<p>Free and Open Source Software has not only increased researchers’ interest about community-driven software development, but lately, interest from commercial actors increased as well. In addition, some scientists have claimed that Open Source Software has entered a new phase: OSS 2.0. Even so, a coherent way of analyzing commercial Open Source ventures is still missing.</p><p>Commercial Open Source firms’ strategies are often described using the term “business models”. However, these models often lack stringent structures and have been used primarily to describe the firms’ offerings and methods to earn revenue.</p><p>Through the adaptation of an existing, firmly theoretically-based analytical business model framework, this thesis suggests a new analysis model for studying for-profit Open Source companies. In addition, the framework is generically constructed, ensuring its usability for other industries as well. The model consists of three elements: <em>market positions, operational platform</em> and <em>offering</em>.</p><p>This particular study concerned four software product vendors, all of which base their products on Open Source Software. When analyzing their business, insights were made about how these firms operated. The result show that there are certain key elements and factors that determine if a company has a sustainable business or not. From the analysis framework, three elements were refined. The main <em>Open Source Software project</em> connects the market positions and the operational platform; and from the offering, the <em>product and service</em> and the<em> revenue model</em> were very important.</p><p>The study identified eight key factors which influenced the elements: <em>brand</em> for the product, the company and the Open Source Software project; <em>community</em>, that is the sum of the non-paying users and developers connected to Open Source Software projects; <em>resources</em>, which are community-based resources such as development and testing; <em>legitimacy,</em> the perceived legitimacy regarding licenses and the revenue models; <em>control,</em> i.e. the control the firm has of the software; <em>ability to charge</em>, or how the company can charge for its services; <em>customers</em>, the paying users; and finally <em>volume</em>, which is the number of paying customers.</p><p>The findings also indicate that companies interested in working with the open-source community have to be able to balance the demands from both their customers and the community in order to benefit and gain competitive advantage.</p> / Report code: LiU-TEK-LIC 2008:26.

<p>The purpose of the project, which led to this thesis, was to investigate the possible effects different horizontal Fields of View (FoV) have on driving performance when driving at night with a Vision Enhancement System (VES). The FoV chosen to be examined were 12 degree and 24 degree FoV, both displayed on a screen with the horizontal size of 12 degree FoV. This meant that the different conditions of FoV also had different display ratios 1:1 and 1:2. No effort was made to separate these parameters. </p><p>A simulator study was performed at the simulator at IKP, Linköping University. Sixteen participants in a within-group design participated in the study. The participants drove two road sections; one with a 12 degree FoV and the other with a 24 degree FoV. During each section four scenarios were presented in which the participants passed one of three types of objects; a moose, a deer or a man. In each section, two of the objects stood right next to the road and two were standing seventeen meters to the right of the road. As the drivers approached the objects standing seventeen meters to the right of the road, the objects moved out of the VES when the vehicle was 200 meters in front of the object with a 12 degree FoV. The objects could be seen with the naked eye when the vehicle was 100 meters in front of the object. When the drivers approached the objects with a 24degree FoV the objects moved out of the VES display when it was possible to see them unaided. </p><p>Results show that a 24 degree FoV displayed with a 1:2 ratio gives the drivers improved anticipatory control, compared to a 12 degree FoV displayed with a 1:1 ratio. The participants with a broader FoV were able to make informed decisions whereas with a narrow FoV some participants started to reaccelerate when they could not see an object. Results also show that any difference in recognition distance that may exist between a 12 degree and a 24 degree camera angle displayed in a 12 degree FoV display do not seem to have any adverse effect on the quality of driving.</p>

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to look into the teaching methods and content in Zimbabwean biology education, and the possible influences that the teachers’ view of nature have on this education. The study was performed in and around Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe with eleven observations and six interviews in primary and secondary schools, corresponding to years four to nine in the Swedish compulsory school. </p><p>My study shows that the teachers’ view of nature is in many parts similar to the Swedish view of nature, but differ in a closer connection to religiosity and in a more every-day-life relation to nature. This is reflected in several of the concepts that view of nature consist of. The view of nature is influencing the content in biology partly. Since science hold universal concepts which are the same all around the world, the view of nature does not influence the scientific parts of biology, but have influence on where the emphases in the education is put. The results show no direct influence of the view of nature on teaching methods, but indirectly influenced by the choice of content.</p>

Computational stereo estimates 3D structure by analyzing visual changes between two or more passive images of a scene that are captured from different viewpoints. It is a key enabler for ubiquitous autonomous systems, large-scale surveying, virtual reality, and improved techniques for compression, tracking, and object recognition. The fact that computational stereo is an under-constrained inverse problem causes many challenges. Its computational and memory requirements are high. Typical heuristics and assumptions, used to constrain solutions or reduce computation, prevent treatment of key realities such as reflection, translucency, ambient lighting changes, or moving objects in the scene. As a result, a general solution is lacking. Stochastic models are common in computational stereo, but stochastic algorithms are severely under-represented. In this dissertation I present two stochastic algorithms and demonstrate their advantages over deterministic approaches. I first present the Quality-Efficient Stochastic Sampling (QUESS) approach. QUESS reduces the number of match quality function evaluations needed to estimate dense stereo correspondences. This facilitates the use of complex quality metrics or metrics that take unique values at non-integer disparities. QUESS is shown to outperform two competing approaches, and to have more attractive memory and scaling properties than approaches based on exhaustive sampling. I then present a second novel approach based on the Hough transform and extend it with distributed ray tracing (DRT). DRT is a stochastic anti-aliasing technique common to computer rendering but which has not been used in computational stereo. I demonstrate that the DRT-enhanced approach outperforms the unenhanced approach, a competing variation that uses re-accumulation in the Hough domain, and another baseline approach. DRT’s advantages are particularly strong for reduced image resolution and/or reduced accumulator matrix resolution. In support of this second approach, I develop two novel variations of the Hough transform that use DRT, and demonstrate that they outperform competing variations on a traditional line segment detection problem. I generalize these two examples to draw broader conclusions, suggest future work, and call for a deeper exploration by the community. Both practical and academic gaps in the state of the art can be reduced by a renewed exploration of stochastic computational stereo techniques. / text

Use of imaging systems for performing various situational awareness tasks in militaryand commercial settings has a long history. There is increasing recognition,however, that a much better job can be done by developing non-traditional opticalsystems that exploit the task-specific system aspects within the imager itself. Insome cases, a direct consequence of this approach can be real-time data compressionalong with increased measurement fidelity of the task-specific features. In others,compression can potentially allow us to perform high-level tasks such as direct trackingusing the compressed measurements without reconstructing the scene of interest.In this dissertation we present novel advancements in feature-specific (FS) imagersfor large field-of-view surveillence, and estimation of temporal object-scene changesutilizing the compressive imaging paradigm. We develop these two ideas in parallel.In the first case we show a feature-specific (FS) imager that optically multiplexesmultiple, encoded sub-fields of view onto a common focal plane. Sub-field encodingenables target tracking by creating a unique connection between target characteristicsin superposition space and the target's true position in real space. This isaccomplished without reconstructing a conventional image of the large field of view.System performance is evaluated in terms of two criteria: average decoding time andprobability of decoding error. We study these performance criteria as a functionof resolution in the encoding scheme and signal-to-noise ratio. We also includesimulation and experimental results demonstrating our novel tracking method. Inthe second case we present a FS imager for estimating temporal changes in the objectscene over time by quantifying these changes through a sequence of differenceimages. The difference images are estimated by taking compressive measurementsof the scene. Our goals are twofold. First, to design the optimal sensing matrixfor taking compressive measurements. In scenarios where such sensing matrices arenot tractable, we consider plausible candidate sensing matrices that either use theavailable <italic>a priori</italic> information or are non-adaptive. Second, we develop closed-form and iterative techniques for estimating the difference images. We present results to show the efficacy of these techniques and discuss the advantages of each.

The intention of my studies is to explore the field of musical learning from the pupil's point of view. This master thesis is the second of two Grounded Theory studies based on interviews.In study no1 Learning of music from the pupils' point of view (Pemsel, 2009) I asked ten pupils, soon to be graduates, to express their own experience of musical learning. The selection of informants was made after reading a questionnaire an- swered by a group of 60 pupils attending different programs at a typical Swedish upper secondary school. The ten selected informants had all chosen several music courses their latest years in school. The questionnaire had two purposes; one was to construct musical profiles of the pupils, the other was to select informants for the interviews. The pupils were asked how much, and what kind of music educa- tion they had experienced. They were also asked to describe good and bad memo- ries of music education. The selected informants had all chosen to attend several music courses in their final years at school. They had in the questionnaire shown that they could express themselves in terms of learning music, and also that they had both positive and negative memories of musical learning environments. The most interesting findings in the first study were the personal navigation and the different choices the pupils made during their way towards musical learning. They learned music in a way that could be compared to the balls movements in a "flipper game", changing directions aiming to find knew musical knowledge. This was all illustrated in The Map of Musical Learning.In study no 2 Music and learning, young adults perspective of music education, I interviewed five post pupils 19-25 years old. They had as pupils chosen to learn something else other than music in upper secondary school. To select informants the so-called "snowball method" was used. A web questionnaire was made in purpose to profile the informants. "The Map of Musical Learning" was used to create an equal dialogue in the interviews. During the interview the Informants were asked to construct their own maps, and explain what that picture symbolised in their lives. In study no 2 I've been looking for answers on the following ques- tions; –What are pupils’ views on music and learning, and on what grounds do students select other courses over music? The results showed that not choosing music could be an active choice toward other interests. The choice not to continue taking music lessons was due to different levels (depending on informant) of neg- ative experiences. Some informants had good experiences of expressing them- selves in other art forms, but not in music. Others didn’t need music teachers; they were experienced and could learn on their own. From pupil's point of view music education could be improved, but the beginner and the experienced music pupil expressed different needs of teaching methods. They all felt that they were not surveyed how they wanted to learn music.

Data warehouses are being used in many applications since quite a long time. Traditionally, new data in these warehouses is loaded through offline bulk updates which implies that latest data is not always available for analysis. This, however, is not acceptable in many modern applications (such as intelligent building, smart grid etc.) that require the latest data for decision making. These modern applications necessitate real-time fast atomic integration of incoming facts in data warehouse. Moreover, the data defining the analysis dimensions, stored in dimension tables of these warehouses, also needs to be updated in real-time, in case of any change. In this thesis, such real-time data warehouses are defined as dynamic data warehouses. We propose a data model for these dynamic data warehouses and present the concept of Hierarchical Hybrid Multidimensional Data Space (HHMDS) which constitutes of both ordered and non-ordered hierarchical dimensions. The axes of the data space are non-ordered which help their dynamic evolution without any need of reordering. We define a data grouping structure, called Minimum Bounding Space (MBS), that helps efficient data partitioning of data in the space. Various operators, relations and metrics are defined which are used for the optimization of these data partitions and the analogies among classical OLAP concepts and the HHMDS are defined. We propose efficient algorithms to store summarized or detailed data, in form of MBS, in a tree structure called DyTree. Algorithms for OLAP queries over the DyTree are also detailed. The nodes of DyTree, holding MBS with associated aggregated measure values, represent materialized sections of cuboids and tree as a whole is a partially materialized and indexed data cube which is maintained using online atomic incremental updates. We propose a methodology to experimentally evaluate partial data cubing techniques and a prototype implementing this methodology is developed. The prototype lets us experimentally evaluate and simulate the structure and performance of the DyTree against other solutions. An extensive study is conducted using this prototype which shows that the DyTree is an efficient and effective partial data cubing solution for a dynamic data warehousing environment.

Integracijos tema aktuali, nes šiandien norima, kad specialiųjų poreikių turintys vaikai gyventų pilnavertį gyvenimą savo bendruomenėje, kad nesusidurtų su segregacija (atskyrimu), kad būtų lygiaverčiai su kitais bendrojo lavinimo mokyklos mokiniais. Darbe nagrinėjamas mokyklos bendruomenės požiūris į specialiųjų poreikių vaikų integraciją į bendrojo lavinimo mokyklą. / In my magistrate work I would like to analyse the problem and peculiarity of disabled children in the process of integration in general educational schools. The aim of the research: To research specific problems appearing while integrating children with special needs into general educational school in Shalchininkay town.

Aktualumas. Paauglių agresyvaus elgesio tyrinėjimo aktualumą lemia dabartinė Lietuvos situacija. Socialiniai gyvenimo pokyčiai paskatino paauglių agresijos protrūkį, mokyklose padaugėjo paauglių agresyvaus elgesio atvejų. Laikui bėgant šis agresyvus elgesys gali peraugti į nusikalstamą veiklą. Darbo tikslas: ištirti sportuojančių paauglių agresijos ypatumus. Darbo uždaviniai: ? Įvertinti sportuojančių paauglių agresijos lygį lyties ir amžiaus aspektu. ? Nustatyti sportuojančių paauglių požiūrį į agresiją lyties ir amžiaus aspektu. Darbo objektas: sportuojančių paauglių agresijos ypatumai ir agresyvaus elgesio priežastys. Tyrimo problema: ar sportuojantys paaugliai agresyvūs? Hipotezė: Sportuojantys berniukai agresyvesni nei sportuojančios mergaitės. Svarbiausi rezultatai ir pagrindinės išvados: Buvo naudojamos tokios metodikos: A. Asingerio klausimynas, nustatyti sportuojančių paauglių požiūriui. Taip pat B. Braklino ir E. Vagnerio asmens tyrinėjimų projekcinė metodika „Rankos“ testas. 1 Atlikus B. Braklino, Piodrovskio ir E. Vagnerio 1961m. „Rankos“ testą, remiantis asmens tyrinėjimų projekcine metodika, nustatėme, kad agresyvumo lygis turi tendenciją didėti kečiantis amžiui. Sportuojantys berniukai yra agresyvesni, nei mergaitės (p<0,05). 2 Atlikus A. Asingerio anketinę apklausą ir apdorojus gautus rezultatus, nustatėme, kad tarp sportuojančių berniukų yra daugiau agresyviai nusiteikusių, negu tarp mergaičių (p<0,05). Tarp 13 -14m. ir 15 – 17m. sportuojančių paauglių pagal... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Topicality. Teenagers‘ aggressive behavior is connected with the present situation in Lithuania. Social problems play a very important role in the growth of teenagers‘ aggression, more and more cases of aggressive behavior appear at schools. In the time run such aggressive behavior may turn into criminal actions. Purpose of the work: to make research on features of aggression of teenagers‘ in sports The tasks of the work: • To evaluate the level of aggression among teenagers in sports taking into consideration their sex and age. • To determine teenagers‘ in sports view on aggression taking into consideration their sex and age. The object of the work: features of aggression of teenagers‘ in sports and reasons of their aggressive behavior. The problem of the research: are teenagers in sports aggressive? Hypothesis: boys sportsmen are more aggressive than girls. The main results and outcomes: Methods used: A. Asinger‘s questionnaire to determine teenagers’ in sport view on aggression. Also B. Braclin‘s and E. Wagner‘s projection methods on personality research named „Hand“ test. 1. Having made „Hand“ test by B. Braclin and E. Wagner it turned out that the level of aggression has tendency to grow with the growing age. Boys sportsmen are more aggressive than girls (p<0,05). 2. Having made A. Asinger’s questionnaire and having analyzed the results of it, it turned out that there are more boys tending to aggression in sports than girls (p<0,05). The reliable differences of view... [to full text]

Dans le contexte de la navigation autonome en environnement urbain, une localisation précise du véhicule est importante pour une navigation sure et fiable. La faible précision des capteurs bas coût existants tels que le système GPS, nécessite l'utilisation d'autres capteurs eux aussi à faible coût. Les caméras mesurent une information photométrique riche et précise sur l'environnement, mais nécessitent l'utilisation d'algorithmes de traitement avancés pour obtenir une information sur la géométrie et sur la position de la caméra dans l'environnement. Cette problématique est connue sous le terme de Cartographie et Localisation Simultanées (SLAM visuel). En général, les techniques de SLAM sont incrémentales et dérivent sur de longues trajectoires. Pour simplifier l'étape de localisation, il est proposé de découpler la partie cartographie et la partie localisation en deux phases: la carte est construite hors-ligne lors d'une phase d'apprentissage, et la localisation est effectuée efficacement en ligne à partir de la carte 3D de l'environnement. Contrairement aux approches classiques, qui utilisent un modèle 3D global approximatif, une nouvelle représentation égo-centrée dense est proposée. Cette représentation est composée d'un graphe d'images sphériques augmentées par l'information dense de profondeur (RGB+D), et permet de cartographier de larges environnements. Lors de la localisation en ligne, ce type de modèle apporte toute l'information nécessaire pour une localisation précise dans le voisinage du graphe, et permet de recaler en temps-réel l'image perçue par une caméra embarquée sur un véhicule, avec les images du graphe, en utilisant une technique d'alignement d'images directe. La méthode de localisation proposée, est précise, robuste aux aberrations et prend en compte les changements d'illumination entre le modèle de la base de données et les images perçues par la caméra. Finalement, la précision et la robustesse de la localisation permettent à un véhicule autonome, équipé d'une caméra, de naviguer de façon sure en environnement urbain. / In an autonomous navigation context, a precise localisation of the vehicule is important to ensure a reliable navigation. Low cost sensors such as GPS systems are inacurrate and inefficicent in urban areas, and therefore the employ of such sensors alone is not well suited for autonomous navigation. On the other hand, camera sensors provide a dense photometric measure that can be processed to obtain both localisation and mapping information. In the robotics community, this problem is well known as Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) and it has been studied for the last thirty years. In general, SLAM algorithms are incremental and prone to drift, thus such methods may not be efficient in large scale environments for real-time localisation. Clearly, an a-priori 3D model simplifies the localisation and navigation tasks since it allows to decouple the structure and motion estimation problems. Indeed, the map can be previously computed during a learning phase, whilst the localisation can be handled in real-time using a single camera and the pre-computed model. Classic global 3D model representations are usually inacurrate and photometrically inconsistent. Alternatively, it is proposed to use an ego-centric model that represents, as close as possible, real sensor measurements. This representation is composed of a graph of locally accurate spherical panoramas augmented with dense depth information. These augmented panoramas allow to generate varying viewpoints through novel view synthesis. To localise a camera navigating locally inside the graph, we use the panoramas together with a direct registration technique. The proposed localisation method is accurate, robust to outliers and can handle large illumination changes. Finally, autonomous navigation in urban environments is performed using the learnt model, with only a single camera to compute localisation.