This thesis presents an inductive, qualitative approach to exploring the connection between entrepreneurship and social movement theory in the context of the fitness movement. This was achieved by applying the External Enabler Framework for New Venture Creation which looks at how changes to the macro environment, such as sociocultural shifts, enable entrepreneurial processes by activating mechanisms on the venture level (Davidsson et al., 2020). A loop derived from social movement literature is implemented as a contribution to the framework that presents a perspective in which ventures not only are influenced by the social movement but also contribute to the movement's momentum. The loop was found to occur as ventures enlarge the scope of the social movement and thus change its characteristics. This insight provides two theoretical contributions. Firstly, the loop originating from social movement theory is better defined and explained. Secondly, the External Enabler Framework for New Venture Creation has been connected to the loop, which provides a more nuanced view of how social movements and ventures interrelate. This is deemed important since it helps us understand how social movements can grow with the influence of ventures and how this leads to the continuous enablement of new ventures.

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Standing and sidelying external rotation exercises produce high activation of the deltoid and infraspinatus. Holding a towel roll under the arm at 30° shoulder abduction during these exercises may decrease deltoid activity and increase infraspinatus activity. The objective was to determine if the addition of a towel under the arm during standing and sidelying external rotation affects EMG activity of the infraspinatus, middle and posterior deltoid, and pectoralis major, compared to the no towel condition. 20 male volunteers (age; 26 ± 3, height; 1.80 m ± .07 m, weight; 77 kg ± 10 kg) had right dominant hand, bilaterally healthy shoulders with no current cervical pathology, and no skin infection or lesion of the shoulder. Maximal voluntary isometric contraction for the infraspinatus, middle and posterior deltoid, and pectoralis major and external rotation in standing and sidelying with and without a towel roll were performed. Normalized average and peak EMG amplitude was compared between the towel conditions during standing and sidelying external rotation. Both infraspinatus and pectoralis major activity had no significant differences between the towel conditions in standing and sidelying (P > .05). In standing and sidelying, posterior deltoid activity was significantly greater with a towel roll (.008 ≤ P ≤ .035 and .008 ≤ P ≤ .018, respectively). Middle deltoid activity had no significant differences between the towel conditions in standing (P > .05). However, in sidelying, middle deltoid activity was significantly lower with a towel roll (.011 ≤ P ≤ .000). The only muscle activation change during standing external rotation with the application of a towel roll was an increase of the posterior deltoid. During sidelying external rotation, holding a towel roll decreased middle deltoid activity and increased posterior deltoid activity. Thus, this study indicates that holding a towel roll under the arm during standing external rotation exercise does not appear to produce desired effects on muscle activation. However, application of a towel roll under the arm could be recommended during sidelying external rotation exercise in order to possibly reduce the superior glide of the humerus, due to decrease muscle activation of the middle deltoid.

This dissertation consists of three chapters and is centered on the issues of external debt default and growth. In the first chapter, we develop a macrodynamic model of a small open economy that incorporates the effects of haircut and external debt default on the borrowing cost of a debtor country. We argue that the ability to impose a substantial haircut, a reduction in external debt in the face of a sovereign default can work as a strong enough incentive for a debtor country to borrow heavily even when it faces an increased default risk. Calibrating our model to real world data and employing numerical simulations we show that the observed overborrowing and consequently multiple external debt defaults by many countries around the world are equilibrium outcomes in the presence of the haircut induced benefit of sovereign default. Chapter two empirically investigates how debt default affects growth in low-income countries that have a high debt burden. We adopt Rose’s (2005) methodology of using dummy variables to examine both the contemporaneous and lagged effects of debt default on growth in countries that received debt relief assistance under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC). An inflow of capital is expected to affect these economies differently than other countries which are not eligible for the HIPC initiative. Our findings indicate that initiation of an external debt default leads to a downturn in growth, possibly due to the uncertainty created by such an event. However, debt renegotiation marking the conclusion of a default spell helps to revive growth and contributes to about 1 percentage point increase in growth for these countries. This positive growth effect of successful completion of a default episode is robust to different specifications and is pertinent even in the long run. In the third chapter, we examine the differential impacts of debt renegotiation on the various sectors within an economy. We analyze more than fifty years of data for ten broadly defined sectors from twenty-four mostly developing countries around the world. Our results indicate that debt rescheduling is associated with five to nine percent growth in sectoral productivity in countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa. This positive impact of debt renegotiation is particularly significant in the sectors of mining, construction, trade services, transport services, business services and personal services. Our findings provide support to the postulations of the debt overhang theory and the crowding out theory at sectoral level.

Att skapa en god balans mellan arbete och fritid kan vara problematiskt då dygnets timmar inte alltid räcker till. Syftet med studien var därför att undersöka hur arbetande kvinnor med hemmavarande barn upplevde balansen, vilka strategier de använde sig av och vilka yttre faktorer som underlättade för dessa strategier. Genom en kvalitativ datainsamling och en intervjuguide som grund utfördes 8 semistrukturerade intervjuer med kvinnor i åldern 31-41 år. Det insamlade materialet transkriberades och en tematisk analys genomfördes. Totalt identifierades sex teman, varav tre beskrev strategier och tre beskrev yttre faktorer. Resultatet visade att kvinnors strategier för att balansera vardagen handlade om planering och förberedelse, tidssparande och bortprioriteringar. De yttre underlättande faktorer som fanns var ekonomiska förutsättningar, socialt nätverk samt arbetsgivarens betydelse och arbetets flexibilitet. Oavsett hur balansen upplevdes använde sig kvinnorna av liknande strategier och därför sågs de yttre faktorerna vara betydelsefulla för att uppnå balans mellan arbete och fritid.

In the present era, with the prevailing competition, the cost of production plays a vital role. As the price of petroleum oils, especially diesel and furnace oil are growing at a steeper rate than solid fuel price, finding a substitute for furnace oil is one of the alternative available. Furnace oil used in boilers can be totally substitute by biomass with an equivalent ratio of 3.5:1 kg/liter on the basis of calorific value. This may results in saving of more than 60% of operating cost and would have attractive payback period of 6-8 months. Sri Lanka has large agriculture base and very common of having Gliricidia as an under-grow. The other biomass fuels such as paddy husk, saw dust, firewood are also available in large quantities around the country. Objective of this article is to study the conversion of presently  running furnace oil fired boiler, which is located at Ambilipitiya paper factory,Sri Lanka to biomass fired external furnace boiler namely water-wall boiler, techno economical study of the project and commissioning. Further a case study, which was done previous to this study and running successfully, is described to show the viability of the conversion using the internal furnace method. This case study was done at a Textile factory namely Brandix Finishing, Siduwa, and Sri Lanka. The results will be reducing the operating cost of the boilers and reduction of green house gas emission.  Opportunities for rural people to get extra income by farming Gliricidia, extra income from saw dust, paddy husk, and firewood are indirect benefits of the project. This report gives details of technical, environmental and commercial aspects of this unique opportunity.      Supervised by: Dr.Primal Fernando, Senior Lecturer, University of Peradeniya

The purpose of the study was to explore the lived experiences of exemplary female elementary principals. The qualitative phenomenological study investigated the career paths, job responsibilities, barriers/challenges, and affirmations of exemplary female principals practicing in elementary schools in the United States. The participants were required to have at least 5 years of experience in education and at least 3 years as an elementary school principal. Interviews were conducted by the researcher to acquire explanations about the participants’ perceptions, perspectives, and feelings based on their experiences as exemplary elementary principals. The investigation focused on the females’ career paths, job responsibilities, barriers/challenges, and affirmations as exemplary leaders. Further, the females provided advice and guidance for aspiring female leaders in education. In general, the exemplary female principals started their careers as teachers, married, had children, and obtained advanced degrees and training in educational leadership as they moved to positions as elementary principals. The job responsibilities of the female principals included supervising instruction to improve instructional practices as the instructional leader, monitoring data, implementing policies and procedures, hiring as well as placing personnel, preparing budgets, maintaining a safe environment for students and staff, managing facilities, and purchasing equipment/resources for the organization. The major barriers/challenges faced by the female principals were lacking resources, managing time, prioritizing tasks, and managing tasks for work and home. Advice and guidance for aspiring female administrators centered around the personal, professional, and public service responsibilities that contributed to their success and recognition as exemplary principal.

Prior research shows that family firms are generally less likely to diversify, but it remains unclear which mode of diversification in terms of internal versus external diversification family firms are more likely to choose once they decide to diversify. Similarly, it is unclear which type of diversification in terms of product versus international diversification family firms are more likely to focus on in comparison to nonfamily firms. Based on insights drawn from the goals, governance, and resources framework, this dissertation investigates the modes/types of diversification in family and nonfamily firms, as well as among various types of family firms. Specifically, I propose that family firms will prefer internal to external diversification to a larger extent than nonfamily firms. I further propose the strength of preference for internal to external diversification is likely to vary among different types of family firms manifested in the level of family ownership, family participation in the top management team and board, and generation of family members owning and controlling the family firm. Likewise, I theorize that family firms would prefer product to international diversification to a larger extent than nonfamily firms and that the strength of preference for product diversification is likely to vary among different types of family firms. A sample of 573 firms drawn from the S&P 1500 index was used toexamine the difference between family and nonfamily firms, and 136 family firms to test the heterogeneity hypotheses. No significant differences were found between family and nonfamily firms in their relative choice on internal over external diversification (Essay 1) and product over international diversification(Essay 2). Consistent with my prediction, I found family representation in the top management team has a significantly positive effect on a firm's tendency to engage in product rather than international diversification. However, in both Essay1 and Essay 2,I did not find significant effects of the other heterogeneous variables on a family firm's tendency to engage in one mode/type of diversification over the other. A rationale for these non-significant relationships is provided. Contributions and implications of this study are also discussed.

Graph search is used in many areas of computer science. It is well-known that the scalability of graph-search algorithms such as A* is limited by their memory requirements. In this dissertation, I describe three complementary strategies for reducing the memory requirements of graph-search algorithms, especially for multiple sequence alignment (a central problem in computational molecular biology). These search strategies dramatically increase the range and difficulty of multiple sequence alignment problems that can be solved. The first strategy uses a divide-and-conquer method of solution reconstruction, and one of my contributions is to show that when divide-and-conquer solution reconstruction is used, a layer-by-layer strategy for multiple sequence alignment is more memory-efficient than a bestirst strategy. The second strategy is a new approach to duplicate detection in external-memory graph search that involves partitioning the search graph based on an abstraction of the state space. For graphs with sufficient local structure, it allows graph-search algorithms to use external memory, such as disk storage, almost as efficiently as internal memory. The third strategy is a technique for reducing the memory requirements of sub-alignment search heuristics that are stored in lookup tables. It uses the start and goal states of a problem instance to restrict the region of the state space for which a table-based heuristic is needed, making it possible to store more accurate heuristic estimates in the same amount of memory. These three strategies dramatically improve the scalability of graph search not only for multiple sequence alignment, but for many other graph-search problems, and generalizations of these search strategies for other graph-search problems are discussed throughout the dissertation.