Syftet med studien är att undersöka om och i sådana fall hur innehållet i två läromedel för årskurs 3 förbereder eleverna inför de nationella proven i matematik. För att undersöka detta analyseras de två läromedlen Favorit matematik och Rik matematiks läroböcker för årskurs 3. Analysen utgår från de förmågor som de nationella proven år 2019 prövar. För att få svar på studiens forskningsfrågor genomförs två semistrukturerade intervjuer med verksamma lärare samt en läromedelsanalys. Resultatet visar på att läroböckerna prioriterar de fem matematiska förmågorna olika. Resultatet visar även på att lärare upplever läroböcker som mastiga och att lärarhandledningen har en stor betydelse för undervisningen. Studiens slutsats är att för att för att upprätthålla en högkvalitativ undervisning är det inte hållbart att endast utgå ifrån ett läromedel. Läraren behöver besitta ämnes- och ämnespedagogisk kompetens så att alla matematiks förmågor kan utvecklas. När en skola väljer att arbeta med ett nytt läromedel är det av stor vikt att hela konceptet med läromedlet anammas och inte endast läroboken.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of religion on individuals' expectations for AI alignment. Drawing from an online survey with over 200 participants from the United States, the study revealed that one's religious affiliation shapes certain expectations towards AI alignment, notably indicating a tendency among religiously affiliated individuals to expect AI systems to underscore and prioritize their own beliefs. The study also showed that individuals with higher levels of religiosity hold stronger expectations that AI systems should align with the moral values of their religious traditions. Furthermore, while diverse religious affiliations are expected to lead to varying expectations from AI systems, empirical support for this hypothesis was largely limited. Overall, this study reaffirms that the issue of AI alignment involves not only technical challenges but also profound social implications, requiring careful consideration of religious diversity.

The decision to apply for Swedish membership in NATO in May 2022 demonstrates a major shift in security policy, as it means leaving the tradition of non-alignment. Three factors make this event interesting to explore further. 1) The decision was conducted under rapid circumstances and, 2) two of the larger political parties, the Social democratic party and the Sweden democrats, changed their traditional viewpoint on keeping non-alignment and instead argue for NATO-membership. 3) The decision was isolated from debates and referendum, which means a lack of transparency to the citizens. The research problem is focused on how this rapid decision officially was legitimized, and the aim of the research is thus analysing how the discourse on NATO-membership was constructed and prompted by the political actors who changed their policy. Leaning on theories on how attitudes, worldviews and security are constructed, this report analyses both the political actors’ communication process as well as how they displayed their attitudes and interpretations of the security context. Methodologically, Political discourse analysis (PDA) was applied on speeches and statements in order to deconstruct arguments, and as a complement, statistics were analysed to view public opinion. The findings display that the political actors mostly used descriptive arguments to rationalise the decision to apply for membership in NATO. In addition, the political parties used arguments associated with “fear” and “danger”. Emotional arguments that connoted “national love” were integrated in the Social democratic party´s speech to the citizens. In contrast, the Sweden democrats offered few statements and short speeches. Similarities between the political actors were that the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022 is mirrored in the political actors’ interpretation of the security situation and the claim that Sweden needs the defence guarantees that follows with a membership in NATO. In conclusion, the findings suggest that the Swedish resistance to NATO-membership has turned to positive attitudes in a similar way in both politics and the “everyday life” of the citizens.

Date: 2023-05-30 Level: Bachelor Thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr  Institution:  School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University  Authors:  Savannah Buhler         Tuuli Söder                (99/02/15)                   (99/03/12) Title: The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities on B2B Customer Relationships Supervisor: Edward Gillmore  Keywords: CSR activities, B2B Relationships, Collaboration, Alignment, Differentiation Research question: What effect do CSR alignment strategies and CSR differentiation strategies have on a firm's B2B relationships?  Purpose: The purpose of this research is to study how a firm aligns or differentiates its CSR strategies in a B2B context. The aim is to investigate how a firm’s CSR strategies affect customer relationships. By doing an explorative case study, this research will provide a deeper understanding of what types of CSR activities a B2B firm is doing and where those activities are used strategically. It investigates how the firm can leverage these activities to strengthen customer relationships by taking responsible and sustainable measures. Method: A qualitative single case study with an inductive approach, the data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: Strengthening B2B relationships can be done by aligning with stakeholder CSR needs. Being proactive and innovative can give a competitive advantage and help differentiate from the competition. These two strategies are used simultaneously and are interrelated. Collaboration is also key to strengthening these relationships.

The increasing availability of high-quality genome assemblies raised interest in the characterization of genomic architecture. Major architectural elements, such as common repeats and segmental duplications (SDs), increase genome plasticity that stimulates further evolution by changing the genomic structure and inventing new genes. Optimal computation of SDs within a genome requires quadratic-time local alignment algorithms that are impractical due to the size of most genomes. Additionally, to perform evolutionary analysis, one needs to characterize SDs in multiple genomes and find relations between those SDs and unique (non-duplicated) segments in other genomes. A na ̈ıve approach consisting of multiple sequence alignment would make the optimal solution to this problem even more impractical. Thus there is a need for fast and accurate algorithms to characterize SD structure in multiple genome assemblies to better understand the evolutionary forces that shaped the genomes of today. Here we introduce a new approach, BISER, to quickly detect SDs in multiple genomes and identify elementary SDs and core duplicons that drive the formation of such SDs. BISER improves earlier tools by (i) scaling the detection of SDs with low homology (75%) to multiple genomes while introducing further 10–34× speed-ups over the existing tools, and by (ii) characterizing elementary SDs and detecting core duplicons to help trace the evolutionary history of duplications to as far as 300 million years. / Graduate

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology, the demands for higher communication rates are increasing. Higher communication rate corresponds to higher DoF. Interference alignment, which is an emerging interference management technique, is able to substantially increase the DoF of wireless communication systems. This thesis mainly studies the delay-based interference alignment technique. The key problem lies in the design of the transmission scheme and the appropriate allocation of the propagation delay, so as to achieve the desired DoF of different wireless networks. In addition, through delay-based interference alignment, the achievability of extreme points of the DoF region of different wireless networks can be proved.

It is widely assumed that current phylogenetic methods are fairly accurate at recovering the evolutionary relationships among different species, but evaluating the relative success of this enterprise is a difficult task. This study addresses some fundamental questions associated with generating phylogenetic trees. The complete genomes of five species of Steinernema were sequenced and assembled. Genes were predicted in AUGUSTUS and orthologous genes were found from those data using OrthoMCL. I aligned 3890 genes in MAFFT and eliminated poorly aligned positions with GBlocks. I created individual trees for each gene as well as a supermatrix tree in PAUP*, using a closely related taxon from another genus, Panagrellus redivivus. In the resulting gene trees, I found only a small subset of all the possible topologies. I discovered that the supermatrix tree has the same topology as the topology with the most gene trees in the gene-topology distribution. There are only a small number of histories for all of the genes and many of the genes have the same lineage. I bootstrapped the gene-topology distribution and found that the best-supported topology was sampled 22.1% of the time. I show that many genes must be sampled in order to converge on the topology with the most support from the gene trees in this dataset.

Background: PostureScreen Mobile® is an app created to quickly screen posture using front and side-view photographs. There is currently a lack of evidence that establishes PostureScreen Mobile® (PSM) as a valid measure of posture. Therefore, the purpose of this preliminary study was to document the validity and reliability of PostureScreen Mobile® in assessing static standing posture. Methods: This study was an experimental trial in which the posture of 50 male participants was assessed a total of six times using two different methods: PostureScreen Mobile® and Vicon 3D motion analysis system (VIC). Postural deviations, as measured during six trials of PSM assessments (3 trials with and 3 trials without anatomical markers), were compared to the postural deviations as measured using the VIC as the criterion measure. Measurement of lateral displacement on the x-axis (shift) and rotation on the y-axis (tilt) were made of the head, shoulders, and hips in the frontal plane. Measurement of forward/rearward displacement on the Z-axis (shift) of the head, shoulders, hips, and knees were made in the sagittal plane. Validity was evaluated by comparing the PSM measurements of shift and tilt of each body part to that of the VIC. Reliability was evaluated by comparing the variance of PSM measurements to the variance of VIC measurements. The statistical model employed the Bayesian framework and consisted of the scaled product of the likelihood of the data given the parameters and prior probability densities for each of the parameters. Results: PSM tended to overestimate VIC postural tilt and shift measurements in the frontal plane and underestimate VIC postural shift measurements in the sagittal plane. Use of anatomical markers did not universally improve postural measurements with PSM, and in most cases, the variance of postural measurements using PSM exceeded that of VIC. The patterns in the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) suggest high trial-to-trial variation in posture. Conclusions: We conclude that until research further establishes the validity and reliability of the PSM app, it should not be used in research or clinical applications when accurate postural assessments are necessary or when serial measurements of posture will be performed. We suggest that the PSM be used by health and fitness professionals as a screening tool, as described by the manufacturer. Due to the suspected trial-to-trial variation in posture, we question the usefulness of a single postural assessment.

The main drivers for this research are the complexities associated with the project management and an organization's project management style in dealing with these complexities. This research aims to demonstrate that alignment between project complexity and project management style increases project performance and decreases project issues, and also, with increased project issues, project performance deteriorates. In order to test these claims, this research developed measures for assessing project complexity, project management styles and project issues by employing a survey of project management professionals. The measure for project complexity is based on a taxonomy with four categories: organizational complexity, product complexity, methods (process) complexity and goal complexity. Project management style is defined as the management paradigm that guides the managers of an organization in perceiving and dealing with management problems. The measure for project nagement style is based on the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle and the Newtonian and complexity paradigms. Also the measures for project issues are developed after an extensive content analysis on the literature on project issues, risks and success factors. A self-administered survey instrument (paper-based and on-line) with 40 questions (seven point Likert scale) was utilized. The respondents were the project management professionals from different industries in the Central Florida region. Each respondent was asked to answer questions for two different kinds of projects: a successful project and a challenged project. Based on the data collected by the survey instrument, the results of confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses provide strong evidence that the final measures for project technology complexity, project management styles, project issues and project performance have adequate validity and reliability. Results of the hypothesis tests demonstrate that increased alignment of project complexity and project management style leads to increased project performance and decreased project issues, and also increased project issues leads to project decreased performance. From the perspective of project management, the results of this study have illustrated the importance of aligning a project's complexity and management style. These results suggest that project or program managers can improve the performance of their projects by any attempt to increase the alignment between project complexity and project management style. Project management professionals and theoreticians can use the methodologies provided in this dissertation to assess project complexity, project management style and alignment.

The motivation behind this research is the prevalence of challenges and ambiguity associated with successful organizational change and the numerous available approaches in dealing with these challenges and ambiguity. Many definitions and methods have been suggested to manage change; however, organizations still report a high failure rate of their change initiatives. These high failure rates highlight the continuing need for research and investigation, and imply a lack of a valid framework for managing successful organizational change. This dissertation critically reviews the concept of having one change approach as the “silver-bullet”. In pursuit of this goal, this research contributes a roadmap to the change management literature and provides definitions for describing change types, change methods and change outcomes. This dissertation also develops a conceptual model that proposes relationships and connections between the change types, change method and change outcomes that is assumed to enable successful change. To validate the research conceptual model, two hypotheses were developed and a self-administered survey was created and administered (paper survey and online). The respondents were professionals involved in change projects in the Central Florida region. The unit of analysis in this research was a completed change project. Respondents were asked to complete the survey for two different projects: a successful project and an unsuccessful iii project. Statistical processes were applied to verify the conceptual model and test the research hypotheses. Based on the data collected, exploratory factor analysis was used to verify the validity and reliability of the conceptual model measures. Results of the hypotheses testing revealed that there are relationships between the complexity of the change type and the use of change methods that significantly relate to successful change. The results also revealed that the alignment of the change type and change methods significantly relates to successful change. From the viewpoint of change project managers, the results of this dissertation have confirmed that the complexity of the change project type negatively correlates with change success and the increased use of change methods positively correlates with change success. The results also confirmed that the methods that highly correlate to change success address the following: (a) the situation that needs changing, (b) the proper implementation of change, (c) the establishment of suitable plans and controls to sustain change, and (d) the presence of a credible team leader who influences the major decisions during the change project.