Choice of Law: A Well-Watered Plateau

De flesta stora företag använder idag ett affärssystem, för att exempelvis integrera olikafunktioner i verksamheten och automatisera affärsprocesser, vilket har bidragit till attmånga leverantörer har ökat försäljningsfokus mot mindre företag. Små företag inserockså behovet av affärssystem (Iskanius et al., 2009) och statistik visar även attanvändandet ökar i mindre företag (SCB, 2013). Små företag kan inte ses som mindreversioner av stora företag (Malhotra och Temponi, 2010; Welsh och White, 1981), dådessa skiljer sig i exempelvis striktare resursbegränsningar, vilket innebär attaffärssystemsprojekt också skiljer sig från de i stora företag. Av denna anledning är detviktigt för leverantörer att förstå vad som påverkar små företag underinförskaffningsprocessen av ett affärssystem. Denna rapport syftar till att, för småsvenska företag, identifiera faktorer som är avgörande för valet att införskaffa ettaffärssystem och undersöka hur dessa påverkar viktiga faktorer senare i processen.Utifrån en litteraturstudie och en inledande empirisk datainsamling ställdes en teori uppi form av hypoteser om hur avgörande faktorer i införskaffandeprocessens initieringsfaspåverkar viktiga faktorer under anskaffnings- och implementeringsfasen. Genom enfallstudiemetod, där sex företag som införskaffat ett affärssystem under de senaste årenundersöktes, analyserades och testades den framtagna teorin.Studiens resultat belyser vikten av inblandade personers befintliga kunskap, en faktorsom påverkar bland annat möjligheten att ta fram en genomtänkt kravspecifikation ochprojektets struktur. Vidare identifierades stora skillnader i inställningen till att förändraoch effektivisera verksamheten och en syn på resursbegränsningar som leder till attexempelvis otillräcklig tid avvaras för projektet. Trots att affärssystem i små företag oftaanvänds endast för ekonomi och ibland även logistik tyder undersökningen också på attinförskaffandet kan medföra ett stort värde genom ett effektivare arbetssätt.Most large companies today use an ERP system, for example to integrate differentfunctional areas of the organization and automate business processes. This has mademany suppliers increase their sales focus on smaller companies. These companiesrealize the need for ERP systems (Iskanius et al., 2009) and statistics also show that theusage is increasing in smaller companies (SCB, 2013). However, small enterprisescannot be seen as smaller versions of large companies (Malhotra and Temponi, 2010;Welsh and White, 1981) as these differ, for example in more stringent resourceconstraints, which means that ERP projects also differ from those of large companies.For this reason, it is important for suppliers and consultants to understand what affectssmall companies during the process of acquiring an ERP system. This report aims to, insmall Swedish companies, identify factors that affect the decision to acquire an ERPsystem and examine how these affect important factors later in the process.Based on a literature review and an initial empirical data collection, a theory wascreated in the form of hypotheses about how the determinants of the aquiring processinitialization phase affects important factors during the acquisition and implementationphases. Through a case study method, in which six companies that has acquired an ERPsystem in recent years were studied, the developed theory was analyzed and tested.Our results highlight the importance of the existing knowledge of involved persons, afactor that influences, for example, the ability to develop a good requirementsspecification and the project structure. Furthermore, we identified significantdifferences in the openness to changing and improving the work flow of the companyand a view of resource constraints that often leads to insufficient time being spared forthe project. Although ERP system in small enterprises often are used only for financialmanagement and sometimes logistics the study shows that the acquisition can add largevalue to the organization through more efficient work processes

On the non-linearity of the willingness to commute

Established analysis of labour market commuting are based on random choice models and gravity type models. In these models generalised transport costs are formulated as exponential or loglinear distance-dependent functions. This paper presents empirical observations that imply that time-distances influence the commuting behaviour in a non-linear way, such that the time sensitivity is much lower for very short and long distances, whereas intermediate distance display a high time sensitivity. This is explained in a model which is parametrised and estimated. The results are important for understanding and predicting commuter behaviour. It also helps to delineate space, as in classical traditions, into local, intra-regional, and extra-regional space.

Pacing Patterns of Half-Marathon Runners: An analysis of ten years of results from Gothenburg Half Marathon

ObjectivesEvery year over 40 000 runners complete Gothenburg Half Marathon, one of the world’s largest half-marathons. As participation in recreational races become more common among e.g., older people and those without extensive training experience, providing advice on how to plan the pacing during race is valuable and provide a safer, more positive experience, lessening the risk of over-straining, injury, or collapse.MethodsWe conduct a large-scale data analysis of 10 years (2011 – 2019) of publicly available results data (n=423 496). We calculate how many runners experience slowdowns >25% somewhere during the race, and how many avoid losing time on the second half. We investigate differences between runners depending on age, sex, and ability. Furthermore, we calculate the relationship between temperature on the race day with the average finishing times and proportion of runners who hit the wall each year.ResultsAmong recreational runners, men are about twice as likely to hit the wall compared to women, across all age groups and ability levels. Younger runners more likely to hit the wall than the middle-aged. In warmer years especially, more runners hit the wall, with a steeper increase among the men.ConclusionUsing only easily accessible publicly available results- and weather data, we see that most runners loose time on the second half and would have benefited from pacing advice, especially in warmer years. Our results can be used by race organisers to provide advice to participants based on e.g., the weather prognosis on the race day, as well as estimating need for medical assistance

Machine Learning of Pacing Patterns for Half Marathon

Every year over 40 000 runners participate in Gothenburg Half Marathon, one of the world’s largest half-marathons. Based on publicly available results data (423 496 entries) for ten years (2010 – 2019)1, we investigate machine learning models for two tasks: prediction of finishing times and identification of runners risking hitting the wall. Our models improve results over the current baseline on finish time prediction and manage to correctly identify many of the runners who later hit the wall, although it also misclassifies many who do not

Dynaflow ™ 48, a microfluidic chip solution for increasing throughput and data quality in patch-clamp-based drug screening

Ion channels are transm embrane proteins, found in virtually all cell types throughout the human body. Ion channels underlie neural communication, memory, behavior, every movement and heartbeat, and are as such prone to cause disease if malfunctioning. Therefore ion channels are very important targets in drug discovery. The gold standard technique for obtaining information on ion channel function with high information content and temporal resolution is patch-clamp. The technique measures the minute currents originating from the movement of ions across the cellular membrane, and enables determination of the potency and efficacy of a drug. However, patch-clamp suffers from serious throughput restrictions due to its laborious nature. To address the throughput problems we have developed a microfluidic chip containing 48 microchannels for an extremely rapid, sequential delivery of a large number of completely controlled solution environments to a lifted, patch-clamped cell. In this way, throughput is increased drastically compared to classical patch-clamp perfusion set-ups, with uncompromised data quality. The 48-microchannel chip has been used for the characterization of drugs affecting ligand-gated ion channels including agonists, antagonists and positive modulators with positive effects on both throughput and data quality.Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę

Swarm Bug Algorithms for Path Generation in Unknown Environments

In this paper, we consider the problem of a swarm traveling between two points as fast as possible in an unknown environment cluttered with obstacles. Potential applications include search-and-rescue operations where damaged environments are typical. We present swarm generalizations, called SwarmCom, SwarmBug1, and SwarmBug2, of the classical path generation algorithms Com, Bug1, and Bug2. These algorithms were developed for unknown environments and require low computational power and memory storage, thereby freeing up resources for other tasks. We show the upper bound of the worst-case travel time for the first agent in the swarm to reach the target point for SwarmBug1. For SwarmBug2, we show that the algorithm underperforms in terms of worst-case travel time compared to SwarmBug1. For SwarmCom, we show that there exists a trivial scene for which the algorithm will not halt, and it thus has no performance guarantees. Moreover, by comparing the upper bound of the travel time for SwarmBug1 with a universal lower bound for any path generation algorithm, it is shown that in the limit when the number of agents in the swarm approaches infinity, no other algorithm has strictly better worst-case performance than SwarmBug1 and the universal lower bound is tight.Comment: Accepted for IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Dec. 13-15, 2023, Singapor

Using Clustering in a Cognitive Tutor to Identify Mathematical Misconceptions

We have implemented an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) prototype for teaching multi-column addition and subtraction to children aged 5-10, using a digitalized version of the Montessori bank game exercises. An Intelligent Tutoring System is a piece of software that teaches a certain subject to its users, and that typically uses artificial intelligence related algorithms to personalize the educational process. Our Intelligent Tutoring System focuses on collecting erroneous input from the user and analyzing it using an experimental clustering algorithm in order to find common misconceptions. The system is based on the assumption that if there is a lot of user errors that are similar, they might correspond to a misconception. To find which errors are “similar”, we use clustering. An ITS like this could support teaching by making the students become aware of their misconceptions, so that they can overcome them. Normally, ITS use bug libraries to systematize misconception handling. A bug library is a collection containing information about possible errors, that can be used to help identify these errors when encountered. Creating bug libraries takes a lot of effort, and if they could be avoided, a typical ITS implementation would take considerably less time. While we found that we could identify some misconceptions of a computer player, the clustering approach needs to be generalized further in order to enable effective application on humans. We conclude that if this approach were to be explored more in detail, it could prove to be a viable alternative to the bug library

Light-Weight Techniques for Improving the Controllability and Efficiency of ISA-Level Fault Injection Tools

ISA-level fault injection, i.e. the injection of bit-flip faults in Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) registers and main memory words, is widely used for studying the impact of transient and intermittent hardware faults. ISA-level fault injection tools can be characterized by different properties such as repeatability, observability, reachability, intrusiveness, efficiency and controllability. This paper presents two pre-injection analysis techniques that improve controllability and efficiency using object code analysis. To improve controllability, we propose a technique for identifying the type of data that is stored in a potential target location. This allows the user to selectively direct fault injections to addresses, data and/or control information. Experimental results show that the data type of 84-100% of the targets locations in 8 programs were successfully identified by this technique. The second technique improves efficiency by fault pruning, i.e., by avoiding injection of faults that is known a priori to be detected by the tested system. This technique leverage the fact that faults in certain bits in the program counter and the stack pointer are always detected by machine exceptions. We show that exclusion of these bits from the fault space could significantly prune the fault space and reduce the time it takes to conduct a fault injection campaign

Control of Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) Engine Dynamics

The Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustionconcept lacks direct ignition timing control, instead the autoignition depends on the operating condition. Since auto ignition of ahomogeneous mixture is very sensitive to operating conditions, a fastcombustion timing control is necessary for reliable operation. Hence,feedback is needed and the crank angle of 50% burnt (CA50) has provedto be a reliable feedback indicator of on-going combustion inpractice. CA50 or other methods for detecting on-going cylinderpressure used in the feedback control of a HCCI engine all rely onpressure sensors. This paper presents a newcandidate for control of HCCI engine by using the electronicconductive properties in the reaction zone. This phenomenon is calledion current. This paper perform combustion timing control based on ioncurrent and compare it with control based on pressure sensor. Thecombustion timing control is performed on cycle-to-cycle basis and the engine is a one-cylinder version of a heavy duty engine equipped with a port injection system using dual fuels