In this paper we report on a narrative study aimed at capturing consultants’ experiences of mergers – from an organizational and cultural perspective – during the so-called dotcom era. In the paper we focus on the problems that resulted from mergers between firms with totally different views on what it means to organize IT-business. The mergers studied led to cultural clashes in how to organize IT-projects, like different ways of managing, organizing, working, collaborating and experiencing the organization, but also implicit practices like dress-code, attitudes, lifestyle, norms and values. The empirical data is collected with the help of storytelling session where consultants tell stories about own experiences or stories that they have heard from colleagues. Stories are presented and discussed related to different themes, such as values, practices, culture/identity, and business models. We propose that these experiences of failed acquisitions and mergers embed important knowledge of the practices and problems of the organizing of IT-businesses.

Over the last decade, free and open source software (FOSS) has gradually become recognized by different actors in society outside FOSS communities and increasingly integrated in corporate software development, challenging proprietary software practices and establishing new open source companies. Literature describing this transition is focusing a narrow view on the value of using FOSS, mainly understanding it as an efficient alternative to established models for software development. This is not sufficient to fully understand the uptake of FOSS into companies. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this, there is a need to articulate a wider range of different values associated with FOSS and how they interplay in the intersection of corporations and movements. To do this we propose the order of worth framework developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski and colleagues, which focus on the arrangements of value logics as an analytical strategy to understand how values form strong or weak arrangements in processes of institutionalization. By applying the framework on key texts from the free and open source software movement as well as on a an interview study with professional software developers employed by firms, we set out to identify how values associated with FOSS become justificatory arrangements that give legitimacy to FOSS and how these arrangements change over time, from the early free software movement to the emergent uptake of FOSS in contemporary professional software development. By understanding how justificatory logics come to play and interplay, corporations that want to adopt FOSS can better manage their engagement in FOSS activities. Keywords: Free and Open Source Software, Orders of Worth, Justification logics, Value of Open Source.

As a result of various driving forces, R&D and innovation processes are increasingly opened up for external influences and resources. This has lead to a changing nature of innovation work to become more distributed, networked and fragmented. In companies, a consequence of this is that hierarchically defined directives are transformed to lateral agreements. For the employee, a consequence of this is that they are increasingly expected to justify the value of distributed innovation practices in relation to both their firm and external contributors of innovation, and by doing so they involve themselves in a process were accountability is horizontally redistributed. In order to analyze this process, we use a case of open source software development, were developers from eleven firms, using open source in their professional practice, are interviewed. We show how distributed innovation processes leave the professional developer with the responsibility to select and assure that external resources becomes advantageous to their work, and how they use different types of justification to account for the value of this appropriation. We identify how different spaces of accountability are formed, potentially leading to tensions between different logic of worth. Keywords: distributed innovation, developers, logic of justification, tensions, accountability

Free and open source software development (FOSS) used to be associated with an ideologically driven movement built around communities of voluntary members, organizing resistance against proprietary software development. Today, however, software firms perceive FOSS as a source of innovation. Previous research has investigated what this change has meant to movement driven FOSS, but we still need more knowledge about the professional programmers and their way of organize business driven open source software development in their daily practice. This article investigates the interpretative guidelines or justifying arrangement that guide their use of FOSS. The analysis is based on 30 interviews that were done during 2008-2009 with programmers who were employed either by software firms that had come to a point where they started to adopt open source, or by firms that always based their business on open source software development. Theoretical concepts that were used in the analysis mainly derive from the economic sociology of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevénot, and the results indicate the emergence of a new spirit of business driven open source, consisting of a combination of different justificatory logics. This new spirit is described as an arrangement guiding how professional programmers in today’s software industry perceive the worth of using open source code in their developmental work.

Companies are seeking methods to become more innovative. One strategy is to introduce disruption to promote innovation. An example of this is the uptake of Open Source Software (OSS) technologies, methods and mindsets by commercially driven actors. Contrary to the firm, open source is associated with hackers driven by a passion emerging out of a community or peer based innovation model. The fact that these hackers are highly engaged in collaboration outside the limits of the organisation, have meant that companies start to perceive them as potential resources enabling them to extend their innovative capacity. The passionate hacker is seen as an autonomous and positive disruptive force that can promote innovation for the company. This paper is based on an interview study with 30 software developers from ten companies that have chosen to introduce OSS as a vehicle for innovation. Theoretically, passion is understood as an urge to develop high quality software beyond the demarcations of the firm; it is a matter of craft or art, and the paper focuses on how this perception of the passionate hacker guides these professional developers at work. Thus, it is analysed how the discourse on the passionate hacker is transformed when it is adopted by developers working in a firm that expects organisational commitment. By studying the reshaping of these software developers’ practices, we show how OSS passion for disruptive innovation is transformed in a professional work environment, but also how disruption creates new demarcations when open source ‘culture of passion’ is introduced in firms.

In this paper we analyse how the increased use of open source software in companies affect employed programmers’ work, which we theorize as part of a larger secularisation process. We have studied both companies based on a more traditional proprietary model who are becoming open source oriented, and SMEs built around open source business concepts. This change results in a need for professional programmers to re-interpret open source within a new business oriented context. We study what kind of strategies programmers develop to cope with these contradictory systems and how it changes work roles and programmers’ approaches towards open source community work.

ABSTRACT

Seven islands in the lake Kolsnaren have been investigated. I have inventoried saproxylic insects and investigated what characters on dead wood and characters at the islands that have affected species number of beetles (Coleoptera) and true bugs (Hemiptera). This study shows a relatively low number of species of beetles and true bugs but the study was too small to estimate a proper result. Probably there is many more species, especially more rare/threatened species. The characters vary between islands, but even the individual islands had different tree species, thickness, degradation stage and sun exposure of dead wood. Therefore there were favourable conditions for many different saproxylic species that have different demands of the habitat to find suitable substrate. The islands are partly isolated by water but no longer distances. With that in mind it was important that there is plenty of dead wood with varying characters around Kolsnaren so they get the opportunity to disperse and recolonise the islands when even the habitats are changing in time. The dead woods thickness and degradation stage was the characters with most impact of the number of species.

At Halmstad University we got off to a very slow start when it came to self-archiving of our scientific publications. Because of the library’s involvement in the management of student papers, it was a fairly simple process to move from the storage of bibliographic data to fulltext archiving of these papers; however, it was a completely different matter with research publications. There was nothing to build on as no database or collection of any sort existed of the research output. Thus we had to start from scratch, which meant convincing researchers, the heads of research departments and others of the potential benefits of setting up an open archive. Despite intensive lobbying from the library, it was only after a decision made by the Head of the University, stipulating that all researchers were responsible for registering their publications in the system, that we experienced an increased activity in terms of registrations and questions concerning self-archiving. This confirmed, what we had already heard from other experiences, that although it would be good if the researchers could see the benefits of voluntarily registering their publications, some sort of mandate was still necessary to get things in motion. As however the decision did not mandate fulltext archiving, this has led to a system containing very few fulltext documents. The coming challenge lies in increasing the amount of fulltext in the system, and in particular, of refereed scientific articles.

This paper aims to contribute to the participatory tradition in health informatics by presenting a model for reflective participatory design emerging from qualitative fieldwork in a participatory project aimed to improve the health and wellbeing of older people in the northern periphery regions of Europe, through new mobile services. The model brings together two established processes in novel ways: systems development and user participation. Within each process three concepts are presented to facilitate discussion and reflection at the concept level, the process level and the integrated process level.

Intensified and matured use of internet-based technologies aimed to facilitate development and innovation are increasingly characterized by a mixture of physical and digital locations; commonly referred to as places and spaces. The aim of this paper was therefore to identify different types of places and spaces central for the innovation milieus and processes of Living Lab projects, illustrate their impact on both process and results, and develop guidelines for space that can be designed in order to facilitate value-driven and democratized innovation. Based on a literature review and a cross case analyses different aspects of space, relevant for Innovation and Living Lab studies, have been identified: 1) local-global; 2) physical and digital, and 3) private-public. In the paper we focus on these concepts as tools for understanding present day innovation and we examples of how digital technology has influenced placement and permeability in relation to place and space.

In this article, we propose the concepts of places and spaces as conceptual tools to facilitate the organization of innovation activities within living labs. We have taken a pragmatic perspective on these concepts regarding how they are integrated in design situations, and how different types of places and spaces can facilitate or hinder innovation. We have found that, by applying openness, realism, and influence in the different spaces of our living lab milieus, they have transformed into many different places depending on the stakeholders involved, the methods chosen, and the facilitation of activities. Hence, by understanding this line of reasoning, living lab managers can make more informed decisions and plans for innovation activities.

In this work we study permutation synchronisation for the challenging case of partial permutations, which plays an important role for the problem of matching multiple objects (e.g. images or shapes). The term synchronisation refers to the property that the set of pairwise matchings is cycle-consistent, i.e. in the full matching case all compositions of pairwise matchings over cycles must be equal to the identity. Motivated by clustering and matrix factorisation perspectives of cycle-consistency, we derive an algo- rithm to tackle the permutation synchronisation problem based on non-negative factorisations. In order to deal with the inherent non-convexity of the permutation synchronisation problem, we use an initialisation procedure based on a novel rotation scheme applied to the solution of the spectral relaxation. Moreover, this rotation scheme facilitates a convenient Euclidean projection to obtain a binary solution after solving our relaxed problem. In contrast to state-of-the-art methods, our approach is guaranteed to produce cycle-consistent results. We experimentally demonstrate the efficacy of our method and show that it achieves better results compared to existing methods. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

The Earth’s average surface temperature is rising as a result of increased greenhouse gasemissions. This means that we face extensive challenges in reducing the anthropogenic climateimpact. With the ambition to map and reduce its climate impact, LBVA (Laholmsbuktens vattenoch avlopp, the administration of sewage treatment in municipalities of Halmstad and Laholm)has undertaken extensive work to compile a climate report for the year of 2016. This shows theoverall climate impact of their operation. The Climate Report covers all sources of emissionsthat occur directly from LBVA's activities, but also the indirect climate impact from purchasedproducts and services. The report apply the CEMAsys accounting tool that categorizes andconverts data into carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Emissions from logistics, energy supplyand the environmental impact of the wastewater treatment process are emissions that LBVAgenerates. This report shows the extent of process emissions in form of methane gas (CH4) andnitrous oxide (N2O) from treatment of wastewater, especially nitrous oxide, which have a veryhigh heating potential and therefore account for a major part of LBVA's climate impact.

Föreliggande studie har en kvalitativ ansats där syftet är att genom intervjuer lyfta fram och tolka hur förskollärare själva uppfattar sitt arbete med matematik och därigenom få en djupare förståelse för matematik i förskolan samt bidra med kunskap om hur användandet av den sker i förskolan. Studiens syfte har framkommit då forskning återkommande belyser att barns tidiga matematiska kunskaper försämras allt mer och att Sverige är ett av de nordiska länderna med lägst genomsnitt i matematikkunskaper. Studien utgår från ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv där de centrala begreppen tolkning, hermeneutisk spiral, förståelse samt förförståelse använts som analysverktyg. Intervjuerna baserades på öppna frågor som genomfördes med sex förskollärare från olika avdelningar och verksamheter. I studiens resultat synliggörs det utifrån respondenternas uttalande att matematik är ett viktigt ämne att arbeta med redan i förskolan och att det kan förekomma olika strategier för att implementera det i verksamheten. Men å andra sidan belyser studien att det enligt förskollärarnas uttalande kan förekomma hinder som de anser vara problematiska för att aktivt kunna arbeta med matematik som ett ämne i förskolan.

In this study, the doped ZnO nanorods with silver (Ag) as photosensitive material are prepared by the solvothermal method. The structural and optical characterization is carried out by the scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy and UV–visible spectroscopy. The use of Ag as dopant did not alter the morphology of ZnO except sample 4 which has flower like morphology. The Ag, Zn and O are the main constituent of doped materials. The XRD revealed a hexagonal phase for ZnO and cubic phase for silver and confirmed the successful doping of Ag. The photocatalytic activity of Ag doped ZnO nanorods was investigated for the photo degradation of methyl orange. The photocatalytic measurements show that 88% degradation of methyl orange by the sample 4 within the 2 h of UV light treatment (365 nm) is significant advancement in the photocatalyst and provide the inexpensive and promising materials for the photochemical applications. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l.

As a socially disruptive technology, Ambient Intelligence is ultimately directed towards humans and targeted at the mundane life made of an infinite richness of circumstances that cannot fully be considered and easily be anticipated. Most books, however, focus their analysis on, or deal largely with, the advancement of the technology and its potential only. This book offers a fresh, up-to-date, and holistic approach to Ambient Intelligence. As such, it addresses the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects of the rapidly evolving field of Ambient Intelligence by seamlessly integrating and fusing it with artificial intelligence, cognitive science and psychology, social sciences, and humanities. It is divided into two main parts: Part 1 is about different permutations of enabling technologies as well as core computational capabilities, namely context awareness, implicit and natural interaction, and intelligent behavior. It details the existing and upcoming prerequisite technologies, and elucidates the application and convergence of major current and future computing trends. Part 2 is an accessible review and synthesis of the latest research in the human-directed sciences and computing and how these are intricately interrelated in the realm of Ambient Intelligence. It deals with the state-of-the-art human-inspired applications which show human-like understanding and exhibit intelligent behavior in relation to a variety of aspects of human functioning - states and processes. It describes and elaborates on the rich potential of Ambient Intelligence from a variety of interrelated perspectives and the plethora of challenges and bottlenecks involved in making Ambient Intelligence a reality, and also discusses the established knowledge and recent discoveries in the human-directed sciences and their application and convergence in the ambit of Ambient Intelligence computing. This seminal reference work is the most comprehensive of its kind, and will prove invaluable to students, researchers, and professionals across both computing and the human-directed sciences. © 2015 Atlantis Press and the author(s).

This book constitutes the refeered proceedings of the 13th Scandinavian Conference on Image Analysis, SCIA 2003, held in Halmstad, Sweden in June/July 2003.The 148 revised full papers presented together with 6 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected for presentation. The papers are organized in topical sections on feature extraction, depth and surface, shape analysis, coding and representation, motion analysis, medical image processing, color analysis, texture analysis, indexing and categorization, and segmentation and spatial grouping.

Increasingly, absolute frequency and orientation maps are needed, e.g. for forensics. We introduce a non-linear scale space via the logarithm of trace of the Structure Tensor. Therein, frequency estimation becomes an orientation estimation problem. We show that this offers significant advantages, including construction of efficient isotropic estimations of dense maps of frequency. In fingerprints, both maps are shown to improve each other in an enhancement scheme via Gabor filtering. We suggest a novel continuous ridge counting method, relying only on dense absolute frequency and orientation maps, without ridge detection, thinning, etc. Furthermore, we present new evidence that frequency maps are useful attributes of minutiae. We verify that the suggested method compares favorably with state of the art using forensic fingerprints as test bed, and test images where the ground truth is known. In evaluations, we use public data sets and published methods only.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Audio- and Video-Based Biometric Person Authentication, AVBPA 2001, held in Halmstad, Sweden in June 2001.The 51 revised papers presented together with three invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on face as biometrics; face image processing; speech as biometrics and speech processing; fingerprints as biometrics; gait as biometrics; and hand, signature, and iris as biometrics.

Vehicular ad hoc networks are highly dynamic and their topology changes frequently due to high speed of vehicles. This result in disconnected networks, therefore, designing a routing protocol for such network is challenging task. The two most important factors which effect routing in vehicular ad hoc networks are Speed and direction. In this work, we propose a novel routing protocol (E-GyTAR) motivated from GyTAR, which was specifically designed for city environments. This paper presents the effect of speed and direction on routing protocol in city environment. City environment consists of junctions and these junctions are selected dynamically on the basis of vehicular speed and directional density. Simulation results show that E-GyTAR incurs less packet loss, and end-to-end delay. © 2011 IEEE.

The purpose of this preliminary study is to introduce wireless body area networks (WBAN) to the reader but also to give an understanding of what possibilities and challenges there are when using short range wireless communication in this domain. Up to date, there is no standard specifically intended for low-power WBANs thus a developer is referred to use proprietary solutions which could be demanding to compare and choose. This study tries to provide the reader with the knowledge about important parameters in low-power sensor networks. Energy consumption is the really weak part of a wireless sensor network since the transceiver and other hardware equipment still drain batteries. For example the startup time for a transceiver that has been in power-down mode could consume as much as three times the energy

as compared when sending the actual bits that invoked the transceiver in first place. The actual application must be the one driving the requirements on the communication. However, the application must be designed with for example the startup time in mind. A sensor network is a true cross-layer design problem where many different areas must meet such as hardware designers, application developers and communication people.

The high velocities and dynamic conditions that a vehicular environment represents introducenew and demanding challenges in the area of wireless communication. Vehicle Alert System(VAS) is a research project at Halmstad University, Sweden, focusing on reliable wirelessvehicle communication. Typical examples of applications for a vehicle alert system are pre-crash warning, communicating slippery road conditions, emergency vehicle routing etc. InVAS a set of application scenarios have been chosen specifically to illustrate as manyinteresting research aspects of a vehicle alert system as possible. The chosen scenarios includeboth vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Research is conductedon all layers of the communication stack relevant for a vehicle alert system – application,network, data link and the physical layer. From a communication perspective a vehicle alertsystem is characterized by short event-driven control messages that have to be receivedwithout errors in time. This implies that different coding strategies, diversity andretransmission schemes must be used to achieve correctness and robustness against theimpairments of the wireless channel.

This survey presents and discusses different wireless communication standards as well asproprietary solutions that are intended especially for a high-speed vehicular environment. Since VAS is aiming for real-time wireless communication, the examined standards will beevaluated accordingly. Real-time communication implies that there is an upper bound on thecommunication delay such that if the data never reaches its intended recipient before a certaindeadline this will have a more or less negative impact on the system performance. One of themost important features of a real-time communication system (and perhaps even more crucialin a wireless high-speed vehicular environment) is the medium access method. If it is notdeterministic (i.e., if there exists no upper bound on the delay before a station gets access tothe wireless channel) it is not possible to give guarantees about meeting the deadlines.All currently existing standards, draft specifications and proprietary solutions with explicitintention for being used in a vehicular environment are covered in this survey. In preparationof this document the standard/draft documents themselves have been studied and forproprietary solutions the respective company’s home pages and in some cases articles havebeen used for collecting information. One of the currently most discussed standards is thedraft IEEE 802.11p which has been thoroughly studied here. It inherits features from theQuality of Service amendment IEEE 802.11e and the physical layer supplement IEEE802.11a. The full protocol suite WAVE, also developed by IEEE, incorporates the 802.11p.Other standards, drafts and proprietary solutions that have been studied are IEEE 802.16,IEEE 802.20, flash-OFDM, national DSCR systems, CALM and IEEE 802.21. These systemsrange from being simple RFID-look-a-like DSRC systems to more advanced centralized WMAN standards. It can be concluded that none of the standards or proprietary solutions described in this surveyis suitable for applications such as those considered in the VAS research project. Within thedifferent standards there certainly are features suitable for a vehicle alert system but nostandard totally fit the requirements of VAS. One lacking feature common for all standardsinvestigated is the ability of providing deterministic medium access for vehicle-to-vehiclecommunication.

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the use of short-range wireless communication technology in industrial communication systems where there is a need for guaranteed timely delivery of correct information. Methods for achieving such capability are developed in the context of the physical layer, the data link layer and the application layer. Based on the insight that it is impossible to achieve strict determinism in a wireless communication system, a probabilistic definition of hard real-time systems is suggested, and thus a guarantee is given in the form of the probability of fulfilling a certain goal. Since a wireless channel is time variant, it is also necessary to continuously keep track of available resources. Allocation and link management methods for wireless communication systems therefore need to be dynamic and of an online character. An exhaustive resource allocation method with redundancy is first proposed for single message delivery and then extended for the operation of a single Bluetooth piconet. However, many devices in an industrial automation system have limited computational resources, especially if wireless sensors/actuators powered by battery or wireless power are considered. This implies that methods used for resource allocation must be of low computational complexity. The complexity issue becomes evident when large systems are implemented, even if each individual sensor generates small amounts of data. The upstream and downstream flows of data grow rapidly in a hierarchical system with many sub-systems, sensors and actuators. It is empirically shown that the aggregated data flow in a monitoring system requires powerful communication nodes already at low levels in the industrial communication hierarchy. A predictable system requires that representative entities for the available resources are defined. In a communication system with a single broadcast domain, such as a single Bluetooth piconet, the resource space is often limited to the time domain. When a multihop wireless network with multiple broadcast domains is considered, the spatial domain is added as an available resource and, if a multi-channel radio transceiver is used, the frequency is also added as an available resource domain. These three domains represent the physical resource space that is available for a wireless multihop network. These are subject to trade-off in all of the three lowest protocol layers, and one of the most challenging problems in the design of a wireless multihop network is how to achieve efficient sharing of these resources. This problem is addressed by proposing a clustered architecture based on a dual-radio node that enables dynamic use of these resource domains.

Polluted areas are places where the level of contamination can be harmful for human health and the environment. There are about 80 000 possibly polluted areas in Sweden, 25 000 of which have been classified according to the risk of specific site. To evaluate the risk and distribution of a contamination on polluted areas, the most common way is to do a risk assessment. In addition to environmental engineering studies and surveys of the site, modelling tools can be used as a complement to try and predict the risk of polluted areas. The purpose of this study is to evaluate such a modelling tool called JAGG 2.1 (Jord, Afdampning, Gas and Grundvand) and its applicability to predict concentrations of the chlorinated solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) in indoor air of buildings located on contaminated sites. The questions that are to be answered in this study is whether the modelling tool can be used to predict concentration of TCE in indoor air and what parameters that affect the calculated value the most? The work with risk assessment could be facilitated by validating this modelling tool.

The modelling tool was tested on three different contaminated sites in Sweden. When testing the modelling tool, relevant data was used to calculate the concentration of TCE in indoor air and thereafter the results were analyzed.

This study showed that the modelling tool underestimated the concentrations of TCE for three out of four tested rooms in the buildings on the contaminated areas for all the tested parameters taken into account. The one room where JAGG 2.1 predicted correct TCE concentrations, compared to the measured result, is considered to have all the right parameters. The parameters are ceiling height, ventilation, the slab-on-grade thickness and the depth where the sample was taken and other geological conditions suitable for a successful calculation. This led to the conclusion that this modelling tool only can be used as an assisting tool and cannot replace environmental engineering studies. The obtained results must also be critically reviewed, before using it for risk assessments.

Keywords: JAGG 2.1, modelling tools, vapor intrusion, chlorinated solvents, trichloroethylene. 

Modern applications require powerful high-performance platforms to deal with many different algorithms that make use of massive calculations. At the same time, low-cost and high-performance specific hardware (e.g., GPU, PPU) are rising and the CPUs turned to multiple cores, characterizing together an interesting and powerful heterogeneous execution platform. Therefore, self-adaptive computing is a potential paradigm for those scenarios as it can provide flexibility to explore the computational resources on heterogeneous cluster attached to a high-performance computer system platform. As the first step towards a run-time reschedule load-balancing framework targeting that kind of platform, application time requirements and its crosscutting behavior play an important role for task allocation decisions. This paper presents a strategy for self-reallocation of specific tasks, including dynamic created ones, using aspect-oriented paradigms to address non-functional application timing constraints in the design phase. Additionally, as a case study, a special attention on Radar Image Processing will be given in the context of a surveillance system based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).

Vi har genomfört en intervjustudie där elever från årskurs 2 och 3 intervjuats om deras upplevelse av utomhusundervisning i biologi. Syftet med studien är att utifrån en intervjustudie genomförd i två klasser studera och analysera elevers inställning till utomhuspedagogik som en undervisningsmetod för lärande. Den forskningsfråga som studien ställer sig är: Hur upplever elever i årskurs F-3 undervisning utomhus i biologi? Intervjuerna är semistrukturerade och genomförs i par på två olika skolor i Sverige. För att få fram ett resultat är empirin analyserad med en induktiv analysmetod. Resultatet visar att eleverna upplever att undervisning utomhus i biologi är bra och roligt. De vill gärna lära sig om djur och växter i bland annat skog eller på en bondgård. När de har biologiundervisning utomhus vill de gärna arbeta tillsammans med andra klasskompisar. Slutsatsen som vi drar genom att ha genomfört studien är att eleverna upplever utomhuspedagogik som en rolig arbetsmetod, men gärna kopplar det till lek istället för undervisning. Det synliggörs även att elever föredrar att ha biologiundervisning inomhus om det regnar och vill vara utomhus vid solsken och värme.

Varje elev ska inhämta och utveckla kunskaper i de naturorienterade ämnena för att kunna vidareutbilda sig och skaffa sig en framtid inom ämnena. Studier visar att elever brister i förståelsen av naturvetenskapliga begrepp och saknar helhetsförståelse i ämnena. Samtalets betydelse i naturvetenskapsundervisningen är avgörande för vad eleverna lär sig. Ansatsen är baserad på aktionsforskning för att kunna utveckla praktiken i verksamheterna. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur samspel och kommunikation mellan elever, genom ett undersökande arbetssätt, kan stötta elevers förståelse i kemi. Frågan som studien baseras på är: Hur samtalar elever i årskurs tre om kemi med stöd av experiment? Studien är utförd i två klasser i årskurs tre där totalt 28 elever deltog. Empirin samlades in med hjälp av videoupptagning och loggboksskrivande som sedan analyserades. Resultatet mynnade ut i fyra kategorier: eleverna samtalar genom att använda vardagsspråket, eleverna samtalar med och om begrepp, eleverna använder hypoteser och eleverna associerar till egna erfarenheter. Studiens centrala slutsats är att samspelet mellan eleverna i meningsfulla kontexter, möjliggjorde att eleverna kunde stötta varandra till att förstå naturvetenskapliga begrepp och fenomen. 

In many organizations, reduced training costs are one of the important reasons for using e-learning. One of the methods used for this is to share learning materials and information between different e-learning systems. This way, the same material does not have to be recreated over and over again and analysis of collected information becomes much easier. Sharable Object Reference Model (SCORM) has long been a standard for reusing learning materials, but has gradually become obsolete. E-learning has evolved with modern technology and interaction. Tablets and smartphones are becoming more common and learning interactions today can, for example, consist of films, virtual worlds and social networks. To enable and simplify collection of information from new technologies and interactions, a new standard was developed called Tin Can API. This new standard lifts many restrictions from SCORM.

In this project the Tin Can API is investigated to find out how it works and how the standard can be used to supplement SCORM. An implementation has been made to an existing e-learning system called esTracer to enable the collection and transmission of learning information to external systems.

The project shows a way to implement the Tin Can API into an existing e-learning system, and how the problem of settings can be solved. A number of user interfaces were created to allow esTracer customers to decide where and when information should be sent and what to send. Ability to collect this information and send it via a scheduled application was also implemented.

Matematik finns överallt men trots det har vi genom studien fått fram att ”det finns jättemycket luckor, att de inte förstår”.  Detta citat är hämtat ifrån en av våra intervjuer och speglar vårt resultat. Studien är kvalitativ och vi har intervjuat pedagoger samt låtit barn, i förskola och årskurs 1, utföra matematikuppgifter. I denna studie har vi fokuserat på grunderna i matematik. Syftet med studien har varit att utröna kunskaper inom antalsuppfattning hos barn. Vi har även belyst pedagogernas kunskaper inom antalsuppfattning samt hur de arbetar med detta. I studien har vi influerats av Piagets och Vygotskijs tankar om hur barn lär. Resultaten i vår studie har analyserats med inspiration av hermeneutiken. Resultaten visar att det finns okunskap hos både barn och pedagoger gällande antalsuppfattning. Det gäller bland annat barn som helt saknar kunskaper inom detta samt att pedagoger uppfattar att subitizing, se stycke 3.4., och ett till ett-principen, se stycke 3.5., är detsamma som antalsuppfattning. Pedagoger behöver djupare förståelse för de matematiska begreppen inom den grundläggande matematiken. Det i sin tur kan medföra ett tydligare matematiskt språk vilket kan underlätta kommunikationen sinsemellan. I sin tur kan det möjliggöra för pedagoger att tillsammans lättare kunna utveckla barns matematiska färdigheter som de behöver i sin vardag som vuxna samhällsmedborgare. 

Performing product development means to simultaneously develop product systems, production processes and marketing efforts. Product Development processes are often complex as they are time dependent and contain many inter-dependencies e.g. between parts and individuals involved Due to the complexity in these processes the methods for research on integrated product development processes need to be designed differently than traditional research methods used. The study of details of totalities can work for mechanical systems but less well for complex systems. For a deeper knowledge of complex systems substantial researcher involvement and participation in real time is essential, which Insider Action Research (IAR) is designed for. IAR can be performed from the three main positions as observer, team member or project leader. The-following conclusions have been drawn (Bjork 2003): The IAR approach is beneficial in most types of development processes and projects when the aim of the research is to achieve increased knowledge and understanding. A mix of detailed and narrative descriptions of a research project provides also practitioners with an opportunity to adopt the findings. The implementation of research results would thereby become facilitated, which is an effect that most researchers as well as practitioners would benefit from.

Cloud computing är en teknik som möjliggör åtkomst till data och lagring av data genom Internet, exempelvis genom Spotify, Google Drive och Dropbox. Denna teknik utnyttjas av företag som gör det möjligt att använda sig av affärssystem som en tjänst via cloud computing. Det har dock visat sig finnas förtroendebrister för den här typen av tjänst bland företag och många tvekar till att använda sig av detta istället för mer traditionella affärsystem. Dessa förtroendebrister kan påverka kundrelationen mellan leverantör och användare för den här typen av tjänst. Med denna uppsats ämnar vi svara på hur företag arbetar med sina kundrelationer och vi ämnar även ge förslag på hur dessa kundrelationer kan stärkas för att förbättra förtroendet för den här typen av tjänst. Vi kommer att beskriva hur aktuell forskning inom området skiljer sig gentemot hur leverantörer av cloud computingaffärsystem faktiskt arbetar med att stödja och förbättra sina kundrelationer.

Digital services involving large systems with multiple users are ubiquitous in modern society. The systems are often complicated and made up of multiple devices and communication protocols. A fundamental problem in this context is how the behavior of a system changes as the number of users vary. In particular, when do the systems’ resources saturate and how does the system behave when close to saturation. Performance testing is key for addressing this fundamental problem. Performance testing is the scope of this project. Performance tests can be used for inference of, for example, a system's scalability. Furthermore, it can be used to provide general guarantees on the services that can be delivered. Performance testing at the company Phoniro AB is considered. The platform Phoniro Care is the back-end service for the company’s products. The Phoiro 6000 system is one of the products that uses Phoniro Care. The system allows for multiple users and offers alarm services. The primary focus of this project is to determine the behavior of that system during varying levels of simulated load, and furthermore analyze the data extracted from such simulations and tests. The open source software JMeter was used as the tool for performance testing. It was selected from a set of candidate tools that have been evaluated in the literature based on various performance criteria. The results are presented by graphs showing the time evolution of different performance indicators. A conclusion from this work is that the implemented performance testing framework helps to answer questions about the systems’ behavior. Questions that are important for the company’s further development and expansion of the system. Furthermore, the proposed framework establishes a foundation for further inquiries on the subject.

Managing international teams with geographically distributed participants is a complex task. The risk of communication breakdowns increases due to cultural and organizational differences grounded in the geographical distribution of the participants. Such breakdowns indicate general misunderstandings and a lack of shared meaning between participants. In this paper, we address the complexity of building shared meaning. We examine the communication breakdowns that occurred in two globally distributed virtual teams by providing an analytical distinction of the organizational context as the foundation for building shared meaning at three levels. Also we investigate communication breakdowns that can be attributed to differences in lifeworld structures, organizational structures, and work process structures within a virtual team. We find that all communication breakdowns are manifested and experienced by the participants at the work process level; however, resolving breakdowns may require critical reflection at other levels. Where previous research argues that face-to-face interaction is an important variable for virtual team performance, our empirical observations reveal that communication breakdowns related to a lack of shared meaning at the lifeworld level often becomes more salient when the participants are co-located than when geographically distributed. Last, we argue that creating translucence in communication structures is essential for building shared meanings at all three levels. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

It is becoming more common to save data online, rather than on physical storage media. This brings many opportunities for you as a user, but also causes new problems, especially within the crime investigations. The problems in the combination of digital forensics and cloud services can be divided into two main categories, which are legal issues and technical issues.

The legal issues primarily concern that the server that stores data and the owner of the server is typically based in a different nation than where the suspected crime is investigated. Most legal issues may seem easy to solve through law changes, but are more extensive than that, as both the consequences it may have for the cloud suppliers, as well as the benefits it may have for the justice system, must be taken into consideration.

The technical issues often have solutions. However, many of these cannot be considered as realistic since the size of the required storage space, and the costs caused by it, are not proportional to what could be achieved. Most technical solutions also give rise to new issues in the form of ethical dilemmas as they require enhanced storage of personal information. To save more information and to possibly need to investigate information associated with a person who is not suspected of committing the crime intrudes the personal integrity.

The cloud, however, also brings opportunities where the foremost for digital forensics is what is called Digital Forensics as a Service. This means that the cloud’s resources are utilised to solve resource related problems that had been significantly more time consuming to implement locally, as well as the opportunities for cooperation and expertise increase, in order to facilitate and enhance IT-forensic work.

The aim of this paper is to reduce the extent of impact campaigns through use of the machine learning algorithm Support Vector Machine. The process involved a literature study and two experiments. The aim of the literature study was to give a frame of reference to text classification with Support Vector Machines. The first experiment involved training a SVM to be able to classify news articles written in swedish based on the reliability of the article. The second experiment involved a comparison between the trained SVM-model and other standard methods in the field. The results from the experiment indicates that SVM is a effective tool for classification of news articles written in Swedish, but also that other standard methods are suitable for the same task.

Objective

To develop and evaluate a standardised method for unbiased measurements of epithelial thickness taking the variability of the dermal papillae in consideration.

Methods

A computer-assisted measurement program suitable for haematoxylin and eosin routine stained specimens has been developed.

Results

The developed program was designed to measure four different distance parameters, taking the number, height and width of dermal papillae into account. The measurement program gave very accurate results compared with manual measurements. The measurement results can be presented as tables or star graphs, and the results can be further processed by multivariate analysis.

Conclusion

The computer-assisted measurement program is considered to be a valuable and reliable tool for measurements of epithelial thickness, irrespectively of the variability of the epithelial morphology. Since length, size and number of the papillae may change with certain pathological conditions, age and also under hormonal influence, this method can be a helpful diagnostic tool.

In 2013 the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency established new suggested limits for

cadmium in biofertilizer. Some biogas producers have already stated that they will have

difficulty to cope with the new suggested limits. This has started a conflict between the

environmental goals “Giftfri miljö” and “God bebyggd miljö”. In this study six biogas plants

has been studied to see how their biofertilizer relate to the suggested limits. They were

selected according to their location and the size of their foodstuff substrate. The results

demonstrate that the problem is associated with high cadmium concentrations in imported

foodstuffs. By influencing the Public Procurement Act, Swedish foodstuff could be favored

and the cadmium content decreases in the biofertilizer. The result demonstrates that

Linköping is the facility that is least able to cope with the suggested limits and Helsingborg is

the facility that has the best potential. The main conclusion of this study is that EU must work

together to achieve the goals that the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency wants to

achieve. If EU is working together to improve the Public Procurement Act, stricter limits for

cadmium concentration in foodstuffs may be established and thus the cadmium concentration

in foodstuff would be reduced.

Effects of inlet design and vegetation type on tracer dynamics and hydraulic performance were investigated using lithium chloride in 18 experimental free water surface wetlands. The wetlands received similar water flow but had different vegetation types: 6 emergent vegetation wetlands (EVWs), 6 submerged vegetation wetlands (SVWs) and 6 free development wetlands (FDWs). Two types of inlet designs were applied: half of each wetland vegetation type had a barrier near the inlet to help distribute incoming tracer solution, while the rest had no barrier. Residence time distribution (RTD) functions were calculated from tracer data using two techniques: method of moments and a novel Gauss modelling approach. RTD functions were used to quantify hydraulic parameters: active wetland volume (e-value), water dispersion (N-value) and hydraulic efficiency (lambda-value). For wetlands without barrier, significantly lower tracer mass recoveries were found from EVWs compared to FDWs and SVWs, signifying a risk of tracer methodological problems in small densely vegetated wetlands. These problems were minimized in wetlands with an inflow construction promoting distribution of incoming tracer solution. Compared to the method of moments, Gauss modelling seemed to produce more reliable lambda-values but less reliable N-values. Data for precise hydraulic quantification were lost by Gauss modelling, as indicated by overall lower variance in these data sets and lower mass recoveries. However, Gauss modelling may minimize uncertainties associated with lithium immobilization/mobilization. Parameters were significantly affected by the RTD data analysis method, showing that the choice of method could affect evaluation of wetland hydraulics. The experimental wetlands in this study exhibited relatively high e-values and low N-values. This was probably caused by the small size of the wetlands and low water flow velocities, emphasizing that hydraulic parameter values obtained in small experimental wetlands may not be applicable to hydraulics in larger wetlands. The method of moments revealed lower e-values from EVWs compared to SVWs and FDWs. It was indicated that lower e-values were mainly caused by vegetation volumes. This highlighted a need for regular maintenance to secure efficient treatment volume in wetlands with dense vegetation. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.

Recent work by Siegelmann has shown that the computational power of recurrent neural networks matches that of Turing Machines. One important implication is that complex language classes (infinite languages with embedded clauses) can be represented in neural networks. Proofs are based on a fractal encoding of states to simulate the memory and operations of stacks.

In the present work, it is shown that similar stack-like dynamics can be learned in recurrent neural networks from simple sequence prediction tasks. Two main types of network solutions are found and described qualitatively as dynamical systems: damped oscillation and entangled spiraling around fixed points. The potential and limitations of each solution type are established in terms of generalization on two different context-free languages. Both solution types constitute novel stack implementations—generally in line with Siegelmann's theoretical work—which supply insights into how embedded structures of languages can be handled in analog hardware.

In this thesis we present a new space-time model of interacting agents in the financial market. It is a combination of the Curie-Weiss model and a model introduced by Järpe. We investigate properties such as the critical temperature and magnetization of the system. The distribution of the Hamiltonian function is obtained and a hypothesis test of independence is derived. The results are illustrated in an example based on real data.

ERP-implementationer är en komplex process som ofta stöter på problem. Det är väl känt och beror ofta på den stora komplexitet som verksamhetsförändringen medför. Trots att verksamheter spenderar betydande resurser på att investera i ett ERP ses många ERP-implementationer som misslyckade då förväntade fördelar och mål inte uppnås i verksamheten. Tidigare har ett flertal kritiska framgångsfaktorer identifierats. I denna studie undersöks relationen mellan två av dessa, förståelse för strategiska mål samt utbildning av användare. Studien undersöker hur en verksamhets arbete med strategiska mål inför och under en ERP-implementation kan påverka utbildning av användare. Studiens resultat visar att en verksamhets målarbete kan ha stor påverkan på utbildning av användare.

Bioenergicentrum i Halland (BEH) är ett projekt som ligger inom ramen för EU:s strukturfondsprogram. Projektet genomförs i Region Hallands regi som är regionens välfärds- och utvecklingsorganisation. Arbetet som bedrivs inom BEH syftar speciellt till att driva utvecklingen mot en ökad produktion och användning av bioenergi till biogas och i förlängningen fordonsgas. Genom att satsa på att skapa förutsättningar för innovation, kunskapsutveckling och samverkan främjas tillväxt och hållbar utveckling.

Vid naturbruksgymnasiet i Plönninge utanför Halmstad finns idag en biogasanläggning som beskickas med bl.a. nötgödsel och matavfall. Dessutom finns en mindre pilotanläggning som är tänkt att fungera som en del av test- och verifieringsanläggning som BEH vill bygga upp i Plönninge. Som ett led i att utveckla dessa anläggningar och kunna erbjuda möjligheten till kunskapsinsamling genomfördes projektet som beskrivs i denna rapport. Uppdraget var att genomföra försöksrötningar på labb, använda resultaten för att skapa en modell som sedan kan nyttjas som ett verktyg i det inledande arbetet med att investera i en biogasanläggning som beskickas med lantbruksbaserade substrat. Högskolan i Halmstad (HH) genomförde försöksrötningarna och Grontmij (GM) använde sedan resultaten för att skapa en modell där bl.a. substrat, förbehandlingsteknik och driftkostnader finns med.

Sammanfattningsvis kan sägas att majs som substrat fungerar bäst med de valda förbehandlingsmetoderna; kemisk behandling, termisk behandling och ultraljudsbehandling. Alla förbehandlingsmetoder med majs som substrat visade på ett positivt resultat, d.v.s. det ökade gasutbytet och dess värde (kr/kWh) översteg kostnaderna för de olika förbehandlingarna. Vad som måste beaktas är att produktionskostnaderna överlag är höga, med och utan förbehandling.

Modellen har konstruerats på ett sådant sätt att den ska vara användarvänlig och med möjlighet att enkelt lägga till ytterligare substrat och förbehandlingsmetoder. Upprepningar av de försöksrötningar som genomförts kommer att öka tillförlitligheten hos modellen. Den fungerar som ett verktyg i att beräkna investeringsmarginalen för förbehandlingsutrustningen baserat på det valda substratet. På detta vis kan intressenter få en första indikation på om det är ekonomiskt rimligt att gå vidare med det tänkta substratet, den valda förbehandlingsmetoden, de planerade mängderna substrat etc.

En investeringskalkyl har tagits fram för en gårdsanläggning som hanterar 5 000 ton substrat eller gödsel årligen. Det motsvarar 2-3 stycken medelstora mjölkgårdar. Kalkylen är översiktlig och syftar till att ge en första indikation på kostnader för de stora komponenterna såsom substratlager, rötkammare och rötrestlager. Kringarbeten såsom utredningar, markarbeten och geoundersökningar är inte med i kalkylen då dessa omkostnader till stor del avgörs av lokalisering och de förutsättningar som finns på platsen redan från start. Generellt kan dock sägas att den absolut billigaste och enklaste gårdsbaserade biogasanläggningen innebär en investering på 2,7-4 MSEK för flytgödsel från 100-300 mjölkkor.

För BEH är det viktigt att skapa en plattform där intressenter kan komma för att genomföra försöksrötningar, byta erfarenheter och samla kunskap. För att uppnå detta är det nödvändigt att kunna erbjuda kunden kompletta och kompetenta lösningar på en och samma plats. Detta innebär ett erbjudande som innefattar försöksrötningar på labb-, pilot och fullskala. Ett förslag på konstruktion av pilotanläggning med övergripande principskiss ingår i denna rapport och fungerar som ett inledande arbete i projekteringen av en större pilotanläggning. Nödvändiga driftanalyser av rötrest ska kunna göras på plats i Plönninge på laboratoriet; analyser såsom enskilda organiska syror ska kunna skickas till lämpligt laboratorium. Personal ska kunna tillhandahållas för att driva och optimera rötningen enligt kundens syften och önskemål. På detta vis fungerar Region Halland som en länk mellan teori ochpraktik, mellan liten och stor skala och mellan aktörer från olika discipliner och geografiska områden.