To be able to provide data collecting services to customers, service provides are required by law to design privacy policies and present their content to users as privacy notices that informs the user on privacy consequences and demonstrate that an explicit informed consent of the user has been collected before processing of the data. However, despite the increase in data collection by services and hence increase of privacy impact, yet privacy notices do not implement proper mechanisms that can assure that data subjects are well informed and their consent are provided with comprehension. The root of this problem is the fact that typically only theoretical description of what consent is and what it involves is offered by existing literature but no “practical” design guides are available for decision makers and practitioners on how to effectively integrate a targeted consent level in privacy notices. This thesis work addresses the need for explicit integration of consent in privacy notice designs by presenting the Extended Privacy Notice Design Space (XPNDS) construct that guides on explicitly incorporating different levels of consent in privacy notices. This thesis uses theories of eye movement in reading and technical references from computer vision for comprehension and attention determination to prove the feasibility of integrating higher level of consent in the design space that may guide to assured informed consent. The construct can be used by managers to communicate, practitioners to design, and regulators to analyze informed consent incorporation in privacy notice designs. Unlike most works available in the literature on consent which only provide theoretical opinion of what informed consent is, this work cast the conceptual consent guidelines in to a practical privacy notice design space to provide an XPNDS that guides to the practicality of achieving assured informed consent in privacy notices. It is the hope of the author that the XPNDS will be useful to both practitioners and academicians in incorporating informed consent in privacy notice designs to an assured level. / <p>Validerat; 20160622 (global_studentproject_submitter)</p>

Due to the tough competitions that exist today, most pharmaceutical distribution companies are in a continuous effort to increase their profits and reduce their costs. Actually, both shortage and surplus of goods can lead to loss of income for these companies. One of the problems in pharmaceutical distribution organizations which deal with public health and pharmaceutical products is how to control inventory levels by means of accurate sales prediction in order to prevent costs of excessive inventory also prevent losing their customers because of drug shortage. Accurate sales prediction is certainly a valuable management tool to meet the mentioned goals since this leads to improved customer service, also, reduced lost sales and costs. However, most pharmaceutical distribution companies in Iran are still using heuristic or traditional statistical techniques to make sales prediction for their products. Thus, the purpose of this research is to apply an innovative and reliable sales prediction method for pharmaceutical distribution companies.To make sales prediction for a pharmaceutical distribution company, we needed to have past sales records of each drug. Accordingly, we gathered sales data of three years from Pakhsh Hejrat Co. which is one of the leading pharmaceutical distributors in Iran. We chose neural networks as our basic tools for sales prediction since most traditional methods like ARIMA are incapable of modeling nonlinearities that exist in most real data; also, they need forecaster’s supervision for the parameter estimation phase. In fact, neural networks are versatile tools for sale prediction since estimation with neural networks can be automatized, and they have proved very effective in order to make prediction by handling non-linear input and output variables Due to the fact that we did not have enough past sales records of drug items, we came up to a new idea of grouping drugs to find group members and make use of co-members’ sales data for each other. Thus, we did a comprehensive network based analysis in order to find clique-sets and group members. Afterwards, we built sales forecasting models with three different approaches: a) ARIMA methodology for time series forecasting, b) Hybrid neural network approach for time series forecasting by means of each drug’s past recodes, and c) Hybrid neural network approach for time series forecasting by means of each drug’s past records and its group members’ past records. Our evaluations and results indicated that our new methodology (number 3 above) was the best methodology, and the weakest one was ARIMA model. / <p>Validerat; 20130304 (marikav)</p>

The use of technology in business process is gaining much attention, and many businesses today rely on technology as an important part of an efficient and effective way of meeting customers’ satisfaction. This study deals with the adoption of a proper and electronic means of tracking counterfeit drugs in the supply chain (distribution network) through the use of RFID technology. The case of the Ghanaian pharmaceutical group KAMA is considered. The main objective consists in finding out how the adoption of RFID technology would help tracking counterfeit drugs in the supply chain of this company and which benefits this could generate. Three research questions are stated and a qualitative approach is adopted. Field observation, a series of interviews with management and field workers of Kama as well as a questionnaire allowed collecting the data. The analysis of the data showed that RFID technology should be adopted by Kama to replace the present costly and relatively inefficient way of tracking counterfeit drugs. The motivation of workers to be trained on RFID as well as the company readiness to train employees represent major factors for adoption and implementation of RFID to track counterfeit drugs and hence contribute to increase the profit margin and improve Kama’s image on the market. Recommendations are finally made on the methodology to be adopted by Kama to implement and use RFID technology to track counterfeit drugs. / <p>Validerat; 20111202 (anonymous)</p>

Sexual conflict occurs when the reproductive optima of males and females are at odds with one another. Conflict between the sexes is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom and is expected to influence the social dynamics of group-living animals. Yet, most social behaviour studies do not address the potential ramifications that sexual conflict can have on social interactions. For my thesis, I used bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) to bridge the gap between sexual conflict and social behaviour. In Chapter 1, I developed a novel semi-naturalistic arena for tracking bed bugs to uncover how sexual conflict shapes animal social networks. My results show that male and females can be in conflict over the social environment. In Chapter 2, I examined how female sexual history shapes mating interactions using bed bugs. First, I showed that realistically high rates of traumatic insemination relative to lower rates dramatically reduce female fitness. Next, I manipulated female insemination status in a realistic group setting and found that males can exhibit strong mate choice even in a mating system with seemingly little male reproductive investment. Lastly, I tracked avoidance behaviour exhibited by female bed bugs as they received successive inseminations and demonstrated that female bed bugs possess plastic avoidance strategies based on their mating history. In Chapter 3, I examined how social experience shapes sexual interactions in a complex, competitive environment and found that social experience did not improve male or female bed bugs’ sexual competence. Finally, in Chapter 4, I extended my work on polyandry to fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and showed that realistically high rates of female multiple mating can increase female fitness. In each chapter, I discuss the significance of my findings as they relate to sexual selection and the evolution of social and sexual strategies and behaviours in both sexes. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Sexual conflict occurs when the reproductive interests of males and females are not in alignment with one another. A common form of sexual conflict occurs when males want to mate more often than females, resulting in harassment of females. Such conflict between the sexes over mating is common across the animal kingdom. While there are many evolutionary consequences of sexual conflict, little is known about how sexual conflict influences the social behaviours of animals. For my thesis, I used bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) to bridge the gap between sexual conflict and social behaviour. I showed that bed bugs are under intense sexual conflict over mating rates which influences both females’ social preferences and their behavioural responses to males. I also found that bed bug females often mate with multiple males, which plays a large role in male mating behaviours and strategies. Finally, using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), I show that mating with multiple males can sometimes be highly beneficial to females. The results of my studies have important implications for understanding the evolution of social and sexual behaviours in both sexes.

Social behaviour is shaped by complex relationships between evolutionary and ecological processes interacting at different scales. Benefits gained from social associations can range from predator dilution to collective sensing, but little is known about how these can be influenced by social structure and phenotypic composition. In this thesis, I investigated how individual decision-making affects phenotypic social structure, and how this mediates social behaviour through emergent properties of collective group behaviour. First, using mixed-species flocks as a model system, I showed individual tits (Paridae, chapter 2) and thornbills (Acanthizae, chapter 3) varied significantly in their social positions. Within-species variation in network position was as large as between-species variation, sug- gesting that prescribing functional roles at the species level may not sufficiently account for potential differences in fitness operating at the individual level. Rather, this suggested that structure may be driven by phenotypic traits, underpinning network structure (chapter 4). Next, I used an extensive data set of foraging records to explore factors determining the composition, of flocks of great tits (Parus major, chapter 5). For example, assortment by dispersal phenotype (immigration status) was the result of spatial disaggregation, and I showed that this may facilitate social selection for breeding territories (chapter 6). Finally, I investigated how decision-making shaped mixed-species social structure. I found that tits used a common strategy for managing pressures of predation and starvation by shifting from exploration to exploitation at different times of the day (chapter 7). I then found that a very simple interaction rule successfully replicated mixed-species group structure (chapter 8). Strikingly, the same rule was applied to both conspecifics and het- erospecifics, potentially playing an important role in the maintenance of flock structure. Through experimental manipulation of ecological conditions, I found that heightened per- ceived predation resulted in stronger social attraction overall, whereas increased competition led to a reduction in attraction to conspecifics (chapter 9). Simulations suggested this could be one potential mechanism underpinning fission-fusion dynamics in these species. Together, the results in this thesis form a framework linking social behaviour to individ- ual fitness where natural selection is shaped by the social environment. This approach may prove useful for testing whether following common social rules reduces variance in benefits accrued by individuals, and how within-species variation in social behaviour can impact emergent properties of groups.

In a norm game, under certain conditions, there exist Nash equilibria of mutual cooperation. Experimental work demonstrates that even in one-shot situations the level and proportion of cooperative behavior increases if an punishment option is available to the players of a public goods game. It is therefore important to analyze conditions such that this is consistent with a rational choice approach. The paper is meant as a first step toward this task. The main result will be that nonstandard assumptions about human motivations or preferences can explain norms with sanctions even in one-shot situations. This is shown by an analysis of the norm game with two well-known recent models of fairness from behavioral game theory.

The main research question in this thesis explores why some people volunteer and give money compared to those that do not. The thesis builds on existing research that explains volunteering and giving, but is primarily concerned with showing how the social environment – or the context – in which people live can explain individual decisions to volunteer and give. This thesis answers three main research questions with this central theme in mind. First, how do the background characteristics of people explain whether they volunteer or give? Second, net of background characteristics of people, how does the social environment (context) that people live in explain volunteering and giving? Third, how do background characteristics of people and the social environment in which they live interact to explain volunteering and giving? Each of the four empirical chapters focuses on research questions that have received limited attention in the literature, while also utilizing relatively unique data, in relatively unique contexts. The main results of this study are as follows. Comparatively, the shared profile of a volunteer and charitable giver is someone who is middle aged, more educated, married, richer, healthier, and a religious service attendee. Contextual country characteristics also displayed an independent effect of these individual-level characteristics: religious diversity and belonging to a religious minority group was associated with a greater likelihood of volunteering, but are not associated with giving. Income inequality is associated with a decreased likelihood of volunteering and giving for respondents in developed countries, whereas the opposite is true for respondents in developing countries, supporting Wilkinson’s relative income hypothesis. A curvilinear relationship exists between national devoutness and volunteering, whereas a strong positive correlation exists between national devoutness and giving. Females are more likely to volunteer and give in societies that exhibit more gender equality; and the lower educated are more likely to volunteer in more educated societies, but that they are not more likely to give in these societies. There is no support for the idea that income disparities in volunteering and giving are exacerbated in more socially unequal societies. In England, there was no support for the idea that a stable residential area promotes volunteering and giving among adults, while neighbourhood deprivation and ethnic diversity were strong negative predictors of both behaviours. Among the youth demographic in England, religious diversity of schools is not associated with any form of civic engagement. Ethnic diversity is positively related to school extra curricular activities, but negatively with youth club participation. Youths attending private schools were more likely to take part in school-based extra-curriculars, but less likely to take part in out of school clubs and groups.

Le comportement des thons tropicaux autour des objets flottants : De l'étude des comportements individuels et collectifs à l'étude du piège écologiqueLes recherches en halieutique ont pour objectif d'améliorer les connaissances sur le fonctionnement des populations de poissons afin de transférer celle-ci vers des outils de gestion. Ce travail de thèse repose sur un ensemble d'expériences et de modélisations destinées à approfondir notre compréhension générale du comportement associatif de poissons grands pélagiques avec des objets flottantes à la surface de l'océan. Notre objectif est de tester si les milliers d'objets flottants artificiels déployés par les pêcheurs (DCP - Dispositifs de Concentration de Poissons) constituent des pièges écologiques pour les thons tropicaux. Pour mener à bien ce travail, nous avons dans le premier chapitre caractérisé le comportement individuel de thons dans un réseau de DCP ancrés. L'analyse de données de marquage acoustique de 96 thons albacores (Thunnus albacares) (30-96 cm) à Hawaii montre que les thons présentent une plasticité comportementale forte face aux DCP qu'ils rencontrent mais également que le temps de résidence sous les DCP diminue avec la taille des individus. Afin de quantifier l'impact de l'augmentation de la densité de DCP il est essentiel de comprendre les mécanismes et les facteurs qui influencent les temps de résidences sous les DCP. Dans le second chapitre, des expériences de choix binaires suggèrent un rôle de la biomasse agrégée dans la formation, la maintenance et la dispersion des agrégations que forment les thons sous les objets flottants. La quantification de la dynamique des arrivées et des départs des poissons aux DCP permettra de valider les hypothèses que nous proposons concernant les mécanismes sociaux sous-jacents d'une part et d'autre part de tester l'influence de la qualité de l'environnement et de la densité de DCP sur les temps de résidences individuels et la distribution spatiale des populations. Dans le troisième chapitre, la comparaison de facteurs de condition de listaos (Katsuwonus pelamis) matures capturés en bancs libres et sous objets flottants dans une zone naturellement riche en objets flottants, et relativement peu impactée par le déploiement de DCP (Le Canal du Mozambique), nous a permis d'établir un point de référence essentiel pour estimer les effets des perturbations actuelles. Plus généralement, les résultats obtenus dans les différents chapitres tendent à conforter l'hypothèse d'un rôle social et non trophique des objets flottants dans l'écologie de thonidés. Les résultats obtenus durant cette thèse amènent à poser un regard nouveau sur l'hypothèse du piège écologique. Notre travail s'est principalement intéressé à un modèle biologique de choix, les thons tropicaux. Cependant le cadre théorique des questions abordées, les outils d'observations et les méthodes d'analyses développées sont assez génériques pour être appliqués aux autres espèces rencontrées sous les objets flottants. Cette recherche s'intègre plus généralement dans les problématiques visant à mieux comprendre les stratégies comportementales et la distribution des populations dans des environnements multi-sites. / Research in fisheries science aims at investigating the functioning of fish population with the objective of using this knowledge to propose sustainable management measures. This PhD thesis relies on a collection of experiments and modelling designed to further our knowledge on the aggregative behaviour of large pelagic fish with floating structures at the surface of the ocean. The overall objective is to test whether the thousands of man-made floating structures deployed by fishermen (also referred as Fish Aggregating Device –FAD) act as ecological traps for tropical tunas. To archive this main objective, it was first necessary to characterize the individual behaviour of tuna in a network of FAD. In the first chapter, the analysis of 96 acoustically tagged yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) between 30-96 cm FL in the array of anchored FADs around Oahu (Hawaii, US) shows that individuals tuna exhibited behavioural plasticity while in the array and that behaviour around FAD is size dependent. In order to assess the impact of the increasing density of FAD, the major habitat modification, it is essential to understand the factors that influence the residence time at FADs. In the second chapter, binary choice experiments suggest that the aggregated biomass under the FAD play a role in the aggregative process. Nonetheless, quantification of arrival and departure dynamics of fish to FAD are required to validate the assumptions we proposed on the underlying social mechanism. Such model would, then, allow testing the effect of FAD density and environmental conditions on individual residence time and spatial distribution of population. In the third chapter, the comparison of skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) condition between individual associated with logs and in free swimming schools in the Mozambique Channel, an area known to be naturally enriched with logs with few FADs, highlights the need for estimating reference points prior to assessing the impacts of anthropogenic modifications to habitats on animals.Combining the different chapters, our results tend to favour a social rather than a trophic role of floating objects in the ecology of tunas. More generally, we discuss what novel insight our results bring up on the ecological trap hypothesis. Tropical tunas represent an interesting model species on which we focused. However, the theoretical framework of the questions we addressed, the observation and analytical tools we developed are generic enough to be applied to the others species that are encountered around floating structures. In a broader extent, this work meets the general topic of studying behavioural strategies and distribution of population in multi-patch environment.

<p>Validerat; 20130215 (global_studentproject_submitter)</p>

<p>Validerat; 20101217 (root)</p>