My recent engagement as music director and conductor of Robert Nelson’s A Room with a View (1992, rev. 2004) has offered me the valuable opportunity to work on an opera side by side with its composer. The purpose of this dissertation is to reconstruct the various stages of the process of creation, interpretation, and performance of a contemporary opera, addressing aspects of the collaboration between the composer and the conductor. The methodology used in my research is based primarily on direct observation and interview. The investigation is conducted from the perspective of a “participant-observer,” due to my personal involvement in the project, as music director and conductor first, and then as interviewer and researcher. The document will be organized in three sections: - the first chapter will establish the context and specific features of my research, providing a scholarly background in relation to the study of the relationship between composer and conductor; - the second chapter will focus on the process of composition in all its stages. I have defined this as the “extended creative process” of A Room with a View; - the third chapter will discuss the Michigan State University production of the opera, considering several aspects of the artistic collaboration between Robert Nelson and me, as well as my involvement in the process as conductor. Through my research, I wish to provide useful insight into the crucial aspects of the composition and the production of new music. In addition, the project aims to offer a fresh contribution to the investigation of the relationship between composers and interpreters, and perhaps could provide some background reference for an interrogation about the current state and the future of American opera.

Bakrund: När njurarnas funktion blir nedsatt får patienten gå igenom dialys regelbundet vilket skapar lidande. Njurtransplantation är alternativ för dessa patienter. De flesta njurar som doneras är från avlidna personer eller från anhöriga men även anonyma givare förekommer. Syfte: Syftet var att belysa donatorers upplevelser av livet under och efter njurdonation. Metod: En litteraturöversikt som är byggd på tio artiklar båda kvantitativa och kvalitativa. De har kvalitetsgranskats enligt Fribergs mall för kvalitetsgranskning. Resultat: Analysen skapade fem teman, känsla av rädsla och oro, den postoperativa smärtan och återhämtningen efter njurdonationen, de psykologiska konsekvenserna av att donera en njure, upplevelsen av vården och uppföljningen samt upplevd tillfredställelse Diskussion: Donatorerna kände oro för att operationen inte skulle lyckas både för sig själv och mottagaren. Efter transplantationen återhämtade sig ofta donatorerna ganska väl och brukade oftast inte få några psykiska besvär. Donatorerna tyckte att de inte fick den medicinska uppmärksamheten som de önskade sig under vårdtiden och kände sig som ett medel av vårdpersonalen. Att få kunskap om hur donatorer upplever donationen och hälso- och sjukvårdspersonalen hjälper blivande sjuksköterskor att sätta sig i dessa patienters livsvärld och ge dem det stöd de behöver.

Thesis (MBA (Business Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: What TV-glasses do you wear? A study in how party-political people decode the TVshow Scooby Doo (Vilka tv-glasögon har du? En studie i hur partipolitiskt aktiva personer tolkar tv-serien Scooby Doo)</p><p>Number of pages: 47 (54 including enclosures)</p><p>Author: Christopher Landstedt</p><p>Tutor: Amelie Hössjer</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies C</p><p>Period: Autumn term 2007</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.</p><p>Purpose/Aim: The aim of this essay is to make a study in how party-political people, 18-25 years old, both female and male, decode the messages in the TV-show Scooby Doo from 1969. Do they decode the show differently because of their political view, their gender or, and their social background? Is there a pattern in the decoding or is it based on a more individual level?</p><p>Material/Method: A qualitative method containing a total number of 16 individual interviews with young adults, 18-25 years old, half of them female, the other half male, were used. All of the participants are members of political youth parties/organizations, equally divided in left and right wing parties. Scooby Doo was chosen thanks to the lack of political meanings and messages in the show and its objective aura. The respondents got to see a preselected episode from the first season ever of Scooby Doo. After they finished watching the show, the interview took place. The interview contained questions on a deeper lever regardingthe episode. Stuart Hall’s all time classic encoding-decoding theory is used as the main theory with the support from other theories in the same field.</p><p>Main results: The degree of active reading is overall equal among the young adults that participated in the study. Differences can be found in the way they decode the sender’s messages and what values they put into the message. The leftwing respondents tended to decode the show in more oppositional way than the rightwing people who tended to read the messages dominant. There is an exception to every rule, also in this case. To sum it all up in one last sentence it should be said that some people’s personal values shine through, and aremore obvious than others.</p><p>Keywords: encoding-decoding, gender, television, interpretation, Scooby Doo, political view, leftwing and rightwing</p>

<p>Personer med autism behöver ha människor runt omkring sig som förstår dem, vilket kräver kunskap både om autism och om den specifika individen. För att kunna uppnå detta behövs ett fungerande samarbete mellan föräldrar och personal. Syftet med denna studie var att jämföra personal och föräldrars syn på personer med autism. För att undersöka detta genomfördes 10 intervjuer som analyserades med meningskoncentrering som analysmetod. Resultatet visade att föräldrar och personal betonade olika delar av störningen. Föräldrar ansåg sig ha samma syn som personal, medan personalen ansåg sig ha en annan syn än föräldrarna, något som kunde bero på att de hade olika referensgrupper i åtanke. Samarbetet ansågs kunna förbättras genom att ha fler möten. Resultaten bekräftar tidigare forskning.</p>

In recent years there has been significant progress in increasing the scope, accuracy and flexibility of 3D photography methods. However there are still significant open problems where complex optical properties of mirroring or transparent objects cause many assumptions of traditional algorithms to break down. In this work we present three approaches that attempt to deal with some of these challenges using a few camera views and simple illumination. First, we consider the problem of reconstructing the 3D position and surface normal of points on a time-varying refractive surface. We show that two viewpoints are sufficient to solve this problem in the general case, even if the refractive index is unknown. We introduce a novel ``stereo matching'' criterion called refractive disparity, appropriate for refractive scenes, and develop an optimization-based algorithm for individually reconstructing the position and normal of each point projecting to a pixel in the input views. Second, we present a new method for reconstructing the exterior surface of a complex transparent scene with inhomogeneous interior. We capture images from each viewpoint while moving a proximal light source to a 2D or 3D set of positions giving a 2D (or 3D) dataset per pixel, called the scatter-trace. The key is that while light transport within a transparent scene's interior can be exceedingly complex, a pixel's scatter trace has a highly-constrained geometry that reveals the direct surface reflection, and leads to a simple ``Scatter-trace stereo'' algorithm for computing the exterior surface geometry. Finally, we develop a reconstruction system for scenes with reflectance properties ranging from diffuse to specular. We capture images of the scene as it is illuminated by a planar, spatially non-uniform light source. Then we show that if the source is translated to a parallel position away from the scene, a particular scene point integrates a magnified region of light from the plane. We observe this magnification at each pixel and show how it relates to the source-relative depth of the surface. Next we show how calibration relating the camera and source planes allows for robustness to specular objects and recovery of 3D surface points.

Palyginus mūsų tiriamųjų paauglių nuo 10 iki 19 metų amžiaus sveikatos kontrolės lokuso skalių duomenis su K. Wallstono (1978), E. Žutautienės (2003), A. Petrulytės ir K. Vetrovaitės (2004) atliktais panašiais tyrimais, stebime tendenciją, kad kuo besimokantieji yra vyresnio amžiaus, tuo labiau išreikštas vidinės kontrolės lokusas. Kituose tyrimuose nenustatyta koreliacija tarp paauglių kūrybiškumo ir akademinio pažangumo. O mūsų tyrimai atskleidė, kad 10 - 19 metų paauglių vidutinis akademinis pažangumas yra susijęs su kūrybinio mąstymo originalumo parametru; taip pat ir vidutinis akademinis pažangumas turi teigiamų sąsajų kūrybiniu mąstymu. Pagal A. Petrulytės, D. Beresnevičienės ir K. Samašonok (2004) ankstesnius tyrimo rezultatus tarp mokinių kūrybiškumo ir mokymosi sėkmės reikšminga koreliacija nebuvo rasta. A. Petrulytė (2008) nubrėžė tyrimų perspektyvą ateityje, kad būtų tikslinga patyrinėti besimokančiųjų sveikatos kontrolės lokuso ir kūrybiškumo subskalių koreliacijas su vidine darna, sveikata, bei palyginti rezultatus su vyresnio amžiaus tiriamųjų (suaugusiųjų) rezultatais. Mūsų tyrimas praplėtė šį teiginį tuo, kad darbe buvo nustatyta kad tarp 10-19 metų paauglių (N=322) lietuvių kalbos bei menų mokymasis turi teigiamų sąsajų su vidinės sveikatos kontrolės (HLC) faktoriumi. Gauti tyrimo duomenys susišaukia su A. Petrulytės (2008) tyrimais tuo jog patvirtina faktą kad tarp kūrybiškumo ir sveikatos kontrolės lokuso bei mokymosi sėkmės yra tam tikras ryšys. Mūsų 1... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Object of the research: self-view, creative thinking and learning success of younger and older adolescents (aged 10-19). Aim of the research: to analyze self-view (evaluation of self-creativity, apprehension of health), creative thinking and learning success of younger and older adolescents (aged 10-19). Hypotheses of the research: 1. Indicators of creative thinking likely differ according to adolescents’ age and sex quantitative and detailed assessment is higher in the groups of girls and older adolescents. 2. Indicators of older adolescents’ health, mood and activity are probably higher and their inner control is more expressed than younger adolescents’. 3. There probably exists positive relationship between adolescents’ a academic progress, indicator of creative thinking and perceptible creativity self-evaluation at emotional and cognitive levels. Conclusions. Creative thinking indicators of adolescents (aged 10-19) are higher in a group of girls and students of higher forms (11-12th school years, aged 17-19). Medium academic progress of adolescents is related to the parameter of creative thinking originality; medium academic progress has positive relations with creative thinking as well. Evaluation of self-creativity at emotional level is higher in girls’ group; and evaluation of self-creativity at cognitive level is the highest among 17-19 years old adolescents (11-12th school years). Indicators of older adolescents’ health, mood, and activity are higher than younger... [to full text]

In spite of the need for organisations to develop competencies among its employees as a source for gaining competitive advantage, and in spite of previous research efforts to find out what contributes to it and the effects of it, the process of Competence Development (CD) implementation is still a ‘black box’, whose internal linkages are unknown. Furthermore it is noticed in previous research that there is a lack of empirically-based research in organisations, and the purpose of this dissertation is therefore to explore the process of CD implementation, as perceived by employees within the debt-collection industry of Sweden.   A case-study on a Swedish Debt-Collection Company was conducted, and data collected through interviews with employees and managers, in order to find out how the process of CD implementation is structured. In order to investigate the internal linkages in the process an extensive literature review was performed in the field of CD, and used for developing a conceptual model, showing how the various stages interact and depend upon each other in gaining competence among its employees. The model was then tested empirically and the findings suggest that the CD implementation was structured mostly in line with the model, although adjustments had to be made.   The findings suggest that in the process of CD implementation conceptualisation of CD plans and selection of participants is conducted in one integrated step and not two distinct steps, as suggested in previous literature. Performance Management and Reflection- and Evaluation are not conducted in two steps but more or less simultaneously. Furthermore, this study suggests that it is the organisation’s responsibility to provide a foundation, opportunities and resources that enable CD, while the employees themselves set the standard for how much they will take advantage of it. Therefore this study argues that if employees can have input and influence on each stage of the process, better outcomes will be provided since it will be aligned with their objectives, personal and professional.   Up to this point, the process of CD implementation has been a ‘black box’, a mechanism that generates a certain level of output but whose internal workings are unknown. It is important to open up that box and to understand how CD operates to produce superior performance for an organisation. The findings in this study help to bridge that gap better, and are useful for managers conducting and implementing Human Resource practices that aim to develop competencies among the company’s workforce in order to gain better performance.

Exporting is a critically important strategy for firms to grow, yet research in this area has tended to ignore how firms can leverage resource-based capabilities to improve export performance. Building on the resource-based view and institutional theory, the authors develop a novel perspective to explain how a firm can improve export performance by aligning its export channel with its level of market orientation capabilities, contingent on the institutional distance between home and export markets. Using a unique database of Chinese exporters, the authors find that exporters with strong market orientation capabilities prefer hierarchical export channels, while those with weak market orientation capabilities prefer hybrid channels. The analysis also indicates that the institutional distance between China and the export market moderates this relation. Moreover, the authors find that aligning export channel choice with firm-level market orientation capabilities and institutional distance yields better export performance. (authors' abstract)

Inkjet-printed memory cards have been developed previously by re-searchers at Mid Sweden University but, these did possess some limita-tions, as each resistive memory cell required one physical contact and the resistances were designed to be electrically programmed.This work overcomes the above limitations by developing chemically programmed printed memory cards and a PC connected memory card reader. Printed memory cards are inexpensive and are developed by inkjet printing the nano-silver ink onto the photo paper substrate. A matrix readout method is used to increase the num-ber of memory cells and, by using a chemical solvent, the resistances were programmed to the desired resistance values and, for which, each resistance value represents data on the cards, called, write once read many (WORM) memories. The memory card reader was developed to access the data (resistance value) of the memory card and also to trans-mit the data to a LabVIEW graphical user interface for displaying the resistance values. By using multiple resistance steps, in which each step represents a different state, it is possible to create a number of possible selectable combinations which can be programmed at a later stage for developing applications.