Throughout history, radical individuals have caused violence and tarnished the reputation of many communities and beliefs. Following 9/11, Islamic Terrorism put fear into many individuals. New fronts of the War on Terror began to open as militaries began to engage terrorist groups who sought to take action through radical beliefs. Al Qaeda had opened up a new front and joined the ranks of the Sunni Insurgency to confront the armed forces of the United States as the Invasion of Iraq began to unfold. This new group had radical leaders who were able to incite a stiff and violent campaign against their enemies. The U.S. was able to slow down the group, but not the ideology, tactics, and leadership once it withdrew from the conflict zone. As leaders in the area began to divide their societies by violence and marginalization, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria were able to come into power and create small, quasi-legitimate caliphate. Although the group may be somewhat defeated in the region, the ideology will carry on. By using organizational theory, we can better compare both groups and learn from their strengths and weaknesses. Through analyzing this parallel case study, new doors may be opened up for research to be able to slow down radical ideologies and thwart violent actions. / Master of Arts / Following 9/11, we begin to see the United States devote countless amounts of resources and energy to combat radical Islamic ideologies. In this, we study Al Qaeda and its Iraq branch, AQI, and how its remnants were able to create one of the most successful and notorious Islamic terror organizations. This thesis allows growth to the study of terrorism, primarily by comparing two terror groups and understanding their rise to success and failures. This thesis also helps study how groups can split apart and form new offshoot organizations. Looking into groups' ideologies allows for the researchers to also how they may affect success. As groups rise and fall, there may a continuation of an ideology. New platforms can assist in this, and play large parts of a groups success. Leadership can be a large factor, guiding a group to success or hurting its image. To combat terror organizations, the military can affect how they grow, thus showing the power of settings and where terror organizations can thrive. By comparing and contrasting organizations, it allows for a different approach of research that can help in preventing violent actors to continue on a similar path.

Det här är en kvalitativ studie som syftar till att undersöka användningen av RFID-teknik i det interna flödet hos en verksamhet i lagerbranschen. Det som undersöktes var hur tekniken kan effektivisera verksamheten och vilken potential som finns med RFID där ämnet realtidsspårning introduceras. Tillsammans med antenner och läsare så möjliggör RFID-teknik identifiering och spårning av lastbärare genom radiofrekvenser vilket gör det till en resurs med hög potential. För att spåra lastbärare används RFID-teknik genom att varje lastbärare utrustas med en unik RFID-tagg.  Fördelarna med att implementera RFID-teknologi inkluderar spårbarhet och synlighet i det interna flödet vilket leder till minskade förluster av lastbärare och en potential till att korta ner ledtider och öka effektiviteten i verksamheten. Hinder som höga initiala investeringskostnader och komplexitet i integration kan identifieras vid implementeringen. För att optimera utnyttjandet av RFID-teknologi för användning och för spårning så föreslås utvecklingar inom området så att fler aktörer ska kunna implementera tekniken och möjliggöra en förbättrad spårning längs värdekedjan. Fallföretaget har sedan två år tillbaka börjat med användning av plastpallar med RFID-taggar i sin verksamhet för att tillfredsställa sina kunder.  Studien bekräftar att trots vissa utmaningar med RFID-teknologin så erbjuder tekniken fördelar som minskad risk för mänskliga fel och bättre hantering och spårbarhet av lastbärare. Avslutningsvis har den här studien visat att användningen av RFID i plastpallar erbjuder signifikanta möjligheter att förbättra interna logistikprocesser. Våra resultat bidrar till såväl den akademiska diskussionen som till praktiska tillämpningar, och stärker förståelsen för hur moderna teknologier kan användas för att driva effektivitet och innovation inom logistiksektorn. / This is a qualitative study aimed at investigating the use of RFID technology in the internal flow of a warehouse. The study examined how the technology can streamline operations and the potential of RFID, particularly in real-time tracking. Alongside antennas and readers, RFID technology enables the identification and tracking of carriers or pallets through radio frequencies, making it a resource with high potential. To track pallets, RFID technology is utilized by equipping each pallet with a unique RFID tag.  The advantages of implementing RFID technology include traceability and visibility in the internal flow, leading to reduced losses of carriers and the potential to shorten lead times and increase efficiency in warehouse operations. Challenges such as high initial investment costs and integration complexity may be identified during implementation. To optimize the utilization of RFID technology for tracking and usage, developments in the field are proposed to enable more actors to implement the technology and facilitate improved tracking along the value chain. The case company has been using plastic pallets with RFID-tags in its operations for the past two years to satisfy customer demands.  The study confirms that despite some challenges with the accuracy of RFID technology, the technology offers significant advantages for modern logistics. The study confirms that despite some challenges with the accuracy of RFID technology, it offers significant advantages for modern logistics systems. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of further research and development to fully leverage the potential of RFID technology in the future.

Für die Trassierung von Straßenverkehrsanlagen hat sich neben anderen Methoden die Verwendung von Biegelinealen als vorteilhaft erwiesen und vor über 50 Jahren etabliert. Inzwischen hat der Einsatz moderner Entwurfssoftware in den Straßenbauverwaltungen und Planungsbüros das Biegelineal trotz seiner Vorteile aus der Praxis verdrängt. Keines der Entwurfsprogramme legt das strukturmechanische Prinzip des Biegelineals zugrunde, da die Verformungen des zu Trassierungszwecken ausgelegten Biegelineals nicht exakt berechnet werden können. An diesem Punkt setzt die vorliegende Arbeit an, sie umgeht das Problem auf numerischem Wege unter Anwendung der Finiten Elemente Methode (FEM). So lassen sich über Strukturanalysen die Verformungen einer um seine Hauptträgheitsachsen punktuell ausgelenkten, prismatischen Balkenstruktur mit doppeltsymmetrischem Querschnitt berechnen. Mit der Analyseantwort ergeben sich insbesondere die dreidimensionalen Koordinaten einer Punktfolge, welche die Biegelinie quasiexakt repräsentiert. Die dreidimensionale Biegelinie setzt sich aus einer Achse und einer Gradiente zusammen und ist im Rahmen der Vorplanung geeignet, eine richtliniengerechte Straßenverkehrsanlage zu erzeugen. Das Untersuchungsergebnis stellt eine neuartige Grundlage für ein dreidimensionales Trassierungsverfahren dar, bei dem ein mathematisch modelliertes Biegelineal im Digitalen Geländemodell (DGM) verformt wird.

Für die Trassierung von Straßenverkehrsanlagen hat sich neben anderen Methoden die Verwendung von Biegelinealen als vorteilhaft erwiesen und vor über 50 Jahren etabliert. Inzwischen hat der Einsatz moderner Entwurfssoftware in den Straßenbauverwaltungen und Planungsbüros das Biegelineal trotz seiner Vorteile aus der Praxis verdrängt. Keines der Entwurfsprogramme legt das strukturmechanische Prinzip des Biegelineals zugrunde, da die Verformungen des zu Trassierungszwecken ausgelegten Biegelineals nicht exakt berechnet werden können. An diesem Punkt setzt die vorliegende Arbeit an, sie umgeht das Problem auf numerischem Wege unter Anwendung der Finiten Elemente Methode (FEM). So lassen sich über Strukturanalysen die Verformungen einer um seine Hauptträgheitsachsen punktuell ausgelenkten, prismatischen Balkenstruktur mit doppeltsymmetrischem Querschnitt berechnen. Mit der Analyseantwort ergeben sich insbesondere die dreidimensionalen Koordinaten einer Punktfolge, welche die Biegelinie quasiexakt repräsentiert. Die dreidimensionale Biegelinie setzt sich aus einer Achse und einer Gradiente zusammen und ist im Rahmen der Vorplanung geeignet, eine richtliniengerechte Straßenverkehrsanlage zu erzeugen. Das Untersuchungsergebnis stellt eine neuartige Grundlage für ein dreidimensionales Trassierungsverfahren dar, bei dem ein mathematisch modelliertes Biegelineal im Digitalen Geländemodell (DGM) verformt wird.

The aim of this work was to create a program to visualize voxel scenes in real time using ray tracing. It included the study of various methods of such a rendering with a focus on shadows. The solution was created using Unity engine and experimental packages Unity Jobs and Burst. The thesis presents multiple ray tracing passes and SVGF technique, that is used to turn a noisy input into full edge-preserving image. The final program is able to render hard shadows, soft shadows, and ambient occlusion at speed of fifty frames per second.

Since the cold war, most countries have moved on from the classical security perception that all threats are external and aiming to invade the sovereignty of the state, thus leading to military armies fighting each other. Instead as Globalization have become more predominant since the beginning of the 1990’s new threats have also emerged that militaries can’t fight as they used to, thus it has become necessary for a wider view on security which also involves human suffering, and the general trend among armies have been to combat these through international peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. This study aims at showing the change in which the Swedish army have undergone since the end of the cold war and into modern days, both in terms of political decisions and also show how the use of language have been changed throughout the course. The thesis covers a time period between 1989 to 2009 and following the process of change from the Swedish political institution that works with military issues, called the Försvarsutskottet or the FöU and the method applied is process tracing with a detailed narrative. Several important conceptions are also explained such as Globalization, Collective security and Human security, which will make the result chapter more understandable. The results showed that the biggest changes in Sweden’s military policy came in three steps, the beginning of the 1990’s was influenced with economic problems for Sweden which also lead to budget downsizings in the military. The mid-1990’s was the time where there existed no real external threat to Sweden, and hence it came to be dominated by several large reforms which also aimed at lowering the costs of the military and adapt it into becoming rapid response forces. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 the new threats emerged and the Swedish military focused even more on improving their international and humanitarian operations. The thesis ends by discussing these finding and present some changes in the use of languages in-between the 20 years.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Kevin C. Dhuyvetter / A Microsoft Excel based budget was developed to find the cost of becoming National Animal Identification Systems (NAIS) compliant in the U.S for beef cow-calf producers. This budget was turned into a stochastic budget by using different distributions for five key variables. From these distributions 10,000 observations were simulated using Latin Hypercube sampling. From the comprehensive budget, a second, more simple budget was constructed for obtaining NAIS cost. This Microsoft Excel based model gives beef cow-calf producers an estimate and a prediction interval associated with the estimated cost of adopting a cattle ID system that is compliant with the National Animal Identification Systems quickly and conveniently, requiring only six inputs. Both the comprehensive and the quick budget are available online. An Ordinary Least Squares regression was estimated using the simulated observations to find marginal effects associated with key variables. The driving factor of total cost per head was eID tag price for operations that tag and eID tag price and chute costs for non-tagging operations. For producers with five or less animals, it was cheaper to hire third parties to tag animals. From the sample data generated, smaller operations pay significantly more than larger operations on a per head basis, as the minimum cost was $2.08 for the larger operations and the maximum cost to small operations was $17.56. The estimated overall average cost per head for the cow/calf industry was $6.26, with a standard deviation of $4.12. Costs were on a per breeding female basis. The Excel spreadsheet budget and model can be downloaded at http://www.agmanager.info/ for producers who wish to estimate NAIS costs specific to their operations.

Clear changes occurred in the field of conventional arms control in the last two decades. States adopted a multitude of norms on especially small arms control in various multilateral control instruments. In addition, non-governmental advocacy actors often established themselves as active participants in control debates with governments. The changes are surprising because they took place in the security sphere and therewith in an area traditionally understood to be the exclusive domain of governments. This research project investigates the significance of the changes for the traditional understanding of security governance. Specifically, it investigates the emergence of control norms and the role and policy impact of non-governmental actors in the promotion of the norms. It asks whether the normative changes and significance of nongovernmental actors therein challenge the understanding of security governance that underpins many established approaches to international relations theory.

<p>A search for a diffuse flux of cosmic neutrinos with energies in excess of 10¹⁴ eV was performed using two years of AMANDA-II data, collected in 2003 and 2004. A 20% evenly distributed sub-sample of experimental data was used to verify the detector description and the analysis cuts. A very good agreement between this 20% sample and the background simulations was observed. The analysis was optimised for discovery, to a relatively low price in limit setting power. The background estimate for the livetime of the examined 80% sample is 0.035 ± 68% events with an additional 41% systematical uncertainty.</p><p>The total neutrino flux needed for a 5σ discovery to be made with 50% probability was estimated to 3.4 ∙ 10^-7 <i>E</i>^-2 GeV s^-1 sr^-1 cm^-2 equally distributed over the three flavours, taking statistical and systematic uncertainties in the background expectation and the signal efficiency into account. No experimental events survived the final discriminator cut. Hence, no ultra-high energy neutrino candidates were found in the examined sample. A 90% upper limit is placed on the total ultra-high energy neutrino flux at 2.8 ∙ 10^-7 <i>E</i>^-2 GeV s^-1 sr^-1cm^-2, taking both systematical and statistical uncertainties into account. The energy range in which 90% of the simulated <i>E</i>^-2signal is contained is 2.94 ∙ 10¹⁴ eV to 1.54 ∙ 10¹⁸eV (central interval), assuming an equal distribution over the neutrino flavours at the Earth. The final acceptance is distributed as 48% electron neutrinos, 27% muon neutrinos, and 25% tau neutrinos.</p><p>A set of models for the production of neutrinos in active galactic nuclei that predict spectra deviating from <i>E</i>^-2 was excluded.</p>

An investigation into the light scattering properties of Saharan dust grains is presented. An electrodynamic trap has been used to levitate single dust particles. By adjusting the trap parameters, partial randomisation of the particle orientation has been introduced. While levitated, the particles were illuminated by a laser, and a rotating half-wave retarder enabled selection of vertically or horizontally polarized incident light. A laser diffractometer and linear photodiode array have been used to measure intensity at scattering angles between 0.5° and 177°. Combining these measurements with Fraunhofer diffraction as calculated for a range of appropriately-sized apertures allows the calculation of the phase function and degree of linear polarization. The phase functions and degree of linear polarisation for four case study particles are presented - the phase functions are found to be featureless across most of the scattering region, with none of the halo features or rainbow peaks associated with regularly shaped particles such as hexagonal columns or spheres. Particle models comprised of large numbers of facets have been constructed to resemble the levitated particles. Utilizing Gaussian random sphere methods, increasing levels of roughness have been added to the surfaces of these models. A Geometric Optics model and a related model, Ray Tracing with Diffraction on Facets, have been modified to calculate scattering on these particle reconstructions. Scattering calculations were performed on each of these reconstructions using a range of refractive indices and two rotation regimes – one where the orientations of the reconstructed particle were limited to match those observed when the particle was levitated, and one where the orientation was not limited. Qualitative comparisons are performed on the phase functions and degree of linear polarization, where it is observed that the addition of roughness to the modelled spheroids causes the computed phase functions to increasingly resemble those from the levitated particles. Limiting the orientation of the particles does not affect the scattering noticeably. The addition of a very small absorption coefficient does not change the comparisons considerably. As the absorption coefficient is increased, however, the quality of the comparisons decreases rapidly in all cases but one. The phase functions are quantitatively compared using RMS errors, and further comparison is performed using the asymmetry parameter.