A set top box is an embedded device, much like a computer with limited capabilities. Its main purpose is to decode a video signal and output it to a TV. The set top box market is constantly growing and to be competitive in it, a set top box has to be able to do more than only TV. One way to make an attractive product is to give it an appealing user interface. This thesis is a part of a larger work at the company to find new ways to create graphical user interfaces. Its goal is to investigate what SVG implementations that exits, which one that is most suitable for an integration attempt and then perform the integration. Several SVG engines were investigated and one provided by the company was selected for integration. Three ways to integrate the SVG engine were identified. One of these alternatives was to extend the callback interface be- tween the engine and the underlying platform. Because of the good fit with the current architecture this alternative was chosen and implemented. As a part of this investigation a demo application suite of SVG content was also constructed. This investigation resulted in a working integration of the chosen SVG engine on the platform. It has also showed that SVG is a suitable language to build graphical user interfaces on set top boxes.

Enligt socialstyrelsens rekommendationer bör varje kommun uppföra genomförandeplaner för de invånare som har en insats genom Socialtjänstlagen (SoL). För att få en insats genom SoL skall en handläggare göra en utredning som ligger till underlag för ett eventuellt beviljande av insats. Syftet med studien är att beskriva och analysera hur informationen förmedlas mellan de personer som är delaktiga i uppförandet av biståndsbeslut och genomförandeplaner inom boendestöd. Vi har studerat detta genom att granska dokumentationen i boendestödsbeslut och intervjuat de personer som är med och upprättar dessa dokument.Frågorna som vi vill ha besvarade i studien är:• • •Hur sker implementeringen av ett biståndsbeslut? Vilken hänsyn tas till brukaren vid upprättandet av dokumentationen? Hur ser dokumentationen ut och hur förhåller sig genomförandeplanen till biståndsbeslutet?Implementeringen sker i ett ständigt informationsflöde mellan de inblandade aktörerna och det som i stor utsträckning styr vad som dokumenteras i genomförandeplanen är informationen och viljan från brukaren. Beslutet kan skilja gentemot genomförandeplanen p.g.a. att ny information har tillkommit när arbetet med uppförandet av genomförandeplanen pågått.

Examensarbetets syfte är att identifiera möjligheter samt svårigheter med att översätta varumärkesplattformen till grafiska profilen. För att förtydliga och få inblick i verklighetens kontext i forskningsområdet, visuell kommunikation, har en fallstudie utförts på Baronen Köpcentrum.Tillvägagångssättet för datainsamlingen utgår ifrån en kvalitativ metod med ett induktivt angreppssätt. Det empiriska materialet utgörs delvis av sex respondentintervjuer med titlarna grafisk profilerare, Art Director, projektledare, centrumledare samt varumärkesstrateg. Dessutom består empirin utav en marknadsundersökning som genomförts med 100 tillfrågade kunder hos Baronen Köpcentrum. Ambitionen är att undersöka om den visuella kommunikationen uppfattas i enlighet med företagets varumärkesbudskap utifrån varumärkesplattformen. Samtliga intervjuer har sammanställts och tillsammans med teoretiska referensramen tolkats och har kvalitativt analyserats för att slutligen frambringa forskningens slutsats.För att nå en effektiv visuell kommunikation är det betydelsefullt att grafiska profilens komponenter samspelar och bildar en enad visuell helhet för kunden. Vid grafisk profilering och utformandet av visuell kommunikation bör företagsledningen utgå ifrån varumärkesplattformen. Ett fåtal starka varumärkesbudskap ska formuleras, för att sedan visuellt förmedlas till kunden. Forskningen påvisar betydelsen av att förstå möjligheterna i att översätta värdeorden till logotyp, färg, form och teckensnitt. Att utforma en visuell strategi utifrån varumärkesplattformen till grafiska profilen har flertalet kommunikationsmöjligheter exempelvis, ökad lönsamhet, varumärkeskännedom samt uppnå marknadspositionen ”top of mind”.

Rich fens are calcareous and nutrient poor wetlands with a rich flora of orchids, sedges and mosses. As many as one hundred plant species are rich fen specialists. Many wetlands have been drained historically, and transformed to agricultural land or production forests. Today rich fens cover only 2-3% of the total mire area in Sweden. Rich fen is a rare and valuable habitat also from a European perspective and is protected in the Natura 2000-network. To increase and maintain the biodiversity and ecosystem services rich fens can offer, it is important to increase the rich fen area by restoration and management. Rich fen restoration can be carried out in different ways. In this report the restoration method of top soil removal is investigated. The method has never been tested before in Sweden and therefore it is important to evaluate the suitability of the method for further conservation work.   Before restoration, the study area had been drained, used as arable land and pasture, and finally become abandoned and overgrown by tall eutrophic herbaceous vegetation. An excavator dug away the layer of nutrient rich top soil and then the site was left for spontaneous development. Adjacent to the restored area, there is a small remnant of rich fen. Monitoring of the restored area was performed during the first five years after the restoration. I repeated the monitoring after ten years, and analyzed the long-term succession of plants and snails, in comparison with the status in the reference fen.   The vegetation in the restored parts is approaching the one in the reference fen. For example, the number of rich fen specialists has increased steadily. However, the colonization of bryophytes is slow. They cover at most 20 % in the restored parts, while 80 % in the reference fen, possibly because of dispersal limitation and the fact that the restored area is drier than the reference fen. More species of herbs can be found in the restored parts than in the reference fen. Another difference is the high cover of bare soil in the restored areas, compared to none in the reference fen. Some trees and bushes are growing in the area, primarily birch (Betula pubescens) and different species of Salix. The land snails have successfully colonized the restored areas. After two years the same number of species was found in the restored area, as in the reference fen. The total number of species found in the restored areas was 26, compared to 29 in the reference fen, among them three rare rich fen indicator species.   The results show how the restored site has developed from bare mineral soil to a rich fen site, approaching the species composition of the reference fen. Several species of rich fen specialists among vascular plants, bryophytes and land snails have established in the restored areas. The small rich fen close to the restored area functions as a source from where plants and animals can spread. Overall the restoration shows very positive results, going from bare soil to rich fen vegetation in only ten years.

While previous research on African smallholder agriculture has been criticized of focusing on the sole factor of population pressure as driver of agricultural degradation or intensification, the present study tries to nuance this debate by providing empirically grounded research, exploring the dynamics behind local agro-ecological change. The thesis specifically studies the dynamics behind small-scale farmers’ crop choices in relation to their management of trees in cropland in Gera District, Ethiopia. Drawing on situated landscape interviews and focus group discussions with farmers combined with observations and interviews with agriculture officials, a contextual understanding of local agro-ecological processes emerged. While political ecology was used as an overarching framework, the concept of landesque capital served as an analytical tool to explore how external and local forces interact at the point of the land management decision. It was found that external factors sometimes have a reinforcing effect at the local scale, but when top-down interventions are incoherent with bottom-up priorities, a conflict occurs. In this way, local dynamics and external drivers constitute an interacting dialectic, with a set of unintentional synergies and trade-offs eventually forming agro-ecological landscape change. / Examining mismatches between management and the supply of ecosystem services in Ethiopian agroecosystems across scales in space and time

Ranking queries are widely used in data exploration, data analysis and decision making scenarios. While most of the currently proposed ranking techniques focus on deterministic data, several emerging applications involve data that are imprecise or uncertain. Ranking uncertain data raises new challenges in query semantics and processing, making conventional methods inapplicable. Furthermore, the interplay between ranking and uncertainty models introduces new dimensions for ordering query results that do not exist in the traditional settings. This dissertation introduces new formulations and processing techniques for ranking queries on uncertain data. The formulations are based on marriage of traditional ranking semantics with possible worlds semantics under widely-adopted uncertainty models. In particular, we focus on studying the impact of tuple-level and attribute-level uncertainty on the semantics and processing techniques of ranking queries. Under the tuple-level uncertainty model, we introduce a processing framework leveraging the capabilities of relational database systems to recognize and handle data uncertainty in score-based ranking. The framework encapsulates a state space model, and efficient search algorithms that compute query answers by lazily materializing the necessary parts of the space. Under the attribute-level uncertainty model, we give a new probabilistic ranking model, based on partial orders, to encapsulate the space of possible rankings originating from uncertainty in attribute values. We present a set of efficient query evaluation algorithms, including sampling-based techniques based on the theory of Markov chains and Monte-Carlo method, to compute query answers. We build on our techniques for ranking under attribute-level uncertainty to support rank join queries on uncertain data. We show how to extend current rank join methods to handle uncertainty in scoring attributes. We provide a pipelined query operator implementation of uncertainty-aware rank join algorithm integrated with sampling techniques to compute query answers.

Abstrakt Färdigheter utvecklas gradvis vid träning och fördelarna som erhålls är många. Utförandet går snabbare, blir mer korrekt och den kognitiva belastningen tros minska. Utvecklandet av färdigheter kan dock påverkas av individens personlighet och faktorer som setts kunna bidra till stress och prestation. Denna studie undersökte betydelsen av upplevda krav, kontroll och socialt stöd enligt en teoretisk modell framtagen av Karasek och Theorell som reviderats av Perski samt personlighet (Eysenck, EPQ-R: extraversion, neuroticism) avseende resultaten på teoretisk respektive praktisk prestation efter olika mängd träning. Prestation mättes med svenska klätterförbundets praktiska och teoretiska standardprov som används vid uppklättring för topprepskort. Antalet deltagare var 60 personer (27 kvinnor, 33 män). Deltagarna var uppdelade på två grupper, varav ena gruppen hade tränat i två timmar och den andra hade tränat i fyra timmar. Resultaten visade inte på några signifikanta skillnader mellan de båda grupperna avseende de undersökta variablerna förutom att de som gått den kortare kursen rapporterade ett starkare socialt stöd än de som gått den längre kursen. De undersökta variablerna krav, kontroll och socialt stöd samt de två personlighetsvariablerna visade sig inte ha någon relation till resultatet på det teoretiska provet. Ju högre krav försökspersonerna rapporterade desto bättre resultat uppvisades dock på det praktiska provet. Tidigare forskning har entydigt visat att dessa variabler har signifikanta relationer till prestation. Avseende studiedesign finns dock vissa metodologiska skillnader relativt denna studie. För att utröna vilka relationer som finns mellan träning gällande klättring, prestation, upplevda krav, kontroll, socialt stöd och extraversion respektive neuroticism skulle det vara önskvärt med en mer omfattande studie. Nyckelord: Träning, Stress, Personlighet, Prestation, Topprepsklättring / Abstract While training, skills are developed gradually and the received advantages are numerous. The performance increases, gets more correct, and the cognitive burden is believed to decrease. Development of the skill can be affected by the individual´s personality as well as factors known to be related to stress and performance. This study examines the relation between experienced demand, control and social support according to a theoretical model developed by Karasek and Theorell and revised by Perski and personality (Eysenck, EPQ-R: extraversion, neuroticism) regarding results of theoretical and practical performance, respectively, after various amount of training. Performance was measured by the Swedish climbing society’s practical and theoretical standard test used at examinations for top rope certificate. There where 60 participants in the study (27 women and 33 men). The participants where divided into two groups, of which one group practiced for two hours and the other group practiced for four hours. The results showed no significant differences between the two groups regarding the observed variables, with an exception for reports of a stronger social support among the participants of the shorter course. The observed variables; demands, control, social support, and the two personality variables showed no correlation with the result of the theoretical exam. Although, participants reporting higher demands scored higher on the practical exam. Earlier research has unambiguously shown that these variables have significant correlations with performance. However, there are some methodological differences with respect to the research design relatively to this study. To investigate the relations between training in climbing and the studied variables, it would be desirable to conduct a more extensive study. Key words: Training, Stress, Personality, Performance, Top rope climbing

Skolverket skapar förordningar där bland annat kursens innehåll och betygskriterier beskrivs. Skolan är nödgad att följa dessa förordningar men även att skapa lokala kursplaner. Skolverket ändrade i januari 2008 förordningen SKOLFS 2000:07 och därmed måste skolan ändra i sin lokala kursplan. Uppsatsens syfte är därför att undersöka hur ett arbete med att implementera ett politiskt beslut kan gå till på en gymnasieskola i Kalmar län. Studien undersöker också vilka övervägande lärarna tagit, vilka dilemman som uppstår, hur dessa yttrar sig samt om lärarna anser att den nya kursplanen är en förbättring jämfört med den tidigare. Gymnasiekursen heter Samhällskunskap A och det är åtta lärare på samma skola som har blivit intervjuade. Den kvalitativa metoden valdes framför den kvantitativa eftersom det inte är mängden svar som studien gäller utan själva processen. Därför är frågeställningen: Hur har arbetet med ett politiskt beslut gått till på en gymnasieskola i Kalmar län? Den teoretiska utgångspunkten är främst Michael Lipskys teori om gatubyråkrater men även Anders Sannerstedts forskning om implementering. Gatu- eller närbyråkrater är offentliganställda som jobbar med sträng tystnadsplikt. De är hårt pressade uppifrån i en top-down styrning, samt arbetar närmast sina klienter. Lipsky menar att närbyråkraterna och deras klienter skulle ha en bättre arbetsmiljö och känna sig mindre pressade om det varit en bottom-up styrd organisation istället. Det resultat som studien funnit är att respondenterna vill ha en direkt styrning vilket betyder att de vill vara styrda innehållsmässigt men inte metodmässigt. De vill bedöma alla elever lika, därför har lärarna hittat metoder för att undvika de påtryckningar som uttrycks i Lipskys teori och som finns i lärarens arbetsmiljö. Lärarna har alltså haft tidspress, resursproblem av schematiskt slag, samt har både Skolverket och skolledning försvårat uppgiften.

Systems engineering introduces the notion of top-down design, which involves viewing an entire system comprised of its components as a whole functioning unit. This requires an understanding of how those components efficiently interact, with optimization of the process emphasized rather than solely focusing on micro-level system components. The traditional approach to the systems engineering process involves requirements decomposition and flow down across a hierarchy of decision making levels, in which needs and requirements at one level are transformed into a set of system product and process descriptions for the next lower level. This top-down requirements flow approach therefore requires an iterative process between adjacent levels to verify that the design solution satisfies the requirements, with no direct flow between nonadjacent hierarchy levels. This thesis introduces a methodology that enables decision makers anywhere across a system-of-systems hierarchy to rapidly and simultaneously manipulate the design space, however complex. A hierarchical decision making process will be developed in which a system-of-systems, or multiple operationally and managerially independent systems, interact to affect a series of top level metrics. This takes the notion of top-down requirements flow one step further to allow for simultaneous bottom-up and top-down design, enabled by the use of neural network surrogate models to represent the complex design space. Using a proof-of-concept case study of employing a guided projectile for mortar interception, this process will show how the iterative steps that are usually required when dealing with flowing requirements from one level to the next lower in the systems engineering process are eliminated, allowing for direct manipulation across nonadjacent levels in the hierarchy. For this system-of-systems environment comprised of a Monte Carlo based design space exploration employing rapid neural network surrogate models, both bottom-up and top-down design analysis may be executed simultaneously. This process enables any response to be treated as an independent variable, meaning that information can flow in either direction within the hierarchy.

This research, based on literature discussion related to issues on intraorganizational power, aims to discover the critical factors affecting the power of HR department within a firm and measure their causal relation as well as correlation through questionnaires. The questionnaires, being sent to any possible representative firms within each industry on our lists, were distributed in a convenient way. They mainly contain two sets of items, one for the HR department manager, another three for the line department manager. In the HR manager one, the questionnaires has 10 questions on HR departmental power index as dependent variable in our study; in the line manager one, it has 15, 5 and 5 questions on HR effectiveness, Top Management Support and HR Innovativeness respectively as independent variable. Based on our findings after statistical analysis, we conclude the followings: 1. As the HR effectiveness increases, the power of HR department does in the same. 2. As the Top Management Support increases, the power of HR department does in the same. 3. As the HR Innovativeness increases, the power of HR department does in the same.