<p>Landscape effects on species performance currently receives much attention. Habitat loss and fragmentation are considered major threats to species diversity. Deciduous forests in southern Sweden are previous wooded pastures that have become species-rich communities appearing as islands in agricultural landscapes, varying in species composition. <i>Actaea spicata</i> is a long-lived plant occurring in these forests. In 150 populations in a 10-km² area, I studied pre-dispersal seed predation, seed dispersal and pollination. I investigated spatio-temporal dynamics of a tritrophic system including<i> Actaea</i>, a specialist seed predator, <i>Eupithecia immundata</i>, and its parasitoids. In addition, effects of biotic context on rodent fruit dispersal and effects of flowering time and flower number on seed set, seed predation and parasitization were studied. Insect incidences of both trophic levels were related to resource population size and small <i>Eupithecia</i> populations were maintained by the rescue effect. There was a unimodal relationship between seed predation and plant population size. Seed predator populations frequently went extinct in small plant populations, resulting in low average seed predation. Parasitoids were present in large plant populations but did not affect seed predator density. Seed predators aggregated at edges, relaxing seed predation in patch interiors. Flowering phenology was unrelated to seed set and insect incidence. A higher flower number did not influence seed predation but was associated with higher seed set and a tendency for a higher parasitization rate. In the study on fruit dispersal more fruits were removed inside than outside populations. Within plant populations more fruits were removed from large aggregations. Overall, this thesis underlines the importance of plant-animal interactions during different phases of the life cycle. The spatial configuration of host plants plays an important role for the outcome of plant-animal interactions and trophic cascades.</p>

<p>The dissertation Reading Texts or ”Reality” investigate teachers use of interpretive communities in teaching literature in secondary school. It discusses how different learning outcomes generates from three interpretory frames for reading. Teachers can be looked upon as critics when they show unexperienced readers why and how they read an interprete literary texts. In their teaching,they don´t relate only to their students but also to thier own conception of subject matter and to a broader discourse in society that deals with questions of why and how we read literature. Following voices of the discourse are included in the study: eight teachers, curriculum texts, a journal for the profession and a journal för scholors.</p><p>Teachers combine several aims in their teaching of literature. They use literature to discuss life, gender and problems related to young people, text as faction. But, they also try to teach their students about narrathology and how to understand and interpretate fictional texts, text as fiction and a world of signs. The curriculum, however, means that literature is read only to gain knowledge about the world,oneself and other people. A contradiction is that one of the criterias for assement includes knowledge of texts and methodology from the academic subject. One of the other voices in the discourse, a journal for scholors, talk about the literary texts but very seldom about teaching the texts. Another voice, a journal for teachers in Swedish, follows the curriculum closely and discusses reading literature as a way to get knowledge of the world.</p><p>Research in subject matter didactics can investigate teaching, relate different aims to different outcomes and show possibilities for teaching literature and reading comprehension. If we choose only one interpretive community, we get one kind of reading comprehension.If we combine two in a complex teaching strategy, we extend learning and reading comprehension of our students.</p>

<p>The subject for this thesis is to find a basis which minimizes the number of bit operations involved in a finite field multiplication. The number of bases of a finite field increases quickly with the extension degree, and it is therefore important to find efficient search algorithms. Only fields of characteristic two are considered. </p><p>A complexity measure is introduced, in order to compare bases. Different methods and algorithms are tried out, limiting the search in order to explore larger fields. The concept of equivalent bases is introduced. </p><p>A comparison is also made between the Polynomial, Normal and Triangular Bases, referred to as known bases, as they are commonly used in implementations. Tables of the best found known bases for all fields up to GF(2^24) is presented. </p><p>A list of the best found bases for all fields up to GF(2^25) is also given.</p>

<p><strong>Background:</strong> A warrant is a derivative that is normally issued over stocks. During the last financial crisis, the trading of warrants reached new records. The high leverage and the complexity of the product make the warrant a risky investment. Financial products such as warrants therefore imply a significant purchase decision for an individual and the consequences of making a poorly thought-out choice can be of considerable importance. Financial products require a high degree of involvement since the decision process is characterized by uncertainty of outcome and complexity of the product. Traditional theories on consumer decision making build on the assumptions of self-interest and rationality. In the context of financial services, the rationality of the decision process has been questioned within the field of behavioral economics, a field that suggests that the consumer is unable to make rational decisions as well as comparative judgments.</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>With a theoretical basis in the traditional consumer decision process, the purpose of this thesis is to examine and describe the decision making of young investors that buy warrants.</p><p><strong>Methodology:</strong> The study can be described as abdicative, since the subject of this thesis is based on an empirical problem observed in reality as well as based on existing theories on the subject. The thesis is furthermore a mixed qualitative and quantitative study. The empirical information was gathered using an Internet survey that was sent out to young investors that are members or are connected to financial associations or societies at different universities.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> The study is considered to show that the decision making of young investors can be described as neither optimal nor rational when buying warrants. The respondents seldom seem to make efficient and as rational decisions as the traditional decision process model implies. Instead, individual characteristics and attitudes of the young investors affect their decision making.</p>

<p>New high quality mobile telecommunication services are offered everyday and the demand for higher data rates is continuously increasing. To maximize the uplink throughput in HSPA when transmission is propagated through a dispersive channel causing self-interference, equalizers are used. One interesting solution, where the equalizer and decoder exchange information in an iterative way, for improving the equalizer performance is Turbo equalization.</p><p>In this thesis a literature survey has been performed on Turbo equalization methods and a chosen method has been implemented for the uplink HSPA standard to evaluate the performance in heavily dispersive channels. The selected algorithm has been adapted for multiple receiving antennas, oversampled processing and HARQ retransmissions. The results derived from the computer based link simulations show that the implemented algorithm provide a gain of approximately 0.5 dB when performing up to 7 Turbo equalization iterations. Gains up to 1 dB have been obtained by disabling power control, not using retransmission combining and utilizing a single receiver antenna. The algorithm has also been evaluated considering alternative dispersive channels, Log-MAP decoding, different code rates, number of Turbo equalization iterations and number of Turbo decoding iterations.</p><p>The simulation results do not motivate a real implementation of the chosen algorithm considering the increased computational complexity and small gain achieved in a full featured receiver system. Further studies are needed before concluding the HSPA uplink Turbo equalization approach.</p>

<p>Background: Due to constant changes and unpredictability in a turbulent environment, the traditional way of planning does not seem to work anymore. Therefore, new approaches to the external and internal conditions need to develop in order to cope with the environmental turbulence. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to define a turbulent environment and identify how an organisation can cope with this environment. Procedure: We have developed a frame of reference mainly consisting of theories regarding a turbulent environment and change. In addition, we have selected eight guiding factors, which we have used when studying, systemising, and comparing how contemporary literature suggests that an organisation can cope with a turbulent environment. </p><p>Results: The conclusions we have come to are that with a definition of the environment as being fast-changing and of chaotic nature, where the changes are continuous, emergent, small, big or somewhere in between, and where paradoxes play an important role, it is necessary to develop an organisational structure, leadership, human resource, and corporate culture, in which the objective always is to create dynamics and to build in an acceptance of change.</p>

<p>Today’s competitive business environment forces companies to introduce new product and process innovations at an increasing pace. Almost every aspect of the modern business is supported by information technology systems which, consequently, must evolve at the same pace as the business. A company’s strategic view on IT reflects the strategic importance of IT in the organization, both in terms of the opportunities IT is expected to create and the commitment to IT the business organization is willing to make.</p><p>SOA is an emerging concept which aims to structure IT in a more flexible manner. The basic idea is to encapsulate distinct units of business logic in reusable services, which can be combined to support business processes. The term service granularity refers to the amount of logic contained in a service. Even though there is immense hype around SOA today, the concept of service granularity is still relatively unexplored. The service should be coarse grained enough to be reusable, but at the same time specific enough to fit the process. Most SOA literature avoids the subject as being too implementation specific and seldom makes any attempt to concretize the rather abstract term.</p><p>The research was conducted at Handelsbanken, which for years has worked with service-oriented principles. The researchers have been given the opportunity to closely analyze the bank’s service initiative. In order to gain an understanding beyond merely technical aspects a rich case study was built, based on interviews with professionals at all levels of the organization.</p><p>The research objective was divided in three parts. The first part was to factorize the notion of service granularity, or in other words to find a number of factors which together precisely describe the granularity of a service. The second part was to explicate how the factors are interrelated, i.e. how changing one factor will affect the others. The final part of the objective was to explain how an organization’s strategic view on IT affects the optimal service granularity.</p><p>It was found that an organization’s strategic view on IT affects the amount of complexity the organization is able to handle, limiting the optimal SOA granularity, which can be precisely described using three factors: reach, range and realm. Reach defines the locations and people the service is capable of connecting, range defines how much functionality the service offers, and realm defines what kind of functionality the service offers.</p>

<p>Is it possible to trace differences in the syntax used in various newspapers and how these differences influence the readability? Earlier studies confirm this and show that it is possible to make a wider distinction between the languages used in for example a broadsheet compared to the language used in a tabloid. In this study, both sentence length and sentence complexity of a broadsheet and a tabloid with a similar political stance were examined in order to find out if it is possible to show differences in readability between the two newspapers.</p><p>The articles used in this study are on-line articles and have thus been taken from a search on the internet. In order to obtain adequate research material, ten articles from each newspaper have been used. Five articles from each newspaper website are news articles whereas the remaining five were taken from the culture pages. Regarding sentence length, the average of each article has been calculated. When it comes to sentence complexity, ratios of simple, complex, and compound sentences have been investigated.</p><p>The analysis revealed that it is possible to show that there are not any substantial differences in sentence length and sentence complexity between the examined newspapers. However, in contrast to the hypothesis of this study, the examined articles in the tabloid consisted of longer sentences and more complex sentence constructions which, according to earlier research, would be an indication of a more formal language which probably has an effect on readability. Since both examined newspapers are supposed to support the Conservative party, it is, with the result of this study, possible to claim that both newspapers have the same targeted audience.</p>

<p>Syftet med vår uppsats är att ur ett sociologiskt samhällsteoretiskt perspektiv, ge både oss själva och läsaren en ökad förståelse för och synliggöra flickor från vissa etniska grupper och deras intim- och familjerelationer i Sverige. För att kunna förstå flickornas eventuella problem och konflikter i familjen tar vi hjälp av Niklas Luhmanns systemteori och hans analys av intima relationer och familjen i det moderna samhället. De frågeställningar som besvaras är:</p><p>• Vilka skillnader mellan det förmoderna och moderna samhällets syn på intim- och familjerelationer ställs flickorna i vårt material inför?</p><p>• Hur kan dessa skillnader tolkas och förstås utifrån Luhmanns systemteoretiska analys av den moderna familjen?</p><p>Vår studie är ett teoretiskt arbete och grundar sig på litteraturstudier. För att kunna besvara våra frågeställningar har vi inspirerats av och löst anknutit oss till en abduktiv metod. Undersökningen tar sin utgångspunkt dels i en nyligen gjord studie av Åsa Andersson, Inte samma lika (2003), och dels i den internationellt erkände sociologen Niklas Luhmanns systemteori och hans analys av intima relationer och familjen.</p><p>För att kunna få en sociologisk samhällsteoretisk förståelse för och kunna placera in familjen i det moderna samhällets kontext presenterar vi de delar av Luhmanns teori och begreppsapparat som vi ansåg relevanta för ämnet. Det gör vi för att kunna förstå hur familjen fungerar i det moderna samhället.</p><p>Sammanfattningsvis kan vi konstatera att de skillnader i synen på intim- och familjerelationer som flickorna har att förhålla sig till finns i såväl den offentliga som den privata sfären. Skillnaderna är flera under respektive sfär men de mest framträdande skillnaderna handlar om moral och förnuft där familjen och den egna etniska gruppen använder mekanismer som skam och skuld för att reducera en ökad kontingens och komplexitet som råder i det moderna samhället. Utifrån flickornas beskrivningar kan vi förstå att deras förväntningar i hög grad skiljer sig från föräldrarnas såväl i valet av äktenskapspartner, hemarbete, mer frihet och ökad jämställdhet i form av utbildning och ekonomiskt oberoende. Utifrån en systemteoretisk synvinkel kan vi även se skillnader på såväl generell som specifik nivå, förändringar av intima relationer kan alltså kopplas till samhällsutvecklingen och dess semantiska koder knutna till familjen som system.</p>

<p>FRAGMENTERAD SAMMANFATTNING</p><p>Aktörerna i Stockholms läns landsting simulerar marknad och konkurrens och är väl medvetna om att de gör detta (Den Stora Upphandlingen; en inre marknad inom ramen för en förvaltningsstyrd struktur). Det är inte det denna alternativa berättelse om konkurrens avslöjar. Aktörerna vet precis vad de försöker göra när de försöker organisera hälso- och sjukvården i Stockholms läns landsting genom att låta sig influeras av andra ”världar”. En särskilt relevant ”annan värld” är ekonomen och ekonomisk teori. Men i den till synes medvetna processen händer något, det uppstår komplexitet; det uppträder många olika världar som cirkulerar i Stockholms läns landsting. Men översättningsprocessen av konkurrens stannar inte här. Aktörerna intensifierar sina ansträngningar för att komma tillrätta med det som blivit komplicerat. Nya förslag på hur hälso- och sjukvården ska organiseras konstrueras, där var och en för fram Det Bästa Sättet för att komma till rätta med de observerade problemen. Situationen och tillvaron blir fördunklad och ekonomisk teori har nu översatts så många gånger, av så många olika aktörer, att det cirkulerar otaliga kopior av den. Det är processen av förenkling, komplexitet och fördunkling som är essensen i min re-presentation och i mina anspråk på att försöka förstå konkurrensprocesser. En essens som jag fångar och illustrerar med hur aktörer i aktörsnätverk översätter (associerar, enrollerar och etiketterar) den neoklassiska marknaden.</p><p>Men annat står också på spel. Aktörer översätter såväl människor som ting samtidigt som ting i sin tur influerar mänskliga föreställningar och ageranden. Men tings förmåga att konstruera människor är begränsat eftersom ting agerar utifrån givna koder, en given Ordning, (som givetvis kan bryta samman och ta oanade vägar, till exempel dataprogram), men som i sig är fyllda av mänskliga avsikter och intentioner. Vissa ”sociotekniska” ting är designade att centrera ”världar”, exempelvis Stockholms läns landsting uttryckt i siffror i en årsredovisning. Likafullt är det bara människor som, i processerna av förenkling, komplexitet och fördunkling, kan träda fram och konstruera och centrera heterogent materiella världar, men genom att centrera mängder av heterogena material (såväl människor som ting) förmår ting visa epistemologiska möjligheter för mänskligt agerande. Människor kan med andra ord färdas långt ut i världen med hjälp av ting. En empirisk observation är att ju längre aktörerna, i hälso- och sjukvården i Stockholms läns landsting, reser i de centrerade heterogent materiella världarna desto mer närsynta blir de samtidigt som potentialen att orsaka allvarliga sidoeffekter blir större och större. En annan empirisk observation i studien är att sidoeffekter hanteras på samma sätt i den nationalekonomiska neoklassiska teorin som i hälso- och sjukvårdens praktik, där internaliserade och väl avgränsade ekonomiska transaktioner antas utgöra normen och sidoeffekter undantagen på marknaden. Istället förhåller sig det precis tvärtom: Sidoeffekter är normen och internaliserade och väl avgränsade ekonomiska transaktioner utgör undantagen.</p>