Plants associated with the historical agricultural landscape are threatened. Land-use changes causing loss, fragmentation and degradation of semi-natural grassland habitats have resulted in many species becoming Red Listed. In addition, climate change favours generalist species, which risk outcompeting the specialist semi-natural grassland species. Conservation of small remnants of historical meadows and pastures left in landscapes has, on the other hand, proved to be of great importance for conservation of these species. A better understanding of how thespecies are affected by climate and land-use changes is essential for long-term and effective conservation plans and restoration measures. With this large-scale study, covering the whole of southern and central Sweden (ca 210000 km2), I investigated spatial variations in the number of retained semi-natural grassland species, and whether the proportion of retained distribution varies between species in different Red-List categories. Recently digitized data on the historical distribution of Swedish vascular plants made it possible to compare the historical and contemporary distributions of species on a large scale. Historical and current data of species distribution, climate and land use, and the presence of valuable grasslands were used to investigate the effects of changes in land use and climate on the species. Over 200 semi-natural grassland species were included in the analysis. The results showed that 34% of the seminatural grassland species in the study were Red Listed. There were spatial variations in retained distribution of species and the proportion of retained distribution varied between different Red-List categories. Species in the most critical category, CR had the lowestproportion retained distribution (median=0.39) and not Red Listed species the highest (median=0.95). The proportion of valuable semi-natural grasslands had a positive effect on retained distribution of species, while retention of open habitats had a negative effect, the lattercontradicting previous studies. Retention of species turned out not to be affected by climate change, which previous studies have suggested, but it was positively affected by a historically colder climate. The results of the study show the importance of preserving and restoring seminatural grasslands to reduce negative effects from other influencing factors, and that spatial differences in the effects are important to consider. The study underscores the need for more knowledge to understand the full impact of the threats that land-use change and climate change pose to these species. / Kärlväxter associerade till det historiska odlingslandskapet är hotade. Förändrad markanvändning med förlust, fragmentering och degradering av habitaten som resultat har lett till att ett stort antal av dessa arter numer är rödlistade. Dessutom hotas arterna ytterligare av klimatförändringar som gynnar generalistarter som då riskerar att konkurrera ut de mer specialiserade hävdgynnade gräsmarksarterna. Bevarandet av små kvarvarande ängs- och betesmarker har däremot visat sig ha stor betydelse för bevarandet av dessa arter. En ökad förståelse för hur arterna påverkas av förändringar i klimat och markanvändning är avgörande för långsiktiga och effektiva bevarandeplaner och restaureringsåtgärder. Med denna storskaliga studie över hela södra och mellersta Sverige undersöker jag spatiala variationer i antalet bevarade hävdgynnade gräsmarksarter, samt om andelen bibehållen utbredning varierar mellan arter i olika rödlistningskategorier. Nyligen digitaliserade data om svenska kärlväxters historiska utbredning gjorde det möjligt att jämföra arters historiska och nutida utbredning i stor skala. Historiska och aktuella data om arters utbredning, klimat och markanvändning, samt förekomsten av värdefulla gräsmarker användes för att undersöka effekterna av förändringar i markanvändning och klimat på hävdgynnade gräsmarksarter. Över 200 hävdgynnade gräsmarksarter inkluderades i analyserna. Resultaten visade att 34% av arterna i studien var rödlistade. Det fanns spatiala variationer i arternas bibehållna utbredningar och proportionen bibehållen utbredning varierade mellan olika rödlistningskategorier. Arter i den mest kritiska rödlistningskategorin CR hade lägst proportion bibehållen utbredning (median= 0,39), medan de ej rödlistade arterna den högsta (median=0,95). Proportionen värdefulla ängs- och betesmarker hade en positiv effekt på arters bevarade utbredning och bevarad öppen mark hade en negativ effekt, det senare i motsats till tidigare studiers resultat. Arternas bibehållna utbredning visade sig inte påverkats av klimatförändringarna, vilket tidigare studier visat på, ett historiskt kallare klimat hade däremot positiva effekter. Studiens resultat visar på vikten av att bevara och restaurera hävdpräglade marker för att minska negativa effekter från andra påverkansfaktorer och att spatiala skillnader i effekterna är viktiga att beakta. Studien understryker att mer kunskap behövs för att förstå de totala effekterna av de hot som förändrad markanvändning och klimatförändringar utgör för dessa arter.

No description available.

There are several hundred Learning Management Systems (LMS) avaliable today. In order to decide which LMS is a good fit for a specific company, it is important to define a list of requirements for an LMS. The purpose of this thesis was to construct a list of requirements for a small consulting firm and test a selection of LMSs. An additional purpose was to evaluate the list of requirements against previous research on the area of digital learning and learning in LMSs. The thesis' result might help other companies to evaluate LMSs in comparison to their needs.  The requirements were found by conducting eleven interviews with employees at the consulting firm and their customers, and performing a thematic analysis on the interview data. The criteria for selecting LMSs was a free trial period and suitability according to the company's business requirements. The LMSs chosen for detailed testing were Techable, Thinkific, AddWisdom and Learnifier. The result showed that AddWisdom fulfilled all high priority level requirements. However, Techable and Thinkific fulfilled the majority of the company's functionality requirements. In the analysis, deficiencies in the list of requirements were found, which are important to take into account in the future. / Det finns fleera hundra digitala lärplattformar (eng. Learning Management Systems, LMS) tillgängliga idag. För att kunna avgöra vilken digital lärplattform som passar ett specifikt företag bäst är de viktigt att definiera en kravlista för en lärplatform. Syftet med detta examensarbete var att konstruera en kravlista för ett mindre konsultföretag och testa ett urval av lärplattformar. Ett ytterligare syfte var att utvärdera kravlistan mot tidigare forskning på området digitalt lärande och lärande i digitala lätplattformar. Resultatet av uppsatsen kan hjälpa andra företag att utvärdera plattformar i jämförelse med deras behov.  Kraven identifierades genom att genomföra elva intervjuer med anställda på konsultföretaget och deras kundföretag, och genomföra en tematisk analys på intevjudatan. Kriterierna för att välja en digital lärplattform var en gratid provperiod och lämplighet enligt företagets affärskrav. De plattformar som valdes för detaljerad testning var Teachable, Thinkific, AddWisdom och Learnifier.  Resultatet visade att AddWisdom uppfyllde alla högprioriterade krav. Dock uppfyllde Teachable och Thinkific majoriteten av företagets krav på funktionalitet. I analysen upptäcktes brister i kravlistan, som är viktiga att ta hänsyn till i framtiden.

Cognate words have a shared orthographic and semantic representation across languages: kniv (‘knife’) in Danish means the same as kniv in Swedish. Their shared form and meaning give cognates a special status in the bilingual mental lexicon and there is robust evidence that because of this special status they are processed faster than non-cognate words. This effect is called the Cognate Facilitation Effect and represents strong evidence that bilinguals do not have two separate mental lexicons, but rather one integrated lexicon for both of their languages with nonselective access. The present study is a replication of Vanlangendonck et al. (2020) with a different language constellation. For the aims of this project, early and late Danish-Swedish bilinguals were recruited to examine the effect of stimulus list composition on the Cognate Facilitation Effect by means of two experiments: one language-specific visual lexical decision task that contained control words from the participants’ L2 (Swedish), a set of cognates, interlingual homographs and pseudowords, and a second task in which half of the pseudowords were replaced by Danish (L2) words that had to evoke a “no” response. This change from a pure to a mixed list was expected to increase response competition and turn cognate facilitation into inhibition. However, the results showed a null Cognate Facilitation Effect both for early and for late bilinguals. These findings are discussed in terms of the assumptions of the BIA+ model of bilingual lexical processing and it is suggested that the presence of language-specific diacritics in the stimulus list has hindered the emergence of the Cognate Facilitation Effect.

Background The present study investigated the psychometric properties of the newly developed English version of the Giessen Subjective Complaint List-8 (GBB-8), a questionnaire assessing psychosomatic symptoms with regard to exhaustion, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal and cardiovascular. Methods A U.S. sample of 638 participants (47.6% female) was recruited by MTurk to participate in this cross-sectional online survey. Validation instruments included the Patient Health Questionnaire-4, Perceived Stress Scale, short version of the Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress. Results Reliability was high with ω’s between .80 and .86 for all subscales. Confirmatory factor analyses yielded comparable good model fit for a four-dimensional model as well as a higher order model. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses confirmed measurement invariance of the GBB-8 across sex and age. Regarding convergent validity, correlations with other instruments were highly significant and of large magnitude as expected. Conclusion The English version of the GBB-8 has shown excellent psychometric properties. Therefore, it can be recommended for the assessment of psychosomatic complaints in contexts where short screening instruments are necessary.

This dissertation examines how institutions and individuals navigate the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism by focusing on architectural preservationists' explanations of what are referred to as white cities. Through dialogue between architectural history, international relations, and critical heritage studies, I map the making and remaking of the histories of white cities, or what were designed as "European" zones – in opposition to "Indigenous" zones – that brought together modernist architecture, white supremacy, early twentieth-century European settler colonialism, and architectural preservation. My focus on preservationists' narrations of these white cities extends interdisciplinary work charting their historical production from a group of scholars focusing on the relationship of architecture in the production of domination in European colonialism. My work extends this scholarship by shifting to preservationists' narrations of white cities through the question: how do preservationists remake the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism that underpinned the production of white cities? In this dissertation, I argue that preservationists remake the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism that produced white cities by relying on what I refer to as didactic narratives to legitimate preservation interventions. Preservationists use these didactic narratives to reframe white cities as part of national histories, the universalism of the World Heritage List, and the history of the modernist movement in architecture and planning. My argument advances by showing preservationists' appropriations of the didactic narratives in the World Heritage List inscription materials for White City of Tel Aviv (2003), Rabat, Modern Capital and Historic City: A Shared Heritage (2012), and Asmara: A Modernist African City (2017) and through ethnographic fieldwork with local preservationists in Casablanca and Tel Aviv. To frame these analyses, I map the institutional changes within the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that sought greater legitimacy by expanding the typological and geographical scope of the World Heritage List. To do so, the institution enlisted the International Committee for the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites, and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO-International) to recraft the criteria to include twentieth-century modernist architecture onto the List. However, DOCOMOMO promoted a particular way of interpreting white cities through the didactic narratives that led to the proliferation of white cities on the World Heritage List. By charting the different ways that preservationists appropriate the didactic narratives in the World Heritage List materials and in the text of semi-structured interviews and from participant observation, I show how the intersecting power structures of white supremacy and settler colonialism that were embedded in the production of white cities are adapted by preservationists in the co-constitution of international institutions, disciplinary knowledge, and individual subject positions. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation considers how the histories of race and colonialism are narrated by architectural preservationists. I do so by focusing on preservationists' narrations of white cities, "European" enclaves designed in opposition to "Indigenous" zones in early 20th century settler colonialism. By focusing on the preservation of what were designed as racialized spaces, I explore how these histories of racial difference and colonialism are mediated by forms of knowledge, institutions, and individuals. Yet it is the focus on preservationists that I detail how preservationists silence, downplay, or mobilize the histories of white cities through three different narrative tropes of national histories, the universalism of the World Heritage List, and modernist movement architecture and design. I show how these narrative tropes justify preservation interventions while making some histories more accessible and others less so. To analyze how preservationists remake the histories of white cities, I map the creation and transformations of the primary international preservation organization, the World Heritage List. These institutional changes led to the addition of white cities in Asmara, Rabat, and Tel Aviv based on preservationists' adaptations of the three narrative tropes. I then show how these same narrative tropes are appropriated by local preservationists to remake the histories of race and colonialism in white cities. By drawing attention to the ways that the histories of race and colonialism are remade through the intersections of individuals, institutions, and forms of knowledge, the project shows how knowledge on the modernist movement is implicated in the constitution of power in the World Heritage List and in consolidating privileged subject positions. Moreover, my analysis opens up questions on the co-constitution of institutions, forms of knowledge, and individual subject positions. Lastly, the analysis demonstrates that individuals have the potential to challenge – rather than to uphold – the constellations of power etched into white cities. I show one instance of architectural preservationists challenging these structures of power in the preservation effort of Les Abattoirs in Casablanca in 2009-2013.

Transactional memory (TM) has emerged as a promising synchronization abstraction for multi-core architectures. Unlike traditional lock-based approaches, TM shifts the burden of implementing threads synchronization from the programmer to an underlying framework using hardware (HTM) and/or software (STM) components. Although TM can be leveraged to implement transactional data structures (i.e., those where multiple operations are allowed to execute atomically, all-or-nothing, according to the transaction paradigm), its intensive speculation may result in significantly lower performance than the optimized concurrent data structures. This poor performance motivates the need to find other, more effective, alternatives for designing transactional data structures without losing the simple programming abstraction proposed by TM. To do so, we identified three major challenges that need to be addressed to design efficient transactional data structures. The first challenge is composability, namely allowing an atomic execution of two or more data structure operations in the same way as TM provides, but without its high overheads. The second challenge is integration, which enables the execution of data structure operations within generic transactions that may contain other memory- based operations. The last challenge is modeling, which encompasses the necessity of defining a unified formal methodology to reason about the correctness of transactional data structures. In this dissertation, we propose different approaches to address the above challenges. First, we address the composability challenge by introducing an optimistic methodology to effi- ciently convert concurrent data structures into transactional ones. Second, we address the integration challenge by injecting the semantic operations of those transactional data struc- ture into TM frameworks, and by presenting two novel STM algorithms in order to enhance the overall performance of those frameworks. Finally, we address the modeling challenge by presenting two models for concurrent and transactional data structures designs. • Our first main contribution in this dissertation is Optimistic transactional boosting (OTB), a methodology to design transactional versions of the highly concurrent optimistic (i.e., lazy) data structures. An earlier (pessimistic) boosting proposal added a layer of abstract locks on top of existing concurrent data structures. Instead, we propose an optimistic boosting methodology, which allows greater data structure-specific optimizations, easier integration with TM frameworks, and lower restrictions on the operations than the original (more pessimistic) boosting methodology. Based on the proposed OTB methodology, we implement the transactional version of two list-based data structures (i.e., set and priority queue). Then, we present TxCF-Tree, a balanced tree whose design is optimized to support transactional accesses. The core optimizations of TxCF-Tree's operations are: providing a traversal phase that does not use any lock and/or speculation and deferring the lock acquisition or physical modification to the transaction's commit phase; isolating the structural operations (such as re-balancing) in an interference-less housekeeping thread; and minimizing the interference between structural operations and the critical path of semantic operations (i.e., additions and removals on the tree). • Our second main contribution is to integrate OTB with both STM and HTM algorithms. For STM, we extend the design of both DEUCE, a Java STM framework, and RSTM, a C++ STM framework, to support the integration with OTB. Using our extension, programmers can include both OTB data structure operations and traditional memory reads/writes in the same transaction. Results show that OTB performance is closer to the optimal lazy (non-transactional) data structures than the original boosting algorithm. On the HTM side, we introduce a methodology to inject semantic operations into the well-known hybrid transactional memory algorithms (e.g., HTM-GL, HyNOrec, and NOre- cRH). In addition, we enhance the proposed semantically-enabled HTM algorithms with a lightweight adaptation mechanism that allows bypassing the HTM paths if the overhead of the semantic operations causes repeated HTM aborts. Experiments on micro- and macro- benchmarks confirm that our proposals outperform the other TM solutions in almost all the tested workloads. • Our third main contribution is to enhance the performance of TM frameworks in gen- eral by introducing two novel STM algorithms. Remote Transaction Commit (RTC) is a mechanism for executing commit phases of STM transactions in dedicated server cores. RTC shows significant improvements compared to its corresponding validation based STM algorithm (up to 4x better) as it decreases the overhead of spin locking during commit, in terms of cache misses, blocking of lock holders, and CAS operations. Remote Inval- idation (RInval) applies the same idea of RTC on invalidation based STM algorithms. Furthermore, it allows more concurrency by executing commit and invalidation routines concurrently in different servers. RInval performs up to 10x better than its corresponding invalidation based STM algorithm (InvalSTM), and up to 2x better than its corresponding validation-based algorithm (NOrec). • Our fourth and final main contribution is to provide a theoretical model for concurrent and transactional data structures. We exploit the similarities of the OTB-based data structures and provide a unified model to reason about the correctness of those designs. Specifically, we extend a recent approach that models data structures with concurrent readers and a single writer (called SWMR), and we propose two novel models that additionally allow multiple writers and transactional execution. Those models are more practical because they cover a wider set of data structures than the original SWMR model. / Ph. D.

This thesis discusses introducing CNC machining centers to the markets of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States (currently the Eurasian Economic Union). The first chapter of the thesis focuses on the legal requirements for placing the products on the markets of the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, their comparison, systematic analysis of the problem, and certification schemes. The second chapter of the thesis analyses safety requirements for CNC machining centers, discusses CNC machines checklists development and their comparison for the markets of the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union.

Several tools and practices have been developed in the innovation management field to support individuals and organizations in their innovation journeys. It is of high interest to understand how the actions and decisions of people affect the innovation process, both on a micro and macro level. The actions of individuals, teams, and upper management in organizations directly or indirectly affect innovation. It becomes interesting to understand such behaviors. The aim of this master’s thesis is to explore and compile a list of human behaviors that drive innovation on three levels: individual, team, and organization. This qualitative study was conducted in Sweden using semi-structured interviews with experienced professionals in the innovation management field. The research also includes defining and understanding key terms that are necessary for exploring and identifying innovation behaviors and offers analogies to support this understanding. An extensive literature review is used to find the initial set of innovation behaviors, and the analysis is developed. The key findings of this research reveal innovation behaviors in 11 categories of individual innovation behaviors, 5 categories of team innovation behaviors, and 6 categories of organizational innovation behaviors. Each category is developed in detail and a list of innovation behaviors is prepared. The implications of this thesis are twofold. Firstly, an extensive theoretical base is developed to understand innovation behaviors in a unified framework. Several new innovation behaviors are identified in empirical results that were not found in the scientific literature. This thesis also provides an actionable base for ‘how to innovate’ questions. Secondly, the results can be used by professionals on a practical level. Individuals, teams, and organizations can educate themselves about innovation behaviors and adopt them during their innovation projects. The upper management in companies can use these innovation behaviors to develop a culture that is supportive of innovation and take innovation-abling actions for their organizations. Innovation professionals can use these behaviors as a tool to support their teams in taking better actions for innovation. Furthermore, researchers can advance the understanding of factors influencing innovation and develop advanced tools and practices as a guide to innovation. / Flera verktyg och metoder för innovation har utvecklats för att stödja individer och organisationer. Det är av stort intresse att förstå hur människors handlingar och beslut påverkar innovationsprocessen. Handlingar från individer, team och högsta ledning i organisationer påverkar direkt eller indirekt innovation. Det är av intresse att förstå sådana beteenden. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att utforska och sammanställa en lista över mänskliga beteenden som driver innovation på tre nivåer: individ, team och organisation. En kvalitativ studie genomfördes i Sverige med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer med erfarna praktiker inom innovationsledningsområdet. Forskningen inkluderar också att definiera och förstå nyckeltermer som är nödvändiga för att utforska och identifiera innovationsbeteenden och erbjuder analogier för att stödja denna förståelse. En omfattande litteraturgenomgång har genomförts för att hitta den initiala uppsättningen av innovationsbeteenden, och analysen av de empiriska resultaten har vidare utvecklat denna. De viktigaste resultaten av denna forskning visar på innovationsbeteenden i 11 kategorier av individuella innovationsbeteenden, 5 kategorier av teaminnovationsbeteenden och 6 kategorier av organisatoriska innovationsbeteenden. Varje kategori har redogjorts för i detalj och en lista över innovationsbeteenden presenterats. Implikationerna av detta examensarbete är tvåfaldiga. För det första utvecklas en omfattande teoretisk bas för att förstå innovationsbeteenden i ett enhetligt ramverk. Flera nya innovationsbeteenden identifierades i de empiriska resultaten som inte återfanns i den vetenskapliga litteraturen. Resultaten ger också en handlingsbar bas för "hur man innoverar"-frågor. För det andra kan resultaten användas i praktiken. Individer, team och organisationer kan utbilda sig själva om innovationsbeteenden och anamma dem i sina innovationsprojekt. Den högsta ledningen i företag kan använda dessa innovationsbeteenden för att utveckla en kultur som stödjer innovation och vidta innovationsfrämjande åtgärder för sina organisationer. Innovationsledare kan använda listan med innovationbeteenden som ett verktyg för att stödja sina team i att vidta bättre åtgärder för innovation. Dessutom kan forskare främja förståelsen av faktorer som påverkar innovation och utveckla avancerade vertyg och metoder som vägledning för innovation.

Bakgrund: Den tekniska utvecklingen går snabbt framåt och kan innebära en utmaning för många grupper i samhället, framförallt äldre. Sverige har som mål att år 2025 vara bäst på eHälsa och som ett delmål har ett register i form av Nationella Läkemedelslistan tagits fram. Registret ska ge patienter, vård- och apotekspersonalen tillgång till samma information med målet att öka patientsäkerheten och patienters delaktighet i vården. För att komma åt den här information krävs inloggning till eHälsomyndighetens tjänst Läkemedelskollen. Äldre personer har ofta mindre datorvana och väljer i många fall papper framför digitala tjänster. Apotekslistan är den analoga tjänsten som just nu erbjuder receptinformation i pappersform till patienterna. Syfte: Studiens syfte var att beskriva äldre patienters upplevelser av att använda receptinformation i analog form och deras uppfattning om digitala alternativ. Material och metod: En kvalitativ semistrukturerad intervjustudie har genomförts och urval har skett strategiskt och målstyrt för att fånga respondenter med olika nivå av teknikvana och på olika demografiska platser i Sverige. Rekrytering skedde med snöbollsurval och resulterade i 9 respondenter. Resultatet tolkades sedan med hjälp av UTAUT och TTF. Resultat: Den fysiska Apotekslistan fyller en viktig funktion i patientens läkemedelsprocess och skapar trygghet för individen. Många respondenter har svårt att se fördelarna med en digital version och upplever att den fysiska listan är tillförlitlig och uppfyller alla krav och behov som finns. Slutsats: En del av den åldrande befolkningen vill ha tillgång till det fysiska pappret som ett alternativ till digitala tjänster och upplever att den skapar trygghet och förenklar vardagen. För att locka fler äldre att testa Läkemedelskollen kan utbildningar tas fram för att minska äldre personers teknostress. En utveckling av tjänsten skulle kunna öka intresset och tillföra ett mervärde som förenklar livet med läkemedel. / Background: Technical development is advancing rapidly and entails a need for skills development for many groups in society, especially the elderly. Sweden aims to be the best in eHealth by 2025, and as an intermediate goal, a register in the form of the “National Medication List” has been introduced. The register will give patients, care and pharmacy staff access to the same information with the aim of increasing patient safety and patients' participation in care. To access this information, login to the eHealth Authority's service Läkemedelskollen is required. Older people often have less computer skills and, in many cases, choose paper over digital services. Apotekslistan is the analogue service that currently offers prescription information on paper to patients. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to describe elderly patients' experiences of using prescription information in analog form and their attitude to digital alternatives. Material and method: A qualitative semi-structured interview study were conducted and selection has been made strategically and goal-oriented to capture participants with different levels of technical knowledge and in different demographic locations in Sweden. Recruitment took place with a snowball selection and resulted in 9 participants. The result was interpreted using UTAUT and TTF. Result: The physical list Apotekslistan fulfills an important function in the patient's drug process and gives the patient a feeling of security. Many people find it difficult to see the benefits of a digital version and feel that the physical list is reliable and meets all the requirements and needs that exist. Conclusion: Part of the aging population wants access to the physical paper as an alternative to digital services and feels that it creates security and simplifies everyday life. To attract more elderly people to try Läkemedelskollen, training can be developed to reduce older people's technology stress. A development of the service could increase interest and add value that simplifies living with chronic disease.