Getting out of the vicious traffic circle: attemps at restructuring the cultural ambience of the automobile throughout the 20th century

For years, alternative vehicle and propulsion concepts have had a very difficult time catching on, even though technicians and engineers have repeatedly pointed out that the design quality of electric propulsion systems or other novel vehicle concepts is available and feasible. Often enough, this state of affairs allowed free rein for various conspiracy theories, in which extraneous issues were made responsible for the lack of technological breakthrough. This paper agues, however, that innovation research has itself focused too narrowly on the process of the establishment of new products. On the basis of five case examples —the implementation of diesel engine propulsion for street vehicles; the EV1, the first electrically propelled standard car by General Motors; Ford’s prototype electric car study “Pivco”; the NSU Wankel engine; and the “Smart” car manufactured by DaimlerChrysler — an attempt is made to develop a comprehensive understanding of innovation processes which does not stop at the “technical invention” of a device. The thesis is that a new device requires a relevant cultural ambience, which must be more or less invented alongside it in multiple dimensions. Technical-constructive work is thus only one part of a successful innovation process; parallel to this, complementary measures must be taken with regard to the overall sectoral environment, law-making, user perceptions and attributions of meaning, as well as the cultural appropriation of a given device. Without the appropriate “adaptive measures”, even the most interesting technical projects runs the risk of sinking onto oblivion for lack of relevance. -- Alternative Antriebs- und Fahrzeugkonzepte tun sich in der Durchsetzung schon seit Jahren sehr schwer, obwohl immer wieder von Technikern und Ingenieuren darauf verwiesen wird, dass die konstruktive Qualität von elektrischen Antriebssystemen oder anderen neuartigen Fahrzeugkonzepten vorhanden sei. Oft genug konnten daher Verschwörungstheorien Raum greifen, in denen sachfremde Tatbestände für die fehlenden technischen Durchbrüche verantwortlich gemacht wurden. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass die Innovationsforschung selbst einen zu engen Blick auf die Prozesse der Etablierung neuer Produkte eingenommen hat. Anhand von fünf Fallbeispielen, der Durchsetzung des dieselmotorischen Antriebes für Strassenfahrzeuge, des EV1, des ersten elektrisch betriebenen Serienfahrzeuges von General Motors, der Konzeptstudie Pivco, einem Elektroautomobilprojekt des Ford-Konzerns, des NSU-Wankelmotors sowie des neuartigen Fahrzeugkonzeptes Smart wird hingegen versucht, ein umfassendes Verständnis von Innovationsprozessen zu entwickeln, das nicht bei der technischen Erfindung eines Gerätes halt macht. Die These ist, dass neue Geräte zur Durchsetzung am Markt auch einen entsprechenden Funktionsraum benötigen (cultural ambience), der mehrdimensional sozusagen immer gleich miterfunden werden muss. Die technisch-konstruktive Arbeit ist daher nur ein Teilbereich eines erfolgreichen Innovationsprozesses. Parallel müssen weitere Vorkehrungen im Branchenumfeld, bei der Gesetzgebung, bei den Nutzerperzeptionen und Bedeutungszuschreibungen sowie den kulturellen Aneignungsweisen vorgenommen werden. Ohne die entsprechenden Anpassungsmassnahmen droht auch den interessantesten technischen Projekten aus Mangel an Relevanz die Bedeutungslosigkeit.

Cell lineage analysis in humans

Delineating a cell’s history, where it came from and what has happened to it, can provide clues as to how tissues and organs are formed and function in the healthy state and in disease. The gold standard for tracing the relationships between cells and their progeny, is performed through prospective labeling with dyes or genetics tags. In this procedure, individual cells are labeled in order to track their clonal progeny at a later time point. These methodologies are, however, not applicable to study the composition of cell lineages in humans. Recently, the development of technologies for single cell sequencing has opened up the possibility to infer cell lineage relationships through the analysis of naturally occurring somatic mutations. During normal cell division, some new random mutations occur, forming an evolving barcode, which carries information about its developmental relationship to other cells. As such, the history of a cell is written in its genome, and every acquired mutation gets passed on to daughter cells. Shared somatic mutations may thus be used to trace backward across cell lineages, and the life history of an organism. The goal of this thesis is to explore the possibility of using genetic variation as cell lineage marks to compute the evolutionary history of human cells as they divide. This work involves the development of new experimental and analytical methods, and the application of these to study the origins and lineage relationships of human cell populations. The methods and results described here, are intended to provide a contribution towards future applications for cell lineage tracing in man

Journal Staff

Upprinnelsen till den rapport som du nu har i din hand är att det under några år har hållits en intern universitetspedagogisk konferens vid Linköpings universitet. Syftet med konferenserna har varit att stimulera universitetets lärare att skriva om sina pedagogiska erfarenheter och tankar. Ett antal utbildningar inom universitetet använder PBL och flera bidrag som diskuterar och belyser PBL har presenterats. Dessa har kommit att bli viktiga i den fortsatta utvecklingen av PBL. Nu har vissa av de tidigare rapporterna tagit slut och det har uppstått behov av att trycka dessa igen och då gärna i en samlad rapport. Den rapport som nu kommit till består alltså till stor del av tidigare presenterade bidrag. Rapporten har kompletterats med ett nyskrivet bidrag av Charlotte Silén och två bidrag som Charlotte skrivit i samband med forskarutbildningskurser. I rapporten finns också ett bidrag som  presenterats av Karin von Shilling på en PBL konferens 1995. Med denna design hoppas vi att rapporten ska kunna bli intressant både för den som vill skaffa sig en introduktion och för den som har erfarenheter av PBL och som vill skaffa sig idéer och perspektiv

Fans on the Road : Travel Preferences of Finnish Ice Hockey Supporters

The aim of this study is to find out about away trips that Finnish ice hockey supporters make within Finland. The idea is also to find out if destination cities of the trips could better benefit from traveling hockey fans. The study aims at finding the basic frame by which the fan organizations choose their destinations, the motives of those who participate and visitors' perceptions of services available at the destination ice halls. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used. Not many earlier studies about the topic exist. Literature about sport tourism concentrates mostly on people doing the sports themselves. Academic literature about sport fans, in turn, is usually about the psychological side of fandom. Several studies of Finnish ice hockey fans exist though. Also their point of view is often psychological. Many of Finnish studies are also only thesis-level works. Because of lack of earlier research about the topic, this work can be seen as a baseline research. Fan organizations choose their travel destinations mostly based on game schedule. Trips are mainly made to games played on Saturdays. On other days of the week the destination should be within a short distance. Distance to destination isn't very important on Saturdays unless the destination is very far away. Visiting fans don't spend much time at the destination city on a regular trip. Usually the fans enter the ice hall straight after stepping out of the bus and return soon after the game. However, overnight trips might interest the fans especially if the destination is far away. Previous experience about destinations also affects the choices fan organizations make. Most important reasons for participating in a trip are especially seeing the favorite team play and supporting the team. Traveling itself as a process isn't an important factor while making the decision to travel yet there could be interest to go on overnight trips more often than fans currently do. Also company affects travel decisions as people prefer going to games with friends or acquaintances. SM-Liiga ice halls seem to have all the different service types away trippers need. There's not much demand on a variety of services as visiting fans mostly buy just drinks of food. Supply of these services is good but visitors are less happy with quality, variety and price of the products sold. An important factor for game experience are the seating arrangements at the ice hall. They were found to correlate with happiness with overall game experience. Ice halls are considered safe and security works well. All in all visiting fans are happier with the service they receive at the ice halls than with the services itself. To improve their service in the eyes of visiting fans, the hosts should pay attention to variety of food and drinks and offer visitors seats that are suitable for their needs. Host organizations and local stakeholders could benefit from offering visiting fans moderately priced packages that could include for example transportation, game ticket, a meal and accommodation or some of these services. This way they could get visitors spend more money at the destination city and at the same time income would spread to a larger number of stakeholders.Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää yksityiskohtia SM-Liigan seurojen kannattajien vierasmatkailusta Suomen sisällä ja tutkia, voisivatko matkojen kohdekaupungit hyötyä vierasmatkailijoista nykyistä paremmin. Tutkimus pyrkii selittämään faniyhdistysten matkojen kohteiden valintaperusteet, matkalle lähtijöiden motiivit sekä vierasmatkalaisten kokemukset kohteen jäähallin palveluista. Käytössä ovat sekä kvalitatiiviset että kvantitatiiviset metodit. Aiheesta ei ole juurikaan aiempaa tutkimusta. Urheilumatkailuun liittyvä kirjallisuus keskittyy enimmäkseen itse urheilemaan lähteviin matkailijoihin. Urheilufaneista kertova akateeminen kirjallisuus puolestaan keskittyy vahvasti faniuden psykologiseen puoleen. Jääkiekkofaneista on tehty Suomessa muutamia tutkimuksia, joista monet ovat opinnäytetyön tasoisia. Aiemman tutkimuksen vähäisyyden vuoksi tämä työ voidaan siis nähdä perustutkimuksena. Faniyhdistykset valitsevat matkakohteensa pääosin SM-Liigan otteluohjelman perusteella. Matkoja tehdään pääasiassa lauantaina pelattaviin otteluihin. Muina viikonpäivinä matkakohteen tulisi olla lyhyen matkan päässä, jotta matka järjestetään. Kohdekaupungin etäisyydellä ei ole lauantaisin suurta merkitystä, ellei matka ole todella pitkä. Yleensä vierasmatkailijat eivät vietä käytännössä lainkaan aikaa kohdekaupungissa, vaan menevät suoraan bussista otteluun ja poistuvat takaisin bussiin pian ottelun jälkeen. Yön yli kestävät matkat olisivat kuitenkin kiinnostavia, etenkin, jos ne suuntautuvat pois lähialueelta. Myös aiemmat kokemukset kohteesta vaikuttavat matkakohteen valintaan. Matkalle lähdetään ennen kaikkea seuraamaan suosikkijoukkueen edesottamuksia sekä kannustamaan suosikkijoukkuetta. Itse matkustus ei sinänsä ole tärkeä tekijä lähtöpäätöstä tehtäessä, joskin mielenkiintoa nykyistä useammille yön yli kestäville matkoille saattaisi olla. Myös matkaseuralla on jonkin verran vaikutusta lähtöpäätökseen – matkaan on mukava lähteä ystävien tai tuttujen kanssa. SM-Liigan jäähalleista löytyy pääasiassa kaikki erityyppiset palvelut, joita vierasfanit kaipaavat. Tarvetta kovin monipuoliselle tarjonnalle ei edes ole, sillä enimmäkseen vieraskannattajat käyttävät vain juoma- ja ruokapalveluita. Näiden osalta tarjonta on määrällisesti kohdallaan, mutta laatuun, ruoan monipuolisuuteen ja hintaan ollaan vähemmän tyytyväisiä. Tärkeä asia ottelukokemuksen kannalta on vierashallin katsomojärjestelyt, joiden huomattiin korreloivan vierailijoiden tyytyväisyyteen ottelutapahtumaan. Jäähalleja pidetään turvallisina ja järjestyksenvalvontaa asiallisena. Kaiken kaikkiaan vieraskannattajat ovat tyytyväisempiä hallilla saamaansa palveluun kuin itse jäähallin palveluihin. Parantaakseen palveluitaan vieraskannattajien näkökulmasta ottelun järjestäjien tulisi kiinnittää huomiota ruoan ja juoman monipuoliseen tarjontaan sekä tarjota vieraskannattajille heidän tarkoitukseensa sopivat katsomopaikat. Seurojen ja paikallisten toimijoiden saattaisi kannattaa tarjota vieraileville faniryhmille edullisia matkapaketteja, jotka sisältäisivät esimerkiksi kuljetuksen, ottelulipun, aterian ja majoituksen tai joitakin näistä. Näin vierasmatkailijat kuluttaisivat kohdekaupungissa enemmän rahaa, joka samalla jakautuisi nykyistä useammalle palveluntarjoajalle

Parallel Business Models in Firms: Utilisation of Dynamic Capabilities in Their Management

Firms have begun to employ multiple business models in parallel to each other for achieving new ways of value creation, but the theoretical field is still lacking detailed understanding of the phenomenon to support managerial decision making. Dynamic capability theory has been suggested to be fruitful in explaining the behaviour of firms attempting to innovate through adopting additional business models, but currently the research field is missing studies that would analyse the relationship between parallel business models and dynamic capabilities from a systemic perspective with the specific empirical context in incumbent firms. The aim of this research was to analyse the development and portfolio interactions of parallel business models, and the effects of dynamic capabilities in their management. The research was conducted as a qualitative embedded case study, by using a deductive approach for theory development. Multiple embedded cases enabled assessing the replicability of the findings across them, and the embedded context allowed more generalisable findings to be made about the firm specific dynamic capabilities. The study followed a pragmatic research philosophy with exploratory purposes, to create understanding for sup-porting managerial decision making, even though the phenomenon is not yet fully under-stood in the theoretical field. Data collection included in-depth interviews of the key managerial personnel regarding both cases, and interview data was analysed by thematic analysis based on the theoretical background of this research. Results across cases were com-pared and discussed for building explanations about the phenomenon. Results show that business models create portfolio interactions regarding activity, re-source, and customer sharing within firms. The primary conflicts emerged from sharing of in-ternal critical resources and customer channels, and activity system connections increased the between complexity of the portfolio. Dynamic capabilities had a pivotal role in enabling the concurrent development, and they were utilised for enabling and moderating the inter-actions. Seizing capabilities were used for managing resource conflicts with solution harvesting and investing prioritisations in the presence of scarcity, and they allowed aligning the business practices and establishing activity system connections. Sensing capabilities were used to pace the resource usage according to external demands, and transforming capabilities allowed building and separating critical resources and sustaining balance between re-source flows. Transforming capabilities were used for controlling, guiding, and separating shared activity systems, and they allowed increasing the sharing efficiencies. The sharing conflicts regarding customer channels were mitigated through balancing their usage or over-riding them through transforming and seizing capabilities. Dynamic capabilities allowed the firm to develop its business model portfolio towards increased alignment. Findings of this study advance the literatures of dynamic capabilities about their effective mechanisms, and parallel business models by developing understanding about portfolio interactions. Increased value creation is possible through establishing parallel complementary business models, and dynamic capabilities can be utilised effectively in their management. Competing business models with low sharing of non-critical assets are recommended to be established in separate organisational structures, without dependencies with firm’s other business models. Further theoretical studies are required for strengthening the foundation of parallel business model and dynamic capability literatures. Empirical research should study the topics in different industry contexts, but also in the light of alternative theoretical lenses, such as strategic entrepreneurship

Förstelärarskap - En tidig analys

Med syftet att undersöka hur förstelärare i den svenska grundskolan upplevde och skapade mening i sin nya roll inom ramen för regeringens karriärtjänstreform genomfördes en kvalitativ studie med åtta förstelärare. Förstelärarna berättade om erfarenheter de gjort under sin första termin som förstelärare och intervjudatan analyserades tematiskt. Fyra teman togs fram: motivation, roll, otydligt uppdrag samt motstånd. Resultatet visar att förstelärarna i undersökningen drivs av ett engagemang för undervisningen och eleverna samt en önskan om att utvecklas i sin yrkesroll. Att förstelärartjänsten innebär högre lön samt en betydelsefull känsla av bekräftelse och uppskattning är anledningar till att de ser positivt på att de blivit förstelärare. En ytterligare anledning som framkommer är möjligheten att arbeta vidare med undervisning och delta i utvecklingen av undervisningen på sin skola. Det otydligt beskrivna uppdraget angavs som orsak till flera negativa effekter. Den nya rollen kan innebära en risk för minskat inflytande i kollegiet och upplevelse av ökad stress. Ansökningsprocessen för förstelärartjänsterna upplevdes omfattande och några deltagare kände motstånd mot att söka eftersom de var osäkra på vad de kunde bidra med. Några förstelärare vittnade om motstånd från kollegerna efter de tillträtt förstelärartjänsten i form av negativa kommentarer och avståndstagande

To design experiences of nature : an exploratorative design study on people’s relations to nature

Samhällets dualistiska attityd skiljer ofta människa från djur, stad från natur, stadsliv från naturliv, vilket gör att relationerna mellan människan och naturen är bristande. Världsbilden och värderingarna bygger bland annat på den naturkontakt som erbjuds i vardagslivet samt hur naturen kommuniceras. Direkta möten med och erfarenheter från natur kan bidra till goda relationer och förståelse för människans samexistens med omvärlden. Men de politiska ideal om friluftsliv som har dominerat sedan 50-talet, präglar vistelse i natur så att motiven begränsas till folkhälsa, självförverkligande eller tävling. Naturens egenvärde är allt för ofta underrepresenterat. Bortsett från den traditionella och organiserade vistelsen i natur finns alternativa förhållningssätt. Även estetiska och sinnliga upplevelser kan bjuda in till ekologisk läskunnighet och förståelse för miljöns relevans och makt över våran tillvaro. Det här arbetet experimenterar med människors sinnesintryck och vardagliga fokus för att erbjuda möten med och rikta uppmärksamheten till naturen. Metoder från konsten och teater har inspirerat till ett utforskande arbete om hur konstnärlig gestaltning kan påverka människors relationer till natur, med fokus på upplevelsen. Under arbetet utvecklades en metod som prövades i fyra olika landskap, för att undersöka essensen av upplevelser i natur. Därefter gestaltades och regisserades två konstnärligt utformade naturupplevelser i urban miljö. Fullskaliga skisser gjorde det möjligt att leva sig in i och diskutera hur kropp och sinne påverkas i mötet med de iscensatta naturupplevelserna och hur de bidrog till att uppmärksamma natur eller samtida förhållningssätt till natur. Arbetet är ett exempel på hur landskapsarkitekter konstnärligt kan gestalta och regissera tillfälliga landskap och upplevelser inspirerade av naturen. Förhoppningen är att experimenten kan bidra till emotionella upplevelser som främjar moralen kring naturen. En förhoppning är att de gestaltade naturupplevelserna kan utgöra en länk mellan människa och natur i staden, samt öppna upp för alternativ till det traditionella friluftslivet.The western worlds attitude to nature causes a profound lack in connection between humans and nature. There are tendencies that define humans as superior to nature, which means a hierarchical order where nature is controlled and used as a resource by humans. This leads to a dualistic approach that separates people from the nature. When planning for experiences in nature the motives often refer to public health, self-realization or sports in standardized recreational green areas. The ideals behind planning of Swedish outdoor recreation goes back to the 1950s and are rarely questioned. However, as an alternative to these conventional planning methods, this thesis discusses artistic approaches and sensory experiences to rebuild an emotional relationships to nature. Artistic experiences, such as dance, light or sound installations, can be communicative tools and affect multiple senses. It can open up for identification, deeper understanding and teach about ecological relationships, beyond verbal communication. Within performance this is explained as an architectonic environment or a storytelling that takes an audience through and experience, so that one reaches an immersive state of mine. Inspired by methods from land art and theatre that focus on exploring the essence of an experience, we use the concepts of dramaturgy and immersion as tools in an explorative study on how to use artistic design to affect and enhance people’s awareness. To be able to analyze and draw conclusions about what defines experiences a method was developed to study encounters with four different landscapes. The result of this thesis is two full scale sketches of temporary experiments that offer a connection with nature in an urban context. Using full-scale sketches enabled a discussion and presumptions about how both body and mind are affected in the encounter with experiences of artificial nature. The result of this thesis argues that aesthetic methods can be used to create emotional relationships to a certain phenomenon of environment. The experiments showed how landscape architects can contribute to an immersive experience that could enhance and improve our ethical and moral values. An aim has been to create a link between human and nature and to introduce alternative approaches in the planning of outdoor life