Robots are becoming more common; robotics has gone from bleeding-edge technology to an everyday topic that families discuss around thedinner table.The number of robots in the industry is growing, which means thatthe demand and need for robots to understand the environment it isworking in is also growing.The standard method for a robot to gather information about a sceneinvolves moving to different pre-determined poses from which it canview and analyze the scene. However, this approach does not con-sider the topology of the scene that the robot should explore.This thesis aims to create a two-dimensional approach to determinethe next best view ( 2D-NBV) to view and explore the scene, intro-duced in the method section.The 2D-NBV method converts a point cloud of the scene to an ele-vation map. A segmenting network is used to get the positions ofpre-trained objects. The positions are then used to generate a2DGaussian kernel heatmap of the scene. Using the 2D elevation andGaussian map, the NBV pose is then calculated. The NBV pose isthen converted back to a 6D pose that the robot moves to capture anew point cloud and register it to the scene.The 2D-NBV method is compared to a baseline and a state-of-the-artmethod. The baseline method captures four different point cloudsfrom pre-determined positions and registers them together. The state-of-the-art methods find a point of interest and declare a set of viewcandidates on a sphere around the point. Ray casting is used to findthe pose with the highest information gain. This pose is set as theNBV for the robot to move to. The goal of this thesis is that themethod should perform better than the baseline method, describedfurther in the method section.The evaluation metric used in this thesis is how wellthe differentmethods could estimate the bounding boxes of pre-trained items us-ing an off-the-shelf semantic scene segmentation method. Six sceneswith varying difficulty were constructed to test the methods.The results showed that the 2D-NBV method successfully comple-mented the scene with information about its empty cells. The 2D-NBV outperforms the state-of-the-art on occluded scenes. The 2D-NBV performed overall just as well as the baseline. The reason thatthe 2D-NBV did not outperform the baseline is seen as a consequenceof the information loss going from 3D to 2D.

This diploma thesis deals with the topic of informal caregivers. The work is divided into two parts. The theoretical portion will take us through general information about caregivers, quality of life, the complexity of care and the offer of assistance to people caring for a family member or other loved one. The topics of stress, needs and support of informal caregivers are elaborated in more detail, and the topic of social policy and its principles and functions is also further explored. The work emphasizes the importance of systemic support for all caregivers of a loved one. In the research portion, this diploma thesis presents the experiences and situations of individual participants. The author has used the method of qualitative research in this study. In this diploma thesis, the research sample consisted of twelve persons from the Czech Republic and three persons from abroad (from the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Austria and the Slovak Republic). The information obtained from foreign participants serves to illustrate the positions of informal caregivers in neighboring countries. The research sample consisted of persons who were approached by the author on the basis of a random selection and who met the criteria. The information was obtained mainly in the form of interviews and...

No description available.

Chapter 1. The family Pteronarcyidae (Plecoptera) is a highly studied group of stoneflies and very important to a wide variety of aquatic studies. Several phylogenies have been proposed for this group recent decades, however there is little congruence between the various topologies. The present study revises the phylogeny of the group by combining molecular data from mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit II, ribosomal subunit 12S, ribosomal subunit 16S, and nuclear loci ribosomal subinit 18S and Histone H3, with published morphological data in a parsimony-based total evidence analysis. The analysis produced a well-supported phylogeny with novel relationships within the genus Pteronarcys. Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian analyses produced topologies congruent with parsimony analysis. Character mapping revealed several homoplasious morphological characters that were previously thought to be homologous. Chapter 2. Phylogeographic studies in aquatic insects provide valuable insights into mechanisms that shape the genetic structure of aquatic communities. Yet studies that include broad geographic areas are uncommon for this group. We conducted a broad scale phylogeographic analysis of P. badia across western North America. In order to allow us to generate a larger mitochondrial data set, we used 454 seqeuncing to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial genome in the early stages of the project. Our analysis reveals what appears to be a complex history of isolation and multiple invasions among some lineages. The study provides evidence of multiple glacial refugia and suggests that historical climactic isolations have been important mechanisms in determining genetic structure of insects in western North America. Our ability to generate a large mitochondrial data set through mitochondrial genome reconstruction greatly improved nodal support of our mitochondrial gene tree, and allowed us to make stronger inference of relationships between lineages and timing of divergence events.

The grain amaranths (Amaranthus sp.) and quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) are important seed crops in South America. These crops have gained international attention in recent years for their nutritional quality and tolerance to abiotic stress. We report the identification and development of functional single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assays for both amaranth and quinoa. SNPs were identified using a genome reduction protocol and next generation sequencing. SNP assays are based on KASPar genotyping chemistry and were detected using the Fluidigm dynamic array platform. A diversity screen consisting of 41 amaranth accessions showed that the minor allele frequency (MAF) of the amaranth markers ranged from 0.05 to 0.5 with an average MAF of 0.27. A diversity screen of 113 quinoa accessions showed that the MAF of the quinoa markers ranged from 0.02 to 0.5 with an average MAF of 0.28. Linkage mapping in amaranth produced a linkage map consisting of 16 linkage groups, presumably corresponding to each of the 16 amaranth haploid chromosomes. This map spans 1288 cM with an average marker density of 3.1 cM per marker. Linkage mapping in quinoa resulted in a linkage map consisting of 29 linkage groups with 20 large linkage groups, spanning 1,404 cM with a marker density of 3.1 cM per SNP marker. The SNPs identified here represent important genomic tools needed for genetic dissection of agronomically important characteristics and advanced genetic analysis of agronomic traits in amaranth and quinoa. We also describe in detail the scalable and cost effective SNP genotyping method used in this research. This method is based on KBioscience's competitive allele specific PCR amplification of target sequences and endpoint fluorescence genotyping (KASPar) using a FRET capable plate reader or Fluidigm's dynamic array high throughput platform.

WHO: s definition av stroke är snabbt insättande störningar av lokal eller global cerebral funktion varande mer än 24 timmar. Stroke räknas som en av våra största folksjukdomar. Årligen insjuknar ca 30 000 svenskar i stroke. Studiens syfte är att undersöka sjuksköterskans uppfattning och förståelse för anhörigasas situation. När ens make/maka plötsligt insjuknat i stroke förändras hela livssituationen. Som sjuksköterska är det viktigt att känna till den börda som de anhöriga bär varje dag. Sjuksköterskans roll består av att handla terapeutiskt gentemot patienter och anhöriga. Sjuksköterskan ska vara ärlig och öppen, rollen innebär också att ha en förmåga till inlevelse och att bry sig om. Metoden att undersöka sjuksköterskans uppfattning och förståelse för de anhörigasas situation var kvalitativa intervjuer av 6 sjuksköterskor på en neurologavdelning. I resultatet framkom 11 olika teman med subkategorier. Resultatet visade sig vara att sjuksköterskorna hade bra insikt i de anhörigas situation och att de arbetade holistiskt och medvetet. Resultatet visade också på brister i tid och avsaknad av fysiskt utrymme för enskilda samtal, sjuksköterska och make/maka emellan. / WHO:s definition of stoke is rapidly occurrence of local or global failure in the cerebral function lasting for more than 24 hours. The purpose of this study is to examine the nurses perception and understanding for the situation of stroke relatives. When your in the situation that your spouse suddenly gets a stroke your whole lifesituation will change. As a nurse its important to recognize the burden the relatives carry every day. The nurses role consists of a therapeutic treatment of the patient and relatives. The nurses should be honest and open minded, the role also consists of being empathic and to care about. The method chosen in order to study the nurses perception and understanding for the situation of stroke relatives were interviews which were conducted with 6 nurses at a neurological ward. The result showed that the nurses had good insight about the situation of stroke relatives and that they worked conscious and with a holistic approach. In the result emerged 11 themes with subkategories. The result also showed a lack of time and the need for more physical space for personal conversation between nurse and spouse.

In 2013, a new set of science standards was introduced for K-12 science education, called the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which focused on three dimensions of science learning that work together: disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. These standards are novel in their emphasis on students needing more than only content knowledge to learn science and engineering. The NGSS science and engineering practices (SEPs) stress the importance of students engaging in the authentic practices of scientists and engineers to help them think like a scientist, practice science themselves, and overcome the misconception that science is a collection of isolated facts (NRC, 2012a). These SEPs include: asking questions and defining problems, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, using mathematics and computational thinking, constructing explanations and designing solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. We performed a qualitative study to determine the conceptions of undergraduate students, the majority of whom were enrolled in STEM majors, about the SEPs. With a theoretical framework of phenomenography guiding our study's design, we conducted deep, open-ended interviews with 59 undergraduate students. The analysis consisted of transcribing interviews, coding transcriptions, writing descriptions of the codes to identify a limited number of distinct categories that describe how students viewed individual SEPs, and analyzing relationships among these categories to create outcome spaces for the ways students viewed the SEPs. In the current dissertation, we present the students' specific conceptions of each of the SEPs. Although the students had a better understanding of some of the SEPs than others (e.g., they understood planning and carrying out investigations and using mathematics and computational thinking best), we found that undergraduates did not have a high level of understanding of any SEP. This is similar to conceptions of undergraduates in the literature, which mostly consisted of preservice teachers. The undergraduates in this study conflated many of the SEPs, misinterpreted SEPs based on the everyday meaning of terms in the practices (i.e., they discussed an everyday meaning of words like "questions" instead of focusing on the unique meaning of "questions" in a scientific context), and perceived that the structured learning activities in which they engage in their current coursework limit their abilities to engage in the SEPs. These results suggest that STEM students need more opportunities to authentically engage in the SEPs in open-ended environments, coupled with explicit instruction that emphasizes the difference between everyday usages of words in the SEPs and their scientific meanings.

Next-generation Internet will be governed by the need for flexibility. Heterogeneous end-systems, novel applications, and security and manageability challenges require networks to provide a broad range of services that go beyond store-and-forward. Following this trend, a service-centric network architecture is proposed for the next-generation Internet. It utilizes router-based programmability to provide packet processing services inside the network and decompose communications into these service blocks. By providing different compositions of services along the data path, such network can customize its connections to satisfy various communication requirements. This design extends the flexibility of the Internet to meet its next-generation challenges. This work addresses three major challenges in implementing such service-centric networks. Finding the optimal path for a given composition of services is the first challenge. This is called "service routing" since both service availability and routing cost need to be considered. Novel algorithms and a matching protocol are designed to solve the service routing problem in large scale networks. A prototype based on Emulab is implemented to demonstrate and evaluate our design. Finding the optimal composition of services to satisfy the communication requirements of a given connection is the second challenge. This is called "service composition." A novel decision making framework is proposed, which allows the deduction of the service composition problem into a planning problem and automates the composition of service according to specified communication requirements. A further investigation shows that extending this decision making framework to combine the service routing and service composition problems yields a better solution than solving them separately. Run-time resource management on the data plane is the third challenge. Several run-time task mapping approaches have been proposed for Network Processor systems. An evaluation methodology based on queuing network is designed to systematically evaluate and compare these solutions under various network traffic scenarios. The results of this work give qualitative and quantitative insights into next-generation Internet design that combines issues from computer networking, architecture, and system design.

Postpartumpsykos är ett akut psykiatriskt tillstånd som drabbar ungefär 0,1-0,2 procent av alla nyförlösta kvinnor. Postpartumpsykos uppstår vanligen mellan dag tre och dag tio efter förlossningen och symtom kan innefatta ångest, irritabilitet, sömnsvårigheter, vanföreställningar och hallucinationer. Tillståndet är allvarligt och kräver inneliggande vård och behandling. När en kvinna drabbas av postnatal psykisk ohälsa är det sedan tidigare känt att även närstående till henne påverkas negativt. Syftet med denna litteraturöversikt är att beskriva kvinnor och deras närståendes upplevelser av postpartumpsykos. En icke-systematisk litteraturöversikt användes som metod för att besvara arbetets syfte. Studier med kvalitativ ansats inkluderades i litteraturöversiktens resultatsammanställning. Totalt inkluderades 13 artiklar där det efter sammanställning identifierades tre huvudteman med tre underteman vardera. Huvudteman som identifierades följde sjukdomsförloppets utveckling över tid: insjuknandet och sjukdomen, behandling och vårdtiden, återhämtning och tiden efter sjukdomen. Resultatet visade att insjuknandet till en början upplevdes som något diffust där närstående hade svårt att förstå att något var allvarligt fel. Sedan utvecklade kvinnorna allvarliga psykotiska symtom vilka präglades av paranoia och vanföreställningar om sin omvärld. Känslor och tankar av skuldbeläggande karaktär uppstod hos både kvinnorna och de närstående där de upplevde ett behov av att leta efter svar på varför de drabbats av sjukdomen. Behandlingen och vårdtiden upplevdes som en prövande tid för både kvinnorna och deras närstående. Kvinnorna var ofta separerade från sina barn och självständigt ansvar hamnade på de närstående avseende. omhändertagande av barn och hem. Ett stort behov av stöd identifierades där upplevelsen av detta varierade beroende på vilken behandling kvinnan erhöll. Att hela familjen inkluderades i behandlingen var viktigt för att ha en god upplevelse av vårdtiden. När kvinnorna skrevs ut från heldygnsvård och återvände till hemmet upplevdes det som en utmanande tid och behovet av fortsatt stöd var stort för att främja återhämtningen. De psykotiska symtomen minskade under denna tid men kunde i stället övergå i depressiva symtom. Social interaktion var en viktig del under återhämtningen och upplevelsen av hur relationerna kvinnorna och de närstående emellan hade förändrats var i stort fokus under denna period. Slutsatsen av studien visade upplevelsen av de utmaningar kvinnor med postpartum psykos och hennes närstående ställdes inför i samband med pykosen. Skam- och skuldkänslor upplevdes av både kvinnorna och deras närstående. Behovet av förbättringar gällande kunskap om tillståndet både i allmänhet och inom hälso- och sjukvården identifierades. Delaktighet och information inom vård och behandling önskades av deltagarna. Vikten av stöd under vårdtiden och återhämtningen var betydelsefull för kvinnan och hennes närstående. / Postpartum psychosis is a serious condition that affects approximately 0,1-0,2 % of all women postpartum. The women who develop the condition need inpatient care and often experience symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, lack of sleep, delusions, and hallucinations. When women develop postnatal mental illness it is previously known that their next of kin also suffer during this time. This study aimes to describe women and their next of kins' experience of postpartum psychosis. A non-systematic literature review was chosen as method for this study. The articles that the authors included were of a qualitative approach. A total of thirteen articles were included in the result and three main themes were identified within the data; becoming ill, treatment and hospital stay and recovery and aftermath. Findings of the results shows that becoming ill is often experienced as something diffuse which led to that neither the women or her next of kin could tell that something serious was going on. The women later developed psychotic symptoms such as paranoia and delusions. The feeling of guilt was identified as a powerful emotion. The time spent at the hospital was identified as a difficult time for both the women who often felt isolated and not being able to see their children, but also for her next of kin who now was taking care of the newborn baby. Information and participation in the treatment were identified as important for both the women and her next of kin during the hospital stay. Support needs were identified in both groups. The recovery was experienced as a tough time for the women and social interaction was found to be an important part of the recovery. During the aftermath, many participants experienced a change in their relationships. The conclusion of this study illustrates the challenging experience of postpartum psychosis. Feelings of shame and guilt were experienced by both the women and next of kin. Improvements are needed in awareness of this condition and a lack of qualification is experienced in the healthcare system. Support needs and including family during the hospital care is desirable for both the women and her next of kin'.

no / This research report was commissioned to assess and evaluate the criminal justice and business case for the Officer Next Door (OND) program. Since its establishment in 1998, the OND program has sought to provide Housing Tasmania residents with a reassurance policing approach based on early intervention in criminal and anti-social behaviour on Housing Tasmania broadacre estates.