When seen through a stereoscope, a Gabor pattern (a Gaussian enveloped sinusoid) that is masked by visual noise is more readily detectable when it appears in front of or behind the noise than when it is embedded in the noise itself. The enhanced visibility brought about by stereo cues is referred to as binocular unmasking. In this work, we investigated whether binocular unmasking may also occur with visual objects more complex than simple Gabor patterns, and with tasks more demanding than detection. Specifically, we examined the effects of binocular unmasking in the detection, categorization, and identification of noise masked images of natural objects. We observed the occurrence of binocular unmasking in all three tasks. However, the size of this effect was greater for detection performance than for categorization or identification performance; the latter two benefited to the same extent by the availability of stereoscopic cues. We argue that these results suggest that low level stereoscopic depth cues may play a helpful role, not only in simple detection tasks with psychophysical stimuli, but also in the perception of complex stimuli depicting natural objects.

This thesis examines how a jury on an artistic education adopts next year's students to a BA program at an art school. My intention is to explore how we established artists who are involved in education as professors, teachers (or students) in art education affects who will be released to the exclusive educational path as an art school represents our work in the admissions jury. My ambition is to create an awareness of what it might mean for the reproduction of the artist.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology used in many applications for the identification of objects. This thesis presents a concept of how libraries could use RFID technology to locate physical items within the library. The ability to locate items within the library changes the way users interact with physical material, creates new ways of user collaboration, and influences the ability to browse the shelves for physical items. Several implementation scenarios are presented in detail and implications on collaboration and browsing are analyzed.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology used in many applications for the identification of objects. This thesis presents a concept of how libraries could use RFID technology to locate physical items within the library. The ability to locate items within the library changes the way users interact with physical material, creates new ways of user collaboration, and influences the ability to browse the shelves for physical items. Several implementation scenarios are presented in detail and implications on collaboration and browsing are analyzed.

As a commonly used technique in data preprocessing for machine learning, feature selection identifies important features and removes irrelevant, redundant or noise features to reduce the dimensionality of feature space. It improves efficiency, accuracy and comprehensibility of the models built by learning algorithms. Feature selection techniques have been widely employed in a variety of applications, such as genomic analysis, information retrieval, and text categorization. Researchers have introduced many feature selection algorithms with different selection criteria. However, it has been discovered that no single criterion is best for all applications. We proposed a hybrid feature selection framework called based on genetic algorithms (GAs) that employs a target learning algorithm to evaluate features, a wrapper method. We call it hybrid genetic feature selection (HGFS) framework. The advantages of this approach include the ability to accommodate multiple feature selection criteria and find small subsets of features that perform well for the target algorithm. The experiments on genomic data demonstrate that ours is a robust and effective approach that can find subsets of features with higher classification accuracy and/or smaller size compared to each individual feature selection algorithm. A common characteristic of text categorization tasks is multi-label classification with a great number of features, which makes wrapper methods time-consuming and impractical. We proposed a simple filter (non-wrapper) approach called Relation Strength and Frequency Variance (RSFV) measure. The basic idea is that informative features are those that are highly correlated with the class and distribute most differently among all classes. The approach is compared with two well-known feature selection methods in the experiments on two standard text corpora. The experiments show that RSFV generate equal or better performance than the others in many cases.

The aim of this study was to shed light on how journalists describe the child’s world and what gender labels are used in their descriptions. We wanted to get a better understanding of what happens when gender is constructed. In order to study how gender is constructed, we chose to examine how the children’s magazine Kamratposten describes children’s spare time. We chose Kamratposten because it turns to both girls and boys. In order to analyze the paper, we chose to do a discourse analysis, and used Norman Fairclough’s and Ylva Brune’s analytical models. When we analyzed the texts we studied previous research and theories about children, gender and media. We analyzed how Kamratposten constructs girls and boys spare time. We made a qualitative content analysis of 20 articles and found that the 1700s views on gender still exist. Thus Kamratposten ascribes girls and boys different gender roles, different behavior and activities in the articles studied. Girls seem to still be positioned in the private surroundings of the home, while boys are positioned in the public sphere. Another difference noted between the genders is the construction of a serious passive and productive girl, and a playful active mostly non-productive boy.

When seen through a stereoscope, a Gabor pattern (a Gaussian enveloped sinusoid) that is masked by visual noise is more readily detectable when it appears in front of or behind the noise than when it is embedded in the noise itself. The enhanced visibility brought about by stereo cues is referred to as binocular unmasking. In this work, we investigated whether binocular unmasking may also occur with visual objects more complex than simple Gabor patterns, and with tasks more demanding than detection. Specifically, we examined the effects of binocular unmasking in the detection, categorization, and identification of noise masked images of natural objects. We observed the occurrence of binocular unmasking in all three tasks. However, the size of this effect was greater for detection performance than for categorization or identification performance; the latter two benefited to the same extent by the availability of stereoscopic cues. We argue that these results suggest that low level stereoscopic depth cues may play a helpful role, not only in simple detection tasks with psychophysical stimuli, but also in the perception of complex stimuli depicting natural objects.

The study of location has a long and extensive history. As this area of study has evolved, there has been an increased recognition of the challenges and the many significant external factors, driven by the changes of trends and criteria on location decisions. Whether it is the world economy, technology and environment issues, and it has affected the existing models used in production location decision.    The primary aim of this thesis was to review the broad base of literature of production location decision, especially on models and factors concerning the manufacturing and supply chain area. The thesis also uncovers previous research that has examined the current status concerning models and factors used in production localisation decision.   Following a brief quantitative analysis of the research area development, the project applied mainly a qualitative approach to the study. Literature databases, literature reviews and case study reports were used as data sources. Literature reviews were used as base for the description, explanation, exploration and correlation analyses within the study.   Based on existing literature, this thesis presents a framework to categorise the existing location models and factors. The framework presents the used models and factors in production location decisions. Three industrial case study reports (from master thesis projects from Väderstad, Alfdex and IKEA) were gathered and used to examine the researchers’ own synthetic framework and further explore the research questions. The result is summarized in the framework that can lead users to understand the current status and the trend concerning the models and factors used in production location decision.     Keywords: Location decision, Production location, Location models and Location factors, Models and actors categorization.

Concepts are widely agreed to be the basic constituents of thought. Amongst philosophers and psychologists, however, the question of how concepts are structured has been a longstanding problem and a locus of disagreement. I draw on recent work describing how representational content is ascribed to populations of neurons to develop a novel solution to this problem. Because disputes over the structure of concepts often reflect divergent explanatory goals, I begin by arguing for a set of six criteria that a good theory ought to accommodate. These criteria address philosophical concerns related to content, reference, scope, publicity, and compositionality, and psychological concerns related to categorization phenomena and neural plausibility. Next, I evaluate a number of existing theoretical approaches in relation to these six criteria. I consider classical views that identify concepts with definitions, similarity-based views that identify concepts with prototypes or exemplars, theory-based views that identify concepts with explanatory schemas, and atomistic views that identify concepts with unstructured mental symbols that enter into law-like relations with their referents. I conclude that none of these accounts can satisfactorily accommodate all of the criteria. I then describe the theory of representational content that I employ to motivate a novel account of concept structure. I briefly defend this theory against competitors, and I describe how it can be scaled from the level of basic perceptual representations to the level of highly complex conceptual representations. On the basis of this description, I contend that concepts are structured dynamically through sets of transformations of single source representation, and that the content of a given concept specifies the set of potential transformations it can enter into. I conclude by demonstrating that the ability of this account to meet all of the criteria introduced beforehand. I consider objections to my views throughout.

Plans do not serve the particular circumstances of a given situation, but rather serve as abstract descriptions of some future activities. The relationship between plans, which are abstract, and actions, which are concrete, is referred to as the relationship between plans and situated actions. This relationship can be formulated in the following questions: 1) How do individuals conceive of future activities? 2) How does an individual who is acting upon a plan adjust when facing contingencies? The relationship between plans and situated actions has remained a source of intense academic discussions (e.g., Bardram, 1997; Bardram & Hensen, 2010; Leudar & Costall, 1996; Ng, 2002; Schmidt, 1997; Suchman, 1987). Despite the ample research on the relationship between plans and situated actions, a review of the literature indicates that the problem has not been adequately addressed (Randall et al., 2007; Suchman 2003), which has compelled this researcher to create a theoretical model that integrates the disparate nature of plans and line of actions. Drawing on research on cognition and categorization theory, this thesis proposes a theoretical framework that conceptualizes the relationship between plans and situated actions in terms of activity categories. Specifically, the theoretical framework draws on the prototype and basic-level category theories of categorization, both of which were developed primarily by Rosch (1978), as well as the field theory developed by Lewin (1936). Categorization theories are used to address plans’ abstractness as they capture typifications of human experience. Field theory is used to address the concreteness of action as it captures dynamic properties of the situation in the here and now. The basic premise of the theoretical framework is that individuals conceive (have a knowledge) of plans and their attributes as future activity categories with a range of possibilities. These possibilities are structurally graded, ranging from highly typical to atypical. Plans are believed to be formed based on what is typical for the activity. The theoretical framework argues that an association exists between an individual’s knowledge of typical adjustment relevant to the activity and actual adjustment the individual makes while performing the activity. With this in mind, the theoretical framework considers the actor’s perspective to be central to the investigation. Based on the theoretical framework, several hypotheses are formularized and tested. An in-depth case study conducted in a ready-mix concrete company was used to examine aspects of the theoretical framework empirically. The results of the case study provide a wide range of independent evidence supporting the framework. In addition, an experimental methodology was developed for quantitative testing in the laboratory aspects of the theoretical framework not attainable in the case study. Theoretical and practical implications of the proposed framework and empirical findings are examined. Future research directions are discussed.