This study aims to present the characteristics and functions of Bourdieu’s forms of capital;economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital in large online social games genre called Massive multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPG). This is done in order to determine if these are reproduced in an online society consisting of thousands of players, which of the forms of capital are of outmost importance and how the accumulation of these affect the players lives using qualitative methods. Results show that the forms of capital in-game carry similar characteristics to the accumulation of such in the real world but are not transferable to the real world to the same extent. Which of the forms of capital was most of importance than others was not evident from the results, however, the empirical material shows of an interrelationship between the accumulation of capital between the dimensions; real world and game world.

Para las organizaciones la innovación se ha posicionado como una estrategia movilizadora de valor y que permite generar competencias distintivas en sus actividades, diferentes perspectivas se han desarrollado en torno a su vinculación con el modelo de decisiones de la organización, por ello el propósito de este documento se orienta a establecer una reflexión de los referentes de modelos gerenciales y el papel de la innovación en estos, que permita la identificación de las bases de conocimiento para su aplicación e implementación en la administración de negocios, determinándose que la actividad innovadora vinculada a los modelos gerenciales, se contempla desde el recurso intelectual, con el fin de mejorar la forma por la cual se crean bienes y servicios, siendo la reflexión principal la relevancia que adquiere para los modelos modernos de gerencia de las organizaciones la mentalidad de cambio y la filosofía innovadora para la sostenibilidad en el tiempo. / Revisión por pares

This dissertation provides elementary facts about trace forms over finite fields of characteristic two in order to generalize some results concerning Gold functions. Then determines new set of maximal Artin-Schreier curves with possible pair of invariants, finds possible trace forms with specific co-dimemntion and provides a new family of binary sequences having low correlation values.

In his seminal work on modular curves and the Eisenstein ideal, Mazur studied the existence of congruences between certain Eisenstein series and newforms, proving that Eisenstein ideals associated to weight 2 cusp forms of prime level are locally principal. In this dissertation, we re-examine Eisenstein congruences, incorporating a notion of “depth of congruence,” in order to understand the local structure of Eisenstein ideals associated to weight 2 cusp forms of squarefree level N. Specifically, we use a commutative algebra result of Berger, Klosin, and Kramer to bound the depth of mod p Eisenstein congruences (from below) by the p-adic valuation of φ(N). We then show how this depth of congruence controls the local principality of the associated Eisenstein ideal.

In his paper, Borcherds introduced a theta lift which allowed him to lift classical modular forms with poles at cusps to automorphic forms on the orthogonal group O(2, l). The resulting automorphic forms, called Borcherds products, possess an infinite product expansion and have their singularities located along certain arithmetic divisors, the so-called Heegner divisors. Mainly based on the work of Bruinier, we study the question whether every automorphic form having its divisor along the Heegner divisors can be realized as a Borcherds product.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-12-18Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:12:47Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 almeida_mr_me_prud.pdf: 1115035 bytes, checksum: 8f8c8fdba0227a80d3083e233c3d5091 (MD5) / Este trabalho se insere na Linha de Pesquisa: “Processos formativos, diferença e valores”. Ao longo desta dissertação, o nosso intuito foi argumentar em torno do predomínio da racionalidade científica em nossa cultura, a qual atinge a escola em seus diferentes níveis. Para sustentar esse argumento recorremos ao diagnóstico que os autores frankfurtianos fazem do poder que o conhecimento científico tem exercido sobre nós e o quanto ele determina nossa maneira de perceber e explicar a realidade que nos cerca, reduzido tudo ao cálculo dos conceitos e a perspectiva do resultado mais eficaz, mais produtivo. A escola e os espaços de formação de professores parecem não escapar a essa lógica, em que a formação foi reduzida a treinamento, à aquisição de competências e habilidades e à adaptação imediata às exigências da cultura contemporânea. O predomínio dessa racionalidade científica nos espaços de formação produziu o que Chauí denomina, metaforicamente, de morte do educador e da pedagogia como arte, visto que a formação foi reduzida à instrumentalização para o trabalho. Esta é uma pesquisa teórica em que buscamos pensar essa problemática a partir de alguns textos de Adorno e Horkheimer, entre eles destacamos “Dialética do Esclarecimento”, sobretudo, os capítulos “Indústria cultural: o esclarecimento como mistificação das massas”, “Elementos do antisemitismo: limites do esclarecimento”, além dos textos de Adorno sobre educação, publicados no Brasil com o título “Educação e Emancipação” e artigos de Max Horkheimer que estão no livro “Sociedad em transición: estudios de filosofia social”. Trabalhamos também com pesquisas que têm sido feitas sobre esses autores no Brasil e que são importantes para o aprofundamento do nosso tema... / This work inserts in Research Line: “Form processes, difference and values.” Along this dissertation, our intention was to argue around scientific rationality predominancy in our culture, in what attain the school in its different levels. To sustain this argument we sun over diagnosis that the frankfurtianos authors make of power that the scientific knowledge hás exercised about us and how it determines our way of perceiving and explaining the reality that surround ourselves, reduced all the concept calculations and the most effective and productive perspective result. The school and teacher form spaces seem not to escape this logic, in what the form was reduced in training, the ability competence acquisitions and immediate adaptation of contemporary culture requirements. The predominancy of this scientific rationality in the form spaces produced what Chauí denominates, metaphorically, of educational death and pedagogy as art, seen that form was reduced instrumentalisation to the work. This is a theorist research in what we search to think this problem apart from some texts of Adorment and Horkheimer, between them we detach “Explanation how masses,” “Elements of anti-semistic explanation limits,” hesides Adorment texts about education published in Brazil as the chapter “Education and Emancipation” and artiches of Max Horkheimer that are in the book “Sociedad em Transición: social philosophy studios.”... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Orientador: Antonio Jose Engler / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Computação Cientifica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-06T01:37:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 OliveiraJunior_MauroRibeirode_M.pdf: 283417 bytes, checksum: ed6ca467b6f01b1fd631b10cca398846 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Neste trabalho seguimos, nos quatro primeiros capítulos, para a construção efetiva de extensões quaterniônicas, a partir do acúmulo de informações obtidas nos capítulos iniciais 1 e 2, sobre a estrutura dos subcorpos intermediários a uma extensão deste tipo, conhecimentos quais são obtidos pela atuação forte da Teoria de Galois, uma vez que é muito bem conhecida a estrutura de subgrupos do grupos dos Quatérnios. Finalmente, em posse dos resultados e caracterizações dos capítulos precedentes, juntamente aos resultados que relacionam formas quadráticas e álgebras quaterniônicas, no capítulo 6 demonstramos o Critério de Witt, que acerta sobre a imersão de extensões biquadráticas em quaterniônicas. Deste critério obtemos um importante resultado de interesse da Teoria dos Números, uma nova caracterização dos números racionais que são somas de três quadrados / Mestrado / Algebra / Mestre em Matemática

The aim of this thesis is to describe marketing communication and product placement in the theoretical part, consequently analyze examples of product placement from the practice and last but not least also analyze the perception and examples of product placement based on the survey research. Therefore the thesis is divided into three main parts. The first, theoretical part, describes the marketing mix, concept of communication, communication mix, new forms of communication, integrated marketing communication, history of product placement, legal framework in the Czech Republic and the forms of product placement. The practical part then focuses on concrete examples of product placement in selected industries (namely TV shows and series, music videos, publishing and novels and computer games) followed by real offers of product placement in the Czech market -- concretely offerings within TV shows of Czech TV channels of Česká televize, Nova and Prima. The third part of the thesis analyses perception of product placement and examples of good and bad product placement based on personal questionnaires. In conclusion, there is an evaluation of the presented information and overview of the survey findings.

Liposomes have important potential as drug delivery vehicles. However, in order to realize this potential, much basic research is required to elucidate the interactions experienced by liposomes in vivo. In this thesis two aspects of these interactions are investigated: the influence of vesicle size and lipid composition on the biodistribution observed in vivo; and the interaction of liposomes with plasma proteins. In order to determine the in vivo behavior of liposomal systems, a new vesicle marker is synthesized (¹²⁵I-tyraminyl-inulin, ¹²⁵ITI) and tested in vivo. It is shown that this probe satisfies the necessary criteria for an accurate marker of liposome behavior, and is superior to probes used by other workers in terms of accuracy, convenience, high specific activity, low tissue quenching and cost. The use of ¹²⁵ITI as a vesicle marker allows accurate measurements to be made with lower doses of liposomes than previously employed. The influence of vesicle size, composition, and dose on the blood residency times, leakage and tissue distributions of vesicles was therefore investigated at these lower doses, employing a cannulation procedure to monitor vesicles. It is demonstrated that the clearance of vesicles from the circulation exhibits biphasic kinetics. The relative number of vesicles cleared during the early phase (halflife <20 min) is decreased by increasing the vesicle dose or decreasing the size. The behavior of small vesicles produced by extrusion is also investigated, and the in vivo behavior of these systems is shown to be equivalent to conventional sonicated systems. The second part of this thesis investigates the binding of plasma proteins to vesicles in vitro. It is shown that vesicles bind a large number of plasma components and that the binding is strongly dependent on the surface charge of the vesicle. Some of the proteins have been tentatively identified with 2-D electrophoresis and several were positively identified via immuno- autoradiography. A hypothesis is advanced regarding the role of plasma proteins in the fate of liposomes in vivo. / Medicine, Faculty of / Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of / Graduate

Endorsement is a popular marketing communications tool that has been used by marketers for many years. However, traditional methods of marketing are now being surpassed as sophisticated consumers become more cynical and seek out unofficial, noncommercial information about brands. Due to the advent of technology, consumers are able to communicate independently via the internet in order to seek out, and provide, their own endorsements for products and brands. This study differentiates between different forms of dependent (paid-for) endorsements and independent (non-paid-for) endorsements; namely regular consumer endorsements, expert endorsements and association endorsements, and investigates their relative effects on brand trust. In addition, this study introduces a new form of endorsement, namely implied independent association endorsement, and tests its effect on brand trust. First, a conceptual framework of the structure of the relationship between endorsements and brand trust was compiled from relative endorsement literature. The study then investigated these relationships amongst South African nutritional supplement users who make use of the Internet to gather product information. The study made use of an Internetbased experimental research design. The study divided subjects into two experimental groups and one control group. The effect of each form of endorsement on brand trust was tested comparatively between the groups. The measurement instrument used to measure brand trust was an adapted version of the brand trust scale (BTS) designed by Delgado-Ballester (2004:573-592). Three one-way between-groups ANOVAs were conducted to compare the variability of brand trust scores between the different experimental groups. The covariate brand familiarity was included to account for previous experience with the brand used in the experiment. One-way between-groups ANCOVA’s were used to control the potential confounding that the covariate brand familiarity had on each dependent variable. The results indicate that neither dependent nor independent regular consumer endorsements have an affect on brand trust scores. However, whilst independent expert and independent association endorsements do significantly influence brand trust scores, dependent expert and dependent (implied independent) association endorsements do not. Finally, it was found that independent endorsements have a greater affect on brand trust scores than dependent (implied independent) endorsements in the association endorsement category. The first implication for managers is that different forms of endorsement influence brand trust differently, therefore, managers should be able to distinguish between different forms of endorsement available to them to use in their marketing communications mix. Secondly, managers should start investigating methods of monitoring or influencing independent expert and association endorsements to benefit from their positive influence on brand trust, which in turn has a positive affect on brand equity, consumer loyalty, brand extension acceptance and retailer re-purchases decisions. Copyright / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Marketing Management / MCom / Unrestricted