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From the simplest items we use to the most complex ones, electronics are everywhere and in everything. However, the escalating demand for electronics has a serious toll on the environment. Thus, the electronics industry has been the focus of legislation for a long time. As a matter of fact, electronics are among the seven priority key value chains identified by the European Union on the way to becoming the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In this sense, this thesis aims to investigate the role of environmental legislation in the green transition of the electronics industry by trying to understand how companies operating in this industry evaluate the measures introduced by the legislation. This was done through both in-depth interviews with representatives from 11 different companies of all sizes (large, medium- and small-sized, and start-up companies) and 2 regulatory agencies, and also group discussions with experts and managers in the field. Although the research started from a point of evaluating the legislation either a driver or a barrier in green transition, the empirical findings indicated that environmental regulations are too complex tools to be considered only in terms of these aspects. Results showed that considering regulations as a driver or barrier is directly related to the size of the companies and the opportunities they have. However, the solution to the challenges faced by the companies is often beyond their own capabilities, and related to external factors, mostly legislators. All companies interviewed within the scope of the study agree that environmental regulations can contribute to green transformation. One thing is certain, however, that the way to ensure this effectiveness is through a transparent and inclusive communication between the lawmakers and the industry.

This research examines the perceptions and attitudes of residents in five rural communities located in the Hilltowns of Western Massachusetts: Ashfield, Chesterfield, Conway, Goshen, and Williamsburg. The research aims to explore the divide between local residents’ strongly held support for private property rights and a concomitant desire to maintain the qualities that contribute to the social, ecological, and aesthetic experience of a rural town, including a viable farm and forest economy. Previous research in the same project utilized mailed, written surveys. In this case, in-depth, in-person interviews were conducted with ten residents of the study area in order to complement the breadth of information gleaned from these earlier studies. The research goal was to inform planning efforts that strive to balance the preservation of rural character with growth and change. Questions were asked to ascertain the individual’s connection to the rural community, including length of residency, occupation, and other demographic variables. Further questions were posed to learn how participants felt that landowner rights to develop property and government intervention to preserve land could be effectively balanced. Results showed that landowners’ desire to retain their property rights remains in conflict with their wish to see their communities remain rural in the face of new development. Medium-term residents may be the most motivated group to get involved in ways to balance landscape change and development with a need to preserve town character. According to study participants, local governments should focus their efforts on voluntary, cooperative measures. Such measures should ideally minimize bureaucracy and maximize a multi-jurisdictional approach in considering a variety of techniques to resolve tough land-use conflicts. Local land trusts emerged as the best-positioned entity to forge cooperative ventures with farmers, landowners, and others in protecting the places of greatest value to those who live and work in the rural landscape. The need for education and communication was vitally expressed. This study sheds new light on the different nuanced and sometimes conflicting attitudes about preserving the rural landscape, but also offers hope for solutions based on collaborations between local governments, land trusts, and local residents.

Europeiska unionen röstade igenom nya regelverk för medicintekniska produkter och för medicintekniska produkter för in vitrodiagnostik 2017. Regelverken implementerades 2021. De nya regelverken innebär striktare krav på tillsyn, klinisk prövning och spårbarhet, för att stärka patientsäkerheten. Målet med projektet var att undersöka om vårdcentralerna inom Stockholm läns sjukvårdsområde (SLSO) uppfyller de nya regelverken och sedan ta fram en analysmodell och analysera hur väl de anpassar sig till regelverken. För att säkerställa att SLSO:s vårdcentralerna uppfyller de nya regelverken utfördes i detta projekt fysiska inventeringar på tio slumpmässigt utvalda enheter som inte har befintliga serviceavtal med leverantörer eller servicegivare. Det visade sig att på samtliga enheter nyttjas konsumentprodukter till patienter, som inte är avsedda för medicinskt bruk. Flertalet enheter saknade även produkter som bör finnas tillgängliga. Överlag var enhetscheferna på vårdcentralerna inte insatta i de nya regelverken och visste inte att produkterna de använde inte är avsedda för sjukvård. De hade även flera produkter som var gamla och/eller trasiga som användes på daglig basis vilket inte uppfyller kraven på patientsäkerheten. Slutsatsen blev därför att SLSO:s vårdcentraler inte uppfyller de nya regelverken. / The European Union voted through new regulations regarding medical devices and medical devices for in vitro diagnostics in 2017. These new regulations were implemented in 2021. The new regulations entailed stricter supervision, clinical testing, and traceability requirements to strengthen patient safety. To ensure that care centers within Region Stockholm comply with the new regulations, physical inventories were carried out at ten randomly selected units that do not have existing service agreements with suppliers or service providers. To compare different units’ individual adaptations to the regulations, an analysis model was created in which the proportion of products that were not approved for medical use and the lack of certain necessary equipment were factors. In all units, consumer products are used for patients, which are not intended for medical use, and several units lack products that should be available. Overall, the unit managers at the care centers were unfamiliar with the new regulations and were unaware that the products they used were not intended for healthcare. The care centers also had several old and/or broken products that were used daily, which does not meet the requirements for patient safety. The conclusion was therefore that the care centers in Region Stockholm do not comply with the new regulations.

Calcium is a crucial intracellular messenger controlling a plethora of important intracellular events. Elevated [Ca2+]i levels regulate numerous processes due to the versatility of the Ca2+ signaling in terms of speed, amplitude and spatia-temporal patterning. Depletion of intracellular calcium stores functions as a primary trigger for a message that is translated to the plasma membrane, resulting in the slow activation of plasma membrane Ca2+ influx channels, which allow entry of external calcium. Since these channels depend upon the state of filling of the intracellular Ca2+stores, these influx channels are called store-operated channels (SOCs). It is unclear how empty intracellular stores signal activation of plasma membrane capacitative calcium entry (CCE). In order to bridge the gaps in our understanding of calcium's role in T cell regulation, this project was designed to look at the effects of various pharmacological regulators of T cell calcium stores. At the start, the effort was directed at the regulation of the microsomal calcium A TPases, considering these are perhaps the most essential mediators of intracellular calcium storage. Thapsigargin (TG) and cyclopiazonic acid (CPA) were shown to be the most potent inhibitors of the Ca2+ -ATPase, also a new Ca2+ regulator aaptamine was shown to exert more modest inhibition of the Ca2+ pump. We also characterized a novel compound, gingerol, findings its actions are to stimulate Ca2+ pumps. Cell growth assays revealed an important role for ryanodine receptors (RyRs) in regulating T cell growth. RyR activators CMC and PCB95 dramatically altered T cell growth patterns leading to significantly reduced cell viability. In contrast RyR antagonist dantrolene appeared to induce growth arrest in that cell proliferation was curtailed, yet cells remained viable. Cell viability studies revealed that the Ca2+ pump regulators TG and aaptamine were also observed to reduce cell growth rates, presumably as a result of their ability to deplete Ca2+ stores (100 nM TG was able to decrease cell viability by 90% within 24 hrs of exposure). PCB95 was able to decrease cell viability by 50% within 24 of hrs exposure and CMC decreased cell viability by 75% within 24 hrs and further over a 48 hr period. 2-APB and aaptamine were cytotoxic at higher doses. The inositol 1 ,4,5 -trisphosphate receptor (IP3R) pathway was also found to be critically linked to T cell growth control. We observed that the IP3R modulator, 2- aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2-APB) induced antigen-like Ca2+ spike that correlates with suppression of T cell growth rates. In this study we have identified two novel T cell Ca2+ store regulators, aaptamine and gingerol. We also find that Ca2+ stores are indeed sensitively linked to T cell growth regulation. Depletion of Ca2+ stores with SERCA inhibitors as well as both RyR and IP3R activators profoundly suppress T cell proliferation most likely via activation of apoptosis.

The concern about disinformation in the digital space has increased since the U.S Presidential Election and the British ‘Brexit’ Referendum in 2016. Many have argued for stricter regulatory frameworks for the Internet to uphold the public’s trust in democratic institutions. In December 2020, the European Commission officially published the proposal of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a new regulation partly designed to approach the dissemination of disinformation in the digital space. Considering the political significance of the DSA, this critical study is interested in the discursive role of media in the public’s meaning making of the legislation in particular and, to some extent, Internet regulations in general. Specifically, the study focuses on linguistic aspects in a selection of 14 Swedish news media texts from December 2020 to systematically draw out the ideological implications behind the related discourses, and ultimately whose interests are represented in the in the conception of the DSA in Sweden. Focus is also paid on how and to what extent disinformation is included or excluded in the media discourses. The analysis is conducted with critical discourse analysis as both methodology and theoretical framework, with a complementary ideological and sociopolitical perspective. The results reveal a widespread support for the DSA specifically or Internet regulations in general, advocating for stricter governance in the digital space to a certain degree. Additionally, the DSA is constructed as a means to tackle the dominating role of large digital service providers in the digital market, establishing an economic outlook of the DSA. Consequently, disinformation is neglected in the media discourses and its political significance is therefore diminished.

Over the last years, bicycles have been addressed in newly developed driver assistance systems for passenger cars on a voluntary basis, and beginning with the blind spot assist systems, this tendency has been picked up by vehicle regulations and systems are made mandatory. This paper intends to give a detailed summary of which vehicle regulations are currently addressing bicycles, when they come into force and if they will be mandatory in the EU. Also, the performance of already available active safety systems for bicycles (not covered by regulatory requirements) and their technological potential will be included.

The shift of media from traditional forms to new digital ones has raised the possibility of new kinds of media services, including mobile television. In today¿s communications market, mobile phones are of increasing importance to users and, since mobile devices are connected most of the time, they have a high degree of location independence. The availability of 3G technology and the mobile devices needed to implement mobile television are now established and available. Mobile television is expected to be an important new service that could penetrate the market place and provide new applications, as well as create a market for new players and new investments, if the appropriate price, content and philosophy for content design are found. This research explores the many potential application areas for mobile TV, with a particular focus on advertising. Various organisations that seek success in this market can utilise the potential for advertising on mobile TV. Ultimately, mobile device users are able to use mobile TV for entertainment and information sourcing. However, a number of challenging issues remain to be addressed. The features that appealed to the consumers were studied in this research. Surveys were conducted to obtain an understanding of consumers¿ opinions and needs regarding the mobile TV experience. Many users clearly do like to interact with video content on mobile devices. Interactive mobile TV advertising can benefit users who will be able to use an essentially ¿free¿ mobile TV service, funded by an advertising model. This research proposes an environment for interactive advertising on mobile TV and discussion of an implementation of the proposed designs.

This assessment reviewed 79 legal documents related to forest land tenure that include: 1 Constitution; 8 Laws; 1 Resolution; 20 Decrees; 30 Circulars, 18 Decisions and 1 Directive. The objective of this paper was to assess the forest tenure rights in the system of Vietnam forest tenure policies. The main research method was based on the assessment framework Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries (VGGT). The results of 2 theme groups (i-Legal recognition and respect of rights; ii-Legal allocation and transfer of tenure rights and duties), corresponding to the seven criteria showed that its marks were at from 1 to 3 (the system of forest tenure policies in Vietnam has attained “slightly addressed” to “mostly addressed” (mark 3). However, it has not yet gained the levels of “fully addressed” (mark 4) for all aspects of forest tenure rights. / Báo cáo này đã rà soát phần lớn các chính sách hiện hành quan trọng của hưởng dụng rừng với tổng số 79 văn bản, gồm: 1 Hiến pháp; 8 Luật; 1 Nghị quyết; 20 Nghị định; 30 Thông tư; 18 Quyết định và 1 Chỉ thị. Mục tiêu của bài viết này là đánh giá các quyền hưởng dụng rừng trong hệ thống các chính sách hưởng dụng rừng ở Việt Nam. Phương pháp nghiên cứu chính được dựa trên khung đánh giá của Hướng dẫn tự nguyện về Quản trị chịu trách nhiệm của hưởng dụng đất, lâm nghiệp và thủy sản (VGGT). Kết quả nghiên cứu 2 nhóm chủ đề (i-Sự ghi nhận và tôn trọng các quyền; ii-Tính pháp lý của việc giao và chuyển nhượng quyền hưởng dụng và các nghĩa vụ), tương ứng với 7 tiêu chí đều cho thấy mới đạt mức điểm từ 1 – 3 (tức là hệ thống chính sách hưởng dụng rừng hiện hành ở Việt Nam đã có những nội dung “giải quyết một phần” đến “giải quyết phần lớn” (điểm 3), tuy nhiên chưa có được mức độ “giải quyết đầy đủ” các khía cạnh về quyền hưởng dụng rừng (điểm 4).

Autonomous Driving Systems (ADSs) have seen rapid progress in recent years. To ensure the safety and reliability of these systems, extensive testing is being conducted before their future mass deployment. One approach is to test ADSs directly on the road, but it is incredibly costly to cover all rare corner cases. Thus, a popular complementary approach is to evaluate an ADS’s performance in a simulator. Such method is called simulation based testing. However, randomly testing ADSs in simulation is still not efficient enough and the testing results might not transfer to the real-world. This dissertation underscores that the cornerstone of efficient simulation testing lies in crafting optimal testing scenarios. We delineate several pivotal properties for these scenarios: they should induce ADS misbehavior, exhibit diversity, manifest realism, and adhere to user specified rules (e.g., following traffic rules). Subsequent to this identification, our research delves into methodologies to enhance one or more of these properties of the generated scenarios. Specifically, we embark on two distinct lines of approach. First, we develop advanced search strategies to unearth diverse scenarios that provoke ADS to misbehave. Second, we harness the potential of deep generative models to produce scenarios that are both realistic and in compliance with user specified rules. Because of the need for efficiently testing end-to-end behaviors of ADSs against complex, real-world corner cases, we propose AutoFuzz, a novel fuzz testing technique, which can leverage widely-used driving simulators’ API grammars to generate complex driving scenarios. In order to find misbehavior-inducing scenarios, which are very rare, we propose a learning based search method to optimize AutoFuzz. In particular, our method trains a neural network to select and mutate scenarios sampled from an evolutionary search method. AutoFuzz shows promises in efficiently identifying traffic violations for the given ADSs under test. Although AutoFuzz is good at finding violations, as a black-box method, it is agnostic of the cause of the violations. In the second project, we focus on finding violations caused by the failure of fusion component, which fuses the inputs of multiple sensors and provides the ADS a more reliable understanding of the surroundings. In particular, we identify that the fusion component of an industry-grade ADAS can fail to trust the more reliable input sensor and thus lead to a collision. We define misbehavior caused by such a failure as "fusion error". In order to efficiently find fusion errors, we propose a fuzzing framework, named FusED, that uses a novel evolutionary-based search method with objective promoting fusion output to deviate from sensor input. We show that FusED can efficiently reveal fusion errors for an industry-grade ADAS. One issue with the generated scenarios by AutoFuzz or FusED (or any other search based methods) is that all the NPC vehicles are controlled by some low-level controllers, whose behaviors are different from human drivers. This poses a difficulty in transferring the found violations into real world. Some recent work tries to address this problem by using deep generative models. However, the scenarios cannot be easily controlled which is not desirable for users to customize the testing scenarios. As both realism and controllability of the generated traffic are desirable, we propose a novel method called Controllable Traffic Generation (CTG) that achieves both properties simultaneously. In order to preserve realism, we propose a conditional, dynamic enforced diffusion model. In order to satisfy controllability, we propose using a kind of "traffic language" called Signal Temporal Logic (STL) to specify what we want in traffic scenarios (e.g., following road rules). We then leverage STL to guide the conditional diffusion model for generating realistic and controllable traffic. Although CTG can generate realistic and controllable traffic, it still requires domain expertise to specify the STL based loss function. Besides, it models traffic participants independently, resulting in sub-optimal agents interaction modeling. In order to address these issues, we developed CTG++ which enables a user to use language to generate realistic traffic scenario. In particular, we proposed to use GPT4 to translate a command in natural language into a loss function in code. We then use the loss function to guide a scene-level diffusion model, which considers all the vehicles jointly, to generate traffic satisfying the command. We have found that CTG++ can generate query (in natural language)-compliant and realistic traffic simulation. In summary, our four projects discussed in this thesis have solved important problems in efficiently testing ADSs and have had significant influence in the advancement of ADS. Besides, the models and empirical studies we performed can be applicable to other testing and behavior generation problems, such as general ML-based software testing, and multi-agent behavior planning and prediction. I hope this thesis can serve as an inspiration to anyone who is interested in the exciting field of ADS testing and development, and contribute to the realization of the full automation of driving.