Medical tourism is a global emerging industry and is an important component of tourism., and operates on the basis of both individual and regional level. Medical tourism refers to a vacation that involves traveling across international borders to obtain a broad range of medical services. It usually includes leisure, fun, and relaxation activities, as well as wellness and health-care service. Patients who seek to reduce their health-care expenditures travel to medical centers in other countries to obtain dental, medical, and surgical services that are less expensive than those at home. Medical tourism can be defined as the provision of cost-effective medical care to patients in collaboration with the tourism industry. This process is usually facilitated by the private medical sector, whereas both the private and public sectors are involved in the tourism industry. By traveling abroad to have surgery or other medical treatment, medical tourists also take advantage of the opportunity to visit a popular travel destination, thus combining health care with a vacation. The aim of this thesis can be summarized as to provide a deep understanding of what factors are essential and require the phenomenon of Medical Tourism in terms of Swedish travel patterns. The research questions aims also to develop a competitive and sustainable business concept within the frames of the current market. The results of this paper aims to proof in addition to the knowledge gained from literature and precedent research, to use a case study methodology to provide a valuable insight for both academics and practitioners into the process of further research, pursue studies and practicing approaches within the context of Medical Tourism. Results indicate that , the factors that characterize the Swedish travel patterns within medical tourism is price, availability and service, quality and the ability of combining holidays with treatment. Medical tourism phenomena can be explained using for components of medical tourism system: medical tourists, medical tourist regenerating regions, medical tourist destinations regions and medical tourism industries. Each component is a basic component of the medical tourism system, and each is mutually connected and interdependent in their mechanisms. Medical tourists require the four areas of the services which are needed for successful medical tourism. Even if the components of service influence each other, in general medical tourism agency plays a major role in arranging the schedule of medical tourists for the for service components. Medical service may be the most important factor which the medical tourists consider when they choose a destination for medical tourism. Accommodation, food and beverage, tourism experiences, and government regulations and socio-cultural factors are also crucial factors affecting the choice of a medical tourism destination. Quality management and Product differentiation is to strategies that both interrelate with each other and benefits both medical tourism efficiencies and medical tourists. They are important strategies from both a sustainable and economic perspectives as Quality management maximizes the internal force of every level in medical tourism clinics in order to satisfy their patients, meanwhile Product differentiation aims to develop sustainable marketing approaches to attract potential medical tourists and create competitive offers.

Proactive ergonomics is generally considered to be a more efficient and cost effective way of designing working environments than reactive ergonomics. It often requires preemptively selecting working postures and forces to reduce potential injury risk. One major issue with proactive ergonomic design is correctly identifying the true manual forces that will be required of a worker to complete defined tasks. Typically, these forces are represented as in direct opposition to the forces required by a particular task. However, this is likely an oversimplification as forces often act in different directions than the task-required direction to increase required force level, enhance balance and reduce joint moments, depending on specific experimental conditions. This study aims to quantify these off-axis forces as they change with different required on-axis force intensities. This thesis evaluated the effects of force intensity on the presence of off-axis forces across four conditions, which included free and constrained postures, and with and without off-axis force. Eighteen female subjects performed static, unilateral, manual pushing and pulling exertions while seated and were limited to force contributions from the right upper extremity. Hand forces and location of bony landmarks were collected from each subject and force intensity consisted of both maximal and submaximal levels (5% to 50% of the maximum producible on-axis force in increments of 5%). All principle direction forces were scaled to the on-axis force level and anatomically relevant joint moments scaled to the maximum capacity joint moment. The main objective of this study was to analyze off-axis force production as force intensity was increased under various constraint conditions. The highest maximum on-axis force was in the fully free condition (off-axis force allowed and posture unconstrained) and as conditions became more constrained for both pushing and pulling exertions, maximum on-axis force production decreased (p=<0.0001). For submaximal exertions in the free posture, participants used off-axis forces to target the shoulder flexion-extension moment by pushing increasingly upwards (p=0.0122) and to the left by 5.6% on-axis (p=0.0025), and by pulling 12.6% on-axis downward (p=<0.0001) and 4.7% on-axis rightward (p=0.0024) compared to when off-axis force was not allowed. When comparing the free to the constrained posture while allowing off-axis force, participants pushed downwards instead of upwards by a difference of 12.9% on-axis (p=0.0002) and pulled less downward (becoming slightly upward) by an increasing difference (p=0.0002) and from decreasing to increasing rightward (p=0.0006). These changes in off-axis force showed a unifying strategy of using less shoulder flexion-extension strength by targeting wrist and elbow moments for pushing and pulling exertions. When in the constrained posture allowing and not allowing off-axis force resulted in more internal elbow flexion (p=0.0003) moment during pushing, and less internal shoulder flexion (p=0.0092), more internal shoulder adduction (p=0.0252), more to less internal elbow supination (p=0.0415), and increasingly less internal wrist flexion (p=0.0296) moments during pulling, which verified previously observed strategies. Finally, for both maximal and submaximal exertions, pulling was more sensitive to changes in off-axis forces compared to pushing which was more sensitive to postural flexibility. In conclusion, the underlying principles as to how and why off-axis forces change provides valuable knowledge to ergonomists so that they can more accurately predict force production in workplace design, ultimately reducing the potential for injury.

Information delivery via the web has become very popular. Along with a growing user population, systems increasingly are supporting content that changes frequently, personalised information, and differentiation and choice. This thesis is concerned with the design and evaluation of resource management strategies for such systems. An architecture that provides scalability through caching proxies is considered. When a cached page is updated at the server, the cached copy may become stale if the server is not able to transmit the update to the proxies immediately. From the perspective of the server, resources are required to transmit updates for cached pages and to process requests for pages that are not cached. Analytic results on how the available resources should be managed in order to minimise staleness-related cost are presented. An efficient algorithm that the server can use to determine the set of pages that should be cached and a policy for transmitting updates for these pages are also presented. We then apply these results to page fragments, a technique that can provide increased efficiency for delivery of personalised pages.

The role of branding in building distribution relationships has attained increased attention in the marketing literature lately and several studies have shown that branding is an effective tool for building stronger relationships between manufacturers and their distribution partners. Unfortunately these findings fail to explain how channel push strategies work independently of consumer pull strategies when it comes to building strong manufacturer brands. On one hand, it is asserted that close interaction between brand representatives and distribution channel members is a prerequisite for success, while it on the other hand is asserted that direct communication to end users is just as important. In terms of managerial implications this has often led to vague recommendations in crafting a "perfect blend" between push and pull strategies.These recommendations constitute a status quo, where marketing managers in manufacturing firms have been placed in between two strategies without clear recommendations on how they work independently of each other. This status quo is a problem in both academic research and managerial practice since distribution channel relationships are seen as an increasingly important source of competitive advantage. As a result, the theoretical foundation of a blended strategy might be reprioritized in advantage for better relationships with distribution channel members, which in effect make push efforts the prioritized channel for manufacturer brand management.This master thesis gives all its attention to channel push branding and provides essential insights into how a brand is built in the minds of distributors, resellers and end-users, through a channel-push strategy. A single case study design is used, investigating a telecom-brand focused solely on a channel push strategy. The investigation concerns the brand identity as well as interviews with distributors, resellers and end-users. The studied brand is analyzed through Aaker's (2002) conceptualization of consumer based brand equity, consisting of brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality and brand loyalty. Although an equity model is used, the goal is not to assess brand value, rather to investigate how brand equity is built through a strict channel push strategy.Although this case illustrates both challenges and limitations, I strongly argue against the assertion that strict push strategies are something of the past. The studied brand is filled with relevant associations and functional attributes and has only suffered minor diversities between different intermediaries and regions. However, this case also shows that channel push branding is a complex procedure that requires careful and specific considerations. Main areas which should be considered are; limitations in awareness creation, difficulties in building brand associations, dependence of interpersonal relations and the activity of the end-user-brand relationship. My main contribution with this case study is a rich description of the underlying phenomena which constitute these considerations. Distribution channel relationships are an increasingly important source of competitive advantage, and I believe that this case provides a new perspective on channel push branding, both to practitioners and to researchers.

Information delivery via the web has become very popular. Along with a growing user population, systems increasingly are supporting content that changes frequently, personalised information, and differentiation and choice. This thesis is concerned with the design and evaluation of resource management strategies for such systems. An architecture that provides scalability through caching proxies is considered. When a cached page is updated at the server, the cached copy may become stale if the server is not able to transmit the update to the proxies immediately. From the perspective of the server, resources are required to transmit updates for cached pages and to process requests for pages that are not cached. Analytic results on how the available resources should be managed in order to minimise staleness-related cost are presented. An efficient algorithm that the server can use to determine the set of pages that should be cached and a policy for transmitting updates for these pages are also presented. We then apply these results to page fragments, a technique that can provide increased efficiency for delivery of personalised pages.

When designing work tasks, one goal should be to enable postures that maximize the force capabilities of the workers while minimizing the overall muscular demands; however, little is known regarding specific shoulder tissue loads during pushing and pulling. This study quantitatively evaluated the effects of direction (anterior-posterior pushing and pulling), handle height (100 cm and 150 cm), handle orientation (vertical and horizontal), included elbow angle (extended and flexed) as well as personal factors (gender, mass and stature) on hand force magnitudes, shoulder and L5/S1 joint moments, normalized mean muscle activation and electromyography (EMG)/force ratios during two-handed maximal push and pull exertions. Twelve female and twelve male volunteers performed maximal voluntary isometric contractions under 10 push and pull experimental conditions that emulated industrial tasks. Hand force magnitudes, kinematic data and bilateral EMG of seven superficial shoulder and trunk muscles were collected. Results showed that direction had the greatest influence on dependent measures. Push exertions produced the greatest forces while also reducing L5/S1 extensor moments, shoulder moments with the 150 cm height and overall muscular demands (p < 0.0001). The 100 cm handle height generated the greatest forces (p < 0.0001) and reduced muscular demands (p < 0.05), but were associated with greater sagittal plane moments (p < 0.05). Females generated, on average, 67% of male forces in addition to incurring greater muscular demands (p < 0.05). The flexed elbows condition in conjunction with pushing produced greater forces with reduced overall muscular demands (p < 0.0001). Furthermore, horizontal handle orientation caused greater resultant moments at all joints (p <. 0.05) The results have important ergonomics implications for evaluating, designing or modifying workstations, tasks or equipment towards improved task performance and the prevention of musculoskeletal injuries and associated health care costs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate municipal development activities of rural oriented areas of the west coast of Sweden. The chosen municipalities for this study are Tanum, Munkedal, Sotenäs and Orust where the aim is to give an understanding to the different municipalities work towards achieving local development and opposing depopulation. The nature of this study is primarily qualitative with a lightly deductive orientation since the presented concept of push and pulls factors of migration and the concept of governance with top down and bottom up approaches is used to understand and analyze the empirics. The empirics of this study give answer to the population situation of the municipalities, the prioritized factors for local development and methods adopted to oppose depopulation. The primary conclusion is that the problem of depopulation is handled by promoting local development through economical means in most municipalities.

In the past, the discussions on the development of service innovation are based on the analyses of manufacturing technology innovation and introduce the concept of manufacturing innovation and the model of product innovation to explore the service innovation of service industry sectors. Also, the past discussions center on the externalities of the service providers, the peripheral factors and new services introduced or provided by the enterprises and fail to focus on the impact of the service innovation on the interaction between customer service representatives and customers. This study will explore the interaction between the service providers (customer service representatives) and service demand (customers) from a microscopic angle and also analyze what roles of service providers and service demand play in the process of service innovation development. The purpose of the study is to understand the interaction roles played by the service representatives and customers, and to analyze the development and the model of service innovation when the representatives provide service to customers. The study will also explore the process of service innovation cycle development and what the driving force is in the formation of service innovation cycle development. The research obtains the qualitative data by the analysis of case study and supplements it with Critical Incident Technique (CIT). With the half structured questionnaire, the interview was conducted with the internal staff of the service providers and customers on the spot. The study tries to find out the reason behind the Critical Incident which prompts the service providers to innovate its service and its content. By analyzing the case study and Critical Incident of the innovation, the study proposes the model of the service innovation cycle and illustrates that the formation of service innovation is enhanced by repetitive evolution of innovation. Through the process of repetition and updated innovation cycle, the service providers can seek the goal of Continuous Service Innovation and outstanding performance. The study also employs Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to analyze the critical driving force of the service innovation during the service process and the meaning each represents.

In this dissertation, we investigate methods of modifying a tight frame sequence on a finite subset of the frame so that the result is a tight frame with better properties. We call this a surgery on the frame. There are basically three types of surgeries: transplants, expansions, and contractions. In this dissertation, it will be necessary to consider surgeries on not-necessarily-tight frames because the subsets of frames that are excised and replaced are usually not themselves tight frames on their spans, even if the initial frame and the final frame are tight. This makes the theory necessarily complicated, and richer than one might expect. Chapter I is devoted to an introduction to frame theory. In Chapter II, we investigate conditions under which expansion, contraction, and transplant problems have a solution. In particular, we consider the equiangular replacement problem. We show that we can always replace a set of three unit vectors with a set of three complex unit equiangular vectors which has the same Bessel operator as the Bessel operator of the original set. We show that this can not always be done if we require the replacement vectors to be real, even if the original vectors are real. We also prove that the minimum angle between pairs of vectors in the replacement set becomes largest when the replacement set is equiangular. Iterating this procedure can yield a frame with smaller maximal frame correlation than the original. Frames with optimal maximal frame correlation are called Grassmannian frames and no general method is known at the present time for constructing them. Addressing this, in Chapter III we introduce a spreading algorithm for finite unit tight frames by replacing vectors three-at-a-time to produce a unit tight frame with better maximal frame correlation than the original frame. This algorithm also provides a “good” orientation for the replacement sets. The orientation part ensures stability in the sense that if a selected set of three unit vectors happens to already be equiangular, then the algorithm gives back the same three vectors in the original order. In chapter IV and chapter V, we investigate two special classes of frames called push-out frames and group frames. Chapter VI is devoted to some mathematical problems related to the ”cocktail party problem ”.

This field study examined relationships of income and life satisfaction among retirees, their perceptions of whether their decisions to retire were voluntary or involuntary, and their stated reasons for retiring: “push” (to exit unsustainable work situations) or “pull” (to pursue more attractive options). Based on prior research, hypotheses predicted that voluntary / involuntary choice would moderate the relationship of income and life satisfaction, and that the relationship would vary as a function of "push" vs. "pull" reasons for retiring. A screened, national sample of 1,043 U.S. retirees completed an online survey that assessed satisfaction with multiple life domains, reason for retiring, demographic characteristics, family income, and perceived financial control. Results showed that voluntary retirees had, on average, higher income, life satisfaction, and perceived financial control than those who saw their retirements as involuntary. Type of reason for retirement did moderate the relationship between income and life satisfaction, but in an unexpected way. Based on decades of research on the relationship of control and stress, the hypothesis predicted the correlation between income and life satisfaction would be weakest in voluntary "pull" retirees, and strongest in the involuntary group. Instead, the relationship was strongest among voluntary "push" retirees (r=+.35). These surprising results highlight the importance of further research on perceived control over retirement on common predictors of life satisfaction in retirement.