Historians of the early space age have established a norm whereby President Eisenhower's actions are judged solely as a response to the launch of the Sputnik satellite, and are indicative of a passive, negative presidency. His low-key actions are seen merely as a prelude to the US triumph in space in the 1960s. This study presents an alternative view showing that Eisenhower’s space policy was not a reaction to the heavily-propagandised Soviet satellite launches, or even the effect they caused in the US political and military elites, but the continuation of a strategic track. In so doing, it also contributes to the reassessment of the wider Eisenhower presidency. Having assessed the development of three intersecting discourses: Eisenhower as president; the genesis of the US space programme; and developments in Cold War US reconnaissance, this thesis charts Eisenhower’s influence both on the ICBM and reconnaissance programmes and his support for a non-military approach to the International Geophysical Year. These actions provided the basis for his space policy for the remainder of his presidency. The following chapters show that Sputnik had no impact on the policies already in place and highlight Eisenhower’s pragmatic activism in enabling the implementation of these policies by a carefully-chosen group of expert ‘helping hands’. This study delivers a new interpretation of Eisenhower’s actions. It argues that he was operating on a parallel track that started with the Castle H-bomb tests; developed through the CIA's reconnaissance efforts and was distilled in the Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. This set a policy for US involvement in outer space that matched Eisenhower’s desire for a balanced budget and fundamental belief in maintaining peace. By challenging the orthodox view, this paper shows that President Eisenhower’s space policy actions were strategic steps that provided a logical next step for both civilian and military space programmes at the completion of the International Geophysical Year.

<p>Skandalen som omvärvde Enron skakade affärsvärlden då det var den största skandal som dittills inträffat. De brott Enrons ledning stod anklagade för var många och av varierande art. De undersökningar som redan har genomförts har till stor del fokuserat på organisationen och ledarskapet. För att ge en annorlunda vinkel fokuserar denna uppsats istället på redovisningen och några av de misstag som begicks av Enrons ledning. Det är även därför som händelserna granskas ur ett revisorsperspektiv. Målgruppen är revisionsintresserade samt de som är intresserade av ekonomisk historia. De data som har använts i arbetet är sekundärdata som blev åtkomlig genom databaser och relevanta sökord. Enron använde sig av enheter som de skapat för speciella ändamål (SPE-enheter) för att kringgå gällande regler samt för att dölja förluster. Detta skedde bland annat i fallet med Talon, då de kringgick reglerna gällande redovisning av förluster genom att ta upp nya inkomster och på så sätt upprätthålla det egna aktievärdet. Tillgångarna i de SPE-enheter Enron skapade bestod till största del av aktier i Enron vilket gjorde enheterna beroende av att Enrons aktievärde upprätthölls. Enligt de regler som var aktuella innan konkursen skulle SPE-enheter konsolideras med grundarens balans- och resultaträkning då vissa kriterier inte uppfylldes. Detta var en regel som Enron konsekvent bröt mot genom att fortlöpande bilda nya enheter för att bibehålla det egna aktievärdet samt för att dölja att kraven kring konsolidering inte uppnåddes. Mark-to-market var en process som Enron utnyttjade frekvent när det gällde värdering av långtidskontrakt inom energihandeln. Processen går ut på att uppskatta kommande marknadsvärden för att kunna beräkna kommande inkomster. Enron var emellertid alltför optimistiska i sina uppskattningar vilket ledde till att vinsterna som redovisats var betydligt högre än de verkliga. För att dölja detta använde sig företaget av vinstförvaltning, vilket innebär att de flyttade inkomster för att upprätthålla en jämn vinstnivå genom åren. Något som blev till ett stort problem då avtalet med videojätten Blockbuster avbröts utan att några vinster verkligen inkommit. Enrons redovisningsbrott är till största delen fria tolkningar av reglerna eller det faktum att de lyckats kringgå dem helt. Enbart i fallen med SPE-enheterna kan brott påvisas.</p> / <p>The Enron scandal was the biggest scandal that had existed (at the time it occurred) and it chocked the entire business world. The crimes that Enron’s management were charged with were many and of different species. Previous investigations concentrate on leadership and organization. To give a different visual angle, this essay focuses on the accounting issues and some of the mistakes that the management in Enron made. Furthermore, the events in the case of Enron are seen from an auditor’s perspective. Our goal is to reach audit and other economic history interested parties. The data that were used is secondary data that became available through carefully selected search words. Enron used entities created for special purposes (SPE-entities) to avoid rules and to hide losses. This happened in the case with Talon, when Enron circumvent the rules regarding the ways in which losses presents in the financial statement, by showing incomes to maintain the value of the stocks. The assets in the SPE-entities were mainly stocks in Enron, which meant that the entities depended on Enron’s stock value to maintain an acceptable level. According to the rules before the bankruptcy, the entities balance- and result sheets did not need to be consolidated with the founders if certain criteria were met. This was a rule that Enron consistently broke by continuously create new entities and Enron could in that way retain their stock value and hide from the consolidating requirements. Mark-to-market is a process that was frequently used by Enron when they were to appreciate the values from long-term contracts within the energy business. According to the process the company estimate market values to present future incomes. However, Enron were to optimistic when they calculated, which meant that the profit estimated were higher than in reality. To cover the truth Enron used profit administration, which means that they shifted the profits to present a better profit level over the years. This became a big problem in the case with Blockbuster Video, a case that was interrupted before any profits were made. The crimes that were made by Enron’s management are to a large part their own interpretation of the accounting rules or the fact that they entirely manage to avoid the rules. Crimes can be pointed out only in the case with the SPE-entities.</p>

None / In the post-Cold War era, China, Japan and Taiwan entered the new phase of their relationship and were forced to reconsider their security and political dialogues. Despite of the US presence in East Asia, they are becoming more active players in the region, thus, shaping a regional “pseudo-strategic” triangle. The main focus in the research is security issues and concerns among the China, Japan and Taiwan in that period without active interference of the US. In 2002, China and Japan celebrated thirty years of relations` normalization. However, some scholars are not optimistic about future intentions of both countries. Contemporary Chinese and Japanese diplomats try to rely on the friendship diplomacy; however, their efforts in an official level still are described as “a mirage of good relations.” Therefore, in the future, China and Japan will keep “equal-but-distant” relationship. On the contrary, even though Japan and Taiwan do not have official relations, however, they both are getting closer by intensifying “unofficial” channels of communication. Overall, one can see that China, Japan, and Taiwan are interested in peace and stability in the region; yet, it remains unclear, whether all of them mean the same thing by security and stability; therefore, this is an important question for future research and security studies of East Asian region.

Following Devereux, Shi, and Xu（2007）, this thesis analyzes the effects of tariffs and derives the optimal tariff under the circumstances that the US dollar acts as an international ‘vehicle’ currency— all traded goods prices between the US and the rest of the world are set in US dollars. We set a tariff policy rule which allows the authority to react to country-specific productivity shocks. The analysis on the equilibrium shows that the current tariff imposed by the US on its output is expansionary. However, for the rest of the world, a current tariff imposed by the US is contractionary. Optimal tariff under flexible and fixed exchange rates are examined. Under flexible exchange rate, optimal tariff policy parameters of the US are dependent only on the monetary policy of its own being indifferent to the exchange rate movement；the exchange rate movement is crucial to the optimal tariff policy of the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the optimal tariff policy of the US under fixed exchange rate is the same as that under the flexible exchange rate, while the policy of the rest of the world is altered owing to the loss of control on its domestic money supply to do the unilateral peg.

The principles versus rules debate has long since been a conversation in the accounting world, but the conversation heated up in the early part of the 21st century on the heels of a few highly publicized accounting frauds. In an increasingly globalized business environment, convergence between the more rules-oriented US GAAP and more principles-oriented IFRS is becoming more and more relevant. This study attempts to better inform that debate, exploring the accounting conceptual framework, United States legal environment, and the costs and benefits of adopting a more principles-oriented set of accounting standards. This study concludes that, though there would likely be some costs initially, principles-oriented standards give managers the ability to produce more relevant, comparable, and reliable financial statements, and can even serve to deincentivize fraudulent behavior. By adjusting the incentive structure, managers would no longer be offered protection by bright-line rules, instead required to more faithfully represent the economic reality of their firm. However, though rules-oriented standards like lease accounting are in need of improvement, due to the complex nature of some transactions, not all standards can be solely principles-oriented. As such, the FASB should develop a propensity away from rules, detailed guidance, and exceptions whenever possible.

A refugee reception has been placed in Kungshall, one of Nybros residential areas. The area has a bad reputation and there are arguably prejudices about the area from the local population. I therefore want to investigate if an ethnic residential segregation exists in Kungshall, from a postcolonial perspective. The following research questions have been formulated: How do residents who doesn’t live in the refugee reception, look at ethnic residential segregation in Nybro? How has Kungshall changed since the refugee reception? Does a cultural racism exist in Kungshall?   The study is a qualitative study using semi structured interviews of four people living in the residential area, a person who has moved out of the area and a person working on the housing corporation “Nybro bostads AB”, who is one of the housing corporation responsible for the residential area Kungshall. The study is based on post-colonial theory. According to all the interviewees, there is an uneven balance between Swedes and immigrants in the neighborhood. And according to all the interviewees living in the area, too many refugees have been placed in Kungshall, and the residential area has changed for the worse in recent history. One of the interviewees has already moved, and the others living in the area either know someone who has moved out of the area or is planning to themselves. And the main reason to ethnic residential segregation is often explained in terms of cultural differences between “us-and- them”: between the refugees and the others. It is clear from the interviews that there is a cultural racism among people and the main reason for people moving out of the area could arguably be related to cultural racism.

The first diamond mine in North America was discovered in 1906 when John W. Huddleston found two diamonds on his farm just south of Murfreesboro in Pike County, Arkansas. Experts soon confirmed that the diamond-bearing formation on which Huddleston made his discovery was the second largest of its kind and represented 25 percent of all known diamond-bearing areas in the world. Discovery of the field generated nearly a half century of speculative activity by men trying to demonstrate and exploit its commercial viability. The field, however, lacked the necessary richness for successful commercial ventures, and mining was eventually replaced in the early 1950s by tourist attractions that operated successfully until 1972. At that time the State of Arkansas purchased the field and converted it to a state park. Thus this work tell the rich and complicated story of America'a once and only diamond field, analyzes the reasons for the repeated failures of efforts to make it commercially viable, and explains how it eventually succeeded as a tourist venture.

The United States is one of the few developed countries in the world that has not adopted the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as its primary financial reporting guidelines. Instead, most American companies prepare financial statements adhering to the United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP). In recent years, there has been much debate regarding the feasibility and impact of a US adoption of IFRS. One area of financial reporting that would be significantly impacted by a switch from US GAAP to IFRS is inventory accounting. Specifically, inventory measurement and costing methods. The goal of this research is to examine the impact that a US adoption of IFRS would have on inventory reporting practices and investor perception of inventory-related accounts. To achieve this goal, I propose several business scenarios that each highlights a different aspect of inventory accounting, then proceed to analyze how these scenarios would be financially represented under IFRS and US GAAP. Results indicate that while the two sets of accounting standards result in different annual account balances, these differences even out over time. As such, I argue that experienced investors will not be significantly impacted should the United States ultimately choose to adopt IFRS.

In the semiarid Southwestern United States, prolonged drought conditions since the early 2000s have resulted in widespread declines of the vegetation productivity in this water-constrained ecosystem, as revealed by analyses of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). However, the spatial pattern of the NDVI response to dry years is not uniform: a divergent response of NDVI to precipitation is observed between the low-lying desert and the high montane forests at elevations above 2,500 meter. Weanalyzed relationships between 15 years of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI and gridded climate data (PRISM) along elevation gradients at scales from regional to local. Our elevation-explicit analysis captures the transition from water-limited to temperature-limited ecosystems, with a sign-reversal in the correlation coefficient between precipitation and NDVI observed at about 2,500-3,000m altitude. Wesuggest warmer temperatures and less snow cover associated with drier years as explanations for high elevation gains in vegetation productivity during dry years.

Mexican immigrant women are a vulnerable population group in the U.S., and face challenges as a result of the nation’s anti-immigrant landscape. To help Mexican immigrant women cope with these realities, scholars have proposed the implementation of social support interventions. Yet only two studies have executed social support interventions for immigrant women. Those tailored specifically for Mexican immigrant women are nonexistent. To address this gap, this Master's thesis piloted the first social support intervention for Mexican immigrant women in the U.S. The purpose was to assess the impact of a social support intervention on the perceived social support for Mexican immigrant women. The study (1) surveyed Mexican immigrant women's current perceived social support, (2) investigated whether engaging in a social support intervention could improve Mexican immigrant women's perceived social support, and (3) explored (through the use of a foto novela) the elements (e.g., persons, places) Mexican immigrant women consider to be most important sources of social support in their lives. Surveys were administered pre- and post-intervention assessing perceived social support using three Likert-type scales. At pre-intervention, perceived social support was moderately high. A difference in perceived social support at post-intervention was observed, but without significance. This work adds to the small body of literature on social support interventions for Mexican immigrant women, and has important implications for future interventions and research. This work also documents the use of foto novelas – an innovative tool to engage with (and give a voice to) Mexican immigrant women. Future work should consider the use of foto novelas, as these amplify new understandings of social support, and capture (through the use of photographs) Mexican immigrant women’s own interpretation of social support.