The purpose of the case study is to research whether the brand Hollister can establish themselves to their target audience working with communication. To achieve the goal with the study, the following theories has been applied: brand building, visual communication, two-way symmetrical communication and communication channels. The study was conducted by a quantitative online questionnaire survey. The online survey was aimed at teenagers aged 15-18 years old living in Täby or Umeå where one question was "What difference can be discerned between Täby, where there is a shop, and Umeå where there is no shop". The material was collected during a period of eight days between december 11th to december 19th 2013. The online survey was answered by 90 units which means a response rate of 90 percent. The results of the study showed that it differed somewhat between the cities and above all it showed that the units from Täby had more knowledge about the brand's visual identity, and visited the store to a larger extent. The analysis also showed that branding is an important part to reach out and influence Hollister’s target audience where the work of visual communication is vital. / Syftet med studien är att undersöka om varumärket Hollister kan etablera sig hos sin målgrupp med hjälp av kommunikation. För att uppnå syftet har följande teorier tillämpats: varumärkesbyggande, visuell kommunikation, tvåvägs-symmetrisk kommunikation samt kommunikationskanaler. Studien har genomförts genom en kvantitativ enkätundersökning på webben. Webbenkäten riktade sig till tonåringar i åldern 15-18 år som bor i Täby eller Umeå då bland annat en frågeställning har varit ”Vilken skillnad går att utläsa mellan Täby, där det finns en butik, respektive Umeå där det inte finns någon butik”. Materialet samlades in under en period på åtta dagar mellan 11-19 december 2013. Webbenkäten svarades av 90 enheter vilket innebär en svarsfrekvens på 90 procent. Resultatet av studien visade att det skiljde en del mellan städerna framförallt går det att utläsa att enheterna från Täby hade mer kännedom kring varumärkets visuella identitet samt besökt butiken i större utsträckning. Analysen visade även att varumärkesbyggande är en viktig del för att nå ut och påverka sin målgrupp och bland annat att arbetet med den visuella kommunikationen är betydelsefull.

近年來，全球氣候變遷與環境惡化顯示目前人類活動與永續發展的衝突，如何減少能源消耗以降低溫室氣體排放成為當務之急。在都市規劃方面，以緊密都市理念探討都市發展與交通能源消耗最受到關注，然而都市發展與產業活動、家戶行為密切相關，因此若僅從交通方面分析能源消耗，恐忽略其他影響能源消耗的重要因素。故本研究著重於探討都市發展特性與能源消耗的關聯性，將產業活動與家戶行為納入模型分析，可更全面性了解都市與能源消耗的關聯性。此外，基於「全球思考、地方行動」的考量，如何落實節能減碳的目標，必須就各縣市的都市發展特性著手，透過追蹤資料模型，進一步了解各縣市的固定效果對能源消耗之影響以及能源消耗之時間趨勢。 透過對都市耗能部門進行分類，並以台灣改制後19個縣市為實證範圍，可以確認都市發展特性的幾個面向：土地使用密度、土地混合使用、交通屬性、產業屬性、家戶屬性、環境屬性與交通運輸、產業發展、家戶活動的耗能關係。實證結果發現，緊密都市有助於節能目標達成；道路增加可及性，但亦助長汽車使用，增加交通耗能；為提升大眾運輸使用率，需加強轉乘便利性以及改變私人交通運輸偏好；產業耗能與出口貿易關聯性高，不利能源減量；家戶居住行為與生活型態對能源消耗有正向影響；公園綠地能調節都市氣溫，減少耗能。 綜上所述，欲形塑一個節能減碳的都市必須透過多元途徑，在土地使用方面須維持適當的發展密度與混合程度；交通方面須加強大眾運輸便利性以提高民眾使用意願並抑制汽車使用；產業方面須透過政府獎勵節能措施及促進產業轉型以提升能源效率；家戶方面應透過教育及政策宣導以培養節能生活習慣，方能達成節能減碳的目標。 / In recent years, global climate change and environmental deterioration show a conflict between human activities and sustainable development. How to reduce energy consumption in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emission has become a top priority. According to the concept of compact city, urban planning is seen as the effective way to reduce transportation energy consumption. However, urban development is associated with industry development and household activities, so it would be improper to focus only on transportation sector. Thus the main motivation for this study is trying to illustrate urban development characteristics by combing transportation sector, industry sector and household sector, in order to understand the influence the urban development characteristics on energy consumption more comprehensively. In addition, on the concept of “global thinking, local action”, how to successfully implement energy saving policies should first understand the urban development characteristics of all counties. The purpose of this study is to empirically explore the influences of urban development characteristics on energy consumption by using panel data models, which uses the reorganization of nineteen counties areas in Taiwan as samples.In order to find out the fixed effect of all counties on energy consumption and trend of energy consumption. The empirical results show that the concepts of compact city still contributes the energy-saving goal；construction of roads increase accessibility, but also encourage car use, which increase energy consumption；to encourage the use of public transportation need to improve the convenience of transfer and change the preference of people；energy consumption in industry is highly associated to international trade, so it would be difficult for energy reduction；the trend of energy consumption has increased due to household lifestyle change；the green resources provides by park, which can adjust the temperature of city and reduce energy consumption. In sum, achieving the energy-saving city need diversified approaches, it can’t just keep increasing the density or land mixed-use. Traffic should be strengthened by improving transfer system. In order to increase the willingness to use public transport system and decrease car dependency；industry must trying to improve energy efficiency；households should cultivate the habit of saving energy by education in order to be a true energy-saving city.

Cooperative relaying is a promising diversity achieving technique to provide reliable transmission, high throughput and extensive coverage for wireless networks in a variety of applications. Two-way relaying is a spectrally efficient protocol, providing one solution to overcome the half-duplex loss in one-way relay channels. Moreover, incorporating the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology can further improve the spectral efficiency and diversity gain. A lot of related work has been performed on the two-way relay network (TWRN), but most of them assume perfect channel state information (CSI). In a realistic scenario, however, the channel is estimated and the estimation error exists. So in this thesis, we explicitly take into account the CSI error, and investigate its impact on the performance of amplify-and-forward (AF) TWRN where either multiple distributed single-antenna relays or a single multiple-antenna relay station is exploited. For the distributed relay network, we consider imperfect self-interference cancellation at both sources that exchange information with the help of multiple relays, and maximal ratio combining (MRC) is then applied to improve the decision statistics under imperfect signal detection. The system performance degradation in terms of outage probability and average bit-error rate (BER) are analyzed, as well as their asymptotic trend. To further improve the spectral efficiency while maintain the spatial diversity, we utilize the maximum minimum (Max-Min) relay selection (RS), and examine the impact of imperfect CSI on this single RS scheme. To mitigate the negative effect of imperfect CSI, we resort to adaptive power allocation (PA) by minimizing either the outage probability or the average BER, which can be cast as a Geometric Programming (GP) problem. Numerical results verify the correctness of our analysis and show that the adaptive PA scheme outperforms the equal PA scheme under the aggregated effect of imperfect CSI. When employing a single MIMO relay, the problem of robust MIMO relay design has been dealt with by considering the fact that only imperfect CSI is available. We design the MIMO relay based upon the CSI estimates, where the estimation errors are included to attain the robust design under the worst-case philosophy. The optimization problem corresponding to the robust MIMO relay design is shown to be nonconvex. This motivates the pursuit of semidefinite relaxation (SDR) coupled with the randomization technique to obtain computationally efficient high-quality approximate solutions. Numerical simulations compare the proposed MIMO relay with the existing nonrobust method, and therefore validate its robustness against the channel uncertainty. / Graduate

Five year old children starting their formal education in primary schools bring with them a range of informal mathematical understandings. Transitioning from an early childhood setting to the reception class at school can have a profound impact on their developing mathematical concepts. Traditionally their first teachers (parents, caregivers and whanau) gradually remove the support and encouragement and some of the familiar surroundings of their early childhood centres are no longer there. As children from 5 – 13 years of age spend approximately 85% of their time out of school it is important that their first teachers are encouraged to continue that support. This paper outlines a New Zealand project ‘Home School Partnership: Numeracy’ that gives one approach to enhancing children’s mathematical learning through shared understandings between home and school.

近年來，隨著中國大陸經濟快速的成長，中國大陸房地產市場也隨之蓬勃發展，然而，近期中國大陸房地產價格的節節高漲，產生了房地產過熱的警訊，而區域間房地產價格的差異與不均，也成為各地區經濟發展的重要阻礙。所以，如何合理的調控房地產價格，使房地產市場能穩定成長並與經濟發展相輔相成，成為中國大陸中央政府必須持續關注與適時妥善處理的問題。 本文運用1999年至2010年中國大陸31個省市地區商品房平均銷售價格和影響房價的經濟相關變數的追蹤資料，運用雙因子固定效果模型進行實證研究。研究結果發現：中國大陸各地區財政分權程度對各地區房地產價格為非線性的關係，呈現U型的曲線。意即，存在一個財政分權的臨界值可以使房價達到最小的情況。建議中央政府應透過調整各地區的財政分權程度，來避免因財政分權不均而產生財政資源不均問題，造成房地產價格的波動。並加強對地方政府的財政預算與財政收入的監督與管制，以抑止「土地財政」的行為。 / With the economic growth, the real estate market is booming in China recently. But the overheating real estate price and the difference of real estate price between region and region become the important impediment to regional economic development in China. Therefore, the central government how to control the real estate price is an immense problem. By using the panel data of average selling price of commercialize buildings and the economic variables of 31cities in China between 1999 and 2010, the study uses two-way fixed effects model to investigate the effect of fiscal decentralization on the real estate price in China. The empirical analysis’ result shows that the fiscal decentralization provides a non-linear effect on the real estate price, it presents the U-shaped curve. In other words, there are a degree of fiscal decentralization can make the real estate price to reach the minimum. According to results, we propose to take some policies. The central government should adjust the degree of fiscal decentralization in each region, in order to avoid the local government financial problem to lead to rise the real estate price.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:14:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 61080100031.PDF: 7443816 bytes, checksum: a82ca7f98a374b3f75cdb221b7fb942b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-22T00:00:00Z / O impacto do boca a boca na Imagem da Marca e no julgamento de produtos (bens e serviços) tem sido estudado há tempos na disciplina de comportamento do consumidor. Com o crescimento da internet como mídia social e meio de comunicação entre consumidores e empresas, o boca a boca ganhou força junto a profissionais e pesquisadores de Marketing. Uma revisão da literatura permitiu traçar um paralelo entre o boca a boca tradicional e o eletrônico. É preciso compreender cientificamente a influência do boca a boca eletrônico no comportamento do consumidor. Para isto, foram realizados dois estudos nesta dissertação, sendo o primeiro um estudo exploratório a partir da realização de entrevistas e aplicação de questionários a consumidores, profissionais de Marketing e especialistas do assunto com o intuito de levantar percepções gerais sobre o tema. Para avaliar estatisticamente as hipóteses propostas nesta dissertação, o segundo estudo foi a realização de um experimento com 168 estudantes, contando com cinco cenários e três tipos de produtos (Vestuário, Cosméticos e Lojas Online). A variável independente foi o Comentário Postado pelo consumidor. Duas foram as variáveis dependentes: Imagem da Marca e Intenção de Compra dela. Para a mensuração da Imagem da Marca se utilizou a escala de Personalidade de Marca de Aaker (1997). No tocante à Intenção de Compra, um concurso foi elaborado para os sujeitos. No início e no final da coleta de dados, os participantes escolhiam as empresas das quais ganhariam um prêmio (vale compra), caso fossem os vencedores. Mediu-se a Intenção de Compra em função da escolha dos consumidores antes e depois do estímulo, sendo comparados, ainda, os resultados dos diferentes cenários. Constatou-se que os comentários negativos e positivos que os consumidores postam na internet têm um impacto significante na Imagem da Marca para outros consumidores nos produtos Vestuário e Loja Online. Mas não foram percebidos impactos destes comentários na Imagem da Marca no produto Cosmético e na Intenção de Compra dos outros consumidores nos três tipos de produtos testados. O Gerenciamento dos Comentários negativos (resposta da empresa a comentário postado pelo consumidor) apresentou uma redução no impacto do comentário na Imagem da Marca para os outros consumidores no produto Loja Online. Contudo, os tons alinhados com Foco Regulatório do consumidor nas respostas das empresas não provocaram diferenças significativas, contra indicando essa concepção teórica como meio de aprimorar os resultados do Gerenciamento dos Comentários. Várias implicações científicas e profissionais interessantes decorrem da pesquisa. Para o praticante, se viu que a internet 2.0 é uma mídia a ser considerada no esforço de comunicação da empresa e que ela deve ser considerada como um canal de comunicação bidirecional. / The impact of Word of Mouth Communication on Brand Image and the evaluation of products (goods and services) has been studied for some time in the discipline of consumer behavior. With the growth of the Internet as a social media and as a means of communication between consumers and enterprises, Word of Mouth has gained strength with Marketing professionals and researchers. A review of the literature draws a parallel between traditional Word of Mouth and its electronic version. It is essential to understand scientifically the influence of Electronic Word of Mouth on consumer behavior. In order to do this, two main studies were made: the first one was an exploratory stage conducted with interviews and questionnaires applied to consumers, marketers, and experts on the subject in order to raise general perceptions on the issue. The second study aims to evaluate statistically the hypotheses proposed in this work and involves an experiment applied to 168 students, considering five scenarios and three types of products (clothing, cosmetics and Online Stores). The independent variable was the Comment Posted by the consumer on the internet. Two were the dependent variables: Brand Image and Purchase Intention. To measure Brand Image, the scale "The Brand Personality" by Aaker (1997) was used. To measure Purchase Intention subjects participated in a contest where they chose, at the beginning and end of data collection, the companies from which they would gain a gift certificate, if they won the contest. Purchase Intention was measured depending on the choice of consumers before and after the stimulus, and compared also the results of different scenarios. It was found that the positive and negative comments that consumers posted on the internet have a significant impact on Brand Image for other consumers of products in Clothing and Online stores. However, there was no perceived impact based on these comments regarding Cosmetic products. No impact was found on other consumers' Purchase Intention. Management of Negative Comments (company's response to comments posted by the consumer on the internet) decreased the negative impact of comments on other consumer's Brand Image on product Online Store and the use of Regulatory Focus Theory on companies' responses did not cause significant differences, counter indicating this theoretical concept as a mean to improve the results of managing the comments posted by the consumer on the internet. Several implications of scientific and professional interest arise from this research. For a Marketing professional, it is evident that internet 2.0 should be considered in the media plan of a company and that it should be treated as a two-way communication channel with consumers.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:55:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5587.pdf: 3066852 bytes, checksum: 17d88d3ab913d61bb315842b57ec5a74 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-09-30 / Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos / Cyclones are used to separate suspended particles from gas streams. The analysis of flow inside the cyclone is complex due to the large number of parameters and operating variables that influence the dynamics of the system. Due to its versatility of use and its robustness, results in computational fluid dynamic are an important alternative often used to study the dynamics of flow in the cyclone. In the literature, several works make use of computational fluid dynamics in order to study the pressure drop of cyclones. However, the works about the efficiency of collection are fewer. For the cyclone, computational fluid dynamics allows an accurately simulation of the collection efficiency of particles with diameter greater than 5 µm; but for particles with smaller diameters the simulated results diverge from experimental values. In this work, Stairmand s cyclone was numerically simulated with injected particles with diameters from 1 to 5 µm. The results were verified using available experimental data reported in the literature. The experimental data taken from literature belong to Zhao and Shen Kang (2004) and Zhao (2005). The simulation mesh was analyzed before and after the simulations. The turbulence models used in the simulation of flow in the cyclone were: Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The dispersed phase was simulated considering one and two way couplings. The equation of motion of the particles was integrated using the integration schemes: implicit, analytic, trapezoidal, and Runge-Kutta. The results showed that the methodology was adequate to reproduce the behavior of the flow in the cyclone. The error percentages obtained in pressure drop were under 5% and the average collection efficiency was reproduced with good accuracy for diameters of 3, 4 and 5 µm. / O ciclone é um equipamento utilizado para separar partículas suspensas em correntes gasosas. A análise do escoamento dentro do ciclone é complexa devido ao grande número de parâmetros e variáveis operacionais que influenciam na dinâmica do sistema. Devido a sua versatilidade de uso e a sua robustez nos resultados a fluidodinâmica computacional é uma alternativa importante utilizada com frequência no estudo da dinâmica do escoamento no ciclone. Na literatura existem vários trabalhos que fazem uso da fluidodinâmica computacional no estudo da queda de pressão. Entretanto, no estudo da eficiência de coleta, os artigos são em menor quantidade. No ciclone, a fluidodinâmica computacional permite simular a eficiência de coleta de partículas com diâmetro maiores que 5 µm com bastante precisão; a modelagem da eficiência de coleta para partículas com diâmetros menores ainda resultam em valores diferentes dos valores experimentais. Neste trabalho foram realizadas as simulações numéricas no ciclone tipo Stairmand; foram injetadas partículas de 1 a 5 µm. Para a verificação foram tomados dados experimentais disponíveis na literatura. Os dados experimentais foram obtidos por Zhao, Shen e Kang (2004) e Zhao (2005). A malha utilizada nas simulações, foi analisada antes e depois das simulações. Os modelos de turbulência utilizados para simular o escoamento no ciclone foram: Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) e Large Eddy Simulation (LES). A fase dispersa foi simulada considerando acoplamento de uma via e acoplamento de duas vias. Para integrar as equações de movimento das partículas, foram utilizados os esquemas de integração: implícito, analítico, trapezoidal e Runge-Kutta. Os resultados mostraram que a metodologia empregada mostrou-se adequada para reproduzir o comportamento do escoamento no ciclone. As porcentagens de erro obtidos na queda de pressão foram em média menores que 5% e na eficiência de coleta foram reproduzidas com boa precisão para os diâmetros de 3, 4 e 5 µm.

Cooperative relay systems have emerged as promising techniques to boost the performance of wireless systems. Recent studies have confirmed that interferences, co-channel interferences (CCIs) and self-interferences, have a huge impact on cooperative relay systems and can cause significant performance degradation. Two problems were observed in this research. Firstly, previous studies on performance analysis of Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relay systems in presence of CCIs have only focused on a specific interference channel model. However, in practical design scenarios, such an assumption is not a realistic proposition. Secondly, analyses of overheads introduced by a time-based relay selection protocol in distributed cooperative systems have been based on an over-pessimistic assumption where all packets involved in a collision are destroyed. Nevertheless, collisions due to the protocol overheads cause the system performance to be degraded but this does not mean that the failure of end-to-end transmission certainly occurs. The thesis aims to analyse the performance of practical cooperative relay systems in the presence of CCIs and self-interferences, by developing exact mathematical methods. A new unified mathematical method for AF relay systems in presence of a random number of arbitrary non-identical CCIs was developed. The obtained new approach derived in terms of a moment generating function of the aggregate interferences' power led to the derivation of new explicit expressions. The new results greatly simplify evaluation of average error rates over diverse practical interference scenarios. Moreover, a new exact mathematical analysis for distributed cooperative relay systems employing a time-based relay selection protocol based on an accurate interference model was presented. This approach led to the derivation of new exact expressions for the spectral efficiency which accounts for both self-interferences and the protocol overheads as well as for different fading scenarios and arbitrary relay locations. This approach provided several advantages over direct approaches, one of which is that it significantly simplified averaging-out the joint random variables involved.

Trovärdigheten för traditionella medier har minskat vilket har lett till att det blivit svårare att kommunicera med kunder och lett till en ökad konkurrens bland företag. I takt med utvecklingen av internet och Web 2.0 blev digitala dagböcker populära som kommunikationsverktyg för företag. Digitala dagböcker har, utifrån problemdiskussionen, identifierats som företagsbloggar bland företag och har inom ramen för Public relations ansetts en lösning på problemet med att kommunicera med kunder. Detta då företagsbloggar präglas av faktorer i form av bland annat förmågan att föra god kommunikation med publiken, skapa relationer, bygga varumärket, differentiera företag från konkurrenter samt som ett bra verktyg för sökmotoroptimering. Vad som dock inte framgår är vilka faktorer som är viktiga för företag att upprätthålla en skapad företagsblogg. Syftet med denna studie är att ur ett företagsperspektiv undersöka och få förståelse för vilka faktorer som är viktiga för att företag ska upprätthålla sin företagsblogg som ett kommunikationsverktyg och syftet leder till frågeställningen: “Vilka faktorer är viktiga för att företag ska upprätthålla sin företagsblogg som ett kommunikationsverktyg?” Studiens urval grundar sig på företag som driver en företagsblogg och är verksamma inom tjänstebranschen och där inom marknadsstrategin business-to-business. Studien består av en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod som har genomförts via semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem företag inom ramen för urvalet. Intervjufrågorna formades efter studiens teoretiska ramverk som stod som grund för forskningen och hade huvudspår inom företagsblogg som kommunikationsverktyg, Public relations, relationsmarknadsföring och varumärkesbyggande. Slutligen analyserades empirin och kopplingar gjordes med relevanta teorier. Resultatet visar att kommunicera ut kunskap och information samt att skapa relationer är viktiga faktorer för att företag ska upprätthålla sin företagsblogg som ett kommunikationsverktyg. Resterande faktorer kan variera och beror på företagets storlek och affärsinriktning. / The credibility of traditional media has diminished over the years which has made it harder for companies to communicate with customers as well as it has increased the competition among companies. In line with the development of the internet and Web 2.0, digital diaries became popular as a communication tool for companies to use. Digital diaries have been identified as corporate blogs among companies and has been identified, within the frame of Public relations, as a solution to the communication problem with consumers that companies can deal with. Corporate blogs are characterized by factors such as the ability to communicate with the audience, create relationships, branding, differentiation as well as a good search engine optimization tool. What is not evident, however, is which are the factors that are important to maintain a corporate blog.  The purpose of the study is to, from a business perspective, examine and understand which factors that are important for companies to maintain their corporate blog as a communication tool and the purpose leads to the question at issue: “Which factors are important for companies to maintain their corporate blog as a communication tool?" The selection of the study is based on companies that are running an corporate blog and that are active in the service business industry within the business-to-business marketing strategy. The study consists of a qualitative study and the used method is semi-structured interviews with five companies within the selection of the study. The interview questions were formed in accordance with the theoretical framework of the study, which formed the basis for the research and had headlines in corporate blog as a communication tool, Public relations, relationship marketing and brand building. Finally, the results were analyzed and connections were made with relevant theories of the study. The results show that to communicate knowledge and information, as well as building relationships, are important factors for companies to maintain their corporate blog as a communication tool. The remaining factors may vary and depend on the size of the company and what business orientation the company has.

The eco-friendly alternatives use is increasing momentum in a conscious effort towards sustainability. In this regards, the relevance and the economic value of using copper slag as a concrete aggregate are explored in this study in order to contribute towards metallurgical waste recycling. Emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the concretes strengthening prepared with copper slag contents and produced under four curing methods: water immersion, water spraying, plastic sheet covering and air-drying. In each curing case excluding for water immersion, was duplicated in indoors (i.e. in the laboratory) and outdoor exposure (so was prone to varying environmental conditions). This was specifically aimed at capturing the effects of tropical weather conditions typical of the Lualaba province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The control mix was designed to reach 25 MPa of compressive strength. Copper slag was successively incorporated as sand replacement at the following mass fractions: 20 %, 40 % and 60 %. Freshly mixed concrete samples were evaluated for workability. Cube specimens were cast accordingly, cured for 28 days and then tested for density and compressive strength. Results indicated an increase in strength up to 20 % of replacement rate for all the curing methods. Further additions resulted in reduction in the strength, but the rate of reduction depended on curing conditions. The increase in strength was mainly credited to the physical properties of copper slag that could have contributed to the cohesion of the concrete matrix. It has been found that appropriate ways of curing can still achieve greater results than that of the control mix since 80 % of humidity is ensure. The two-way ANOVA test performed on the 28-days compressive strength values confirmed the significant influence of the curing methods, of copper slag content and the interaction between them. It has been found that considerable influence is attributed to copper slag content and that warm environmental conditions further extend the concrete strengthening. / College of Engineering, Science and Technology / M. Tech. (Chemical Engineering)