This essay describes the philosophy of science that Thomas Kuhn puts forth in his work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The question is, does his description of the scientific paradigm work as well today as in the examples he gave in the book?The conclusion is that there are certain factors that make for a number of differences between science today and, for example in the seventeenth century. There is also a growing theory or vision of a post normal science laid developed by among others Jerome Ravetz. This theory or vision is an idea of a science close to peer-communities and fast as well as critical decisions involving opposite values..

This thesis looks at two sides of the same coin: how to support the production and future development at a specialist medical technology department at Danderyd Hospital. The two sides are; a pilot study of a product management system (PDM) and an interview based study on the characteristics of the silent knowledge of the technicians. The department (National respiratory centre, NRC) is facing retirement of several key employees.The technical study shows that the success of an implementation is largely dependent on the users? prior knowledge and use of a 3D Computer aided design system (CAD).The system itself is shown to fulfill the Lifecycle requirement of tracking the products (mostly tracheostomy tubes) but without a CAD centered workflow, some substantial education and preferably some new recruits, an implementation of the PDM system will fail. The author recommends development of the current ?low-tech? system of MS Excel and Access rather than redistribute the dependency from technician towards a complex, commercial software and its vendor.The analysis of the technicians? silent knowledge with the newly developed method, epithet for silent knowledge (ETK), shows that the longer employment time:the more differentiated technicians become in describing their work,practical knowledge are regarded higher andthe social and collective problem solving factors of the work becomes more important.Typically, it is shown that a new employee should preferably enjoy problem solving, being pragmatic and social as well as having some prior education or work experience in a CAD and/or a PDM system..

For many years, the construction industry in Sweden has not developed much of an integral approach for design across disciplines. The sector?s impact on society, economics and environment is huge. To make the interactions within the construction industry more efficient, a relatively new concept called BIM (Building Information Modeling) has been introduced. The idea with BIM is that the different actors of the construction industry will work through intelligent CAD software, with common file formats and more cooperation between different actors during the various steps of the building and construction process.The technical consultancy company WSP Sweden is working actively to implement BIM within the frame of its activities.

The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

Genom att föra samman människor med olika bakgrund och utbildning kan åtskilliga idéer skapas, nya metoder utvecklas och mer kreativa och originella designlösningar produceras. Baksidan är, att ju fler olika människor med olika bakgrund som är involverade i ett projekt desto svårare blir det att kommunicera inom gruppen av olika individer och svårare att komma vidare i en design- och utvecklingsprocess. Vi har under våren deltagit som en del i ett större programvaruutvecklingsprojekt och skapat och använt oss av flera olika designartefakter som medel för att främja samarbete, kommunikation och designarbetet av den produkt vi utvecklade. I denna uppsats beskriver vi hur dessa designartefakter har kommit till, förändrats och hur de har påverkat oss och vårt designarbete. Syftet med uppsatsen är att visa på vilket sätt man kan integrera metoder från olika discipliner i ett programvaruutvecklingsprojekt och framförallt hur arbetet med, och kring designartefakter spelar en viktig roll i utvecklingen av en produkt..

This thesis explores some issues regarding estimations of the cost of capital on the Stockholm Stock Exchange through reverse engineering of the Residual Income Valuation model and through usage of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Previous studies are in conflict of whether the risk premium changes considerably over time or not. Furthermore, the risk premium estimated by CAPM tends to be fairly stable. In this study, reverse engineering of the cost of capital implied by analysts? forecasts shows a significant difference in the risk premium over time.

This thesis of 15 hp has been implemented at Halmstad University, in collaboration with Saab Dynamics in Linköping. Saab Dynamics is a company operating in the defence industry where competition is tough. This necessitates new ways to increase efficiency in the company, which is the basis for this thesis. Saab Dynamics wants to introduce simulation driven design. Since Saab Dynamics engineers have little experience of simulation, required a user methodology with clear guidelines.

This thesis discusses how the education in the Master of Engineering program can change to become more into line for the students needs, especially for the women, both directly in the education situation and later in their occupational roles. This is done using a gender perspective. Both the education and the occupation today is characterised by masculine norms and values. The education lacks gender perspective and is created by men, for men. The thesis gives concrete proposals on how to change two existing courses to better fit the students.

Open source is growing outside the boundaries of hackers, amateurs and software development, creating a humongous potential in many different areas and aspects of society. The intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that drives open source have been in the subject of much research recently, but how they affect each other when paid and unpaid contributors come together is still hidden in obscurity. In this study I investigate how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation correlates with each other and how those correlations affect paid and unpaid open source software contributors. The literature synthesis is based on of systematic reviews through searches in library databases, identification of articles by searching on the Internet and by reading relevant books. My results indicate that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations continuously affect each other and that paid contributors are more vulnerable since their extrinsic motivation in terms of money is reached only when many other motivations are fulfilled.

This essay examines computer and video games and their capacity of being useful in teaching sessions. Focus is being put at a possible pedagogical potential and how it is being expressed in games mechanics. To get answers on these subjects? studies by Professor James Paul Gee and Jesse Schell is used together in creating a model for analysis. With this model together with a narrative analysis this essay hopes to give clarifications on if a pedagogical potential is present and if so, how it is being expressed.Studies in this paper shows that a pedagogical potential is overall present in used material.

Testing has always been an important task in the scope of software quality. Though it has never been as much appreciated within the management of the organisations as the software development has. However testing is becoming more attractive within organisations because it becomes more evident how much money working systems saves in contrast to defect ones. A tester often use testing tools to simplify the work progress. There are a lot of tools nowadays but not many evaluating models which helps the tester to know which one to recommend.

This report is based upon an experimental study of exit sign luminescence in different environments. The purpose is to evaluate the lowest luminescence of an exit sign, based upon Swedish regulations. Scientific experiments have been conducted in a controlled environment, where exit sign luminescence was graded by an evaluation group. The results of these have been verified by similar experiments that took place in two department stores. The final result of the study is guidelines for appropriate exit sign luminescence in different environments..

Today more effective computer programs are in use, regarding design of geotechnicalconstructions. There is a risk that the theoretical background of the computerprograms, its limitations and the signification of the choice of soil parameter isforgotten when the computer programs become more user-friendly.This Master thesis deals with simulation and analysis regarding three computerprograms, FEM-design, with the addition Raft, Plaxis and BE-slab. Comparisons aremade for settlement and maximum moment in a concrete-plate. FEM-design is a threedimensional FEM-program, foremost created for design engineers. Plaxis is a twodimensional FEM-program, intended for geotechnical engineers while BE-Slab is aBoundary elements program in two dimensions that is mainly used by designengineers.

Kandidatarbetets syfte är att undersöka mötet mellan människa och medium genom att undersöka hur människor relaterar till och tolkar mötet med ett medium. Undersökningen tar sin utgångspunkt i flera tänkbara kunskapsfält, bland annat posthumanism, transhumanism, tolkningsvetenskap. Dessa kunskapsfält prövas sedan i en gestaltning för att avgöra om kunskapen är relevant i förhållande till vårt ärende..

Global Software Development (GSD) is based on a geographical distance where teams are spread throughout the world. The related research have for a long time addressed the challenges presented by geographical distances. GSD is basically a necessity for many businesses to use in order to reduce development costs, reduce production time and to maintain high quality. The study aims to investigate the relationship between the reality of a specific maintenance project. Thus, our research question: How do distributed maintenance teams experience temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distances? To achieve the purpose of the study, we chose to perform a case study of a global consulting company which recently started a new system maintenance project.