The purpose of the following qualitative study was to explore social workers' perspectives on children's experiences of being exposed to domestic violence due to men's violence against women. The purpose was also to explore social workers' perceptions of support measures that used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six social workers who work with children and families in the social services. The study takes its theoretical starting point in trauma theory and attachment theory. The results showed that factors such as finances, mental illness and substance abuse are common causes to the child being exposed to indirect domestic violence. Children may show fear and anxiety, they may also show signs of psychosomatic disorders, behavioral difficulties, difficulty concentrating, and they may develop insecure attachment relationships with their caregivers. The results also showed that children who are exposed to indirect violence can be supported in various ways, where the child's family can also be included in the process. According to the interviewees, the function of the support interventions depends on the parent’s active participation in the process, which determines whether the support interventions work. / Syftet med studien var att undersöka socialarbetares perspektiv på barns upplevelser av att bli utsatta för indirekt våld, som en följd av mäns våld mot kvinnor. Författarna har även som avsikt att undersöka socialsekreterarnas uppfattning om vilka stödåtgärder som används för att stödja barn som utsätts för indirekt våld som en följd av mäns våld mot kvinnor. För att besvara syftet användes en kvalitativ design, där semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med sex socialsekreterare som arbetar med barn och ungdomsutredning i socialtjänsten. Studien har sin teoretiska utgångspunkt i traumateori och anknytningsteori. Resultaten visade att faktorer som ekonomi, psykisk ohälsa och missbruk är vanliga orsaker till att barn utsätts för indirekt våld i hemmet. Barn som utsätts för indirekt våld kan visa rädsla och oro, men också tecken på psykosomatiska störningar, beteendesvårigheter och koncentrationssvårigheter. De kan även utveckla otrygga anknytningsrelationer med sina omsorgspersoner. Resultaten visade också att barn som utsätts för indirekt våld kan stöttas på olika sätt där även barnets familj kan inkluderas i förändringsprocessen. Stödinsatsernas funktion beror enligt intervjupersonerna på föräldrarnas aktiva delaktighet, vilket är en avgörande faktor för om stödinsatserna fungerar.

Indirect discrimination is one form of discrimination according to the Swedish diskrimineringslag (2008:567). This type of discrimination is a more abstract form than direct discrimination. The direct discrimination-form is the one where one person is intending to discriminate another person because of that person belonging to a group protected against discrimination by the law. Indirect discrimination on the other hand is when one person is discriminated because of a policy or a rule that is not intending to be discriminating. This makes this form of discrimination much harder to see and make visible, that is because the intention is not needed. In this thesis the focus is indirect discrimination and how the state have a responsibility to prevent that indirect discrimination occur. To make it easier to see the indirect discrimination and who is being subject for it, this thesis is using a structural discrimination theory to provide what is missing in the law. By using this theory, this thesis argue that the state is taking less responsibility and puts the responsibility on the single managers of institutions instead. The duty of the state is thereby hard to show and makes the law difficult to use from a structural discrimination perspective.

Purpose: To investigate the usefulness of the Economic Value Added Momentum ratio and to determine if Swedish non-real estate, non-financial companies been either positively or negatively affected by their Corporate Real Estate structure from an EVAM perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Using a regression analysis composed of the OMX large and mid cap non-real estate, non-financial companies, investigates the relationship between companies’ real estate holdings and their ability to sustain a positive EVAM. The study covers the time period from 2006 to 2009 and includes 172 observations. Findings: The data showed that a negative relationship between EVAM and PPTY at the 10% real estate intensity interval might exist. However, no evidence was found that might suggest that a negative relationship between EVAM and corporate real estate holdings at the higher (15% real estate intensity) or the lower (5% real estate intensity) existed. This could suggest that companies’ that own lower percentages of real estate assets (less than 5% of PPTY) are not affecting their EVAM value and that companies’ that own larger amount of real estate (15% of PPTY or higher) are better at managing their real estate assets and thus it is not negatively impacting their EVAM. Research Implications: Real estate is reported at historical cost rather than at current fair market values. As the economy has, historically, enjoyed more periods of expansions than contractions, intuitive companies’ real estate assets are undervalued. Economic recession and booms can also dilute both the positive and negative aspects of real estate ownership. Although this investigation seeks to neutralize this phenomenon by including two periods of economic expansion and two periods of economic recession, it is unreasonable to claim that this will completely neutralize this affect. Practical Implications: The companies that have a PPTY of between 10% and 15% might be better off selling their real estate holdings or investing additional funds in real estate so as to either have a PPTY below 10% or above 15%. Companies that are in-between the 10% and 15% real estate ownership segment might not deem it cost effective to have specific real estate professionals or to invest in real estate know-how; however, the firms’ might at the same time own too much real estate, making it too costly to do nothing. Consequently, the companies could be better off deciding on a particular strategy: owning more real estate or owning less real estate. Originality/Value: Investigates if a linkage between a company’s ability to generate a positive EVAM and a company’s quantity of real estate assets exists.

NeuroEvolution besides deep learning is considered the most promising method to train and optimize neural networks. Neuroevolution uses genetic algorithms to train the controller of an agent performing various tasks. Traditionally, the controller of an agent will be encoded in a genome which will be directly translated into the neural network of the controller. All weights and the connections will be described by their elements in the genome of the agent. Direct Encoding – states if there is a single change in the genome it directly affects a change in the brain. Over time, different forms of encoding have been developed, such as Indirect and Developmental Encodings. This paper mainly concentrates on Developmental Encoding and how it could improve NeuroEvolution. The No-Free Lunch theorem states that there is no specific optimization method that would outperform any other. This does not mean that the genetic encodings could not outperform other methods on specific neuroevolutionary tasks. However, we do not know what tasks this might be. Thus here a range of different tasks is tested using different encodings. The hope is to find in which task domains developmental encodings perform best.

Feedback can be given in many different forms, and the type that is written and strives to either correct students written errors or support their overall writing ability is suitably enough referred to as written corrective feedback (WCF) of which there are two main types of: indirect and direct WCF. We know that second language writers meet many obstacles, be that lack of motivation and vocabulary or misspellings and phrasal issues; nonetheless, teachers thought processes about what type of feedback to give on what type of error is of importance for the continuation of the development of sound feedback approaches. Therefore, we intend to investigate English teachers perceptions on the WCF they give with the help of the following research questions: What are primary school English teachers’ perceptions about WCF in order to promote their ESL students writing development? What are primary school English teachers’ perceptions regarding their choice between written direct CF or written indirect CF on their ESL students written production?To investigate these questions we wrote an interview guide, and conducted interviews with seven teachers in 4th to 6th grade, asking about their perceptions on the development of writing in English as a second language and how they would describe their corrective feedback and their thought process on what type to give and when to give it on their student’s writing. Our findings showed that all teachers acknowledged two types of students in their ESL classroom: the high proficiency and the low proficiency. The low proficiency need more direct, clear and specific corrections on most of their writing whilst the high proficiency benefit from more indirect CF in order to make use of their metacognitive thinking skills. The findings also revealed that teachers choose to use indirect or direct CF based on the activity and whether the purpose is to learn grammar or not. If the focus is grammar, they would choose direct CF, and if it was to write a fictional story, they would give more indirect CF in order to not stifle the student’s creative process and “take the fun out of it”. Our study points to a need of more research within the field of feedback in general, since there is not much evidence showing what approaches are the most beneficial. Another issue is that there are practically no guidelines for teachers to follow, telling them what type to choose and for what activities. This is something for future research to dig deeper into.

This dissertation extends previous work on the Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT), a test that was developed to measure affective processes at an implicit (supposedly automatic, preconscious) level. In particular, the first manuscript that is included in this dissertation demonstrates that the IPANAT picks up on processes resembling counter-regulation (cf. Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008) after exposure to negatively valenced emotional stimuli. The IPANAT might therefore be a suitable measure of affect regulation in some contexts. Furthermore, the second manuscript introduces a version of the IPANAT that was designed for the measurement of distinct emotions, the IPANAT for distinct emotions (IPANAT-DE). Finally, the third manuscript and an additional supplemental study not yet submitted for publication provide evidence that the subscales of the IPANAT-DE are sensitive to priming with different emotional expressions, and that facial expressions of the same valence but of different distinct emotions trigger emotion specific changes of IPANAT-DE scores. In the last part of this dissertation, the three manuscripts and the supplemental study are discussed with respect to three overarching issues: 1. The kinds of processes that might drive IPANAT scores and whether these processes are indeed influenced by affective experience or whether they are purely cognitive. 2. How IPANAT scores are related to other aspects of affect. 3. How the IPANAT can be adapted to different research questions as well as to applied contexts.

Dark matter has a long history, but it was not until modern times that we have a chance of detecting it. This thesis focuses on the velocity distribution and its effect on indirect WIMP detection. Recently a new velocity distribution, based on data from SDSS and GAIA, was proposed. For this reason simulation of capture, annihilation and resulting flux of neutrinos from the Sun and Earth has been made both for the new and Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution. The newly proposed velocity can reduce the annihilation rate in Earth by two thirds. For the Sun the effect depends on the mass of the WIMPs. For 50 GeV WIMPs the newly proposed velocity distribution could increase the annihilation rate by 5%, while for 3 TeV WIMPs it could decrease the annihilation rate by 28%. For Earth and high mass WIMPs the low velocity tail is the important part and the low resolution of this region in the new velocity distribution result in some uncertainties.

Although private foundations are assumed to be beneficial, their impact on grantee organizations is not well understood. This quantitative research explored how private, nonoperating foundations influence grantees' financial capacity to pursue their missions. Principal-agent theory was applied to rationalize foundations' social good purpose, along with subsidy theory of public charities' need for capital accumulation, thus comprising a unique framework for identifying pathways of relationships amongst influencer variables of foundations' operating characteristics; the outcome of grantees' months of unrestricted, liquid net assets (MULNA); and the mediator of foundations' payout rate. Multiple regression and indirect effects analyses of data on 612 cases from NCCS and tax returns revealed that the sector focus and characteristics of certain types of funders (i.e., oldest, largest, smallest, volunteer and professionally staffed, aggressive and average charitable spenders, and arts-focused foundations) affected payout behavior. In addition, large foundations' payout rate influenced MULNA, especially among financially strong grantees. Finally, payout mediated the association between age and MULNA among the largest foundations, and between sector focus and MULNA among the oldest foundations. This research contributes to the discourse on foundations' effectiveness in three ways: (a) associations were significant among segmented data, thus affirming the usefulness of examining specific types of foundations; (b) wealth distribution by the largest and oldest foundations was of tangible importance to their grantees, knowledge of which can be used in grant decision making and in informing policies on payout; and (c) principal-agent theory can be applied to hold foundations accountable to public interests.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Although current augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR) systems are facing advanced and immersive experience in the entertainment industry with countless media forms. Theses systems suffer a lack of correct direct and indirect illumination modeling where the virtual objects render with the same lighting condition as the real environment. Some systems are using baked GI, pre-recorded textures, and light probes that are mostly accomplished offline to compensate for precomputed real-time global illumination (GI). Thus, illumination information can be extracted from the physical scene for interactively rendering the virtual objects into the real world which produces a more realistic final scene in real-time. This work approaches the problem of visual coherence in AR by proposing a system that detects the real-world lighting conditions in dynamic scenes, then uses the extracted illumination information to render the objects added to the scene. The system covers several major components to achieve a more realistic augmented reality outcome. First, the detection of the incident light (direct illumination) from the physical scene with the use of computer vision techniques based on the topological structural analysis of 2D images using a live-feed 360-degree camera instrumented on an AR device that captures the entire radiance map. Also, the physics-based light polarization eliminates or reduces false-positive lights such as white surfaces, reflections, or glare which negatively affect the light detection process. Second, the simulation of the reflected light (indirect illumination) that bounce between the real-world surfaces to be rendered into the virtual objects and reflect their existence in the virtual world. Third, defining the shading characteristic/properties of the virtual object to depict the correct lighting assets with a suitable shadow casting. Fourth, the geometric properties of real-scene including plane detection, 3D surface reconstruction, and simple meshing are incorporated with the virtual scene for more realistic depth interactions between the real and virtual objects. These components are developed methods which assumed to be working simultaneously in real-time for photo-realistic AR. The system is tested with several lighting conditions to evaluate the accuracy of the results based on the error incurred between the real/virtual objects casting shadow and interactions. For system efficiency, the rendering time is compared with previous works and research. Further evaluation of human perception is conducted through a user study. The overall performance of the system is investigated to reduce the cost to a minimum.

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