Luminosities of High-Redshift Objects in an Accelerating Universe

The results from the Supernova Cosmology Project indicate a relation between cosmic distance and redshift that corresponds to an accelerating Universe, and, as a consequence, the presence of an energy component with negative pressure. This necessitates a re-evaluation of such astrophysical luminosities that have been derived through conventional redshift analyses of, e.g., gamma-ray bursts and quasars. We have calculated corrected luminosity distances within two scenarios; the standard one with a non-zero cosmological constant, and the more recently proposed ``quintessence'', with a slowly evolving energy-density component. We find luminosity corrections from +30 to -40 per cent for redshifts with $z=0 - 10$. This finding implicates that the SCP data do not, by themselves, require a revision of the current, rather qualitative modeling of gamma-ray bursts and quasar properties.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 2 postscript figures, submitted to PR

Preon Trinity - a new model of leptons and quarks

A new model for the substructure of quarks, leptons and weak gauge bosons is discussed. It is based on three fundamental and absolutely stable spin-1/2 preons. Its preon flavour SU(3) symmetry leads to a prediction of nine quarks, nine leptons and nine heavy vector bosons. One of the quarks has charge $-4e/3$, and is speculated to be the top quark (whose charge has not been measured). The flavour symmetry leads to three conserved lepton numbers in all known weak processes, except for some neutrinos, which might either oscillate or decay. There is also a (Cabibbo) mixing of the $d$ and $s$ quarks due to an internal preon-antipreon annihilation channel. An identical channel exists inside the composite $Z^0$, leading to a relation between the Cabibbo and Weinberg mixing angles.Comment: 12 pages Latex, no figures; to be published in the Proceedings of Beyond 99, Tegernsee, Germany, June 199

Quantifying Semantic Linguistic Maturity in Children

We propose a method to quantify semantic linguistic maturity (SELMA) based on a high dimensional semantic representation ofwords created from the co-occurrence of words in a large text corpus. The method was applied to oral narratives from 108 children aged 4;0–12;10. By comparing the SELMA measure with maturity ratings made by human raters we found that SELMA predicted the rating of semantic maturity made by human raters over and above the prediction made using a child’s age and number of words produced. We conclude that the semantic content of narratives changes in a predictable pattern with children’s age and argue that SELMA is a measure quantifying semantic linguistic maturity. The study opens up the possibility of using quantitative measures for studying the development of semantic representation in children’s narratives, and emphasizes the importance of word co-occurrences for understanding the development of meaning

Diffusion of financial innovations – A study of the stock index bond’s popularity

Titel: Spridningen av finansiella innovationer - En studie av aktieindexobligationernas popularitet Författare: Henrik Hansson och Sverker Nilsson. Handledare: Anders Hederstierna Institution: Managementhögskolan, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Kurs: Kandidatarbete i Företagsekonomi, 10 poäng Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att förklara varför sparandet i AIO:er har ökat och hur AIO:en har spridit sig. Metod: Vi har genomfört intervjuer av kvalitativ karaktär på de fyra storbankerna. Vi har sedan analyserat resultatet av intervjuerna med hjälp av teori om hur innovationer sprids. Slutsats: AIO:ernas relativa fördel har ökat de senaste åren. AIO:ernas position stärktes mot aktier och aktiefonder i och med börskraschen. När sedan räntorna började falla sökte placerarna nya alternativ. I AIO:erna har de hittat en gyllene medelväg. Under 1990-talet var AIO:ernas utveckling bromsad av att rådgivarna inte hade kunskap om AIO:erna. Detta medförde att AIO:ernas kommunikationskanal inte fungerade tillfredställande och detta hade en starkt bromsande effekt på deras spridning. Kring år 2003 nådde AIO:erna early majority. Då dessa är många fler än early adopters ökade spridningstakten för AIO:erna.Title: Diffusion of financial innovations – A study of the stock index bond’s popularity Authors: Henrik Hansson and Sverker Nilsson. Supervisor: Anders Hederstierna Department: School of Management, Blekinge Institute of Technology Course: Bachelor’s thesis in Business Administration, 10 credits Purpose: The purpose with this essay is to explain why the savings in stock index bonds has increased and how this diffusion process can be analysed. Method: We have interviewed employees at the four largest banks in Sweden. The results of the interviews have been analysed whit help of diffusion of innovations theory. Results: The relative advantage of stock index bonds has increased the last few years. The stock index bonds position, compared to stocks, improved when the stock market fell. When the interest decreased the investors begun to search for new alternatives. Stock index bonds have become their middle risk alternative. The fact that the economic advisors didn’t have the knowledge about stock index bonds during the 1990’s held the diffusion of the stock index bonds back. Some time around the year of 2003 the stock index bonds reached the early majority. Because of this group’s much lager size than the early adopters, the rate of diffusion accelerated

Diffusion of financial innovations – A study of the stock index bond’s popularity

Titel: Spridningen av finansiella innovationer - En studie av aktieindexobligationernas popularitet Författare: Henrik Hansson och Sverker Nilsson. Handledare: Anders Hederstierna Institution: Managementhögskolan, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Kurs: Kandidatarbete i Företagsekonomi, 10 poäng Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att förklara varför sparandet i AIO:er har ökat och hur AIO:en har spridit sig. Metod: Vi har genomfört intervjuer av kvalitativ karaktär på de fyra storbankerna. Vi har sedan analyserat resultatet av intervjuerna med hjälp av teori om hur innovationer sprids. Slutsats: AIO:ernas relativa fördel har ökat de senaste åren. AIO:ernas position stärktes mot aktier och aktiefonder i och med börskraschen. När sedan räntorna började falla sökte placerarna nya alternativ. I AIO:erna har de hittat en gyllene medelväg. Under 1990-talet var AIO:ernas utveckling bromsad av att rådgivarna inte hade kunskap om AIO:erna. Detta medförde att AIO:ernas kommunikationskanal inte fungerade tillfredställande och detta hade en starkt bromsande effekt på deras spridning. Kring år 2003 nådde AIO:erna early majority. Då dessa är många fler än early adopters ökade spridningstakten för AIO:erna.Title: Diffusion of financial innovations – A study of the stock index bond’s popularity Authors: Henrik Hansson and Sverker Nilsson. Supervisor: Anders Hederstierna Department: School of Management, Blekinge Institute of Technology Course: Bachelor’s thesis in Business Administration, 10 credits Purpose: The purpose with this essay is to explain why the savings in stock index bonds has increased and how this diffusion process can be analysed. Method: We have interviewed employees at the four largest banks in Sweden. The results of the interviews have been analysed whit help of diffusion of innovations theory. Results: The relative advantage of stock index bonds has increased the last few years. The stock index bonds position, compared to stocks, improved when the stock market fell. When the interest decreased the investors begun to search for new alternatives. Stock index bonds have become their middle risk alternative. The fact that the economic advisors didn’t have the knowledge about stock index bonds during the 1990’s held the diffusion of the stock index bonds back. Some time around the year of 2003 the stock index bonds reached the early majority. Because of this group’s much lager size than the early adopters, the rate of diffusion accelerated

Preon trinity : a schematic model of leptons, quarks and heavy vector bosons

Quarks, leptons and heavy vector bosons are suggested to be composed of stable spin- (1/2) preons, existing in three flavours, combined according to simple rules. Straightforward consequences of an SU(3) preon-flavour symmetry are the conservation of three lepton numbers, oscillations and decays between some neutrinos, and the mixing of the d and s quarks, as well as of the vector fields W0 and B0. We find a relation between the Cabibbo and Weinberg mixing angles, and predict new (heavy) leptons, quarks and vector bosons, some of which might be observable at the Fermilab Tevatron and the future CERN LHC. A heavy neutrino might even be visible in existing data from the CERN LEP facility.Validerad; 2002; 20061216 (ysko

Drivkrafter f\uf6r industriell samverkan

Drivkrafter f\uf6r industriell samverkan, Rapport till Industrins Verkstadsinstitu