The perfect wave: an estimate of a Norwegian petroleum supercycle

Over the last decades, the relationship between natural resource discoveries on macroeconomic development has been thoroughly debated. The importance of maintaining a sustainable development in mainland industries has made this a topic of interest for both economists and regulators. This master thesis aims to examine and quantitatively assess how the Norwegian economy has been affected by the evolution of its petroleum sector. We also relate our findings to earlier contributions on this topic from both theoretical and empirical literature. We examine the effect of the petroleum industry on the Norwegian economy by conducting two comparative analyses. First, following a theoretical two-sector model, we compare the impact of booms and busts in oil prices on macroeconomic variables in two resource economies, Norway and Australia, and a non-resource economy, Sweden. Generally, we find that the predicted dynamics can be identified in the resource economies, but that these responses have changed through time. Notably, the introduction of a floating exchange rate has allowed the real effective exchange rate to respond to oil price fluctuations, thus shielding the remaining economy. Other institutional effects, such as the Norwegian fiscal rule, sovereign wealth fund and a well-defined monetary framework might also have contributed to this effect. Second, we build a counterfactual scenario in which Norway did not discover petroleum. This is done by means of a synthetic control method, creating a synthetic Norway from 1972, using nonpetroleum producing OECD countries. We find that Norwegian GDP per capita has been an average of 15.6 % larger than what it would have been in the absence of petroleum resources. Norwegian mainland industries have suffered an average loss in production of 12.4 % of mainland GDP relative to the counterfactual scenario. We hypothesize that the latter is owed to forfeited capital investment and real effective exchange rate effects. Furthermore, we find a petroleum-driven supercycle in the Norwegian GDP per capita, peaking already in 1998, suggesting that the contraction-phase is more mature than previously assumed. Although political priorities in favour of the petroleum industry have been beneficial, the generated revenue streams and returns on investment have crowded out parts of the mainland industries. This has implications for adjustments in the coming years, when the petroleum industry is phased out. We discuss briefly some scenarios for this adjustment process, and conclude.nhhma

US policy toward Russia after 9/11: between cooperation and containment

17 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia is still one of the most important in world politics. Despite this, the US-Russia relationship seems to be described more often than not in terms of crisis and conflict. Russia has obviously contributed to this development, and the many deficiencies of contemporary Russian politics have been described amply before. This study takes a closer look at the American side of the relationship, and at the implications of US foreign policy on bilateral relations with Russia. The main argument is that US Russia policy has had a negative influence. Although the relationship seemed to be moving in a positive direction after the events of 9/11, several US actions, both in terms of its general foreign policy and its Russia policy, have undermined future positive developments and cut the relationship short of its considerable potential. The war on terror, which provided the initial impetus for closer US-Russia cooperation, ultimately highlighted disagreement and conflicting interests rather than facilitating further rapprochement. Many of these developments and the core issues of the bilateral relationship were often rooted in “hard security” issues. The Russian focus on this and their preoccupation with traditional security policy made cooperation resemble a zero-sum game, and it also diminished the level of trust in US-Russia relations, making cooperation in general more difficult

Implementation of an Embedded Control System for Electronically Adjustable Suspension in a Formula Student Racing Car

Good road handling is one of the most important characteristics of a racing car. To expand the capabilities of conventional suspension setups, the usage of adaptive suspension has become increasingly popular in high performance cars. Advancements in electronics and embedded technology has allowed such systems to be implemented with little weight gain over conventional suspension. The Formula Student team Revolve NTNU therefore wishes to implement a system for adaptive suspension on their car - the KA Aquilo R. A previous prestudy by the same author has evaluated the feasibility of such a solution, and proposed a top level design for an embedded control system. This thesis will present the design, implementation and testing of a distributed embedded system to control a continuously controlled electronic suspension(CES). Based on the top level design proposed in the prestudy, a complete hardware design has been prepared for the system. The system was distributed into a Central Controller Unit, and Wheel Controller Units for each damper. A complete set of prototype system units has also been implemented, by the help of electronics manufacturer SimPro. The implemented hardware design has been tested and verified to be working.Furthermore, a software implementation for the system's units has been implemented. For the Central Controller Unit a execution framework has been implemented, to allow the development of controller algorithm to be continued easily. The wheel controller units has implemented necessary software to control damping parameters of each shock absorber, according to supervisory control signals sent by the Central Controller. A common communication protocol to interconnect the CES system with the other electronic systems of Revolve's car has also been implemented.Some elementary tests has also been performed to verify the performance of the system. The result is a a prototype system that may be used for evaluation of concept and on-car performance

The International Herring Investigations in the Norwegian Sea : Present position and discussions of future work

Distant Northern Seas Committee

Extreme low temperature tolerance in woody plants

Woody plants in boreal to arctic environments and high mountains survive prolonged exposure to temperatures below -40°C and minimum temperatures below -60°C, and laboratory tests show that many of these species can also survive immersion in liquid nitrogen at -196°C. Studies of biochemical changes that occur during acclimation, including recent proteomic and metabolomic studies, have identified changes in carbohydrate and compatible solute concentrations, membrane lipid composition, and proteins, notably dehydrins, that may have important roles in survival at extreme low temperature (ELT). Consideration of the biophysical mechanisms of membrane stress and strain lead to the following hypotheses for cellular and molecular mechanisms of survival at ELT: (1) Changes in lipid composition stabilize membranes at temperatures above the lipid phase transition temperature (-20 to -30°C), preventing phase changes that result in irreversible injury. (2) High concentrations of oligosaccharides promote vitrification or high viscosity in the cytoplasm in freeze-dehydrated cells, which would prevent deleterious interactions between membranes. (3) Dehydrins bind membranes and further promote vitrification or act stearically to prevent membrane–membrane interactions.© 2015 Strimbeck, Schaberg, Fossdal, Schröder and Kjellsen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms

Atopic disease in relation to Staphylococcus aureus carriage and spa type distribution in a subarctic adult population

Atopic diseases are common, and the atopic epidemic has ravaged through the westernized countries and is heading for the developing countries too. Despite being a common disease, however, treatment and diagnostic options are still lacking. The immune system and development of atopic disease are interconnected with the environment through exposures or lack thereof. The microbiota of the mucosal membranes and skin throughout the body have been purposed serving a sentinel role in this interplay. In this study, we investigated if atopic disease is associated with Staphylococcus aureus nasal colonization and carriage in adults. Furthermore, we wanted to test whether the distribution of S. aureus spa types differs in adults with atopic disease compared to adults without atopic disease in a general population of men and women

Characterization of the mechanical properties of pancreatic, breast, and colon tumor models

Den tette og stive ekstracellulære matriksen i kreftsvulster danner en fysisk barriere som hindrer tilførsel av medisiner og dermed hemmer kreftbehandling. I dette prosjektet har stivheten til tre tumormodeller fra mus blitt målt og sammenlignet med konsentrasjonen av to viktige bestanddeler av den ekstracellulære matriksen: sGAG og kollagen. Mikroindentering av kreftsvulstene ga kraft-indenteringskurver som, ved å kurvetilpasse dem til Hookes lov og Hertz-modellen, ga verdier for fjærkonstanten og Youngs modulus. Hookes lov ble kurvetilpasset innenfor et lineært intervall på 100 $\mu$m, mens Hertz-modellen inkluderte data fra hele kraftkurven. Youngs modulus ble også beregnet basert på skjærbløgehastigheten som ble målt ved bruk av skjærbølgeelastografi. Innholdet av kollagen og sGAG ble målt ved bruk av ferdige assay-kit, og ga målinger av konsentrasjonen i $\mu$g kollagen eller sGAG per mg våtvekt av kreftsvulsten. Konsentrasjonen av sGAG ga en indikasjon på proteoglykaninnholdet i kreftsvulsten. KPC hadde gjennomgående høyest verdi for stivhetsparametrene, mens CT26 hadde lavest. Stivhetsparametrene for 4T1 varierte avhengig av den eksperimentelle metoden; resultater fra indentering ga stivhetsparametre tilsvarende CT26, mens skjærbølgedataene antydet at Youngs modulus var tilsvarende KPC. Korrelasjonsanalyse av stivhetsparametre og konsentrasjon av kollagen og sGAG viste at kollagenkonsentrasjonen økte og sGAG-konsentrasjonen sank med økt svulststivhet. Med unntak av korrelasjonen mellom Youngs modulus fra indentering og sGAG-konsentrasjonen var ingen av trendene statistisk signifikante.The dense and rigid extracellular matrix in malignant tumors creates a physical barrier that hinders the delivery of drugs, and thus compromises treatment efficacy. This project has measured the stiffness of three murine tumor models, and related the results to the concentrations of two important ECM constituents: sGAG and collagen. Micro indentation of tumor sections provided force indentation depth curves, which could be used to estimate spring constants and Young's moduli by curve fitting to Hooke's law and Hertz model. Hooke's law was curve fitted within a 100 $\mu$m linear interval, while Hertz model included data from the entire force curve. Young's modulus was also calculated from the shear wave velocity acquired using shear wave elastography. The contents of collagen and sGAG were measured using pre-made assay kits, and provided measurements of the concentrations in $\mu$g collagen or sGAG per mg wet weight of the tumor. The concentrations of sGAG provide an indication of the proteoglycan contents in the tumor. KPC consistantly had the highest stiffness parameters, while CT26 had the lowest. The stiffness parameters for 4T1 varied depending on experimental procedure; indentation data suggested similar stiffness parameters to CT26, and shear wave elastography indicated Young's modulus similar to KPC. Correlation analysis of stiffness parameters and concentrations of collagen and sGAG showed that the collagen concentration increased and sGAG concentration decreased with increasing tumor stiffness. However, except for the correlation between Young's modulus from indentation and sGAG concentration, none of the trends were statistically significant