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Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) encompass an array of head trauma caused by diverse mechanisms, including falls, vehicular accidents, and sports-related incidents. These injuries vary from concussions to diffuse axonal injuries. TBIs are characterized by the linear and rotational accelerations of the head during an impact, which are influenced by various factors such as the velocity and location of the impact and the contact surface. Consequently, the accuracy of laboratory tests designed to evaluate protective technologies must closely mirror real-world conditions. This dissertation explores the boundary conditions essential for accurately replicating head impacts in laboratory settings. The research aims to improve the reconstruction of head impacts, concentrating on two main areas: 1) examining various aspects of friction during head impacts and 2) biomechanically characterizing the head impacts sustained by older adults during falls. This study provides insights into the overall influence of friction during head impacts. It investigates the friction coefficients between the helmet's shell and the impact surface, as well as between human heads, headforms, and helmets. Additionally, it assesses how these frictional interactions influence oblique impact kinematics. Defining static and dynamic friction coefficients of the human head and headforms is needed to develop more realistic head impact testing methods, define helmet-head boundary conditions for computer-aided simulations, and provide a framework for cross-comparative analysis between studies that use different headforms and headform alterations. This research also introduces and evaluates the accuracy of a model-based image mapping method to measure head impact speeds from single-view videos in un-calibrated environments. This measurement technique advances our comprehension of head impact kinematics derived from uncalibrated video data. By applying this method, videos of falls involving older adults were analyzed to determine head impact speeds and boundary conditions. The resulting data was used to construct headform impacts, capturing linear and rotational head impact kinematics. These reconstructions can inform the development of biomechanical testing protocols tailored to assess protective gear for older adults, with the goal of reducing fall-related head injuries. / Doctor of Philosophy / Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are head injuries that can happen in many ways, such as from falling, car accidents, or playing sports. These injuries can range from mild concussions to more severe cases, brain bleeds, or skull fractures. They happen when the head moves quickly or spins because of a hit, which can be affected by the speed of the impact, where on the head the impact happens, or what the head impacts against. Therefore, the accuracy of laboratory reconstruction head impact tests must closely mirror real-world conditions. This dissertation explores the boundary conditions essential for accurately replicating head impacts in laboratory settings. The research aims to improve the reconstruction of head impacts, concentrating on two main areas: 1) examining various aspects of friction during head impacts and 2) biomechanically characterizing the head impacts sustained by older adults during falls. This study provides insights into the overall influence of friction during head impacts. It investigates the friction coefficients between the helmet's shell and the impact surface, as well as between human heads, headforms, and helmets. Additionally, it assesses how these frictional interactions affect head impacts. Understanding how friction influences head impacts is crucial for improving helmet testing methods and allows for more consistent comparisons across various research studies that use different headform models or modifications. This research also introduces and evaluates a method to calculate head impact speeds by analyzing video footage, even if the video was not taken with special equipment or setup. This approach improves our understanding of head movements during accidents by using video clips of falls, particularly those involving older adults, to determine the head speeds and conditions of the impact. The information gathered from these analyses helps to reconstruct these impacts using a headform to measure injury metrics. These reconstructions are crucial for designing tests that can evaluate safety equipment meant to protect older adults from head injuries during falls.

Technological literacy is the goal of technology education and in order to attain this goal, students need to be able "to use, manage and understand technology" (ITEA, 2000/2002/2007). Students need to have positive attitudes towards technology and can engage in their technological world. Technological Literacy is an ever-increasing requirement in this 21st Century for students in order for people to engage in their technological world it may well be that we need students to be technologically literate so that we can address these up-and-coming issues. In teaching technology education at the primary level, it is essential to develop valid assessments that gauge student's attitudes about technology so that the results inform policy makers, educators, and curriculum writers to improve the schools' curriculum and advance the teaching of technology education. The purpose of this study was the validation of a modified version of the PATT-USA instrument called the Pupils' Attitudes Towards Technology – Grade 4 (PATT-G4) for use with 4th grade students to assess their attitudes and concepts toward contemporary technology. A literature review reviewing the theoretical frameworks for technology education, the educational shift towards technological literacy as well as best practices for measuring student attitudes and instrument development was conducted. This study was a non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional survey research design which included several statistical tests that were similarly used for the original PATT-USA instrument. Results from the data analysis indicated that students who were enrolled in a technology education program had more positive attitudes towards technology and technological concepts. Furthermore, both boys and girls had very strong attitudes towards the importance of technology. The conclusions and implications suggest that the PATT-G4 instrument should be administered to a larger sample size and different fourth grade populations. / Doctor of Philosophy / Technological literacy is the goal of technology education and in order to attain this goal, students need to be able "to use, manage and understand technology" (ITEA, 2000/2002/2007). Students need to have positive attitudes towards technology and can engage in their technological world. Technological Literacy is an ever-increasing requirement in this 21st Century for students in order for people to engage in their technological world it may well be that we need students to be technologically literate so that we can address these up-and-coming issues. In teaching technology education at the primary level, it is essential to develop valid assessments that gauge student's attitudes about technology so that the results inform policy makers, educators, and curriculum writers to improve the schools' curriculum and advance the teaching of technology education. The purpose of this study was the validation of a modified version of the PATT-USA instrument called the Pupils' Attitudes Towards Technology – Grade 4 (PATT-G4) for use with 4th grade students to assess their attitudes and concepts toward contemporary technology. The initial administration of this instrument was given to a sample of fourth grade students from three sub-urban elementary schools from a northeastern state. Findings indicated that students who were enrolled in a technology education program had more positive attitudes towards technology and technological concepts. Furthermore, both boys and girls had very strong attitudes towards the importance of technology. The conclusions and implications suggest that the PATT-G4 instrument should be administered to a larger sample size and different fourth grade populations.

This thesis project had the overall aim of investigating older adults (OA) representation of real-world objects through different cognitive paradigms probing visual working memory (vWM) and attention. OAs are known to demonstrate difficulties in these two cognitive domains, however, an under-researched in the aging field is the possible influence of the quality of representations in conjunction with the amount of representations in determining OA’s performances. Moreover, a majority of research in the aging field has utilized geometrical shapes, therefore I was interested to investigate whether the previous findings extend when real-world objects are used. Accordingly, the main questions accordingly probed in this study were 1) whether the content of object representations influence OAs’ performances when vWM and attention are probed, or whether effects are solely due to the amount, and 2) whether age-effects found in previous vWM and attention studies in aging, extend when real-world objects are used. To this aim, Chapter 3 describes two experiments where I manipulated the perceptual and conceptual similarity amongst objects presented to OAs and young adults (YAs) when performing a change detection task taxing vWM. Results indicated both age groups had significantly lower performances when there 3 objects to retain and recall, but no age-related differences in the maintenance and recall of these types of objects. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 report three experiments addressing the impact of object numerosity and/or nature in OAs’ attention deployment during a visual search task. Results of two experiments in Chapter 4 with manual responses found that OAs’ performance was detrimentally impacted by the amount of object representations, irrespective of the relation amongst the items. Chapter 5 illustrates an eye movement study, aimed at exploring more in detail the visual exploratory behavior of older and young individuals. Overall, OAs were slower and showed a larger tendency to get distracted than YAs, regardless of the perceptual or conceptual target-distractor similarity. Overall, the studies presented in this thesis indicated that aging negatively affects the ability to ignore distracting information. However, little evidence was provided as to whether aging negatively influences the content representation of an object. This result confirms previous research indicating that some, but not all aspects, decline in late adulthood.

Doctor of Philosophy / In my research, I developed protein model quality estimation methods aimed at evaluating the reliability of computationally predicted protein models in the absence of experimentally solved ground truth structures. These methods specifically focus on estimating errors within the protein models to quantify their structural accuracy. Recognizing that even the most advanced protein structure prediction techniques may produce models with errors, I also developed a complementary protein model refinement method. This refinement method iteratively optimizes the weakly modeled regions, guided by the error estimation module of my quality estimation approach. The development of these model quality estimation methods, therefore, not only offers valuable insights into the structural reliability of protein models but also contributes to optimizing the overall reliability of protein models generated by state-of-the-art computational methods.

Yes / Purpose: Despite the potential of social media in emerging markets (EMs), only few studies published in high quality information systems (IS) journals that have addressed issues related to social media in the context of EMs. This study aims to analyse existing research related to social media published in high quality IS journals for exploring initial research trends, emerging themes, limitations and future research directions in the context of emerging markets. Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted systematic review of 22 articles on social media, which were published in the “Senior Scholars Basket of IS Journals and Information Systems Frontiers” from 1997 to 2017. Manual literature search approach (i.e. screening through table of contents of each journal) was employed to identify relevant articles. The content of relevant articles was systematically analysed and synthesised along with keyword analysis to understand research trends on social media related issues in the emerging markets context. Findings: The study identified four major themes from existing research on the social media in the context of emerging markets, namely: 1) Social media frameworks; 2) Social media and consumers; 3) Social media and organisations; and 4) Social media and society with majority of the studies focusing on consumers. Single Subject was found as the major limitation with studies analysed focusing on single platform/country/domain hindering the generalizability whereas including new exogenous variable to improve the validity of existing studies emerged as main future research direction. Originality/value: This study conducted literature review on social media in EMs, which has not been undertaken yet. Moreover, it employed manual search (an effort and time intensive approach) to overcome the shortcomings of keyword search to identify, locate, select and analyse the social media literature in the context of emerging markets.

Målet med denna kunskapsöversikt är att få mer information kring begreppet och diagnosendyskalkyli, då fler och fler elever diagnostiseras med inlärningssvårigheter, för att sedan kunnaundersöka vilken typ av anpassad undervisning det finns som jag kan använda mig av när jagundervisar de elever som lider av dyskalkyli. Skollagen (SFS, 2010) understryker att det är skolansansvar att upprätta åtgärder så fort som möjligt när en elev riskerar att inte klara lärandemålensamt anpassa undervisningen utifrån elevernas individuella behov. Huvudfrågan som ställts i detta arbete är vad dyskalkyli faktiskt innebär och syftet med frågornaär vad vi som blivande lärare kan göra för att anpassa undervisningen samt vad styrdokumentenredogör för att skolan har för skyldigheter när det gäller detta. Metoden som valts är en kunskapsöversikt av bland annat artiklar som skrivits om ämnet. Dematerial som använts har främst varit vetenskapliga artiklar, styrdokument, lagar ochdoktorsavhandlingar som finns tillgängliga online. Resultatet har visat att forskningen inte vet vad det är som orsakar dyskalkyli men är ändå ganskaöverens om att det är en ärftlig funktionsnedsättning. Den matematiska svårigheten handlar i omsvårigheter att förstå matematiska begrepp samt behålla matematiska resonemang i arbetsminnet.Resultaten har också visat att det finns många sätt lärare kan anpassa sin undervisning för attunderlätta för de elever med inlärningssvårigheter i matematik.

The main goal of this thesis is to explore basic methods which is using for extraction of important words from articles. After that try to understand character of using keywords from the available set of testing English articles. Based on these findings, try to design and to implement a system which is using this methods. Then created system testing on the real English articles and after that try to analyse results.

Makt kan utspela sig på många olika sätt, i varje sammanhang inom varje rum finns någon form av makt. I min studie har jag valt att undersöka makten i mötet mellan ungdomar och polis, utifrån ungdomars berättelser. Ungdomar är vår framtid, det är våra framtida ledare och politiker, det är de som kommer att ta över världen efter oss, därför är det viktigt att vi tar hand om våra ungdomar och att vi skapar en ljus framtid för dem. För att våra ungdomar ska bli välartade måste vi undersöka förhållanden som påverkar dem och deras utveckling av jaget. Därför har jag valt att undersöka makten i mötet mellan dem och polisen då jag anser att mötet påverkar dem och deras framtid. Poliser ingår i vårt rättsväsende, vi ger dem makt och legitimitet för att de ska skydda oss och bekämpa brottsligheten. Alla som har blivit utsatta för någon form av brott upplever det starka behovet av en disciplin som ska bevaka vår rätt och få oss att känna trygghet när vi går ut, trygghet när vi är i våra hem, tryggheten att kunna leva och vara fria. Men hur blir det när vi, den stora majoriteten ger så mycket makt till enstaka individer som ska bevaka vår rätt. Poliser är också mänskliga varelser som kan falla för frestelser och mänskliga reaktioner. Och hur blir det när vi ger poliser makt att hjälpa och skydda våra ungdomar och de istället använder sin makt för att trycka ner och kränka dem. Ja, makt är ett strakt ord som kan ge upphov till många olika konsekvenser. / ABSTRACTPower can be played out in many different ways. In my study I have chosen to investigate the power of the encounter between youth and police, from stories told by youth. In order to help our young people to become functional human beings, we must examine the relations which can affect them and their development of self and therefor I have chosen to explore the power in the meeting between them and the police because I believe that the meeting affects them and their future. Police officers are part of our judicial system we give them power and legitimacy not only to fight crime but also to protect us. Anyone who has been subjected to some form of crime feel a strong need for a discipline that will guard our rights. But what about when we, the great majority give so much power to certain individuals in order to guard our right. What if the individuals that we have given the right to protect us instead missuses this power in order to suppress and abuse? Yes, power is an abstract word that can provide many different consequences. I will try to explore the power in the meeting between young people and the police in this essay by trying to find the answers to these questions.- How does the meeting between youth and police look like?- Which aspects of power are there?- How do young people experience the power of the police?- How is the power played out in the meeting between youths and police?- What are the consequences of the power in the meeting?I have chosen to use phenomenology as theory and focus my remarks on Schutz's work, instead off Husserl's phenomenological philosophy. The method I have used is qualitative research through a deep group interview with five youths and one depth individual interview. The result of my study has shown that police use violence, not only necessary violence that is permissible to use by the law, but also excessive violence, violence that is unjustified. Some police officers use their power to offend and assault young people. After listening to young people's stories about the police, which confirmed the earlier research that has been done, is my conclusion that the power in the encounter between youth and police is abused by the police and that young people find this very negative.

The research in natural & organic cosmetics field is particularly scant, and especially in Sweden, no research has been done on the industry of natural & organic cosmetics. In consideration of the global eco-trend and also in order to overcome this research gap, this current thesis is focused on studying Swedish natural & organic cosmetics industry, which nowadays appears to be competitive and challenging as never before. Sweden is one of the most environmentally conscious countries where the consumption of cosmetics reached 15 billion SEK in 2011. There are number of companies and brands which categorize them as natural, and continuously look for ways to attract new and keep existing customers. The increased consumer demand for natural & organic products can be observed, consumer awareness coupled with willingness to purchase products that fit their principles and values, as well as consumer price-sensitivity as a result of global recession and their pursuit of making the best value of money. The requirement of natural beauty products are increasing and are available on environmentally-conscious Swedish market. The motivation behind this study is to enhance understanding about the natural & organic cosmetics industry in Sweden, and take a deeper look by over viewing some companies which are presented on this market. Understanding the industry structure is particularly important. Modified Porter’s five forces model has been used in this thesis in order to make the industry analysis.