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This study focuses on the ten most valued groups on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange and their reported results for the period of 2009-2015. The purpose of the study was to investigate correlation between reported results on different levels and the progress of the share prices. Using Pearson’s correlation coefficient I was able to compare operating profit, net result and other comprehensive income to one another. I found that operating profit and net result came very close to each other, whilst other comprehensive income fell behind.  As it seems, share prices are affected by a numerous of variables, not only by reported results and earnings.

This thesis project explores repurposing a hydroelectric plant along Richmond Virginia's Canal Walk. The building has been redesigned to create a community-oriented space programmed as an indoor park, event venue space, and cafe. Throughout this thesis, it became important to create private niches within a public space while creating a flexible public venue that accommodates a variety of activities. Through a variety of spaces that offer users options, a flexible public venue is creating, yielding a community-oriented environment that reconnects local with the site.

Cette thèse étudie l’Art poétique de Paul Claudel et son influence dans sa création avec un regard critique chinois. Pour éviter des interprétations excessives, nous élaborons une approche interculturelle. Dans le processus concret de la lecture, nous employons d’abord l’art de la critique des anciens esthètes chinois, résumons de manière synthétique notre ressenti intuitif inspiré par l’ensemble de l’œuvre de Claudel en deux sentiments : la marche et la fuite. Puis, nous faisons appel à la méthode traditionnelle occidentale de l’analyse textuelle et à la méthode de la recherche documentaire, afin de relier les effets aux textes. L’observation du développement et de la transformation de ces deux forces permet de traverser la complexité apparente de l’œuvre du poète, et de révéler l’influence directe et des convergences possibles entre sa pensée et la pensée orientale. / This thesis studies Art poétique of Paul Claudel and his influence in his creation with a Chinese critical perspective. To avoid excessive interpretation, I develop an intercultural approach. In the actual process of reading, I use the classical Chinese aesthetic and literary theories to summarize synthetically the aesthetic effect of the works as a whole, and proposes the two kinds of effects as “walk” and “escape”. Then I use the traditional western method of textual analysis and the method of documentary research, to link effects to text. The observation of the development and transformation of these two forces can cross the apparent complexity of the poet’s work, and reveal the direct influence and possible convergences between his thought and Eastern thought.

Two-periodic random walks are models for the one-dimensional motion of particles in which the jump probabilities depend on the parity of the currently occupied state. Such processes have interesting applications, for instance in chemical physics where they arise as embedded random walk of a special queueing problem. In this paper we discuss in some detail first passage time problems of two-periodic walks, the distribution of their maximum and the transition functions when the motion of the particle is restricted by one or two absorbing boundaries. As particular applications we show how our results can be used to derive the distribution of the busy period of a chemical queue and give an analysis of a somewhat weird coin tossing game. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

We study the large deviation behaviour of simple random walks in dimension three or more in this thesis. The first part of the thesis concerns the number of lattice sites visited by the random walk. We call this the range of the random walk. We derive a large deviation principle for the probability that the range of simple random walk deviates from its mean. Our result describes the behaviour for deviation below the typical value. This is a result analogous to that obtained by van den Berg, Bolthausen, and den Hollander for the volume of the Wiener sausage. In the second part of the thesis, we are interested in the number of lattice sites visited by two independent simple random walks starting at the origin. We call this the intersection of ranges. We derive a large deviation principle for the probability that the intersection of ranges by time n exceeds a multiple of n. This is also an analogous result of the intersection volume of two independent Wiener sausages.

The focus of this thesis is to investigate the impact of the boundary conditions on configurations in the Abelian sandpile model. We have two main results to present in this thesis. Firstly we give a family of continuous, measure preserving, almost one-to-one mappings from the wired spanning forest to recurrent sandpiles. In the special case of $Z^d$, $d \geq 2$, we show how these bijections yield a power law upper bound on the rate of convergence to the sandpile measure along any exhaustion of $Z^d$. Secondly we consider the Abelian sandpile on ladder graphs. For the ladder sandpile measure, $\nu$, a recurrent configuration on the boundary, I, and a cylinder event, E, we provide an upper bound for $\nu(E|I) − \nu(E)$.

The pricing of options is one of the key problems in mathematical finance. In recent years, pricing models that are based on the continuous time random walk (CTRW), an anomalous diffusive random walk model widely used in physics, have been introduced. In this thesis, we investigate the pricing of European call options with CTRW and generalized CTRW models within the Black-Scholes framework. Here, the non-Markovian character of the underlying pricing model is manifest in Black-Scholes PDEs with fractional time derivatives containing memory terms. The inclusion of non-zero interest rates leads to a distinction between different types of \forward" and \backward" options, which are easily mapped onto each other in the standard Markovian framework, but exhibit significant dfferences in the non-Markovian case. The backward-type options require us in particular to include the multi-point statistics of the non-Markovian pricing model. Using a representation of the CTRW in terms of a subordination (time change) of a normal diffusive process with an inverse L evy-stable process, analytical results can be obtained. The extension of the formalism to arbitrary waiting time distributions and general payoff functions is discussed. The pricing of path-dependent Asian options leads to further distinctions between different variants of the subordination. We obtain analytical results that relate the option price to the solution of generalized Feynman-Kac equations containing non-local time derivatives such as the fractional substantial derivative. Results for L evy-stable and tempered L evy-stable subordinators, power options, arithmetic and geometric Asian options are presented.

Este trabalho consiste no projeto mecânico de um exoesqueleto robótico para paraplégicos com lesões medulares entre T2 a L1, ou seja, sem mobilidade da cintura para baixo e com mobilidade do peito para cima, inclusive das mãos. A utilização do equipamento necessita da utilização de muletas ou andadores. O mecanismo possui seis graus de liberdade, sendo quatro atuados por motorredutores (joelhos e quadris) e dois suportados por molas (tornozelos). Os motorredutores são projetados especialmente para o exoesqueleto, sendo compostos de um motor de corrente continua de imã permanente e um redutor harmônico do tipo panqueca acoplados de forma adequada para minimizar peso e volume. Para calcular os esforços solicitados em cada articulação foi desenvolvido um modelo dinâmico do corpo humano para simular os movimentos que o exoesqueleto é capaz de realizar, que são: marchar, sentar, levantar e subir e descer escadas. O modelo utilizado do corpo humano possui cinco ligamentos rígidos e é capaz de simular movimentos no plano vertical. Os resultados obtidos da simulação são comparados com resultados experimentais da literatura e são considerados satisfatórios. / This work presents a mechanical design of a robotic exoskeleton for paraplegics with spinal cord injuries between T2 to L1, that means, without mobility from the waist down and with mobility from the chest up, including the hands. For using the equipment the paraplegic needs the aid of crutches or walkers. The mechanism has six degrees of freedom, with four degrees actuated by gear motors (knees and hips), and two degrees supported by springs (ankles). The gear motors are designed especially for the exoskeleton. They are composed by an permanent magnet brushless electric motor conveniently coupled with an pancake harmonic speed reducer to minimize weight and volume. For calculating the efforts in each joint a model for the human body is developed to simulate the movements the exoskeleton can perform, which are: walk, sit, standup and climb up and down stairs. The human body model has five rigid links and it is capable to simulate movements in the vertical plane. The results obtained in the simulations are compared very well with experimental results from the literature.

Walkability indices are currently used for a wide range of research and commercial applications. Few studies have examined the relationship between walkability indices and measured pedestrian volume or walking rates, nor explored moderators of pedestrian volume such as weather. With 14 years of traffic study data from the City of Ottawa, a spatial auto-regressive (SAR) multi-level model (MLM) was used to understand the proportion of variance in walking explained by the commercial Walk Score® index and selected weather variables. Modeling revealed that a significant proportion of pedestrian volume at a given location in Ottawa, including its spatial lag, was explained by the corresponding Walk Score® value and its spatial lag (51.45%). Furthermore, weather expressed as a combination of ‘felt’ temperature, presence or absence of precipitation, and percent cloud cover, accounted for 2.79% of the variance in walking. These findings indicate that walkability indices may provide value as cost-effective engineering and urban planning tools.