Ambient intelligence refers to the vision of computationally augmented everyday environments that are sensitive, adaptive and responsive to humans and intelligently support their daily lives. Ambient ecologies are the infrastructures of ambient intelligence. To enable system developers to frame and manage the dynamic and complex interaction of humans with ambient ecologies consisting of a mixture of physical (real) and virtual (digital) objects, novel interaction paradigms are needed. Traditional interaction paradigms like the WIMP (windows, icon, menus, and pointing devices) paradigm for desktop computing operate in a closed world, unaware of the physical, social and cultural context. They restrict human perception and action to screen, mouse and keyboard with the assumption that human attention will be fully devoted to interaction with the computer. Emerging interaction paradigms for ambient intelligence are typically centered on specific devices, specific computing environments or specific human capabilities. Also, many of them are driven by technological advancements rather than viewing the human agent as their starting point. A principled, theoretical approach centered in the individual human agent, their situation and activities that are comprehensive and integrated while at the same time instrumental in the design of ambient ecologies has been lacking. This thesis introduces egocentric interaction as an approach towards the modeling of ambient ecologies with the distinguishing feature of taking the human agent’s body, situation and activities as center of reference, as opposed to the more common device-centric approaches in facilitating human-environment interaction. Egocentric interaction is encapsulated in a number of assumptions and principles such as situatedness, the proximity principle, the physical-virtual equity principle, perception and action instead of “input” and “output,” and activity-centeredness. A situative space model is proposed based on some of these principles. It is intended to capture what a specific human agent can perceive and not perceive, reach and not reach at any given moment in time. The situative space model is for the egocentric interaction paradigm what the virtual desktop is for the WIMP interaction paradigm: more or less everything of interest to a specific human agent is assumed and supposed to happen here. In addition, the conception and implementation of the easy ADL ecology based on egocentric interaction, comprising of smart objects, a personal activity-centric middleware, ambient intelligence applications aimed at everyday activity support, and a human agent literally in the middle of it all is described. The middleware was developed to address important challenges in ambient intelligence: (1) tracking and managing smart objects; (2) tracking a human agent’s situative spaces; (3) recognizing human activities and actions; (4) managing and facilitating human-environment interaction; and (5) to ease up the development of ambient intelligence applications. The easy ADL ecology was first simulated in immersive virtual reality, and then set up physically as a living laboratory to evaluate: (1) the technological and technical performance of individual middleware components, (2) to perform a user experience evaluation assessing various aspects of user satisfaction in relation to the support offered by the easy ADL ecology, and (3) to use it as a research test bed for addressing challenges in ambient intelligence. While it is problematic to directly compare the “proof-of-concept” easy ADL ecology with related research efforts, it is clear from the user experience evaluation that the subjects were positive with the services it offered. / easy ADL project

Background: The Activity-Based Costing model has its origin in the Manufacturing Industry and has since its origin become more usual. The ABC-method is beginning to break through in several others businesses than just the Manufacturing Industry, but there are insufficient information about how the ABC-model can be developed in Trading Company for instance. These companies often use simple and stereotyped calculations in their organizations and assume the cost price by calculating, which give rise to an inappropriate allocation of the costs. ABC could therefore be a solution to these problems and therefore would it be interesting to investigate how this model can be designed in a trading company. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and usage of the Activity-Based Costing in a Trading Company. Method: The paper has a sign of a case study. A more deep study has also been made at Materialservice in Nässjö, while the study at ICA, Hall.miba and Svenskt Papper has been of a more supplementary nature. We have also made interviews with two firms of consultants, Prodacapo and SAM in purpose to make our study/investigation more general. Result: We have found that the result the customer has a more important role in the Trading Company than the Manufacturing Industry and that the Trading Company use more activities and cost drivers in their ABC-model. The result also shows that the main area of use of ABC in the trading company is to guide the behaviours of the company and the customers.

Gottfridsson, H. O., 2007, Färdmedelsvalets komplexa förutsättningar – En studie av arbetspendling i småbarnshushåll med Kils kommun som exempel, (Complex conditions governing choice of transport – A study of parents of young children commuting to work from the municipality of Kil). Travel is a means through which people fulfil a variety of social and biological requirements. In turn, the purpose, destination and identity of the traveller set different requirements that different forms of transport have different opportunities of fulfilling. The purpose of this dissertation is to find out about the complex conditions that form the scope for action in the choice of transport, in this particular case for parents of young children when travelling to and from work. The dissertation emphasises the importance of studying the whole picture and of the interchange between the component parts in order to gain a better understanding of the conditions governing a commuter’s choice of transport. In the study a theoretical framework of reference is gradually established by mixing empiricism and theory. As a result, a number of factors significant for the transport selection process are identified. These factors include the composition and organisation of the household, transport system structures, local community structures and the resources and preferences of the commuter. Several methods were used during the collection of data. Data about commuters was collected via surveys and travel diaries. Traffic systems and associated structures were studied with the help of maps. Work requirements combined with local structures such as the location of the home, workplace and services, and how the household chooses to organise daily activities, place specific demands on the planning of the journey to and from work. Different transport systems meet these demands in varying degrees. The choice of transport is also determined by the commuter’s socio-economic situation, travel resources and how he or she, depending on motives, knowledge and habits finally perceives the alternatives available. The results confirm that car users and public transport users have different strategies when choosing transport. The results also indicate that there are commuters who declare the same grounds for their choice of transport, but who in practice conclude different consequences and choose different means of transport. The data also indicates clearly that among users of public transport there are major differences in journey times, number of stops, distance to bus stops and travel costs, and that commuters who use public transport are more complex as a group.

Public transit is becoming an increasing important field of study to combat global issues such as traffic congestion and climate change. Accurate simulation of public transit is therefore likewise vital, as it is an important tool for understanding potential impacts of public transit policies. The research presented in this thesis describes the implementation of a multimodal, dynamic, agent-based supply-side simulation model of public transit implemented in the open-source platform MATSim for the city of Toronto. Transit schedule data was converted from Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) and map-matched to a region-wide road network to obtain a congestion-based multimodal assignment for transit. Volume-based results from the assignment showed under-prediction of subway volumes and slight over-prediction of bus volumes, but were generally comparable with static EMME/3 assignment for the same data. Travel time analysis indicated that further calibration of network specification is needed.

Public transit is becoming an increasing important field of study to combat global issues such as traffic congestion and climate change. Accurate simulation of public transit is therefore likewise vital, as it is an important tool for understanding potential impacts of public transit policies. The research presented in this thesis describes the implementation of a multimodal, dynamic, agent-based supply-side simulation model of public transit implemented in the open-source platform MATSim for the city of Toronto. Transit schedule data was converted from Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) and map-matched to a region-wide road network to obtain a congestion-based multimodal assignment for transit. Volume-based results from the assignment showed under-prediction of subway volumes and slight over-prediction of bus volumes, but were generally comparable with static EMME/3 assignment for the same data. Travel time analysis indicated that further calibration of network specification is needed.

With this dissertation, it is intended to improve our understanding of the effects of urban rail systems on the mobility of women, their accessibility and their extent of experiencing the city they live in, that is their urban geography. The main aim is to understand whether women who live nearby an urban rail system and who use this system have higher levels of mobility and wider urban geography when compared with those who live in places without an urban rail access and those who do not use urban rail systems. In search for the effects of metro usage on mobility, as well as the factors affecting metro usage, the study is built on four main fields in transportation studies: mode choice theory, activity based travel theory, time-geography theory and women studies. Women living on Ankara metro line and in Ke&ccedil / i&ouml / ren constitute the main case study in this thesis. With the help of a comprehensive questionnaire, applied on captive public transport women riders, it is assessed whether the Ankara metro has positive effects on the mobility of women living nearby the metro stations, whether women who use the metro have higher mobility and wider urban geography, and whether the metro can be effective in enhancing the mobility and urban geography of women who are identified as particularly vulnerable in the literature. Understanding the factors, in cases where expected positive impacts on mobility have not been realized, is also important to contribute to the theoretical discussions that the study is built on.

The rudimentary cost accounting methods were set up for an organization¡¦s internal planning and controlling, its main function is to provide managers with information of program-control, product cost calculation and performance assessment. At that time, cost-management system had not been affected by external accounting statement.Follow the organization¡¦s growth and expansion,the relationship of external investors and government between businesses is becoming much more closer, the method,that lead to external audit and accounting statement became more important and even supersede the function of old accounting methods. The current costing methods used by ordinary enterprises are traditional ones ,which emphasizing on writing accounting statement, that could not provide managers with real-time and useful management information. After 1980, however, some scholars began to notice these problems and announced new cost accounting methods to solve defects of traditional accounting .On the base of traditional job costing, process costing, standard costing, new accounting ABC and target costing development, this study is to redesign an integrated costing system to meet three major targets---editing financial statement, providing related information about program-control and assessing product cost. According to the research design, to compare advantages and disadvantages of all costing methods firstly ;and then ,take the job costing, process costing and ABC as the actual costing on one hand, and take the standard costing and target costing are as estimated costing on the other hand. And to co-operate costing skills, such as AIS, responsibility center, pricing assignment and balanced scorecard ,integrating these two dimension to form an integrated strategic costing management. Applying this system into a case company can not only assess cost more accurate but also get cost-difference analysis of operation center and usage of company¡¦s resources. In hence, that can satisfy a manager¡¦s information demand, and good for exception management and performance assement.

This thesis examines the time-use patterns of adults in dual-earner households with and without children as a function of several individual and household socio-demographics and employment characteristics. A disaggregate activity purpose classification including both in-home and out-of-home activity pursuits is used because of the travel demand relevance of out-of-home pursuits, as well as to examine both mobility-related and general time-use related social exclusion and time poverty issues. The study uses the Nested Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value (MDCNEV) model, which recognizes that time-decisions entail the choice of participating in one or more activity purposes along with the amount of time to invest in each chosen activity purpose, and allows generic correlation structures to account for common unobserved factors that might impact the choice of multiple alternatives. The 2010 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data is used for the empirical analysis. A major finding of the study is that the presence of a child in dual-earner households not only leads to a reduction in in-home activity participation but also a substantially larger decrease in out-of-home activity participation, suggesting a higher level of mobility-related social exclusion relative to overall time-use social exclusion. To summarize, the results in the thesis underscore the importance of re-designing work policies in the United States to facilitate a reduction in work-family conflict in dual-earner families. / text

Background: Companies of today commonly search to gain competitive advantages throughout different forms of co-operation, one of which is referred to as Supply Chain Management. Although little research has been assigned to the topic of how to manage and control this type of relation, lately a growing number of academics has been arguing that ABC is an appropriate mean of controlling this type of relationships. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate to what degree the ongoing debate on the use of ABC as a mean of control within SCM correspond to the present theories related to ABC and SCM respectively. Research method: The thesis takes it’s starting point within the literature, meaning that the empirical information consists of published articles in the ongoing debate. This information is put in relation to the original theories concerning both topics. Conclusions: The results shown in the thesis in some content agrees with the ongoing debate referring to the positive aspects that could result from using ABC as a mean of control within SCM. However the main result of the study is the discovery of a lack of discussion concerning the problems that implementing ABC within SCM might implicate, a fact that we believe contributes to the mainly positive view on using ABC within Supply Chain Management. / Bakgrund Företag av idag ingår i allt större utsträckning i någon form av samarbete för att på så vis skapa sig konkurrensfördelar på marknaden, en av dessa samarbetsformer går under beteckningen Supply Chain Management. Hur styrningen i denna typ av relation bör se ut är ett relativt outforskat ämne, dock finns det i dagens forskningsdebatt flera forskare som förespråkar ABC-kalkylering som ett lämpligt styrinstrument för denna typ av relationer. Syfte Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur väl den pågående forskningsdebatten gällande användandet av ABC som styrverktyg inom SCM överensstämmer med befintlig teoribildning inom de respektive forskningsområdena. Genomförande Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i litteraturen, med detta avses att den empiri som studeras består av publicerade artiklar i den aktuella debatten. Informationen ställs sedan i relation till den existerande teoribildningen inom ABC respektive SCM. Slutsats De resultat som framkommer ur studien visar på att den aktuella debatten i vissa avseenden har rätt i de positiva effekter ett ABC-system skulle kunna generera inom SCM. Men vad studien huvudsakligen kommer fram till är att det i forskningsdebatten saknas en ordentlig problematisering av ämnet, vilket enligt oss också förklarar den övervägande positiva syn som föreligger till användandet av ABC inom SCM.

Tinkamos išlaidų apskaitos sistemos pasirinkimui įtakos turi visa eilė veiksnių ir aplinkybių. Įmonėms, kurių produkcijos gamybai yra priskiriama daug netiesioginių išlaidų, buvo sukurta ABC (Activity-based costing) išlaidų apskaitos sistema, kuri padeda įvertinti veiklą, priimti valdymo sprendimus, kontroliuoti bei mažinti išlaidas, atsisakyti vertės nepridedančių veiklų. Atlikti tyrimai “N” medelyno pavyzdžiu parodė, kad netiesioginės sodmenų gamybos išlaidos paskirstomos miško sėjinukų, sodinukų ir dekoratyvinių sodinukų auginimo išlaidoms pagal tiesioginio darbo užmokesčio sumą. Toks netiesioginių išlaidų paskirstymas sodmenų grupėms iškraipo sodmenų savikainą, nes išanalizavus „N“ medelyno gamybos technologinį procesą, pastebėta, kad skirtingų grupių sodmenys kaupia ne vienodas išlaidas, t.y. jų poreikiai yra skirtingi ir reikalauja skirtingų veiklų. Todėl autorė siūlo medelyno gamybos procesą suskirstyti į tris pagrindinius etapus: produkto sukūrimą (idėją), produkto pagaminimą-išauginimą ir pardavimą, pagal šiuos etapus išskirti veiklas ir kaupti sodmenų auginimo išlaidas. / Choice of appropriate cost accounting system is influenced by a number of factors and circumstances. Companies whose production is attributed to a lot of indirect costs have set up ABC (Activity-Based Costing) cost accounting system, which helps to evaluate performance, make management decisions to control and reduce costs, to refuse activities of value decrease. The studies in nursery 'N' show that the indirect costs of seedlings are allocated to forest seedlings, plants and ornamental plants growing costs under the amount of direct salary. This allocation of indirect costs distorts the cost of seedlings, because the analysis of the nursery "N" production process technology shows that different groups of seedlings accumulate different costs because their needs are different and require different activities. Therefore, the author suggests three basic steps of nursery production process: creation of the product (the idea), production-cultivation and sales, to exclude activities and to collect costs of seedling production.