An insufficient financial market means that poor individuals cannot access financial capital, making it difficult for them to generate a stable income. Formal banks see these individuals as unreliable customers because of their financial background and see a risk that these potential customers will not repay their loans, which would put the bank at risk. Banks usually use the borrower’s assets as collateral for their loans. Unfortunately, not many of these poor people have any assets. Microloans can solve these problems by opening up the opportunity for financial capital that enables poor people to make the investments needed to create or develop some form of production and thus increase employment. This research was carried out to analyze if the collected variables can determine the repayment ability of those who got a microloan from the Amhara Credit and Savings institution. Since the borrowers received their loans through two different processes, this study divided the data into two groups. Group 1 received their microloan based on a personality test and the individuals in group 2 received their microloan based on group lending. This division is done in order to be able to eliminate that the lending process itself may have affected the repayment ability. This study is based on random sample data from the Amhara Credit and Savings institution. Regression analyses were performed using the STATA-15 software. The results are not entirely consistent with previous studies because some variables did not get the expected outcome linked similar to previous studies. Some of the variables in this study appear to have an effect on the repayment ability, but not all. Thus, the conclusion is that the results are insufficient and further research needs to be made to reject or confirm the influence of the socio-economic factors and structure of the microloan on the repayment ability for Ethiopian borrowers. / En otillräcklig finansmarknad innebär att fattiga individer inte kan få tillgång till finansiellt kapital vilket gör det svårt för dem att generera en stabil inkomst. Formella banker ser dessa individer som opålitliga kunder på grund av deras ekonomiska bakgrund och ser en risk med att dessa potentiella kunder inte kommer att återbetala sina lån, vilket skulle sätta banken i risk. Banker använder vanligtvis låntagarens tillgångar som säkerhet för sina lån. Tyvärr så har inte många av dessa fattiga människor några tillgångar. Mikrolån kan lösa dessa problem genom att öppna upp möjligheten för finansiellt kapital som gör det möjligt för fattiga människor att göra de investeringar som behövs för att skapa eller utveckla någon form av produktion och därmed öka sysselsättningen. Denna forskning genomfördes för att analysera om våra insamlade variabler kan förklara återbetalningsförmågan hos de som fick ett mikrolån från Amhara Credit and Savings Institution. Eftersom låntagarna fick lån genom två olika processer delade vi upp dem i grupp ett, som fick sitt mikrolån genom ett personlighetstest och grupp två, som fick sitt mikrolån via en grupp med andra individer. Detta för att kunna eliminera att själva processen till hur de har fått lånet kan ha påverkat återbetalningsförmågan. Studien är baserad på slumpmässiga provdata från Amhara Credit and Savings Institution. Regressionsanalyser utfördes med användning av Stata 15-programvaran. Resultaten är inte helt i överensstämmelse med tidigare studier, i och med att vissa variabler inte har det förväntade utfallet kopplat till tidigare studier. Några av variablerna i denna studie visar sig ha en påverkan på återbetalningsförmågan, men inte alla. Således är vår slutsats att resultaten är otillräckliga och behöver ytterligare undersökning för att kunna avvisa eller bekräfta denna uppsats variablers påverkan på återbetalningsförmågan.

The purpose of this study was to shed light on the effects that ADHD symptoms can have on the way individuals assess themselves on six different domains: physical, moral, personal, family, social and academic/work and on their overall self-concept. A total of 136 participants were assessed using two self-ratings questionnaires: Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS-2) and the ADHD screening questionnaire (ADHD-SQ). Mean scores showed positive self-concepts in each individual subscale. A total of 17% of individuals met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and they were separated into three subgroups: 7,4% Inattentive group, 5,9% Hyperactive/Impulsive group and 3,7% Combined group. Correlational analyses showed significant negative correlation between overall self-concept and both Inattention and Hyperactivity. Independent T-test samples found that participants with high prevalence of ADHD symptoms had significantly lower self-concept scores compared with participants with low prevalence of ADHD symptoms. / Studiens syfte var att belysa effekterna som ADHD-symtom kan ha på hur individer bedömer sig inom sex olika domäner: fysiska, moraliska, personliga, familj, sociala och utbildning/arbete, och på deras övergripande självuppfattning. Totalt 136 deltagare utvärderades med hjälp av två instrument: Tennessee Self Concept Scale: andra upplagan (TSCS-2) och ADHD screeningformuläret (ADHD-SQ). Medelpoängen visade positiva självkoncept i varje enskild underskala. Totalt 17% av deltagarna uppfyllde de diagnostiska kriterierna för ADHD och de delades in i tre undergrupper: 7,4% Ouppmärksam grupp, 5,9% Hyperaktiv / impulsiv grupp och 3,7% kombinerad grupp. Korrelationsanalyser visade signifikanta negativa samband mellan övergripande självuppfattning och både ouppmärksamhet och hyperaktivitet. Oberoende t-test fann att deltagare med hög prevalens av ADHD-symtom hade signifikant lägre självuppfattning jämfört med deltagare med låg prevalens av ADHD-symtom.

The human gaze is pivotal in motion planning and control. Gaze is typically directed at visual target sites prior to physical interactions with them. This proactive gaze (PEG) behavior has been observed in a multitude of physical situations. However, PEG has not been examined in virtual reality (VR). Identification of PEG in VR could be helpful for digital human modeling applications and human-robot interactions. In this study we asked 10 participants to perform a pick-and-place (PAP) task in VR while we were tracking gaze behavior. Our results indicate that PEG also occurs in VR. Furthermore, the action to reach directly towards the PAP object or walk to it before reaching, results in different gaze strategies. Relocating before a reach is associated with gaze to additional sites, such as the floor and the table upon which the object was placed. / Den mänskliga blicken är avgörande för planering och kontroll av rörelse. Blicken riktas vanligtvis mot visuella mål före interaktion med dessa. Denna proaktiva blick (eng. ’proactive gaze’; PEG) har observerats i många olika slags fysiska situationer. Dock har inte PEG undersökts i virtual reality (VR). Identifiering av PEG i VR skulle kunna vara användbart för applikationer med digital mänsklig modellering och människo-robotinteraktioner. I denna studie instruerade vi 10 försöksdeltagare att utföra en s.k. pick-and-place-uppgift (PAP) i en VR-miljö medan vi registrerade deltagarnas blick. Våra resultat indikerar att PEG också förekommer i VR. Vidare leder handlingen att direkt sträcka sig efter objektet till ett annorlunda blickbeteende jämfört med att först förflytta sig innan man sträcker sig efter PAP-objektet. Vid förflyttning innan man sträcker sig efter objektet fästs blicken på ytterligare områden såsom golvet och bordet som objektet placerats på.

The project is highly inspired by the rise of vertical cityscape and how it can shape a new context for mobility to exist within. When the destinations travelled will be spread out in the vertical landscape instead of only the horizontal one. A rearrangement of housing, schools, restaurants and parks will create new needs for mobility to fill. In which the vehicles restricted to the two dimensional format of today can not. This will create a new era of vertical transportation to combat the densification of the future. The project investigates how new technologies such as magnetic levitation could be applied to architecture and open up space for vertical transportation. To give a flexible mobility system in high rise, high density urban areas. And with this create walkways thriving with nature on the horizontal planes. That promotes walkability, social connections and gives more space to people. For this to work, the project was set in the year of 2050 inside of a protoype district. By the reason to let the technology mature, this will also be a pivotal time of how to accommodate for the densification. Exploring how mobility would work and the everdaylives of the innhabitants in the district. The Project aims to provoke the perception of what a future urban area could be and how it would affect the need for transportation. When the premise was set, the mission was to create this new type of mobility, its functionality, its experience and of course a vehicle to convey these different elements. This was made through a number of ideation sessions, physical prototypes, hand sketches, digital sketches and digital modeling. Realizing it into an viable solution. The result of this project is Vertal Mono, A compact vehicle suited for the era of vertical transportation. It is designed to be a daily commuting vehicle within Vertico district, a prototype district testing vertically connected cityscapes. Mono is designed to be the smaller human footprint pod of the Vertal line up. It is nimble and flexible, being able to reach anywhere at any time. It is an essential part of mobility to the inner circles of the district and part of the communities living there. Vertal offers an on demand shared experience whether the occupant is riding for a single minute or for 15. The interior space offers great flexibility as a response to the vast range of usecases it needs to fulfill.

Recombinant adeno-associated virus vectors are one of the most promising gene delivery tools for applications within gene- and cell therapy. The high level of wild-type adeno-associated virus infections in humans is a limitation due to the pre-existing immunity against the vector or its transgene product. An important tool to develop effective and safe therapies is the ability to measure the pre-existing immune responses against the virus capsids in humans. This master thesis at Gyros Protein Technologies aimed to investigate if the Gyrolab immunoassay system can be used to screen for pre-existing anti-capsid immunity in human sera by optimizing and evaluate three different assay formats: an indirect assay, a generic anti-AAV adsorption assay and a bridging assay. The evaluation focused on immunity against adeno-associated virus serotype 2. All immunoassay formats performed well and depending on application, the different formats offers different advantages. The generic anti-AAV adsorption assay offers the ability to easily screen for several viral serotypes without having to label the capsid, and the bridging assay provides high sensitivity. When screening 31 individual human sera, 58% were positive using the indirect assay and the generic anti-AAV adsorption assay and 65% using the bridging assay format. Provided, is automated and high throughout immunoassays where 16 individuals can be screened in one-two hours. It is shown that all three immunoassay formats can be used to screen for anti-adeno-associated virus antibodies, even though further optimization, cut off development and a larger data set is needed to obtain a fully sophisticated screening tool.

Bone age assessment can be useful in a variety of ways. It can help pediatricians predict growth, puberty entrance, identify diseases, and assess if a person lacking proper identification is a minor or not. It is a time-consuming process that is also prone to intra-observer variation, which can cause problems in many ways. This thesis attempts to improve and speed up bone age assessments by using different object detection methods to detect and segment bones anatomically important for the assessment and using these segmented bones to train deep learning models to predict bone age. A dataset consisting of 12811 X-ray hand images of persons ranging from infant age to 19 years of age was used. In the first research question, we compared the performance of three state-of-the-art object detection models: Mask R-CNN, Yolo, and RetinaNet. We chose the best performing model, Yolo, to segment all the growth plates in the phalanges of the dataset. We proceeded to train four different pre-trained models: Xception, InceptionV3, VGG19, and ResNet152, using both the segmented and unsegmented dataset and compared the performance. We achieved good results using both the unsegmented and segmented dataset, although the performance was slightly better using the unsegmented dataset. The analysis suggests that we might be able to achieve a higher accuracy using the segmented dataset by adding the detection of growth plates from the carpal bones, epiphysis, and the diaphysis. The best performing model was Xception, which achieved a mean average error of 1.007 years using the unsegmented dataset and 1.193 years using the segmented dataset. / <p>Presentationen gjordes online via Zoom. </p>

Context. During the usage of a product, evaluating its performance quality is a crucial procedure. Web servers are one of the most used technological products in today’s modern world[1]. Thus, in this thesis we will evaluate and compare the performances of two web servers. The servers that are tested in the experiment are a raspberry pi 3B and a personal HP laptop. Objectives. The main objective of the study is to evaluate the performance of a raspberry pi 3B as a web server. In order to give a clearer image of how the raspberry pi performs, the laptop will also be evaluated and its performance will be used as a contrast during the study. Realization. To fulfill our objective, an experiment was conducted with the help of a performance testing tool called apache bench. To provide comprehensive performance results, the served content and the server software were altered throughout the experiment. The number of simulated users sending the requests were also altered. Results. The results were gathered by sending more than 1000 HTTP-requests to the two servers that served static and dynamic websites. The number of served requests per second and the CPU consumption of the servers were the recorded results. The raspberry pi exhibited response times as high as 1164 requests per second and CPU consumption that varied between ≈6% and ≈40%. In comparison to the laptop, on one occasion it exhibited a better processor utilization serving HTTPrequests of one user. Conclusions. Regardless of the used server software, although the laptop was slightly performing better, the raspberry pi had a closer response time in comparison to the laptop when both of them were serving a static website. On the contrary, when both were serving dynamic content the raspberry pi had a very low response time in the comparison. Out of the two used server software, nginx gave it a better CPU consumption in contrast to the laptop that had a better processor. That is irrespective of the served content type.

Expensive and complex automated systems for greenhouses are frequently utilized in the horticulture industry. In parallel, smart systems for home automation has recently seen a rapid increase in popularity. This project aims to combine the climate optimization capabilities of industrial systems with the convenience of home automation systems. More specifically, this project is focused on the design and implementation of electrical and mechanical requirements of a smart greenhouse system. This involved the selection of hardware components, such as sensors, actuators and controllers. It also involved the interconnection between these components and the development of measurement and control systems to autonomously manage the greenhouse. The system is based on a WiFi-connected microcontroller. Parameters monitored include; temperature, humidity and wind-speed. Irrigation is controlled by a solenoid valve and can be scheduled to desired intervals. Ventilation and temperature optimization is done by controlling the roof-hatch with a linear actuator and control of a heater. The results demonstrate a accurate and reliable system with low power consumption. The resulting prototype can be installed in new and existing greenhouses. Functionalities can be remotely controlled and monitored by the convenience of an android application. The total cost of the components used was around 4 500 SEK. Further development could be done to enable seamless scalability with additional components and functionalities. Climate optimization by incorporation of weather forecast as a parameter could be implemented to further reduce energy consumption. / Dyra och komplexa automatiserade växthussystem är vanligt förekommande inom industrin för hortikultur. Parallellt har populariteten för "Smart Home" system för hemautomatisering radikalt ökat. Målet med detta projekt är att kombinera klimatoptimiseringsmöjligheterna hos industriella system med lättanvändligheten hos system för hemautomatisering. Detta projekt fokuserar specifikt på designen och implementationen av de elektriska och mekaniska krav som ställs på ett "smart greenhouse system". Detta innefattar; val av komponenter såsom sensorer, aktuatorer samt styrenhet men även sammankopplingen mellan dessa komponenter och utvecklingen av mjukvara till reglersystemet, som i sin tur syftar till automatiseringen i växthuset. Systemet är baserat på en WiFi-uppkopplad mikrokontroller. Parametrar som monitoreras är; temperatur, luftfuktighet och vindhastighet. Bevattning kontrolleras av en magnetventil och kan schemaläggas för bevattning i önskade intervall. Ventilering och temperaturoptimisering sker genom kontroll av taklucka med hjälp av ett linjärt ställdon samt kontroll av ett värmeelement. Resultatet demonstrerar ett pålitligt och punktligt system med låg energiförbrukning. Prototypen som utvecklats kan installeras i både nya och befintliga växthus. Funktionaliteterna kan smidigt fjärrkontrolleras och monitoreras från en android applikation. Den totala kostnaden för de komponenter som använts var runt 4500 kr. Vidareutveckling vad gäller skalbarhet för att sömlöst lägga till komponenter och funktionaliteter bör övervägas. För ytterligare minskad energiförbrukning med hjälp av klimatoptimering kan väderprognos adderas som en parameter.

Although automated greenhouse systems are widely used in industrial horticulture, the availability of similar, but simpler and affordable systems for residential greenhouses is low. The purpose of this project is, therefore, to design and develop a smart greenhouse system that supports standalone and remote monitoring and control of residential greenhouses. More specifically, this thesis focused on the design and implementation of the user interface and communication model of a smart greenhouse system. This project proposes a system architecture that can be used for converting a regular greenhouse into a smart greenhouse. The purpose of this is to enable users to monitor and control vital crop factors based on their needs. The resulting system is a userfriendly mobile application, a cloud-based storage service, and a responsive greenhouse system. Further development could focus on user experience and publish/subscribe distribution to achieve low power consumption. / Automatiska växthussystem används i stor utsträckning inom industriell trädgårdsodling men tillgängligheten för liknande, enklare och prisvärda system för bostadshus är låg. Syftet med detta projekt är därför att designa och utveckla ett smart växthussystem som stödjer monitorering och kontroll av mindre privata växthus. Denna avhandling fokuserar specifikt på design och implementering av ett användargränssnitt och en kommunikationsmodell för ett smart växthussystem. Detta projekt föreslår en systemarkitektur som kan användas för att konvertera ett vanligt växthus till ett smart växthus. Syftet med detta är att göra det möjligt för användare att övervaka och kontrollera viktiga grödofaktorer baserat på deras behov. Det resulterande systemet är en användarvänlig mobilapplikation, en molnbaserad lagringstjänst och ett responsivt växthussystem. En vidareutveckling av systemet kan fokusera på användarvänlighet och publish/subscribe distribution för att uppnå låg energiförbrukning.

Every few years, modern heavy-duty vehicles get redesigned and can carry more cargo than previously known. Increasing the amount of cargo means increasing the weight, which then leads to more pressure on the engineers to design improved vehicle frames and axles to distribute this load. A recent addition is a second front axle. This axle has been steered with a mechanical link since its introduction, but due to recent law changes, the possibility to steer this axle with an electro-hydraulic system is now available. The purpose of the project is just that, to create an electro-hydraulic steering system, it can be known as steer-by-wire (SBW). Through meetings with lead engineers at Volvo GTT, the first draft of some Concepts could be achieved. The Concepts consisted of a CAD design of the steering, complemented by hydraulic steering. By reusing existing parts in the new design, a similar steering capability was achieved. But having a SBW-system that can attach directly to the new axle, that is not restricted to a connection with the first axle enables so many options, and now, the sky is the limit. The weight is reduced, fuel and energy consumption is reduced, but maybe most important of all. The flexibility of this system is increased, enabling options to have independent steering from the first axle and even changing the placement of the axle on the frame itself. A system like this can have a significant impact on the environmental effects of trucks, as it can reduce the number of vehicles on the road. Thanks to the increase in cargo capacity. / Med några års mellanrum får moderna tunga fordon en ny design och kan frakta mer gods än tidigare. Men att öka mängden gods innebär att öka vikten, vilket leder till mer tryck på ingenjörerna för att designa förbättrade fordonsramar och axlar för att fördela denna last bättre. Nyligen har en andra framaxel lagts till. Denna axel har styrts med en mekanisk länk sedan den infördes, men tack vare de senaste lagändringarna finns nu möjligheten att styra denna axel med ett elektro-hydrauliskt system. Syftet med projektet är just det, att skapa ett elektro-hydrauliskt styrsystem, kan även kallas steer-by-wire (SBW). Genom möten med ingenjörer på Volvo GTT kunde det första utkastet till några koncept uppnås. Koncepten bestod av en CAD-konstruktion av styrningen, kompletterad med en hydraulisk styrning. Genom att återanvända befintliga delar i den nya designen uppnåddes en liknande styrfunktion. Men att ha ett SBW-system som kan kopplas direkt till den nya axeln, det är inte längre begränsat med en anslutning till den första axeln, nu sätter bara fantasin gränserna. Vikten minskas, bränsle- och energiförbrukning minskas, men kanske viktigast av allt. Flexibiliteten i detta system ökar, vilket gör det möjligt att ha oberoende styrning från den första axeln och till och med ändra axelns placering på själva ramen. Ett system som det här kan ha en stor inverkan på miljöeffekterna av lastbilar, eftersom det kan minska antalet fordon på vägen. Tack vare den ökade mängden dom nu kan frakta.