En ny värld har skapats med Internets möjligheter till marknadsföring med sociala medier i centrum. Det har satt marknadsföraren på okänd mark då sociala medier introducerar helt nya prövningar då konsumenten själv kan styra över det publicerade materialet som ett företag väljer att lägga ut. Kommunikationens tillvägagångssätt mellan en kund och ett företag har förändrats, och därmed även beteendemönstret för respektive part. Detta leder till många frågetecken som; hur går företaget tillväga? Behåller vi ett traditionellt angreppssätt? Aggressivt eller passivt? Viralt eller direkt? Studien tar an ett kvalitativt angreppssätt där två aktuella aktörer på marknaden har valts ut och därefter intervjuats. Det är två företag verkande inom varsin social medie-marknadsföring strategi, nämligen viral marknadsföring respektive direktmarknadsföring. Som primär informationsdata har delvis strukturerade frågor använts. Till hjälp för att besvara forskningsfrågorna och övriga frågetecken i problemdiskussionen har teorier utvecklats utifrån studiens grundteorier, viral och direktmarknadsföring. Båda av de intervjuade företagen tycks vara medvetna om att det nödvändigt att följa med i utvecklingen med social medie marknadsföring. De båda företagen tycks också bedriva framgångsrika marknadsföringskampanjer inom de båda marknadsföringsstrategierna viral och direkt marknadsföring. Kommunikationen är en gemensam nämnare för de båda marknadsföringsstrategierna. Det är även viktigt att nå rätt målgrupp vid rätt tidpunkt. Det går att hitta risker med båda nämnda strategier, men de ser ganska olika ut för respektive strategi. Att kunna definiera störningsmomentet och ta itu med det kan underlätta för budskapet. Viral och direktmarknadsföring är två vitt skilda strategier som används inom sociala medier. De båda tycks ändå vara framgångsrika strategier med stor utdelning då de verkar på rätt plattform. Det återstår att se hur social medie-marknadsföring kommer att formas i framtiden.

It is an indisputable fact that cities have experienced a process of economic and spatial restructuring accompanied by the globalization of economy throughout the world since the 1980s. In line with this process, industrial sector has also witnessed economic and social restructuring process. Research in regional planning marks this process as a consequence of emerging industrial dynamics such as new technologies, new markets, and lower labor costs under new spatial divisions of labor. Such industrial dynamics brought spatial restructuring as well. Therefore, industrial firms are willing to relocate production activities to the new areas where they maintain the spatial margins of profitability. In this respect, today, one of the main discussion arenas of industrial geography is to explain the reasons of the industrial relocation. Within this context, this thesis focuses on the main push and pull factors that underlie the relocation process of industrial activities towards outside of Istanbul as well as beyond the provincial boundaries. In order to show this, a case study was conducted in Gebze Organized Industrial Zone (GOIZ) because 1/100.000 scale Environmental Management Plan of Istanbul has determined GOIZ as the potential area where the firms can relocate. The case study covered 37 firms which constitute the total number of firms relocated from Istanbul. Results of the thesis show that traditional location factors such as transport, site and premises are the most important factors that motivate firms to relocate from Istanbul to the GOIZ. However, contemporary factors are not much explanatory in case of the GOIZ.

In this thesis, a real world application of the constant work in process (Conwip) system in an electronics company is realized. The aim of the application is to reduce the work in process (WIP) inventory while maintaining the same throughput level. A model is developed to determine the constant work in process level of the Conwip system for the production lines in this company. The approximated mean value analysis approach is used for the solution. Real system data are collected before and after the Conwip application. Hypothesis tests are used to compare the WIP and the throughput levels of the Conwip system with the existing push control system for a pilot production line. Results of the hypothesis tests show that the Conwip production control system can signinifcantly reduce the WIP while maintaining the same throughput rate.

The electrostatic actuation with its several advantages is the main principle for micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). One major drawback is the nonlinear behavior, which results into instability, known as the electrostatic pull-in effect. This effect might also push a closed-loop configuration into instability and thus makes a linear time-invariant control inapplicable to the system. The paper investigates the stability of an acceleration sensor in closed-loop operation with this setting. A simplified controller adjustment gives a first insight into this topic. Practical implementations saturate on the quantizer's full-scale value, which is also considered in the stability analysis. Numerical phase-plane analysis verifies the stability and shows further surprising results.

Being able to identify blended dredged material and crushed glass of different proportions as materials suitable for Mechanically Stabilized Earth walls could help the adoption of these materials in civil engineering thereby reducing the environmental impact of these waste materials. The objectives of this thesis include the following: Collect and organize data to facilitate material selection based on interaction properties with uniaxial geogrids; analyze the data for trends for varying percentages of crushed glass vs. dredged materials; compare the properties of different blends with those of a well-documented uniform sand; compare the pullout data with that of previous studies related to the presence of fines in the fill material; and compare the pullout data to that of previous studies on the effect of geogrid rib thickness. The main findings of this thesis study include the following: A blend of 80% crushed glass and 20% dredged material is a legitimate alternative backfill material for reinforced soil slopes. The use of 100% crushed glass as a fill material is not recommended due to glass particles embedding into the geogrid thereby reducing the tensile capacity of the geogrid. Blends with lower percentages of crushed glass and higher percentages of dredged material may be appropriate based on the requirements of individual designs. The increased thickness of the UX1700 geogrid over the UX1400 geogrid contributed to higher a pullout resistance for each combination of fill material and normal stress. / text

Lean Manufacturing (LM) is widely accepted as a world-class manufacturing paradigm, its currency and superiority are manifested in numerous recent success stories. Most lean tools including Just-in-Time (JIT) were designed for repetitive serial production systems. This resulted in a substantial stream of research which dismissed a priori the suitability of LM for non-repetitive non-serial job-shops. The extension of LM into non-repetitive production systems is opposed on the basis of the sheer complexity of applying JIT pull production control in non-repetitive systems fabricating a high variety of products. However, the application of LM in job-shops is not unexplored. Studies proposing the extension of leanness into non-repetitive production systems have promoted the modification of pull control mechanisms or reconfiguration of job-shops into cellular manufacturing systems. This thesis sought to address the shortcomings of the aforementioned approaches. The contribution of this thesis to knowledge in the field of production and operations management is threefold: Firstly, a Multi-Agent System (MAS) is designed to directly apply pull production control to a good approximation of a real-life job-shop. The scale and complexity of the developed MAS prove that the application of pull production control in non-repetitive manufacturing systems is challenging, perplex and laborious. Secondly, the thesis examines three pull production control mechanisms namely, Kanban, Base Stock and Constant Work-in-Process (CONWIP) which it enhances so as to prevent system deadlocks, an issue largely unaddressed in the relevant literature. Having successfully tested the transferability of pull production control to non-repetitive manufacturing, the third contribution of this thesis is that it uses experimental and empirical data to examine the impact of pull production control on job-shop performance. The thesis identifies issues resulting from the application of pull control in job-shops which have implications for industry practice and concludes by outlining further research that can be undertaken in this direction.

Sammanfattning I det här examensarbetet undersöker vi IT som verktyg i skolan.  Hur lärare använder sig av dator, smartboard, smartphone, surfplatta eller digital kamera, dessa kallar vi digitala redskap, i undervisningen. En smartboard är en interaktiv tavla med touchfunktion som är kopplad till en dator och projektor. Vårt syfte är att undersöka i vilken omfattning de digitala redskapen integreras i undervisningen och de frågor vi ställer oss är: I hur stor omfattning använder sig lärare av digitala redskap i undervisningen? Hur beskriver lärare sina möjligheter- tankar kring-att använda IT i undervisningen?   Det material studien bygger på är inhämtat genom intervjuer och observationer på två skolor. Intervjufrågorna är utformade efter den litteratur vi läst och utifrån det vi vill undersöka. Intervjuerna spelas in för att underlätta vår bearbetning och sammanfattning av resultatet i del fyra. Eftersom det behövs fullmakt vid videoinspelning, av både lärare och elevernas föräldrar så valde vi att endast observera lärarna och de digitala redskapens påverkan på klassen. Vid sidan av detta har vi även valt att titta närmare på hur arbetet kring IT är formulerat i läroplanen. Riktlinjerna och målen relateras till den tidigare forskning som presenteras i studien och de resultat som framkommit i vårt eget arbete. Ett flertal statliga projekt har varit aktiva sedan 1970-talet för att införa digitala redskap i skolan. Vi har tagit del av en modell, TPACK och en teori, Pull-and Push. TPACK modellen används som ett redskap för att synliggöra användningen av digitala redskap i undervisningen. Eftersom vi menar att eleverna visar ett större intresse för lektionens innehåll när läraren använder digitala redskap. TPACK uppstår, som vi senare går in på, när lärarna använder sig av sin faktakunskap, pedagogisk kunskap samt den tekniska kunskapen samtidigt. För att uppmärksamma effekterna av samhällets användning av digitala redskap och vad samhället kräver att man bör kunna, använder vi Pull-and push teorin. Det visar på en efterfråga som resulterar i ett större användande av till exempel digitala redskap i skolan. Studiens resultat visar bland annat att lärarna vill använda de digitala redskapen mer men att de saknar kunskap och utbildning i de digitala redskapen. Majoriten av de intervjuade lärarna uttrycker att det behövs satsas mer på tekniken i skolan så att den blir lättare att arbeta med samt mer tid.

The continuous increase in wireless usage forces an immense pressure on wireless communication in terms of increased demand and spectrum scarcity. Service providers for communication services had no choice but to allocate new parts of the spectrum and present new communication standards that are more spectrally efficient. Communication is not only limited to mobile phones but recently attention has been given to intelligent transportation systems (ITS) where cars will be given a significant place in the communication network. Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) is already assigned a slice of the spectrum at 5.9GHz using the IEEE802.11p standard also known as Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC); however, this assignment will have limited range and functionality at first, and users are expected to depend on existing wireless mobile channels for some services such as video streaming and car entertainment. Therefore, it is essential to integrate existing wireless mobile communication standards into the skeleton of ITS at launch and most probably permanently. An investigation was carried out regarding the existing communication standards including wireless local area networks (WLAN) and it was found that frequency bands from 400MHz up to 6GHz are being used in various regions around the world. It is also noted that current state of the art transceivers are composed of several transmitter front-ends targeting certain bands and standards. However, the more standards to be supported the more components to be added and the higher the cost not to mention the limited space in mobile devices. Multimode Multiband (MMMB) transmitters are therefore proposed as a potential solution to the existing redundancy in the number of front-end paths in modern transmitters. Broadband amplifiers are an essential part of any MMMB transmitter and they are also among the most challenging especially for high power requirements. This work explains why single ended topologies with efficiencies higher than 50% have a fundamental bandwidth limit such that the highest frequency of operation must be lower than twice the lowest frequency of operation. Hence, Push-Pull amplifier topology is being proposed as it was found that it has inherent broadband capabilities exceeding those of other topologies with comparable efficiency. The major advantage of Push-Pull power amplifiers is its capability of isolating the even harmonics present in the even mode operation of a Push-Pull amplifier from the less critical odd mode harmonics and the fundamental frequency. This separation between even and odd signals comes from the inclusion of a Balun at the output of push-pull amplifiers. Such separation makes it possible to operate amplifiers beyond the existing limit of single ended power amplifiers. To prove the concept, several Baluns were designed and tested and a comparison was made between different topologies in terms of balance, bandwidth and odd and even mode performances; moreover, to illustrate the concept a Push-Pull power amplifier design was implemented using the multilayer Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics (LTCC) technology with a bandwidth ratio of more than 100%.

In the latest time, the US has had an easy Monetary Policy. Because of the increasing link among the countries through interconnections on international trade, financial, and labor markets, such policy has not only had effects in the US economy, but also in the rest of the world. So many countries, especially emerging and developing countries, have suggested that such a policy has been causing an excessive flow of funds out of the US which are disrupting the exchange rate and competitiveness of those countries. An innovation of the analysis is that capital flows are divided in "Firm related" (direct investment and equity flows) and "Debt" (debt instruments and private loans obtained from foreign financial institutions). Another innovation is related to the measure of the external factors considering the US alone and a compound of Advanced Countries (AC) that includes: the US, European Union, United Kingdom, and Japan. The performed analysis indicates that the US Monetary Policy has been having a role on the determination of the capital flows to the Latin America Countries (LAC). However, these external "push factors" have been less important than the "pull factors" from Latin America. In the model, the "push factors" reflected to have had influence on the total capital flows, especially through the global liquidity proxies measured by the growth of the monetary stock in the AC. Holding all other things constant, one percent increase in the monetary stock in the US will generate capital flows to the LAC for an amount between 0.47 to 1.71 percentages of GDP. This effect is bigger when using the proxy constructed with the US alone than when using the compound of AC. The long term interest rate registered significance only on the "Firm related" type of capital flows and only when using the compound of AC. The performed analysis also indicates that there is preeminence of the "pull" (domestic) over the "push" (external) factors. This means that the LAC have been pursuing actions such as political stability, sound and consistent economic policies, and more market oriented policies that are attracting capital flows by themselves.

This experimental study focuses on the links that exist between the mechanical pull-out behaviour of multi-filament yarns embedded in concrete and the impregnation of the yarn by the concrete. To this aim, 5 glass yarns have been embedded in concrete (AR and E glass yarns from assembled or direct roving). A pre-treatment was applied to the yarn before the casting, and was chosen in the following three: wetting, drying or pre-impregnation with a cement slurry. By this way, 15 yarn / pre-treatment combinations were obtained that generate 15 conditions of impregnation of the yarn by the cementitious matrix. In each case, the mechanical properties were determined from a classical pull-out test and the yarns impregnation properties were characterized by two dedicated tests: yarns porosity measurements and along yarn water flow measurements. By studying the relationship between the mechanical behaviour and the physical properties of the impregnated yarns, it is shown that the pre- and post-peak behaviour are mainly connected to the flow rate measured during the water flow measurements, which suggest a specific influence of the connected pores parallel to the filaments and of the penetration depth of the matrix into the yarn. The postpeak and the residual behaviour are moreover linked to the yarn pore volume associated to the disorder induced in the filaments assembly by the penetration of the matrix. The overall result of this work is a contribution to the understanding of the relationship between the impregnation of the yarns and the pull-out behaviour.