abstract: Sacred apocalyptic texts claim to foretell coming events, warning the faithful of some terrible fate that lies beyond the present. Such texts often derive their power from successfully recasting past events in such a way as they appear to be "predicted" by the text and thus take on additional meanings beyond the superficial. This ex eventu status allows apocalyptic texts to increase the credibility of their future predictions and connect emotionally with the reader by playing on present fears. The fifth-century Daoist apocalyptic text, the Scripture on the Cycles of Heaven and Earth (Tiandi yundu jing, 天地運度經), is no exception. This thesis examines the apocalyptic markers in the poetic sections of the text, attempting to develop a strategy for separating the generic imagery (both to Chinese texts and the apocalyptic literary genre as a whole) from the more significant recoverable references to contemporary events such as the fall of the Jin dynasty and the subsequent founding of the Liu-Song dynasty. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. East Asian Languages and Civilizations 2011

Räddningstjänsten är ett yrke där risktagande är en del av vardagen för personalen, det finns många olika faktorer som påverkar hur och varför ett beslut tas före och under en räddningsinsats. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka skillnader i risktagande mellan befattningar inom räddningstjänsten, baserat på faktorer som sensationssökning och synen på den egna kontrollen av handlingar och dess konsekvenser. Metoden som användes var en webenkät baserad på två validerade tester för att undersöka dessa faktorer; Sensation Seeking Scale samt Locus of Control-test. Sammanlagt deltog 17 stycken respondenter och alla var män, befattningarna varierade mellan brandman, styrkeledare, insatsledare, ställföreträdande räddningschef samt räddningschef. Resultatet visade en signifikant skillnad i sensationssökning mellan befattningarna där de lägre befattningarna hade störst sensationssökning. Ingen signifikant skillnad i Locus of Control-testet mellan befattningarna fanns. Slutsatsen utifrån resultatet är att lägre befattningar inom räddningstjänsten söker sensation i större utsträckning än högre befattningar och kan sägas ha en annan syn på risker och risktagande. Till exempel är en större tolerans för risker, en mindre erfarenhet av yrket och dess riskfyllda situationer samt en större acceptans för konsekvenser av ett risktagande, olika karaktärsdrag för vad en större sensationssökning innebär.

Denna rapport innehåller de samlade erfarenheterna från ett produktutvecklingsprojekt i kursen TDDD77 vid Linköpings universitet. Projektets mål var att skapa en applikation för att visualisera mätdata från en specialutrustad bil på en surfplatta. Detta var önskvärt då det inte fanns något sätt att se om någon sensor slutade fungera mitt i ett test. Projektet delades upp i en förstudie följd av tre iterationer, där en färdig produkt presenterades på en teknisk mässa i slutet av iteration 3. Resultaten visar att Essence Kernel Alpha States kunde användas som en hälsokontroll för projektet, men då de kunde ses som rätt vaga och lämnade rum för tolkning passade det bäst som ett komplement till exempelvis milstolpar. Att använda Google Protocol Buffers sågs som ett viktigt tekniskt val tillsammans med uppdelningen av klienten i front- och back-end. Protobuf underlättade kommunikationen mellan server och klient som annars krävt ett nyskapat protokoll. Uppdelningen av front- och back-end underlättade inte bara resursfördelningen vid utveckling utan även vid felsökning då det i många fall blev lättare att se precis var felet uppkom. Back-ends uppbyggnad gjorde även att den går att återanvända vid eventuell utveckling till flertalet plattformar. Den arbetsprocess som följdes ses som en hybrid mellan agila metoder och vattenfallsmodellen. Mycket erfarenhet finns att hämta från projektet, bland annat hur krav kan ändras och hur en prototyp kan styra mjukvaruutvecklingen åt rätt håll. På grund av att surfplattan distraherar användaren under körning av bil har designen utgått från att minimera interaktionen som krävs med surfplattan under mätning.

I detta arbete utvecklas ett spel för utlärning av programmeringskoncept till förskolebarn. Spelet utvecklas agilt som ett delspel i lärospelet “Magiska Trädgården”. Resultatet av det utvecklade spelet är ett spel där ett bi ska flyga i en loop för att plocka upp ett antal bär, detta ska medföra förståelse av loopar som programmeringskoncept. Spelets användbarhet utvärderades av experter i en heuristisk studie med hjälp av 8 erkända användbarhetsprinciper [4].  Utvärderingen av spelet visar att det enligt experternas åsikt uppfyller de utvalda användbarhetsprinciperna. Dessutom utvärderades det av experterna som meningsfullt i utbildningssyfte.

The most advanced ports as of writing of this report are at least somewhat autonomous. Whether discussing the transporters between crane and stack (temporary storage) or cranes, the ports are shifting into a completely autonomous system. This ultimate goal presents a challenge in regards to unloading and loading cargo ships in the harbour. How do you achieve unloading of a ship without human intervention while still guaranteeing secure trajectories for the containers? ABB Ports in collaboration with the Division of Vehicular Systems at Linköping University have developed a simulation that utilises a simple control model to investigate the behaviour, limitations and capabilities of such an autonomous crane. Specifically, this simulation utilises a model of the dynamics of a Ship-to-Shore crane (STS), which has the task of unloading a ship. In order to set the crane model in context of realistic scenarios, some additions to the simulation are needed. One of these additions is obstacles. Before this thesis work, the model enjoyed an empty simulation environment to freely optimise how quickly the containers could be transported off of the ship. The addition of obstacles in the form of other containers on the cargo ship as well as the physical presence of the crane’s legs presents new challenges for the optimiser used to solve the optimal control problems formulated through the model in the simulation. The implementation of obstacles is one of the objectives for this thesis. This addition was implemented by modeling the obstacle dimensions and ship limitations by looking at the largest container ships in the world. Due to the simulation not containing obstacles previous to this thesis work, the initial guess provided to the solver initialised the solving in an area of convergence that is unfair to the solver, This rendered the simulation useless, as any obstacle presented to the solver would generate an infeasible solution. Another functionality needed for the obstacle implementation to be meaningful is a solution for guaranteeing safe trajectories for the containers from ship to shore. The solution utilised to reach this goal was to combine a convex hull and safety conditions where the convex hull covers the obstacles, including some padding to prevent collisions between the container carried (load) and obstacles. The safety conditions however calculates the potential positions of the load when an emergency stop occurs, and therefore can prevent the load from swinging into obstacles if there is an emergency stop. These implementations however changes the usefulness and performance of the simulation because of how they shrink the area of convergence for the solver and making some problems non-solvable. When considering both a convex hull and safety conditions, the usability of the simulations is harmed, but can still be utilised to learn about autonomous performance of the simulation. The optimal solutions include some interesting characteristics that can learn crane operators about how the control systems can be utilised. Such a simulation would benefit from continuous development in order to investigate further technologies and features that could improve both performance and usability. Areas such as homotopy, modelling ropes, comparison between simple and nuanced model would be truly interesting for future areas of investigation.

Fuel leakage through a fill limit vent valve (FLVV) inside a fuel tank is an important factor to consider during the design of a new tank. The performance of the carbon canister which absorbs the hydrocarbon can be compromised if fuel manages to escape through the valve, so called Liquid Carry Over (LCO) and thus not fulfilling the fuel emission requirements. As of today this is not thoroughly investigated using experiments nor Computational Fluid Dynamics. The main focus of this study was to develop a method to simulate the behaviour of the FLVV during various driving conditions at an early design stage and if this gives rise to fuel escaping through the FLVV. This method was later to be validated with an experimental set-up and later used to perform some simulations to investigate LCO by varying different parameters such as fuel level and different types of driving. What happens when the canister is purging was also investigated to see if it has a pronounced effect on LCO. Purging is when hydrocarbons, absorbed by the canister, are sent to the engine and giving rise to an under pressure in the tank.The method was developed to run on a cluster utilizing 200 Central Processing Unit Cores where each simulated physical second required an average of 3 hours of simulation time.The flow inside the tank was simulated using a Volume Of Fluid (VOF) multiphase model and the dynamic behaviour of the floater inside the FLVV was simulated using an overset mesh with a Dynamic Fluid Body Interaction.The movement of the simulated dynamic floater was validated with an experimental set-up specifically developed for the overset mesh validation and the motion of the floater was captured at a fairly accurate level.A prototype for an experimental tank was also developed and produced to validate the VOF set-up used for sloshing inside the tank which was utilized on the real tank but due to time limitation the experiments were not performed. The results from the parameter investigation showed that LCO was present in cases with high fuel level inside the tank 95 % and that an aggressive driving gives rise to a higher level of LCO compared to normal driving. Simulations with a fuel level of 85 % and lower showed no evidence of LCO for this particular tank model. The purging of the tank induced a pumping effect giving rise to a higher level of LCO pumped through by the floater.

Discrete-event simulation (DES) is an invaluable tool which organizations can use to help better understand, diagnose, and optimize their operational processes. Studies have shown that for the typical DES exercise, the greatest amount of time is spent on developing an accurate model of the process that is to be studied. Process mining, a similar field of study, focuses on using historical data stored in software databases to accurate recreate and analyze business processes. Utilizing process mining techniques to help rapidly develop DES models can drastically reduce the amount of time spent building simulation models, which ultimately will enable organizations to more quickly identify and correct shortcomings in their operations. Although there have been significant advances in process mining research, there are still several issues with current process mining methods which prevent them from seeing widespread industry adoption. One such issue, which this study examines, is the lack of cross-compatibility between process mining tools and other process analysis tools. Specifically, this study develops and characterizes a method through which mined process models can be converted into discrete-event simulation models. The developed method utilizes a plugin written for the ProM Framework, an existing collection of process mining tools, which takes a mined process model as its input and outputs an Excel workbook which provides the process data in a format more easily read by DES packages. Two event logs which mimic real-world processes were used in the development and validation of the plugin. The developed plugin successfully extracted the critical process data from the mined process model and converted it into a format more easily utilized by DES packages. There are several limitations which will limit model accuracy, but the plugin developed by this study shows that the conversion of process models to basic simulation models is possible. Future research can focus on addressing the limitations to improve model accuracy.

The dielectric constant or relative static permittivity of a material represents the capacitance of the material relative to a vacuum and is important in many industrial applications. Nevertheless, accurate experimental values are often unavailable and current prediction methods lack accuracy and are often unreliable. A new QSPR (quantitative structure-property relation) correlation of dielectric constant for pure organic chemicals is developed and tested. The average absolute percent error is expected to be less than 3% when applied to hydrocarbons and non-polar compounds and less than 18% when applied to polar compounds with dielectric constant values ranging from 1.0 to 50.0. A local composition model is developed for mixture dielectric constants based on the Nonrandom-Two-Liquid (NRTL) model commonly used for correlating activity coefficients in vapor-liquid equilibrium data regression. It is predictive in that no mixture dielectric constant data are used and there are no adjustable parameters. Predictions made on 16 binary and six ternary systems at various compositions and temperatures compare favorably to extant correlations data that require experimental values to fit an adjustable parameter in the mixing rule and are significantly improved over values predicted by Oster's equation that also has no adjustable parameters. In addition, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations provide an alternative to analytic relations. Results suggest that MD simulations require very accurate force field models, particularly with respect to the charge distribution within the molecules, to yield accurate pure chemical values of dielectric constant, but with the development of more accurate pure chemical force fields, it appears that mixture simulations of any number of components are likely possible. Using MD simulations, the impact of different portions of the force field on the calculated dielectric constant were examined. The results obtained suggest that rotational polarization arising from the permanent dipole moments makes the dominant contribution to dielectric constant. Changes in the dipole moment due to angle bending and bond stretching (distortion polarization) have less impact on dielectric constant than rotational polarization due to permanent dipole alignment, with angle bending being more significant than bond stretching.

杜家祁. / 論文(博士)--香港中文大學, 1999. / 參考文獻 (p. 1-11 (2nd group)) / 中英文摘要. / Available also through the Internet via Dissertations & theses @ Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Du Jiaqi. / Lun wen (Bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 1999. / Can kao wen xian (p. 1-11 (2nd group)) / Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.

Quels étaient les modernismes existant en Asie de l’Est pendant les années 1920 et 1930 où la première vague des mouvements modernistes a eu lieu ? À travers les études du transfert littéraire de Paul Morand à partir de la France vers la Chine, en passant par le Japon, on s’interroge sur la façon dont les acteurs du monde littéraire japonais et chinois impliqués dans la réception littéraire de Morand ont pensé le modernisme et la modernité. On compare les réflexions des communautés littéraires des deux pays vis-à-vis du modernisme au sein de cette réception morandienne en trois grandes parties : tout d’abord, les traducteurs principaux japonais et chinois des œuvres morandiennes, Horiguchi Daigaku et Dai Wangshu ; ensuite, les critiques qui ont introduit Morand dans le débat du modernisme des années 1920 et 1930, allant jusqu’à créer un champ littéraire dédié à la réception de Morand. Dans le cas japonais, ce sont Chiba Kameo, la communauté littéraire établie, l’École des sensations nouvelles japonaise et sa revue de cercle L’Époque littéraire. Tandis que dans le cas chinois, ce sont l’École des sensations nouvelles chinoise et sa revue littéraire affilée Trains sans rail ; enfin, les deux écrivains représentatifs des Écoles des sensations nouvelles japonaise et chinoise, Yokomitsu Riichi et Liu Na’ou, dont les styles littéraires ont souvent été comparés avec celui de Morand. Par les analyses de ces trois parties, nous voudrions présenter les configurations particulières du modernisme en Asie de l’Est de l’époque. / What were the modernisms of East Asia during the 1920s and the 1930s? By studying the literary journey of Paul Morand from France to China via Japan, we question how the intellectuals of Japanese and Chinese literary world who were involved in this literary reception during the 1920s and the 1930s, considered modernism through French ideas. The Japanese and the Chinese reflections on modernism are compared in three main aspects: first, the translation of Morand’s works done by Horiguchi Daigaku and Dai Wangshu. Second, the criticisms which involved Morand into the debate concerning modernism in this period, created a literary field for the reception of Morand in these two countries. For the Japanese case, the parties that were concerned the most were Chiba Kameo, the established literary community, the Japanese Neo-Perception School and her coterie magazine Age of Literature. Whereas for the Chinese case, the Chinese Neo-Perception School and her affiliated magazine Trains without Railway were the most relevant. Third, two representative writers of the Neo-Perception Schools, Yokomitsu Riichi and Liu Na’ou, whose literary styles were often compared to those of Morand’s. Through the analysis of these three aspects, we seek to show the configurations of modernism in East Asia.