Aeolian dust that gets deposited builds up loess sequences that cover 10% of the Earth's continents. Such sequences can be several metres thick with material deposited over thousands of years, and therefore act like archives of past climates. The glacial and interglacial cycles during the late Quaternary affects the loess deposition and the dust in the atmosphere, which has an impact on the global climate. Loess material is deposited during colder and drier periods. Paleosols have often been developed in the loess sequences, reflecting a warmer and wetter climate with decreased dust deposition. By sampling loess from different depths of the sequence and analysing different properties of the material, a reconstruction of past environment and climate can be done. Two commonly used methods are magnetic susceptibility analysis and grain size analysis and differences in the result can show differences in the climate and environment at the time the material was deposited. The late Quaternary climate was influenced by changes in the North Atlantic, and loess in the area is important to study to get a better understanding of the climate at the time it was deposited. In this project, loess material from a 10 metres thick sequence at the Romont site, Belgium has been analysed with grain size and magnetic susceptibility measurements to reconstruct past climate. The results show differences in the magnetic enhancement and the grain size as a gradual decrease in the magnetic enhancement, indicating a colder climate as confirmed by an increase in the U-ratio. This is followed by the abrupt onset of the warm Holocene period, matching the marine isotope record at the approximate same time period. The magnetic susceptibility data identifies the Rocourt tephra layer and also shows evidence of erosion of material between the Kincamp soil and the Nagelbeek Tongue Horizon. / Fint sandmaterial som transporteras med vinden kallas för stoft, när det sedan avsätts på marken bygger det upp så kallade för löss-sekvenser. En löss-sekvens kan vara flera meter tjock och uppbyggd under tusentals år, vilket innebär att materialet på olika djup reflekterar hur klimatet var då det avsattes. Klimatet under senkvartär tid reflekterar istider och mellanistider, vilket påverkar mängden stoft i atmosfären och avsättningen av materialet. Materialet har främst avsatts under kalla och torra perioder. Avsättningen minskade under varma och blöta perioder, vilket var optimalt för så kallade  paleosoler att bildas genom vittring. Genom att ta prover från olika djup i en löss-sekvens och analysera dem är det möjligt att tolka tidigare förändringar i klimatet. Två vanliga analysmetoder är att mäta materialets magnetiska mottaglighet och kornstorleken på materialet. Klimatet under senkvartär tid (130 - 12 tusen år sedan) påverkades av norra Atlanten. Det är därför av stor vikt att analysera prover från platser i närheten, för att bättre förstå hur klimatet varierat då materialet avsattes. I det här projektet har material från en 10 meter tjock löss-sekvens i Romont, Belgien analyserats. Resultatet visar variationer i kornstorlek och magnetisk mottaglighet. Ett vulkaniskt lager som kallas Rocourt identifierades, följt av en gradvis minskning av den magnetiska mottagligheten som visar på ett gradvis kallare klimat fram till början på den varma Holocen-perioden som vi befinner oss i nu. Resultatet visar också bevis för erosion mellan två enheter i sekvensen.

Företag ska i de finansiella rapporterna delge en rättvisande bild. Bokföringsnämnden bestämde sig för att förändra de redovisningsregelverk som gällde för att förenkla för de svenska företagen samt för att uppnå en bättre redovisning. Denna skiftning i normgivningen kom att kallas K-projektet. Ett utav regelverken K3 innehåller en praktiskt ny värderingsmetod i Sverige, vilket är komponentavskrivning. Komponentavskrivning ska resultera i att företag redovisar på ett tydligare sätt vad som händer i verksamheten och på så vis ska den uppnå en mer rättvisande bild. Metoden har blivit väl omdiskuterad och kritiserad, främst för att kostnaden är väldigt stor till en så liten nytta. Komponentavskrivning anses heller inte bidra till en förbättrad redovisning, enligt kritikerna. Fastighetsbranschen är den mest utsatta branschen då de har många fastigheter att beakta, vilket resulterar i en stor mängd komponenter.Syftet med denna studie är att studera om komponentavskrivning som tillgångsvärderingsmetod har bidragit till en mer rättvisande bild av verkligheten. För att kunna mäta detta har vi valt att genomföra intervjuer där vi har samlat in åsikter om metoden. Vi har intervjuat fem allmännyttiga fastighetsbolag och fem revisorer om vad de tycker om komponentavskrivning.De resultat vi fått fram är att åsikterna skiljer sig åt. Samtliga är överens om att komponentavskrivning rent teoretiskt bidrar till en mer rättvisande bild, men inte i praktiken i lika stor utsträckning. Vi kan uttyda ett mönster i att de fastighetsbolag som från början har gjort en grundlig och välarbetad övergång och som har kommit längre i processen idag, ser värdet med metoden. För revisorerna är det svårt att uttyda något mönster, mer än att revisorernas åsikter kan tänkas vara påverkade av omgivningen. / Businesses should communicate a true and fair view in their financial statements. The Board of Accounting decided to change the accounting rules, which was made to simplify for Swedish companies and to achieve a better accounting. This shift in accounting norms was called the K-project. One of the regulations, K3, contains a practically new valuation method in Sweden, which is the component depreciation. Component depreciation will result in that companies report in a clearer way what is happening in the business. In this way it achieves a more accurate picture. The method has been well debated and criticized, mainly because the cost is very high for such a small benefit, but also because component depreciation does not seem to contribute to an improved reporting. The real estate industry is the most vulnerable sector, as they have many properties to consider which will result in even more components.The purpose of this study is to investigate if the component depreciation as an asset valuation method has contributed to a more accurate picture of reality. To measure this, we have chosen to conduct interviews in which we collect opinions about the method. We interviewed five public real estate management companies and five auditors about what they think about the component depreciation.The results we have produced are that opinions differ. All respondents agree that the component depreciation theoretically contribute to a more accurate picture, but not always practically. We can interpret a pattern. If real estate management companies from the beginning has made a thorough and well-made transition and has come further in the process today, they also sees the value of the method. For auditors, it is difficult to interpret any pattern, more than that the auditors opinions may be influenced by the environment.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / Optical trackers are often used at the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) and at other Department of Defense (DoD) ranges to collect video and trajectory data for real-time display and postflight processing. When optical trackers are used in remote areas, pointing data from radar is utilized to enable the trackers to initially acquire targets. To enable the trackers to use radar-pointing data, offsets to true north must first be known. This offset is taken into account given the current position of the optical tracker. During postflight processing, when determining the trajectory of the target, the offsets are also taken into account to produce an accurate trajectory solution. Current methods of determining offsets to true north are time consuming and involve a lot of guesswork. Typically, a map and a known landmark are used to determine the offsets to true north. Another method is to look for the North Star (Polaris) and input an estimated offset. This paper will describe an inexpensive, stand-alone system that utilizes the Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine these offsets. This device may be modified and integrated with other systems that may need to point accurately. For example, a gun barrel on a tank may need to point accurately to within a degree. This device may also be used to accurately position telemetry antennas.

I den här uppsatsen undersöks hur vampyrer dör i TV-serierna True Blood (2008-2014), Vampire Diaries (2009-2017) och Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). Genom närläsning och jämförelser mellan dessa olika sätt att skildra vampyrers död diskuteras vad detta innebär för den roll vampyren får i respektive serie, och vad det betyder för skildringen av kropp och kroppslighet. Jag använder mig av teorier kring skildringen av (mänsklig) död på film, samt för en diskussion i relation till bland annat Judith Butlers begrepp ”sörjbara kroppar” och Giorgio Agambens ”bare life”. Utifrån detta ställs frågor om hur vampyrer, deras död och skildringen av denna relaterar till de diskurser om mänsklighet som genomsyrar serierna och deras kontext.

In many arid and semiarid regions worldwide, high levels of soil salinity is a key driver of land degradation, as well as a key impediment to re-establishing plant cover. Combating land degradation and erosion associated with soil salinity requires experimental determination of plant species that can grow in soils with high levels of salinity and can be used to re-establish plant cover. Herein, we evaluated the responses of untested candidate cultivars of two halophytic grass species to high soil salinity: alkali sacaton (Sporobolus airoides Torr.) and seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Swartz). We evaluated the growth responses of both species in a greenhouse under control (no-salt) and various levels of NaCl salinity (EC 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, and 48dSm(-1)) using Hoagland solution in a hydroponics system in a randomized complete block design trial. At all salinity levels, sacaton grass had a greater shoot height, shorter root length, lower shoot fresh and dry weights, and poorer color and general quality compared to seashore paspalum. The shoot fresh and dry weights of both grasses were greatest at the low to medium levels of salinity, with the greatest response observed at EC 16dSm(-1). At the highest level, salinity significantly reduced shoot fresh and dry weights of both grasses. Because growth of both halophytic species exhibited high tolerance to salinity stress and were stimulated under low to medium levels of salinity, both species could be considered suitable candidates for re-establishing plant cover in drylands to combat desertification and land degradation associated with high levels of soil salinity.

Many real-world applications use random numbers generated by pseudo-random number and true random number generators (TRNG). Unlike pseudo-random number generators which rely on an input seed to generate random numbers, a TRNG relies on a non-deterministic source to generate aperiodic random numbers. In this research, we develop a novel and generic software-based TRNG using a random source extracted from compute architectures of today. We show that the non-deterministic events such as race conditions between compute threads follow a near Gamma distribution, independent of the architecture, multi-cores or co-processors. Our design improves the distribution towards a uniform distribution ensuring the stationarity of the sequence of random variables. We improve the random numbers statistical deficiencies by using a post-processing stage based on a heuristic evolutionary algorithm. Our post-processing algorithm is composed of two phases: (i) Histogram Specification and (ii) Stationarity Enforcement. We propose two techniques for histogram equalization, Exact Histogram Equalization (EHE) and Adaptive EHE (AEHE) that maps the random numbers distribution to a user-specified distribution. EHE is an offline algorithm with O(NlogN). AEHE is an online algorithm that improves performance using a sliding window and achieves O(N). Both algorithms ensure a normalized entropy of (0:95; 1:0]. The stationarity enforcement phase uses genetic algorithms to mitigate the statistical deficiencies from the output of histogram equalization by permuting the random numbers until wide-sense stationarity is achieved. By measuring the power spectral density standard deviation, we ensure that the quality of the numbers generated from the genetic algorithms are within the specified level of error defined by the user. We develop two algorithms, a naive algorithm with an expected exponential complexity of E[O(eN)], and an accelerated FFT-based algorithm with an expected quadratic complexity of E[O(N2)]. The accelerated FFT-based algorithm exploits the parallelism found in genetic algorithms on a homogeneous multi-core cluster. We evaluate the effects of its scalability and data size on a standardized battery of tests, TestU01, finding the tuning parameters to ensure wide-sense stationarity on long runs. / October 2016

Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to develop a holistic understanding of customers’ value perceptions and experiences within the online apparel industry. In doing so, the authors’ hope to develop managerial guidelines for companies to utilize. This will be done with a customerdominant logic approach. Design/Methodology/Approach As the study aims to understand behavior and perceptions, the authors have used an inductive, qualitative method to gain the deepest possible customer insight. By using a case study, the authors have been able to further understand the given context. Using focus group interviews resonated in the authors aim to understand why the participants reasoned as they did, as they would in a focus group session argue for their standpoint. The interview template was influenced by the theories on value formation within customer-dominant logic. Findings This study strengthens the relevance of CD logic empirically and provides a deeper understanding of customers’ value perceptions and the reasons behind them. Functional elements of value were proven to be important, yet it was the values derived of emotional and life-changing elements that created true value. Based on the findings of this study, the authors have proposed a new term, true value, which refers to a state-of-mind in which a person finds in psychological well-being through the experiences derived from a product or service. Furthermore this study highlights social media’s importance within the given context. Originality/Value Previous research on customer-dominant logic has mainly been on a theoretical level. This research contributes to service research by studying the phenomena through empirical research within the online apparel industry. Furthermore, this research develops managerial guidelines for companies applying customer-dominant logic within the given context. Research Implications/Limitations Awareness of the importance of social media within the online apparel industry can provide insight and assist businesses in shaping marketing strategies. This research was limited by time, demographical group and geographical location. Furthermore, the generalizability of the results is limited to the given context.

Efforts to improve diesel fuel sprays have led to a significant increase in fuel injection pressures and a reduction in nozzle-hole diameters. Under these conditions, the likelihood for the internal nozzle flow to cavitate is increased, which potentially affects spray breakup and atomisation, but also increases the risk of causing cavitation damage to the injector. This thesis describes the study of cavitating flow phenomena in various single and multi-hole optical nozzle geometries. It includes the design and development of a high-pressure optical fuel injector test facility with which the cavitating flows were observed. Experiments were undertaken using real-scale optical diesel injector nozzles at fuel injection pressures up to 2050 bar, observing for the first time the characteristics of the internal nozzle-flow under realistic fuel injection conditions. High-speed video and high resolution photography, using laser illumination sources, were used to capture the cavitating flow in the nozzle-holes and sac volume of the optical nozzles, which contained holes ranging in size from 110 micrometers to 300 micrometers. Geometric cavitation in the nozzle-holes and string cavitation formation in the nozzle-holes and sac volume were both observed using transient and steady-state injection conditions; injecting into gaseous and liquid back pressures up to 150 bar. Results obtained have shown that cavitation strings observed at realistic fuel injection pressures exhibit the same physical characteristics as those observed at lower pressures. The formation of string cavitation was observed in the 300 micrometers multi-hole nozzle geometries, exhibiting a mutual dependence on nozzle flow-rate and the geometry of the nozzle-holes. Pressure changes, caused by localised turbulent perturbations in the sac volume and transient fuel injection characteristics, independently affected the geometric and string cavitation formation in each of the holes. String cavitation formation of was shown to occur when free-stream vapour was entrained into the low pressure core of a sufficiently intense coherent vortex. Hole diameters less than or equal to 160 micrometers were found to suppress string cavitation formation, with this effect a result of the reduced nozzle flow rate and vortex intensity. Using different hole spacing geometries, it was demonstrated that the formation of cavitation strings in a particular geometry became independent of fuel injection and back pressure once a threshold pressure drop across the nozzle had been reached.

Models of true concurrency have gained a lot of interest over the last decades as models of concurrent or distributed systems which avoid the well-known problem of state space explosion of the interleaving models. In this thesis, we study such models from two perspectives. Firstly, we study the relation between Petri nets and stable event structures. Petri nets can be considered as one of the most general and perhaps wide-spread models of true concurrency. Event structures on the other hand, are simpler models of true concurrency with explicit causality and conflict relations. Stable event structures expand the class of event structures by allowing events to be enabled in more than one way. While the relation between Petri nets and event structures is well understood, the relation between Petri nets and stable event structures has not been studied explicitly. We define a new and more compact unfoldings of safe Petri nets which is directly translatable to stable event structures. In addition, the notion of complete finite prefix is defined for compact unfoldings, making the existing model checking algorithms applicable to them. We present algorithms for constructing the compact unfoldings and their complete finite prefix. Secondly, we study probabilistic models of true concurrency. We extend the definition of probabilistic event structures as defined by Abbes and Benveniste to a newly defined class of stable event structures, namely, jump-free stable event structures arising from Petri nets (characterised and referred to as net-driven). This requires defining the fundamental concept of branching cells in probabilistic event structures, for jump-free net-driven stable event structures, and by proving the existence of an isomorphism among the branching cells of these systems, we show that the latter benefit from the related results of the former models. We then move on to defining a probabilistic logic over probabilistic event structures (PESL). To our best knowledge, this is the first probabilistic logic of true concurrency. We show examples of expressivity achieved by PESL, which in particular include properties related to synchronisation in the system. This is followed by the model checking algorithm for PESL for finite event structures. Finally, we present a logic over stable event structures (SEL) along with an account of its expressivity and its model checking algorithm for finite stable event structures.

La prophétesse Cassandre se revête d'emblée dans ses différentes manifestations contemporaines d'un caractère polymorphe. Nous avons voulu démontrer dans ce travail la modernité de son personnage en nous appuyant sur des traductions récentes des textes d'Homère, d'Eschyle, et d'Euripide et sur des créations originales où Cassandre tient un rôle significatif pour le déroulement de l'histoire. Ces textes dévoilent une figure de Cassandre par son statut de prophétesse et par sa parole légitime et non crue dont l'essence se déploie à partir de sa parole. Parole de Cassandre dont le fonctionnement s'organise sur une scène d'énonciation qui déplace les cadres habituels de la communication ; un énonciateur multiple, un rapport temporel achronique, un énoncé hyperréférentiel ou silencieux, un interlocuteur qui se situe dans un futur non encore advenu. Par ailleurs, la prophétesse dévoile un rapport à l'autre complexe : une impérative demande, haine et mépris, rejet de sa communauté, désir néanmoins de sauver les siens, de les avertir du danger pour les épargner. Avec les auteurs, Jean Giraudoux, Suzanne Dumarest-Dussauge et Eudes Labrusse, Cassandre dans le genre théâtrale, joue une parole en acte qui se présente comme une énigme à déchiffrer et qui enchaîne l'autre dans une obligation de répondre à ses demandes. Cassandre s'incarne entièrement dans sa voix, dans une réflexion métalinguistique, et dans les actes de sa parole et conséquents à sa parole : effet de vérité, d'inquiétude, d'avertissement. / The prophetess Cassandra is arrayed in the many contemporary manifestations of a polymorphous character. This thesis seeks to demonstrate the modern side of Cassandra, drawing on recent translations of Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides, and on original works in which Cassandra plays an important role in the story's development. These works reveal Cassandra through her role as a seer and through her valid yet veiled words, whose perplexing and disturbing meaning emerges. Cassandra's prophecy, delivered in a statement that breaks the standard framework of communication—a multifaceted speaker, a temporal and spiritual relationship, highly referential or abstract language, an interlocutor from a future that has not yet come to pass. There is a complexity to Cassandra's relationships—an urgent request, hate and disdain, rejection by her community, and the desire to save her people and deliver them from danger through her warnings. The works of Jean Giraudoux, Suzanne Dumarest-Dussauge and Eudes Labrusse bring Cassandra to life on the stage, where she presents a puzzle to be solved and imposes on others a duty to act on her prophesies. Cassandra finds her full expression in her voice, in a metalinguistic reflection, and in the act of prophecy and the actions that follow from it: the impact of truth, concern, warning. But she also embodies a reflection on the current nature of truth and the relationship between our language and truth: how to speak it, how to hear it, what it is, and how to find it.