is dealing with the relations between EFTA and EU from the year 1960 up to present. Its goal is not only to describe them but also identify their key moments and circumstances which led to them and based on that to predict the future development. First chapter is devoted to the history of the relations between EFTA and EU from the year 1960 till mid 1990's. The second chapter focuses on EEA, its essence, tools and objectives. The third chapter then describes the development of the relations between EFTA and EU from mid 1990's up to present.

The strict family reunification policies in Norway and Denmark have affected many individual’s family life. Individuals currently struggle to be reunited with their non-EU family members because of strict requirements. For some, moving to Sweden can be a solution due to their more liberal reunification policies. This paper analyses how family reunification policy in Norway and Denmark has affected the lives of those who relocate to Sweden. The method that was used for the analysis was the interviewing method. In the theoretical framework transnationalism was applied, and it focuses on the connection transnational migrants have with three countries at the same time. The transnational perspective illustrates the different obstacles transnational migrants face. The analysis showed that the reasons individuals relocated from Denmark and Norway was because of age and income requirements, deportation and suspect of arranged marriage by the migration agencies. The analysis also showed that distance relationship, distant parenthood, social belonging and identity helped shape the individual’s life.

Ce mémoire a pour objectif de clarifier la position de Timothy Williamson dans la problématique de la norme de l’assertion. Le premier chapitre permet de circonscrire la perspective strictement épistémologique adoptée par Williamson. Le second chapitre met en relief trois thèses de Williamson qui portent sur la connaissance et permet de dégager les grandes lignes de l’explication épistémique qu’il propose pour l’assertion. La première de ces thèses fait de la connaissance la norme de l’assertion dans le sens où la connaissance est la seule règle constitutive de l’assertion. La seconde thèse examinée fait de la connaissance un état mental factif. Il s’agit d’un état mental particulier qui met en relation causale le monde et l’esprit. La dernière thèse mise en relief défend l’idée selon laquelle la connaissance est équivalente aux éléments probants de l’agent. Le mémoire a pour objectif de démontrer que ces thèses comprises ensembles impliquent que la position de Williamson est radicalement réaliste, invariantiste et externaliste. Le troisième et dernier chapitre cherche à contraster la position de Williamson avec celle de Keith DeRose dans le but de clarifier les conséquences conceptuelles de l’analyse de Williamson. Les principales conclusions à tirer du mémoire sont les suivantes : l’explication épistémique de l’assertion apportée par Williamson est à la fois robuste, informative et ne peut être importée que dans un cadre radicalement réaliste.

Cryptographic protocols are implemented in hardware to ensure low-area, high speed and reduced power consumption especially for mobile devices. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is the most commonly used public-key cryptosystem and its performance depends heavily on efficient finite field arithmetic hardware. Finding the multiplicative inverse (inversion) is the most expensive finite field operation in ECC. The two predominant algorithms for computing finite field inversion are Fermat’s Little Theorem (FLT) and Extended Euclidean Algorithm (EEA). EEA is reported to be the most efficient inversion algorithm in terms of performance and power consumption. This dissertation presents a new reformulation of EEA algorithm, which allows for speedup and optimization techniques such as concurrency and resource sharing. Modular arithmetic operations over GF(p) are introduced for small values of p, observing interesting figures, particularly for modular division. Whereas, polynomial arithmetic operations over GF(pm) are discussed adequately in order to examine the potential for processes concurrency. In particular, polynomial division and multiplication are revisited in order to derive their iterative equations, which are suitable for systolic array implementation. Consequently, several designs are proposed for each individual process and their complexities are analyzed and compared. Subsequently, a concurrent divider/multiplier-accumulator is developed, while the resulting systolic architecture is utilized to build the EEA-based inverter. The processing elements of our systolic architectures are created accordingly, and enhanced to accommodate data management throughout our reformulated EEA algorithm. Meanwhile, accurate models for the complexity analysis of the proposed inverters are developed. Finally, a novel, fast, and compact inverter over binary fields is proposed and implemented on FPGA. The proposed design outperforms the reported inverters in terms of area and speed. Correspondingly, an EEA-based inverter over ternary fields is built, showing the lowest area-time complexity among the reported inverters. / Graduate

Insurance companies offer business and individuals the possibility to reduce the financial impact of a risk occurring by transferring it away from themselves onto someone. For taking on risk on behalf of someone else the insurance company requires a premium from the policyholder which is pooled and invested in order to meet future obligations towards the policyholder. However, the importance of the European insurance industry goes beyond economic protection of the policyholder as the industry with its EUR8.4 trillion or 58 percent of EU GDP in assets is the largest institutional investor in Europe. As the financial system has undergone dramatic transformation over time, so have the role and function of intermediaries changed. While traditional tasks like reducing transaction costs and asymmetric information became less relevant, facilitating of risk transfer and dealing with the increasing breadth and depth of financial markets are gaining more and more importance. While insurers have been able to hold illiquid asset to a larger extent arguments from the industry are made that the planned introduction of Solvency II will limit insurers and overlook their investment abilities, which is something that can affect the region’s economic development. The above mention aspect combined with the limited research that has been conducted on insurers’ asset allocation and the performance of it resulted in the following research question: Does asset allocation impact insurance company's performance? The question focuses on insurers within the European Union (EU) which is enlarged by the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, where performance is measured as the return on investment (ROI). To answer the research question in the best possible way, relevant theories such as Modern Portfolio Theory or Efficient Market Hypothesis are presented and discussed as well as previous research on asset allocation. Earlier studies about asset allocation policy and its power to explain the investment return came to different conclusions which can be due to variation in the interpretation of the findings or difficulties by distinguishing between asset allocation policy and active asset allocation. Census is used to investigate in the topic as the population of listed insurance companies within the selected region was rather small which finally came down to 42 firms due to the timeframe of 11 years. Data regarding insurer’s asset class weights in debt securities, equity, real estate, derivatives, cash and equivalent, loans and receivables and the category of others were collected. The return on investment was also collected for each year of the time period and for each insurance company. Benchmarks were constructed in order to replicate what the return of a passive investment of the same proportion would have yielded. The result was inconclusive as it was not possible to determine if asset allocation policy or active management have the greatest impact on the return on investment. This is contradicting previous research of asset allocation and performance as researchers have found that asset allocation policy explains most or all of the return.

No description available.

This thesis deals with the European Free Trade Association and its gradual integration into the European Union. Both EFTA and the EU were founded in post-war Europe with the objective of economic prosperity through mutual cooperation of the Member States, this later resulted in mutual cooperation between the two units and the progressive incorporation of EFTA into the EU. The first chapter discusses the development context for EFTA and the EEA upto 2001. The second chapter analyzes the impact of the revision of the memorandum on the relationship between Switzerland and the other EFTA members, the level of cooperation achieved in the EEA, and Switzerland's current relationship with the EU. The third chapter outlines the possibilities of further development of EFTA and the EEA countries and summarizes the current attitudes of individual members of EFTA towards furtherdeepening of their mutual relations.

Unlike environmental non-governmental organisations and other knowledge producers, the European Environment Agency (EEA) seems to attract seemingly little academic interests among scholars of international relations. With this in mind, this thesis seeks to discuss how knowledge institutions such as the EEA may be seen as active participants in IR, while simultaneously seeking to extend academic discussion considering the EEA itself. More explicitly, and in order to narrow down its focus, this thesis is driven by a research question: what is the role of the EEA in policymaking and monitoring done by the European Commission? This thesis adopts social constructivism as its theoretical framework while building on data obtained through both a quantitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Both of these methods are used to identify as what kind of a knowledge producer the EEA is institutionalised as a part of the policymaking-complex of the Commission. This thesis finds that the EEA is best understood as an autonomous actor in IR which’s role is to legitimise and support environmental policymaking of the Commission rather than function as an active policymaker itself.

ANNOTATION The topic of this thesis is Financial Mechanisms of the European Economic Area and Norwegian Financial Mechanism and their using in the Czech Republic. In the introductory part there is described evolvement of these mechanisms since the foundation of the European Free Trade Association and the European Communities to their bilateral cooperation. This cooperation resulted in the creation of the European Economic Area. These Financial Mechanisms existence is based on creation EEA. The goal of this thesis is to present possibilities of the financial mechanisms and to show potential applicants for a financial support, how they could apply for the supporting finance and what they could expect. Furthermore the thesis contains analysis concerning use of the mechanisms in five years period 2004 -2009 and evaluation of results from questionnaire survey focused on one of the grants - Fund for Non-governmental Non-profit Organization. A general goal of this thesis is to provide to general and professional public compact information relating to the topic.