Six flash nonfiction comic essays composed in direct conversation with the combination of the flash nonfiction form and the comic form make up the body of this creative thesis. In addition to this creative work, a comparison of several essential craft aspects of flash nonfiction and comic composition are discussed, and an argument is made for the benefit of melding the two forms. This hybrid genre of flash nonfiction comics benefits from aspects of both forms craft, including: heightened potency of images and themes, a dependence on association, and narrative structures based on expanding larger ideas from “miniatures.” The comic form’s difficulties in dealing with nonfiction approaches to authorial presence and figurative language is also discussed. Ultimately, the melding of the flash nonfiction form and the comic form creates valuable opportunities for both genres and their writers—as the six flash nonfiction comic essays, which make up the body of this creative thesis, illustrate.

This thesis reviews progress toward an understanding of the processes involved in the solution of spatial problems. Previous work employing factor analysis and information processing analysis is reviewed and the emphasis on variations in speed and accuracy as the major contributers to individual differences is noted. It is argued that the strategy used by individuals is a preferable explanatory concept for identifying the cognitive substratum necessary for problem solving. Using the protocols obtained from subjects solving The Minnesota Paper Form Board (Revised), a test commonly regarded as measuring skill in spatial visualization, a number of different strategies are isolated. Assumptions as to the task variants which undergird these strategies are made and tested experimentally. The results suggest that task variants such as the size of the stimulus and the shape of the pieces interact with subject variables to produce the operating strategy. Skill in problem solving is revealed in the ability to structure the array, to hold a structured image and to reduce the number of answers requiring intensive processing. The interaction between task and subject variables results in appropriate or inappropriate strategies which in turn affect speed and accuracy. Results suggest that strategy formation and usage are the keys to explaining individual differences and an heuristic model is presented to explain the performance of individual subjects on the problems involved in the Minnesota Paper Form Board. The model can be used to predict performance on other tests; and as an aid to teaching subjects experiencing difficulties. The model presented incorporates strategy variation and is consequently mores complex than previously suggested models. It is argued that such complexity is necessary to explain the nature of a subject's performance and is also necessary to perform diagnostic evaluation. Certain structural -features of the Minnesota Paper Form Board are questioned and suggestions for improvement included. The essential explanatory function of the strategy in use makes the prevalent group administration approach suspect in the prediction of future performance in spatial or vocational activity.

<p>In this paper we have studied how user designed mock-ups, together with video recordings, </p><p>can contribute in the process of generating user requirements when designing the future e- </p><p>newspaper. The mock-ups originate from future workshop carried out within the DigiNews </p><p>project. By analyzing user designed mock-ups to retrieve user requirements and evaluating </p><p>the results against a focus group and newspaper designers we gained understanding on how </p><p>mock-ups can contribute as data input in a user involved design process. The study concludes </p><p>that mock-ups are an effective tool for making use of users’ visions and opinions in a </p><p>dynamic design process.</p>

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The drying sequence in the manufacturing process for paperboard involves evaporation of water, primarily from within the fibres. The vapour is then transported out of the web by pressure or concentration gradients. As the moisture transport from the paper web to the ambient is quicker than the moisture transport within the fibre network to the surfaces of the web, moisture gradients develop through the thickness of the web. This work concerns effects on the mechanics of paper drying from the variation in moisture through the relatively thin structures of paper and paperboard. Distributions of inplane residual stresses through paper materials in the unloaded state after drying are believed to be caused by the varying moisture through the thickness during drying. The distributions in general exhibit compressive stress near the board surfaces and tensile stress in the interior of the board. This may be modified after drying and is also affected by structural variation in the material between different plies of multi-ply paperboards. The stress development during drying is important because it influences the resulting material properties of the paper and because it can lead to curl, which is a quality problem. The residual stresses themselves are an error source in simulation or evaluation of the mechanical behaviour of paper. In this work, residual stress distributions in paperboard were determined experimentally, to clarify the mechanisms of residual stress build-up. An experimental method for such tests was also developed. Based on the experimental findings, the mechanics of paper drying was modelled and the stress build-up simulated. Simulation offers a way of studying how the properties of paper develop during drying of wet paper webs.

In January 2005 a trading scheme with emission allowances, including carbon dioxide (CO2), was introduced in Europe. This has influenced the electricity price as well as the price of CO2 emitting production. The paper and pulp industry uses a high share of electricity and emits CO2 and is therefore chosen. This industry is investigated to see if the competitiveness for the industry has been influenced by the emission trading scheme. Since the trial period is too short to give any clear results, USA has been investigated to make comparisons with Sweden. Different theories about the subject together with electricity price and production price data from Statistiska Centralbyrån. A competitiveness model is calculated with help from production prices and show that Sweden has become relatively more competitive compared to the USA since 1995. A reason for this can be the introduction of an emission trading scheme in the USA in 1995. If this is the case, the Swedish paper and pulp industry can face a decrease in competitiveness in the near future.

The experiences of past efforts of industrial pollution control while maintaining competitiveness should be of great value to research and policy practice addressing sustainability issues today. In this article, we analyze the environmental adaptation of the Swedish pulp industry during the period 1970–1990 as illustrated by the sulfite pulp producer Domsjö mill. We investigate how this company managed to adapt to heavy transformation pressure from increasing international competition in combination with strict national environmental regulations during the 1960s to the early 1990s. In line with the so-called Porter hypothesis, the company was able to coordinate the problems that were environmental in nature with activities aiming at production efficiency goals and the development of new products. Swedish environmental agencies and legislation facilitated this ―win-win‖ situation by a flexible but still challenging regulatory approach towards the company. From the early 1990s and onwards, the greening of the pulp industry was also a result of increased market pressure for green paper products.

For learners engaging in senior-level courses, tutors in many cases would like to pick some articles as supplementary reading materials for them each week. Unlike researchers Googling papers from the Internet, tutors, when making recommendations, should consider course syllabus and their assessment of learners along many dimensions. As such, simply Googling articles from the Internet is far from enough. That is, learner models of each individual, including their learning interest, knowledge, goals, etc. should be considered when making paper recommendations, since the recommendation should be carried out so as to ensure that the suitability of a paper for a learner is calculated as the summation of the fitness of the appropriateness of it to help the learner in general. This type of the recommendation is called a Pedagogical Paper Recommender.<p>In this thesis, we propose a set of recommendation methods for a Pedagogical Paper Recommender and study the various important issues surrounding it. Experimental studies confirm that making recommendations to learners in social learning environments is not the same as making recommendation to users in commercial environments such as Amazon.com. In such learning environments, learners are willing to accept items that are not interesting, yet meet their learning goals in some way or another; learners overall impression towards each paper is not solely dependent on the interestingness of the paper, but also other factors, such as the degree to which the paper can help to meet their cognitive goals.<p>It is also observed that most of the recommendation methods are scalable. Although the degree of this scalability is still unclear, we conjecture that those methods are consistent to up to 50 papers in terms of recommendation accuracy. <p>The experiments conducted so far and suggestions made on the adoption of recommendation methods are based on the data we have collected during one semester of a course. Therefore, the generality of results needs to undergo further validation before more certain conclusion can be drawn. These follow up studies should be performed (ideally) in more semesters on the same course or related courses with more newly added papers. Then, some open issues can be further investigated. <p>Despite these weaknesses, this study has been able to reach the research goals set out in the proposed pedagogical paper recommender which, although sounding intuitive, unfortunately has been largely ignored in the research community. <p>Finding a good paper is not trivial: it is not about the simple fact that the user will either accept the recommended items, or not; rather, it is a multiple step process that typically entails the users navigating the paper collections, understanding the recommended items, seeing what others like/dislike, and making decisions. Therefore, a future research goal to proceed from the study here is to design for different kinds of social navigation in order to study their respective impacts on user behavior, and how over time, user behavior feeds back to influence the system performance.

Petroleum coke (petcoke) has been burned at kraft pulp mills to partially substitute for natural gas and fuel oil used in lime kilns. Due to the high vanadium and sulfur contents in petcoke, there had been concerns over the impact of burning petcoke on kiln and chemical recovery operations. Laboratory studies were performed to examine the fate of vanadium and sulfur in lime kilns and chemical recovery cycle. The results suggest that most of the vanadium in petcoke quickly forms calcium vanadates with lime in the kiln, mostly 3CaO•V2O5. In the causticizers, calcium vanadates react with Na2CO3 in green liquor to form sodium vanadate (NaVO3). Due to its high solubility, NaVO3 dissolves in the liquor circulating around the chemical recovery system. V becomes enriched in the liquor, leading to vanadium build-up in the system. The S in petcoke would stay in the reburned lime, lower the lime availability, increase SO2 emissions from the kiln stack, alter the S balance, increase the liquor sulphidity, and potentially contribute to ring formation in the kiln.