Bombadil\u27s Role in \u3ci\u3eThe Lord of the Rings\u3c/i\u3e

Investigates the oft-maligned Tom Bombadil chapters of The Lord of the Rings, revealing their centrality to Tolkien’s philosophy and Tom’s frequently overlooked symbolic importance at later points in the book

Does the fashion of a management strategy affect the stock price? An event study of the fashion of downsizing

The purpose with this thesis is to examine whether the popularity of downsizing as a management strategy has an effect on the stock market's reactions when a company announces downsizing. This thesis has employed a quantitative method. An event study has been used and we have calculated the normal and abnormal return using the market model. Data has been collected from Datastream in forms of stock prices and Affärsdata has been used to find the announcements about downsizing. The event window has been (-2, +2) days considering previous research. According to the statistical tests there are no differences between the two CAARs, which means that the stock market´s reaction to an announcement of downsizing does not differ when downsizing was in fashion and when it was not

KONFLIKTERNA I SKOGEN : – EN ANALYS AV REGELKONFLIKTER OCH MYNDIGHETSAGERANDE

Vi har undersökt orsaken till de pågående kon!ikterna mellan skogsägare och skogsvårdande myndigheter angående tillämpningen av artskyddsförordningen. Vi konstaterar att myndigheterna i ett internt projekt har utvecklat en tillämp-ning av artskyddsförordningen som saknar stöd i gängse rättskällor, som lagtext, förarbeten och praxis. Tillämpningen etablerades i internt framtagna riktlinjer för handläggning av artskyddsärenden. Vi konstaterar att den nya tillämpningen kon-sekvent är till nackdel för den enskilde skogsbrukaren. De viktigaste punkterna är a) en försämrad möjlighet att få ersättning vid nekad skogsbruksåtgärd, b) svårighet att av myndigheten få svar på vad som gäller och c) en utökad börda för utrednin-gar och bevisföring för den enskilde

Nyckeln till budet

Titel: Nyckeln till budet - En analys av bakomliggande faktorer och deras inverkan på utfallet vid offentliga uppköpsförsök på Stockholmsbörsen Seminariedatum: 2014-06-04 Kurs: FEKH89, Examensarbete i finansiering på kandidatnivå, 15 Högskolepoäng Författare: Daniel Keberku, John Saidac, Gustaf Treschow Handledare: Anna Glenngård Nyckelord: Uppköpserbjudande, Stockholmsbörsen, regressionsanalys, budpremie, fientligt bud Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka vilken inverkan bakomliggande faktorer har på utfallet vid offentliga uppköpserbjudanden på Stockholmsbörsen. Metod: Utifrån syftet har en kvantitativ metod valts. Data har främst samlats in från Cision News och Capital IQ. Korrelationsberäkning och regressionsanalyser har genomförts i IBM SPSS. Teoretiska perspektiv: Studien bygger på prinicipal-agentteorin och effektiva marknadshypotesen. Vidare bygger studien på teorin om förvärvsvågor samt tidigare forskning. Empiri: Studien är en totalundersökning av offentliga uppköpserbjudanden på Stockholmsbörsen mellan åren 2007-2014, och består av 88 observationer. Utfallet vid uppköpserbjudandena är beroendevariabeln och förklaringsvariablerna är styrelsens rekommendation, budpremie, budplikt och utländsk budgivare. Resultat: Studien påvisar ett positivt samband mellan lyckat uppköpsförsök och styrelsens rekommendation och hög budpremie. Inget signifikant samband mellan beroendevariabeln och budpliktsbud kunde påvisas, dock fanns en tendens på ett negativt samband. Inget samband kunde utläsas mellan lyckat uppköpsförsök och utländsk budgivare.Title: The key to the bid – An analysis of the underlying factors and their impact on the outcome of public takeover attempts on Stockholm Stock Exchange. Seminar date: 2014-06-04 Course: FEKH89, Degree project in Finance, Undergraduate level, 15 ECTS-credits Authors: Daniel Keberku, John Saidac, Gustaf Treschow Advisor: Anna Glenngård Keywords: Public tender offer, Stockholm Stock Exchange, regression analysis, bid premium, hostile bid Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of underlying factors on the outcome of public tender offers on Stockholm Stock Exchange. Methodology: The study uses a quantitative research method. Data is mainly gathered from Cision News and Capital IQ. The regression analysis and correlation calculations have been performed in IBM SPSS. Theoretical perspectives: The theoretical framework is based on the principal-agent problem, the effective market hypothesis, merger waves and previous studies on the subject. Empirical foundation: The study includes 88 public tender offers on Stockholm Stock Exchange between 2007-2014. The outcome of the public tender offers is the dependent variable in the analysis. The independent variables include; board recommendation, bid premium, mandatory bid and foreign bidder. Conclusions: The regressions show that the chances of a successful tender offer increases if the bid is non-hostile and the bid premium is high. No statistical significance on the impact of mandatory bids or foreign bidder was shown, but the regression shows that mandatory bids have a tendency to increase the chance of a failed tender offer

Insidesaktivism som en strategi att kontrollera produktionsmedlen? : - Ett exempel från skogsbruket

I artikeln integreras begreppet insidesaktivism med det bredare begreppet rent-seeking och insikter i hur transaktionskostnaderna är avgörande för hur produktion organiseras. Ansatsen är att förstå vilken roll insidesaktivismen spelar för produktionens organisering. För att uppnå detta konstrueras en modell över produktionens organisering som utgår från konsumenten som avgörande aktör och där insidesaktivism ingår som en av flera möjliga strategier för konsumenten att komma i åtkomst av önskad konsumtion. I arbetet utnyttjas som exempel aktuella konflikter i Sverige om hur skogsbruket ska bedrivas, vilket möjliggör en mer konkret framställning av den framtagna modellen samt ger vissa insikter i konflikternas natur. Med hjälp av modellen kan också insidesaktivsmens troliga effekter diskuteras, med utgångspunkt i den aktuella konflikten, och det konstateras att det finns tre olika slags risker med insidesaktivism, risker ur perspektiven av samhällsekonomisk effektivitet respektive demokratiska och rättsliga principer

Local delivery of beta interferon using an adeno-associated virus type 5 effectively inhibits adjuvant arthritis in rats

Beta interferon (IFN-β) is a cytokine with potent immunomodulatory properties and has been described as a promising therapeutic molecule for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). IFN-β was previously overexpressed intra-articularly using an adenoviral vector in rats with adjuvant arthritis (AA) as a model of RA. This effect was powerful, albeit transient due to the vector chosen. Therefore, in the context of pre-clinical development, a delivery vector optimized for intra-articular gene transfer, recombinant adeno-associated virus type 5 (rAAV5), was selected. To exert an optimal effect, protein production should parallel the course of the disease. For this reason, the gene for IFN-β was placed under the control of an inflammation-responsive [nuclear factor (NF)-κB] promoter. After intra-articular injection of the rAAV5 constructs in rats with AA, local transcription of the transgene and production of the IFN-β protein was found, leading to a pronounced and sustained effect on paw swelling when the expression was under the control of the NF-κB-responsive promoter. Additionally, a significant beneficial effect was observed on proteoglycan depletion and erosions. Thus, intra-articular overexpression of IFN-β using a rAAV5 vector exhibits potential as an innovative therapy for the treatment of RA

Protease activity profiling of snake venoms using high-throughput peptide screening

Snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMPs) and snake venom serine proteinases (SVSPs) are among the most abundant enzymes in many snake venoms, particularly among viperids. These proteinases are responsible for some of the clinical manifestations classically seen in viperid envenomings, including hemorrhage, necrosis, and coagulopathies. The objective of this study was to investigate the enzymatic activities of these proteins using a high-throughput peptide library to screen for the proteinase targets of the venoms of five viperid (Echis carinatus, Bothrops asper, Daboia russelii, Bitis arietans, Bitis gabonica) and one elapid (Naja nigricollis) species of high medical importance. The proteinase activities of these venoms were each tested against 360 peptide substrates, yielding 2160 activity profiles. A nonlinear regression model that accurately described the observed enzymatic activities was fitted to the experimental data, allowing for the comparison of cleavage rates across species. In this study, previously unknown protein targets of snake venom proteinases were identified, potentially implicating novel human and animal proteins that may be involved in the pathophysiology of viper envenomings. The functional relevance of these targets was further evaluated and discussed. These new findings may contribute to our understanding of the clinical manifestations and underlying biochemical mechanisms of snakebite envenoming by viperid species

Mixture Risk Assessment of Complex Real-Life Mixtures—The PANORAMIX Project

Humans are involuntarily exposed to hundreds of chemicals that either contaminate our environment and food or are added intentionally to our daily products. These complex mixtures of chemicals may pose a risk to human health. One of the goals of the European Union’s Green Deal and zero-pollution ambition for a toxic-free environment is to tackle the existent gaps in chemical mixture risk assessment by providing scientific grounds that support the implementation of adequate regulatory measures within the EU. We suggest dealing with this challenge by: (1) characterising ‘real-life’ chemical mixtures and determining to what extent they are transferred from the environment to humans via food and water, and from the mother to the foetus; (2) establishing a high-throughput whole-mixture-based in vitro strategy for screening of real-life complex mixtures of organic chemicals extracted from humans using integrated chemical profiling (suspect screening) together with effect-directed analysis; (3) evaluating which human blood levels of chemical mixtures might be of concern for children’s development; and (4) developing a web-based, ready-to-use interface that integrates hazard and exposure data to enable component-based mixture risk estimation. These concepts form the basis of the Green Deal project PANORAMIX, whose ultimate goal is to progress mixture risk assessment of chemicals.Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the Green Deal project PANORAMIX Grant Agreement No. 10103663

Demospongic Acids Revisited

The well-known fatty acids with a Δ5,9 unsaturation system were designated for a long period as demospongic acids, taking into account that they originally occurred in marine Demospongia sponges. However, such acids have also been observed in various marine sources with a large range of chain-lengths (C16–C32) and from some terrestrial plants with short acyl chains (C18–C19). Finally, the Δ5,9 fatty acids appear to be a particular type of non-methylene-interrupted fatty acids (NMA FAs). This article reviews the occurrence of these particular fatty acids in marine and terrestrial organisms and shows the biosynthetic connections between Δ5,9 fatty acids and other NMI FAs