Alaska Natives and American Laws

In this thesis we focus on the issue of crowdfunding and especially how a project relates to and embraces its community. While a lot of related research focus on what makes people give, our research instead delve into whether a creator looks upon the sponsors as something more than just a financial resource. To manage this task we used a triangular perspective consisting of a case study, a questionnaire and a netnographic study. The goal was to gain the perspectives of creators, crowdfunding platforms and sponsors on how the communication between the community and the project works and can be improved.        The three crowdfunding platforms we reviewed (Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Rockethub) all had fairly similar models on how to attract sponsors and make them involved in the project, while the questionnaire and netnographic study demonstrated how a community could contribute in different ways. Based on our results we draw the conclusion that a project can be successful without embracing the creative qualities of its sponsors but doing so also is a waste of a great asset to both current and future projects.

Implementation of environmental strategies in companies’ management and control system

Sustainability reporting has grown in importance and transparency over the years. The reporting has in many countries gone from being voluntarily to become mandatory. This is the case within the EU, which adopted the non-financial reporting directive (2014/95/EU) in 2014. Sweden applied the directive in 2017 in the Annual Account Act. At the same time as the requirements have increased research has showed there is a gap between the content of the disclosed reports and companies’ actual sustainability activities. To create a reliable and transparent external sustainability report there is a need to take internal activities into account and collect data for reporting from internal management and control systems. Previous research has also recognised that sustainability needs to be a part of the corporate strategy in order to ensure that sustainability becomes a part of the business operations. In order to contribute to a deeper understanding of any deficiencies between the information provided in sustainability reports and the internal activities the aim of this study is to investigate and explain the implementation of environmental strategies in company’s management and controls system. Swedish companies operating in industries with a high environmental impact, the forest-, paper-, mining-, and steel industry, are selected as research objects in this study. A deductive method in combination with a hermeneutic method is applied. Management control systems, corporate sustainability strategy, legal requirements, the Global Reporting Initiative and accounting postulates form the theoretical framework. The empirical result shows there is a gap between the communicated environmental strategies and the implementation in the company management control system in each of the three industries. The result of the study raises questions regarding what the goal is for the communicated environmental strategies and to what extent the strategies are implemented. Another conclusion is that the companies in the three industries do not comply with the GRI framework, when reporting a limited number of environmental performance indicators. In addition, despite of a mandatory regulation for disclosing of non-financial information and the use of a common framework there is no common reporting standard for companies in the studied industries. External stakeholders need to have access to relevant non-financial information to assess companies’ impact on the environment. Current legislation and standard frameworks provide a high level of flexibility regarding what to report. In order to achieve a common standard this study shows a need to add a conceptual sustainable framework for accounting and reporting, enforcement mechanisms and regulated common standards to achieve a more transparent and reliable reporting practice

Unsupervised Contact Learning for Humanoid Estimation and Control

This work presents a method for contact state estimation using fuzzy clustering to learn contact probability for full, six-dimensional humanoid contacts. The data required for training is solely from proprioceptive sensors - endeffector contact wrench sensors and inertial measurement units (IMUs) - and the method is completely unsupervised. The resulting cluster means are used to efficiently compute the probability of contact in each of the six endeffector degrees of freedom (DoFs) independently. This clustering-based contact probability estimator is validated in a kinematics-based base state estimator in a simulation environment with realistic added sensor noise for locomotion over rough, low-friction terrain on which the robot is subject to foot slip and rotation. The proposed base state estimator which utilizes these six DoF contact probability estimates is shown to perform considerably better than that which determines kinematic contact constraints purely based on measured normal force.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 201

Recombinant Simian Varicella Virus-Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Vaccine Induces T and B Cell Functions and Provides Partial Protection against Repeated Mucosal SIV Challenges in Rhesus Macaques

HIV vaccine mediated efficacy, using an expanded live attenuated recombinant varicella virus-vectored SIV rSVV-SIVgag/env vaccine prime with adjuvanted SIV-Env and SIV-Gag protein boosts, was evaluated in a female rhesus macaques (RM) model against repeated intravaginal SIV challenges. Vaccination induced anti-SIV IgG responses and neutralizing antibodies were found in all vaccinated RMs. Three of the eight vaccinated RM remained uninfected (vaccinated and protected, VP) after 13 repeated challenges with the pathogenic SIVmac251-CX-1. The remaining five vaccinated and infected (VI) macaques had significantly reduced plasma viral loads compared with the infected controls (IC). A significant increase in systemic central memory CD4+ T cells and mucosal CD8+ effector memory T-cell responses was detected in vaccinated RMs compared to controls. Variability in lymph node SIV-Gag and Env specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell cytokine responses were detected in the VI RMs while all three VP RMs had more durable cytokine responses following vaccination and prior to challenge. VI RMs demonstrated predominately SIV-specific monofunctional cytokine responses while the VP RMs generated polyfunctional cytokine responses. This study demonstrates that varicella virus-vectored SIV vaccination with protein boosts induces a 37.5% efficacy rate against pathogenic SIV challenge by generating mucosal memory, virus specific neutralizing antibodies, binding antibodies, and polyfunctional T-cell responses

Preserving and memorialising relationships: exploring young people’s experiences of foster care through the lens of social capital

This article presents findings from research into how young people growing up in foster care in the UK manage the relationships in their social networks and gain access to social capital. It is a concept that highlights the value of relationships and is relevant to young people in care as they have usually experienced disruptions to their social and family life. Qualitative methods were used and the findings show that despite experiencing disruption to their social networks, the young people demonstrated that they were able to maintain access to their social capital. They achieved this in two ways. Firstly, they preserved their relationships, often through what can be seen as ordinary practices but in the extraordinary context of being in foster care. Secondly, they engaged in creative practices of memorialisation to preserve relationships that had ended or had been significantly impaired due to their experience of separation and movement. The article highlights implications for policy and practice, including the need to recognise the value of young people’s personal possessions. Furthermore, it stresses the need to support them to maintain their relationships across their networks as this facilitates their access to social capital