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This thesis describes the experimental and numerical investigation of a novel cold-formed steel 48ft and 54ft long span truss. The truss we designed was to be used as the roofs of large buildings, such as warehouses, hangars, sports arenas. The investigation includes both experimental and numerical testing, the experimental testing of the truss under uniform loads (increasing loads) to determine its deflection and load carrying capacity. The numerical test included developing a finite element model of the truss in SolidWorks and using a finite element model of the truss in ABAQUS to simulate the experimental tests. The findings of this study can be used to improve the design of cold-formed steel long span trusses. The study also provides valuable information for future studies on the modeling of trusses with different cold-formed steel members and the behavior of trusses under load.

Tidigare forskning har visat på ett tydligt samband mellan upplevd meningsfullhet och grad av fysisk och psykisk hälsa hos individer med kroniska sjukdomar. Individer som drabbas av kronisk sjukdom likt ME/CFS behöver enligt tidigare forskning omformulera livsmål och förväntningar på tillvaron då kroniska sjukdomar ofta har en direkt påverkan på dessa. Syftet med studien var att undersöka upplevelsen av meningsfullhet hos individer med sjukdomen ME/CFS samt vilka faktorer som främjar respektive hindrar upplevelsen av meningsfullhet. 12 personer i varierande åldrar i Sverige deltog i studien där materialet samlades in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. I resultatet framgick att respondenterna i stor utsträckning upplevde livet som meningsfullt trots sjukdomens omfattande påverkan. Sociala relationer som främjande faktor betonades medan sjukdomens symtom och funktionsnedsättning lyftes fram som mest hindrande. Resultatet från denna studie kan användas i vägledande syfte för  sjukvårdspersonal, anhöriga och de individer som drabbas av sjukdomen ME/CFS.

This thesis approaches Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) as a biopolitical problem, that is as a shifting scientific object which needs to be studied, classified and regulated. Assemblages of authorities, knowledges, and techniques make CFS subjects and shape their everyday conduct in an attempt to increase their supposed autonomy, wellbeing and health. CFS identities are, however, made not only through government, scientific and medical interventions but also by the patients themselves, a biosocial community that collaborates with scientists, educates itself about the intricacies of biomedicine, and contests psychiatric truth claims. CFS is a socio-medical disorder, an illness trapped between medicine, psychology and society, an illness that is open to debate, and therefore difficult to manage and standardise. CFS is, thus, more than a fixed and defined medical category; it is a performative and multiple category, it is a heterogeneous world. This thesis studies that performative complexity by assembling different pieces of empirical data that constitute its heterogeneity: medical and psychiatric journals and monographs, self-help books, CFS organisations’ magazines, newsletters and websites, illness narratives and social studies of CFS, CFS blogs, and qualitative interviews with diagnosed CFS patients and CFS activists. The thesis delineates different interventions by medicine, science, the state and the patients themselves and concludes that CFS remains elusive, only partially standardised, in an on-going battle between all the different actors that want to define it for their own situated interests.

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Recent research has implicated working memory in unconscious tasks, controversially shifting the viewpoint of conscious access necessitating working memory functions (Soto, Mäntylä & Silvanto, 2011). The aim of this study was to investigate the flexibility of unconscious working memory using continuous flash suppression (CFS). Participants (n=18) completed a simple delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) task. Two conditions required the matching of either objects or spatial locations. CFS was used to render stimuli invisible and the perceptual awareness scale (PAS) helped to determine subjective conscious experience. Analysis determined no significant findings in d’ or reaction times. This confirmed the null hypothesis, that there would not be an affect on working memory due to presentation of visually suppressed information. These results may have been due to a lack of effect, complexity or procedural issues. Further research is needed to elucidate these non-significant results. This is especially critical since alternative methods examining unconscious working memory have found significant results.

This thesis explored significant other responses to CFS/ME in association with patient illness outcomes and symptom maintenance utilising a multi-method approach; a systematic review, cross-sectional, longitudinal and momentary methods were included. The review identified empirical evidence for two potential interpersonal mechanisms. The evidence suggested that significant other beliefs and responses, dyadic relationship quality, and patient outcomes associated with each mechanism were different. Dyadic belief incongruence was also highlighted as important with respect to relationship quality. Thus, potential research questions and current methodological limitations were identified; the subsequent empirical papers presented attempted to address these. The first empirical study (Chapter 3) utilised the Expressed Emotion (EE) framework to investigate the impact of critical comments and EOI; no cross-sectional associations between EE and patient outcomes were observed. A longitudinal design was also employed to examine the predictive validity of EE. Longitudinally, high critical comments predicted higher fatigue severity; further analyses indicated that depression mediated this relationship. High EOI was also predictive of higher fatigue severity at follow-up. This was the first study to examine EE within a CFS/ME sample; the longitudinal impact of high-EE upon patient outcomes suggests that it is a potentially beneficial target for future interventions. Paper 2 (Chapter 4) sought to examine the factors that might contribute to significant other EE by examining significant other illness beliefs and dyadic belief incongruence. The results indicated that significant others rated as high-EE had stronger illness models, more negative beliefs about the consequences associated with the condition, and negative emotional representations. These findings identify those beliefs that may be particularly important for high-EE within the current patient group. Overall dyadic belief incongruence was not important for EE-rating; high-EE dyads reported similar illness beliefs, whilst low-EE significant others reported more optimistic beliefs about the condition. These findings suggest that optimistic beliefs about the condition may be better for both significant other and patient outcomes. The final empirical study (Chapter 5) examined the associations between significant other negative and solicitous responses and fluctuations in patient illness outcomes on a momentary basis. The impact of significant other responses was largely transitory; changes in patient outcomes did not extend past the current momentary assessment. Negative significant other responses were associated with momentary increases in symptom severity; patient distress partially mediated this relationship. Patient-perceived solicitous responses were associated with increased activity limitation, but reduced disability reported at the same momentary assessment. These results suggest that momentary reports capture more dynamic processes than observed in traditional cross-sectional analyses. Taken together, the findings presented within this thesis provide further evidence for the impact of significant other factors on patient outcomes. The evidence for the hypothesised mechanism associated with critical EE was consistent throughout studies. However, the evidence for the role of EOI currently requires further exploration. Finally, the results suggest that the development of significant other-focussed interventions may be beneficial for both patient and significant other outcomes.

CPU schedulers are an integral part of all operating systems used in modern systems, as they enable efficient task execution. In recent years the demand for interactive tasks such as video playback, streaming and gaming has increased rapidly. This combined with new ideas and design for CPU scheduling has led to the development of the BitMap Queue scheduler(BMQ) by Alfred Chen. Which aims to be efficient and scalable for interactive tasks, in hopes of becoming an alternative scheduler for Linux. This paper evaluates the performance of BMQ compared to the current default scheduler, the Completely Fair Scheduler(CFS). The methodology in the paper focuses on two key aspects latency and interactivity. The results display BMQ outperforming CFS in latency while maintaining similar performance in interactivity. However during heavier loads in the interactivity test BMQ outperformed CFS significantly. Thus the results suggest that BMQ provides reduced latency while providing at least similar and in some cases better interactive performance when compared to CFS.

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