"Therefore, the aims of the study are to explore the origin, nature and purpose of fact-finding missions, to explore what is currently on the ground, to expose the inherent deficiencies in the current practice, which compromise the missions' capacity to promote and protect human and peoples' rights. Having identified the shortcomings, lessons and inspiration will be drawn from the practice and rules of procedure of other regional and international treaty monitoring bodies, particularly the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The starting point of the analysis shall be to identify the various fact-finding related issues that arose in the response of the Government of Zimbabwe to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) report. A survey of the reaction and response of other countries in which similar fact-finding missions were conducted, shall be carried out to gauge the consistence or otherwise in the ACHPR's practice. It shall be strongly suggested that the ACHPR should substantially borrow from other human rights systems, if necessary. After closely observing these issues, the study will come up with a position and firm recommendations to the ACHPR in terms of which its practice can be revamped for the achievement of an effective and progressive promotion and protection of human and peoples' rights as contemplated by the African Charter. ... This study has four chapters. Chapter one constitutes introductory remarks putting the study into context and the justification thereof. Chapter two explores the nature, origin, forms and importance of fact-finding in human rights protection. It searches for the underlying principles governing credible and plausible fact-finding. Chapter three analyses the ACHPR fact-finding practice to see what is there and critically compare it to the IACHR, UN and ILO practice. It aims at demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of the African system. Chapter four revisits the weaknesses unearthed in chapter three and proposes recommendations for overall improvement. The study concludes by soliciting draft rules of procedure from the general principles explored in chapter two, combined with lessons learnt from other systems in chapter three. The model fact-finding rules of procedures are marked Annexure A at the end of this work." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) is the task to find efficient collision-free paths for a fixed set of agents. Each agent moves from its initial location to its desired destination in a shared environment represented by a graph. The classical definition of MAPF is very simple and usually does not reflect the real world accurately. In this thesis, we try to add several attributes to the MAPF definition so that we overcome this shortcoming. This is done in several steps. First, we present an approach on how to model and solve MAPF via reduction to Boolean satisfiability using Picat programming language. This provides us with a useful model that can be easily modified to accommodate additional constraints. Secondly, we modify MAPF to portray a more realistic world. Specifically, we allow new agents to enter the shared environment during the execution of the found plan, and we relax the requirement on the homogeneousness of the shared environment. Lastly, we experimentally verify the applicability of the novel models on real robots in comparison with the classical MAPF setting.

Detta examensarbete tar plats i Bredäng, söder om Stockholm. Projektet har varit en undersökning i hur man omarbetar, anpassar och informerar två befintliga bostadshus från miljonprogramsåren till dagens behov. Med syfte att skapa kontinuitet och komplexitet i dessa strikta strukturella fält, detta genom en formfinnande process där textilt skumgummi har använts som ett medlande objekt av additiv och subtraktiv information med referenser till “The Renewed Novelty of Symmetry” av Greg Lynn. Det är ett spekulativt projekt som tar upp frågor kring byggnaders evolution samt begreppet "mismatch", med ambitionen att dessa byggnader skall få fortsätta berättelsen om nya sätt att bygga bra bostäder för framtiden. Den berättelse som de en gång var en del utav när miljonprogrammet utvecklades, då avståndet mellan forskning och profession var mycket kort och byggnaderna byggdes tillsammans med de nyaste idéerna och teknikerna för den tiden. Men att låta livet i och runt dessa byggnadsstrukturer ha en inverkan på sin egen situation samt att förankra byggnaderna på platsen har varit fokus. / This thesis project has been an investigation in how to rework, adapt and inform two existing housing structures from the million-programme-era in Bredäng, south of Stockholm, to the needs of today. Aiming to create continuity and complexity in these structural fields through a form finding process using textile foam rubber as the intermediating object of additive and subtractive information, referring to “The Renewed Novelty of Symmetry” by Greg Lynn. It's a speculative project that takes on the question of building evolution and mismatch, where I want these buildings to continue the story of new innovative ways of building good housing for the future. The story which they once where part of when the million-program-era was developed, when the distance between research and profession was short and the buildings where built with the new building ideas and techniques of that time. So trying to let the life within and around these building structures have an impact on its own situation and also tying the buildings to the site has been the main focus.

Trender är ett fenomen som innebär en tydlig och stabil förändring av något på marknaden. Inom sportens värld finns det en trend som varit speciellt uppmärksammad och aktuell de senaste åren. Sporten det handlar om är padel, vilket för många var ett okänt område för bara 5 år sedan, men som nu växt fram till att vara en uppskattad sport eller motionsform i Sverige. Förmågan att snappa upp och utnyttja en affärsmöjlighet eller en trend är en väsentlig egenskap för att kunna starta och driva en lönsam verksamhet och det är vanligt att det är just de som kallas entreprenörer som besitter denna förmåga. Syftet med denna studie är att skapa medvetenhet kring hur entreprenörer identifierat och värderat trenden padel och dess affärsmässiga potential. Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod, varvid fem semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med fem olika entreprenörer inom padelbranschen. Forskarna har använt sig av en abduktiv ansats, där teori och empiri har samlats in växelvis. Litteraturgenomgången presenterar teorier kring vad en trend och affärsmöjlighet är samt hur en trend kan urskiljas. Även teorier kring en entreprenörs personlighet samt hur man identifierar och värderar en trend behandlas. Resultatet av studien grundar sig i att tillvägagångssättet för entreprenörer som startat verksamhet inom padel skildrar sig från hur det vanligtvis går till vid ett företags framväxt. Där entreprenörens affärsnätverk, identifiering och värdering av affärsmöjligheten tillsammans med dennes personlighet har legat till grund för bedömningen av padelns affärsmässiga potential.

Pieris oleracea, formerly Pieries napi, was once a widespread pierid butterfly in New England until the introduction of a biological control agent, Cotesia glomerata. It has been suggested that C. glomerata is responsible for the range reduction of P. oleracea. There are been several introductions of a second more specialized biological control agent, Cotesia rubecula, to the United States since the 1960’s. My first goal was to determine the current distribution and status of P. rapae parasitoids and the effectiveness of C. rubecula as a biological control agent since its release. The findings of a survey I conducted of the parasitoid community of P. rapae indicate that C. rubecula now occurs as far west as North Dakota and has become the dominant parasitoid of P. rapae in the northeastern and north central United States and adjacent parts of southeastern Canada, where it has displaced C. glomerata, the previously dominant parasitoid. Survival of artificially established cohorts of P. rapae larvae was assessed in a collard patch on an organic vegetable farm in western Massachusetts. There was a significant drop in larval survival between the 4th and 5th instar due to parasitism by C. rubecula. This was change from survival curves of P. rapae from a 1985-1986 study, in which there was a significant drop in survival between the 5th instar and pupal stage due to C. glomerata. The final goal of my thesis work is to try to understand why P. oleracea was able to survive at the focal study site in Lenox, MA despite parasitoid pressure and range reduction elsewhere in New England. In olfactometer tests, there was no difference in attractiveness of naïve C. glomerata females to volatiles of either Cardamine pratensis (cuckooflower) foliage, the host plant of P. oleracea or Brassica olercea (collard) foliage (P = 0.51). In order to determine if overtopping by other vegetation may provide an enemy free space for P. oleracea by affecting detection by C. glomerata, cage experiments were conducted. Overtopping vegetation had a significant effect on parasitism by C. glomerata (F = 12.8, df = 3, PP. oleracea has been able to thrive at the Lenox, MA site.

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Society today brings a high pace development and demand of Artificial intelligence systems as well as robotics. To further expand and to take one step closer to have Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) working in the cities, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency launched a project that introduces U-space airspace, an airspace where UAVs, for instance, are allowed to operate for commercial services.The problems defined for U-space airspace resemble problems defined in the area of multi-agent path finding, such as scaling and traffic etc., resulting an interest to research whether MAPF-solutions can be applied to U-space scenarios. The following thesis extends the state-of-the-art MAPF-algorithm Continuous-time Conflict based search (CCBS) to handle simplified U-space scenarios, as well as extend other A*-based algorithms, such as a version of the Receding Horizon Lattice-based Motion Planning named Extended Multi-agent A* algorithm with Wait-Time (EMAWT) and an extended A* named Extended Multi-agent A* algorithm (EMA) to handle them. Comparisons of the three algorithms resulted in the EMAWT being the most reliable and stable solution throughout all tests, whilst for fewer agents, the CCBS being the clear best solution.

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<p dir="ltr">Accurately locating a radio-frequency (RF) emitter is imperative in the defense sector, and passive direction finding systems are intriguing due to relatively low cost. This approach involves using the time difference between a signal’s impact at equispaced antennas to determine the location of the emitter, a particular challenge for wideband waveforms operating near the noise floor. Microwave photonic systems have been demonstrated for passive direction finding. These techniques possessed drawbacks, such as reliance on the incoming signal’s bandwidth, dependence on laser power, or the inability to recover an angle from wideband pulses. This thesis presents a novel approach to passive direction finding by translating the methods of spectral interferometry from the optical domain to RF. Spectral interferometry involves interfering a time-delayed reference pulse with a “signal” pulse that has passed through an unknown system. By removing the spectral phase of the reference pulse from the resulting interferogram, the spectral phase of the uncharacterized system is recovered. This enables direction-finding for many waveforms, including the wideband low peak power chirps frequently used in radar. Incorporating an analog optical delay line into both a hard-wired RF interferometer and a two-element antenna array demonstrated spectral interferometric processing of chirped signals with up to 1 GHz instantaneous bandwidth. The technique extracted accurate delays and angles to within 2$\degree$ throughout testing. This approach only requires the imposed delay be longer than the autocorrelation of the bandwidth limited pulses. With additional backend processing, this method could simultaneously determine the angle and classify the incoming signal.</p>