The concept of the product life cycle is not new, having been described, analyzed and discussed so often in the literature of marketing, management and manufacturing. While its strategic implications have been the subject of much research, little is known about its effect on operational aspects, particularly for product and process design. This paper intends to fill this gap. Four product and process concepts are considered; they are modularization, mass customization, the customer order decoupling point, and postponement. By means of a causal loop diagram, the relationships between the different concepts are explored, all finally connecting to one of two business benefits: cost reduction or customer value enhancement. Building on the diagram, a conceptual framework is presented; intended to serve as a set of guidelines for companies wishing to align their product and process design with respect to the product life cycle, allowing benefits to be gained by leveraging the different stages of the product life cycle. Finally, a case study tests the conceptual framework against a global materials handling equipment manufacturer. Due to the long product life cycles existing in the industry, it was not possible to fully cover all steps of the product life cycle. However, the application of the other concepts was explored in great detail for both the operational supply chain, as well as for the design of new products.

Energy efficiency in industry is became important issue in this century considering cost of energy, energy crisis in the world and environmental issue of using energy sources. To solve this problem energy management can be successful tools due to it positive impact on reduction of energy use and also reduction of energy use environmental impacts. The aim of this thesis is to present results of a successful energy managing practices in a Swedish iron foundry and explain the possibilities to implement energy efficiency measures in iron foundry. This in depth evaluation conducted in 2009-2010 in the ITT Water & Wastewater that is a pump manufacture and considers the most energy efficient foundry in Sweden. The company has received the Swedish Foundry Association’s energy prize in 2006 and is considered the most energy efficient foundry in Sweden. In order to reach the goals of project some visiting of factory is done to be familiar with the overall view of the factory and to detect the measures which have been done. Then all data have been gathered and after that analyzed. This in depth evaluation tries to indicate role of energy manager and having energy management practice in industry. Research in this field that contains both theoretical aspect and practical results is very rare. Also for approaching to more details result for in depth evaluation it is better to be  involved with another aspects and actors in industry such as different workers, decision makers to have an in depth view about energy management practice, but because of time limitation in this work just  energy manager and the energy efficiency implementations are considered to conclude results. Results point out well-organized, IT-based and knowledgeable energy management system in cooperation with energy efficiency measures implementation and professional energy manager in the company under study in different part make an increase in energy efficiency for electricity more than 27% and for district heating 68%. Evaluations of factory energy management practices from 10 years ago till 2008 is done and show also role of the overcoming barriers in executing energy management strategies.

Det här examensarbetet behandlar de olika teoretiska verktyg och moment en grafiskt process innehåller, samt jämför teorins delar med hur olika företag arbetar i verkligheten. En studie har genomförts på fyra olika oberoende varumärkesägande företag som intervjuats för att ta del av deras individuella processer vid utveckling av förpackningsdesign till sina produkter. Innehållet i intervjuerna har ställts mot vad teorin presenterar där processerna har jämförts och analyserats för att belysa för- och nackdelar. Genom att framhäva svagheter och se på andra lösningar lyfts eventuella möjligheter till effektivisering av processerna fram. Det här examensarbetet behandlar de olika teoretiska verktyg och moment en grafiskt process innehåller, samt jämför teorins delar med hur olika företag arbetar i verkligheten. En studie har genomförts på fyra olika oberoende varumärkesägande företag som intervjuats för att ta del av deras individuella processer vid utveckling av förpackningsdesign till sina produkter. Innehållet i intervjuerna har ställts mot vad teorin presenterar där processerna har jämförts och analyserats för att belysa för- och nackdelar. Genom att framhäva svagheter och se på andra lösningar lyfts eventuella möjligheter till effektivisering av processerna fram.

Perso-Arabic script is the official writing system in Iran. Romanized transcriptions, based on phonology of Persian, have been extensively used in electronic communications especially on Internet. Dealing with the conversion between these two types of writing systems has been an interesting topic in Natural Language Processing. Similar to Machine Translation, these conversions can be applied at different grammatical layers; such as sentence, phrase or word layer. In this thesis, by choosing Dabire as a standard Romanized transcription, we introduce two approaches to achieve such conversions at word level. In Lexicon-based approach we use Finite State Technology for bi-directional conversion between Perso-Arabic and Dabire. The second approach uses association analysis for statistical conversion from Perso-Arabic to Dabire.

Mathematical modeling has evolved from being a rare event to becoming a standardapproach for investigating complex biological interactions. However, variationsand uncertainties in experimental data usually result in uncertain estimatesof the parameters of the model. It is possible to draw conclusions from the modeldespite uncertain parameters by using core predictions. A core prediction is amodel property which is valid for all parameter vectors that fit data at an acceptablecost. By validating the core prediction with additional experimentalmeasurements one can draw conclusions about the overall model despite uncertainparameter values. A prerequisite for identifying a core prediction is a global searchfor all acceptable parameter vectors. Global optimization methods are normallyconstructed to search for a single optimal parameter vector, but methods searchingfor several acceptable parameter vectors are required here.In this thesis, two metaheuristic optimization algorithms have been evaluated,namely Simulated annealing and Scatter search. In order to compare their differences,a set of functions has been implemented in Matlab. The Matlab functionsinclude a statistical framework which is used to discard poorly tuned optimizationalgorithms, five performance measures reflecting the different objectives of locatingone or several acceptable parameter vectors, and a number of test functionsmeant to reflect high-dimensional, multimodal problems. In addition to the testfunctions, a biological benchmark model is included.The statistical framework has been used to evaluate the performance of thetwo algorithms with the objective of locating one and several acceptable parametervectors. For the objective of locating one acceptable parameter vector, theresults indicate that Scatter search performed better than Simulated Annealing.The results also indicate that different search objectives require differently tunedalgorithms. Furthermore, the results show that test functions with a suitabledegree of difficulty are not a trivial task to obtain. A verification of the tuned optimizationalgorithms has been conducted on the benchmark model. The resultsare somewhat contradicting and in this specific case, it is not possible to claimthat good configurations on test functions remain good in real applications.

Biological ontologies can be used to classify basic terms in biological domains and relations between them. They can also be used as the foundation for interoperability between systems, as community reference and as well as for searching, integration and biological data exchange. Developing ontologies is not easy and most of the time the end result is incomplete or inconsistent. In many cases, such developed ontologies although useful, result into problems when used in semantically-enabled applications. This led to drawing wrong conclusions or failing to see the correct ones. To deal with these problems ontologies need to be repaired. Till today much of the work has been done on searching and repairing the semantic flaws like unsatisfiable concepts and inconsistent ontologies. In this thesis our goal in particular is to find the missing structural relations (is–a hierarchy) between different concepts in ontologies. These concepts are extracted by matching different patterns like Hearst or Hyponymy patterns. Furthermore, the patterns are either noun phrases or the subclasses within a class of patterns. Moreover, we also apply external knowledge such as PubMed to validate the missing is-a relations between concepts found by the algorithm using Hearst and Hyponymy patterns through the documents provided by PubMed. The validation provides us the path to conclude the correctness of our developed algorithm.

With malware becoming more and more diused and at the same time more sophisticatedin its attack techniques, countermeasures need to be set up so that new kinds ofthreats can be identied and dismantled in the shortest possible time, before they causeharm to the system under attack. With new behaviour patterns like the one shown bypolymorphic and metamorphic viruses, static analysis is not any more a reliable wayto detect those threats, and behaviour analysis seems a good candidate to ght againstthe next-generation families of viruses. In this project, we describe a methodology toanalyze and categorize binaries solely on the basis of their behaviour, in terms of theirinteraction with the Operating System, other processes and network. The approach canstrengten host-based intrusion detection systems by a timely classication of unkownbut similar malware code. It has been evaluated on a dataset from the research communityand tried on a smaller data set from local companies collected at University ofMondragone.

This thesis deals with algorithms that optimize the implementation of the error detection technique for soft real-time and multimedia applications in order to minimize their average execution times. We aimed to design the algorithms such that with little hardware available we could achieve maximum time gain. In the context of electronic systems implemented with modern semiconductor technologies transient faults have become more and more frequent. Factors like high complexity, smaller transistor sizes, higher operational frequencies and lower voltage levels have contributed to the increase in the rate of transient faults in modern electronic systems. As error detection is needed, no matter what tolerance strategy is applied, the detection mechanisms are always present and active. Unfortunately, they are also a major source of time overhead. In order to reduce this overhead designers try to implement error detection in hardware, but this approach increases the overall cost of the system. In general there are three approaches to implement the error detection technique. One extreme implementation involves software only and another extreme implementation involves hardware only.  But we focus on the mixed one which involves both hardware as well as software, in order to generate the best system performance with minimal costs. To reduce the time overhead and to achieve maximum time gain, we place as much as possible of the checking expressions in hardware depending on the available resources. The decision is taken based on the frequency information obtained from an execution profile of the program. To achieve our goal we have formulated the problem as a knapsack problem, for which we proposed two algorithms.  The first one is a greedy approach and the second one finds the optimal solution using dynamic programming. To compare the result for these two algorithms and evaluate their efficiency we have run a series of experiments considering applications with different number of detectors and checking expressions. We have also run our optimization on a real-life application (GSM encoder) to see the how these algorithms perform under real-life scenarios. The experimental evaluation has proved the efficiency of our algorithms under different scenarios. Our optimization reduces the time overhead incurred by the error detection component in systems with tight resource constraints. The results presented in this thesis can be used as a foundation for future research in the area. For example, our algorithms could be extended to consider partially dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs or they could be extended so that they give probabilistic guarantees (and could be used in hard real-time systems).

This master thesis investigated the availability of raw materials for biogas production in the city of Medellín, Colombia. By first studying the development of biogas and its use as a vehicle fuel in the city of Linköping, Sweden, a comparison was made in order to focus on high-yield substrates. The objective was to calculate potential production given the amounts and types of substrates found locally and comparing it with the estimated demand of a local bus fleet that is planned to run on natural gas. The assessment of the raw materials was made in situ. The planned sources were visited in order to get information that would be later on analyzed for estimating its production potential. These sources were originally a municipal wastewater treatment plant, two slaughterhouses and two biodiesel plants. The wastewater treatment plant is already producing biogas, resulting from the treatment of sludge in anaerobic digesters. Nevertheless, calculations showed that current production is around 54% that of theoretical potential. Regarding the slaughterhouse, several important flows were detected, although some of them would not be currently available for biogas production, as they already have a defined use. The case for biodiesel production in the city was not very successful, as the two plants that were planned to be analyzed, have not started operations yet. However, some assumptions were made and some figures were calculated for further conclusions and analyses. During the visit, some other interesting sources were detected and were included in this report, such as another wastewater treatment plant, two fruits and vegetables markets, two landfills and biodiesel production in other areas. Several interesting points were discussed and analyzed through a comparison of the two cities. Drivers, barriers, actors, raw materials and production capacity were summarized and compared, resulting on reflections and conclusions. The results were also interesting, showing that the biogas potential at the two wastewater treatment plants would be enough to fuel the system and that if the other sources were to be used, excess biogas would be available for other uses, e.g. private cars or injection into the natural gas grid. / Det här examensarbetet undersöker tillgången på råvaror för biogasproduktion i Medellín, Colombia. Genom att först studera utvecklingen av biogas och dess användning som bilbränsle i Linköping, Sverige, gjordes en jämförelse för att fokusera på hög substrat avkastning. Syftet var att beräkna möjlig produktion utifrån de mängder och typer av substrat som går att finna lokalt, och därefter jämföra detta med ett bussbolags uppskattade efterfrågan av naturgas.   Värdering av råvaror gjordes in situ. De planerade källorna besöktes för att få information som senare kan analyseras för att värdera dess produktionsmöjlighet. Källorna var ursprungligen ett avloppsreningsverk, två slakterier och två biodiesel produktionsverk. Avloppsreningsverket producerar redan biogas, med vattenrengöring på anaeroba slam digestorer. Trots detta visade beräkningar att nuvarande produktion utgjorde ungefär 54% av den teoretiska möjligheten. I fråga om slakteriet, upptäcktes flera viktiga flöden, även om några inte skulle vara tillgängliga för biogasproduktion, då de redan användes för något annat. Studien om biodiesel produktionen i staden var inte lyckad, eftersom de två produktionsanläggningarna som skulle analyseras, ännu inte startat sina verksamheter. Dock var några antaganden gjorda och några siffror beräknade för ytterligare slutsatser och analyser. Under besöken upptäcktes några andra intressanta källor, så som andra avloppsreningsverket, två frukt- och grönsaksmarknader, två soptippar samt biodiesel produktion i andra områden.   Flera intressanta punkter har diskuterats och analyserats genom jämförelsen mellan de två städerna. Förare, hinder, aktörer, råvaror och produktionskapacitet sammanfattades och jämfördes, vilket resulterat i reflektioner och slutsatser. Resultatet var också intressant, då det visar att potentialen för biometan på de två reningsverken skulle vara tillräcklig för att driva systemet, samt om andra källor användes skulle det finnas överskott på biometan för annan användning, t.ex. personbilar eller injektioner i naturgasnätet.

Local therapy with radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is an important method for treating liver tumors mostly in early stage, which has been increasingly used in recent years. RFA utilizes an RF current that is applied to the target tissue through an electrode connected with a power generator and percutaneously inserted into the tumor; the electrode power causes the tissue temperature rise required for destroying cancer cells. If RF thermal ablation entails numerous advantages - such as high repeatability of treatments, suitability for patients who can‟t undergo surgery, quick procedure and fast recovery -, there are still some inconveniences and difficulties coupled with this technique. One of these problems is the so called heat sink effects, resulting from the presence of large blood vessels close to the electrode tip. First, an overview is given of RFA physical background and heat transfer models followed by the improvement of a model of RF ablation in the liver. Second, special attention has been given to the mesh settings so that the simulation model could benefit from an appropriate mesh in terms of resolution and accuracy of the results obtained and in terms of reduced computational time. Then, a large part of the work has been dedicated to the development of a power regulation (PR) aiming at an optimization of the thermal treatment although the presence of large blood vessels in the ablation area and at an abatement of the number of residual tumors. Finally, a comparison work has been conducted between two different ablation modalities (RF versus MW) showing similarities and differences until the conclusion that currently the RFA treatment is the most suitable treatment for tumors in early stage, small and localized.