This study examines university English-medium Instruction (EMI) reform implementation approaches from a comparative organizational perspective. Over the last decade, the number of master’s degree programs instructed exclusively in English in non-Anglophone Europe increased dramatically. Europe is an interesting case as it actively promotes multilingual learning; however, many European policies over the last twenty years accelerated the rise of monolingual EMI reforms, especially at the graduate-level. The purpose of this exploratory study is to contribute to our understanding of how widespread EMI reforms impact structures and behaviors at the organizational level in European universities in ways that respond to the organization’s embedded policy contexts. This research aims to advance our understandings of comparative EMI reforms and also, drawing on the concepts of neoinstitutional theory, develop our knowledge of how these processes might be theorized and expanded. I combine the theoretical frames of translation and institutional logics to analyze empirical case studies of the implementation of the EMI reform concept in three Northern European universities in leading EMI provider countries: the University of Oslo in Norway, the University of Göttingen in Germany, and Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The theoretical concept of institutional complexity is used to analyze the contending tensions universities confront when deciding the best way to design and implement EMI reforms. The three-axis comparative framework developed in this study represents a novel approach to examining variations in EMI reform implementation. Variations in organizational EMI implementation approaches (collegial, targeted, and market) are understood by analyzing comparatively how the three universities interpreted axial tensions between institutional logics for the best way to organize their EMI reform approaches: for academic or economic purposes; cooperative or competitive purposes; and local or global purposes. This comparative case study underscores the importance of examining a university’s embedded environment (both European and local levels) to understand university response to widespread EMI reform trends and highlights the significance of contextual dynamics to European EMI program development policy. The study concludes with policy recommendations and future directions.

This study investigated the lifespan influences of task type and working memory on the syntactic complexity of narrative discourse production. Participants included 180 healthy adults across three age cohorts: 20-29 years (Young Group), 60-69 years (Older Group) and 75-89 years (Elderly Group). Participants completed standardized working memory measures and four discourse tasks (single/sequential picture description, storytelling and personal recount). Syntactic complexity for each sample was measured via clausal density yielding a complexity index. For analysis, participants were placed into one of two groups based on working memory scores above (High Working Memory Group) or below (Low Working Memory Group) the mean. Significant differences in syntactic complexity between working memory groups were found for the single picture description and the storytelling; individuals in the high working memory group produced language with greater syntactic complexity. When the effects of cohort and working memory were investigated with a two-way ANOVA, working memory group was no longer significantly related to syntactic complexity. However, there was a significant relationship between cohort and syntactic complexity for the single picture description and storytelling tasks. Analyses indicate that the relationships between syntactic complexity, age, and working memory are dependent on task type.

Purpose: At the Wellington Blood and Cancer Centre (WBCC), Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) is used to treat a variety of head and neck (H&N) cancers. Presently, the complexity of plans is limited to ensure the accuracy of patient treatment within the range of the departmental experience. The complexity limitation is applied through use of a monitor unit (MU) constraint during plan optimisation. Plans of higher complexity can be obtained by loosening the MU constraint, and setting more stringent optimisation objectives on organs at risk (OAR) and target volumes (PTV). This could potentially yield higher quality treatment plans but may also degrade the accuracy of the TPS calculation or the plan delivery at the treatment machine. The aim of this study is to investigate the level of plan complexity that results in accurate treatment plan calculation and delivery, and quantify the corresponding gain in plan quality. Methods: Five previously treated H&N patients were selected for the study. Each patient’s clinical plan was used as the lowest complexity level and labelled C1. Subsequently, an approximate pareto-optimal plan (C3) was created that focused equally on sparing spinal cord, brain stem and parotid gland while maintaining, or improving on, the previously obtained target coverage. Next, a C2 plan was created such that the plan quality was in between C1 and C3. Plan quality of each complexity level was assessed in terms of OAR sparing and PTV coverage. The average leaf pair opening (LPO), critical leaf pair opening (%LPO<1cm) and mean leaf travel were used as plan complexity metrics. The calculation and delivery accuracy of each complexity level using Varian TrueBeam LINAC/Eclipse TPS was verified using time resolved point dose measurements (TRPD), EBT film measurements (Ashland Inc.) and ArcCheck measurements (Sun Nuclear Corp.). A comprehensive uncertainty analysis was carried out including a quantification of the measurement and delivery reproducibility. Results: Increasing plan complexity from C1 to C3 reduced the Spinal Cord D1cc, Brain Stem D1 and Parotid Gland Dmean up to 14.7 Gy, 7.1 Gy and 7.8 Gy, respectively. In addition, C3 plans improved the target coverage compared to C1 plans, with the PTV66 and PTV54 D98 increasing up to 1.0 Gy and 0.6 Gy, respectively. The verification measurements showed that the plan calculation and delivery for all complexity levels was well within clinical acceptance levels (Table 1). TRPD showed that VMAT dose delivery itself was repeatable within 0.1% (1 S.D.) over 10 consecutive deliveries for both C1 and C3 complexity levels. Discussion & Conclusions: This study has shown that increasing the plan complexity can provide significant dosimetric advantages for the treatment of H&N cancer. Verification measurement results indicated that this did not noticeably degrade the calculation and delivery accuracy of VMAT using a Varian TrueBeam LINAC and our Eclipse TPS beam model. H&N VMAT at the WBCC can now be developed further with greater confidence in the dosimetric accuracy of higher complexity plans.

Systems Thinking, (ST), has lately received increased attention, once again, as a result of accelerate change conditions and as organisations seem to operate in a more complex and uncertain context, which demands a new way of thinking. ST is an answer to these challenges as it is a way of thinking and acting that adopt a broader perspective. However, the perspective is not new itself and despite its positive aspects, it is still received inferior attention in the academia as well as practice. The purpose of this research was to contribute to an understanding of the employees perception of the change process towards this perspective, in order to gain an understanding of what is difficult and what factors that have helped these individuals to gain the perspective. A theoretical framework was developed and by conducting an exploratory study of the individual change, data were collected from in-depth interviews. The research findings come up with a model of nine key factors that are considered helpful to the employees in the change process, and three of those especially useful when implementing the ST perspective. The model can be seen as practical guidelines for implementation of ST reforms.

L'étude que nous proposons s'inscrit dans le cadre de la complexité implicite des calculs. Selon Daniel Leivant, il s'agit de donner des caractérisations de la complexité sans faire de référence explicite à un modèle de calcul. Nous montrons que les interprétations de programmes sont un bon outil d'analyse dans ce contexte. Les aspects théoriques et pratiques sont abordés.

Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have recently been proposed as a versatile generalization of Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs). In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the computational complexity of ADFs. Our results show that while ADFs are one level up in the polynomial hierarchy compared to AFs, there is a useful subclass of ADFs which is as complex as AFs while arguably offering more modeling capacities. As a technical vehicle, we employ the approximation fixpoint theory of Denecker, Marek and Truszczyński, thus showing that it is also a useful tool for complexity analysis of operator-based semantics.

Inevitably, it becomes more and more important to verify that the systems surrounding us have certain properties. This is indeed unavoidable for safety-critical systems such as power plants and intensive-care units. We refer to the term system in a broad sense: it may be man-made (e.g. a computer system) or natural (e.g. a patient in an intensive-care unit). Whereas in Model Checking it is assumed that one has complete knowledge about the functioning of the system, we consider an open-world scenario and assume that we can only observe the behaviour of the actual running system by sensors. Such an abstract sensor could sense e.g. the blood pressure of a patient or the air traffic observed by radar. Then the observed data are preprocessed appropriately and stored in a fact base. Based on the data available in the fact base, situation-awareness tools are supposed to help the user to detect certain situations that require intervention by an expert. Such situations could be that the heart-rate of a patient is rather high while the blood pressure is low, or that a collision of two aeroplanes is about to happen. Moreover, the information in the fact base can be used by monitors to verify that the system has certain properties. It is not realistic, however, to assume that the sensors always yield a complete description of the current state of the observed system. Thus, it makes sense to assume that information that is not present in the fact base is unknown rather than false. Moreover, very often one has some knowledge about the functioning of the system. This background knowledge can be used to draw conclusions about the possible future behaviour of the system. Employing description logics (DLs) is one way to deal with these requirements. In this thesis, we tackle the sketched problem in three different contexts: (i) runtime verification using a temporalised DL, (ii) temporalised query entailment, and (iii) verification in DL-based action formalisms.

The Hypertext concept was introduced about 50 years ago. This thesis presents the development of a reference system using the Hypertext concept. HYATS (HYpertext Automata and Turing Theory Learning 5ys,em) is a system which helps users learn many topics in the area of theory of computation. The system is implemented by Guide which is a general purpose Hypertext system running on PC-Windows environment. HYATS also includes a Turing machine simulating program which was written by Dominique Atger as her Master's Thesis in 1993, so that users can actually experiment with Turing machines learned through HYATS. HYATS will be not only the reference system, but also the complete package of actual learning system. The motivation behind this project is to study basic concepts of a Hypertext system so that it will also contribute to G-Net research. HYATS can be used as a prototype for future development of versions of by using other Hypertext systems such as NoteCards. / Department of Computer Science

2011 fick det svenska utbildningsväsendet en ny skollag, i vilken det står att utbildningen ska vila på vetenskaplig grund och beprövad erfarenhet. Tidigare studier har påvisat att förskollärare känner en osäkerhet inför vad det vetenskapliga begreppet innebär. Den här studien syftar till att undersöka förskollärares yrkesidentitet och yrkesspecifika kompetenser i relation till att förskolan vilar på vetenskaplig grund. Studien utgår från ett sociokulturellt perspektiv vilket innebär en syn på människor som deltagare i en social interaktion där handlingar och tänkande är situerade i en social kontext.  Studiens empiriska data härrör från fokusgrupper med förskollärare samt intervjuer med en lektor och en professor. Analysarbetet har genomförts med inspiration av Grounded Theory. Resultatet består av sju olika kategorier. Kollektiv kompetens som praxisbunden och verbal, Kompetens i form av görande, Kompetens som förmåga att hantera en komplex verksamhet, Personlighet som kompetens, Reflektion som kompetens, Se och förstå barns intentioner samt Kompetens och identitet i relation till en vetenskaplig grund. Det framkommer en hög kompetens hos förskollärare när de samtalar om sin verksamhet, men de har svårt att uttrycka sin kunskap i relation till vetenskapliga teorier. När de sätter ord på sin kompetens gör de det i termer av ett görande i en kollektiv och praxisbunden kultur.

Description logics (DLs) are used to represent knowledge of an application domain and provide standard reasoning services to infer consequences of this knowledge. However, classical DLs are not suited to represent vagueness in the description of the knowledge. We consider a combination of DLs and Fuzzy Logics to address this task. In particular, we consider the t-norm-based semantics for fuzzy DLs introduced by Hájek in 2005. Since then, many tableau algorithms have been developed for reasoning in fuzzy DLs. Another popular approach is to reduce fuzzy ontologies to classical ones and use existing highly optimized classical reasoners to deal with them. However, a systematic study of the computational complexity of the different reasoning problems is so far missing from the literature on fuzzy DLs. Recently, some of the developed tableau algorithms have been shown to be incorrect in the presence of general concept inclusion axioms (GCIs). In some fuzzy DLs, reasoning with GCIs has even turned out to be undecidable. This work provides a rigorous analysis of the boundary between decidable and undecidable reasoning problems in t-norm-based fuzzy DLs, in particular for GCIs. Existing undecidability proofs are extended to cover large classes of fuzzy DLs, and decidability is shown for most of the remaining logics considered here. Additionally, the computational complexity of reasoning in fuzzy DLs with semantics based on finite lattices is analyzed. For most decidability results, tight complexity bounds can be derived.