During the last years the need for real-time database services has increased due to the growing number of data-intensive applications needing to enforce real-time constraints. The COMponent-based Embedded real-Time database (COMET) is a real-time database developed to meet these demands. COMET is developed using the AspeCtual COmponent-based Real-time system Development (ACCORD) design method, and consists of a number of components and aspects, which can be composed into a number of different configurations depending on system demands, e.g., Quality of Service (QoS) management can be used in unpredictable environments. In embedded systems with requirementson high up-time it may not be possible to temporarily shut down the system for reconfiguration. Instead it is desirable to enable dynamic reconfiguration of the system, exchanging components during run-time.

The Swedish government has set up 16 environmental goals for Sweden to achieve. One ofthem is ?Living forests?, which is the foundation for the ?National strategy for the formalprotection of forests?. The ?National strategy? puts the private forest owner at the centre ofattention in order to achieve the environmental goal ?Living forests?.

Adaptive Resource Allocating Vector Quantizer (ARAVQ) är en teknik för datareducering för mobila robotar. Tekniken har visats framgångsrik i enkla miljöer och det har spekulerats i att den kan fungera som ett generellt datautvinningsverktyg för tidsserier. I rapporten presenteras experiment där ARAVQ används som datareducerare på en artificiell respektive en fysiologisk datamängd inom en datautvinningskontext. Dessa datamängder skiljer sig från tidigare robotikmiljöer i och med att de beskriver objekt med diffusa eller överlappande gränser i indatarymden. Varje datamängd klassificeras efter datareduceringen med hjälp av artificiella neuronnät.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

The company Microshop is interested in implementing new features in their product-website, and would like to examine the possibility and usefulness of introducing such functionality. When designing interaction for commercial websites, it is important to make the menus easy to use, and refrain from using deep hierarchies in order to avoid causing unnecessary burden for the users. There is an interest among users for adaptive functionality, but this requires great amounts of trust in the website from the user. Something which can be created by refraining from using implicit information, and provide detailed explanations throughout the website. A usability test was conducted in order to complement the data gathered from the theoretical study, the interviews and the expert evaluations.

The purpose of this thesis is to assist the Swedish energy company NIBE Energy Systems in their studies of adaptive regulation applicable to electrical water heaters. Due to coming energy classifications of these appliances in the European Union, NIBE Energy Systems needs to use adaptive regulation, called Smart Control, to keep their products in the best possible energy class and remain competitive to the market. By using this Smart Control regulation a 2-3 % improve-ment of efficiency can be credited the system. This is a small number, but heavily needed, since the energy classes are based on the idea that the European Union is provided with electricity from coal condensate power resulting in a 40 % maximum efficiency. Furthermore, doing noth-ing will result in some water heaters not being approved to use on the market from 2015 due to low efficiency.

Som bytesdjur måste zebran ständigt vara på sin vakt för att undvika att falla offer för ett rovdjur. De tre zebraarter som finns i världen är bergzebra, stäppzebra och Grevyzebra. De olika arterna lever på olika platser och de har även olika sociala strukturer. Inom flocken använder zebrorna sig av olika strategier som gör att rovdjuren får svårare att anfalla dem. En del av dessa strategier är zebrornas vaktbeteende då de hjälps åt att vakta flocken mot rovdjur i olika situationer.

A survey was undertaken to understand sheep management, breeding practices and selection criteria for Red Maasai sheep in Maasai pastoralist communities in Kajiado District, Kenya. Differences between North and South Kajiado District were investigated to gain knowledge about farmers having different prerequisites and how it can affect the sheep production. The reason for keeping sheep and the specific breeds show the multiple objectives of the Maasai farmers. Adaptive traits, such as resistance to diseases and droughts, and productive traits, such as increased growth and carcass weight, were both ranked highly. In addition to this, the sheep has a social and traditional value in Maasai culture.

Syftet med arbetet är att identifiera och lyfta fram ett antal riktlinjer för den visuella designen av animerad bild som används i utbildningssammanhang. Vi ämnar också att identifiera vilka stilelement inom animerad undervisningsfilm som står sig över tid och olika medium. Att belysa de nya kvaliteter och möjligheter som framkommer i och med det digitala mediet. Vi kommer också att titta på hur målgrupp och mottagarkontext påverkar formens uttryck och innehåll.Vi har med en gemensam analysmodell gjort en kvalitativ analys av tre tidstypiska animerade undervisningsfilmer, Camouflage (1943), Den Vidunderliga Världshistorien (1993) och Gutten og Torsken (2007) som alla använder sig av humor som en förstärkning av lärandet.Genom analysen har vi kunnat identifiera stilelement så som användandet av stereotyper och metaforer, konstaterat hur innehåll och uttryck till stor del påverkats av målgrupp och mottagarkontext men även av gällande distribution och tekniska möjligheter..

The aim of this thesis was to explore and analyze the sponsored debates on Newsmill, so called seminars. How does the sponsor use Newsmills seminars for marketing purposes? Who is allowed to write in Newsmills seminars?To answer these questions we used both a quantitative survey and a qualitative survey.To examine how the sponsors use Newsmills seminars for marketing purposes we conducted a qualitative analysis which included three of the eleven seminars - a total of 26 articles. We examined how the sponsors conveyed the picture of themselves and if the written content in Newsmills seminars contained any hidden marketing. We could see that the sponsor has a great deal of influence on the seminars and also used them to market their brand with hybrid messages.

The subject of this thesis is the application of Support Vector Machines on two totally different applications, facial expressions recognition and remote sensing.The basic idea of kernel algorithms is to transpose input data in a higher dimensional space, the feature space, in which linear operations on the data can be processed more easily. These operations in the feature space can be expressed in terms of input data thanks to the kernel functions. Support Vector Machines is a classifier using this kernel method by computing, in the feature space and on basis of examples of the different classes, hyperplanes that separate the classes. The hyperplanes in the feature space correspond to non linear surfaces in the input space.Concerning facial expressions, the aim is to train and test a classifier able to recognise, on basis of some pictures of faces, which emotion (among these six ones: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sad, and surprise) that is expressed by the person in the picture. In this application, each picture has to be seen has a point in an N-dimensional space where N is the number of pixels in the image.The second application is the detection of camouflage nets hidden in vegetation using a hyperspectral image taken by an aircraft.

AbstractRunning an individual bookstore is not an easy task. And then to do it in a profitable way is even harder.In this study you will read about what matters to the profitability in a bookstore. There are several aspects of this but it may be of interest to know what is affecting most of a bookstore's profitability.These three theories were researched by examination of previous research. The theories were then compared to the empirical research of an individual bookstore. Developing the empirical research qualitative and quantitative data collection methods was used.

Undersökningens syfte är att förklara hur chefer agerar vid ledningsdrivna och vid spontant uppkomna förändringsinitiativ i en organisatorisk miljö där det finns informella nätverk av specialiserade kompetenser. Arbetet kombinerar en kvalitativ ansats för att utforska och beskriva chefers ledarskapsmetoder genom djupintervjuer med en kvantitativ undersökning i enkätform riktat mot chefer och även mot deras medarbetare med specialistkompetens. Studiens slutsats är att de undersökta cheferna har metod och förmåga att skapa goda förutsättningar för förändring samt att stötta samverkan och innovation i informella nätverk inom den lokala enhetens kontext. Cheferna saknar dock god förmåga och metodik för att kunna utöka detta till att omfatta och inverka på företagets nyttoskapande som helhet..

Efficient numerical methods for option pricing is an active field of research. This project has the goal to examine possible ways to improve an established method of numerical pricing. The method is based on an adaptive finite difference method in price and uses the backwards differentiation formula of order 2, BDF2, in time. The project will focus on improvements to the time integration through implementation of discontinuous Galerkin methods, dG. Empirical convergence and accuracy results are obtained for equidistant dG-methods up to order 3 and performance is compared to BDF2.

Information på webben konsumeras idag via en mängd heterogena enheter. Faktorer som nätverksunderlag och skärmupplösning påverkar vilken bild som är lämplig att leverera till klienten, då en bild i sitt originaltillstånd på en tekniskt begränsad enhet tar lång tid att hämta samt kräver en stor datamängd. Eftersom surfandet på mobila enheter via mobila nätverk förväntas att öka är en lösning för adaptiv bildladdning relevant. Syftet är att undersöka huruvida en webbtjänst, bestående av en klient och en server, kan avgöra bäst lämpad bildkvalitet att leverera till klienten, baserat på dennes aktuella nätverksprestanda och skärmupplösning. En enhet med lägre skärmupplösning och ett långsammare nätverk berättigar en bild i sämre kvalitet och lägre bildupplösning.