The underlying aim of this paper is to find out how the management and employees in a grocery store on a relatively small community in Sweden is experiencing Technology-Based Self-Service (TBSS), and self-scanning. And how store management and employees experience that the self-scanning ability is received by their respective consumers. Several open individual interviews were conducted with the administrative head of sales and various employees working at different departments at Coop Forum in Skara In offering self-scanning, we believe that the store provides consumers with an opportunity to perform their daily purchases by an easy and flexible approach, which we believe will have a positive impact on the entire store visit. A positive store visit, we believe play a major role in consumers choosing to do their shopping in the store. The issue to be elucidated in this paper is; How do management and employees in a grocery store perceive that self-scanning influence consumers' purchase and the service the shop offers? Why would a supermarket use self-scanning as part of the service they offer to their consumers? The report concludes the similarities and differences experienced by administrative sales manager and employees compared to previous research on the subject. Employees at Coop Forum possessed good knowledge of the subject area, sales manager realized current problems and difficulties, but as Coop Forum is one of many chain stores, the individual opportunities were limited. The idea behind the TBSS and self-scanning includes aspects such as cost savings, improved customer service with wider and better service to consumers.

No description available.

No description available.

The number of people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer`s disease, increased dramatically over the past centuries and is expected to increase even further within the next years. Based on predictions of the World Health Organization and Alzheimer`s Disease International, 115 million people will suffer from dementia by the year 2050. An additionally increase in other age related neurodegenerative diseases is also forecasted. Quite naturally, neurodegenerative diseases became a focus of attention of governments and health insurances, trying to control the uprising financial burden. Early detection and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases could be an important component in containing this problem. In particular, researchers focused on automatic methods to analyze patients’ imaging data. One way to detect structural changes in magnetic resonance images (MRI) is the voxel-based method approach. It was specifically implemented for various imaging modalities, e.g. T1-weighted images or diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM), a method specifically designed to analyze T1-weighted images, has become very popular over the last decade. Investigations using VBM revealed numerous structural brain changes related to, e.g. neurodegeneration, learning induced structural changes or aging. Although voxel-based methods are designed to be robust and reliable structural change detection methods, it is known that they can be influenced by physical and physiological factors. Dehydration, for example, can affect the volume of brain structures and possibly induce a confound in morphometric studies. Therefore, three-dimensional T1-weighted images were acquired of six young and healthy subjects during different states of hydration. Measurements during normal hydration, hyperhydration, and dehydration made it possible to assess consequential volume changes in gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The datasets were analyzed using VBM, FreeSurfer and SIENA. A significant decrease of GM and WM volume, associated with dehydration, was found in various brain regions. The most prominent effects were found in temporal and parietal areas, in the left inferior orbito-frontal region, and in the extra-nuclear region. Moreover, we found consistent increases in CSF, an expansion around 6% of the ventricular system affecting both lateral ventricles, i.e. the third and fourth ventricle. Similar degrees of shrinkage in WM volume and increase of the ventricular system have been reported in studies of Alzheimer’s disease during disease progression and in its prestage mild cognitive impairment. Based on these findings, a potential confound in GM and WM or CSF studies due to the subjects’ hydration state cannot be excluded and should be appropriately addressed. These results underline the sensitivity of VBM and might also concern other voxel-based methods, such as Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). TBSS was specifically designed for WM analyses and its sensitivity might be helpful for revealing the spatial relation of structural WM changes and related blood serum biomarkers. Two common brain related biomarkers are the glial protein S100B, a plasticity inducing neuro- and gliotrophin, and neuron-specific enolase (NSE), a marker for neuronal damage. However, the spatial specificity of these biomarkers for brain region has not been investigated in vivo until now. Therefore, we acquired two MRI parameters – T1- weighted and DTI - sensitive to changes in GM and WM, and obtained serum S100B and NSE levels of 41 healthy subjects. Additionally, the gene expression of S100B on the whole brain level in a male cohort of three subjects from the Allen Brain Database was analyzed. Furthermore, a female post mortal brain was investigated using double immunofluorescence labeling with oligodendrocyte markers. It could be shown that S100B is specifically related to white matter structures, namely the corpus callosum, anterior forceps and superior longitudinal fasciculus in female subjects. This effect was observed in fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity – the latest an indicator of myelin changes. Histological data confirmed a co-localization of S100B with oligodendrocyte markers in the human corpus callosum. S100B was most abundantly expressed in the corpus callosum according to the whole genome Allen Human Brain Atlas. In addition, NSE was related to gray matter structures, namely the amygdala. This effect was detected across sexes. The data demonstrates a very high S100B expression in white matter tracts, in particular in human corpus callosum. This was the first in vivo study validating the specificity of the glial marker S100B for the human brain, and supporting the assumption that radial diffusivity represents a myelin marker. The results open a new perspective for future studies investigating major neuropsychiatric disorders. All above mentioned studies are mainly dependent on the sensitivity and accuracy of soft and hardware parameters. In particular, technical developments have improved acquisition accuracy in the field of MRI. Interestingly, very little is known about the confounding effects of variations due to hardware parameters and their possible impact on reliability and sensitivity of VBM. Recent studies have shown that different acquisition parameters may influence VBM results. Therefore age-related GM changes were investigated with VBM in 36 healthy volunteers grouped into 12 young, 12 middle-aged and 12 elderly subject. Six T1-weighted datasets were acquired per subject with a 12-channel matrix coil, as well as a 32-channel array, MP-RAGE and MP2RAGE, and with isotropic resolutions of 0.8 and 1 mm. DARTEL-VBM was applied on all images and GM, WM and CSF segments were statistically analyzed.. Paired t-tests and statistical interaction tests revealed significant effects of acquisition parameters on the estimated gray-matter-density (GMD) in various cortical and subcortical brain regions. MP2RAGE seemed slightly less prone to false positive results when comparing data acquired with different RF coils and yielded superior segmentation of deep GM structures. With the 12-channel coil, MP-RAGE was superior in detecting age-related changes, especially in cortical structures. Most differences between both sequences became insignificant with the 32-channel coil, indicating that the MP2RAGE images benefited more from the improved signal-to-noise ratio and improved parallel-imaging reconstruction). A possible explanation might be an overestimation of the GM compartment on the MP-RAGE images. In view of substantial effects obtained for all parameters, careful standardization of the acquisition protocol is advocated. While the current investigation focused on aging effects, similar results are expected for other VBM studies, like on plasticity or neurodegenerative diseases. This work has shown that voxel-based methods are sensitive to subtle structural brain changes, independent of imaging modality and scanning parameters. In particular, the studies investigated and discussed the analysis of T1- and diffusion weighted images with VBM and TBSS in the context of dehydration, blood serum sensitive biomarkers and aging were discussed. The major goal of these studies was the investigation of the sensitivity of voxel-based methods. In conclusion, sensitivity and accuracy of voxelbased methods is already high, but it can be increased significantly, using optimal hardand software parameters. It is of note, though, that these optimizations and the concomitant increase of detection sensitivity could also introduce additional confounding factors in the imaging data and interfere with the latter preprocessing and statistical computations. To avoid an interference e.g. originating from physiological parameters, a very careful selection and monitoring of biological parameters of each volunteer throughout the whole study is recommended. A potential impact of scanning parameters can be minimized by strict adherence to the imaging protocol for each study subjectwithin a study. A general increase in detection sensitivity due to optimized parameters selection in hard- and/or can not be concluded by the above mentioned studies. Although the present work addressed some of those issues, the topic of optimal selection of parameters for morphometric studies is still very complex and controversial and has to be individually decided. Further investigations are needed to define more general scanning and preprocessing standards to increase detection sensitivity without the concomitant amplification of confounding factors.

Purpose This study has been conducted in order to investigate opportunities regarding theestablishment of technology-based self-service stores (TBSS). By studying proposedsites for establishment, information has been collected in order to be used in a factorrating analysis. Research questions 1. Where is the need for expanded service supply the greatest and what characterizesa number of potential establishments? 2. What impact does the marketing decision ‘people’ have in order to create anattractive store concept? 3. How does the need of goods and services differ as well as the marketing decision‘people’ between different potential establishment sites and different consumergroups? Methodology This master thesis has been conducted as a survey on planned establishments placesas well as an observation study of these. A qualitative approach has been usedwhenever respondent answers, from the questionnaire, were applied to the subquestions in order to be used as data for the research questions later on. Literatureconcerning marketing, establishment strategies and consumer needs has been of vitalimportance in this study. Conclusion Based on our study, we found that the need for increased service supply is greater inrural areas. What characterizes potential establishment sites is the distance to andnumber of potential consumers. When it comes to the importance of the marketingdecision ‘people’, it turned out that ‘service availability’ is far more important thanthat of ‘people’ which becomes a secondary feature in order to create an attractivestore concept. The need for good and services differs between the two differenttypes of establishment places. However, both consumer groups prefer to have food,but it differs when it comes to what type. Younger people tend to be more positivelycommitted to unmanned self-service. / Våra krav på service och tillgänglighet ökar samtidigt som samhället urbaniseras och fler pendlar mellan hemmet och arbetet. För att underlätta för konsumenten skulle en teknologibaserad självservice (TBSS) butik kunna fungera. Rapporten ämnade att ta reda på förutsättningarna för etablering av dessa butikskoncept och hur konsumentgrupper upplever attraktivitet även om butiken är utan personal. Vi utgår från McCarthy (1960) marknadsmix med de fyra konkurrensmedlen produkt, plats, pris, och promota. Marknadsmixen har sedan utökats till att även innehålla flera konkurrensmedel med personal som ett av dessa. För att ta reda på konsumenters behov av ett utökat serviceutbud utformades en enkät innehållande delfrågor som berörde hur konsumenter upplevde det nuvarande serviceutbudet, inställning till TBSS och behov av varor och tjänster. Denna enkät besvarades av resenärer på resecentrum och boende på fyra landsbygdsorter. En analys med hjälp av faktorvärdesmetoden utfördes på fem utvalda faktorer för att ge data till en observationsstudie rörande etablering. Från resultaten av enkätstudien upptäcktes att merparten av respondenterna var positivt inställda till TBSS, vilket innebär att konkurrensmedlet personal inte är avgörande när det kommer till att skapa ett attraktivt butikskoncept. De slutsatser som vi drar är att etableringsplatser behöver vara lättillgängliga för ett stort antal konsumenter för att vara värt att satsa på. De produkter som främst angavs var ätbara följt av biljett- och drivmedelstjänster. Analysen med hjälp av faktorvärdesmetoden exemplifierar på ett tydligt sätt hur företag i dagligvaruhandel kan jämföra etableringsplatser utifrån olika faktorer.

Our demands on services and availability increases at the same time as the society gets more urbanized and more people tends to commute. In order to facilitate the consumer, technology based self-service (TBSS) stores might survive and thrive. This thesis had a focus on finding out the general public's perception on TBSS stores and how they perceive the availability even if it is unmanned. The extended marketing mix contains people as a means of competition and we wanted to investigate whether this competitive mean could be ruled out which would mean that the extended marketing mix needs to be revised. In order to find out the people's perception of the TBSS concept a short enquiry were constructed containing three questions. People from Uppsala central station and four countryside towns, corresponding to two percent of the population, answered this enquiry. In order to collect data for information concerning establishment a factor rating method with five chosen factors were performed. From the results of the enquiry we found that the majority of the respondents have a positive attitude towards TBSS, which means that the competitive mean people are not critical when it comes to consumer perception of accessibility; conclusion from this is that the extended marketing mix needs to be revised. The products that was stated most frequently were edible goods followed by ticket and fuel services. The analysis using the factor rating method exemplifies a way for companies to compare differents places for establishment from various chosen factors. / Våra krav på service och tillgänglighet ökar samtidigt som samhället urbaniseras och fler pendlar mellan hemmet och arbetet. För att underlätta för konsumenten skulle en teknologibaserad självservice (TBSS) butik kunna fungera. Rapporten ämnade att ta reda på konsumenters inställning till en TBSS butik och hur de upplever tillgängligheten även om butiken är obemannad. Vi utgår från McCarthy (1960) marknadsmix med de fyra konkurrensmedel produkt, plats, pris, och promota. Marknadsmixen har sedan utökats för att även innehålla flera konkurrensmedel med personal som ett av dessa. Vi ville undersöka om konkurrensmedlet personal kan uteslutas vilket skulle innebära en revidering av den utökade marknadsmixen. För att ta reda på konsumenters inställning till TBSS konceptet utformades en kort enkät innehållande tre frågor (nuvarande serviceutbud, varor och tjänster samt inställning till obemannad självservice). Denna enkät fick resenärer på resecentrum och boende på fyra landsbygdsorter, motsvarande två procent av populationen, svara på muntligt. En analys med hjälp av faktorvärdesmetod utfördes av fem utvalda faktorer för att ge data till en observationsstudie rörande etablering. Från resultaten av enkätstudien upptäcktes att merparten av respondenterna var positivt inställda till TBSS, vilket innebär att konkurrensmedlet personal inte är avgörande när det kommer till konsumenters uppfattning av tillgänglighet; detta innebär att den utökade marknadsmixen behöver revideras. De produkter som främst angavs var ätbara följt av biljett- och drivmedelstjänster. Analysen med hjälp av faktorvärdesmetoden exemplifierar på ett tydligt sätt hur företag kan jämföra olika etableringsplatser utifrån olika faktorer.

The number of people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer`s disease, increased dramatically over the past centuries and is expected to increase even further within the next years. Based on predictions of the World Health Organization and Alzheimer`s Disease International, 115 million people will suffer from dementia by the year 2050. An additionally increase in other age related neurodegenerative diseases is also forecasted. Quite naturally, neurodegenerative diseases became a focus of attention of governments and health insurances, trying to control the uprising financial burden. Early detection and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases could be an important component in containing this problem. In particular, researchers focused on automatic methods to analyze patients’ imaging data. One way to detect structural changes in magnetic resonance images (MRI) is the voxel-based method approach. It was specifically implemented for various imaging modalities, e.g. T1-weighted images or diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM), a method specifically designed to analyze T1-weighted images, has become very popular over the last decade. Investigations using VBM revealed numerous structural brain changes related to, e.g. neurodegeneration, learning induced structural changes or aging. Although voxel-based methods are designed to be robust and reliable structural change detection methods, it is known that they can be influenced by physical and physiological factors. Dehydration, for example, can affect the volume of brain structures and possibly induce a confound in morphometric studies. Therefore, three-dimensional T1-weighted images were acquired of six young and healthy subjects during different states of hydration. Measurements during normal hydration, hyperhydration, and dehydration made it possible to assess consequential volume changes in gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The datasets were analyzed using VBM, FreeSurfer and SIENA. A significant decrease of GM and WM volume, associated with dehydration, was found in various brain regions. The most prominent effects were found in temporal and parietal areas, in the left inferior orbito-frontal region, and in the extra-nuclear region. Moreover, we found consistent increases in CSF, an expansion around 6% of the ventricular system affecting both lateral ventricles, i.e. the third and fourth ventricle. Similar degrees of shrinkage in WM volume and increase of the ventricular system have been reported in studies of Alzheimer’s disease during disease progression and in its prestage mild cognitive impairment. Based on these findings, a potential confound in GM and WM or CSF studies due to the subjects’ hydration state cannot be excluded and should be appropriately addressed. These results underline the sensitivity of VBM and might also concern other voxel-based methods, such as Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). TBSS was specifically designed for WM analyses and its sensitivity might be helpful for revealing the spatial relation of structural WM changes and related blood serum biomarkers. Two common brain related biomarkers are the glial protein S100B, a plasticity inducing neuro- and gliotrophin, and neuron-specific enolase (NSE), a marker for neuronal damage. However, the spatial specificity of these biomarkers for brain region has not been investigated in vivo until now. Therefore, we acquired two MRI parameters – T1- weighted and DTI - sensitive to changes in GM and WM, and obtained serum S100B and NSE levels of 41 healthy subjects. Additionally, the gene expression of S100B on the whole brain level in a male cohort of three subjects from the Allen Brain Database was analyzed. Furthermore, a female post mortal brain was investigated using double immunofluorescence labeling with oligodendrocyte markers. It could be shown that S100B is specifically related to white matter structures, namely the corpus callosum, anterior forceps and superior longitudinal fasciculus in female subjects. This effect was observed in fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity – the latest an indicator of myelin changes. Histological data confirmed a co-localization of S100B with oligodendrocyte markers in the human corpus callosum. S100B was most abundantly expressed in the corpus callosum according to the whole genome Allen Human Brain Atlas. In addition, NSE was related to gray matter structures, namely the amygdala. This effect was detected across sexes. The data demonstrates a very high S100B expression in white matter tracts, in particular in human corpus callosum. This was the first in vivo study validating the specificity of the glial marker S100B for the human brain, and supporting the assumption that radial diffusivity represents a myelin marker. The results open a new perspective for future studies investigating major neuropsychiatric disorders. All above mentioned studies are mainly dependent on the sensitivity and accuracy of soft and hardware parameters. In particular, technical developments have improved acquisition accuracy in the field of MRI. Interestingly, very little is known about the confounding effects of variations due to hardware parameters and their possible impact on reliability and sensitivity of VBM. Recent studies have shown that different acquisition parameters may influence VBM results. Therefore age-related GM changes were investigated with VBM in 36 healthy volunteers grouped into 12 young, 12 middle-aged and 12 elderly subject. Six T1-weighted datasets were acquired per subject with a 12-channel matrix coil, as well as a 32-channel array, MP-RAGE and MP2RAGE, and with isotropic resolutions of 0.8 and 1 mm. DARTEL-VBM was applied on all images and GM, WM and CSF segments were statistically analyzed.. Paired t-tests and statistical interaction tests revealed significant effects of acquisition parameters on the estimated gray-matter-density (GMD) in various cortical and subcortical brain regions. MP2RAGE seemed slightly less prone to false positive results when comparing data acquired with different RF coils and yielded superior segmentation of deep GM structures. With the 12-channel coil, MP-RAGE was superior in detecting age-related changes, especially in cortical structures. Most differences between both sequences became insignificant with the 32-channel coil, indicating that the MP2RAGE images benefited more from the improved signal-to-noise ratio and improved parallel-imaging reconstruction). A possible explanation might be an overestimation of the GM compartment on the MP-RAGE images. In view of substantial effects obtained for all parameters, careful standardization of the acquisition protocol is advocated. While the current investigation focused on aging effects, similar results are expected for other VBM studies, like on plasticity or neurodegenerative diseases. This work has shown that voxel-based methods are sensitive to subtle structural brain changes, independent of imaging modality and scanning parameters. In particular, the studies investigated and discussed the analysis of T1- and diffusion weighted images with VBM and TBSS in the context of dehydration, blood serum sensitive biomarkers and aging were discussed. The major goal of these studies was the investigation of the sensitivity of voxel-based methods. In conclusion, sensitivity and accuracy of voxelbased methods is already high, but it can be increased significantly, using optimal hardand software parameters. It is of note, though, that these optimizations and the concomitant increase of detection sensitivity could also introduce additional confounding factors in the imaging data and interfere with the latter preprocessing and statistical computations. To avoid an interference e.g. originating from physiological parameters, a very careful selection and monitoring of biological parameters of each volunteer throughout the whole study is recommended. A potential impact of scanning parameters can be minimized by strict adherence to the imaging protocol for each study subjectwithin a study. A general increase in detection sensitivity due to optimized parameters selection in hard- and/or can not be concluded by the above mentioned studies. Although the present work addressed some of those issues, the topic of optimal selection of parameters for morphometric studies is still very complex and controversial and has to be individually decided. Further investigations are needed to define more general scanning and preprocessing standards to increase detection sensitivity without the concomitant amplification of confounding factors.

Digitaliseringens framväxt har förändrat hur tjänster erbjuds på marknaden. Det blir allt vanligare att kunder interagerar med teknologi i servicemöten istället för med servicepersonal, en teknologi som benämns self-service technology (SST). Tidigare forskare har beskrivit flera övergripande anledningar till att företag väljer att implementera SST, exempelvis; reducerade kostnader, ökad produktivitet, ökad kundnöjdhet och lojalitet samt för att nå nya kundsegment. Tidigare forskning har bedrivits kring vilka faktorer som påverkar attityder till och tillfredsställelse med SST i olika kontexter, vilka visat sig föregå användning av SST. Förekomsten av SST inom casual dining-restauranger är dock en relativt ny företeelse, där forskning kring konsumenters attityder och tillfredsställelse saknas. Restauranger av casual dining-karaktär kan definieras som en typ av restaurang som ligger mellan snabbmatsrestaurang och finrestaurang.  Syftet med denna studie är att utvidga den befintliga forskningen inom self-service technology (SST) till casual dining-restauranger. Mer specifikt är syftet att undersöka applicerbarheten av tidigare SST-forskning på en relativt ny och unik restaurangkontext, för att kartlägga vilka faktorer som påverkar konsumenters attityder till och tillfredsställelse med SST i denna kontext. Vidare är syftet att undersöka om det finns betydande skillnader mellan hur faktorerna påverkar attityd respektive tillfredsställelse. Att sammantaget kartlägga detta kan ge praktisk användbar information till chefer för casual dining-restauranger som står inför beslutet att utforma och implementera liknande SSTs i sina verksamheter. Studiens syfte mynnade ut i följande frågeställning:  Vilka faktorer påverkar konsumenters attityder till, och tillfredsställelse med, self-service technology i casual dining-restauranger?  För att besvara forskningsfrågan genomfördes en fallstudie av restaurangkedjan Pinchos. Totalt 20 hypoteser formulerades kring valda faktorers eventuella påverkan på restaurangbesökares attityd till och tillfredsställelse med SST i casual dining-restauranger. För att undersöka dessa hypoteser genomfördes en kvantitativ undersökning i form av en internetdistribuerad enkät. Totalt 169 respondenter besvarade enkäten. Enkla och multipla linjära regressionsanalyser genomfördes därefter för att analysera empirin.  Resultatet visar att faktorerna: användbarhet, enkelhet vid användning, nöje, pålitlighet samt support vid behov uppvisar ett signifikant positivt samband med såväl attityd till som tillfredsställelse med SST i casual dining-restauranger när de studeras enskilt. Studien visar vidare att faktorerna behov av interaktion med personal samt avsaknad av personlig service uppvisar ett signifikant negativt samband med såväl attityd till som tillfredsställelse med SST i denna kontext. Studien visar således att samtliga faktorer påverkar både attityd och tillfredsställelse. Faktorerna ekonomisk kompensation och technology readiness visade inget signifikant samband med varken attityd eller tillfredsställelse när de studerades enskilt. Faktorn kontroll analyserades ej då enkätfrågorna relaterade till denna faktor uppvisade för låg intern konsistens.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a transition phase between normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Individuals with MCI show impairment in cognition as well as corresponding damage to areas of their brain. Performance on tasks such as discriminating objects with ambiguous features has been associated with damage to the perirhinal cortex, while scenes with structural (spatial) elements have been associated with damage to the hippocampus. In addition, attention is regarded as one of the first non-memory domains to decline in MCI. A relatively new MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is sensitive to white matter microstructural integrity and has been associated with changes due to cognitive decline. 18 MCI (14 amnesic, 4 vascular) and 12 healthy matched controls were assessed in feature ambiguity, attention and structural learning to assess associated deficits in MCI. Associations with white matter microstructural integrity were then investigated. The MCI groups were discovered to perform worse than controls on the test of structural learning. In addition, altered attention networks were found in MCI and were associated with white matter microstructural integrity. No significant differences were found for feature ambiguity. These findings suggest there may be specific damage to the hippocampus while the perirhinal cortex may be preserved in MCI. Furthermore, dysfunction in attention was found to be associated with white matter microstructural integrity. These experimental tests may be useful in assessing dysfunction in MCI and identifying degeneration in white matter microstructural integrity. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to validate these findings.

In the world of high mobility, there is a growing need for people to communicate with each other and have timely access to information regardless of the location of the individuals or the information. This need is supported by the advances in the technologies of networking, wireless communications, and portable computing devices with reduction in the physical size of computers, lead to the rapid development in mobile communication infrastructure. Hence, mobile and wireless networks present many challenges to application, hardware, software and network designers and implementers. One of the biggest challenge is to provide a secure mobile environment. Security plays a more important role in mobile communication systems than in systems that use wired communication. This is mainly because of the ubiquitous nature of the wireless medium that makes it more susceptible to security attacks than wired communications. The aim of the thesis is to develop an integrated dynamic security and authentication system for mobile transactions. The proposed system operates at the transactions-level of a mobile application, by intelligently selecting the suitable security technique and authentication protocol for ongoing transaction. To do this, we have designed two schemes: the transactions-based security selection scheme and the transactions-based authentication selection scheme. These schemes use transactions sensitivity levels and the usage context, which includes users behaviors, network used, device used, and so on, to decide the required security and authentication levels. Based on this analysis, requisite security technique, and authentication protocols are applied for the trans-action in process. The Behaviors-Observations-Beliefs (BOB) model is developed using cognitive agents to supplement the working of the security and authentication selection schemes. A transaction classification model is proposed to classify the transactions into various sensitivity levels. The BOB model The BOB model is a cognitive theory based model, to generate beliefs over a user, by observing various behaviors exhibited by a user during transactions. The BOB model uses two types of Cognitive Agents (CAs), the mobile CAs (MCAs) and the static CAs (SCAs). The MCAs are deployed over the client devices to formulate beliefs by observing various behaviors of a user during the transaction execution. The SCA performs belief analysis, and identifies the belief deviations w.r.t. established beliefs. We have developed four constructs to implement the BOB model, namely: behaviors identifier, observations generator, beliefs formulator, and beliefs analyser. The BOB model is developed by giving emphasis on using the minimum computation and minimum code size, by keeping the resource restrictiveness of the mobile devices and infrastructure. The knowledge organisation using cognitive factors, helps in selecting the rational approach for deciding the legitimacy of a user or a session. It also reduces the solution search space by consolidating the user behaviors into an high-level data such as beliefs, as a result the decision making time reduces considerably. The transactions classification model This model is proposed to classify the given set of transactions of an application service into four sensitivity levels. The grouping of transactions is based on the operations they perform, and the amount of risk/loss involved if they are misused. The four levels are namely, transactions who’s execution may cause no-damage (level-0), minor-damage (level-1), significant-damage (level-2) and substantial-damage (level-3). A policy-based transaction classifier is developed and incorporated in the SCA to decide the transaction sensitivity level of a given transaction. Transactions-based security selection scheme (TBSS-Scheme) The traditional security schemes at application-level are either session or transaction or event based. They secure the application-data with prefixed security techniques on mobile transactions or events. Generally mobile transactions possesses different security risk profiles, so, empirically we may find that there is a need for various levels of data security schemes for the mobile communications environment, which face the resource insufficiency in terms of bandwidth, energy, and computation capabilities. We have proposed an intelligent security techniques selection scheme at the application-level, which dynamically decides the security technique to be used for a given transaction in real-time. The TBSS-Scheme uses the BOB model and transactions classification model, while deciding the required security technique. The selection is purely based on the transaction sensitivity level, and user behaviors. The Security techniques repository is used in the proposed scheme, organised under three levels based on the complexity of security techniques. The complexities are decided based on time and space complexities, and the strength of the security technique against some of the latest security attacks. The credibility factors are computed using the credibility module, over transaction network, and transaction device are also used while choosing the security technique from a particular level of security repository. Analytical models are presented on beliefs analysis, security threat analysis, and average security cost incurred during the transactions session. The results of this scheme are compared with regular schemes, and advantageous and limitations of the proposed scheme are discussed. A case study on application of the proposed security selection scheme is conducted over mobile banking application, and results are presented. Transactions-based authentication selection scheme (TBAS-Scheme) The authentication protocols/schemes are used at the application-level to authenticate the genuine users/parties and devices used in the application. Most of these protocols challenges the user/device to get the authentication information, rather than deploying the methods to identify the validity of a user/device. Therefore, there is a need for an authentication scheme, which intelligently authenticates a user by continuously monitoring the genuinity of the activities/events/ behaviors/transactions through out the session. Transactions-based authentication selection scheme provides a new dimension in authenticating users of services. It enables strong authentication at the transaction level, based on sensitivity level of the given transaction, and user behaviors. The proposed approach intensifies the procedure of authentication by selecting authentication schemes by using the BOB-model and transactions classification models. It provides effective authentication solution, by relieving the conventional authentication systems, from being dependent only on the strength of authentication identifiers. We have made a performance comparison between transactions-based authentication selection scheme with session-based authentication scheme in terms of identification of various active attacks, and average authentication delay and average authentication costs are analysed. We have also shown the working of the proposed scheme in inter-domain and intra-domain hand-off scenarios, and discussed the merits of the scheme comparing it with mobile IP authentication scheme. A case study on application of the proposed authentication selection scheme for authenticating personalized multimedia services is presented. Implementation of the TBSS and the TBAS schemes for mobile commerce application We have implemented the integrated working of both the TBSS and TBAS schemes for a mo-bile commerce application. The details on identifying vendor selection, day of purchase, time of purchase, transaction value, frequency of purchase behaviors are given. A sample list of mobile commerce transactions is presented along with their classification into various sensitivity levels. The working of the system is discussed using three cases of purchases, and the results on trans-actions distribution, deviation factor generation, security technique selection, and authentication challenge generation are presented. In summary, we have developed an integrated dynamic security and authentication system using, the above mentioned selection schemes for mobile transactions, and by incorporating the BOB model, transactions classification model, and credibility modules. We have successfully implemented the proposed schemes using cognitive agents based middleware. The results of experiments suggest that incorporating user behaviors, and transaction sensitivity levels will bring dynamism and adaptiveness to security and authentication system. Through which the mobile communication security could be made more robust to attacks, and resource savvy in terms of reduced bandwidth and computation requirements by using an appropriate security and authentication technique/protocol.