The stratigraphic record of lahars in the Whangaehu River reveals that in the past 180,000 years this route has been one of the main conduits for lahars from Mount Ruapehu, the highest active andesitic stratovolcano in the Central North Island of New Zealand. Both debris flows and hyperconcentrated flows have engulfed surfaces up to 160 km distance from the Volcano. Eight episodes of laharic activity are recognized by the distinctive lithology and similar age of their deposits. The newly defined upper Pleistocene Whangaehu Formation provides evidence for the earliest lahar event in the Valley, c. 180,000- 140,000 years ago. There is only meagre evidence for laharic activity following this event until the Ohakean and Holocene, although two new informally named deposits - the Mangatipona pumice sand (c. 37,000 years B.P.) and Apitian lahars (c. 32,000-25,500 years B.P) - are recognized, of minor extent. The formerly defined late Quaternary Te Heuheu (c. 25,500- 14,700 years B.P.), Tangatu (c. 14,700-5,370 years B.P.), Manutahi (c. 5 ,370-3,4600 years B.P.), Mangaio (c. 4,600 years B.P.) and Onetapu (< c. 1,850 years B.P.) Formations are here described and interpreted. Triggering mechanisms for lahar deposits are distinguished based on lithological criteria. (a) Bouldery deposits in the Whangaehu Formation are interpreted to have been emplaced by a single highly competent debris flow triggered by a southerly-directed flank collapse at Mount Ruapehu. This debris flow was competent enough to transport boulders up to 2 m in diameter over 140 km from the Volcano. Bouldery deposits are also recognized in the Onetapu Formation, but are restricted to higher gradient surfaces on the Mount Ruapehu ring plain. The Onetapu Formation deposits are interpreted to have been emplaced by lahars resulting from catastrophic drainage of Crater Lake, which occupies the active crater on Mount Ruapehu. (b) Pebbly and sandy deposits are interpreted to have been emplaced by low competence debris flows and hyperconcentrated flows. These lahar deposits are recognized in all formations described. The lithology in these deposits is commonly pumice and they are interpreted to have been triggered by eruptions and/or high rainfall events at the Volcano. Formations, and individual members within Formations, were dated by radiocarbon dating of organic material found below, within or above lahar deposits, or by coverbed stratigraphy. Both rhyolitic and andesitic tephras provided recognizable time planes in the late Quaternary coverbeds overlying lahar deposits. In this study quantitative analysis of quartz abundance, which is shown to vary between loesses and palaeosols, is used as an indirect means of establishing a surrogate for past climate changes which have been correlated to the deep sea oxygen isotope curve. A minimum age for the newly defined Whangaehu Formation is established by this method. The accumulation rate for lahars in the Whangaehu River has accelerated from 1 km3 every c. 23,000 years in the past c. 160,000 years to 1 km3 in 589 years in the past c. 2,000 years. This acceleration probably results from the increased frequency of lahars in the River following the development of Crater Lake c. 2,000 years B.P. According to this pattern an estimated 0.17 km3 volume of lahars could be anticipated over the next 100 years. If the 2,000 year accumulation rate were to be met over the next 100 years there would be 170 lahars of l0[superscript]6 m3 in this time interval , or 17 lahars of 10[superscript]7 m3 (or 1.7 lahars of 10[superscript]8 m3). The largest reported volume for an historic lahar is 10[superscript]6 m3 and these have occurred on average once every 30 years. The accumulation rate for historic lahars is 0.0054 km3 in 100 years. Therefore, although the accumulation rate appears to have slowed down, further large lahars with magnitudes 10 or 100 times greater than those witnessed could be expected.

Atomic flows are a geometric invariant of classical propositional proofs in deep inference. In this thesis we use atomic flows to describe new normal forms of proofs, of which the traditional normal forms are special cases, we also give several normalisation procedures for obtaining the normal forms. We define, and use to present our results, a new deep-inference formalism called the functorial calculus, which is more flexible than the traditional calculus of structures. To our surprise we are able to 1) normalise proofs without looking at their logical connectives or logical rules; and 2) normalise proofs in less than exponential time.

<p>During the last decades organizations have made large investments in Information Technology (IT). The effects of these investments have been studied in business and academic communities over the years. A large amount of research has been conducted on the relation between the investments in IT and productivity growth. Productivity is a central measure of national and organizational success and is often considered in economic decisionmaking. Researchers have however found it difficult to present a clear-cut answer to the effect of IT investments on productivity growth; an inability defined as the productivity paradox.</p><p>Within the Impact of IT on Productivity (ITOP) research program the relevance of the productivity measure as an indicator of the value of IT is questionned. IT has over the years replaced physical interfaces with digital and in this way enabled new ways to process information. A retrospective research approach is therefore applied where the effects of digitized information flows are studied within specific organizational settings.</p><p>In this thesis the effects of digitized information flows within Swedish grocery distribution are studied. A comprehensive presentation of the development is first conducted and three focal areas are thereafter presented. These describe supply chain information flows including order information, information on new items and analysis of point-of-sales information. The presentation of the focal areas identifies a number of effects from the digitization of information flows. The effects are analyzed according to a predefined analytical framework. The effects are divided into five categories and are thereafter evaluated when it comes to potential for generating value.</p><p>The study shows that the digitization of information flows has generated numerous, multifaceted effects. Automational, informational, transformational, consumer surplus and other effects are observed. They are difficult to evaluate using a single ndicator. Specific indicators that are closely related to the effects can however be defined. The study also concludes that the productivity measure does not capture all positive effects generated by digitized information flows.</p> / ISRN/Report code: LiU-Tek-Lic-2005:39

<p>Den här uppsatsen behandlar Lean i en administrativ miljö, istället för produktion. Lean är inget nytt påfund, utan har sina rötter tillbaka till 1930-talet hos grundarna av Toyota. Lean handlar om att minska slöseri och att visualisera flöden inom företag. Lean används för att identifiera värden och värdeflöden, skapa flöden utan slöserier och implementera dessa flöden mer effektivt genom kontinuerliga förbättringar. </p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att se hur Lean kan implementeras i en administrativ avdelning för att minska slöseri, ledtider och standardisera arbetsprocesserna. Vidare kommer en grund läggas till en modell för vidare implementering av Lean i andra administrativa avdelningar. </p><p>Genom utförda intervjuer, följda ordrar och genom studerade dokument har det blivit klart att Lean går att använda sig av och implementera i en administrativ avdelning. Arbetsprocesserna blir mer synliga vilket gör att processerna kan standardiseras och på så sätt kan slöseri minskas och därmed ledtider minska. Standardisering av arbetet kan ske genom att skapa en prisdatabas, prismodell och synliggöras genom visuell planering. </p><p>Modellen som skapats är en pyramid som är uppdelad i fem olika steg. Grunden i pyramiden är att de anställda måste ta ansvar för sitt eget arbete. Nästa nivå i pyramiden är att engagera de anställda. Tredje steget är att visualisera flödet, aktiviteterna och de problem som existerar. Nästa steg är att förenkla flödet, och toppen av pyramiden är att kontinuerligt förbättra flödet. </p><p>Slutsatsen av denna studie är att Lean är ett sätt att arbeta som grundar sig i sunt och gemensamt förnuft. Lean kan implementeras i en avdelning genom att göra flödena synliga och identifiera problem, slöseri och förbättrings möjligheter. Vidare kan inte Lean implementeras i en avdelning om inte de anställda tar ansvar för sitt arbete eller om det inte finns ett tydligt ledarskap.</p> / <p>This Master thesis is concerning Lean in an administrative section, instead of production. Lean is nothing new, it has its roots back to the 1930s with the founders of Toyota. Lean is about reducing waste and visualizing flows in companies. Lean is used to find values and value streams in the business, creating flows without waste and to implement these flows more efficiently by continuously work with improvements. </p><p>The purpose of this Master thesis is to study how Lean can be implemented in a section of a company where the processes are related to administration, not production, to reduce waste, lead time and structuralize the work process. Further a foundation will be created for a model to implement Lean in other administrative sections. </p><p>Through interviews, following orders in the flow and by studying documents it has been established that Lean can be used and implemented in an administrative section. By using Lean work processes can be made more visual, which makes it possible to standardize the process and in that way reduce waste and lead time. This can be made by creating a price database, price model and by using visual planning. </p><p>The model created is a pyramid divided into five steps. The foundation is to take responsibility for ones own work, and to inform the employees and give them meaning with changes. The next level is to engage the employees. Third step is to visualize the flow, activities and the problems. The next step is to simplify the flow, and the top of the pyramid is to continuously improve the flow. </p><p>The conclusions of the Master thesis are that Lean is a way of working with good and common sense. Lean can be implemented in a section by making the flows visual and then identifying problems, waste and improvements. Further Lean cannot be implemented in a section if the employees do not take responsibility of their own work, or if there is not a visual leadership.</p>

Floods are major disturbance events for riverine ecosystems, directly and indirectly impacting organisms and their habitat. In this study I investigated the role of riverine floods and flow alteration in regulating aquatic macroinvertebrate population and community structure. I examined this problem using a variety of methods: a meta-analytic review of primary studies from the literature, a mathematical model synthesizing population and flood ecology, a multi-year experimental flood program in an arid-land river, and a field investigation of flood recovery behaviors in a charismatic larval odonate. I found that floods significantly reduced invertebrate abundance in the short term, but had varied effects across particular study sites, microhabitats, and taxonomic groups. I determined that both resistant and resilient capabilities are important to persistence of invertebrate populations after disturbance events, and that these traits may act in a binary fashion. Recovery over time of invertebrate populations may be partially due to "hidden resistance" of spatially displaced individuals in side-channels, benthic substrate, and vegetation or wood. Some invertebrates adapted to flood-prone rivers may possess behavioral adaptations for returning to the main-channel of the river after flood events. This dissertation contributes to riverine disturbance ecology and provides information useful to prediction and management of ecosystem flows in rivers. / Graduation date: 2012

We study the problem of minimizing the maximum latency of flows in networks with congestion. We show that this problem is NP-hard, even when all arc latency functions are linear and there is a single source and sink. Still, one can prove that an optimal flow and an equilibrium flow share a desirable property in this situation: all flow-carrying paths have the same length; i.e., these solutions are "fair," which is in general not true for the optimal flow in networks with nonlinear latency functions. In addition, the maximum latency of the Nash equilibrium, which can be computed efficiently, is within a constant factor of that of an optimal solution. That is, the so-called price of anarchy is bounded. In contrast, we present a family of instances that shows that the price of anarchy is unbounded for instances with multiple sources and a single sink, even in networks with linear latencies. Finally, we show that an s-t-flow that is optimal with respect to the average latency objective is near optimal for the maximum latency objective, and it is close to being fair. Conversely, the average latency of a flow minimizing the maximum latency is also within a constant factor of that of a flow minimizing the average latenc

With the advent of neoliberal globalization in the 1980s, international student mobility (ISM) has become a significant social and educational phenomenon. Given the increasing magnitude of international student flows from developing countries to the developed or major member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this research explores major OECD policy positions on international students, related priorities in higher education, and the influence of the GATT, the WTO and the GATS on higher education in these countries. Chinese graduate student perspectives are also drawn upon to understand Chinese student migrations to Canada in pursuit of higher education. The research considers ISM as a social and educational phenomenon of student migration across borders for higher education. Given the focus on exploration, meanings and understandings, an interpretive approach and qualitative case study strategy have been utilized to examine relative policy positions and to understand the experiences of Chinese graduate students who study at the University of Alberta (U of A) with the view to contribute towards qualitative studies of ISM. / Theoretical, Cultural and International Studies in Education

In the oil industry, there is a special class of pipelines used for the transportation of refined products. The problem of sequencing the inputs to be pumped through this type of pipeline seeks to generate the optimal sequence of batches of products and their destination as well as the amount of product to be pumped such that the total operational cost of the system, or another operational objective, is optimized while satisfying the product demands according to the requirements set by the customers. This dissertation introduces a new modeling approach and proposes a solution methodology for this problem capable of dealing with the topology of all the scenarios reported in the literature so far. The system representation is based on a 1-0 multi commodity network flow formulation that models the dynamics of the system, including aspects such as conservation of product flow constraints at the depots, travel time of products from the refinery to their depot destination and what happens upstream and downstream the line whenever a product is being received at a given depot while another one is being injected into the line at the refinery. It is assumed that the products are already available at the refinery and their demand at each depot is deterministic and known beforehand. The model provides the sequence, the amounts, the destination and the trazability of the shipped batches of different products from their sources to their destinations during the entire horizon planning period while seeking the optimization of pumping and inventory holding costs satisfying the time window constraints. A survey for the available literature is presented. Given the problem structure, a decomposition based solution procedure is explored with the intention of exploiting the network structure using the network simplex method. A branch and bound algorithm that exploits the dynamics of the system assigning priorities for branching to a selected set of variables is proposed and its computational results for the solution, obtained via GAMS/CPLEX, of the formulation for random instances of the problem of different sizes are presented. Future research directions on this field are proposed.

La technique micro météorologique de covariance de turbulences est utilisée pour estimer les échanges de CO2 entre les écosystèmes et latmosphère. Des centaines de sites instrumentés, répartis dans le monde entier, lutilisent désormais pour étudier une grande variété décosystèmes. Cette technique est cependant entachée dune erreur systématique lorsquelle est appliquée sur des couverts hauts comme des forêts, en conditions atmosphériques stables, cest-à-dire essentiellement pendant les nuits peu venteuses et sans couverture nuageuse. Pendant ces périodes, en effet, le transport turbulent serait concurrencé par un autre mécanisme de transport qui est ladvection. Dans ce travail, la présence dadvection a été testée sur le site expérimental forestier de Vielsalm (Belgique) et son importance a été évaluée. A cette fin, un dispositif expérimental permettant des mesures de vitesse de vent, de concentration de CO2 et de température de lair à lintérieur de la forêt a été installé. Il a permis la mise en évidence, pendant les périodes stables, découlements gravitationnels se réalisant près du sol suite au refroidissement des surfaces et à la présence dune faible pente. Il a été montré que ces écoulements étaient responsables du transport advectif de CO2. Une analyse dincertitude a été menée à laide de campagnes de mesures spécifiques. Elle a conclu à la faisabilité des mesures de gradients verticaux et surtout horizontaux de CO2 sur le site mais a montré que le plus grand facteur dincertitude portait sur les estimations de la composante verticale de la vitesse au-dessus de et dans la forêt. Malgré ces incertitudes, une analyse fine des épisodes gravitationnels a permis de mettre en évidence un mécanisme cohérent liant les écoulements dair et le champ des concentrations de CO2 et permettant de mieux comprendre comment le CO2 pouvait être transporté latéralement et verticalement par les écoulements gravitationnels. Finalement, la faisabilité dune correction basée sur lestimation des termes advectifs a été évaluée. Il a été montré que les incertitudes portant sur ladvection étaient trop importantes pour permettre daméliorer sensiblement le bilan nocturne des flux de CO2 au moyen de cette méthode. Celle-ci savère toutefois intéressante pour mieux comprendre les processus de transport à loeuvre dans un couvert forestier./The micrometeorological technique of eddy-covariance is used for the estimation of the CO2 exchange between the ecosystems and the atmosphere. Hundreds of instrumented sites, spread all over the world, use it henceforth to study a great variety of ecosystems. This technique is however affected by a systematic error when applied above tall canopies like forests, in stable atmospheric conditions, i.e. primarily during non windy nights without cloud cover. Indeed, during these periods the turbulent transport would be competed with by another transport mechanism which is called advection. In this work, the presence of advection has been tested on the experimental forested site of Vielsalm (Belgium) and its importance has been evaluated. For this purpose, an experimental set-up allowing the measurements of wind velocity, CO2 concentration and temperature of the air inside the forest has been installed. It has allowed the description, for the stable periods, of gravitational flows being carried out close to the ground due to the cooling of surfaces and the presence of a weak slope. These flows were shown to be responsible for advective CO2 transport. An uncertainty analysis has been carried out using dedicated measurement campaigns. It has conclude with the feasibility of measurements of vertical and especially horizontal CO2 gradients on the site but has shown that the greatest factor of uncertainty related to the estimate of the vertical velocity component above and in the forest. In spite of these uncertainties, a fine analysis of the gravitational episodes has made it possible to highlight a coherent mechanism linking the flow field and the CO2 concentration field and making it possible to better understand how CO2 could be transported laterally and vertically by the gravitational flows. Finally, the feasibility of a correction based on the estimate of the advective terms has been evaluated. It has been shown that uncertainties relating to advection were too important to make it possible to appreciably improve the night assessment of CO2 fluxes by means of this method. This one proves however interesting for better understanding the processes of transport at work in a forest cover.

Den här uppsatsen behandlar Lean i en administrativ miljö, istället för produktion. Lean är inget nytt påfund, utan har sina rötter tillbaka till 1930-talet hos grundarna av Toyota. Lean handlar om att minska slöseri och att visualisera flöden inom företag. Lean används för att identifiera värden och värdeflöden, skapa flöden utan slöserier och implementera dessa flöden mer effektivt genom kontinuerliga förbättringar.  Syftet med uppsatsen är att se hur Lean kan implementeras i en administrativ avdelning för att minska slöseri, ledtider och standardisera arbetsprocesserna. Vidare kommer en grund läggas till en modell för vidare implementering av Lean i andra administrativa avdelningar.  Genom utförda intervjuer, följda ordrar och genom studerade dokument har det blivit klart att Lean går att använda sig av och implementera i en administrativ avdelning. Arbetsprocesserna blir mer synliga vilket gör att processerna kan standardiseras och på så sätt kan slöseri minskas och därmed ledtider minska. Standardisering av arbetet kan ske genom att skapa en prisdatabas, prismodell och synliggöras genom visuell planering.  Modellen som skapats är en pyramid som är uppdelad i fem olika steg. Grunden i pyramiden är att de anställda måste ta ansvar för sitt eget arbete. Nästa nivå i pyramiden är att engagera de anställda. Tredje steget är att visualisera flödet, aktiviteterna och de problem som existerar. Nästa steg är att förenkla flödet, och toppen av pyramiden är att kontinuerligt förbättra flödet.  Slutsatsen av denna studie är att Lean är ett sätt att arbeta som grundar sig i sunt och gemensamt förnuft. Lean kan implementeras i en avdelning genom att göra flödena synliga och identifiera problem, slöseri och förbättrings möjligheter. Vidare kan inte Lean implementeras i en avdelning om inte de anställda tar ansvar för sitt arbete eller om det inte finns ett tydligt ledarskap. / This Master thesis is concerning Lean in an administrative section, instead of production. Lean is nothing new, it has its roots back to the 1930s with the founders of Toyota. Lean is about reducing waste and visualizing flows in companies. Lean is used to find values and value streams in the business, creating flows without waste and to implement these flows more efficiently by continuously work with improvements.  The purpose of this Master thesis is to study how Lean can be implemented in a section of a company where the processes are related to administration, not production, to reduce waste, lead time and structuralize the work process. Further a foundation will be created for a model to implement Lean in other administrative sections.  Through interviews, following orders in the flow and by studying documents it has been established that Lean can be used and implemented in an administrative section. By using Lean work processes can be made more visual, which makes it possible to standardize the process and in that way reduce waste and lead time. This can be made by creating a price database, price model and by using visual planning.  The model created is a pyramid divided into five steps. The foundation is to take responsibility for ones own work, and to inform the employees and give them meaning with changes. The next level is to engage the employees. Third step is to visualize the flow, activities and the problems. The next step is to simplify the flow, and the top of the pyramid is to continuously improve the flow.  The conclusions of the Master thesis are that Lean is a way of working with good and common sense. Lean can be implemented in a section by making the flows visual and then identifying problems, waste and improvements. Further Lean cannot be implemented in a section if the employees do not take responsibility of their own work, or if there is not a visual leadership.