It is highly desirable to be able to make predictions of properties in metallic materials based upon the composition of the material and the microstructure. Unfortunately, the complexity of real, multi-component, multi-phase engineering alloys makes the provision of constituent-based (i.e., composition or microstructure) phenomenological equations extremely difficult. Due to these difficulties, qualitative predictions are frequently used to study the influence of microstructure or composition on the properties. Neural networks were used as a tool to get a quantitative model from a database. However, the developed model is not a phenomenological model. In this study, a new method based upon the integration of three separate modeling approaches, specifically artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, and monte carlo was proposed. These three methods, when coupled in the manner described in this study, allows for the extraction of phenomenological equations with a concurrent analysis of uncertainty. This approach has been applied to a multi-component, multi-phase microstructure exhibiting phases with varying spatial and morphological distributions. Specifically, this approach has been applied to derive a phenomenological equation for the prediction of yield strength in a+b processed Ti-6-4. The equation is consistent with not only the current dataset but also, where available, the limited information regarding certain parameters such as intrinsic yield strength of pure hexagonal close-packed alpha titanium.

Med utgångspunkt i en av matematikämnets förmågor, resonemangsförmågan, redogör denna studie för vilken typ av uppgifter inom området algebra som ger elever i årskurs 4-6 en möjlighet att få visa sin resonemangsförmåga, och vad läraren kan göra för att främja detta i arbetet med uppgifterna. Denna frågeställning besvaras genom en systematisk litteraturstudie som utgår ifrån vad tidigare forskning kommit fram till om ämnet. Resultatet visar att det finns flera gemensamma komponenter i de uppgifter som kan visa elevernas resonemangsförmåga. Den mest frekvent återkommande, och starkast framhållna, av dessa komponenter är kopplingen till problemlösningsuppgifter. När uppgifterna är ett problem – vilket i sammanhanget betyder att eleverna på förhand inte vet vilken strategi eller metod som ska användas för att lösa uppgiften – får eleverna en möjlighet att kunna resonera sig fram till en lösning. Det hela kan dock problematiseras av att om eleverna blir vana med att arbeta med samma typ av problemlösningsuppgifter blir uppgifterna inte längre ett problem för eleven. Deras resonemang blir därmed mera imitativa och elevens förkunskaper om hur uppgifterna brukar lösas är det som istället får störst inflytande över resonemanget. / <p>Matematik</p>

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

Morphine has been and continues to be one of the most potent and widely used drugs for the treatment of pain. Clinical and animal models investigating sex differences in pain and analgesia demonstrate that morphine is a more potent analgesic in males than in females; indeed, we report the effective dose of morphine for female rats is twice that of male rats. In addition to binding to the neuronal mu opioid receptor, morphine binds to the innate immune receptor toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) on microglia. Morphine action at TLR4 initiates a neuroinflammatory response and directly opposes morphine analgesia. Our recent studies demonstrate that administration of chronic morphine activates microglia within the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vlPAG), a critical brain region for the antinociceptive effects of morphine, while blockade of vlPAG microglia increases morphine analgesia and suppresses the development of tolerance in male rats. Despite increasing evidence of the involvement of microglia in altering morphine efficacy, no studies have examined sex differences in microglia within the PAG. The present experiments seek to characterize the distribution and activity of vlPAG microglia in males and females using behavioral, immunohistochemical and molecular techniques, while demonstrating the sufficiency and necessity of vlPAG microglia to produce sex differences in morphine analgesia using site-specific pharmacological manipulation of TLR4. We also investigate a novel pharmacokinetic mechanism underlying the sexually dimorphic effects of morphine administration on microglial activity. Here, we address a fundamental gap in our current understanding of sex differences in morphine analgesia and establish a mechanistic understanding of how the activation of vlPAG microglia sex-specifically influences morphine analgesia.

Revisorer har idag till uppgift att granska och uttala sig kring ett företags ekonomi, dess redovisning och, i Sverige, företagets förvaltning. Revision handlar delvis om att förstå det granskade företaget och dess verksamhet. Höga krav ställs på revisorns kompetens och oberoende, delvis för att intressenter ska kunna fatta viktiga beslut efter en korrekt utförd revision. Uppsatsen studerar huruvida det finns olika faktorer som har en inverkan på kvalitetsskillnader mellan små och stora revisionsbyråer. Vi vill med studiens syfte kartlägga och analysera huruvida revisionsbyråns storlek påverkas dess revisionskvalitet. Vi försöker i denna studie besvara vårt syfte utifrån två olika delstudier. Uppsatsens första delstudie består av en grundlig litteraturgenomgång där vi presenterar, för uppsatsen, relevant forskning. Efter en genomgripande litteraturgenomgång fann vi fem faktorer som vi valde att bygga vidare vår uppsats på. Dessa faktorer var upptäcka brister, rapportering av brister, klientportfölj, rykte och kontorsstorlek. Slutsatsen i delstudie 1 visar att faktorerna torde ha en betydande inverkan på revisionskvalitet och att de stora byråerna har lättare, än de mindre byråerna, att åstadkomma en revision av hög kvalitet. Några exempel på detta är att mycket kompetens på plats torde öka chansen att upptäcka brister i revisionen och att de stora byråernas rykte kan vara gynnsam för byråns klientselektion. Därefter följer delstudie 2 som är en fördjupning av uppsatsens delstudie 1. I denna del utförde vi en intervjustudie där 13 revisor intervjuades från både små och stora revisionsbyråer. Detta gjorde vi för att få en klarare bild över hur revisionskvalitet uppfattas av dagens revisorer och huruvida de ser någon skillnad mellan byråstorlekarna. Vi lade även till komfortfrågor under dessa intervjuer då vi ansåg det vara av stort intresse att tillföra den individuella revisorn och dennes upplevda komfort och huruvida detta kunde ha en inverkan på revisionens uppnådda kvalitet. Intervjustudiens resultat visade inga specifika mönster på att revisionskvaliteten skulle vara högre hos någon av de respektive byråstorlekarna. Vi fann istället den individuella revisorn och dennes komfort som den mest betydande faktorn för revisionskvalitet. Vårt kunskapsbidrag blir således utifrån denna studie att revisionskvaliteten inte torde skilja sig åt mellan byråstorlekarna. Vår analys åskådliggör däremot att den individuella revisorns engagemang och komfort är den avgörande faktorn till huruvida skillnader inom revisionskvalitet uppstår mellan byråer. / Today auditor´s task is to review and express their opinion on a company's finances, their accounts and, in Sweden, the company's management. Audit is partly about understanding the audited company and its operations. There are high demands on the auditor's competence and independence, partly because stakeholders should be able to make important decisions for a proper and thorough audit. The research involves studying whether there are different factors that have an impact on the quality differences between small and large accounting firms. We found the subject interesting and wanted to identify and analyze whether the auditing firm's size affected its audit quality. In this study we tried to answer our purpose from two different studies. The first sub-study consists of a thorough literature review where we present, for this essay, relevant research. After a thorough literature review, we found five factors that we chose to build our essay on. These factors included the identification of gaps, the shortcomings Report, Client Portfolio, Reputation and Office Size. The conclusion of this study shows that these factors have a significant impact on audit quality, and that the larger firms, from these factors, have it easier to achieve higher quality audits. Some examples are that more expertise in the office should increase the chance of detecting deficiencies in the audit, and that the great reputation of the agencies can be beneficial to the Agency's client selection. Then follows substudy 2, which is a deepening of the essay’s substudy 1. In this part we carried out an interview study, in which 13 auditors were interviewed from both small and large accounting firms. We did this in order to get a clearer picture of how audit quality is perceived by today's accountants, and whether they see any difference between the firm sizes. We also added comfort issues during these interviews because we considered it to be of great interest to supply the individual auditor and their perceived comfort, and whether this could have an impact on audit quality. The results of the interviews showed that no specific pattern on audit quality would be higher in any of the respective firm sizes. Interestingly, we instead found the individual auditor and his comfort as the most significant factor for audit quality. Our knowledge contribution is thus, based on this study, that audit quality is not higher in any particular firm when it comes to agency size. Our analysis illustrates, however, that the individual auditor's engagement and comfort are the deciding factors to whether differences in audit quality arises between agencies.

An autonomous, real-time orbit determination system was developed within thiswork for the next iteration of the University of W¨urzburg’s CubeSat programme.The algorithm only made use of magnetometer and sun sensors, which already wereimplemented on UWE-3, the third satellite in the programme. Previous developedsystems used the same approach, however the unique aspect in this work is thatthe algorithm was implemented using equinoctial elements.A Runge-Kutta-4 integrator propagated the orbit position using the orbit dynamicsunder the consideration of J2-perturbations. Afterwards, an Extended KalmanFilter corrected the position through processing the two measurements.The algorithm was then tested under multiple conditions. At first, a two weekstability test was conducted using simulated data, followed by a test with recordedsatellite data. These have shown a mean error of 13.2 km and 12.6 km respectively.Lastly, the algorithm was translated in to C and evaluated on a micro-controller.

Syftet med denna undersökning är att ta reda på hur elever i årskurs 4-6 förstår illustrationer och modeller som används inom NO-undervisningen. Frågeställningen handlar mer specifikt om hur illustrationer och modeller påverkar elevers lärande. Undersökningen är gjord i form av en systematisk litteraturstudie där tidigare forskning har sökts i databaser, bland annat ERIC ebsco och Summon. Sökprocessen och urvalet av litteratur är noga redovisat. Sex artiklar från olika delar av världen valdes ut för analys. Resultatet av analysen visar att illustrationer och modeller är värdefulla för elevers lärande men att elever i årskurs 4-6 ofta inte har förmåga att själva tolka bilderna eller förstå vilken information som bilderna kan förmedla. Detta innebär att lärare behöver lära eleverna vad som karaktäriserar olika former av modeller och illustrationer. Eleverna behöver också lära sig att se sambanden mellan olika representationer. På så sätt kan eleverna utveckla den förmåga, visual literacy, som krävs för att kunna ”läsa” bilder.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.