Within the field of Product Design there is an increasing interest in designing with emerging markets. Considering how long people have already been concerned with increasing global living standards it is surprising how little has been achieved. This suggests our current methods are insufficient. The Capability Approach (CA) by Amartya Sen offers a new way of assessing inequality and poverty, focusing on what people have reason to value to be or do. Products can be means to achieve these beings and doings. An evaluation framework inspired by this philosophy was developed. The framework was tested in a case study. The sociological impact was evaluated of the Philips Chulha, a subsidized cooking stove implemented in tribal India. The impact in terms of the CA was identified and explained using Kleine&rsquo / s Choice Framework and Bourdieu&rsquo / s concept of habitus. The framework was successful in engaging into deep dialogues with the target users. The interpreter appeared to be highly influential on the way the study was executed. Since the research was conducted in one region, no firm statements could be made based on this single case study. The framework needs further testing and developing in order to increase the collaboration between the interviewer and the interviewee. Eventually product designers can use the improved evaluation framework as a prospective framework to uncover design opportunities for developmental purposes.

<p>This paper adds to the understanding and transparency of equity pricing in emerging markets. Its novel contribution is that it empirically investigates the pricing of Country Risk in BRIC markets, using a two-factor intertemporal pricing model. Bridging the gap between academics and practitioners, this paper contributes to the debate as to whether or not it is justified to adjust discount rates for emerging market companies – as given by the CAPM – by including an unconditional country risk premium. In choosing between country risk proxies, the sovereign yield spread adjusted for relative equity volatility appears to supersede the classical sovereign yield spread in explaining return variations. Evidence is presented that country risk is priced in India and China indicating some type of market segmentation; in these markets, the addition of a country risk premium to the discount rate is justified. Moreover, the paper complements the market integration literature in that it is shown that the correlation between the change in country risk premium and the equity risk premium might show signs of market segmentation or market integration, rendering the pricing factor for country risk in specific countries significant or insignificant, respectively. © 2010 Soeriowardojo, G.T. All rights reserved.</p>

<p>The final aim of this thesis is to evaluate opportunities and risk factors of investing in China, in terms of pros and cons, and also to elaborate an optimal portfolio strategy. The pros regarding investments in China are (1) the economic liberalisation and reforms of the institutional framework; (2) the Chinese market’s huge potential and the high-growth IT and telecommunications sectors; (3) a favourable macroeconomic climate and an impressive development. The cons are (1) the mismanagement of the state-run companies; (2) the mainland exchanges’ intra-year volatility; (3) the export sector’s performance might decline; (4) the institutional framework is largely responsible for many risk factors; (5) a tougher competition climate after the entry in the WTO. Also, our calculations on an optimal portfolio strategy suggest that less risk-averse investors may want to consider the World/Shanghai portfolio, whereas the World/Shenzhen portfolio might instead suit the preferences of more risk-averse investors.</p>

<p>Bakgrund: Utvecklingsländernas obligationsmarknad har under de senaste fem åren genererat en avkastning i nivå med aktier. Detta faktum kombinerat bristen på tidigare forskning inom detta område har gjort det intressant att undersöka utvecklingsländernas obligationsmarknad närmare. </p><p>Syfte: Syftet är att analysera effektiviteten på utvecklingsländernas obligationsmarknad. </p><p>Genomförande: Med hjälp av informationskvoten och Treynorkvoten undersöks om någon av de tre fonderna i urvalet genererat systematisk överavkastning jämfört med marknadsindexet JP Morgan Emerging Market Constrained Index. Ett signifikanstest på 5 % görs för att utreda om avkastningen är skild från 0. </p><p>Resultat: Ingen av de undersökta fonderna har givit någon avkastning signifikant skild från noll enligt informationskvoten. Dock har INVESCOs fond genererat signifikant underavkastning enligt Treynorkvoten.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Title: How Kalmar Industries and Trelleborg AB developed their business in the emerging markets of China and Russia</p><p>Background and Purpose: The world is becoming more global and companies are quick to grab hold of this opportunity to internationalize and expand into emerging markets. The emerging markets studied in this paper are China and Russia, which boast growing economics, large sources of labor, and are reportedly highly corrupt. The research for this paper focuses on Kalmar Industries – a leading supplier of cargo handling equipment to ports, terminals, and Trelleborg AB Fluid Systems – an industrial company that sells industrial hose and other industrial rubber components. Both companies have entered the markets of China and Russia and are presently expanding operations there. This paper’s aim is to get a better insight into how they entered these emerging markets and what difficulties they have faced developing in these markets.</p><p>Method: A survey was sent in advance to potential interviewees working closely with the subject markets. The authors then followed up with interviews, phone interviews, and emailed responses.</p><p>Theory: Market entry strategies, framework for integrated risk management in international business, international risk perception and mode of entry, two dimensions of corruption, and relationship marketing</p><p>Findings and Conclusion: Both Kalmar Industries and Trelleborg AB Fluid Systems entered the market through exportation and have gradually increased investments in these markets. Both have experienced challenges in these markets mostly due to government policies and other general risks associated with entering into foreign markets. Although corruption is present in China and Russia, neither company feels that it affects the way they do business. In spite of the risks, both companies feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and they plan to continue growing in these markets.</p>

Applying information technology (IT) to support or magnify a competitive business strategy has been recognized which IT had adopted by enterprises. Many examples of various enterprises illustrate applying IT to create and sustain competitive advantage. Applying information strategy is becoming a trend for success and also for coping with dramatic environmental changing.The Institute of Medicine (IOM) brought patient safety issue into the public attention in its 1999 report “To Err is Human”. It is estimated those medical errors responsible for 44,000 and 98,000 deaths in the United States per year. Medical errors are causing patient’s death, permanent loss of health functions, etc.. Facing on these errors, main strategy for preventing errors is applying IT strategy. Many studies and surveys show that information technology can effectively reduce the rate of medical care errors and adverse events, up to 50%.Thus, information technology plays the role as a gatekeeper for promoting and protecting patient safety in various fields of medical care. The object of this thesis is from historical review to explore various IT strategies adopted by hospitals to improve patient safety and to explore of Taiwan hospitals applying patient safety information technologies to pursue patient safety and its contribution. We are designing this research by three phases. Phase I study, various of SCI literature review from 1990 to 2005 and in-depth interview with physicians, administrators from hospital was used to collect the data. Phase II study; from previous literature reviewed, the model and comments will gather from Phase I interviews to develop a structured questionnaire. Phase III study, In order to reduce the probability of misinterpretation, a Delphi approach was used to further revise and validate the extended framework, which has been synthesized from Phase I and Phase II study. Patient safety has become an important trend and international health facilities operation guidelines. Therefore, hospitals need a well-developed plan to implement in the near future by steps to achieve risk free hospital for patient treatment. We are happy to share our findings to hospitals and learn more on what we can do to make the hospital a safer place for all type of errors.Hospitals not only pursuing a patient safety goal by innovative information technologies but also diffusing, assiminating as a trend of enhance patient safety era. Key Words: Patient Safety, Medical Error, RFID, Electronic Medical Record.

Fluctuation of exchange rate has affected the increasing burden of foreign debt payment in emerging economies. This issue has negatively influenced the economic growth. It has been a severe obstacle considering that governments have to issue public debt denominated in foreign currency to finance the budget deficit. Hence, there is an urgent necessity to implement an efficient public debt management to minimize the exchange rate exposure. This thesis analyses how efficient the foreign debt portfolio management is in the 14 emerging economies under examination in the period of 1990-2013. Panel Dynamic Fixed-effect Estimator and Granger Causality approach are applied to analyze how responsive the currency composition of foreign debt portfolio to the exchange rates movement. The thesis examines the four biggest foreign debt shares that are denominated in US dollar, Euro, British pound, and Japanese yen, and the related exchange rates movement in the economies under consideration. The observation concludes that the foreign debt portfolio management in these emerging economies is not efficient or not optimal. The evidences prove that changes in the exchange rates of Euro, British pound, and Japanese yen relative to US dollar Granger cause changes in respected debt shares. It means that there is no substitution effects from the appreciation of the currencies vis-à-vis the US dollar during the year of observation.

Programmable reversible logic is emerging as a prospective logic design style for implementation in modern nanotechnology and quantum computing with minimal impact on circuit heat generation. Recent advances in reversible logic using and quantum computer algorithms allow for improved computer architecture and arithmetic logic unit designs. In this paper, a 2*2 Swap gate which is a reduced implementation in terms of quantum cost and delay to the previous Swap gate is presented. Next, a novel 3*3 programmable UPG gate capable of calculating the fundamental logic calculations is presented and verified, and its advantages over the Toffoli and Peres gates are discussed. The UPG is then implemented in a reduced design for calculating n-bit AND, n-bit OR and n-bit ZERO calculations. Then, two 3*3 RMUX gates capable of multiplexing two input values with reduced quantum cost and delay compared to the previously existing Fredkin gate is presented and verified. Next, 4*4 reversible gate is presented and verified which is capable of producing the calculations necessary for two-bit comparisons. The UPG and RC are implemented in the design of novel sequential and tree-based comparators. Then, two novel 4*4 reversible logic gates (MRG and PAOG) are proposed with minimal delay, and may be configured to produce a variety of logical calculations on fixed output lines based on programmable select input lines. A 5*5 structure (MG) is proposed that extends the capabilities of both the MRG and PAOG. The comparator designs are verified and its advantages to previous designs are discussed. Then, reversible implementations of ripple-carry, carry-select and Kogge-Stone carry look-ahead adders are analyzed and compared. Next, implementations of the Kogge-Stone adder with sparsity-4, 8 and 16 were designed, verified and compared. The enhanced sparsity-4 Kogge-Stone adder with ripple-carry adders was selected as the best design, and its implemented in the design of a 32-bit arithmetic logic unit is demonstrated. The proposed ALU design is verified and its advantages over the only existing ALU design are quantitatively analyzed.

The continuous scaling down of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) has improved the performance of electronic appliances. Unfortunately, it has come to a stage where further scaling of the MOSFET is no longer possible due to the physical and the fabrication limitations. This has motivated researchers towards designing and fabricating novel devices that can replace MOSFET technology. Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistors, Single Electron Tunneling Junctions, Nano-Magnetic Devices, and Spin Field-Effect Transistors are some prospective candidates that could replace MOSFET devices. In this dissertation, we have studied the computational performance of Nano−Magnetic Devices due to their attractive features such as room temperature operation, high density, robustness towards thermal noise, radiation hardened nature and low static power dissipation. In this work, we have established that data can be propagated in a causal fashion from a driver cell to the driven cells. We have fabricated a ferromagnetic wire architecture and used a magnetic force microscopy (MFM) tip to provide localized magnetic inputs. This experiment validated two important phenomena; (1) a clocking field is essential to propagate data and (2) upon removal of the clocking field data can be propagated according to the input data. Next, we have fabricated and captured MFM images of a nano-magnetic logic architecture that has computed the majority of seven binary variables. The architecture was designed by interconnecting three three-input majority logic gates with ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic wire architectures. This seven input majority logic architecture can potentially implement eight different logic functions that could be configured in real-time. All eight functions could be configured by three control parameters in real-time (by writing logic one or zero to them). Even though we observed error-free operations in nano-magnetic logic architectures, it became clear that we needed better control (write/read/clock) over individual single layer nano-magnetic devices for successful long-term operation. To address the write/clock/read problems, we designed and fabricated amultilayer nano-magnetic device. We fabricated and performed a set of experiments with patterned multilayer stacks of Co/Cu/Ni80Fe20 with a bottom layer having a perpendicular magnetization to realize neighbor interactions between adjacent top layers of devices. Based on the MFM images, we conclude that dipolar coupling between the top layers of the neighboring devices can be exploited to construct three-input majority logic gates, antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic wire architectures. Finally, we have experimentally demonstrated a magnetic system that could be used to solve quadratic optimization problems that arise in computer vision applications. We have harnessed the energy minimization nature of a magnetic system to directly solve a quadratic optimization process. We have fabricated a magnetic system corresponding to a real world image and have identified salient features with true positive rate more than 85%. These experimental results feature the potentiality of this unconventional computing method to develop a magnetic processor which solves such complex problems in few clock cycles.

Amphibians are declining at alarming rates globally. Multiple factors contribute to these declines, including chemical contaminants and emergent diseases. In recent years, agrochemical use, especially fungicide applications, has increased considerably. Previous studies have demonstrated that these agrochemicals leave application sites and enter wetlands via runoff and have detrimental effects on non-target organisms. For example, exposure to contaminants can have multifarious effects on amphibians, such as reducing their ability to deal with a secondary stressor, such as disease. A pathogen that is found concomitant with chemical contaminants in aquatic systems is Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Bd has decimated amphibian populations worldwide. Susceptibility to this pathogen varies across amphibian life stages, and is greater in adults than larvae. Consequently, it is important to examine the effects of simultaneous and serial Bd and agrochemical exposure throughout amphibian development. I assessed the combined effects of 3 different fungicides and Bd on two amphibian species: Cuban tree frogs (Osteopilus septentrionalis) and grey tree frogs (Hyla versicolor), both simultaneously and across life stages. To elucidate the complexities of these interactions, I conducted two experiments, one in the laboratory and another in outdoor mesocosms. Frogs were exposed to most of the possible combinations of fungicides and Bd as tadpoles and metamorphs. The presence of fungicides during the tadpole stage caused no difference in timing to metamorphosis and therefore no extension of time animals were exposed to the pathogen. Fungicides did not reduce fungal growth; in fact, tadpoles exposed simultaneously to a fungicide and Bd, regardless of the specific fungicide, had increased fungal loads compared to acetone controls. Additionally, animals exposed to both stressors simultaneously had higher mortality compared to controls or any of the stressors singly. Lastly, the fungicide had persistent effects on amphibian health by affecting susceptibility to Bd later in ontogeny. Frogs exposed to any of the three fungicides as a tadpole had higher Bd prevalence, Bd abundance, and Bd-induced mortality when challenged with Bd after metamorphosis, an average of 71 days after their last fungicide exposure. In conclusion, I found no benefits of fungicides for amphibians. In fact, results indicate both immediate and delayed negative effects of exposure to fungicides and Bd. These findings highlight the importance of studying multiple potential contributors to amphibian declines, simultaneously and sequentially, to understand net effects of stressors on amphibian performance.