The incredible ability of human beings to quickly detect the prominent or salient regions in an image is often taken for granted. To be able to reproduce this intelligent ability in computer vision systems remains quite a challenge. This ability is of paramount importance to perception and image understanding since it accelerates the image analysis process, thereby allowing higher vision processes such as recognition to have a focus of attention. In addition to this, human eye fixation points occurring during the early stages of visual processing, often correspond to the loci of salient image regions. These regions provide us with assistance in determining the interesting parts of an image and they also lend support to our ability to discriminate between different objects in a scene. Salient regions attract our immediate attention without requiring an exhaustive scan of a scene. In essence, saliency can be defined as the quality of an image region that enables it to stand out in relation to its neighbors. Saliency is often approached in either one of two ways. The bottom-up saliency approach refers to mechanisms which are image-driven and independent of the knowledge in an image, whereas the top-down saliency approach refers to mechanisms which are task-oriented and make use of the prior knowledge about a scene. In this thesis, we present a bottom-up measure of saliency based on the relationships exhibited among image features. The perceived structure in an image is determined more by the relationships among features rather than the individual feature attributes. From this standpoint, we aim to capture the organization within an image by employing relational distributions derived from distance and gradient direction relationships exhibited between image primitives. The Rényi entropy of the relational distribution tends to be lower if saliency is exhibited for some image region in the local pixel neighborhood over which the distribution is defined. This notion forms the foundation of our measure. Correspondingly, results of our measure are presented in the form of a saliency map, highlighting salient image regions. We show results on a variety of real images from various datasets. We evaluate the performance of our measure in relation to a dominant saliency model and obtain comparable results. We also investigate the biological plausibility of our method by comparing our results to those captured by human fixation maps. In an effort to derive meaningful information from an image, we investigate the significance of scale relative to our saliency measure, and attempt to determine optimal scales for image analysis. In addition to this, we extend a perceptual grouping framework by using our measure as an optimization criterion for determining the organizational strength of edge groupings. As a result, the use of ground truth images is circumvented.

Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med utökad kunskap om vilka förhållningssätt olika läromedel har gällande introduktionen av läs- och skrivinlärning samt i vilken grad läromedlen möjliggör interaktion mellan undervisningens samtliga deltagare. Studien är baserad på en kvalitativ textanalys där fyra läromedel, Simalabim grundbok 1, Prima svenska 1, Forma språket ettan samt Den magiska kulan, har analyserats utifrån sex olika kategorier, som alla berör det sociokulturella perspektivet. De sex kategorierna är: top-down, bottom-up, enskilt arbete, arbete i par, arbete i helklass samt högläsning av lärare. Kategorierna är baserade på det sociokulturella perspektivet, en socialkonstruktivistisk syn på kunskap samt den proximala utvecklingszonen. Analysen grundas i forskningsfrågorna:   Vilka förhållningssätt har de studerade läromedlen gällande introduktion av läs- och skrivinlärning? I vilken grad möjliggör läromedlen interaktion mellan undervisningens samtliga deltagare?   Resultatet redogörs med hjälp av en tabell (se tabell 2), som senare står till grund för en jämförelse. Jämförelsen tar avstamp i Lev Vygotskijs tankar inom det sociokulturella perspektivet där det lyfts fram att samspelet mellan människor är grunden till utveckling och lärande. Jämförelsen relateras även till den tidigare forskning som studien presenterar.   Studiens resultat påvisar olikheter i läromedlen gällande användningen av arbetssätt som möjliggör mellanmänsklig interaktion och samspel. Det visas att det vanligaste är att olika arbetssätt kombineras, undantaget en arbetsbok där endast ett tillvägagångssätt, enskilt arbete, används. Även Olga Dysthes tankar kring att olika arbetssätt bör kombineras lyfts fram i studien. Vygotskijs synsätt på lärande är att lärande och kunskapsinhämtning sker via sociala samspel, detta är någonting som kan diskuteras i relation till vad resultaten i denna studie visar. Två av kategorierna som undersöks i studien är top-down och bottom-up. Vad gäller top-down tillämpas den i tre av fyra arbetsböcker, varav en dessutom tillämpar bottom-up. Det är endast en arbetsbok som enbart tillämpar bottom-up.        Slutsatsen som kan dras baserat på studiens resultat är att innehållet i läromedlen är olika. Trots att flera arbetsböcker använder samma förhållningssätt till läs- och skrivinlärning skiljer sig arbetsböckernas innehåll och upplägg markant. Något annat som kan konstateras är att innehållet i arbetsböckerna till största del består av uppgifter som eleverna ska genomföra enskilt, dock är det även vanligt att flera olika typer av övningar som i olika grad möjliggör interaktion kombineras.

Innovation as the most important way for firms to retain their long-term competitiveness has been extensively researched lately. In this thesis, the author perceived innovation from the bottom up approach, where innovation spans over a broad spectrum of actors, reaching the initiative at a very low level. From this perspective, although innovation starts from an initial idea within an individual’s mind, the connections and interactions between individuals in a social context are very important for idea generation and innovation implementation. Thus social links and interaction within the enterprise context hold an important role in the firms’ innovation. Enterprise Social Network (ESN), defined as “a set of technologies that creates business value by connecting the members of an organization through profiles, updates, and notifications”, comes as one strategy to facilitate professional social networking activities within firms to support better collaboration and communication. However, nowadays when social networking becomes very popular, theimplementation of ESN appears more of a trend for firms instead of a well planned strategy. Most ESN implementations lack means of evaluation of their impacts towardthe firms’ performance, including innovation. In response to that, this thesis’s aim is to answer the ‘how’ question on ESN support toward 9 innovation climate characteristics and social interaction within firm. In this research, an interpretive research methodology was applied towards a case in a global telecom company, Ericsson, with their ESN called MyNET. As part of the methodology, a survey and interviews were done to assess MyNET users’ experience and opinion in this matter. The social network graph was also used in this methodology as an additional input for the interviews. There were 672 respondents participating in the survey and 10 interviews were conducted. The results show that the targeted goals of MyNET implementation support innovation climate characteristics. The results also show that professional social networking activities supported by MyNET such as individual user profile, add colleague in the social network, share information, ask and answer questions, join community, etc, provide an innovative way for social interaction supporting better communication and collaboration which is important for innovation in a global ompany.

Public spaces should be public! Their purpose should be to serve the public, not to be convenient for planners, investors and developers. Often, our common ground and imagination of urban landscapes doesn’t go further than a bench, a lawn and, if lucky, a bin. This project explores how public spaces can be governed and organised by the people around it by empowering them to be in the centre of the planning and being able to make decisions and shape their habitat according to their needs, wishes and imagination. As part of this project a guide was created on how to claim and shape one’s local public space together with their community.

The intelligent handling of waste is a pressing issue today. Up until the 19th century it had been however an integral part of societies especially when it comes to the waste generated by construction and demolition (Bahamon and Sanjines, 2010). After industrial revolution (1750-1850) which opened the gates of mass production and mass consumption followed and supported by two major forces of capitalism and the dramatic increase in world population, the generation of waste accelerated correspondingly and in a global scale. The mass extraction of natural resources on one hand (limited amount of natural resources), and the problems caused by waste landfilling and incineration such as pollution and diseases on the other hand, made us stop this linear extraction-to-waste trend and recognize recycling as a solution. Recycling chiefly addresses a sustainable approach to reduce the negative effects of waste and at the same time involves processing used materials (waste) into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials (Eco Cloud), however through recycling not only some energy has to be consumed to make this process run but also some portion of pollution would be generated as a side effect. What is more is that up until today recycling has been neither in many cases economically profitable nor has it been possible to recycle all the amount of waste. For instance In US- as the most consuming society on the planet Earth- only 34% of the municipal solid waste can be recycled and the rest ends up in either landfills or incinerators (EPA,2010). This project is to mainly focus on the definition of a rather comprehensive network (Network of Reuse) which sits right before recycling through which as much as possible of the total amount of waste could be directly absorbed back into the society (with minor changes in some cases) in different scales, the resultants of which would be claimed not to be only less energy consumption and less pollution caused through processing waste (as in recycling) but also avoiding a considerable amount of unrecycled materials from ending up in landfills and incineration. In fact the assumed network-which is simulated by the smart grid model- could be said to be a complementary section added to the existing trend today and is on no account against recycling. Like any other network, the network of reuse is based upon strategies, tools, and policies. The rhizomic growing structure of this network-that is in contrast to the tree structure of recycling- suggests a bottom up movement in handling waste and empowering people while the proposed time-line strategy is assumed to be moving from entertainment towards a coherent business network. In fact the project itself suggests the necessity of more bottom up structures to happen in our future planning. The entire project is highly founded upon research and could be applied in a variety of actual designs and concrete cases. Therefore, in this project no specific site is being addressed directly but the actual need for adding the supposed network is explored.

Esta tesis doctoral ha provocado un cambio de actitud y mentalidad; porque la forma de realizar investigación hasta el momento había sido basada en resultados, es decir, primero se piensa cual será el resultado que se obtendrá o hacia donde se debe llegar, que es lo que se va a producir, utilizando en este caso el método de abajo hacia arriba (bottom up). Sin embargo, este informe se ha realizado bajo una metodología causal, es decir, interesa conocer primeramente cual será el modelo para luego contestar preguntas ¿qué es? y ¿para qué es?, debido a que así se decide un modelo que servirá de marco a la solución y se concretan los objetivos, ya sin ambigüedad, que se persigue alcanzar. Posteriormente se irán contestando las preguntas de ¿cómo?, ¿cuándo? y ¿quién lo hará? Porque así se establece la estructura de la solución, la tecnología que la soportará, y el contexto. Por esa razón, este trabajo aborda aspectos diferentes a las formas tradicionales de resolver un problema en particular, sobre el cual ya se conocen otras soluciones. El método bottom-up puede utilizarse cuando se conoce de antemano la solución por otros casos parecidos; y el top-down es el método general cuando no se tiene mayor conocimiento previo sobre cuál puede ser la solución. De allí que para esta investigación se ha hecho uso del método top-down. Por lo tanto, el grado de Doctora permitirá, resolver problemas haciendo uso de método científico, procurando evitar incorporar arbitrariedad o reduciendo esta a su mínima expresión y, con ello, garantizando la calidad de la solución. Se persigue producir un avance en el estado del conocimiento, en el caso particular de la educación piramidal en el que se ha trabajado bajo un enfoque colaborativo jerarquizado, para la enseñanza de los lenguajes de programación, a través de una plataforma didáctica virtual, en la cual personas con un nivel de educación superior pueden tutorar a otros de nivel educativo inferior para, de esa manera, poder mejorar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador, aunque cabe mencionar que este proyecto podrá ser aplicado a cualquier institución educativa ya sea formal o informal. El objetivo principal es que mediante la educación piramidal y por medio del uso de una plataforma virtual, se pueda dar apoyo en el aprendizaje de cualquier área del conocimiento, que en el caso particular se abordarán los lenguajes de programación, por ser parte fundamental de las carreras de Informática y del área de competencia docente de la autora.

Since January 1, 2015, the police authority's largest organizational reform took place, and 21 county police authorities were merged into one unified police authority. The purpose of this was to increase the prerequisites for a stronger operating result with higher quality in the efforts. In connection with the reorganization, they sought to have a more distinct management where the operations would be employee driven. In this study, the official's space for action is studied, and to what extent the public works are considered regarding the expertise and knowledge of the employees at local police level. Through an interview study the officials of the local police level shared the experiences and how the reorganization's impact on the space of action has affected their ability on making decisions. The analysis of the study takes the biggest inspiration from Lisky's street-level bureaucracy theory but also shows elements of the authority's structure, i.e. top-down and bottom-up perspective. The study also takes into account the public officials’ tools of power and analyzes the exercise of power.

Although issues linked to global environmental change and its role within peace, conflict andsecurity have been subject to social and political controversy for years, they are still notsufficiently respected by energy companies, trade unions, national governments andinternational institutions alike. Through applying the tools of a single instrumental case studylinked to the application of discourse analysis I, this study explores the process of securitizationof the environment in the extraordinary case of the resistance and occupation surrounding theHambach Forest, thereby countering the widely held assumption that collective action aimedat radically changing existing structures is not possible. The particular exploratory focus is puton the way this non-conventional environmental security discourse has been created within aredefined securitization framework. By challenging the traditional focus of securitizationtheory on top-down construction through elites, this study provides a broadened, bottom-upaccount of environmental securitization stemming from local civil society actors as nonpowerholdersthat effectively proclaim their recognition of the environment’s intrinsic valuefrom a grassroots level. Consequently, it argues for the significance of securitization as creativeprocess of alerting policy makers, political leaders and the broader society to the emergency ofclimate change and global environmental degradation symbolized through the specific case ofHambach Forest.

Objective: Saliency-based theories assume that stimulus features (luminance, edges, texture) shape the hierarchy of perception. Predictions about human viewing behavior point out that highly salient objects or regions of a picture will be perceived first (e.g. Itti et al. 2001). Not much attention is paid to top-down factors such as emotion, motivation and other cognitive functions. The present study analyses the influence of the emotional status on visual perception in free-viewing tasks. Following the hypotheses of the study even in artificial contexts such as viewing neutral pictures in an experiment, top-down factors, such as emotion might influence length of fixation and the number of fixations and saccades. Approaches of visual perception and perception in general should focus more on the individual cognitive aspects of this process. Method: In an eyetracking-study 91 participants viewed neutral and emotional relevant pictures without any task. Five emotional pictures (crime, murder, babies), which were taken from the IAPS (Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 2005) were followed by one neutral picture (forest, grass) taken from studies of Peters et al (2005) and Einhäuser et al. (2003). Altogether the subjects viewed 130 pictures. Results: There were significant differences in viewing behavior concerning the neutral pictures subject to the emotional condition. When presented in context with emotional pictures, neutral pictures were fixated longer and less frequently in comparison to the neutral condition. There is evidence to suggest that the emotional context influenced visual attention concerning the neutral pictures in that way that attention for the neutral material was reduced in the context of highly arousing emotional pictures. This leads to the conclusion, that even in experimental setups with simple neutral stimuli the process of visual perception is influenced top-down.

The main goal of the present thesis is to contribute to the study of overt visual attention under natural conditions. All publications included in the thesis employ eye-tracking methodology and local image feature analysis. The particular scientific question posed, if all parts of the thesis are considered together, can be formulated as: What experimental (i.e. experimenter controlled) and pseudo-experimental (e.g. demographic characteristics such as age) variables define, quantify and set limits for bottom-up determinants of fixation election? In this summary, I will bring together the answers to this question obtained during the course of the thesis and try to elucidate their significance in relation to the puzzles and riddles of eye movement research. After presenting an overview of the field, I will show how and to what extent fixation selection is altered as a function of age and as certain stimulus components are modified. Finally, I will argue that visual attention involves varying degrees of reliance on bottom-up cues according to the attending agent’s knowledge that is relevant in a given context.