This thesis aimed to give more insight in the dynamics of enzymes at interfaces. The adsorption and mobility of adsorbed proteins can e.g. give a better understanding of structure-function properties of interfacially active enzymes. Studied enzyme was the lipase from Thermomyces lanuginosus (TLL). Adsorption of TLL to surfaces of different hydrophobicity was studied by Dual Polarization Interferometry (DPI), Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and ellipsometry. It was found that TLL had highest affinity and adsorbed to largest adsorbed amount on a hydrophobic, C18 terminated surface. Moreover, activity studies of adsorbed TLL suggested that a larger fraction of the lipases were orientated with the active site facing the surface on hydrophobic surfaces. Mobility of adsorbed enzymes was studied by means of Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) with Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM). CLSM was also used as a tool to image the role of TLL in the detergency of lipids from single cotton fibers. The TLL surface mobility was measured on model surfaces of different hydrophobicity. The rate of TLL surface diffusion was strongly dependent on the surface density of lipase, which was explained by sterical hindrance and intermolecular repulsion. The diffusion was both lowest and decreased as a function of time after adsorption on the most hydrophobic surface. This was thought to be due to a larger fraction of adsorbed TLL oriented with the active site towards the hydrophobic surface and that this fraction increased as a function of time. The presence of surfactants affected the TLL mobility on hydrophobic surfaces. The diffusion increased more than tenfold when TLL was coadsorbed with C12E6/LAS above the critical micellar concentration (cmc) of the surfactant. This was thought to be due to a surfactant induced desorption-rebinding mechanism of TLL. Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (TIR-FCS) supported this theory and was implemented as a technique to quantify kinetic processes of protein-surfactant interactions at surfaces. The surface mobility of TLL was higher on a trimyristin substrate surface compared to the model hydrophobic surface. Single particle tracing of lipases could be performed by conjugation of TLL to Quantum Dots (QDs). The microscopic behavior of QD-lipases on trimyristin suggested that the enzyme operated in two different modes on the surface, which gave the trajectories of single lipase molecules a “bead on a string” appearance. / QC 20100818

Background: The most important resource of today’s companies is human resources. This has lead to a vast literature in the field of Human Resource Management, and within that are the fields of motivation and career management. Given the importance of technology intensive companies’ and the fact that engineers are increasingly dissatisfied and recognized as being difficult to manage a part of the literature have focused upon management of engineers. In this it is widely ac-cepted that engineers need special treatment, however, literature is not complete and a part which, up until now, has gained little attention is the one concerning career mobility. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to identify the inducements and obstacles to the career mobility of engineers. Frame of Reference: The first part of the theoretical framework covers motivation, in which the authors focus on McClelland’s Content Theory of Motivation, given its close connection to need for achievement, a central aspect in career mobility. The second part deals with previous research on management of engineers. Based on the Frame of Reference the authors construct the Career Mobility Model, which serve as a foundation for subsequent structure and interpretation. Method: In order to fulfill the purpose of the thesis the authors chose a qualitative research method, and conducted twelve semis structured interviews. The results were then analyzed in the light of the theoretical framework. Empirical Findings: The empirical findings consist of interviews with engineers of different ages, employment time and stages of their career. The interview results are organized based on the theoretical framework to aid forthcoming interpretation. Analysis: In the analysis the authors apply the empirical findings on the Career Mobility Model, thus interpret the different obstacles and inducements to career mobility. The authors’ interpretations reveal a clear excess of obstacles compared to inducements at the company participating in the study. Conclusions: By creating a challenging work situation and offering continuous education companies can create a good foundation for career mobility. However, without a uniform career management program combined with visible career routes and established communication channels a company will lack critical aspects of in-ducements to career mobility. Moreover, technical companies need to remember that the best specialist may not always be the best manager, given the many ob-stacles a specialist focused manager can induce. / Bakgrund: Den idag viktigaste resursen för företag är människor. Detta har lett till en omfattande litteratur inom ämnet Human Resource Management, och inom det återfinns ämnena motivation och karriär management. Givet betydelsen av teknologi intensiva företag och det faktum att missnöjet bland ingenjörer ökar samt att de är erkända som svåra att hantera har en del av litteraturen inom detta ämne fokuserat på hur man leder ingenjörer. Inom denna är det vida erkänt att ingenjörer behöver specialhantering, ändock är litteraturen inte fullständig och ett ämne, vilken det fram tills nu det givits lite uppmärksamhet åt, är karriärsrörlighet. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att identifiera hinder och incitament till ingenjö-rers karriärsrörlighet. Referensram: Den första delen av det teoretiska ramverket hanterar motivation, inom vilken författarna fokuserar på McClellands behovsteori, givet dess nära koppling till behovet av presentation, en central aspekt inom karriärs rörlighet. Den andra delen handlar om tidigare forskning vad gäller management av ingenjörer. Ba-serat på Referensramen skapar författarna Karriär Rörlighets Modellen vilken fungerar som en bas för kommande struktur och analys. Metod: För att fullgöra syftet med uppsatsen valde författarna en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod, och genomförde tolv semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet analyserade sen i ljuset av det teoretiska ramverket. Resultat: De empiriska resultaten består av intervjuerna gjorda med ingenjörer i olika åldrar, med olika anställningslängd och i olika stadier av sin karriär. Intervju resultaten är organiserade baserat på det teoretiska ramverket för att underlätta inför den kommande analysen. Analys: I analysen applicerar författarna den empiriska undersökningen på Karriär Rörlighets Modellen, vilket betyder att de analyserar hinder och incitament för karriärsrörlighet. Författarnas analys visar att det finns ett klart överskott av hinder jämfört med främjande faktorer på företaget i studien. Slutsats: Genom att skapa en utmanande arbetssituation och erbjuda konstant utbildning kan företag skapa en bra bas för karriärsrörlighet. Likväl, utan ett övergripande program för karriärplanering kombinerat med synliga karriärvägar och etablerade kommunikationskanaler kommer företag att sakna kritiska aspekter som främjar karriärsrörlighet. Dessutom måste tekniska företag komma ihåg att den bästa specialisten inte alltid är den bästa ledaren, givet de många hinder en specialist fokuserad ledare kan skapa.

Behavioral patterns prediction in the context of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs)has been receiving increasing attention due to enabling on-demand, intelligent traffic analysis and response to real-time traffic issues. One of these patterns, sequential patterns, are a type of behavioral patterns that describe the occurence of events in a timely-ordered fashion. In the context of VANETs, these events are defined as an ordered list of road segments traversed by vehicles during their trips from a starting point to their final intended destination, forming a vehicular path. Due to their predictable nature, undertaken vehicular paths can be exploited to extract the paths that are considered frequent. From the extracted frequent paths through data mining, the probability that a vehicular path will take a certain direction is obtained. However, in order to achieve this, samples of vehicular paths need to be initially collected over periods of time in order to be data-mined accordingly. In this thesis, a new set of formal definitions depicting vehicular paths as sequential patterns is described. Also, five novel communication schemes have been designed and implemented under a simulated environment to collect vehicular paths; such schemes are classified under two categories: Road Side Unit-Triggered (RSU-Triggered) and Vehicle-Triggered. After collection, extracted frequent paths are obtained through data mining, and the probability of these frequent paths is measured. In order to evaluate the e ciency and e ectiveness of the proposed schemes, extensive experimental analysis has been realized. From the results, two of the Vehicle-Triggered schemes, VTB-FP and VTRD-FP, have improved the vehicular path collection operation in terms of communication cost and latency over others. In terms of reliability, the Vehicle-Triggered schemes achieved a higher success rate than the RSU-Triggered scheme. Finally, frequent vehicular movement patterns have been effectively extracted from the collected vehicular paths according to a user-de ned threshold and the confidence of generated movement rules have been measured. From the analysis, it was clear that the user-de ned threshold needs to be set accordingly in order to not discard important vehicular movement patterns.

With a general concern for the role played by media and communication in individuals’ mobility  in a world where national borders are dissolving and people’s lives are becoming increasingly mediated, this empirical study sought to investigate a group of transnational young professionals’ daily news consumption and their mobile life experiences by conducting face-to-face interviews with target individuals in both Thailand and Sweden, and combining the results with an analysis from a theoretical perspective enlightened by cosmopolitanism and cultural capital. The study identified a set of distinctive news consumption tastes and multiple mobilities possessed by the interviewees. It demonstrates that news consumption can: 1) directly affect the mobile young professionals’ corporeal mobility by providing information about potential movement opportunities; 2) increase their social mobility by enabling them to accumulate cultural capital; and 3) expand their imaginative mobility by increasing their visuality of the multiple communities to which they belong. Conversely, any change in their multiple mobilities is reflected in a corresponding change in their choices of news consumption.

Mobility of the horse to initiate motion from the standing position is examined in this thesis. In particular, the thesis focuses on the study of the mobility of a horse with fixed hooves to the ground, and on how its musculoskeletal system is used to free the legs from restraints. Possible leg patterns to initiate motions are investigated. The breaking forces generated at front and hind hooves during static-pulling and dynamic jerking are evaluated. Design of the restraint system that uses ropes to immobilize certain joints in order to prevent the horse from generating these forces is the main objective of this thesis. Such a system could be applied as an alternative to rather massive mechanical devices, the main purpose of which is to block the breaking forces (which are quite large when fully developed).<p> Analysis of the mobility of the horse is based on the mechanics of a skeletal linkage system driven by muscle forces. Only major muscles involved in fighting the restraints are included in the analysis. The force generation capability of a muscle is determined by physiological cross sectional area (PCSA) of the muscle. Possible leg patterns are predicted with the kinematics analysis considering range of motion at each joint in the legs. Corresponding breaking forces generated in each pattern is evaluated with the kinetics analysis. Relationship between the characteristic parameter of the pattern and the breaking force at hoof are established. <p>The horse's computer model is used to justify the analytical result. Fighting mechanisms of the horse are simulated in the dynamic simulation software package. Patterns and the breaking forces developed by the horse model simulation agree well with the analytical results. To the authors best knowledge, this is the first time a computer model is used in analyzing the method of restraining an animal. <p>The mobility of the animal with hoof restraints and methods to remove mobility were further confirmed with a preliminary animal restraint test conducted on a sheep. The sheep was chosen because the leg patterns to initiate motion on a horse are similar to that of sheep, but the sheep is more convenient to handle. The experiment showed that the mobility of the sheep could be removed completely by restraining its hooves, lower legs, and head with easily attached ropes.

Accurate travel time data are necessary to monitor and evaluate traffic conditions effectively. In the past 20 years, the hours per year lost by the average driver have increased by 300% in the 85 largest U.S. cities, which translates into lost productivity and increased costs. State department of transportation (DOT) agencies and other government organizations need accurate travel time and speed information to better combat this congestion faced by motorists. In the past, ground truth travel time information was typically collected with probe vehicles using the “floating car” method. However, new methods using data collected from global positioning systems by private companies such as INRIX®, Navteq®, and TomTom® have emerged that allow travel time data to be obtained more cheaply and quickly. The Urban Mobility Report (UMR) has turned to these companies, specifically INRIX®, for calculating congestion indices across the United States. This is done by analyzing average speeds and reference speeds supplied by INRIX. The UMR analysis relies on INRIX-supplied reference speeds to calculate delay, which produces artificially high delay on many suburban arterials. Currently, these reference speeds are determined by taking the 85th percentile of weekly speeds (typically overnight hours [10PM to 6AM]). There is a need to refine the reference speeds on arterials in order to account for signal operations, particularly during the daytime hours, so that the UMR more accurately reflects arterial congestion across the nation. Using Bluetooth and INRIX speed data, this thesis develops a new reference speed methodology that accurately reflects arterial delay during daytime hours. This study found that a 60% daytime free-flow reference speed best represents arterial congestion. Using Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) guidelines, this thesis also explores the use of Bluetooth data for arterial and intersection level of service (LOS) analysis under both HCM 2000 and HCM 2010 methodologies. Through analysis, it was found that Bluetooth data capture more of the high and low LOS values compared to the HCM methodology based on segment speed calculations. These high and low LOS values, as well as the rapidly changing LOS between 15-minute intervals, could be attributed to an insufficient sample size.

The evolvement of technology within the business world has transformed both organizations and people involved. As the business world is rapidly changing it requires organizations to adapt to new trends to be able to compete and to gain competitive advantage. The widely developed and used mobile business-to-customer applications have generated the realization that the technology can be used by organizations for their mobile employees to gain competitive advantage. Therefore, we have investigated the functionality of information integration between mobile applications and ERP systems for mobile employees, and the benefits and challenges it has. The research is an exploratory investigation about how the new trend within mobility is to be seen within the business world. With the use of an inductive and qualitative research approach, we started with no previous theories to get an understanding of the subject. In the use of mobile business-to-employee applications, the most important information integration is the one between ERP systems and mobile applications since it is the organizational information that is needed for the mobile workers. The result of the research is that it is more common with a single, oneway integration in terms of either input or output between ERP systems and mobile applications. The more advanced two-way integration exists and is increasing in the area of internal use of mobile applications for organizations. Additionally, there are a lot of benefits to gain from when working with mobile applications for organizations, for example to increase the productivity of mobile employees. There are also challenges that need to be discussed before deciding to invest in enterprise mobility, for example security aspects.

This study explores what UK managers aged 50 and over perceive as career progression at a time in life when opportunities for further promotion may have ceased. It examines motivational drivers and subjectively significant personal and organizational influences on career progression. It also investigates whether motivation for career progression is perceived to have changed over the career and the extent to which it may differ between male and female older managers. The research adopted a qualitative, inductive approach using a phenomenological methodology. Fieldwork comprised semi-structured interviews with 27 male and 13 female managers aged 50 and over from two large, UK financial services organizations. The findings show how motivation for career progression in managers aged over 50 is driven by individually diverse patterns of career drivers, personal and work-related influences, and attitudes towards career opportunities. These can be classified into a number of career progression orientations. The study contributes to knowledge in the area of subjective psychological career mobility in late career and the balance which individuals maintain between the organizational and personal aspects of their career. It demonstrates that motivational drivers of career progression are perceived to change over the career and that career progression is linked, on an individual basis, to past, current and future career mobility which may extend past the traditional retirement transition. It also reveals that, in general, older female managers may exhibit a greater drive for self-realisation through later life career renewal than their male counterparts.

This thesis examines how the village of Birzeit is made as place. The reader is taken on a tour designed to show some of the sights of Birzeit and three sets of practices that are key in forging Birzeit-as-place. The first set of practices cohere around homes: the dilapidated houses in the Old City, the modern Spanish Apartments, the frequently empty dwellings of diaspora and two destroyed homes. The second set of practices involves families: the negotiation of different distances by families stretched across continents, the extensive efforts of some families to live in close physical proximity that contrast with others who are witnessing the increasing nuclearization of family living space and attendant family practices. Thirdly, im/mobilities: the movements of disapora in the summer, students travelling to and from Birzeit University and immigrants who have migrated from the north and south of Palestine to work in and around Ramallah. In offering a passing glimpse at some of the dynamic relationships that cohere around and between these material and imaginative spatial practices, I hope to (re)present Palestine as a vibrant and dynamic place, shaded by social, political, economic and cultural differences that maybe similar to other parts of the world. In doing so my chronicle departs from accounts of Palestinian space that tend to prioritize the ongoing practices of Israeli Occupation and its effects. Nevertheless, Birzeit is coloured by such practices too, which penetrate and complicate practices of home, family and im/mobility. The tour stages a series of empirical stories and events that were drawn from the eleven months of fieldwork I conducted in Birzeit between June 2005 and October 2007, during which time I conducted participant observation, interviews and archival research. These stories are punctuated by a set of theoretical engagements. I choose to keep these moments separate to explore how theory and Birzeit as I experienced it might converse with one another. I hope that each will be an equal partner in the conversation, that each will complicate and extend the other, and that this conversation will also build a affirmative relation between this place and you.

Introduction: Driver perceptions may be a more important determinant of behaviour than one’s actual driving abilities. While there is evidence to support these associations, prior studies have relied on self-reports of driving behaviour. Purpose: The primary purposes of this study were to extend previous research by examining driver perceptions in relation to measures of actual driving behaviour and to compare the perceptions and behaviour of sole versus couple drivers. Methods: A convenience sample of 61 older drivers (aged 67 to 92, 59% women) were recruited as either sole drivers (only driver in the household, n=39) or couples (both currently driving and sharing a vehicle, n=22). Two in-vehicle devices (one with a GPS unit) were installed in participant vehicles for one week. Participants completed trip logs, out-of-home activity diaries, questions on usual driving habits and ratings of situational driving frequency and avoidance. Perceptions were assessed using the Driving Comfort Scales (DCS Day and Night) and Perceived Driving Abilities (PDA) Scales. Couples were also asked to rate their comfort level in their partner’s driving using modified DCSs. Tools were administered at one of two home visits (during which vehicle devices were installed and removed) and an interview conducted at the end to ascertain whether the week’s driving was typical. Results: Driving comfort scores were significantly related to multiple indicators of actual driving behaviour, including: radius from home (DCS-D, p<.05; DCS-N, p<.01), total distance overall (DCS-N, p<.001) and at night (DCS-D, p<.05; DCS-N, p<.01). Perceived abilities, meanwhile, were related to distance driven (p<.01). Although sole drivers were significantly older, they drove more often, longer distances and for greater duration than couple drivers. Overall, men had higher DCS scores and, in couples, were more likely to rate themselves higher than their spouses. Partners’ comfort levels in their spouses’ driving were related to their spouses’ self-reported situational avoidance and amount of night driving over the study week. When couples drove together, traditional roles were evident (i.e., the husband often preferred to drive and the wife let him). Multivariate analyses showed that the square-root of distance (km) was most influenced by household status, location of residence, perceived abilities, and gender (R2 = .57), while the log of the average radius was influenced by location of residence and perceived comfort in night driving (R2 = .33). Conclusions: This was the first study to examine older drivers’ perceptions in relation to actual driving behaviour and to compare the perceptions and behaviour of sole versus couple drivers. Study results supported prior associations (with self-reported driving) and extended our knowledge base by demonstrating that perceptions (both personal and those of others) are important to actual driving behaviour. The current findings also provide new insight into the importance of examining location of residence and household status.