[pt] Esta tese propõe que a combinação de técnicas de filtragem colaborativa, em particular para recomendações item-item, com novas tecnologias de computação em nuvem, pode melhorar drasticamente a eficiência dos sistemas de recomendação, particularmente em situações em que o número de itens e usuários supera milhões de objetos. Nela apresentamos uma arquitetura de recomendação item-item em tempo real, que racionaliza o uso dos recursos computacionais através da computação sob demanda. A arquitetura proposta oferece uma solução para o cálculo de similaridade entre itens em tempo real, sem ter que recorrer à simplificação do modelo de recomendação ou o uso de amostragem de dados de entrada. Esta tese também apresenta um novo modelo de feedback implícito para vídeos de curta duração, que se adapta ao comportamento dos usuários, e descreve como essa arquitetura foi usada na implementação de um sistema de recomendação de vídeo em uso pelo maior grupo de mídia da América Latina, apresentando resultados de um estudo de caso real para mostrar que é possível reduzir drasticamente o tempo de cálculo das recomendações (e os custos financeiros globais) usando o provisionamento dinâmico de recursos na nuvem. Ela discute ainda a implementação em detalhes, em particular o projeto da arquitetura baseada em nuvem. Finalmente, ela também apresenta oportunidades de pesquisa em potencial que surgem a partir desta mudança de paradigma. / [en] This dissertation argues that the combination of collaborative filtering techniques, particularly for item-item recommendations, with emergent cloud computing technology can drastically improve algorithm efficiency, particularly in situations where the number of items and users scales up to several million objects. It introduces a real-time item-item recommendation architecture, which rationalizes the use of resources by exploring on-demand computing. The proposed architecture provides a real-time solution for computing online item similarity, without having to resort to either model simplification or the use of input data sampling. This dissertation also presents a new adaptive model for implicit user feedback for short videos, and describes how this architecture was used in a large scale implementation of a video recommendation system in use by the largest media group in Latin America, presenting results from a real life case study to show that it is possible to greatly reduce recommendation times (and overall financial costs) by using dynamic resource provisioning in the Cloud. It discusses the implementation in detail, in particular the design of cloud based features. Finally, it also presents potential research opportunities that arise from this paradigm shift.

This study investigates if attitudes towards the pandemic recommendations made by the Public Health Agency of Sweden and if the estimation of their duration differ before and after a Covid-19 vaccination. The participants contributed to the study by filling out a questionnaire. A mass vaccination is a rare occurrence and few empirical studies have been conducted. A risk regarding a mass vaccination is that it can result in a premature relaxed mindset towards the recommendations, which can lead to an increased spread of the virus. To investigate this, we compared the responses from the participants who filled out the questionnaire before and after the Covid-19 vaccination. The results showed no differences in the attitudes towards the recommendations in the two groups, however tendencies of differences regarding the estimation of duration of the pandemic recommendations was discovered. Thus, we could not detect any large effects of a more relaxed mindset towards the recommendations, however we cannot exclude smaller effects. The results do not support that stricter recommendations should be introduced in order to counteract a more relaxed attitude. / Studien ämnar undersöka om inställningen till Folkhälsomyndighetens rekommendationer och uppskattningen av pandemirekommendationernas varaktighet skiljer sig åt före respektive efter vaccination mot covid-19. Deltagarna medverkade i studien genom att svara på ett frågeformulär.En massvaccinering är en sällsynt förekomst och få empiriska studier har genomförts. En risk vidgenomförandet av en massvaccinering är att den kan resultera i en för tidigt avslappnad inställning till rekommendationerna, vilket kan leda till en ökad smittspridning i samhället. Resultatet visade inte på några skillnader i inställningen till rekommendationerna mellan de två grupperna, dock fanns det tendenser till skillnader angående uppskattningen av pandemirekommendationernasvaraktighet. Således, utifrån studiens resultat, påvisades inte någon stor effekt av en avslappnad inställning efter en massvaccinering men det går inte att utesluta mindre effekter. Studiens resultatstyrker inte att strängare rekommendationer bör införas i en vaccinationsfas för att motverka en avslappnad inställning.

Restriktionerna och rekommendationerna införda för att bromsa besmittningen av Covid-19,har implicerat en livsstilsförändring hos individen. Restriktionerna har hindrat människanfrån att delta i sociala sammanhang som var normen innan pandemin ochrekommendationerna har uppmuntrat individen att förändra delar av sin livsstil, i syfte attanpassa sig till de nya samhällsförutsättningarna. Uppoffringarna som individen har behövtgöra, intresserade i synnerhet den sociala dimensionen. Till följd av de minskade socialainteraktionen mellan individerna i samhället, har den ekologiska dimensionen upplevtoväntade förmåner. Man kan i stort sett säga att restriktionerna har gjort individens livsstilmer hållbar, ur en ekologisk synpunkt. De ekologiska fördelarna med restriktionernaförväntas dock försvinna när de så småningom lyfts, om inte livsstilen som individen harbedrivit hittills, behålls kvar. För att detta ska ske, behöver den nya, hållbara livsstilen blinormen för standarden för hälsa och välstånd som finns i samhället. Kulturen som driversamhället ska därför präglas av individens hållbara idéer, tankar och handlingar.Den hållbara livsstilsförändringen har varit startpunkten för denna undersökning. Syftet medstudien är att undersöka ifall individen är villig att fortsätta leva efter livsstilen som bedrevsunder pandemin och hur individens inställning till hållbar livsstil i framtiden har förändratsmed införandet av restriktionerna. Under arbetets gång kommer individens beteenden och valatt problematiseras utifrån två teorier som det teoretiska ramverket består av: kulturellresiliens och hållbart medborgarskap. För att uppnå syftet användes en enkätundersökningsom datainsamlingsmetod, där 70 personer svarade och en blandning av en tematiskinnehållsanalys och en deskriptiv statistisk analys som analysmetod. Av resultatet framgår atten stor del av respondenterna är för en fortsatt användning av klimatfrämjanderekommendationer som riktlinje för en mer hållbar livsstil. Samtidigt, har restriktionernapåverkat individen negativt ur en social synpunkt, men medvetenheten att miljön gynnas avdet är något som anses vara positivt av individen. / The social constraints and recommendations that were introduced to mitigate the spread ofCovid-19 virus, has had implications on the individual’s lifestyle, making it more sustainable.The social constraints have prevented the individual from taking part in any social activitieswith numerous people, but the recommendations have motivated the population for a changein some parts of their lifestyle to better accommodate the forced changes many communitieshave experienced due to the pandemic. The sacrifices that the individual had to make werefocused on its social sphere and as a result of that, the environment has experiencednumerous benefits. The pandemic has made the individual’s lifestyle more sustainable for theenvironment. These environmental benefits though, are expected to disappear when thepandemic is over and the social constraints ceases. Although, if this more sustainable lifestylecould continue, this would be a great opportunity to make a step in the right direction. Thiscould only happen if it becomes the new norm for what a good and sustainable lifestyleshould be lived. The culture, with its norms, should therefore be influenced by theindividual’s sustainable ideas, thoughts and actions.The change into a more sustainable lifestyle has been the starting point of this study. Thepurpose of this paper is to examine if the individual is willing to accept a more sustainablelifestyle and if its attitude towards environmentally conscious lifestyle has changed since theintroduction of sustainable recommendations. During the course of the paper, the individual’sattitudes and choices will be problematized through two theories that makes up the theoreticalframework of this study: cultural resilience and sustainable citizenship. To achieve thepaper’s main purpose, a survey was sent digitally, and 70 people answered, and a mixedmethod approach was used to analyse the result. The survey’s outcome was that the strongmajority of individuals would keep the sustainable recommendations as guidelines towards amore sustainable lifestyle. Besides that, the social constraints have influenced the individual’ssocial sphere negatively, but they have also contributed to many advantages for theenvironment.

Czech foreign development cooperation represents important part of the Czech foreign policy. It also demonstrates adoption of its own part of responsibility for resolution of current global problems. Together with becoming part of organisations such as European Union or Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development importance of Czech foreign development cooperation is growing. Next to the main goal which is reduction of poverty in third-world countries, development cooperation has also another goals: it is also contributing to construction of good relations with developing countries and it helps ensure economic, security and environmental interests of the Czech republic. Current system of the Czech foreign development cooperation has grown up from the foundations, which have been lawn before 1989. From that time Czech Republic has made a great effort to improve its system of development cooperation and become an effective and responsible donor. As a key step in the direction of desired changes can be considered process of transformation of the Czech foreign development cooperation, initiated in 2007. Transformation was officially crowned when the Fundamentals documents were adopted. These documents present the Conception of the Czech foreign development cooperation and the Law (Act) of the...

Seasonal influenza outbreaks are associated with morbidity and mortality in the United States. Though children are the most susceptible to influenza infection and are most likely to transmit the illness to others, many children are not vaccinated. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between seasonal influenza vaccination Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendations, demographic characteristics, socioeconomic factors, and vaccine type among children over 3 consecutive flu seasons. This quantitative cross-sectional study was guided by the social ecology of health model. Secondary data from 3 consecutive flu seasons (2014-2015, 2015-2016, and 2016-2017) provided by the National Health Interview Survey was used for this study. Binary logistic regression and chi-square were used to analyze the data. A relationship between socioeconomic status, demographics (age, race, and family income) and vaccine type (live-attenuated influenza vaccine [LAIV]/inactivated influenza vaccine) was established among U.S. children; those who received LAIV were most likely to be White elementary school age children with a higher family income. Demographic and socioeconomic status was not considered influential in LAIV uptake for race, health insurance status, or family income. ACIP recommendations by age and year had the greatest impact on flu vaccine choice for this sample population. The results of this study can lead to social change by providing information for policy that can increase vaccine uptake, which can result in lower health cost and reduced illness and death rates associated with the flu, especially for those most at risk.

Sudden unexplained infant death (SUID) is a sudden death of an infant under 1 year of age that cannot be explained after an investigation or an autopsy. SUID is the leading cause of infant deaths in the United States; SUID is considered a sentinel event to the birth hospital. Birth hospitals are held accountable for education, training, and role modeling of infant safe sleep practices (SSP) to reduce infant sleep-related deaths up to 1 year of age. This educational project was designed to answer the project-focused question of whether the implementation of an evidence-based, safe sleep training program for nurses would improve their knowledge of SSP. Bandura's social cognitive theory and the root cause analysis theory were used to guide the project that provided education on SSP and methods for teaching SSP for 48 nurses who work in a postpartum unit in a large hospital in the northeastern United States. A search of the literature provided the content from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for the education program and served the basis for the 15-item multiple-choice test, which was used for the pretest, posttest design project. The test was administered to the nurse participants who ranged in education from associate degree, baccalaureate degree, to master's degrees. The project goal was to increase nurses' knowledge by training and role modeling infant safe sleep environments and to reduce SUIDs. Results of the pretest and posttest evaluation revealed significant improvement in test scores from a pretest M = 72.9 to a posttest M = 90.0 (p <.05). The implications of this project for social change are that each nurse's knowledge and abilities to teach parents and families about SUID prevention strategies improve, sudden infant deaths may decrease in this hospital setting.

In this study, the absence of enough usage of the agile methodology Test-driven development among embedded developers was highlighted, and a solution for getting more developers to start using that methodology was researched into. The research revolved around making the practice of unit testing, which is a large part of the test-driven development methodology, more available to developers by lowering the knowledge threshold of which unit testing framework to choose and how they work. The area of embedded development was narrowed down to the usage of microcontrollers and the development of software for those in the programming language C. This study managed to firstly gather the general opinion of developers of which the most sought after criteria was that a unit testing framework for embedded development should support. With the help of those criteria, an extensive comparison could be done between some of the most popular and recommended unit testing frameworks for embedded microcontroller development. The observations that was made during the experiment were then used to take away some lessons learned that could form recommendations containing information about which unit testing framework that should be used depending on which preferences a developer could have.

A greenhouse pot study was conducted on three soils with varying clay contents to establish K critical value at -3 and -1/3 bar soil moisture levels. Four K fertilizer treatments (0, 0.07, 0.14, and 0.3 g/pot) replicated three times were arranged in a complete randomized block design. The Cate-Nelson graphical procedure revealed that K critical values for corn and soybeans were not equal at the two designated moisture levels. The corresponding percentage yield however was higher at -1/3 bars for corn and at -3 bars for soybean. Statistical regression analysis showed that there was a minor response in plant tissue K to changes in soil test K at both soil moisture levels. The ANOVA at 0.05 significance level showed the observed data were consistent with the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference between plant percentage yield and the increasing K fertilizer application rates at the two moisture levels.

Online LARPing has been practiced for a long time, but gained its popularity as the Covid-19 pandemic hit. However, online platforms have some drawbacks and limitations in various aspects, for example, in embodiment, in accessibility, etc. This thesis aims to gain deeper insights into factors influencing players in terms of embodiment during online LARPing and important features that future online LARP designers should pay attention to. This thesis is a qualitative research aiming to create design guidelines through empirical investigations of online LARPing. For the empirical investigations, the study embraced an ethnographic approach through participatory observations, complimented by analysis of scripts and interviews with writers. The study then used the findings from the empirical investigations to understand what make players feel more embodied during an online LARPing and let the results inform the creation of design guidelines that could bring a higher degree of embodiment to online LARPing. The work is mainly a design proposal or a design guidance intended for future online LARP designers, instead of building a new technology or a new prototype. The design guidelines aim to create comprehensive recommendations to bring out more embodiment while LARPing online.

Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are an emerging form of technology that allows owners of electricity producing appliances, such as electric vehicles, to partake in a pool of producers of sustainable energy. The Swedish electricity grid owner Svenska Kraftnät hosts a platform where VPPs act as intermediaries between energy producing customers and third party buyers. A requirement to participate in these transactions, however, is to post a bid specifying the amount of power that can be produced from a VPP during a given hour at least 48 hours into the future. This is where forecasting comes into the picture. This report compares the accuracy of eight different machine learning models when tasked with forecasting power output using the same training data from an electric vehicle-based VPP. The study also examines which inferences about customer behavior can be drawn from the same data and give strategic recommendations to VPPs based on the findings of the study. Upon evaluating the results, it was found that deep learning models outperformed autoregressive models, which in turn outperformed Random Forest Regression and Support Vector Regression. As for customer behaviors found in the data, a small negative correlation between spot prices and delivered output was found, suggesting that customers limit their charging when spot prices are high. Further, more power is generally produced during nighttime and on weekends. The data also shows an autocorrelation with a lag of 24 hours, suggesting that charging behaviors on a given day influence charging behaviors the subsequent day. / Virtuella kraftverk (VPPs) är en framväxande form av teknologi som tillåter ägare av elproducerande enheter, till exempel elbilar, att delta i ett nätverk av producenter av hållbar energi. Den svenska elnätsägaren Svenska Kraftnät driver en plattform där VPPs agerar mellanhänder mellan energiproducerande kunder och tredjepartsköpare. Ett krav för att delta i budgivningen är dock att som VPP kunna lägga ett bud som specificerar hur stor effekt som kan produceras under en viss timme, minst 48 timmar i framtiden. Här kommer prognoser in i bilden. Denna rapport jämför precisionen för åtta olika maskininlärningsmodeller som har i uppgift att predicera effektproduktion med hjälp av samma data från ett elbilsbaserat VPP. Denna studie undersöker också vilka slutsatser som kan dras angående kundbeteenden från given data och ger strategiska rekommendationer baserat på studiens resultat. Efter utvärdering av resultaten kunde det konstateras att Deep Learning-modeller överträffade autoregressiva modeller, som i sin tur överträffade Random Forest Regression och Support Vector Regression. Vad gäller kundbeteenden i given data, kan sägas att en låg negativ korrelation fanns mellan spotpriser och effektproduktion, vilket tyder på att kunder begränsar laddning av elbilar när spotpriserna är höga. Vidare kan sägas att mer effekt generellt sett produceras på kvällar och helger. Studiens data visar också på en autokorrelation med en eftersläpning (lag) på 24 timmar, vilket tyder på att laddningsmönster under en given dag influerar laddningsmönster under nästkommande dag.