During the 2005 growing season two irrigation management practices were developed for cabbage production utilizing a Greenfield solar powered miniature pivot, located at the Canada-Saskatchewan Irrigation Diversification Centre (CSIDC) near Outlook, Saskatchewan. Solar and battery power was used to operate the drive and control system of the miniature centre pivot located on CSIDCs pressurized pipeline. The management practices included a low-flow, 94 litres per minute (lpm) schedule with irrigation events occurring in the evening and night periods, and a high-flow, 370 lpm schedule with irrigation events occurring during the daytime hours. In each management practice, the soil moisture content was maintained above 65% of field capacity to optimize yield and head development (Waterer 2005).<p>Over the 2006 growing season, testing was conducted to evaluate the performance of each management practice. Performance was based upon application uniformity, water use efficiency and energy use efficiency. In addition to performance evaluation, tests were conducted to determine operational characteristics of this relatively new irrigation system to identify potential use in agricultural production. <p>The uniformity coefficient of the high-flow management practice was greater than that of the low-flow management practice. This was a result of nozzle selection and layout of each application system, as determined by the manufacturer. <p>Water use efficiency increased significantly when converting from a high-flow operating system to the low-flow system. This increase in water use efficiency was a result of reduced water loss, in the high flow system, through evaporation and potential run-off due to decreased application rates and environmental factors between watering times. Water loss through this manner is not beneficial to plant growth and results in elevated operating costs with little to no improvement in yield. <p>Energy use efficiency, due to differences in water use efficiency and friction loss in the piping system, also increased upon switching from a high-flow system to the low-flow system. In general, converting this type of system from a high-flow management practice to a low-flow management practice will help conserve water and energy resulting in savings in operating and capital costs.<p>Testing to determine the operating characteristics of the power system was completed during the 2006 growing season. It was concluded that these systems have potential use in operating small-scale pivot and pumping systems on high-value crops.

Digital information och kommunikation genom digitala medier är ett växande område. E-post och andra kommunikationsmedel används dagligen över hela världen. Parallellt med att området växer så växer även intresset av att hålla informationen säker. Transmission via antenner är inom signalbehandling ett välkänt område. Transmission från en sändare till en mottagare genom fri rymd är ett vanligt exempel. I en tuff miljö som till exempel ett rum med reflektioner och oberoende elektriska apparater kommer det att finnas en hel del distorsion i systemet och signalen som överförs kan, på grund av systemets egenskaper och buller förvrängas.Systemidentifiering är ett annat välkänt begrepp inom signalbehandling. Denna avhandling fokuserar på systemidentifiering i en tuff miljö med okända system. En presentation ges av matematiska verktyg från den linjära algebran samt en tillämpning inom signalbehandling. Denna avhandling grundar sig främst på en matrisfaktorisering känd som Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). SVD’n används här för att lösa komplicerade matrisinverser och identifiera system.Denna avhandling utförs i samarbete med Combitech AB. Deras expertis inom signalbehandling var till stor hjälp när teorin praktiserades. Med hjälp av ett välkänt programmeringsspråk känt som LabView praktiserades de matematiska verktygen och kunde synkroniseras med diverse instrument som användes för att generera signaler och system. / Digital information transmission is a growing field. Emails, videos and so on are transmitting around the world on a daily basis. Along the growth of using digital devises there is in some cases a great interest of keeping this information secure. In the field of signal processing a general concept is antenna transmission. Free space between an antenna transmitter and a receiver is an example of a system. In a rough environment such as a room with reflections and independent electrical devices there will be a lot of distortion in the system and the signal that is transmitted might, due to the system characteristics and noise be distorted. System identification is another well-known concept in signal processing. This thesis will focus on system identification in a rough environment and unknown systems. It will introduce mathematical tools from the field of linear algebra and applying them in signal processing. Mainly this thesis focus on a specific matrix factorization called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). This is used to solve complicated inverses and identifying systems. This thesis is formed and accomplished in collaboration with Combitech AB. Their expertise in the field of signal processing was of great help when putting the algorithm in practice. Using a well-known programming script called LabView the mathematical tools were synchronized with the instruments that were used to generate the systems and signals.

Value-at-Risk (VaR ) is an industrial standard for monitoring market risk in an investment portfolio. It measures potential osses within a given confidence level. VaR was first used by major financial institutions in the early 1990’s, and widely developed after the release of J.P. Morgan’s Riskmetrics Technical Document in 1996. The efficient calculation, implementation, interpretation and optimization of VaR are a challenge in the practice of risk management when the number of market factors in the portfolio is high. In this thesis, we are concerned with the quadratic analytical estimation of VaR and we present a methodology for an approximation to VaR that is based on the principal components of a sensitivity-adjusted covariance matrix. The result is an explicit expression in terms of portfolio deltas, gammas, and the mean and covariance matrix. It can be viewed as a non-linear extension of the linear model given by the delta-normal-VaR of RiskMetrics, a standard calculation for the risk in the financial sector. We obtain an asymptotic expansion for VaR in the limit when the confidence level approaches 1 and precise estimates of the reminder. We then optimize the approximated VaR with respect to the gradient or delta of the portfolio, a quantity which can be changed by trading the underlying assets (stocks), without entering into any derivative transactions. This analysis provides an optimal trading strategy of the portfolio that minimizes the risk.

The Singular Value Decomposition is one of the most useful matrix factorizations in applied linear algebra, the Principal Component Analysis has been called one of the most valuable results of applied linear algebra. How and why principal component analysis is intimately related to the technique of singular value decomposition is shown. Their properties and applications are described. Assumptions behind this techniques as well as possible extensions to overcome these limitations are considered. This understanding leads to the real world applications, in particular, image processing of neurons. Noise reduction, and edge detection of neuron images are investigated.

Detta examensarbete går ut på att för TitanX Engine Cooling ABs räkning analysera deras användning av Lean-verktyget Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Detta på grund av att verktyget inte levererar all information som företaget efterfrågar. För att hitta potentiella alternativ till VSM har verktyg och ramverk inom Enterprise Architecture studerats (EA). Utöver detta har även Theory of Constraints och Sex Sigma analyserats. För att undersöka om det är möjligt att även skapa en kostnadsdimension i VSM har påläggskalkylering undersökts. Resultatet av jämförelsen av teorin bakom VSM och hur TitanX använder VSM visar att det finns vissa skillnader, dock är skillnaderna inte så stora och tros inte påverka resultatet av själva kartläggningen. Vidare har analysen givit att EA kan ersätta VSM men också att modellerna och ramverken inom EA är avsevärt mer komplexa och omfattande än VSM. Theory of constraints är integrerbart med Lean och innehåller också en serie mätvärden som ger den information som TitanX efterfrågar.

This study investigated the human perception of certain social values to improve national well-being. It focused on the relative importance of two values, innovation and sustainability. Finally, it examined the possibility of a perceived trade-off between these two values by identifying whether a value change occurred among people from developed and developing countries under both constrained (forced-choice) and unconstrained (free-choice) rating conditions. The perceived importance of social values was measured in a survey using an eleven point rating scale. The perceived trade-off and the value change were identified by analyzing rating responses of the survey from test to retest. The analysis found that participants experienced a significant value change from test to retest and participants had different value preference depending on their country type, either developed or developing. This study consisted of two parts. The exploratory pilot study was conducted based on the Management Sciences Student Survey. This survey gathered information about the importance of selected social values from sixteen graduate students in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. The confirmatory main study was conducted using a web-based survey, Global Representative Value Change Survey. It collected information about the importance of the social values from close to three hundred students at the university at both test (Time One) and retest (Time Two). In this way, it enabled the researcher to identify a value change over time that was primarily attributed to a salience manipulation of innovation and sustainability trade-off. With a focus on the trade-off, the results revealed that all participants from developed and developing countries experienced a significant value change under the unconstrained condition, while very few significant value changes took place under the constrained condition. This study implies that people tend to maintain their value consistency and are not inclined to trade-off innovation for sustainability. If these values can co-exist in harmony and without compromise, people are prepared to give due consideration to sustainability, but not at the compromise to innovation. Implications are highlighted for educators, policy makers, and managers of technological innovation and change.

Energy accounting determines how much a software process contributes to the total system energy consumption. It is the foundation for evaluating software and has been widely used by operating system based energy management. While various energy accounting policies have been tried, there is no known way to evaluate them directly simply because it is hard to track every hardware use by software in a heterogeneous multicore system like modern smartphones and tablets. This work provides the ground truth for energy accounting based on multi-player game theory and offers the first evaluation of existing energy accounting policies, revealing their important flaws. The proposed ground truth is based on Shapley value, a single value solution to multi-player games of which four axiomatic properties are natural and self-evident to energy accounting. This work further provides a utility optimization formulation of energy management and shows, surprisingly, that energy accounting does not matter for existing energy management solutions that control the energy use of a process by giving it an energy budget, or budget based energy management (BEM). This work shows an optimal energy management (OEM) framework can always outperform BEM. While OEM does not require any form of energy accounting, it is related to Shapley value in that both require the system energy consumption for all possible combination of processes under question. This work reports a prototype implementation of both Shapley value-based energy accounting and OEM based scheduling. Using this prototype and smartphone workload, this work experimentally demonstrates how erroneous existing energy accounting policies can be, show that existing BEM solutions are unnecessarily complicated yet underperforming by 20% compared to OEM.

Living Lab är en öppen innovationsmiljö där innovationer samproduceras, testas och verifieras av användarna, tillsammans med företag och akademin i en kontext som representerar innovationens tänkta användningsområde. Genom samverkan kan olika värden skapas för företagen. Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur Living Lab skapar värde för företag och vilka värden företag kan identifiera ur de användarcentrerade aktiviteterna. Uppsatsen karaktäriseras av en kvalitativ ansats och grundar sig i en explorativ undersökning med djupintervjuer där fyra företag ligger till grund för uppsatsens resultat. Uppsatsen har visat att Living Lab skapat värden för företag genom att de fått mer tilltalande produkter, identifierat nya användarkategorier och samordnat resurser med företag. Living Lab är därmed värdeskapande för företag genom stöd för utvärdering, ny- och vidareutveckling av innovationer. Samverkan mellan användare, företag och akademin öppnar upp för ett kunskapsutbyte vilket skapar värde för företag då kompetensutveckling äger rum och en djupare kunskap om användarna kan erhållas

This study investigated the human perception of certain social values to improve national well-being. It focused on the relative importance of two values, innovation and sustainability. Finally, it examined the possibility of a perceived trade-off between these two values by identifying whether a value change occurred among people from developed and developing countries under both constrained (forced-choice) and unconstrained (free-choice) rating conditions. The perceived importance of social values was measured in a survey using an eleven point rating scale. The perceived trade-off and the value change were identified by analyzing rating responses of the survey from test to retest. The analysis found that participants experienced a significant value change from test to retest and participants had different value preference depending on their country type, either developed or developing. This study consisted of two parts. The exploratory pilot study was conducted based on the Management Sciences Student Survey. This survey gathered information about the importance of selected social values from sixteen graduate students in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. The confirmatory main study was conducted using a web-based survey, Global Representative Value Change Survey. It collected information about the importance of the social values from close to three hundred students at the university at both test (Time One) and retest (Time Two). In this way, it enabled the researcher to identify a value change over time that was primarily attributed to a salience manipulation of innovation and sustainability trade-off. With a focus on the trade-off, the results revealed that all participants from developed and developing countries experienced a significant value change under the unconstrained condition, while very few significant value changes took place under the constrained condition. This study implies that people tend to maintain their value consistency and are not inclined to trade-off innovation for sustainability. If these values can co-exist in harmony and without compromise, people are prepared to give due consideration to sustainability, but not at the compromise to innovation. Implications are highlighted for educators, policy makers, and managers of technological innovation and change.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)/ International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) proposed Conceptual Framework solidifies stewardship as a primary financial reporting objective. Concurrently, fair value (FV) continues to be emphasized in FASB and IASB standards. In this study, using data from real estate firms in the UK, I test whether FVs provide stewardship-relevant information incremental to information provided by historical costs. Measuring stewardship by changes in CEO cash compensation and FVs through revaluations of investment properties, I find FVs provide stewardship information beyond historical costs; however, FVs must be supported by external appraisals to be useful. Further, FVs help to explain the traditional association between stock returns and compensation. The actual realization of FV changes through sale continues to be rewarded through compensation, meaning the full compensation value of FV changes is not given until realized. FV changes provide more useful stewardship information when FV estimates are of higher quality or when the CEO is more strongly governed. I also find that higher sensitivity to management effort, proxied by firm growth opportunities, makes FV changes more stewardship-relevant. Overall, I conclude that for UK real estate firms, FVs are useful for assessing management's stewardship with improvements in estimate quality and sensitivity to management effort increasing stewardship-usefulness; however, historical costs continue to be relevant for stewardship. My thesis provides insight into what information best captures management stewardship.