Ungdomsbrottslighet är ett aktuellt problem som finns i Sverige och framställs i media att den ökar, vilket inte stämmer då det finns rapporter och statistik på att det har skett en minskning. Statistik är en viktig del i brottspreventivt syfte eftersom den hjälper forskare få en bild av hur omfattande ungdomsbrottsligheten är, dess utveckling, omfattning, dess minskande och om det förekommer skillnader mellan de olika regionerna i Sverige. ”Detta var min vändpunkt” är en studie vars syfte är att granska varför ungdomar i kriminalitet slutar att begå brott och även undersöka vilka deras vändpunkt/er var utifrån teoretikerna Robert Sampson och John Laubs teori om vändpunkter. Frågeställningarna som uppsatsen behandlat är: vad fick vissa ungdomar att sluta begå brott, finns det vändpunkter för ungdomsbrottslingar samt om någon av dessa vändpunkter var relationer, miljöombyte eller sysselsättning.För att undersöka och besvara dessa frågor har en kvalitativ ansats använts. Tre stycken semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med medlemmar från Unga Kris. Resultatet analyserades och diskuterades utifrån teorin om turning points samt tidigare forskning. Frågeställningarna besvarades och det informanterna uppgav har varit mest betydelsefullt för att avsluta en brottslig karriär är självinsikt, sysselsättning och relationer till nära och kära. Vändpunkter som har varit bidragande faktorer har varit sysselsättning, inre motivation, nära till förlust av närstående vilket ledde till en vilja att förändra sin levnadssituation. / Juvenile delinquency is a current problem that exists in the Swedish society which is portrayed as increasing, which is not true since there are reports and statistics that there is a decreasing level of juvenile delinquency .Statistics is an important part of crime prevention because it helps scientists understand the extent of juvenile delinquency, its development, its range, its increase and decrease and whether there are differences between the different regions in Sweden. But who are the young people that represent the statistic and why did they stop commit crime?This was my turning point is a study which aims to examine why young people involved in crime stop committing crimes and also examine their turning point/ s which is based on the theorists Robert Sampson and John Laubs theory of turning points .To examine and answer these questions, a qualitative approach was used. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the Young Kris. The results were analyzed and discussed based on the theory of turning points and previous research. The informants stated that the meaningful factors that lead to the end of their criminal career were self-perception, occupation and relationships with loved ones. Turning points that have been contributing factors was inner motivation, imprisonment, and loss of relatives, which led to a desire to change their life situation.

Sequences are sufficient to describe topological properties in metric spaces or, more generally, topological spaces having a countable base for the topology. However, filters or nets are needed in more abstract spaces. Nets are more natural extension of sequences but are generally less friendly to work with since quite often two nets have distinct directed sets for domains. Operations involving filters are set theoretic and generally certain to filters on the same set. The concept of a filter was introduced by H. Cartan in 1937 and an excellent treatment of the subject can be found in N. Bourbaki (1940).

This study investigates the effects of institutional structure on the privacy rights regimes in the United States and the United Kingdom, from 2000-2006. The goal of this research is to analyze how variation in the institutional arrangements across these two countries allowed for more or less protection of privacy rights for citizens. Domestic terrorist attacks during the time period represent a catalyst for changes in police and government surveillance activities. Veto points literature provides the framework for institutional comparison. The first part of the research provides a discussion of the historical evolution of privacy rights in both states, focusing on government and police surveillance and investigations. The second part of the research, based on veto points theory, compares the institutional arrangements of the United States and the United Kingdom, and suggests that the number of veto points and the ideological proximity of veto players have had an effect on the formulation of policy. Laws governing surveillance, investigations and privacy in the year 2000 provide a benchmark for analyzing how policies change over time.

We study the size of sets containing sums of two integer cubes such that their representation is unique and also fit between two consecutive integer cubes. We will try to write algorithms that efficiently calculate the size of these sets and also implement these algorithms in PythonTM. Although we will fail to find a non-iterative algorithm, we will find different ways of approximating the size of these sets. We will also find that techniques used in our failed algorithms can be used to calculate the number of integer lattice points inside a circle.

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This thesis examines the practice of hunting within the Neolithic community of Çatalhöyük by focusing on its stone projectile points. Wild faunal remains indicate that hunting remained in practice, even though domesticated animals and plants comprised the staple diet of the Neolithic people of Çatalhöyük. Hunting and the “wild” are venerated in the site's iconography (wall paintings, wild bull skull mural installations, zoomorphic figurines), while obsidian projectile points—the dominant hunting weapons— were carefully executed artifacts that seem to have served more than one purpose. In studying the projectile points I consider the role of hunting at Çatalhöyük and its significance in shaping personal and communal identities. By employing an attribute analysis I examined the projectiles’ deposition in varied contexts (caches, burials, building infills, middens etc). Differences in use-wear traces as well as in technological and morphological traits suggest that the Çatalhöyük point assemblage consists of two groups that were used and treated in very distinct ways. The first group comprises projectile weapons that were used in hunting, exhibiting clear signs of actual use; whereas the second group consists of bifaces that were in all likelihood reserved for ceremonial purposes given their pristine condition and special deposition. This thesis argues that hunting was not merely an alternate subsistence strategy but an arena where symbolic expression and social identities could be performed and negotiated. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis researches the role of hunting in one of the earliest agricultural societies with livestock, Çatalhöyük in Turkey (7th-6th millennium cal BCE). For this purpose I studied the stone tips of projectile weapons, i.e. arrows and spears. The results of this work show that apart from the actual hunting weapons, the people of Çatalhöyük also had weapons reserved for ceremonial purposes. Indeed other evidence also shows that hunting and the “wild” was revered at the site: wall paintings, wall decorations with wild animal skulls, large feasting events, and animal figurines. In this thesis I argue that hunting was not only a strategy for the farmers of Çatalhöyük to acquire extra food resources but it also played a significant role in their symbolic and religious life, which is why this tradition persisted even after the domestication of animals.

We study the structure of the set of extreme points of the compact convex set of matrix-valued holomorphic functions with positive real part on a finitely-connected planar domain 𝐑 normalized to have value equal to the identity matrix at some prescribed point t₀ ∈ 𝐑. This leads to an integral representation for such functions more general than what would be expected from the result for the scalar-valued case. After Cayley transformation, this leads to a integral Agler decomposition for the matrix Schur class over 𝐑 (holomorphic contractive matrix-valued functions over 𝐑). Application of a general theory of abstract Schur-class generated by a collection of test functions leads to a transfer-function realization for the matrix Schur-class over 𝐑, extending results known up to now only for the scalar case. We also explain how these results provide a new perspective for the dilation theory for Hilbert space operators having 𝐑 as a spectral set. / Ph. D.

Due to advancements in supercomputing and algorithms for finite element analysis, today's computer simulation models often contain complex calculations that can result in a wealth of knowledge. Gaussian processes (GPs) are highly desirable models for computer experiments for their predictive accuracy and uncertainty quantification. This dissertation addresses GP modeling when data abounds as well as GP adaptive design when simulator expense severely limits the amount of collected data. For data-rich problems, I introduce a localized sparse covariance GP that preserves the flexibility and predictive accuracy of a GP's predictive surface while saving computational time. This locally induced Gaussian process (LIGP) incorporates latent design points, inducing points, with a local Gaussian process built from a subset of the data. Various methods are introduced for the design of the inducing points. LIGP is then extended to adapt to stochastic data with replicates, estimating noise while relying upon the unique design locations for computation. I also address the goal of identifying a contour when data collection resources are limited through entropy-based adaptive design. Unlike existing methods, the entropy-based contour locator (ECL) adaptive design promotes exploration in the design space, performing well in higher dimensions and when the contour corresponds to a high/low quantile. ECL adaptive design can join with importance sampling for the purpose of reducing uncertainty in reliability estimation. / Doctor of Philosophy / Due to advancements in supercomputing and physics-based algorithms, today's computer simulation models often contain complex calculations that can produce larger amounts of data than through physical experiments. Computer experiments conducted with simulation models are sought-after ways to gather knowledge about physical problems but come with design and modeling challenges. In this dissertation, I address both data size extremes - building prediction models with large data sets and designing computer experiments when scarce resources limit the amount of data. For the former, I introduce a strategy of constructing a series of models including small subsets of observed data along with a set of unobserved data locations (inducing points). This methodology also contains the ability to perform calculations with only unique data locations when replicates exist in the data. The locally induced model produces accurate predictions while saving computing time. Various methods are introduced to decide the locations of these inducing points. The focus then shifts to designing an experiment for the purpose of accurate prediction around a particular output quantity of interest (contour). A experimental design approach is detailed that selects new sample locations one-at-a-time through a function to maximize the amount of information gain in the contour region for the overall model. This work is combined with an existing method to estimate the true volume of the contour.

A fingerprint matching algorithm with a novel set of matching parameters based on core points and triangular descriptors is proposed to discover rarity in fingerprints. The algorithm uses a mathematical and statistical approach to discover rare features in fingerprints which provides scientific validation for both ten-print and latent fingerprint evidence. A feature is considered rare if it is statistically uncommon; that is, the rare feature should be unique among N (N>100) randomly sampled prints. A rare feature in a fingerprint has higher discriminatory power when it is identified in a print (latent or otherwise). In the case of latent fingerprint matching, the enhanced discriminatory power from the rare features can help in delivering a confident court judgment. In addition to mining the rare features, a parallel algorithm for fingerprint matching on GPUs is also proposed to reduce the run-time of fingerprint matching on larger databases. Results show that 1) matching algorithm is useful in eliminating false matches. 2) each of the 30 fingerprints randomly selected to mine rare features have a small set of highly distinctive statistically rare features some of whose occurrence is one in 1000 fingerprints. 3) the parallel algorithm implemented on GPUs for larger databases is around 40 times faster than the sequential algorithm. / Master of Science