An increasing amount of technology in cars makes new ideas and solutions necessary. This study will explore the idea of a personalized driver environment and investigate possible benefits and drawbacks with such a feature. The study consists of three parts: a pre-study exploring personalization, a survey investigating the attitudes towards personal settings, and finally an interview testing a specific solution. The survey was distributed in USA and Sweden while the interviews were conducted with Swedish subjects. Overall, the concept of a personalized car has been well received. This study has shown that the most requested settings are associated with the driver position, hi-fi system and climate. The study also suggests that feeling in control of the personalization is more important than the benefits associated with automation. The user prefers visible solutions, such as a personal button on the key before hidden (e.g. using a button sequence or a menu system). Such a button promotes the feature while allowing the user to interact with the car in a familiar way. However, since little real user experience exists with such solutions it is important to continue research when further developing personalization of a car.

In this thesis we explore how knowledge management is performed in open source projects. Open source projects are often perceived as informal, even unmanaged. Still, they appear to manage knowledge acquisition and sharing sufficiently well to successfully develop software in such a distributed environment as the Internet. This thesis aims to explore that apparent contradiction, and thus complement the currently limited research in this field. The thesis consists of a literature study of knowledge management theory and open source development, resulting in the analysis of open source practices from a knowledge management perspective. Currently the field of knowledge management maintains several, partially opposing doctrines. Apart from the business aspect, two main schools of thought are present. The commodity school approaches knowledge as a universal truth, an object that can be separated from the knower. The community school emphasises knowledge as something internal to the human mind, but which can be shared as experiences between people. In the analysis presented, we have applied an analysis method which considers both the commodity and the community perspectives. The analysis is based on previous research studies of open source, and open source practices, and is furthered by a cursory case study using examples from a selected set of open source projects. Our conclusions are that knowledge management indeed is present in open source projects, and that it is supported by an ecology like interaction of project practices. / Denna uppsats undersöker hur kunskapsledning används i öppenkällkodsprojekt. Öppenkällkodsprojekt uppfattas ofta som informella, ibland till och med okontrollerade. Ändå verkar de kunna hämta in och sprida kunskap tillräckligt väl för att kunna utveckla lyckade programvaruprojekt, även i en så distribuerad miljö som Internet. Med uppsatsen vill vi undersöka den skenbara motsättningen. Uppsatsen består av en literaturstudie av kunskapsledning och öppen källkod. Dessa studier har utmynnat i en analys av projektmetoder som används i öppenkällkodsprojekt, sett från ett kunskapsledningsperspektiv. Idag finns det flera motsägelsefulla lärosatser inom området kunskapsledning. Två huvudsakliga inriktningar är den kognitiva skolan och den konstruktivistiska skolan. I den kognitiva skolan anses kunskap kunna objektiviseras och behandlas som en vara, separat från personen som har kunskapen. Den konstruktivistiska skolan anser att kuskapen är bunden till den som vet, men att det går att dela med sig av kunskap genom social interaktion. I uppsatsen har vi analyserat projektmetoderna från båda dessa perspektiv. Analysen baseras på tidigare forskning om öppenkällkodsprojekt, och kompletteras av exempel på hur projektmetoderna används i ett urval av öppenkällkodsprojekt. Våra slutsatser är att det finns ett starkt stöd för kunskapsledning i öppenkällkodsprojekt och att den stöds av en ekologiliknande växelverkan mellan olika projektmetoder.

Bakgrund: Företag som huvudsakligen agerar med Internet som kontaktkanal möter sällan eller aldrig sina kunder fysiskt, vilket leder till ett behov av att komplettera frånvaron av fysisk kontakt med andra former av kommunikation. Som lösning på detta problem har företag börjat tillämpa personligt anpassad e-postmarknadsföring vid kontakt med konsumenter för att bättre tillgodose kunders behov av relevant information. Samtidigt som personlig anpassning ger möjligheten att erbjuda kunden mervärde och öka kundens lojalitet kan också kunden uppfatta tekniken som falsk och konstruerad. Otillräcklig kunskap om konsumenters värderingar i frågor som berör personlig anpassning av e-post kan leda till att företag får svårt att knyta sig till potentiella kunder samt behålla befintliga kunder. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka till vilken grad e-handelskonsumenter föredrar personligt anpassade e-postutskick, hur e-postutskick bör framställas samt vilken betydelse konsumentens relation till företaget har. Detta ska resultera i rekommendationer till företag som genom personlig anpassning vill utveckla sin e-handelsstrategi. Metod: För att kunna bekräfta eller förkasta de uppsatta hypoteserna tar uppsatsen ett hypotetiskt deduktivt angreppssätt. En kvantitativ enkätundersökning används för att samla in empirisk data vilken har analyserats statistiskt med hjälp av t-test. Undersökningens population omfattar ett e-handelsföretags kunder. Resultat: Uppsatsens empiriska studie visar att e-handelskonsumenter av manligt kön föredrar personligt anpassade e-postutskick framför opersonliga e postutskick. I allmänhet uppfattas personlig anpassning som relevanshö-jande teknik, särskilt om den personliga anpassningen är genuin och om konsumenten tidigare uttryckligen angett sitt intresse för e-postutskicket. I uppsatsen studeras våra resultat närmare för att identifiera i vilka situationer som e-handlarnas värderingar skiljer sig åt. Företag bör beakta att kunden är mer öppen för personlig anpassning av e postutskick när denne har kontroll över hur företaget tillämpar den personliga anpassningen. Demografiska faktorer som utbildningsnivå och till viss del geografisk lokalisering har ock-så betydelse för hur personlig anpassning uppfattas. / Background: Companies that primarily act with Internet as channel of contact meet their customers in real life very rarely or never, which creates a need to complement the absence of physical contact with other forms of communication. As a solution to this problem companies have begun to implement personalized e-mail marketing in order to better satisfy customers’ need for relevant information. Still, as personalization gives the possibility to offer the customer added value while increasing the customer loyalty, the technology can also be perceived as deceitful and artificial. Insufficient knowledge regarding the customers’ perception of issues that concern personalization can result in difficulties for companies to attract new and retain existing customers. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to study to what extent e-consumers prefer personalized e-mail marketing, how e-mail campaigns should be created and what significance the relation has between consumers and companies. This is expected to result in recommendations to e-tailors that want to develop their business through the use of personalization in their e-mail marketing efforts. Method: In order to be able to verify or to falsify the set hypotheses, the research takes a hypothetical deductive approach. A quantitative survey has been used to collect the empirical data which has been statistically analyzed with the use of t-tests. The research population consists of the customers of an e-tailor. Conclusions: The empirical study shows that male e-consumers prefer personalized e mail marketing more than non-personalized e-mail marketing. Personalization is in general perceived as a technique to increase the level of relevance of the e-mail, thus being looked upon as added value, especially when the technique is genuine and if the consumer explicitly has given his or hers area of interest for the e-mail campaigns. In the thesis the research results are studied closer in order to investigate in which situations opinions part. Companies should also consider that customers are more open towards personalized e-mail marketing when she or he has control over how the companies apply personalization. Demographic factors such as level of education and to a certain extent geographical location also have an impact on how personalization is perceived.

According to a conventional wisdom, politics is nowadays more personalized than before. The proposition of the personalization of politics is relevant for three specific areas: institutions, media and voting behavior. This dissertation deals with the latter, since it focuses on the influence of party leaders on vote choice. So far the empirical scholarship tested whether “leader effects” have increased overtime (longitudinal studies) or investigated which conditions can enhance or discourage the electoral influence of party leaders (conditionality literature). We argue that both approaches have their limits, the former being based on the customary assumption of linearity, the latter investigating the role of (micro, meso and macro) “characteristics” rather than overarching and dynamic condition(s). This dissertation puts the cursor on a specific overarching condition: the (in)stability of parties and party systems (supply-side complexity). Actually, we argue that the magnitude of leader effects on the vote is conditional to the quality of the electoral environment. We therefore attribute to the “leader variable” a heuristic value: the leader appeal is conceived as an electoral shortcut more likely to be activated in complex electoral environment than in clear and stable contexts. There are two ways of testing the link between (variations in) and supply-side complexity and (variations in) leader effect on the vote. The first requires the adoption of a synchronic perspective, which implies a cross-national and cross-partisan empirical posture. This perspective considers space (i.e. “horizontal”) variations of stability, by assuming that certain parties and party systems are stable, while others are less or not stable. Are leader effects on the vote greater in the latter than in the former? The second one focuses on time (i.e. “longitudinal”) variations of stability. Indeed, electoral contexts vary across time – and not only across spaces - thus modifying the perceptions that voters may have of their electoral environment. When parties and party systems get convulsed, voters lose their frame of references. As such, they become cue-takers and rely more easily on leader appeals. On the contrary, when the political environment becomes clarified, voters will be less encouraged to rely on leader heuristic.This dissertation gives voice to both dimensions (space variation vs time variation). In a first place, we dig into the synchronic perspective. The relationship between supply-side complexity and leader effect on the vote is tested on a sample composed by 20 countries and 125 parties, included within the Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems. In a second place, we chart the magnitude of the leader variable according to longitudinal variations of supply-side complexity. Actually, our analytical effort will henceforth be centered on two distinguished case studies: Poland (1997-2011) and Italy (1996-2013), which have both experienced important variations in the stability of their electoral environment.We demonstrated that de facto differences (i.e. cross national and cross-partisan variations) in terms of stability do not automatically determine the magnitude of leader effects. On the contrary, we detect a link between the leader variable and longitudinal variations of the electoral environment. However, the quality of this link proves to be different in Poland and Italy. In the young democracy of Poland, leader effects and stability seem to be convergent rather than antagonist forces, while the Italian case properly fits our expectations: the convolution of the electoral environment makes voters more sensitive to the leader heuristic. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Abstract The use of agent systems has increased enormously, especially in the field of mobile services. Intelligent services have also increased rapidly in the web. In this thesis, the utilization of software agent technology in mobile services and decentralized intelligent services in the multimedia business is introduced and described. Both Genie Agent Architecture (GAA) and Decentralized International and Intelligent Software Architecture (DIISA) are described. The common problems in decentralized software systems are lack of intelligence, communication of software modules and system learning. Another problem is the personalization of users and services. A third problem is the matching of users and service characteristics in web application level in a non-linear way. In this case it means that web services follow human steps and are capable of learning from human inputs and their characteristics in an intelligent way. This third problem is addressed in this thesis and solutions are presented with two intelligent software architectures and services. The solutions of the thesis are based on a combination of neural network and agent technology. To be more specific, solutions are based on an intelligent agent which uses certain black box information like Self-Organized Map (SOM). This process is as follows; information agents collect information from different sources like the web, databases, users, other software agents and the environment. Information is filtered and adapted for input vectors. Maps are created from a data entry of an SOM. Using maps is very simple, input forms are completed by users (automatically or manually) or user agents. Input vectors are formed again and sent to a certain map. The map gives several outputs which are passed through specific algorithms. This information is passed to an intelligent agent. The needs for web intelligence and knowledge representation serving users is a current issue in many business solutions. The main goal is to enable this by means of autonomous agents which communicate with each other using an agent communication language and with users using their native languages via several communication channels.

External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT) is a common treatment option for patients with prostate cancer. When treating the prostate with EBRT, a geometric volume (PTV margin) is added around the prostate to account for uncertainties in treatment planning and delivery. Current methods for estimating PTV margins rely on the analysis of population-based inter- and intra-fraction motion data. These methods do not consider the patient-to-patient differences in demographic or clinical presentation of patient specific factors (PSFs), such as age, weight, body-mass index, health and performance status, prostate-specific antigen levels, Gleason scores, presence of bowel problems, or other health conditions. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility using regression-based predictive algorithms to predict the extent of prostate motion for the purpose of personalizing the PTV margin using PSFs as inputs. Benchmarking simulations of Linear, Ridge, LASSO, SVR, kNN, and MLP algorithms were performed by simulating prostate intra-fraction motion and realistic variations in PSFs. Sample sizes ranged from n=20 to 800, with varying levels of noise into the motion data (0-10mm). Leave-one-out cross validation was used to train and validate algorithm performance. The results suggest that algorithm performance improves significantly within the first 50 – 100 patients, and this rate of improvement is independent of noise in prostate motion. The Ridge regression algorithm predicted intra-fraction motion to the lowest mean absolute error in simulated motion, performing especially well in small datasets. To evaluate the clinical utility of this approach, pre- and post-treatment prostate motion data, treatment time data, and rectal distension data was recorded in 21 patients, along with a variety of PSFs. In the analysis of patient data, the LASSO algorithm out-performed the Ridge algorithm, predicting the mean and standard deviation of an individual prostate cancer patient’s intra-fraction motion to within 0.8mm and 0.4 mm mean absolute error, respectively. However, prostate motion predictions did not correlate with PSFs, possibly due to the small sample size. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using regression-based algorithms for predicting prostate motion, and hence the opportunity to personalize PTV margins in prostate cancer patients. / Graduate / 2018-08-22

This diploma thesis is focused on content personalization and specifically on recommender systems. The aim of the thesis is to propose a methodology of recommender system implementation in e-commerce using the IT tool Soyka. Functions of personalization tools which directly support recommender systems are identified on the basis of a theoretical description of recommender systems and their technological approaches. Based on these identified functions the tool Soyka is classified. The main contribution of the thesis is the created and published methodology which is ready to be used on real implementation projects by anyone involved.

This work focuses on web personalization, its advantages for users and merchants. Presents current standards in this field, analyzes theoretical background and technical realization. Finally describes application of the theory on actual web projects - Skrz.cz and Drakkaria.cz. Main benefit of this work is a complete overview of the web personalization and general manual for personalization implementators.

This thesis focuses on the issue of personalization of concrete project. The main goal of the thesis is to broaden this real project, which is dealing with offering study materials to students, with elements of personalization in order to become more useful for its visitors - thanks to displaying of relevant information to each visitor separately. Thesis gives detailed description of the whole implementation process, which was necessary for achievement of this particular state.

In recent years, negativity has become a dominant theme in the political campaign. However, there are no comprehensive studies to measure the amount of negativity and to examine how parties and candidates adopt these negative strategies, particularly in the Canadian context. Although some studies have focused on a particular aspect of negative campaigning in a Canadian election, the question remains of how and to what extent parties adopt negative strategies in an election. In this thesis, I have collected and analyzed parties’ press releases in the 2015 federal election to examine and explain negativity in parties’ political campaigns. I have tested my results according to five primary theories of negative campaigning, including competitive positioning, ideological proximity, party organization, coalition or minority effect, and negative personalization, to see if these theories apply in the Canadian context. My results indicate that the 2015 federal campaign was a highly negative one, and most of the negative attacks have been directed towards the leader of the Conservative Party, Stephen Harper, while the Conservative Party published the least amount of negative attacks during the campaign. I also found that the Liberal Party has published the most negative statements during the campaign. My results also show that one of the influential factors in shaping parties’ negative campaign strategies is the other parties’ status in public opinion polls, particularly the federal voting intention factor. Although the results show that most of the attacks in the 2015 campaign targeted leaders of parties, I did not find enough support in my models to verify the negative personalization theory. The overall findings of this thesis show that Canadian elections are moving toward a presidential-style campaign, similar to the United States, by becoming more negative and more personalized, which can have significant implications for Canadian democracy.