Abstract Bleaching is an essential process in chemical pulp production for better pulp brightness and longer life expectancy. However, it causes costs such as chemicals, energy, equipment, and loss of yield. Non-linear reactions and several process variables, with interactions, make large plants complicated to model and optimize. As an expensive process bleaching has been a natural target of optimization, but there is still the need to either improve these methods or consider the optimization problem from a new point of view. The aim of this thesis was to develop production optimization methods for pulp bleaching, so that they are practical, usable on-line, easy to tune, and transferable. According to our assumption, neural networks could provide a practical optimization method by combining analytical knowledge with real data. In this kind of problem, the load sharing concept, recognizing interactions in chemical usage and the serial multi-stage nature of the process can simplify the task. The related work in bleaching optimization was studied as well as multi-stage serial process solving in principle, related optimization methods and especially neural networks in optimization. The data were collected during normal mill operation and modeled using neural networks. Optimization was performed based on visualizing the neural network models. The results showed that backpropagation neural networks are capable of modeling parts of the bleach plant and also the entire bleaching operation to such an extent that they are useful in the optimization. The modeling and the tuning can be performed without a profound knowledge of the system, but the process is slower and less reliable. Moving a trained neural network to another mill is inadvisable. It is more reasonable just to transfer the knowledge of variables and network structure. The important factor in on-line production optimization is the stabilization of the disturbances and a well-controlled operation towards a more economical state. Generally, more than half of the total chemicals should be used in the first bleaching stage D0 and the remaining load should be divided so that the dosage at the D1 is about 30% higher than in the D2 stage.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional & Community Planning / Brent Chamberlain / Narratives of urban experiences influence understanding of space and urban form. Narratives give meaning to space, creating memories of places and helping to define an individual’s cognitive map. The representation of narratives within cognitive maps impacts day to day activities, as well as, emotional, cultural, and social characteristics of one’s self. Planners and designers play an important role in crafting narratives through the implementation of designs and policies that together shape urban form. This research investigates the relationship between spatial cognitive schemas and narratives within cognitive maps. Specifically, how college students develop and use narratives within their cognitive map to help with living in a new and initially unfamiliar place of residence. Through mixed method analysis of drawn individual cognitive maps, an online survey, and a group discussion, results show that different types of experiences within narratives influence the likelihood of it appearing within the spatial cognitive schema. The findings suggest that narratives created by peak emotional experiences contain a longer and clearer representation within cognitive maps because of their personal value. By better understanding the role of these emotional responses and their connection with urban form, design professionals can aim to frame projects toward influencing individual’s lives. Understanding how individuals develop narratives of their new city may influence planning and design with the goal of creating urban projects that provide social and cultural significance through meaning of place.

Two studies are presented, linking word-frequency information within the Global Corpus of Web-based English to real world facts. The first study concerns how patterns of the use of place names reflect geospatial and geopolitical relationships of English-speaking nations. The second study concerns how the emotional connotation of words before place names reflects general well-being in that place. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that the surface structure of language, as embodied in word frequencies, is a useful source of information about the real world. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / This thesis involves two studies, using the Global Corpus of Web-based English. The first study shows how you can reconstruct a rudimentary map of English speaking countries of the world purely on the basis of how often different words happen in texts. The second study shows that when we discuss countries of the world online, how happy and exciting the adjectives are before place names relate to how long people live in that country.

Food systems are complex social-ecological systems. Currently, they are the source of large-scale health problems and environmental impacts, and there is widespread agreement that transformative change is needed. Scenarios are useful tools for directing such change, as they provide engaging future visions that work well with complex systems.  This thesis is a part of Mistra Food Futures, a platform for a sustainable transformation of the Swedish food system, where scenarios for Swedish food futures are being developed. The thesis purpose is to contribute to the scenario development by the use of systems mapping and semi-quantitative scenario modelling. The thesis builds on four scenario narratives previously developed by Mistra Food Futures researchers. During the thesis process, these scenario narratives were re-interpreted as Causal Loop Diagrams. The diagrams were then used as the basis for constructing a food system model in the form of a Fuzzy Cognitive Map. Simulations were run to investigate the conditions under which the scenarios could be reproduced by modelling. The modelling uncovered several system dynamics: the competition or shared interests of different types of agriculture; the system impacts of novel foods; the vulnerabilities of localised food systems; the importance of food culture; and the interactions of environmental policy with farming systems. Another finding was system attractors where scenarios mix, and these are presented as alternative scenarios. The thesis contributes to the scenario development by making relationships, system feedbacks, and drivers explicit by systems mapping, as well as providing a user-friendly model that can be used for further system exploration. The analysis of specific dynamics can be used to inform upcoming scenario iterations, and alternative scenarios can be used to maintain analytical depth when scenario interactions are discussed. The process also provides a demonstration of the use of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps in scenario modelling.

No description available.

When we make decisions, we rely on our memories to choose the best course of action. The hippocampal-entorhinal system plays an essential role in supporting memory, with episodic and spatial memory being two key components of the mnemonic system. To guide choices, our brain also requires an adequate representation of information that enables flexible behavior. Recent research demonstrated that the hippocampal-entorhinal system represents information in a domain-general cognitive map that encodes relationships between states, which has been suggested to enable adaptive decision making. This thesis investigated how cognitive maps in the hippocampal-entorhinal system support memory and decision making, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In the first study, we examined the precise relationship between concurrent episodic and spatial mnemonic representations. While previous research showed that both memory components are supported by the hippocampus, it remained unclear how exactly the hippocampus supports both at the same. We show that episodic and spatial information is integrated in the anterior hippocampus, in line with a common coding mechanism for episodic and spatial memory and domain-general cognitive maps. Beyond purely encoding the episodic and spatial setting, making choices also requires us to represent associated values. In the second study, we therefore investigated whether the hippocampal-entorhinal system also represents an abstract cognitive map of values for decision making. Previous studies showed that hippocampal-entorhinal cognitive maps represent abstract information such as feature spaces, with two recent studies providing first evidence for map-like representations of values in animals. However, it remained elusive whether cognitive maps would also represent values to guide decision making in humans. We show that the human entorhinal cortex used a grid-like representation to represent an abstract value space during prospective decision making, with an orientation aligned to the axis through the space that was most informative for choices. This provides novel evidence for an abstract cognitive map of values for decision making in humans. The findings presented in this thesis reconcile previous separate accounts of episodic and spatial hippocampal representations and provide important evidence for even more abstract cognitive maps in humans. Taken together, this thesis emphasizes the pivotal role of domain-general and abstract cognitive maps as a hippocampal-entorhinal coding principle for organizing information and enabling adaptive decision making.

Interaction with the environment is a crucial feature that characterizes intelligent biological systems. To do so the information acquired by the surroundings needs to be organized in flexible and generalizable structure, namely cognitive maps, which encode relational information, store it, and make it easily accessible and reusable. The hippocampal-entorhinal system plays a crucial role in the creation of cognitive maps, and, particularly, grid cells have been targeted as the main neural correlate. In humans, grid-like activity has been associated with the encoding of both spatial and abstract knowledge. However, in the field of cognitive maps, the precise relationship between spatial and conceptual knowledge remains unclear. Here, we take blindness as a model to test whether the mechanisms ontogenetically evolved to navigate in space scaffold the navigation through concepts or, on the contrary, if spatial and abstract knowledge develop independently. In this thesis, I provide, for the first time, evidence in favor of the scaffolding hypothesis by observing a reduction of the grid-like coding in the early blind individuals’ entorhinal cortex both during a spatial and a conceptual navigation task. Crucially, lack of visual experience seems to influence specifically the grid system, as, instead, the typical cortical networks that support spatial and conceptual navigation show a high resiliency to early visual deprivation. These findings will deepen significantly our understanding of the relationship between spatial and nonspatial concepts, opening the path to novel questions related to the development of the grid system and, more in general of the cognitive maps.

<p>The implementation of a new motor vehicle block exemption began in 2002, and affected the car dealer industry in Sweden. Before this new regulation, a general agent distributing cars to dealers had the ability to restrict car dealers’ behavior much more. Nowadays, dealers have the right to sell different brands from the same showroom, even if there are strict rules about how the different brands should be presented. The new block exemption have also given car dealers possibilities to establish in other places within EU were selective distribution is applied.</p><p>As the environment changed (by the block exemption), dealers faced new information that required interpretation. In this thesis we have focused on industrial wisdom; a reasonable and consistent, yet subjective, sense-making of reality in an industry. This sense-making is a way to understand and justify company behavior; resulting assumptions are considered so basic that they remain unquestioned by industry participants. However, interpretations depend on who makes them; different persons interpret things in different ways.</p><p>In the light of the car dealer industry and the motor vehicle block exemption 1400/2002, this thesis investigated if change due to institutional pressure can affect industrial wisdom. Further, what does this process look like.</p><p>To fulfill our purpose we conducted a qualitative research by interviewing 19 Chief Executive Officers from the car dealer industry in Sweden. The sample was designed by a maximum variation sampling technique, in which we as researchers used our own judgment to pick cases that were extra informative. Before we conducted the interviews, we reviewed literature to gain a general understanding of the industry and relevant issues.</p><p>From our research we know that industrial wisdom can change due to a shift in institutional pressure and we observed that the car dealer industrial wisdom was changing. There are some new perceptions and aspects of wisdom, which suggest that the industry has moved away from previous equilibrium. Nevertheless, perceptions are diverse in a number of areas and thoughts have not been translated into action, which leaves much potential for further change. Naturally, this is a slow and difficult process since cognitive maps are embedded in a mindset that relies on previous experience and automatic interpretations. If wisdom changes more depends<strong> </strong>a great deal on if/how dealers (continue to) act.</p><p>This thesis resulted in a model (The Loop of Wisdom) that explains how a change in institutional pressure affects industrial wisdom. New information enters the company, gets interpreted, acted upon and feeds back out to the environment, which affect other companies and the industry as a whole.</p>

A seleção de fornecedores é uma decisão-chave nos processos de aquisição e de compra. Tanto a escolha de critérios como a avaliação das possíveis alternativas são etapas fundamentais neste processo de decisão. Nas últimas décadas, as instituições de ensino superior privado do Brasil vêm sofrendo grandes desafios na tentativa de institucionalizar práticas administrativas aplicadas no mercado empresarial com o objetivo principal de aperfeiçoar seus processos de trabalho e reduzir riscos e custos operacionais, aumentando assim sua produtividade e qualidade dos serviços prestados. Estas iniciativas visam manter as instituições autossustentáveis e competitivas em um mercado agressivo em constante expansão. Desta forma, um olhar crítico e profissionalizado para seus processos de negócios tem sido uma das soluções encontradas a fim de atingirem suas metas organizacionais. Neste contexto, este trabalho propõe a formalização do processo decisório na seleção de fornecedores através de sua sistematização utilizando os mapas cognitivos para estruturação e identificação de critérios que efetivamente apresentam valor na seleção de parceiros para o tomador de decisão dos departamentos de Controladoria e Suprimentos e Administração do Patrimônio. O trabalho também propõe a posterior priorização destes critérios para a seleção de potenciais fornecedores através da utilização do método multicritério Analytic Hierarchy Process. / Supplier selection is a key decision in the procurement and purchasing processes. Both the choice of criteria and the evaluation of possible alternatives are critical steps in this decision-making. One of the great challenges of private higher education institutions (PHEI) in Brazil in recent decades has been the attempt to institutionalize administrative practices applied in the business market with the primary goal of optimizing their business processes and achieve reduced risks and operational costs, thereby increasing their productivity and the quality of services. These initiatives aim to maintain self-sustaining and competitive institutions in an aggressive market which is constantly expanding. Therefore, a critical and professionalized look at their business processes has been one of the solutions in order for them to achieve their organizational goals. In this context, this paper proposes to formalize the decision-making process in the selection of suppliers through their systematization using cognitive maps to structure and identify the criteria that effectively present value during the partner selection of the decision-maker\'s procurement and purchasing department. The paper also proposes the subsequent prioritization of these criteria for evaluation and selection of potential suppliers through the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process multi-criteria method.

A seleção de fornecedores é uma decisão-chave nos processos de aquisição e de compra. Tanto a escolha de critérios como a avaliação das possíveis alternativas são etapas fundamentais neste processo de decisão. Nas últimas décadas, as instituições de ensino superior privado do Brasil vêm sofrendo grandes desafios na tentativa de institucionalizar práticas administrativas aplicadas no mercado empresarial com o objetivo principal de aperfeiçoar seus processos de trabalho e reduzir riscos e custos operacionais, aumentando assim sua produtividade e qualidade dos serviços prestados. Estas iniciativas visam manter as instituições autossustentáveis e competitivas em um mercado agressivo em constante expansão. Desta forma, um olhar crítico e profissionalizado para seus processos de negócios tem sido uma das soluções encontradas a fim de atingirem suas metas organizacionais. Neste contexto, este trabalho propõe a formalização do processo decisório na seleção de fornecedores através de sua sistematização utilizando os mapas cognitivos para estruturação e identificação de critérios que efetivamente apresentam valor na seleção de parceiros para o tomador de decisão dos departamentos de Controladoria e Suprimentos e Administração do Patrimônio. O trabalho também propõe a posterior priorização destes critérios para a seleção de potenciais fornecedores através da utilização do método multicritério Analytic Hierarchy Process. / Supplier selection is a key decision in the procurement and purchasing processes. Both the choice of criteria and the evaluation of possible alternatives are critical steps in this decision-making. One of the great challenges of private higher education institutions (PHEI) in Brazil in recent decades has been the attempt to institutionalize administrative practices applied in the business market with the primary goal of optimizing their business processes and achieve reduced risks and operational costs, thereby increasing their productivity and the quality of services. These initiatives aim to maintain self-sustaining and competitive institutions in an aggressive market which is constantly expanding. Therefore, a critical and professionalized look at their business processes has been one of the solutions in order for them to achieve their organizational goals. In this context, this paper proposes to formalize the decision-making process in the selection of suppliers through their systematization using cognitive maps to structure and identify the criteria that effectively present value during the partner selection of the decision-maker\'s procurement and purchasing department. The paper also proposes the subsequent prioritization of these criteria for evaluation and selection of potential suppliers through the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process multi-criteria method.