Mobiltelefoner, sociala medier och smarta teknologier är idag en självklar del av tillvaron för många. Samtidigt har överanvändning av mobiltelefoner förknippats med psykisk ohälsa. Som del av utvecklingen av smarta telefoner, appar och tillgången till stora datamängder har även fenomenet att bevaka sina egna vanor med hjälp av tekniken blivit vanligt förekommande. Denna typ av informationsinsamling kallas för quantified self-data och intresset för tekniken är stort. Tidigare forskning om quantified self-data antyder att det skulle kunna vara ett kraftfullt hjälpmedel för en användare som vill förbättra sin livskvalitet. Ett däremot outforskat område är vad som händer med effekterna av quantified self när det ställs mot teknologier som redan vunnit mark i att styra en användares beteende, exempelvis våra smartphones. Denna studie syftade till att utforska detta område och frågan som ställs är hur kontinuerlig feedback i form av quantified self-data, via en mobilapplikation, har för inverkan på en mobilanvändares upplevelse av mobilen och sin användning av den. I studien fick åtta deltagare under två veckor använda sig av mobilapplikationen Moment, som presenterar data om en användares mobilanvändning. Deltagarna ombads även skriva ner dagliga reflektioner i en loggbok. Resultatet visar på att appen tillsammans med loggboken fick deltagarna att aktivt reflektera över sin användning. Deltagarna ansåg att deras användning förblev oförändrad, men att appen och dess data mestadels motiverade till ett minskat användande. Samtliga deltagare trodde att appen var ett bra hjälpmedel för den som vill minska sin mobilanvändning. / Smartphones and social media have become common parts of our everyday life. At the same time, smartphone attachment and overuse have been associated with negative implications on mental health. As a part of the development of smartphones, apps and the access to great amounts of data, the phenomenon of tracking one’s own habits is frequently occurring. This type of data gathering is called quantified self and there is a big interest in the technology. Previous research suggests that quantified self could be a powerful tool for a user wishing to improve his or her life quality. However, the effect of quantified self when put up against technology that is already effective in steering users’ behaviors, such as our smartphones, remains an unexplored subject. This study aimed to explore that subject and the questioned asked is how continuous feedback through quantified self, when presented in a mobile application, influences a smartphone user’s experience of the phone and the usage of it. In the study conducted, eight participants used the application Moment during two weeks, an application which presents the user with data about phone usage. Participants where prompted to write down daily reflections in a journal. The result shows that the app together with the journal made the participants actively reflect on their phone usage. Participants felt that their usage remained unchanged, but that the app mostly motivated them to reduce their usage. All participants thought that the app would be a good aid for those who want to reduce their smartphone usage.

Den bärbara teknikens snabba utveckling och integration i våra liv har gett upphov till en diskussion rörande teknikens negativa konsekvenser. Tidigare forskning har visat på en korrelation mellan en stor mobilanvändning och ett sämre välmående, och inom populärkulturen syns nya fenomen som digital detox och att nedgradera sin smartphone till en telefon med färre funktioner. Trots det verkar trenden tyda på att mobilanvändandet ökar. Genom konstanta aviseringar i form av korta texter innehållande olika budskap och information, s.k. notiser, kallar mobilen ofta på ens uppmärksamhet. Den här studien syftar till att undersöka hur notiserna påverkar mobilanvändningen och om det finns ett samband mellan mängden notiser som når användarna och deras övergripande mobilanvändning. För att besvara frågeställningen genomfördes strukturerade observationer av användares opåverkade mobilanvändning samt hur användningen förändrades när de inte längre nåddes av notiser. Observationerna följdes av enkäter för att ge resultatet ett kvalitativt komplement. Resultatet visade att det totala antalet skärmupplåsningar minskade medan tiden tillbringad med mobilen ökade, vilket leder till slutsatsen att då användaren nås av färre notiser blir användningssessionerna färre i antal men längre i varaktighet. Samtidigt verkade kontrollerandet av låsskärmen, d.v.s. att man väcker skärmen utan att låsa upp den, ha blivit mer frekvent. Detta för att se till att man inte missat viktig information, och då särskilt att ha missat att någon har försökt få tag på en. En absolut majoritet av deltagarna upplevde det som besvärande att inte kunna nås av notiser, och det gällde uteslutande notiser från kommunikationsapplikationer. Användarens egen inställning till notiser tycktes inte ha ett samband med hur mobilanvändningen påverkades. / The rapid development of portable technology and its integration in our way of living has led to discussions about the negative consequences of technology. Previous research has shown a correlation between major mobile phone usage and a low well-being, and within popular culture new phenomenona regarding technology has arisen, such as digital detox and to downgrade one’s smartphone to a phone with fewer features. Despite this, the trend indicates that smartphone usage is increasing. The smartphone is constantly calling for attention through notifications in form of short texts containing various announcements and information. The purpose of this study is to examine in which way notifications may affect mobile phone usage and if there is a connection between the amount of received notifications and one’s overall mobile phone usage. To investigate this, we implemented structured observations on the users unaffected smartphone usage as well as their usage when notifications were disabled. Surveys were added as a qualitative complement to the observations. The result of the study showed that the total amount of unlockings of the screen decreased while the time spent on the smartphone increased, which leads to the conclusion that when the users received fewer notifications the usage sessions became fewer in number but longer in duration. Checking the lock screen, i.e. to wake the smartphone without unlocking it, seemed to have become more frequent. This was due to that the users wanted to ensure they did not miss any important information, and in particular if someone was trying to get in touch with them. An absolute majority experienced the absence of notifications as bothersome, particularly concerning notifications from communication applications. No correlation was found between the users’ attitude to notifications and the way their smartphone usage changed.

The use of technology, such as electronic mail and the Internet, is becoming the norm in many workplaces. This is especially true in academic workplaces. The present study examined several issues related to electronic mail use and job satisfaction for employees within a higher education workplace. Results of the study found that administrative level employees both sent and received more email than non-administrative level staff. Job satisfaction was not found to be related to the amount of email sent or received. No difference in job satisfaction was found between employees at the main campus versus regional locations, nor was there a difference in job satisfaction between those employees who were supervised primarily via email and those who had in-person supervision. Results of this study help to clarify the role electronic mail plays in the workplace behavior and attitudes of higher education employees. This study also updates older research that found lower levels of job satisfaction in employees receiving e-supervision. The present study found no such differences, perhaps indicating a change in how employees experience e-supervision. Future researchers are urged to continue study examining how electronic technologies influence workplace attitudes and behaviors. While this study focused on email usage, other studies could examine Internet usage or focus on the integration of new technologies into the academic workplace.

Helping behavior is generally adaptive. However, optimal usage theory suggests that even helping might be taken to an unhealthy extreme, for example an individual serving someone to the extent that they neglect their own needs. Not a single dedicated measurement tool has been constructed to assess the tendency. Thus, the present study seeks to propose and validate a new measure of compulsive helping by assessing construct, convergent, and divergent validity. Using a sample (N=438) of emerging adults (Mage=20.29, SD=1.04, 51.71% Female) from the Flourishing Families Project, validity evidence supported the proposed measure, as well as convergent validity of the constructs of general prosocial behavior, anxiety, and divergent validity of empathy and self-regulation. Various future directions are proposed in order to improve the rigor and breadth of future measurement attempts of compulsive helping.

Usage-based approaches have become increasingly important in research on language acquisition and recently also in bilingual first language acquisition. Lexically specific patterns, such as What’s this? and frame-and-slot patterns, such as [I want X] play an important role in language acquisition scenarios. The ubiquity of such conventionalized chunks and frame-and-slot patterns supports the idea that children construct their early utterances out of concrete pieces they have heard and stored before. To investigate the emergence of patterns in children’s speech the traceback method has been developed, which accounts for the composition of utterances by relying on previously acquired material. Recently, the traceback method has also been applied to code-mixed utterances in bilingual children testing the assumption that bilingual utterances are structured around a frameand- slot pattern in which the open slot is filled by (a) word(s) from the other language, e.g., [where is X] as in where is das feuer ‘where is the fire’. In this paper we want to present how the empirical use of the traceback method, and the general adoption of a usage-based theoretical perspective, can shed new lights on the study of bilingual phenomena, such as code-mixing.

Modular housing is an important segment of the factory-built housing industry, in the Mid-Atlantic. In 1998, a study was conducted to assess the structural needs and requirements of this industry. This study addressed three questions. (1) What is the current and future state of the industry? (2) What structural material trends are present between 1992 - 2000? (3) What opportunities exist for product substitution and development of new structural materials? This study found that the modular housing industry in the Mid-Atlantic region is growing. The greatest barrier to market expansion is transportation costs. Expansion is expected in the South and Midwest regions of the US. Most competition comes from site-built and manufactured homebuilders. To stay competitive, respondents plan to increase customization options and home size. The need for cost effective, quality structural materials is a growing concern. Softwood dimensional lumber has been decreasing since 1992 and is expected continue to decrease through 2000. Decreases are due to design changes and quality concerns. The use of engineered lumber has increased in order to compensate for decreases in dimensional lumber necessary to meet the structural needs of the industry. Using factor analysis and perceptual mapping techniques, dimensional lumber was not perceived to be as suited for structural building applications as engineered lumber. However, respondents felt that engineered lumber tended to be more expensive. Perceptual mapping also identified gaps between the ideal needs of building applications and the ability of current materials to meet those needs. Opportunities for new product development exist where gaps occurred. / Master of Science

Sociability is an individual’s tendency to associate with conspecifics in a non-aggressive manner. Sociability can manifest in the formation of social groups that can reduce predation risk and increase feeding success. Studies of social behaviour in insects are typically through the lens of classically know social insects, however many insect species that have been long thought as non-social have been shown to exhibit social behaviour, in particular Drosophila. A previous experiment evolved lineages of high and low sociable fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) following 25 generations of artificial selection, after which RNA and DNA was extracted and sequenced. The main goal of this thesis was to integrate analyses of differential gene expression, transcript usage and population genomics to investigate the genetic architecture of sociability in Drosophila. I developed a pipeline to perform differential gene expression analysis by modelling gene expression using a generalized linear mixed-effect model. Here I found a total of 327 genes differentially expressed and 174 genes differentially expressed between the low and high sociable lineages. Next, I developed a pipeline to perform differential transcript usage analysis using a generalized linear mixed-effect model to model transcript usage. I found 619 genes to have transcripts with differential usage and 190 genes to have transcripts with differential usage between the low and high sociable lineages. Lastly, I developed a pipeline for population genomics to identify regions of the genome under selection. I identified genes that are likely under selection and the overlap between these genes and genes/transcripts found to be differentially expressed/used. Overall, I identified potential genes that are involved in the genetic architecture of sociability and can be further candidate tested. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

The human genome comprises 8% sequences of retroviral origin, so-called human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). Most of these proviral sequences are defective, but some possess open reading frames. They can lead to the formation of viral transcripts, when activated by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. HERVs are thought to play a pathological role in inflammatory diseases and cancer. Since the consequences of activated proviral sequences in the human body are largely unexplored, selected envelope proteins of human endogenous retroviruses associated with inflammatory diseases, namely HERV-K18, HERV-K113, and HERV-Fc1, were investigated in the present study. A formation of glycosylated envelope proteins was demonstrated in different mammalian cell lines. Nevertheless, protein maturation seemed to be incomplete as no transport to the plasma membrane was observed. Instead, the proteins remained in the ER where they induced the expression of genes involved in unfolded protein response, such as HSPA5 and sXBP1. Furthermore, low expression levels of native envelope proteins were increased by codon optimization. Cell-free expression systems showed that both the transcriptional and translational level is affected. By generating different codon-optimized variants of HERV-K113 envelope, the influence of single rare t-RNA pools in certain cell lines was demonstrated. The mRNA secondary structure also appears to play an important role in the translation of the tested viral envelope proteins. In summary, the formation of certain HERV proteins is basically possible. However, their complete maturation and thus full biologic activity seems to depend on additional factors that might be disease-specific and await elucidation in the future.

In the field of vehicle durability, many individuals are focusing on methods for better replicating the durability a user will experience throughout the typical design lifespan of a vehicle (e.g., 100,000 miles). To estimate user durability a means of understand the types of damaging events and driving styles of uses must be understood. The difficulty with accurately estimating customer usage is, firstly, there is a large pool of possible roads for a user to drive along, for example, there are over 4 million miles of public roads in the United States, alone [1]. In addition, while measurements of these surfaces could be collected it would be impractical for two reasons, the first is the financial and extreme time burden this would take. Second, when collecting measurements of a road surface only the current state of a road surface can be measured, thus as a road deteriorates or is repaved the measurements collected would no longer be an accurate representation of the road. It should be mentioned that even, if all of the road surfaces were measured performing simulation and analysis of all of these road surfaces would be computationally intensive. Instead, it would be beneficial if select events that account for a significant portion of the damage a vehicle experiences can be identified. These damaging events could then be used in more complex vehicle simulation models and as input and validation of proving ground and laboratory durability testing. The objective of this research is to provide a means for improved estimation of vehicle durability, specifically a means for identifying, characterizing, and grouping unique separable damaging events from a road profile measurement. In order to achieve this objective a measure that can be used to identify separate damaging events from a road profile is developed. This measure is defined as Localized Pseudo Damage (LPD), which identifies the amount of damage each individual road excitation makes to the total accumulated damage for a single load path in a vehicle system. LPD is defined as a damage density to minimize the effect of measurement spacing on the resulting metric. The developed LPD measure is causal in that the value of LPD at a location is not affected by any future locations. In addition, for a singular event (e.g., impulse or step) in the absences of other excitations, the LPD value at the singular event location is equivalent to the total pseudo damage divided by the step size at the location. Once a measure of pseudo damage density is known at multiple locations along a road profile for multiple load paths of interest, then separable damaging events can be identified. To identify separable damaging events the activity of the vehicle system must be considered because separate damaging events can only occur when a region of inactivity is present across all load paths. Subsequently, an optimization problem is formed to determine the optimal active regions to maintain. The cost function associated with the optimization problem is defined to minimize the cost (number of locations maintained in damaging events) and maximize the benefit (the amount of pseudo damage maintained). Lastly, a statistical test is developed to assess if separate damaging events can be considered to be from the same general class of events based on their damage characteristics. The developed assessment methods establish the similarity between two more separable damaging events based on application specific user defined inputs. In the development, two example similarity metrics are defined. The first similarity metric is in terms of distance and the second is in terms of likelihood (probability). The developed statistical analysis uses the current state-of-the-art in clustering algorithms to allow for multiple damaging events to be identified and grouped together. / Doctor of Philosophy / In the automotive field determining the level of damage a typical production vehicle experiences over its lifetime has always been a desirable criterion to identify. This criterion is commonly referred to as customer usage. By understanding the typical customer usage of a vehicle over the lifetime of a vehicle, automotive engineers are able to improve the design of vehicle components. The issue with defining customer usage is that there are millions of miles of roads that a customer can travel on and millions of customers that all have unique driving characteristics. While it is possible to collect measurements of these road surfaces to use in further vehicle simulations, it is not feasible both from a financial and time perspective. In addition, the simulation and analysis of all road surfaces would be computationally intensive. However, if select damaging events (regions of the road surface that excessively contribute to accumulated damage) are identified, then they can be used in more complex vehicle durability analyses with lower computational efforts. In conventional damage analysis a total amount of accumulated damage is established for a known road surface. The issue with defining damage this way is that unique events which likely contributed a large amount of the accumulated damage cannot be identified. The first objective of this research is to define damage as a function of the vehicle's location along a road surface. Then, unique and separable damaging events can be identified and separated from sections of the road that do not significantly contribute to the accumulated damage. After defining this measure, an optimization problem is developed to identify damaging events based on maximizing the benefit (amount of damage accounted for in damaging events) and minimizing the cost (amount of road surface retained). Unique and separable damaging events are identified by solving this optimization problem. While the optimization problem identifies unique, separable damaging events, it is likely that some damaging events contain similar characteristics to each other. When performing additional durability analysis, it would be beneficial to form connections between similar damaging events to allow for analysis to be performed based on groups of events. To identify damaging events with similar characteristics, a statistical analysis is developed as the last contribution of this work. By combining this analysis with current state-of-the-art clustering algorithms and user provided definitions based on applications, similar damaging events are able to be grouped together.

While a policy of more decentralized stormwater management is increasingly being pursued in areas containing new housing developments, the question arises as to how stormwater management is handled in existing settlements, where restructuring the drainage system is a much more complex affair and often requires the active involvement of property owners. Recognizing that the multidimensional objectives of stormwater management in settlements call for a range of local strategies, this article examines the interaction and strategic contribution of two key municipal institutions for regulating stormwater management, namely, compulsory connection and usage and stormwater charges, in order to examine how they meet these objectives when property owners are involved. The following questions are addressed: How do these two key institutions link the varied objectives of stormwater management with practical options for decentralization? Which institutional designs are capable of integrating property owners into a municipal stormwater strategy in a coherent manner? What is current local government practice? This article begins by analyzing the interactions between different objectives of stormwater management, the interplay of the two key institutions, and options for stormwater management on private properties. On this basis, we then present an empirical study of current practice in 44 medium to large cities in Germany. This shows that while local governments devise very different—and often inconsistent—institutional designs, decentralization is quite commonly pursued in existing settlements.