The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between the surrounding world and the library with respect to the library’s need to provide a Library 2.0 web site. We also explore the relationship between the physical and the virtual library. Our research objects are the public libraries of Stockholm and the Umeå region, that maintain the web sites Biblioteket.se and minabibliotek.se respectively. By applying Dorte Skot-Hansen's theory of rationales we found that the Stockholm public library is acting in accordance with the experience rationale, whereas the libraries of Umeå are influenced by the instrumental rationale. Furthermore, by applying Antonio Gramsci’s theories of hegemony and struggle for power and neo-institutional theory to our data, we conclude that these libraries are strongly influenced by the surrounding society to provide Library 2.0 web sites in order to maintain their position within the library field and possibly to be considered foremost in that field. By failing to implement a Library 2.0 web our research objects would risk losing their positions within the library field, a declining influence in the cultural hegemony, fewer visitors and a reduced budget. We also found that the relationship between the physical and the virtual library has not been evaluated. Furthermore we found that the web sites do not make any impact on the physical libraries. These two findings might be due to the so far rather immature implementations. / Program: Bibliotekarie

We consider the problem of reconstructing a surface from noisy samples by approximating the point set with non-uniform rational B-spline surfaces. We focus on the fact that the knot sequences should also be part of the unknown variables that include the control points and the weights in order to find their optimal positions. We show how to set up the free knot problem such that constrained nonlinear optimization can be applied efficiently. We describe in detail a parallel implementation of our approach that give almost linear speedup. Finally, we provide numerical results obtained on the Chemnitzer Linux Cluster supercomputer.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur elever med utländsk bakgrund, som bor och går i skolan i mångkulturella och socialt utsatta områden, upplever sina möjligheter att lära matematik. Uppsatsen tar upp och diskuterar hur allmänna diskurser påverkar elevernas förgrunder och rationaler för lärande, och hur dessa på olika sätt bidrar till hur eleverna upplever sina möjligheter att lära matematik. Empirin består av fokusgruppintervjuer med årskurs 9 elever. Studien visar bland annat att elevers med utländsk bakgrund tillkortakommande i matematik påverkas av flera olika faktorer, varav de flesta eleverna inte själva kan förändra. Studien pekar på att det är av vikt att man även beaktar de allmänna diskursernas inverkan på elevernas möjligheter att lära matematik. Eleverna lever med dessa diskurser och har accepterat dem som ”sanna”. En implikation av resultaten i denna studie är att tillgången till en likvärdig matematikutbildning för elever i svensk grundskola behöver problematiseras och även inkludera faktorer som förekommer utanför matematikklassrummet / The purpose of the study is to examine how immigrant students, who live and attend school in multicultural and socially deprived areas, are experiencing their possibilities to learn mathematics. The thesis discusses how public discourses affect students’ foregrounds and rationales for learning in different ways, contributing to how the students perceive their possibilities to learn mathematics. The empirical material consists of focus group interviews with students in grade 9. The results show that immigrant students’ shortcomings in mathematics are affected by wide variety of influences, most of which are out of their control to change. The study suggests that it is of importance to consider the influence of public discourse on students’ possibilities to learn mathematics. Students live within these discourses and have accepted them as "the truth about the world". One implication from the findings is that access to an equivalent mathematics education for students in Swedish Compulsory School needs to be problematized and include factors outside of the classroom situation itself.

We consider the problem of reconstructing a surface from noisy samples by approximating the point set with non-uniform rational B-spline surfaces. We focus on the fact that the knot sequences should also be part of the unknown variables that include the control points and the weights in order to find their optimal positions. We show how to set up the free knot problem such that constrained nonlinear optimization can be applied efficiently. We describe in detail a parallel implementation of our approach that give almost linear speedup. Finally, we provide numerical results obtained on the Chemnitzer Linux Cluster supercomputer.

Der Beitrag geht dem Verhältnis von Zielen und Collective Agency im politischen Handeln nach. Dabei wird die These entwickelt, dass das unmittelbare Erfahren und Gestalten von gemeinsamen Handlungsverhältnissen die Zielorientierung in der Politik nicht ersetzen kann, sondern als eine wichtige Bestandsbedingung des politischen Handelns zu verstehen ist. Ausgangspunkt sind dabei Positionen, wie sie in der politischen Theorie bisher am deutlichsten von Hannah Arendt vertreten wurden und in unserer Gegenwart insbesondere in neuen sozialen Bewegungen verbreitet sind: Diesen zufolge besteht der Kern politischen Handelns in der Erfahrung einer Collective Agency. Der Beitrag rekonstruiert diesen Zugriff anhand der Schriften Hannah Arendts und verortet ihn im Umfeld bestehender Theorieansätze sowie von Erkenntnissen der Aufstands- und Rebellionsforschung. Schließlich werden handlungstheoretische Überlegungen angestellt (u. a. im Hinblick auf die Unterscheidung zwischen Haupt- und Nebenprodukten und die Zweistufigkeit in Handlungsprozessen). Sie laufen darauf hinaus, die Collective Agency in eine komplexere Zielorientierung aufzunehmen. Dadurch ergibt sich eine Korrektur sowohl instrumenteller Politikverständnisse als auch von Theorien, die den Sinn von Politik im Vollzug der Handlungsprozesse selbst ansiedeln. / The article explores the relationship between goals and collective agency in political action. It is argued that the experience and shaping of collective agency cannot replace goal orientation in politics, but must be understood as a resilience condition for the existence of political action. First, the article critically discusses theories of political action that are centered on collective agency. The article then reconstructs this approach from Hannah Arendt’s writings and places it in the context of existing theoretical approaches as well as insights from research on insurgency and rebellion. Finally, reflections are made on how to improve the modeling of political action. Here, among other things, the distinction between main and by-products and the two-stage nature of political action are important. These reflections then allow for incorporating collective agency into a more complex goal orientation. This, in turn, leads to a correction of approaches centered on both instrumental and collective agency.

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