D i g i t a l i z a t i o n a n d N e w B u y e r B e h a v i o r i s C h a n g i n g B 2 B R e l a t i o n s h i p M a r k e t i n g

Problem definition: The increasingly informed customer will lead to an even greater demand for expertise and knowledge of marketers. Firms need to find new ways to utilize the informed customer as a co-creator of value by more proficiently analyzing behavior, both online and offline. An uncertainty lies in to which extent the operational standards of KIBS firms translate to their marketing and sales efforts, or to what degree they are using potential customers to help shape their value propositions. The research question that has been identified is how the relationships seen in knowledgeintensive B2B marketing are affected by the digitalization of society and the change in buyer behavior that is a result of these societal changes. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis will be to identify the effects of digitalization and changing buyer behavior on relationships seen across marketing and sales of knowledge-intensive services in a B2B context. This will lead to a recommendation for the case company’s future direction of its marketing and sales functions. Methodology: The research approach of this master’s thesis has been a combination of a descriptive and !! ! IV! Digitalization and New Buyer Behavior is Changing B2B Relationship Marketing Tobias Olsson Emil Uhlin an explorative study. The descriptive approach intends to describe the overall areas of the problem formulation, while the explorative approach aims to collect as much information as possible regarding these areas. The goal of research has been to put more weight on the explorative approach. The research is approached as a case study focusing on a company that is both B2B and in a sector that includes many interesting angles of the problem. Case company: The choice of Company X as case company for this thesis was rooted in three overall observations. First off, the area of digital marketing is currently seeing increased urgency in B2B. The sector of IT and business consultancy is also interesting. The companies in this sector often have many different ways of working within the same company. The choice of a B2B company is motivated by the fact that the new wave of digital marketing has seen greater advancements in B2C. B2B is historically stronger in much of the relationship marketing basics, like close network relationships. The digital advancements in B2B deviate from those in B2C, and are probably not as standardized. Lastly, an interesting aspect of Company X is that it offers business units on opposite sides of the spectrum in regards to overall digital advancements. Conclusions: Information really is the common denominator for everything that pertains to the power balance of supplier and customer. The authors believe that the presented framework provides a good intersection of assessing relational strength in B2B, the ability to grade strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats in digitalization, and lastly the level of current buyer insight. The models are secondary and may be modified, but the choice to observe relationships, digitalization and more in-depth buyer behavior should provide a holistic view for similar studies

Trading CDS Indices vs. Equity Index Futures – A pairs trade

In this thesis we use a unique data set to show that there is a cointegrating relationship between the EURO STOXX 50 index and the Markit iTraxx Europe index that can be exploited through trading. As far as we know, we are the first ones to write about trading this pair in an academic paper. On our way we deal with various peculiarities in the data set before we manage to find cointegration. The cointegration is evident enough to be utilized when trading the pair. We deal with many practical issues when simulating the trading environment, like marking-to-market of CDS index positions. We successively add more layers of reality to the trading simulation, such as bid-offer-spreads and even in the last step our strategies are highly profitable. Finally, we benchmark our strategies against indices and show that they have low market correlation. This is achieved by introducing an alternative beta measure, customized for the involved assets

Social and environmental issues on the removal of fuelwood and litter from Eucalyptus stands around Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

The demand for energy in Ethiopia is high and 95% of the used energy is biomass energy. To meet this demand eucalyptus plantations have been established around the urban centers. The high demand for fuel wood has led to a situation where all biomass is removed. The eucalyptus forest is clear-cut every seven years. In addition to official management activities there is also an extensive removal of shoots and litter. This study has looked at litter-raking and fuel wood collection and how the removal of these plant parts affects soil properties. The hypothesis was that the shoots and litter removed contain a considerable amount of nutrients, and the removal of these components contributes to depletion of soil nutrients. The study has quantified the amount of biomass removed per hectare and year in eucalyptus plantations north of Addis Ababa (i.e. Mt. Intoto). The plant parts have later been categorized into subcomponents and separately analyzed in terms of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, sodium and magnesium. The total removal of nutrients per hectare and year is then related to the soil nutrient pool

Sex-specific developmental plasticity in response to yolk corticosterone in an oviparous lizard

Corticosterone exposure during prenatal development as a result of maternal upregulation of circulating hormone levels has been shown to have effects on offspring development in mammals. Corticosterone has also been documented in egg yolk in oviparous vertebrates, but the extent to which this influences phenotypic development is less studied. We show that maternal corticosterone is transferred to egg yolk in an oviparous lizard (the mallee dragon, Ctenophorus fordi Storr), with significant variation among clutches in hormone levels. Experimental elevation of yolk corticosterone did not affect hatching success, incubation period or offspring sex ratio. However, corticosterone did have a sex-specific effect on skeletal growth during embryonic development. Male embryos exposed to relatively high levels of corticosterone were smaller on average than control males at hatching whereas females from hormone-treated eggs were larger on average than control females. The data thus suggest that males are not just more sensitive to the detrimental effects of corticosterone but rather that the sexes may have opposite responses to corticosterone during development. Positive selection on body size at hatching for both sexes in this species further suggests that increased corticosterone in egg yolk may have sex-specific fitness consequences, with potential implications for sex allocation and the evolution of hormone-mediated maternal effects.<br /

Persis: A Persian Font Recognition Pipeline Using Convolutional Neural Networks

What happens if we encounter a suitable font for our design work but do not know its name? Visual Font Recognition (VFR) systems are used to identify the font typeface in an image. These systems can assist graphic designers in identifying fonts used in images. A VFR system also aids in improving the speed and accuracy of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems. In this paper, we introduce the first publicly available datasets in the field of Persian font recognition and employ Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to address this problem. The results show that the proposed pipeline obtained 78.0% top-1 accuracy on our new datasets, 89.1% on the IDPL-PFOD dataset, and 94.5% on the KAFD dataset. Furthermore, the average time spent in the entire pipeline for one sample of our proposed datasets is 0.54 and 0.017 seconds for CPU and GPU, respectively. We conclude that CNN methods can be used to recognize Persian fonts without the need for additional pre-processing steps such as feature extraction, binarization, normalization, etc

The spacing and selection effects impact on the wood production with Norway spruce

Trakthyggesbruket är det vanligaste skogsskötselsystemet i Sverige och innehåller fyra karakteristiska faser. De olika faserna är föryngringsfasen, ungskogsfasen, gallringsfasen och slutavverkningsfasen. Dessa påverkas av hur många plantor, planteringsförbandet, som planteras per hektar under föryngringsfasen. Det här medför att en skogsägare kan få en lyckad föryngring med få plantor, trots minimalt arbete och utgifter. Ett glesare förband ger en sämre urvalseffekt då det finns färre träd att välja mellan till det framtida slutbeståndet. Dock blir risken att ett glest bestånd drabbas av rotröta och stormfällning lägre. Denna studie inriktar sig på att undersöka hur planteringsförbanden med gran (Picea abies [L.] Karst) påverkar virkesproduktionen när alla planteringsförband har röjts och gallrats ned till samma stamantal per hektar. Data är hämtat från en av SLU:s försökytor (1026), sex mil nordväst om Umeå utanför Vindeln. Det är ett icke randomiserat försök uppdelat i tre block. Försöket består av fem kvadratiska planteringsförband (1x1m, 1,5x1,5m, 2x2m, 2,5x2,5m och 3x3m) uppdelade i tre avdelningar vardera, utspridda över de tre blocken. Försöket anlades 1965 för att undersöka planteringsförbandets och urvalseffektens påverkan på virkesproduktion och har reviderats fem gånger. Analyser utfördes på förbandens totala volymproduktion, övre höjd, medelhöjd och medeldiameter vid den senaste revisionen. Planteringsförband 1x1m producerade bäst, i alla kategorier, följt av planteringsförband 3x3m. Någon statistisk signifikans kunde dock inte finnas på planteringsförbandets och urvalets effekt på virkesproduktionen. Liknande försök med gran (Picea abies [L.] Karst) har visat att tätare planteringsförband leder till högre volymproduktion om de inte gallrats. Om gallring utförs i tätare förband kan glesare förband producera jämlikt med de ursprungligt tätare planteringsförbanden men kvaliteten i beståndet minskar.Clear felling is the most common alternative for the Swedish silviculture. This consists of four characteristic phases. The phases are; reafforestation phase, young forest phase, thinning phase and clear cutting phase. By planting different amount of plants, different spacing, during the reafforestation, the other phases will be affected. This entails that a forest owner could have a successful reafforestation with minimal work and expenditure invested. A sparsely spacing gives less selection effect because of fewer trees to choose for future stand. However it will have a lower risk of being affected by root rot and storm damage. This study aims to examine how different spacing with spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst) affects timber production after being cleared and thinned to the same number of stems per hectares. The data has been collected from a trial area (1026) belonging to SLU, 60 kilometers northwest of Umeå outside Vindeln. It is a none randomized trial area consisting of three blocks with 5 squared spacing (1x1m, 1,5x1,5m, 2x2m, 2,5x2,5m and 3x3m) broken up into three different sections, spread out over the three blocks. The experiment was initiated in 1965 to study the effect of different spacing and the selection effect on wood production and has been revised five times. Data over volume production, over height, mean height and mean diameter from the last revision was analyzed. The 1x1m spacing was the best performing in all categories followed by spacing 3x3m. However, no statistical significance could be found by looking at the spacing effect on timber production. Similar studies with spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst) have shown that closer spacing leads to a higher volume production if they are not thinned. If denser spacings are thinned, a sparsely spacing can produce equitable as the originally denser spacing but the quality of the stand will be lower

How do variations in ship operation impact the techno-economic feasibility and environmental performance of fossil-free fuels? A life cycle study

Identifying an obvious non-fossil fuel solution for all ship types for meeting the greenhouse gas reduction target in shipping is challenging. This paper evaluates the technical viability, environmental impacts, and economic feasibility of different energy carriers for three case vessels of different ship types: a RoPax ferry, a tanker, and a service vessel. The energy carriers examined include battery-electric and three electro-fuels (hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia) which are used in combination with engines and fuel cells. Three methods are used: preliminary ship design feasibility, life cycle assessment, and life cycle costing. The results showed that battery-electric and compressed hydrogen options are not viable for some ships due to insufficient available onboard space for energy storage needed for the vessel\u27s operational range. The global warming reduction potential is shown to depend on the ship type. This reduction potential of assessed options changes also with changes in the carbon intensity of the electricity mix. Life cycle costing results shows that the use of ammonia and methanol in engines has the lowest life cycle cost for all studied case vessels. However, the higher energy conversion losses of these systems make them more vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of electricity. Also, these options have higher environmental impacts on categories like human toxicity, resource use (minerals and metals), and water use. Fuel cells and batteries are not as cost-competitive for the case vessels because of their higher upfront costs and shorter lifetimes. However, these alternatives are less expensive than alternatives with internal combustion engines in the case of higher utilization rates and fuel costs

Phylogenomics and biogeography of the world's thrushes (Aves, Turdus) : new evidence for a more parsimonious evolutionary history

To elucidate the relationships and spatial range evolution across the world of the bird genus Turdus (Aves), we produced a large genomic dataset comprising ca 2 million nucleotides for ca 100 samples representing 53 species, including over 2000 loci. We estimated time-calibrated maximum-likelihood and multispecies coalescentphylogenies and carried out biogeographic analyses. Our results indicate that there have been considerably fewer trans-oceanic dispersals within the genus Turdus than previously suggested, such that the Palaearctic clade did not originate in America and the African clade was not involved in the colonization of the Americas. Instead, our findings suggest that dispersal from the Western Palaearctic via the Antilles to the Neotropics might have occurred in a single event, giving rise to the rich Neotropical diversity of Turdus observed today, with no reverse dispersals to thePalaearctic or Africa. Our large multilocus dataset, combined with dense species-level sampling and analysed under probabilistic methods, brings important insights into historical biogeography and systematics, even in a scenario of fast and spatially complex diversification.Peer reviewe