ADRs are negotiable certificates,which represent the ownership of foreign corporations and are traded in the U.S stock market. As a potential alternative to direct investment in foreign stocks,ADRs have become popular tools for international diversification. In our paper,we focus on the price transmission mechanism amongst the ADR and it¡¦s pricing factors as well as the global diversification effect of ADRs. Specifically,three topics are examined in our paper¡R First we apply several multiple regression models to identify what factors affect ADR returns and the returns on underlying stocks. These factors we used to incorporated included foreign exchange rate, S&P 500 Index and world Index. Due to possible common factors not incorporated in our models, we apply SUR to yield more robust results. Second, we apply VAR to investigate how ADR returns and returns on underlying stocks interrelated and augmented by lagged U.S. equity index and world index on a daily basis. Finally, we apply vector-error-correction model to investigate how ADR returns and returns on underlying stocks interrelated with deviations from long run relationships. We first implement Augmented Dickey-Fuller tests to see if they are integrated of the same order. The residuals are then used as error-correcting terms for VECM. Due to the fact that these markets do not close synchronously, VECM with different error correcting terms documented in this study does provide important information regarding how ADR or stock returns react to the deviations from the long-run equilibrium.

This study represents the first econometric study that has attempted to model energy demand exclusively for Jordan. In so doing, recent developments in time series econometrics modeling techniques are adopted to estimate total energy demand functions at the aggregate and sectoral levels together with demand functions for individual fuels for Jordan using a new data set covering the period (1968-2000). Different econometric approaches were employed to estimate the elasticities including OLS, Johansen's ML, DOLS and ARDL to enable a comparison of the statistical results and the estimated price, income, urbanization elasticities. The different econometric techniques therefore act as a check of the robustness of the results obtained. All estimates of the demand functions whether at the aggregate level or at the disaggregate levels are robust not only in terms of statistical competence but also in terms of economic intuition. At the aggregate level, the various econometric techniques yield almost identical elasticity estimates. The estimates indicate a long run elasticity of around unity with respect to per capita GDP, 0.35 with respect to per capita area constructed, -0.30 with respect to real energy prices, a coefficient around 0.1 for the dummy variable representing the level of conflict in the region and a coefficient around 0.7% p.a. for the time trend as a proxy to the Underlying Energy Demand Trend (UEDT). The income elasticity implies that economic growth is likely to be accompanied by proportional increases in energy consumption. The price elasticity suggests that taxes on their own are unlikely to achieve government goals for energy conservation or environmental improvement, although they may well be efficient for revenue raising. Furthermore, evaluating the impact of per capita area constructed on energy consumption levels helps provide guidance for the future need of power generation and refining capacities. The study present forecasts for aggregate energy, aggregate electricity and aggregate petroleum over the period 2001-2015 using 2000 forecasts from the Jordanian governments and international organizations for the exogenous variables. The forecasts are constructed using three different scenarios of the GDP and area constructed growth, with constant real energy price at the 2000 level and with real energy prices increasing by 2% annually. The low growth scenario assumes 4% annual growth of GDP and area constructed, the medium growth scenario assumes 6% for both annual growth of GDP and area constructed, and the high growth scenario assumes 8% annual growth of GDP and 6% annual growth of area constructed. With constant real energy price, the low growth scenario suggests that total energy demand will increase by an average annual growth rate of 3.9 % over the forecasted period. The medium growth scenario indicates that the total energy demand will increase by an average annual growth rate of 6.37 % over the forecasted period, implying that aggregate energy demand will double by the year 2012. The high growth scenario suggests that the total energy demand will increase by an average annual growth rate of 8.24 % over the forecast period and double by the year 2010.

My practice involves leveraging analog and digital techniques from many disciplines, but especially graphic design, craft/material studies, and sculpture. I embrace reproduction and repetition as both tools and means to visualize what is often unseen, and to recognize not only what is made, but what supports making— from the straightforward and immediate to the complex and conceptual.

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / Long waiting times before receiving a health service, give rise to long queues and congested health facilities, both of which are unnecessary and avoidable. Since patients in part judge the quality of the service by the length of time they spent waiting for it, it is imperative to measure waiting times, and determine and mitigate the immediate and underlying causes of lengthy waits. The facility under investigation was known to have excessively long waiting times. Since the immediate causes of long waiting times were known, it was thus required to research and understand the underlying causes of long waiting times and consequently whether there were any barriers to implementing recommendations to reduce waiting times at this primary health care facility. AIM: The aim of the study was to determine the underlying causes of long waiting times and the barriers to implementing recommendations to reduce waiting times. METHODS: A quantitative cross-sectional analytical study with a small qualitative component was undertaken. The qualitative study took a workshop format by piggy-backing onto feedback sessions held to present the results of the previously conducted waiting time survey to staff. Staff commentary at the workshops on possible underlying causes and barriers to recommendations to reduce them, were then used to develop a questionnaire for the quantitative portion of the study. The population and sample for the qualitative part of the study were all staff working at the facility who attended the feedback sessions. The cross-sectional descriptive quantitative study intended to uncover what underlying causes affected long waiting times, what recommendations could be explored to mitigate long waiting times and improve the patient experience, and if there were any barriers to these recommendations. The quantitative study population and sample were all staff who worked at the facility for more than six months and all patients who had utilised the services at the facility for three or more times. Data was collected using structured questionnaires, which were different for staff and patients. A detailed descriptive analysis was conducted.

Dans un contexte publicitaire de plus en plus concurrentiel, la course à l’originalité chez les annonceurs a permis à l’humour d’obtenir une place de choix. L’offre média étant également de plus en plus vaste : spots télévision, radio, e-publicité, affichage, street marketing, on constate la multiplication des campagnes publicitaires humoristiques et décalées. Les communications préventives qui empruntent généralement les techniques persuasives à la publicité, se tournent de plusen plus vers l’appel à l’humour. L’humour qui présente un intérêt certain en termes de persuasion semblerait donc être un levier intéressant à mobiliser dans ces communications afin de 1) limiter l’effet d’habitude communicationnelle par rapport aux communications préventives traditionnelles (appel à la peur, à la honte, à la culpabilité, etc.) et 2) éviter le détournement de l’individu fasse à une communication préventive faisant appel à des émotions négatives. Cette recherche vise donc à mieux comprendre le fonctionnement de l’appel à l’humour en communication préventive et à identifier les conditions permettant d’assurer son efficacité. Cette thèse poursuit donc un premier objectif théorique : apporter un éclairage sur le concept de l’humour et sa mise en œuvre en communication. Une étude expérimentale sur 300 personnes, dans le contexte de la prévention du surpoids et de l’obésité, a été conduite afin de tester plusieurs communications préventives faisant appel à différents types d’humour. Elle a permis de 1) s’assurer de l’efficacité persuasive d’une communication préventive du surpoids et de l’obésité faisant appel à l’humour, 2) examiner les effets des différents types d’humour sur cette efficacité, 3) étudier le processus d’influence (cognitif et affectif) et les conditions d’efficacité de l’humour en identifiant les variables médiatrices et modératrices (en particulier le rôle de variables individuelles telles que l’estime de soi, la corpulence perçue et la satisfaction corporelle). / In an increasingly competitive advertising context, the race for originality among advertisers have positioned humor as a determinant tool. Indeed, as the media offer is growing (television, radio, e-advertising, billboards, street marketing, etc). There is a proliferation of humorous and offbeat advertising campaigns. Preventive communications, which generally use persuasive techniques for advertising, are turning more and more to humor. Indeed, humor have been proved to be efficient in terms of persuasion and could thus present some advantages in preventive communications. It could notably 1) offer new opportunities to catch the public attention with a new effect, different from the ones used by traditional preventive communications (fear, shame or guilt appeal) and 2) avoid disinterest of people to preventive communication involving negative emotions. Consequently, this research aims to better understand the use of humor in preventive communication and to identify the conditions to ensure its effectiveness. This thesis pursues a first theoretical objective: to shed light on the concept of humor and its implementation in communication. An experimental study on 300 people, in the context of the overweight and obesity prevention, was conducted to test several preventive communications using different types of humor. The objectives are the following: 1) to ensure the effectiveness of a persuasive preventive communication about overweight and obesity using humor, 2) examining the effects of different types of humor on this effectiveness and 3) to study the process of influence (cognitive and affective) and the conditions of efficiency of humor by identifying mediating and moderating variables (in particular the role of individual variables such as self-esteem, perceived body and body satisfaction).

Diese Dissertation beschreibt eine Messung von hadronischen Ereignisformvariablen (event shapes) in Protonkollisionen mit einer Schwerpunktsenergie von 7 TeV am Large Hadron Collider (LHC) am CERN (Conseil Europeenne pour la Recherche Nucleaire) bei Genf (Schweiz). Die analysierten Daten mit einer integrierten Luminosität von 1.1 inversen fb wurden im Jahr 2011 mit dem ATLAS Experiment aufgenommen. Für die Analyse wurden solche Ereignisse ausgewählt, in deren harten Streuprozessen ein Z-Boson produziert wurde, welches entweder in ein Elektron-Positron-Paar oder ein Muon-Antimuon-Paar zerfällt. Die Observablen wurden mit sämtlichen rekonstruierten Spuren innerhalb der Akzeptanz des inneren Spurdetektors (Inner Detector) von ATLAS außer denen der Leptonen des Zerfalls des Z-Bosons berechnet. Somit handelt es sich hierbei um die erste Messung dieser Art. Anschließend wurden die Observablen auf Untergrundprozesse mit auf Daten basierenden Methoden korrigiert wobei ein neues Verfahren für die Korrektur des sogenannten Pile-up (Überlagerung mehrerer Proton-Proton Wechselwirkungen) entwickelt und erfolgreich zur Anwedung gebracht wurde. Schließlich wurden die gemessenen Verteilungen entfaltet. Die so erhaltenen Daten sind insbesondere sensitiv auf das sogenannte Underlying Event und können direkt mit Monte-Carlo-Ereignisgeneratoren ohne aufwändige Simulation des ATLAS-Detektors verglichen werden. Abschließend wurde versucht die Modellparameter in den Simulationsprogrammen Pythia8 und Sherpa mithilfe der gewonnenen Daten durch eine bessere Abstimmung (Tuning) zu verbessern. Hierbei zeigte sich, dass das zugrunde liegende Sjostrand-Zijl Modell nicht ausreicht, um eine adäquate Beschreibung der gemessenen Verteilungen zu erreichen. / This thesis describes a measurement of hadron-collider event shapes in proton-proton collisions at a centre of momentum energy of 7 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Conseil Europeenne pour la Recherche Nucleaire) located near Geneva (Switzerland). The analysed data (integrated luminosity: 1.1 inverse fb) was recorded in 2011 with the ATLAS-experiment. Events where a Z-boson was produced in the hard sub-process which subsequently decays into an electron-positron or muon-antimuon pair were selected for this analysis. The observables are calculated using all reconstructed tracks of charged particles within the acceptance of the inner detector of ATLAS except those of the leptons of the Z-decay. Thus, this is the first measurement of its kind. The observables were corrected for background processes using data-driven methods. For the correction of so-called pile-up (multiple overlapping proton-proton collisions) a novel technique was developed and successfully applied. The data was further unfolded to correct for remaining detector effects. The obtained distributions are especially sensitive to the so-called Underlying Event and can be compared with predictions of Monte-Carlo event-generators directly, i.e. without the necessity of running time-consuming simulations of the ATLAS-detector. Finally, it was tried to improve the predictions of the event generators Pythia8 and Sherpa by finding an optimised setting of relevant model parameters in a technique called Tuning. It became apparent, however, that the underlying Sjostrand-Zijl model is unable to give a good description of the measured event-shape distributions.

Background Clostridium difficile is a Gram-positive bacteria found in the large bowel or colon that causes mild to severe intestinal conditions and sometimes death. The primary risk factors for development of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) include healthcare exposure and recent antimicrobial use. The purpose of this study is to compare risk factors associated with CDI occurring in the Community to those associated with Healthcare Facility Associated CDI in the metro Atlanta population from September 1, 2009 – April 30, 2011. Methods Patients were identified through C. difficile surveillance program of the Georgia Emerging Infections Program (EIP). Prospective, population based, laboratory based surveillance for all positive C. difficile cases in the Georgia Health District 3 (HD3). Due to the sampling scheme, for this analysis CO-HCFA and HCFO cases were combined to make a Healthcare Facility Associated (HCFA) classification. Using SAS, a logistic regression analysis was performed to compare the associated risks between CA and HCFA classifications. Results The rate of CDI in the HD3 counties in Georgia is 84 per 100,000. The median age of infection is 63 and the age range in this study is 1 to 102 years old. CA cases represented 38% of the sampled population. CDI cases 65 and older were more likely to have a Healthcare association compared to CA-CDI cases (p Conclusion This study supports literature about CDI and antimicrobial use and looks further in to the role underlying conditions play as a risk factor for HCFA-CDI cases.

The following piece will highlight the correlations found between foreign market exits and reentries. The developed tables, figures and conceptual model will graphically display in details the stages a Multinational Corporation (MNC) would go through during the course of a market exit up until the reentry. Moreover, the paper will elaborate how many firms have failed to understand the magnitude of a well-executed market withdrawal. Furthermore, the paper will indicate the correlations found between underlying reason & quality of exit; quality of exit & ease of reentry, and “time out” & reentry.

Övervikt och fetma är ett stort problem världen över. Varje år dör 2,8 miljoner vuxna människor av sjukdomen. För att kunna arbeta preventivt mot övervikt och fetma och hjälpa de patienter som lider av sjukdomen bör sjuksköterskan ha mer kunskap och utbildning om de bakomliggande faktorerna. Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att belysa bakomliggande faktorer för övervikt och fetma. 12 vetenskapliga artiklar valdes ut och granskades och resultatet framkom i form av fyra kategorier; livsstilsfaktorer, känslor och relationer, socioekonomiska faktorer och genetiska faktorer.  I ett flertal studier framkom det att brist på fysisk aktivitet var en starkt bidragande faktor till viktuppgång. Stress och tidsbrist var de utlösande faktorerna till att den fysiska aktiviteten uteblev. Graviditet och moderskap sågs som en bakomliggande faktor till viktuppgång hos kvinnor. Relationer och en svår barndom kunde också bidra till viktuppgång hos både män och kvinnor. Arbetsmiljö, utbildningsnivå och socioekonomisk status hade en betydelse relaterat till högt BMI, dock visade dessa faktorer skillnader gällande genus. Det framkom att det finns ett könsideal och att det framförallt har betydelse gällande männens viktuppgång. Vidare kvalitativ forskning med fokus på patienternas upplevelser är av betydelse. Likaså sjuksköterskans preventiva arbete som bör uppmärksammas redan under sjuksköterskeutbildningen. / Overweight and obesity is a major problem worldwide. Every year 2.8 million adult dies in the disease. In order to work preventively against overweight and obesity and to help patients who suffer from the disease, nurses need more knowledge and education about the underlying factors. The purpose of this study was to illustrate the underlying factors for overweight and obesity. 12 scientific papers were selected and examined and the result emerged in four categories; lifestyle factors, feelings and relationships, socioeconomic factors and genetic factors. Several studies showed that the lack of physical activity was a major contributing factor to gaining weight. Stress and lack of time were the triggering factors that physical activity did not occurred. Pregnancy and motherhood was seen as an underlying factor to why women gained weight. Relationships and a difficult childhood could also contribute to weight gain in both men and woman. Work environment, education and socioeconomic status had a role related to high BMI, however, those factors showed differences regarding gender. It was found that there are gender ideals and that they are primarily of importance regarding the men’s weight gain. Further qualitative researches focusing on patients’ experiences are relevant. Similarly, the nurse’s preventive work should be addressed during nursing school.

Syftet med denna studie har varit att analysera socialsekreterares erfarenheter av bakomliggande orsaker till att barn i familjer med utländsk bakgrund blir aktuella för utredning enligt Socialtjänstlagen (SFS 2001:453). Studien behandlar skillnader mellan familjer med utländsk bakgrund och familjer med svensk bakgrund vad gäller bakomliggande orsaker för aktualisering hos socialtjänsten. Studien är kvalitativ och grundar sig på fem semistrukturerade intervjuer. Till grund för analysen har Bronfenbrenners utvecklingsekologiska teori använts vilken har kompletterats med begrepp som behandlar migrationsprocess, socialisationsprocess och kultur. Resultatet visar att det inte finns någon större skillnad gällande bakomliggande orsaker för aktualisering beroende på härkomst. Det framkommer att social utsatthet är vanligt förekommande hos de familjer som aktualiseras och då främst i form av ekonomisk utsatthet, boendesituation och arbete. Det som skiljer familjer med utländsk bakgrund från familjer med svensk bakgrund är att de invandrande familjerna har bristande integreringsmöjligheter. Samhällsorientering för de nyanlända ses i denna studie som en tänkbar faktor i bristande integreringsmöjligheter. För att få mer kunskap av informationens betydelse för integreringen i det nya landet ges förslag att vidare forskning bör behandla de nyanländas egen uppfattning kring samhällsorienteringen och dess innehåll. / The purpose of this study has been to analyse social workers experiences of underlying factors to why children in families with an immigrant origin becomes subject for the social services. The study involves differences between families with an immigrant background and families with Swedish background in terms of underlying factors to why they become subjects for the social services. The study is qualitative and based on five semi-structured interviews. The analysis is based on Bronfenbrenners ecological systems theory and has been supplemented by concepts that involve migration process, socialization and culture. The survey reveals that there is no significant difference, in the underlying factors for the cause to become the subject of social services, due to origin. It appears that social deprivation is common among the families that become subject for the social services, mainly in form of economic vulnerability, living situation and work. What distinguishes families with an immigrant background from families with Swedish background is their lack of integration possibilities. Civics for the newly arrived families is seen in this survey as a possible factor in the lack of integration possibilities. To gain more knowledge of the role of information for inclusion in the new country, suggestions for further research are to address the newly arrived families own perception of the civics and its contents.