Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs) have gained a lot of attention because of their potential to immerse deeper into people' lives. The applications of WSNs range from small home environment networks to large habitat monitoring. These highly diverse scenarios impose different requirements on WSNs and lead to distinct design and implementation decisions. This thesis presents an optimization framework for WSN design which selects a proper set of protocols and number of nodes before a practical network deployment. A Genetic Algorithm(GA)-based Sensor Network Design Tool(SNDT) is proposed in this work for wireless sensor network design in terms of performance, considering application-specific requirements, deployment constrains and energy characteristics. SNDT relies on offine simulation analysis to help resolve design decisions. A GA is used as the optimization tool of the proposed system and an appropriate fitness function is derived to incorporate many aspects of network performance. The configuration attributes optimized by SNDT comprise the communication protocol selection and the number of nodes deployed in a fixed area. Three specific cases : a periodic-measuring application, an event detection type of application and a tracking-based application are considered to demonstrate and assess how the proposed framework performs. Considering the initial requirements of each case, the solutions provided by SNDT were proven to be favourable in terms of energy consumption, end-to-end delay and loss. The user-defined application requirements were successfully achieved.

Consumer marketing scholars keenly emphasize a proposed paradigm shift toward interactive relationships and lived brand experiences. Yet, little has been done to investigate the link between the two. Until now. This study is an attempt to measure the effects of lived brand experiences on consumers’ perceived relationship with a brand, through testing an academically established brand relationship quality model onto the concept of experiential event marketing. Susan Fournier’s (2000) brand relationship quality scale was chosen as the construct to be tested in the experiential event marketing context. It was through a theoretical argumentation hypothesized that the experiential event intervention would produce positive direct effects within the scale, but that these would decline with time. This was consequently tested through a repeated measurement study, set at an experiential food truck event hosted by the Swedish FMCG brand Santa Maria. Respondents were to rank their perceived brand relationship quality with the brand on three different occasions; directly before, directly after, and two weeks after being exposed to the experiential event. This way, not only the immediate effect, but also the effect over time, could be measured. It could be concluded that all but one constructs produced positive direct effects, but only half of them were significant. In all cases but one this effect declined significantly when being measured two weeks afterwards, and went in several cases back at approximately the same level as in the initial measurement. These findings have important implications for both academics and practitioners. Most notably, we argue that the link between lived brand experiences in form of typical FMCG experiential events and strengthened longer-term brand relationship quality can be invalidated.

Interactivity is a factor on which cyber journalism is based and summarizes participation options between a user and the medium, a user with other users, and a user with editors. In this study, we focus on the latter in three countries-Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador-, which have been identified owing to their technological gap and the emerging importance of online communication for their respective societies. Through 35 in-depth interviews with journalists from these countries, we analyzed the concept of interactivity of these professionals and their relationship with users. The results revealed that the journalists positively valued civic contributions as a space for diagnosis, although they do not perceive its informational value, as they relate them to the context of opinions. These results verify the prevalence of journalism as strongly influenced by conventional offline production routines. / Revisión por pares

Modebranschen har under de senaste åren genomgått en dramatisk förändring där e-handeln tar över allt mer och mer. Framtidsprognosen för fysiska butiker ser relativt dyster ut och inom en snar framtid förväntas dessa inte finnas kvar. Detta är tack vare den så kallade butiksdöden vilken innebär att e-handeln tar en allt större plats i konsumenternas val av handelskanal. Detta faktum indikerar i minskade antal köp i fysiska butiker vilket resulterar i en osäker framtid för de fysiska butikerna. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vid vilken kanal, online eller offline, dagens konsumenter väljer att handla sina kläder samt vilka aspekter som kan påverka valet. Undersökningen har genomförts med hjälp av en enkät tillsammans med en övergripande litteraturstudie. Resultatet klargör att det var väldigt jämnt mellan kanalerna online och offline men enligt denna studie föredrar konsumenter att handla sina kläder via offlinekanaler. Utifrån vår studie kan även tydas att faktorer som kan påverka en konsument i valet av köpkanal bland annat är säkerhet, utbud, service, tid, plats, social miljö samt graden av bekvämlighet. Resultatet kan förhoppningsvis vara ett hjälpmedel för företag, handlare, detaljhandlare och andra intressenter. Utifrån studiens resultat kan vi ge råd till företag att de bör prioritera segmentering av sina kunder för att rikta sin verksamhet rätt. Företag som kan driva verksamhet både online och offline innehar en fördel då konsumenter idag tenderar att växla mellan olika kanaler. Offlinekanaler bör lägga stor vikt vid placering av butiken, fokusera på utbudet och servicen. Onlinekanaler bör ta vara på faktorerna av bekvämlighet, tid, utbud och säkerhet. Detta kan genomföras genom att erbjuda generösa returvillkor, bra produktbeskrivningar och erbjuda ett stort utbud. / The fashion industry has experienced a dramatic change over the last few years, where e-commerce takes over more and more. The future forecast for physical stores looks relatively gloomy and are expected not to remain in the near future. This is due to the so-called retail death, which means that e-commerce is taking an increasing place in consumer choice of trade channel. This fact indicates in the reduced number of purchases in physical stores which results in an uncertain future for the offline channel. The purpose of this study was to investigate in which channel, online or offline, today’s consumers choose to buy their clothes and what aspects that can affect the choice. The paper has been conducted using a survey together with an overall literature study. The result clarifies that it was very even between online and offline channels, but according to this study, consumers still prefer to shop their clothes via offline channels. Based on our study, it can also be argued that factors that may affect a consumer in the choice of purchasing channel include security, supply, service, time, location, social environment and the level of convenience. The result can hopefully be a tool for businesses, traders, retailers and other stakeholders. Based on the study results, we advise companies that they should prioritize segmentation of their customers in order to direct their business properly. Companies that can do business online and offline hold an advantage since consumers nowadays tend to switch between different channels. Offline channels should place great emphasis on the location and focus on supply and service. Online channels should take into account the factors of convenience, time, supply and safety. This can be achieved by offering generous terms of return, good product descriptions and offering a wide range of products.

Nous développons une approche de résolution numérique du filtrage par méthode de grille, en utilisant des résultats de quantification optimale de variables aléatoires. Nous mettons en oeuvre deux algorithmes de calcul de filtres utilisant les techniques d'approximation du type ordre 0 et ordre 1. Nous proposons les versions implémentables de ces algorithmes et étudions le comportement de l'erreur des approximations en fonction de la taille des quantifieurs en s'appuyant sur la propriété de stationnarité des quantifieurs optimaux. Nous positionnons cette approche par grille par rapport à l'approche particulaire du type Monte Carlo à travers la comparaison des deux méthodes et leur expérimentation sur différents modèles d'états. Dans une seconde partie, nous nous intéressons à l'avantage qu'offre la quantification pour le prétraitement des données offline pour développer un algorithme de filtrage par quantification des observations (et du signal). L'erreur est là aussi étudiée et un taux de convergence est établi en fonction de la taille des quantifieurs. Enfin, la quantification du filtre en tant que variable aléatoire est étudiée dans le but de la résolution d'un problème d'évaluation d'option américaine dans un marché à volatilité stochastique non observée. Tous les résultats sont illustrés à travers des exemples numériques.

Mesurer les performances d'une application est devenue une tâche incontournable pour mieux comprendre sa dynamique et anticiper son évolution. Cette tâche nécessite des outils de supervision qui s'adaptent aux différentes spécificités de l'application et de son environnement de déploiement (distribution, hétérogénéité, etc.). Ces outils doivent également être les moins intrusifs possibles pour ne pas perturber le fonctionnement de l'application. Notre contribution dans cette thèse est de concevoir et d'implémenter une plateforme de supervision basée sur le déploiement dynamique de sondes pour collecter des informations sur l'utilisation des ressources systèmes. Ces sondes sont choisies pour leurs faibles degrés d'intrusivité. Elles fonctionnent en mode « offline » en enregistrant localement et sans traitement préalable les informations collectées au lieu de les transmettre sur le réseau. Ce mode de fonctionnement est moins intrusif car il optimise l'utilisation des ressources systèmes et réseaux. La plateforme intègre également un moteur générique d'analyse qui assure la transformation des formats hétérogènes des informations collectées vers un format pivot basé sur XML ce qui facilite la phase de corrélation. Ce travail de thèse, réalisé dans un cadre industriel, définit une plateforme pour fédérer des sondes de supervision. Le concept de cette plateforme peut être étendue pour faciliter la construction de systèmes nécessitant de vérifier l'état des ressources. C'est le cas par exemple des systèmes qui vérifient les contrats de performances.

This thesis considers the disk scheduling problem. The problem is investigated in two types of settings: offline and online. We first adopt the traveling salesman problem with time windows in the scheduling literature for solving the offline problem. Then we develop a decision epoch scheme in which offline problems are iteratively used in solving the online problem. We perform an experimental study for our approach and two well-known disk scheduling algorithms, and compare them according to several performance criteria.

"Vi utmanar konventionella förpackningar för en hållbar framtid." BillerudKorsnäs AB bildades år 2012 och inriktar sig mot pappersindustrin. På bruket i Frövi tillverkas vätskekartong för mejeriprodukter samt förpackningskartong, vilket görs med en produktionskapacitet av 470 000 ton/år. För att skapa god kartongkvalitét krävs rätt kemikaliedosering, vilket säkerställs genom provtagning. Genom att investera i ny mätutrustning ges därmed möjligheten till en jämnare mätprocess och därmed bättre styrmöjlighet. Detta examensarbete syftar till jämförelse av mätutrustning för jämnare kemikaliedosering. I denna rapport görs jämförelse av off-och online-utrustning och rutiner vid mätning på olika kartongskikt för att därefter avslutningsvis bedöma resultat och fortsatt arbete för en jämnare kemikaliedosering. Dessa jämförelser påvisar en titreringslösning med för hög koncentration för ett skikt vilket innebär osäkra mätresultat. Detta innebär att titratlösning av lägre koncentration måste komplettera den nuvarande för säkrare mätresultat. / "We challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future" BillerudKorsnäs AB was formed in 2012 and focuses on the paper industry. At the mill in Frövi they create liquid cartonboard for dairy products and packing cartonboard with a production capacity of 470 000 tonnes/year. For making good quality possible proper chemical dosage is required and to guarantee that water tests has to be made. Investing in new measuring equipment will allow steady measurement process. This project is comparing measurement equipment for a steady chemical dosage. In this report comparing between off-line and on-line measurement equipments and routines when measuring different cartonboard layers. This will help the company in there further work with the process for a steady chemical dosage. The result of the comparisons demonstrate a high concentration of titration solution for one layer which contributes to uncertain results. This means that the company have to use a titration solution of lower concentration as well as the present obtain reliable results.

During recent years, technology has played a crucial role in shaping the retail industry. Digitalisation and e-commerce are seen as the future of retailing. However, big online retailers have shown increasing interest in offline shopping by heavily investing in brick and mortar stores. The strategy of a retailer making use of both offline and online channels is called omnichannel strategy. This study investigates why online retailers are investing in physical stores and what is the impact of this decision on their customer base. The study uses a two-step research. First, a case study on the Swedish retailer NetOnNet is conducted to confirm the theoretical framework and build the research model. Then, a quantitative research with questionnaire is used to investigate the impact of an omni-channel strategy on the consumers’ attitudes towards the retailer. The results show that awareness and control are the factors most affected by an omni-channel strategy. Instead, having both an online and offline presence does not have a relevant impact on the factors trust, perceived risk and personalisation.

Human movements are remarkably adaptive, such that we are capable of completing movements in a novel environment with similar accuracy to those performed in a typical environment. Our ability to perform in these environments involves accurate processing of sensory feedback for online and offline control. These processes of control have been widely studied for well learned actions, but not for actions in a novel visuomotor environment. In two experiments, we examined control processes underlying reaches when participants were first introduced to a visuomotor rotation (Experiment 1) and then following visuomotor adaptation (Experiment 2). All participants completed 150 reach training trials when (1) a cursor accurately represented their hand motion (i.e., aligned cursor) and (2) a cursor was rotated 45 degrees clockwise relative to their hand motion (i.e., rotated cursor). In Experiment 1, we sought to determine if the control processes underlying movements in typical and novel visuomotor conditions were comparable. Participants (n = 16) received either continuous visual feedback or terminal visual feedback regarding movement endpoint during reach training. Analyses revealed that participants were able to demonstrate similar outcomes (i.e., movement time and endpoint errors) regardless of visual or cursor feedback, but also demonstrated more offline control (i.e., took more time planning and were less consistent in initiating their movements) when reaching with a rotated cursor compared to an aligned cursor, even at the end of training. Together, the results suggest a greater contribution of offline control processes and less effective online corrective processes when reaching in a novel environment compared to when reaching in a typical environment. In attempt to promote online corrective processes, participants (n = 16) in Experiment 2 first completed the training trials with continuous visual feedback and then completed an additional 45 reaches under (1) slow movement time (i.e., Slow MT: 800-1000 ms) and (2) fast movement time (i.e., Fast MT: 400-500ms) constraints. Results showed a shift to online control (i.e., greater endpoint accuracy) when reaching with an aligned and rotated cursor, when sufficiently more time was provided (i.e., Slow MT). Specifically, participants were able to more effectively utilize visual feedback for online control under the Slow MT constraint compared to when reaching quickly (i.e., Fast MT). Together, these experiments demonstrate a flexibility in control processes underlying reaches with rotated visual feedback of the hand. In that reaches first engage in offline control processes during adaptation to a visuomotor rotation, and then shift to online corrective processes following visuomotor adaptation.