Denna studie belyser hur kommunikationen gentemot allmänheten såg ut i Hallands sex kommuner under stormen Per. Syftet har varit att se vilka informationskanaler kommunerna valde att använda sig av, vilka lärdomar man tog med sig från Gudrun och kommunernas syn på information och allmänheten. Mitt material består främst utav dokument, utvärderingar och rapporter från kommunerna, länsstyrelsen och Radio Halland. Detta har kompletterats med åtta informantintervjuer. Forskning gällande kriser, kriskommunikation och information har även utgjort en viktig del i min studie. Lagen om extra ordinära händelse har varit en central del i uppsatsen då lagen reglerar vad kommunerna och landstingen måste genomföra innan, under och efter en krissituation. Vad gäller informations- och kommunikationsberedskap har kommuner och landsting stor frihet att själva bedöma hur denna skall se ut och organiseras. Utvärderingen visar att det fanns brister i kommunikationen gentemot allmänheten under stormen Per. Några exempel på brister i kommunikationen var: Att delge medborgarna med information i ett tidigt skede under stormen Per. Informationen till Radio Halland var till en början nästintill obefintlig och man fick söka information själva. En annan brist som jag har kunnat urskilja är att kommunikationen i många fall är enkelriktad och inte dubbelriktad. Kommunerna tar inte tillvara på de tillfällen som allmänheten kan ge feedback under kriser som t.ex. vid värmestugor och andra upplysningsfunktioner. Det man tydligt kan se är att information värderas högt hos majoriteten av kommunerna men handlingskraften och motivationen saknas på många håll. Nyckelord: Kommuner, Stormen Per, Kris, Kriskommunikation, Information, Lagen om extraordinära händelser.

For the past few years, with the rapid advance of VLSI and multimedia technology, the applications of three-dimensional (3D) graphic applications have been widely and rapidly spread into various areas, and not longer limited into specific technical areas performed by high-end workstations. In near future, the 3D graphic engine will become an indispensable part of most multimedia systems including the entertainment television sets, the personal electronic appliances etc. A general 3D graphics engine can be divided into the geometry subsystem and the raster sub- system. The main contribution of this thesis is to design an efficient fragment pipeline process. It also helps the development of the vertex processor, and the integration of geometry and raster subsystem. In the design of the per-fragment processor, since it contains vary processing stages, such as fog blending, visible test, and alpha blending. This thesis analyzes the dependence relationship between these stages to allow several stages to run in parallel to reduce the overall pipeline latency and adjust the processing order of these stages to avoid unnecessary texturing access. This thesis also proposes two memory buffer access mechanisms suitable for the tile-based 3D graphic rendering engine to reduce the overall system memory bandwidth. The first method is to include some additional control flags for each tile such that the frequent buffer clear operations can be integrated with the normal rendering processes to avoid the additional memory clear access. The second approach is to identify the non-modified pixels in each tile by building the dirty table to reduce the number of updated pixels. The experimental results show that the proposed methods can cause more than 50% reduction of memory access. The proposed design has been realized using 0.18um technology. The gate count of the vertex processor without special functions and per-fragment processor is 201k and 118k, respectively.

Abstract   The topic of this essay is to show why I regard the non fiction novel as a problematic genre and to compare two popular and famous swedish non fiction novels; Legionärerna (1968) by Per Olov Enquist and Gömda (1995) by Maria Eriksson and Liza Marklund. I start with giving a short introduction to modern genre theory and to non fiction novels as a genre. I also discuss different definitions of non fiction novels by, for example, Rolf Yrlid and Lars-Olof Franzén. Then I discuss Enquist’s Legionärerna and the critics’ reception of it. I am also doing the same with Eriksson’s and Marklund’s Gömda before I compare these two novels with each other.   My conclusion is that Legionärerna and Gömda have a lot in common although there are some differences. One important difference is that the uncertainty between fact and fiction in Legionärerna seems to be an important part of the novel, in contrast to Gömda which has a political purpose but no discussion about objectivity and the limit between fact and fiction. The big problem with non fiction novels, as I see it, is that a lot of people regards the genre as fact but according to a number of scholars it is more convenient too see it as a mixture between fact and fiction where the author both interprets and manipulates the actual events. Though there are no established definition of what a non fiction novel is the author of a non fiction novel  has a responsibility to the reader to write in the beginning of the novel if the plot is true or not. We can compare this declaration by the author with a contract between the author and the reader which is cancelled if it turns out that the declaration is false.

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La identificació per radiofreqüència (RFID) és una tecnologia de comunicació sense fils entre un lector i un transductor anomenat etiqueta, que s’adhereix als objectes per a identificar-los o emmagatzemar-ne informació. A diferència dels seus predecessors, els codis de barres òptics, l’enllaç de comunicació no requereix visió directe i es poden llegir múltiples etiquetes al mateix instant de temps. El rang d’operació és significativament superior també. Totes aquestes característiques afavoreixen el desenvolupament del que serà, segons els experts, la revolució de la Internet de les Coses, que permetrà identificar qualsevol objecte etiquetat des de qualsevol ordinador, instantàniament. Només dos factors impedeixen el desenvolupament i expansió de la tecnologia RFID: la falta d’uniformitat en la estandardització i els costos dels sistemes RFID, que van disminuint ràpidament any rere any. La finalitat de la tesi és abordar i aportar solucions a la falta d’homogeneïtat en els estàndards de RFID en el rang de freqüències ultra altes (UHF). L’objectiu, per tant, es centra en dissenyar etiquetes RFID per operar en les bandes de freqüència de les diferents regions del món. És a dir, es dissenyaran etiquetes RFID duals en freqüència per operar en diferents regions. Per aconseguir aquesta fita es desenvolupa un mètode pertorbatiu mitjançant les línies de transmissió artificials de tipus ressonant, basades en conceptes metamaterial. Aquestes línies permeten cert control dels paràmetres elèctrics de les xarxes d’adaptació que es concatenaran entre l’antena i el xip de l’etiqueta RFID. Així, aprofitant les característiques de controlabilitat dels metamaterials, s’implementen etiquetes RFID multibanda. L’estudi analític del mètode pertorbatiu, així com el disseny, fabricació i mesura de les etiquetes RFID són els blocs principals d’aquest treball. / Radiofrequency identification (RFID) is a wireless communication technology, consisting on a link between a reader and a transducer namely tag. The tag is attached to the objects in order to identifier them and to provide information of such objects. RFID is being developed to replace the optical bar codes, because it offers some relevant advantages as the possibility to read multiples tags at the same time without direct line of sight. It also involves that the RFID read ranges are largest. According to experts, the RFID technology will allow to develop the revolution of The Internet of Things, which can identifier any tagged object from any computer, instantly. However there are two factors which hinder the development and expansion of RFID technology: the standard (lack of uniformity) and the costs associated to RFID systems, which are decreasing year after year. The thesis goal deals with solutions to solve the lack of uniformity of the standard in the RFID ultra-high frequencies (UHF).Therefore, the thesis aim consists in designing RFID tags capable to operate at two frequency bands of the different worldwide regions. In order to achieve this target a perturbation method has been carried out by means of the resonant-type artificial transmission lines, based in metamaterial concepts. Such lines can engineer and tailor the dispersion diagram and characteristic impedance (to some extend) of the impedance matching networks, which are cascaded between the antenna and the chip of the tag. Then, it is possible to implement multiband RFID tags, thanks to the metamaterial controllability. This work has compiled the analytical study of the perturbation method, and also the design, fabrication and measure of the RFID tags.

European railways have been immersed since the nineties in a restructuring process aimed at improving the effectiveness, quality and economic efficiency of the provision of railway services, as well as stimulating the growth of railway markets. This reform has involved a separation between infrastructure management and operation and the introduction of rail infrastructure charges to regulate the use, by railway undertakings, of the infrastructure managed by infrastructure managers. Rail infrastructure charges aim, in essence, at recovering costs. Nevertheless, they can have an influence on the usage of the infrastructure, especially in corridors where competition between modes exists. Therefore, special attention should be paid to their definition and amount to ensure that they do not counteract the important effort that the European Union is making to help finance and build a European high speed network aimed at strengthening railways and redressing modal share imbalances. In Europe, legislation requires transparent and non discriminatory rail access charges, based on the principles of short run marginal social cost although mark ups are permitted where necessary to meet financial requirements. However, it does not specify how these principles should be implemented. This dissertation has three main tasks. Firstly, it calculates the amount of rail infrastructure charge for European high speed lines/services based on the marginal cost. Secondly, it characterises the rail infrastructure charging systems applied to European high speed lines/services, in order to detect if mark ups above the marginal cost of wear and tear are being applied to those services and if so, how they are applied. Finally, it quantifies the impacts on traffic volumes and mode split resulting from bringing the current levels of rail infrastructure charges (applied in the European high speed network) to the level of marginal cost of maintenance and renewals and to the optimal Ramsey mark up. According to the results obtained, current levels of rail infrastructure charges implemented in Europe have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the high speed passenger services that run on the European railway network, particularly in the cases where the rail market share is currently low (below 80-85%). Thus, mark ups would not have been imposed after careful consideration of their consequences on the market position of railway undertakings in the market segment in question.

L'últim tram de la guerra civil, el regnat de Renat d'Anjou, és el que ha estat menys estudiat fins aleshores. Aquesta tesi pretén fer un estudi sobre el funcionament de les dues principals institucions de representació ascendent del país: Diputació i Consell de Cent, durant aquest regnat. Per estudiar el diferent comportament de les institucions cal, però, recular fins 1461 data en la qual es signa la Capitulació de Vilafranca. Es tracta d'un acord entre el rei i les institucions, un cop superat el conflicte de l'empresonament de Carles de Viana, les institucions van arribar a un nou pacte amb el rei que renovava l'administració de justícia, l'observança de les lleis, estableix l'allunyament forçat de Joan II de Catalunya i l'estructura del govern del primogènit. Aquest intent de renovació del pacte amb el rei, però, no reeixí i la guerra esclatà. Hem plantejat l'estudi de les institucions durant la guerra en tres blocs diferenciats. El primer, circumscrit als límits cronològics del regnat de Renat d'Anjou, posa exemples del comportament polític de les institucions i de la seva relació amb els reis electes durant la contesa que les enfrontà amb Joan II. Destaquem aquí enfrontaments com la polèmica ocasionada pel jurament de Joan de Lorena, primogènit i lloctinent reial; les limitacions que les institucions van insistir a fer sobre els poders de Joan d'Aragó i Calàbria, segon lloctinent i nét bastard de Renat d'Anjou, o el comportament de les institucions durant el setge de Barcelona. Tots els episodis reflecteixen unes institucions fortes que s'enfrontaren al monarca cada cop que, aquest, intentà subvertir les lleis pactades. Les dues parts restants es dediquen a l'actuació econòmica i militar de les institucions. Aquestes dues parts no s'estudien circumscrites al regnat de Renat d'Anjou sinó que, en ser temàtiques que requereixen un estudi de més llarga durada, s'estudien en el marc més ampli de la guerra. L'actuació econòmica de les institucions s'ha de centre en dos eixos principals: la creació de noves imposicions i la gestió del seu cobrament. En no poder arrendar les generalitats la Diputació es va veure obligada a organitzar una xarxa de collidors i inspectors. Un altre de les grans preocupacions institucionals en matèria econòmica fou l'emissió, manteniment i preocupació pel deute públic. La gran quantitat de deute públic i el fet que aquest fos garantit per la Taula de canvi de Barcelona va posar en perill el banc de la ciutat. Les institucions van haver de decretar una suspensió de pagaments i dissenyar un programa de reformes. La guerra civil fou un enfrontament encara molt feudal, estacional, amb gran importància dels setges. Alhora d'organitzar mobilitzacions armades les institucions es veieren molt limitades per la legislació restrictiva del país que només permetia aixecar lleves generals per a la defensa del territori. Tot i això les institucions actuaren organitzant l'abastiment de les tropes i coordinant la defensa de les poblacions. D'altra banda, en les dues ocasions en les què el rei va convocar l'usatge princeps namque foren el Consell de Cent i la Diputació els que s'encarregaren de negociar la commutació de l'usatge per un pagament que permetés assoldar mercenaris. L'actuació de les institucions durant la guerra revela una societat cívica forta i activa, tot i que militarment poc organitzada. La guerra civil del segle XV i el capteniment del Consell de Cent i la Diputació del General en defensa de la legalitat pactada i com a mecanismes de control de la legalitat del rei i els seus oficials quedà en el record dels catalans com un precedent que fou invocat durant la Guerra dels segadors i, més tard, durant la Guerra de successió. / This research seeks to analyze the role of the Consell de Cent (the ”Council of One Hundred” which served as a governmental body of Barcelona) .as well as the Diputació del General (the permanent representatives of the Court) during the reign of Renat d'Anjou. Although there is some exisiting research on the previous reigns of Enric IV and Pere de Portugal, very little investigation has been done on the reign of Renat d'Anjou, the last king elected by the Consell de Cent and the Diputació in their war against the king Joan II. An analysis of the resulting Accord of Vilafranca (1461) is crucial for understanding the outstanding role of the Consell the Cent and the Diputació during this period. The aim of the Accord was to enable the deputies of representative institutions to gain control over the royal administration. and its officers. This legal text constituted a new deal between the representative institutions and the monarchy which resulted in changes regarding the administration of justice, the observance of law and rule of the country. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the political action of the Consell de Cent and the Diputació and the relationship of these entities with the elected Anjou monarchy. It comments upon the interaction between a new monarchy trying to establish its authority and two very powerful institutions that attempted to control and curb its power. The second part describes the military organization of the period : the different types of mobilizations, defense systems, army supplies, etc. The third deals with fiscal politics and public debt during the war, the creation of new taxes, public debt emissions guaranteed by the Taula de Canvi (the Barcelona municipal bank), and the strategies to avoid its bankruptcy due to the high interest rates. The resulting study portrays a society with a very powerful civic structure and a weak military organization whose attempt at a new political organization lasted only for ten years and under war circumstances. It is impossible to venture whether it might have been successful under different circumstances; nevertheless, some of the reforms attempted during this period, were later implemented by the next king Ferran II with only some changes.

Health is one of the most important components of human capital. It can affect production level of a country through various channels. In this study the causal relationship of health and real GDP per capita income in 5 low income countries of Africa south of the Sahara is analyzed using granger causality test. Unbalanced panel data set during the year 1970 to 2009 is used. Life expectancy and mortality rate are used as a proxy for health. The result revealed that mortality rate has a significant and negative impact on real per capita income. The Granger causality test showed, real GDP per capita and mortality rate have causal or bidirectional relationship. On the other hand, real GDP per capita does not granger cause life expectancy, but life expectancy granger cause real GDP per capita. The comparative descriptive analysis of the health indicators in different income groups of the world also showed that, higher income countries are better off in their health status.

Per Wahlöö is one of Sweden´s most famous crime writers. Together with Maj Sjöwall he revolutionized the swedish crime novel in the mid-sixties with the Martin Beck-series. Before that he was working as a reporter in the fifties and started writing novels about the oppression of man, power and totalitarian mentality in the end of the decade. Those novels (1959-1968) are called “The dictatorship”-series. This paper has focused on his contemporary writings about Spain where Wahlöö lived for a couple of years in the mid-fifties. How did the fascist Franco regime take place in his writings between the years 1951 to 1962? The material investigated is both journalism articles and fictional writings with the two novels The Wind and the Rain (1961) and The Lorry (1962) as the prime motives. This paper shows that the dictatorship of general Franco is quite invisible in Wahlöö´s early writings. On the other hand it takes almost the entire thematic space in the novels from the sixties. Per Wahlöö´s ideological agenda is also moving from being rather bleak and invisible in the 1951-articles to be more concerned with the class discrimination and fascist oppression in the later pieces. Spain is also an interesting paradox with it´s exploding tourist industry in the fifties and sixties while the ruthless fascist government still controlls the poor people in the country. The relationship between the individual man and the overall social structure is also something that Wahlöö is writing about. The dictatorship-man in Wahlöös novels is someone who is programmed by a fascist structure which in turn creates their own antithesis; the (socialist) dissident, an anti-heroe who´s only way out is armed rebellion proclaimed by an awokened class conscousness.