The discipline usually called `probability theory' can be seen as the theory which describes and sets standard norms to the way we reason about plausibility. From this point of view, this `plausibility theory' is a province of logic, and the following informal proportion subsists: plausibility theory is to the common notion of `plausibility', as deductive logic is to the common notion of `truth'. Some studies in plausibility theory are here offered. An alternative view and mathematical formalism for the problem of induction (the prediction of uncertain events from similar, certain ones) is presented. It is also shown how from plausibility theory one can derive a mathematical framework, based on convex geometry, for the description of the predictive properties of physical theories. Within this framework, problems like state assignment - for any physical theory - find simple and clear algorithms, numerical examples of which are given for three-level quantum systems. Plausibility theory also gives insights on various fashionable theorems, like Bell’s theorem, and various fashionable `paradoxes', like Gibbs' paradox. / QC 20100816

SUMMARY Title: Inter(man)tional Assignments? – A Study Concerning Women’s Possibilities to Work Abroad Problem: How do women perceive their possibilities to obtain an international assignment? Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to create an understanding for women’s possibilities to obtain an international assignment. To be able to achieve this and to obtain a more faceted picture two types of sectors have been examined; larger Swedish corporations within the Swedish business world and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. We will further elucidate how women within the two sectors may perhaps learn from each other’s experiences, this to create new knowledge regarding women on international assignments. Theory: In this study concepts linked to the fields of culture, management and international business are included; more pecifically the areas of international assignments, gender based differences, female characteristics, the glass ceiling and networks. A second theory part has been added after the completion of the empirical data collection to create a better and broader foundation for our study. Dual-careers, male structures, male bonding and old boys’ networks are included in this part. The supplemented theories have been placed previous to our analysis. Method: We have performed a qualitative study from a gender based perspective with a focus upon female expatriates. The study has an abductive approach and we relate to a hermeneutical epistemology. Telephone interviews have been performed with female respondents who currently possess and international assignment or previously been an expatriate. Result: The result of our study shows that there is no clear-cut answer to how women perceive their possibilities to obtain a foreign assignment, since their experiences are complex and individual. However, the core of our answer to the research question distinguishes a few aspects which are common among the respondents. The major cause affecting women’s possibilities is the issue of dual-career couples. The spouse’s and family’s situation is the main reason for the lack of women in these assignments. Another aspect which appears to be of great importance is the lack of women in leading positions. More women are needed on each and every managerial level to allow more women to achieve higher positions. If this is accomplished there will be a larger pool of competent and skilled females to choose from when selecting expatriates. Even though we have studied two diverse sectors, the issues and problems for the women seem to be the same. Still, both sectors have something to learn from each other. First, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs should improve their recruitment process. Second, something the Swedish business world can learn from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs is to support their expatriates in a better way before and during their assignment abroad.

I tysk rätt har Bundesgerichtshof sedan länge slagit fast att både en ny och kvarstående part är skiljebundna efter singularsuccession. Skiljebundenhet för den nya parten vid Abtretung (borgenärsbyte) baseras på § 404 Bürgeliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) som anger att en ny part inte kan få bättre rätt än den överlåtande parten. Den kvarstående partens bundenhet stöds på en analogi av § 401 BGB som innebär att sidorättigheter som är kopplade till ett avtal går över på en ny part vid singularsuccession. Undantag till skiljebundenheten föreligger om en avvikande partsvilja kan påvisas. Högsta domstolen uttalade i NJA 1997 s. 866 att skiljebundenhet ska föreligga för både ny och kvarstående part efter singularsuccession. Den nya partens bundenhet grundas på att den kvarstående parten inte ska få sin rätt försämrad genom en överlåtelse som denne inte har kunnat motsätta sig samt 27 § lagen (1936:81) om skuldebrev. Skiljebundenheten för den kvarstående parten motiverades med att denne annars skulle kunna spekulera i valet av tvisteform. En haltande bundenhet ansågs oskäligt av domstolen som slog fast att bundenhet skulle föreligga om inga ”särskilda omständigheter” kunde påvisas. ”Särskilda omständigheter” omfattar enligt doktrin antingen den nya partens oförmåga att stå kostnaderna i ett skiljeförfarande eller att skiljeavtalet har slutits på grund av en stark personlig anknytning mellan de ursprungliga parterna. Betalningsoförmåga bör inte ses som en ”särskild omständighet” eftersom situationen likväl kan uppkomma utan att succession har skett. Om betalningsoförmåga ska vara ett undantag till skiljebundenhet så bör det vara ett generellt undantag som inte förutsätter succession. Undantaget för ett nära förhållande mellan de ursprungliga parterna bör ändras till att istället motsvara det tyska undantaget om avvikande partsvilja. På så vis kan en stark personlig anknytning fortfarande utgöra ett undantag till skiljebundenhet men undantaget blir mer flexibelt. I propositionen till lag (1999:116) om skiljeförfarande framförde regeringen att skiljebundenhet vid singularsuccession borde regleras av rättstillämpningen eftersom det inte skulle vara möjligt att införa en lagregel som täckte alla tänkbara situationer vilket tyder på att ett flexibelt undantag behövs. Undantag till skiljebundenhet vid singularsuccession bör också utvidgas till att omfatta en ny part för att undvika en haltande möjlighet till undantag. Om en haltande bundenhet anses oskälig torde en haltande möjlighet till undantag också vara det. Undantaget till skiljebundenhet i svensk rätt är i behov av både förändring och förtydligande.Vad

Numerous aspects of job scheduling in manufacturing systems have been the focus of several studies in the past decades. However, human factors in manufacturing systems such as workers’ mental conditions are still neglected issues and have not received adequate attentions. Job boredom and mental fatigue are both aspects of workers’ mental condition. They affect work performances by increasing sick leave duration and decreasing work productivity. On the other hand, job rotation could be an alternative strategy to cope with such human issues at work. The benefits of job rotation for both employees and firms have been widely recognized in the literature. Although some studies found job rotation as a means to reduce workers' physical work-related traumas, they did not consider the effect of variable mental conditions on workers. Despite the proven importance of boredom and mental fatigue at the workplace, they have not been a combined precise objective of any job rotation problem in current literature. The study of mental conditions proposed in this paper attempts to extend the previous works by addressing new methods and developing a feasible solution to increase manufacturing productivity. A new job scheduling program has been designed specifically which combines a new job rotation model and a job assignment method.

In this thesis a method for solving the Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP) is described. It is based on a reformulation of the original problem into a Set Partitioning Problem (SPP), in which the columns represent partial solutions to the original problem. For solving this problem, column generation, with systematic overgeneration of columns, is used. Conditions that guarantee that an optimal solution to a restricted SPP is optimal also in the original problem are given. In order to satisfy these conditions, not only columns with the most negative Lagrangian reduced costs need to be generated, but also others; this observation leads to the use of overgeneration of columns. The Generalized Assignment Problem has shown to be NP-hard and therefore efficient algorithms are needed, especially for large problems. The application of the proposed method decomposes GAP into several knapsack problems via Lagrangian relaxation, and enumerates solutions to each of these problems. The solutions obtained from the knapsack problems form a Set Partitioning Problem, which consists of combining one solution from each knapsack problem to obtain a solution to the original problem. The algorithm has been tested on problems with 10 agents and 60 jobs. This leads to 10 knapsack problems, each with 60 variables.

Grid computing has emerged as a global platform to support organizations for coordinated sharing of distributed data, applications, and processes. Additionally, Grid computing has also leveraged web services to define standard interfaces for Grid services adopting the service-oriented view. Consequently, there have been significant efforts to enable applications capable of tackling computationally intensive problems as services on the Grid. In order to ensure that the available services are assigned to the high volume of incoming requests efficiently, it is important to have a robust service selection algorithm. The selection algorithm should not only increase access to the distributed services, promoting operational flexibility and collaboration, but should also allow service providers to scale efficiently to meet a variety of demands while adhering to certain current Quality of Service (QoS) standards. In this research, two service selection algorithms, namely the Particle Swarm Intelligence based Service Selection Algorithm (PSI Selection Algorithm) based on the Multiple Objective Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm using Crowding Distance technique, and the Constraint Satisfaction based Selection (CSS) algorithm, are proposed. The proposed selection algorithms are designed to achieve the following goals: handling large number of incoming requests simultaneously; achieving high match scores in the case of competitive matching of similar types of incoming requests; assigning each services efficiently to all the incoming requests; providing the service requesters the flexibility to provide multiple service selection criteria based on a QoS metric; selecting the appropriate services for the incoming requests within a reasonable time. Next, the two algorithms are verified by a standard assignment problem algorithm called the Munkres algorithm. The feasibility and the accuracy of the proposed algorithms are then tested using various evaluation methods. These evaluations are based on various real world scenarios to check the accuracy of the algorithm, which is primarily based on how closely the requests are being matched to the available services based on the QoS parameters provided by the requesters.

North Atlantic and South Atlantic swordfish (Xiphias gladius L.) are currently managed as two stocks separated at 5°N. While previous studies of genetic population structure using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA confirm two genetically distinct stocks, sampling coverage has not been uniform or representative of all areas and estimates of admixture in areas of contact have not been provided. In this study, we examined: 1) the applicability of high-resolution melting analysis (HRMA) in population genetic studies of non-model organisms, 2) the use of nuclear markers in Atlantic swordfish and the methodology whereby nuclear gene variation can be quickly screened, identified, and genotyped using short-amplicon (SA) HRMA and unlabeled probe (UP) HRMA, and 3) the use of HRMA to characterize nuclear markers to study the genetic population structure of Atlantic swordfish using representative samples of the entire basin to provide an estimation of population admixture by means of Bayesian individual assignment. High resolution melting analysis (HRMA) is shown to be a highly sensitive, rapid, closed-tube genotyping method amenable to high throughput and, though until recently primarily confined to clinical studies, suitable for population studies in non-model species. Ten nuclear markers were genotyped primarily by SA- and UP-HRMA in North Atlantic (n=419), South Atlantic (n=296), and Mediterranean (n=59) swordfish. Comparisons of pairwise FST, AMOVA, PCoA, and Bayesian individual assignments were congruent with previous finding of three discrete populations with comparatively low levels of estimated gene flow for a marine organism (FST = 0.039-0.126). Population admixture was identified and estimated in the Northeast Atlantic and appeared to be asymmetrical, with swordfish from the South Atlantic found among North Atlantic localities but no North Atlantic migrants identified in the South Atlantic. The Mediterranean boundary currently at the Strait of Gibraltar is found to extend west into Atlantic waters to approximately 8°W. Similarly, the boundary between North and South Atlantic swordfish should be revised to a line that extends north from 0°N 45°W to 25°N 45°W and from that position, as a nearly horizontal line, eastwards to the African coast. Finally, I show that Bayesian individual assignment using the developed marker set can be used for mixed stock allocation in the Northeast Atlantic.

Two important topics in the study of Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Programming (QCQP) are how to exactly solve a QCQP with few constraints in polynomial time and how to find an inexpensive and strong relaxation bound for a QCQP with many constraints. In this thesis, we first review some important results on QCQP, like the S-Procedure, and the strength of Lagrangian Relaxation and the semidefinite relaxation. Then we focus on two special classes of QCQP, whose objective and constraint functions take the form trace(X^TQX + 2C^T X) + β, and trace(X^TQX + XPX^T + 2C^T X)+ β respectively, where X is an n by r real matrix. For each class of problems, we proposed different semidefinite relaxation formulations and compared their strength. The theoretical results obtained in this thesis have found interesting applications, e.g., solving the Quadratic Assignment Problem.

Numerous aspects of job scheduling in manufacturing systems have been the focus of several studies in the past decades. However, human factors in manufacturing systems such as workers’ mental conditions are still neglected issues and have not received adequate attentions. Job boredom and mental fatigue are both aspects of workers’ mental condition. They affect work performances by increasing sick leave duration and decreasing work productivity. On the other hand, job rotation could be an alternative strategy to cope with such human issues at work. The benefits of job rotation for both employees and firms have been widely recognized in the literature. Although some studies found job rotation as a means to reduce workers' physical work-related traumas, they did not consider the effect of variable mental conditions on workers. Despite the proven importance of boredom and mental fatigue at the workplace, they have not been a combined precise objective of any job rotation problem in current literature. The study of mental conditions proposed in this paper attempts to extend the previous works by addressing new methods and developing a feasible solution to increase manufacturing productivity. A new job scheduling program has been designed specifically which combines a new job rotation model and a job assignment method.

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