This thesis begins with the hypothesis that the role of ideas in urban and global development is understudied and understated in comparison to studies that privilege economic and political analyses. The thesis generates two related models that seek to provide a comprehensive means of analyzing both the political economic constraints of development as well as the ideational limits that are overlooked by conventional models. The political economic model adapts constructivist principles to explain the structural limits on urban development that emerge from the contemporary global political economy. The second model draws on previous work done in the field of policy diffusion to posit four relational ways in which ideas are adapted and localized. The thesis argues that political economy analyses provide a comprehensive but mostly macro-level analysis and often fail to adequately understand individual thinking outside of the rational actor model. The ideational adaptation model corrects for this, providing a detailed micro-level analysis that is founded on the political economic framework. Together, the two models provide a comprehensive understanding of the ideational limits and political economic constraints at work in any given development scenario. In order to demonstrate the utility of the combined models (termed combined conceptual approach), the thesis applies the models to four different applications. Three examples are historical secondary source examples (educational philosophy, international business councils, and water sanitation) related to the history of Shanghai and China, and the impact of foreigners on their development vision, strategies, and practice. One application is a case study of Shanghai’s Expo 2010, which uses original data established through high-level interviews with Expo participants. The use of the combined conceptual approach shows how the interpersonal and inter-institutional adaptation and localization of ideas affect the way we understand the concept of legitimate best practice in urban development. The combined conceptual approach highlights the role that human thought, emotions, and psychology play in urban development. It links political economic activity to constructed bonds of trust, learning, the mentality of competition, and soft forms of coercive power (hegemonic ideas, leadership, and conditionality). Finally, the most important contribution of the combined conceptual approach is that it allows for an analysis of both the macro- and micro-levels of development in a relational and holistic fashion.

Syftet med vår studie var att att se vilka diskurser som finns kring barnperspektivet bland socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter. Genom att identifiera diskurser kring detta begrepp var även målet att kunna bidra med ny kunskap kring hur barnperspektivet kommer till utryck och tolkas av utredarna. Vi har använt oss av kvalitativa enkäter med öppna frågor. Enkäterna delades ut till socionomer verksamma inom barn- och ungdomsenheter i åtta kommuner i Sverige. Resultatet har sedan tagits fram med hjälp av diskursanalys. Den valda analysmetoden bygger på Laclau och Mouffes diskursteori. Vi har sedan vidare analyserat vårt resultat utifrån teorier om makt samt med hjälp av tidigare forskning. Vi har utifrån vårt material identifierat tre stycken nodalpunkter, kring vilka diskursen centreras. Detta har vi kunnat göra genom att vi samlat alla utsagor, brutit ner dessa och hittat gemensamma nämnare som i sin tur hjälpt oss att identifiera nodalpunkterna. De funna nodalpunkterna är barnet i fokus, barns perspektiv samt vuxnas ansvar för barns bästa. Nodalpunkterna visar tydligt på vad som anses vara viktigt och därmed hur utredarna talar kring barnperspektivet och dess innehåll. Vi har även sett att utredarna skiljer på begreppen barns bästa respektive barns vilja och att barns vilja ses som en del av barns bästa. De funna nodalpunkterna kan även säga något om både utredarnas syn samt arbete med barns bästa och barns vilja.

This thesis begins with the hypothesis that the role of ideas in urban and global development is understudied and understated in comparison to studies that privilege economic and political analyses. The thesis generates two related models that seek to provide a comprehensive means of analyzing both the political economic constraints of development as well as the ideational limits that are overlooked by conventional models. The political economic model adapts constructivist principles to explain the structural limits on urban development that emerge from the contemporary global political economy. The second model draws on previous work done in the field of policy diffusion to posit four relational ways in which ideas are adapted and localized. The thesis argues that political economy analyses provide a comprehensive but mostly macro-level analysis and often fail to adequately understand individual thinking outside of the rational actor model. The ideational adaptation model corrects for this, providing a detailed micro-level analysis that is founded on the political economic framework. Together, the two models provide a comprehensive understanding of the ideational limits and political economic constraints at work in any given development scenario. In order to demonstrate the utility of the combined models (termed combined conceptual approach), the thesis applies the models to four different applications. Three examples are historical secondary source examples (educational philosophy, international business councils, and water sanitation) related to the history of Shanghai and China, and the impact of foreigners on their development vision, strategies, and practice. One application is a case study of Shanghai’s Expo 2010, which uses original data established through high-level interviews with Expo participants. The use of the combined conceptual approach shows how the interpersonal and inter-institutional adaptation and localization of ideas affect the way we understand the concept of legitimate best practice in urban development. The combined conceptual approach highlights the role that human thought, emotions, and psychology play in urban development. It links political economic activity to constructed bonds of trust, learning, the mentality of competition, and soft forms of coercive power (hegemonic ideas, leadership, and conditionality). Finally, the most important contribution of the combined conceptual approach is that it allows for an analysis of both the macro- and micro-levels of development in a relational and holistic fashion.

This thesis begins with the hypothesis that the role of ideas in urban and global development is understudied and understated in comparison to studies that privilege economic and political analyses. The thesis generates two related models that seek to provide a comprehensive means of analyzing both the political economic constraints of development as well as the ideational limits that are overlooked by conventional models. The political economic model adapts constructivist principles to explain the structural limits on urban development that emerge from the contemporary global political economy. The second model draws on previous work done in the field of policy diffusion to posit four relational ways in which ideas are adapted and localized. The thesis argues that political economy analyses provide a comprehensive but mostly macro-level analysis and often fail to adequately understand individual thinking outside of the rational actor model. The ideational adaptation model corrects for this, providing a detailed micro-level analysis that is founded on the political economic framework. Together, the two models provide a comprehensive understanding of the ideational limits and political economic constraints at work in any given development scenario. In order to demonstrate the utility of the combined models (termed combined conceptual approach), the thesis applies the models to four different applications. Three examples are historical secondary source examples (educational philosophy, international business councils, and water sanitation) related to the history of Shanghai and China, and the impact of foreigners on their development vision, strategies, and practice. One application is a case study of Shanghai’s Expo 2010, which uses original data established through high-level interviews with Expo participants. The use of the combined conceptual approach shows how the interpersonal and inter-institutional adaptation and localization of ideas affect the way we understand the concept of legitimate best practice in urban development. The combined conceptual approach highlights the role that human thought, emotions, and psychology play in urban development. It links political economic activity to constructed bonds of trust, learning, the mentality of competition, and soft forms of coercive power (hegemonic ideas, leadership, and conditionality). Finally, the most important contribution of the combined conceptual approach is that it allows for an analysis of both the macro- and micro-levels of development in a relational and holistic fashion.

Les réacteurs de IVème génération à neutrons rapides offrent la possibilité de valoriser le plutonium produit par le parc actuel des réacteurs à eau légère et de transmuter une part déterminante des déchets ultimes. Actuellement, de nouveaux projets de réacteurs à neutrons rapides sont étudiés dans le monde et doivent satisfaire de nouvelles exigences en termes d’économie des ressources, de réduction des déchets, de compétitivité, de sûreté et de fiabilité. Ainsi, ces nouveaux projets intègrent des innovations qui permettent d’améliorer la sûreté du réacteur (comportement naturel du coeur) en cas d’accident. Dans le cas du prototype ASTRID étudié en France au CEA, ces innovations portent sur le design géométrique du coeur et notamment l’intégration d’une plaque fertile au centre et d’un plenum de sodium en partie supérieure afin d’augmenter les fuites de neutrons en cas de vidange en sodium. Ces designs hétérogènes sont caractérisés par des vidanges en sodium proches de zéro résultant de fortes compensations entre les différentes zones du coeur. L’évaluation des grandeurs neutroniques d’intérêt nécessitent alors des outils de calculs robustes dans le but de traiter rigoureusement le transport des neutrons, et notamment au niveau des interfaces entre milieux. Le premier travail de thèse a donc consisté à améliorer la méthodologie existante permettant d’évaluer au mieux les grandeurs neutroniques d’intérêt. Ces améliorations ont consisté à développer une méthode d’analyse spécifique basée sur la théorie des perturbations et l’utilisation d’un solveur de flux moderne en transport Sn. Ce travail a permis d’une part, de réduire les biais de calcul sur les grandeurs neutroniques d’intérêt par rapport à des méthodes de référence (Monte Carlo) et, d’autre part, d’obtenir des distributions spatiales des effets neutroniques plus précises, et notamment des coefficients locaux de contre-réactions utilisés pour les analyses de transitoires non-protégés caractérisant le niveau « naturel » de « sûreté » du coeur. Par ailleurs, les incertitudes sur ces paramètres neutroniques ont un impact important sur les performances et la sûreté du coeur en termes de marges à prendre lors de la phase de conception. Il est donc important de les maîtriser et de les réduire afin de conserver les gains envisagés par le concept CFV. Ces incertitudes ont pour origines : les données nucléaires (sections efficaces macroscopiques pour une composition du coeur donnée), les données technologiques (données de fabrication et notamment la géométrie, les concentrations atomiques des constituants du coeur et les lois de dilatations thermiques),l’évolution du bilan matière dans le coeur sous irradiation, la thermique du combustible, les biais provenant des solveurs, des schémas de calculs (et de la modélisation) et des méthodes utilisées. Par ailleurs, les incertitudes sur la composition du coeur irradié et la thermique du combustible sont elles-mêmes fortement affectées par celles sur les données nucléaires. La propagation des incertitudes issues des données nucléaires sur les grandeurs neutroniques est donc complexe car faisant intervenir plusieurs sources de corrélation. Cette complexité est en outre accrue si l’on souhaite évaluer la corrélation spatiale des grandeurs neutroniques et des incertitudes associées. Le deuxième objectif de la thèse a donc consisté à mettre en place une méthodologie permettant de propager les incertitudes issues des données nucléaires sur les grandeurs neutroniques. Cette méthodologie se base sur l’évaluation de coefficients locaux de sensibilités permettant de déterminer les corrélations entre les différents paramètres neutroniques. (...) / Fast reactors (FR) can give value to the plutonium produced by the existing light water reactors and allow the transmutation of a significant part of the final nuclear waste. These features offer industrial prospects for this technology and new projects are currently studied in the world such as ASTRID prototype in France. Future FRs will have also to satisfy new requirements in terms of competitiveness, safety and reliability. In this context, the new core concept envisaged for ASTRID incorporate innovative features that improve the safety of the reactor in case of accident. The proposed design achieves a sodium voiding effect close to zero: it includes a fertile plate in the middle of the core and a sodium plenum in the upper part in order to increase the neutron leakage in case of sodium voiding. This heterogeneous design represents a challenge for the calculation tools and methods used so far to evaluate the neutronic parameters in traditional homogeneous cores. These methods have been improved over the thesis to rigorously treat the neutron streaming, especially at the mediums interfaces. These enhancements have consisted in the development of a specific analysis methodology based on perturbation theory and using a modern three dimensional Sn transport solver. This work has allowed on the one hand, to reduce the bias on static neutronic parameters in comparison with Monte Carlo methods, and, on the other hand, to obtain more accurate spatial distributions of neutronic effects including the reactivity feedback coefficients used for transient analysis. The analysis of the core behavior during transients has also allowed estimating the impact of reactivity feedback coefficients assessment improvements. In conjunction with this work, innovative methods based on the evaluation of local sensitivities coefficients have been proposed to assess the uncertainties associated to local reactivity effects. These uncertainties include the correlations between the different local parameters. The propagation during transients with these methods has allowed an estimation of temperature distributions achieved in the core and also to determine the available safety margins before sodium boiling.

The main goal of this masther thesis is design and implementation of library for reduction of strategy profiles of strategy games in normal form. Logics of library functionality will be based on suitable heuristics founded on methods of iterative elimination of dominated strategies and FDDS. Functionality of resultant library will be demonstrated on convenient problems.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to apprise the reader with a basic life insur- ance projection method which is used for the valuation of insurance company's liabilities. The basic projection method can be extremely time consuming in practise so another two variance reduction methods and their combination are presented to obtain either more precise liabilities estimation, or to reduce the time required for the projection. The presented methods are antithetic variate method, control-variate method and their combination later called integrated control-variate method. The final outcome of the thesis is simulation experi- ment which evaluates the liabilities of the group of policies and comparison of the presented variance reduction methods. 1

Under litteraturstudierna fick författarna en uppfattning om att järnvägsbranschen är präglad av en hel del problematik som visat sig i ett flertal brister. Flera större omorganiseringar hade skapat en bransch med otydliga ansvarsgränser och otydliga roller med en mängd utdragna rättsliga tvister mellan beställare och entreprenörer som följd. Stämningen beskrevs som dyster och kompromisser mellan järnvägsaktörer förekom inte i den mån som behövdes, utan aktörerna tänkte mest på sin egen verksamhet. En ändring behövdes. Rapporten är begränsad till tre nyckelaktörer med koppling till järnvägsunderhåll: beställare, entreprenör och trafikutövare. Fokus har lagts på det alltför förekommande avhjälpande underhållet, som visar sig i form av trafikstörningar och trafikstopp. I samma veva uppstod en insikt om att behovet att föra in förebyggande underhåll i större omfattning var stort. Med tanke på de kunskaper författarna införskaffat sig under sin utbildning gällande förebyggande underhåll, var det lite av en chock att upptäcka hur underhållet på järnvägen sköts tidigare. Järnvägsaktörer med olika verksamheter på järnvägen, är formellt oberoende av varandra för att uppnå en fungerande järnväg och därmed en utökad samverkan. Dialog och samverkan var två nyckelord som ofta förekom och en idé om att införa rutiner för en utökad samverkan i form av dialog, antogs kunna vara början till en lösning på problematiken.  När arbetet med rapporten fortlöpte, upptäckte författarna att järnvägsbranschen är en bransch under en pågående förnyelse. Ett förbättringsarbete pågår i form av renodlade roller på riksdagens beslut nu i år och Forum för Framkomlighet (FFF) är ett forum som arbetar för just en utökad samverkan. I forumet träffas beställare, entreprenörer och trafikutövare för att genom dialog uppnå en utökad samverkan, där det första mötet inträffade i april nu i år.  En hel del har hänt under rapportens gång och författarna har utvecklat en samverkansstrategi i bästa mån utefter befintliga förutsättningar för att strategin ska vara applicerbar. Strategin är uppdelad i tre faser för att införas successivt, där Fas 3 innebär en samverkan över ett helt distrikt. Det om något, är en total samverkan. / During the writers literature study they received a clearer perception of the problematics that is embossed in the Railway industry. Several larger reorganisations had created an industry with unclear responsibilities and unclear roles resulting in several protracted litigations between the client and the contractor. The mood was described as bleak and compromises between the operators did not occur by the necessary means, the operators mostly considered only their own activities in the industry. A change had to be done. This report is limited to three key operators with connections to the maintenance on the railway. These key operators are: the client, the contractor and the transport operator. The report focuses on the all too reoccurring corrective maintenance those results in traffic-disturbances and traffic-stops. In the same time an insight occurred that a large need for implementing a preventive maintenance on a larger scale existed. Considering the knowledge the writers had acquired during their education about preventive maintenance, it slightly shocked them to see how the railway maintenance was carried out on the railway. Different operators in different organisations on the railway are dependant of each other to accomplish a functional railway, thus an increased interaction between the operators is achievable. Dialogue and interaction were two keywords that often reoccurred and the idea to, by an increased dialogue, introduce routines for an extended interaction was considered being a first step to solving the issues that exists on the railway. During the writers work on this report, they discovered that the railway industry is an industry under renewal. A process for improvement is currently going on, in the form of purer roles which was carried on after a decision was made by the Parliament of Sweden. The Forum for Accessibility (FFF) is a forum, which had their first meeting in April this year, they are currently working on increasing the interaction on the railway. In this forum the client, contractors and transport operators form a dialogue to achieve this increased interaction between one and another. A lot has happened during the writers work on this report and they have developed an interaction-strategy in the best way possible to make this strategy applicable considering the current conditions on the railway today.

Niemals zuvor in der Geschichte der Technik hat eine Technologie eine so rasante Verbreitung erfahren hat, wie es mit Smartphones und Tablet PCs (digitale Medien) erlebt wurde (Moura und Carvalho 2010). Diese erweisen sich als digitale Alleskönner bzw. Minicomputer mit einem polyfunktionalen Leistungs- und Anwendungsumfang. Es verwundert nicht, dass „die Lebenswelt mit digitaler Technik […] alltägliches Handeln in nahezu allen Kontexten [präformiert].“ (Kerres 2017, S. 22) und mit einem hohen Nutzungszuspruch korrespondiert. In Deutschland beläuft sich die Anzahl der Smartphone-Nutzer auf 57 Millionen und dies bei jährlichen Zuwachsraten (Bitkom e.V. 2018).Jedoch trügt diese vermeintlich breite, gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz und die Nutzung digitaler Medien scheint sich als altersspezifisches Phänomen zu präsentieren. Liegt die Abdeckung mit Smartphones in der Altersgruppe der 14- bis 49jährigen bei über 95 Prozent (Bitkom e.V. 2018), nutzen lediglich 41 Prozent der Personen ab 65 Jahren ein Smartphone1 (Lutter et al. 2017). Dabei nimmt das Nutzungsverhalten mit zunehmenden Alter ab (Barczik 2019). Dies ist umso erstaunlicher, da digitale Medien speziell für ältere Erwachsene Möglichkeiten zur Alltagserleichterung bieten (Mori und Harada 2010, Leung et al. 2012, Thimm 2013). Überdies ermöglichen Smartphones und Tablet-PCs ortsunabhängige Interaktionsmöglichkeiten (Feist und McDougall 2013) und befördern damit die soziale Teilhabe. Feist und McDougall 2013 sprechen modernen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) sogar die Möglichkeit zu, den Alter(n)sprozess gelingend zu unterstützen. Dies lässt sich mit Beispielen wie Mobile Healthcare oder Ambient Assistent Living Systeme untersetzen. Entgegen dieser Vorteile wirft sich unweigerlich die Frage auf, wodurch die gegebene altersbedingte Digital Divide verursacht wird? [... aus der Einleitung]

The aim of the diploma thesis is to apprise the reader with a basic life insur- ance projection method which is used for the valuation of insurance company's liabilities. The basic projection method can be extremely time consuming in practise so another two variance reduction methods and their combination are presented to obtain either more precise liabilities estimation, or to reduce the time required for the projection. The presented methods are antithetic variate method, control-variate method and their combination later called integrated control-variate method. The final outcome of the thesis is simulation experi- ment which evaluates the liabilities of the group of policies and comparison of the presented variance reduction methods. 1