Total ankle arthroplasties (TAAs) are mechanical devices used to replace the articular surfaces of the ankle joint in order to relieve pain for patients with osteoarthritis. Since most osteoarthritis is post-traumatic, and due to the highly variable individual foot geometry, TAAs are rarely inserted into normal geometry. This leads to serious problems with stresses and contact pressures in TAA components. This study uses finite element (FE) modeling to determine how hindfoot alignment, or how far in varus or valgus the most distal part of the calcaneus is perpendicularly from the axis of the tibia, affects the stresses and contact pressures in the articulating surfaces of two different TAA models. To investigate the effects of foot alignment on hardware stresses after TAA, FE models were generated. Models of the mobile bearing, three component Scandinavian Total Ankle Replacement (STAR) and the fixed bearing, two component Zimmer Trabecular Metal Total Ankle (Zimmer) were generated from laser scans of the hardware and virtually implanted into 3D models of the tibia and talus. Ligaments were modeled as linear springs to impart physiologically realistic flexibility in the model. The stance phase of a walking gait cycle was applied and stresses and contact pressures at the articulation between model components were recorded for various degrees of hindfoot alignment [1]. Data analyzed shows that both models have areas of high concentrations of stress and contact pressure. The Zimmer TAA seems to favor a valgus alignment due to the lower stresses and contact pressures in valgus alignments compared to varus. Though the STAR does not generally favor one alignment over the other, it does have significantly lower stresses and contact pressures than the Zimmer. These differences may be due to the geometric congruency of the STAR versus the anatomical articulation of the Zimmer.

El presente trabajo tuvo como objetivo principal el desarrollo de una metodología para la empresa RENUSA, que le permita identificar, categorizar, priorizar y autorizar el portafolio de proyectos de tecnologías de la información. Esta empresa comercializa repuestos y realiza mantenimiento de autos. El resultado de la aplicación de la metodología es obtener el máximo beneficio financiero y no financiero. Así mismo se determinó el nivel actual organizacional de la gestión del portafolio de proyectos. Así mismo se desarrolló cuatro capítulos, donde en el primer capítulo se definieron los términos y conceptos que sirvieron en la comprensión de la metodología y su aplicación, así como también los principales estándares de evaluación del grado de madurez organizacional de la gestión de proyectos. En el segundo capítulo, se desarrolló la situación actual de la empresa, donde se comprendió los objetivos estratégicos de la empresa, la estructura organizacional, la cadena de suministro, entre otros. Luego se definió la situación problemática y los objetivos específicos de solución. En el tercer capítulo, se planteó los alcances de la metodología de gestión de portafolio de proyectos bajo la metodología del PMI, adecuado al nivel de madurez objetivo de la organización, bajo el estándar OPM3. Así mismo, se profundizó en el estudio de la herramienta de decisión AHP, la cual se usó en la etapa de priorización, para alinear el portafolio a los objetivos estratégicos de la empresa. Finalmente, en el último capítulo se mencionó las conclusiones obtenidas, luego de la evaluación a la empresa, y las recomendaciones respectivas que permitirán mejorar la gestión de portafolio de proyectos en la empresa RENUSA. / The main objective of this work was to develop a methodology for the RENUSA company, which allows it to identify, categorize, prioritize and authorize the portfolio of information technology projects. This company sells parts and performs car maintenance. The result of the application of the methodology is to obtain the maximum financial and non-financial benefit. Likewise, the current organizational level of project portfolio management was determined. Likewise, four chapters were developed, where in the first chapter were defined the terms and concepts that served in the understanding of the methodology and its application, as well as the principles of the evaluation of the degree of maturity of the organizational project management. In the second chapter, the current situation of the company is described, which includes the strategic objectives of the company, the organizational structure, the chain supply, among others. Then the problematic situation and the specific objectives of the solution are defined. In the third chapter, the scope of the management of the project portfolio management, under the PMI standard, was considered appropriate to the level of objective maturity of the organization, under the OPM3 standard. Likewise, it deepened in the study of the decision tool AHP, which was used in the prioritization stage, to align the portfolio to the strategic objectives of the company. Finally, in the last chapter the conclusions are mentioned, then to evaluate the company, and the recommendations, refers to the management of the project portfolio in the RENUSA company. / Trabajo de investigación

Die Identifikation der Bindungsspezifitäten von Proteininteraktionsdomänen und damit letztlich auch ‎die Fähigkeit potentielle Bindungspartner dieser in vivo vorherzusagen bildet ein grundlegendes ‎Element für das Verständnis der biologischen Funktionen dieser Domänen. In dieser Arbeit wurde ‎untersucht, inwieweit solche Vorhersagen bezüglich der SH3-Domäne – als Beispiel für eine ‎Proteininteraktionsdomäne – mithilfe von Support-Vector-Machines (SVMs) möglich sind, wenn ‎diesen als Informationsquelle ausschließlich die innerhalb der Aminosäuresequenz der Domäne ‎konservierten Informationen zur Verfügung stehen. Um den SVM-basierten Klassifikator zu ‎trainieren und zu validieren, wurde ein Satz aus 51 SH3-Domänen verwendet, die zuvor ‎entsprechend ihrer Ligandenpräferenz in ein System aus acht verschiedenen Klassen eingeteilt ‎worden waren. Da die innerhalb der Aminosäuresequenzen konservierten Informationen in ‎abstrakte Zahlenwerte konvertiert werden mussten (Voraussetzung für mathematisch basierte ‎Klassifikatoren wie SVMs), wurde jede Aminosäuresequenz durch ihren jeweiligen Fisher-Score-‎Vektor ausgedrückt. Die Ergebnisse erbrachten einen Klassifikationserror, welcher weit unterhalb des ‎Zufallsniveaus lag, was darauf hindeutet, dass sich die Bindungsspezifität (Klasse) einer SH3-Domäne ‎in der Tat von seiner Aminosäuresequenz ableiten lassen dürfte. Mithilfe klassenspezifisch ‎emittierter, artifizieller Sequenzen, implementiert in den Trainingsprozess des Klassifikators, um ‎etwaigen nachteiligen Auswirkungen von Overfitting zu entgegenzuwirken, sowie durch ‎Berücksichtigung taxonomischer Informationen des Klassensystems während Training und ‎Validierung, ließ sich der Klassifikationserror sogar noch weiter senken und lag schließlich bei lediglich ‎‎35,29% (vergleiche Zufall: 7/8 = 87.50%). Auch die Nutzung von Feature Selections zur Abmilderung ‎Overfitting-bedingter, negativer Effekte lieferte recht vielversprechende Ergebnisse, wenngleich ihr ‎volles Potential aufgrund von Software-Beschränkungen nicht ausgenutzt werden konnte.‎ Die Analyse der Positionen im Sequence-Alignment, welche für den SVM- basierten Klassifikator am ‎relevantesten waren, zeigte, dass diese häufig mit Positionen korrelierten, von denen angenommen ‎wird auch in vivo eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Determination der Bindungsspezifität (Klasse) zu spielen. ‎Dies unterstreicht nicht nur die Reliabilität des präsentierten Klassifikators, es gibt auch Grund zur ‎Annahme, dass das Verfahren möglicherweise auch als Supplement anderer Ansätze genutzt werden ‎könnte, welche zum Ziel haben die Positionen zu identifizieren, die die Ligandenpräferenz in vivo ‎determinieren. Informationen, die nicht nur für ein besseres Verständnis der SH3-Domäne (und ‎möglicherweise auch anderer Proteininteraktionsdomänen) von grundlegender Bedeutung sind, ‎sondern auch aus pharmakologischer Sicht von großem Interesse sein dürften.‎ / Regarding protein-interaction-domains the identification of their binding specificities and ‎eventually ‎also the ability to predict potential binding partners for them in vivo constitutes a fundamental ‎element for the understanding of the biological functions of these domains. In this study it ‎was ‎investigated to what extent such predictions could be made for the SH3-domain – as an ‎example ‎for a protein-interaction-domain – when using support-vector-machines (SVMs) trained ‎exclusively ‎with the information conserved within the amino-acid-sequence of the domain. A set of ‎‎51 SH3-‎domains, pre-classified into a system of eight different classes according to their ligand ‎preference, was used to train and cross-validate the SVM-based classifier. To convert the ‎information ‎conserved within the amino-acid-sequences into abstract numeric values (a ‎prerequisite for a ‎mathematics-based classifier like SVMs) each sequence was represented by its ‎respective Fisher-‎score-vector. The results revealed a classification error level way below chance ‎level, indicating the ‎binding specificity (class) of an SH3-domain can indeed be inferred from its ‎amino-acid-sequence. ‎With the help of class-specific emitted, artificial sequences introduced into ‎the training process of the ‎classifier to counter adverse overfitting effects and by additionally ‎considering taxonomic ‎information of the class system during training and cross-validation, the ‎classification error level of ‎the classifier could be lowered even farther, eventually reaching a level ‎as low as 35.29% (compare ‎chance level: 7/8 = 87.50%). The use feature selections to counter ‎overfitting returned quite ‎promising results, too, however couldn't be exploited to its full potential ‎due to software limitations. ‎ The analysis of those positions in the sequence-alignment being most relevant for the SVM-‎based ‎classifier showed, they frequently correlated with positions considered to also play in vivo a ‎pivotal ‎role in binding specificity (class) determination of the SH3-domain. Not only does this ‎underline the ‎reliability of the presented classifier, it also gives reason to believe, the method could ‎possibly be ‎used as a supplement for other approaches trying to identify positions that determine ‎ligand ‎preference in vivo. Information, not only fundamental for a better understanding of the SH3-‎‎domain (and maybe also other protein-interaction-domains), but also likely to be of great interest ‎from a pharmacological point of view.‎

quot; Organisational critical activities quot; (OCAs) are activities which must be conducted by the organisation constantly in order to be successful in the industry. They are recognised as being essential to short, medium, and long-term success in that industry, have been significantly resourced and receive regular senior management monitoring and direction. Although these activities are extremely important, some empirical studies have shown that they are not well supported by organisations, particularly in the area of Web support. This thesis develops an evaluation methodology called the quot;organisational critical activity Web support evaluation methodology quot; (OCAWSEM) which can be utilised to elicit OCAs from organisations, evaluate whether an organisation acutes; OCAs are being supported by its Web site, and provide guidance on how the organisation can improve its Web site. To develop the OCAWSEM, this thesis reviews the relevant literature and proposes a prototype OCAWSEM. A new iterative case design (ICD) approach has been used in order to further develop the prototype, and then to test the improved OCAWSEM. The selected field cases were eight universities in New Zealand. In total, 43 semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior teams, middle level managers, and Web teams. A systematic review of these universitiesacute Web sites was performed from the provideracutes, rather than the useracutes perspective. The outcome shows that the Developed OCAWSEM is a valid and reliable methodology for the evaluation of the support for OCAs from Web sites in the universities in New Zealand. This thesis provides useful lessons, drawn from the development and testing processes, as the basis from which to develop more specific OCAWSEMs for use in other organisational and industry contexts. Both practitioners and academicians can gain a deeper understanding of the notion of OCAs, better elicit OCAs from management, conduct Web site evaluations, and discuss the support of the Web sites for the OCAs.

<p>This thesis describes the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry as an analytical tool. The theory of NMR spectroscopy in general and quantitative NMR spectrometry (qNMR) in particular is described and the instrumental properties and parameter setups for qNMR measurements are discussed. Examples of qNMR are presented by impurity determination of pharmaceutical compounds and analysis of urine samples from rats fed with either water or a drug (metabolic profiling). The instrumental parameter setup of qNMR and traditional data pre-treatments are examined. Spectral smoothing by convolution with a triangular function, which is an unusual application in this context, was shown to be successful regarding the sensitivity and robustness of the method in paper II. In addition, papers III and IV comprise the field of peak alignment, especially designed for ¹H-NMR spectra of urine samples. This is an important preprocessing tool when multivariate analysis is to be applied. A novel peak alignment method was developed and compared to the traditional bucketing approach and a conceptually different alignment method.</p><p>Univariate, multivariate, linear and nonlinear data analyses were applied to qNMR data. In papers I–II, calibration models were created to examine the potential of qNMR for these applications. The data analysis in papers III–VI was mainly explorative. The potential of data fusion and data correlation was examined in order to increase the possibilities of analysing the highly complex samples from metabolic profiling (papers V–VI). Data from LC/MS analysis of the same samples were used with the ¹H-NMR data in different ways. Correlation analyses between the¹H-NMR data and the drug metabolites identified from the LC/MS data were also performed. In this process, data fusion proved to be a valuable tool.</p>

<p>Ontologies is one of the key techniques used in Semantic Web establishment. Nowadays，many ontologies have been developed and it is critical to understand the relationships between the terms of the ontologies, i.e. we need to align the ontologies.</p><p>This thesis deals with an approach for finding relationships between ontologies using literature by classifying documents related to terms in the ontologies.</p><p> </p><p>In this project the general method from [1] is used, but in the classifier generation part, a brand new classifier based on SVMs algorithm is implemented by LPU and SVM<em>^light</em>. We evaluate our approach and compare it to previous approaches.</p>

<p>Bakgrund: Befintlig alignmentteori berör inte de svårigheter som företag möter i att uppnå strategisk alignment, särskilt när de genomgår större förändringar. De förändringar som amerikanska och europeiska fullserviceflygbolag har genomgått genom att introducera lågprisalternativ visar att det har varit svårt att skapa lönsamhet. </p><p>Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är, att med hjälp av exempel från flygbranschen, konkretisera befintlig alignmentteori, sätta alignment i relation till olika förändringsprocesser, samt att utifrån de olika förändringsprocesserna diskutera förutsättningar för att uppnå alignment vid en partiell förändring. </p><p>Genomförande: Sekundärdatastudie av den amerikanska och europeiska flygmarknaden. </p><p>Resultat: Förutsättningarna för att uppnå alignment vid partiell förändring kan underlättas av en dialektisk förändringsprocess i kombination med ett livscykelsynsätt, och försvåras av en teleologisk eller evolutionär förändringsprocess.</p>

<p>For the purpose of this descriptive translation study, a translation corpus was built from roughly the first 20,000 words of each of the first four Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, and their respective translations into Swedish. I*Link, a new type of word alignment tool, was used to align the samples on a word level and to investigate and analyse the aligned corpus. The purpose of the study was threefold: to investigate manifestations of translation universals, to search for evidence of translator development and to study the efficiency of different strategies for using the alignment tools.</p><p>The results show that all three translation universals were manifested in the corpus, both on a general pattern level and on a more specific lexical level. Additionally, a clear pattern of translator development was discovered, showing that there are differences between the four different samples. The tendency is that the translations become further removed from the original texts, and this difference occurs homogeneously and sequentially. In the word alignment, four different ways of using the tools were tested, and one strategy was found to be more efficient than the others. This strategy uses dynamic resources from previous alignment sessions as input to I*Trix, an automatic alignment tool, and the output file is manually post-edited in I*Link.</p><p>In conclusion, the study shows how new tools and methods can be used in descriptive translation studies to extract information that is not readily obtainable with traditional tools and methods.</p>

<p>Syftet med studien var att undersöka försvarsmaktlärares uppfattning om</p><p>relationen mellan kursernas examinationsform och faktorer som har med de</p><p>studerandes lärande att göra. Studien hade dessutom som syfte att undersöka om</p><p>det finns några betydande skillnader i uppfattning mellan skolor med olika</p><p>karaktär i form av generalist- eller specialistinriktning på utbildningen.</p><p>Konstruktionen av empirisk data har möjliggjorts genom att vi har intervjuat</p><p>lärare från två olika skolor, dels Militärhögskolan i Halmstad (MHS H) dels</p><p>Försvarsmaktens tekniska skola (FMTS).</p><p>För att kunna tolka vårt resultat har vi använt oss av två referensramar. Det är</p><p>Marton och Booth teoretiska referensram om lärandet samt Biggs teorier om</p><p>konstruktiv gruppering av de faktorer som främjar lärandet. Resultatet pekar på</p><p>att det är av betydelse för de studerandes lärande att lärarna gör medvetna val för</p><p>att examinationen skall vara ett stöd i lärandet och inte enbart en</p><p>kontrollfunktion. Vidare kan vi konstatera att det inte föreligger några skillnader</p><p>i uppfattning om examinationens vikt för lärandet utan skillnaden ligger i</p><p>uppfattning om i vilken grad man faktiskt har möjlighet att realisera sina planer</p><p>med hänsyn taget till de ramfaktorer som styr planeringen av den genomförda</p><p>utbildningen.</p>

<p><strong>Aim: </strong>Based on a case study of UNICEF Supply Division (SD), this thesis seeks to investigate how non-profit organizations use scorecards and if the use of scorecards in non-profit organizations results in strategic alignment.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method: </strong>The theoretical framework for this case study consists primarily of the strategic performance management tool known as the Balanced Scorecard, which consists of interlinked measures, derived from the organization's strategy. For the case study, primary data, both qualitative and quantitative, was collected by means of semi structured interviews with members of senior management and a survey which was sent out to the whole organization. Abductive reasoning was applied in the analysis.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Result & Conclusions:</strong> The case study organization's scorecard focuses mainly on a selection of process measures and is perceived by staff and management as a good diagnostic tool for processes. The organization thus has implemented a more operational adaption of the scorecard. A weak match between the organization's strategy and selected measures in its scorecard in combination with limited incentives for achieving set targets suggest that strategic alignment is likely to be low.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Suggestions for future research:</strong> The scope of the thesis is limited to UNICEF Supply Division. Comparative studies of other UN agencies would increase the reliability of the study. Future research may also try to address, more in-depth, how non-profit organizations can implement more strategic, as opposed to operational performance management systems.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Contribution of the thesis:</strong> While the findings of this study mirror prior findings on Balanced Scorecard use in the non-profit sector, it has given the case study organization valuable insight on important measurement parameters, strategy mapping and other areas of improvement.</p>