Who rules the rules?

How pupils are to learn a second or a foreign language, especially grammatical elements, has been much debated the last couple of decades. This study is a qualitative analysis of teaching materials published between 1966 and 2007, used when teaching English in Swedish schools. The focus is on grammar exercises and the grammatical element relative pronouns. The exercises devoted to relative pronouns are analysed and contrasted in connection with the steering documents published in the early sixties (Lgr -60), the early eighties (Lgr -80) and the ones used today (Lpo -94). Results in short show that the exercises look roughly the same with introductory example sentences and so called fill-in-the-gaps exercises. The teaching materials, except one, use an inductive approach to grammar and the closer we get to the new millennium the more contrastive the exercises and explanations get

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

Jet Reconstruction and Graph Neural Networks in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Masteroppgave i fysikkPHYS399MAMN-PHY

Influence of Material Characteristics on Warp In Norway Spruce Studs

The aim of this study was to find parameters that cause warp. The study comprised 190 studs (45 X 95 X 2500 mm) of Norway spruce (Picea abies) from Sweden. Warp was measured five times in different moisture conditions. A number of parameters were registered on the studs, for example, average distance from the pith, grain angle, amount of juvenile wood, ring width, compression wood distribution on the surfaces, knots, cracks, wane, density, and modulus of elasticity. Grain angle and annual ring curvature were found to explain 73% of the variation in twist. Bow and crook were not possible to explain with statistical models. However, the distribution of compression wood on the surfaces of the studs could most often reveal the direction of bow and crook

Analyzing Communication Media and Actions - Extending and Evaluating the Business Action Matrix

In this paper we analyse how different communication media affect, restrict and facilitate business actions. This paper aims to attain a further understanding of what consequences decisions about offering or relinquishing a certain medium would have for the company and its customers. We are also interested in finding feasible ways to make such analyses of business actions and communication media. For this purpose, we use a business action matrix to analyse three kinds of business actions in a Swedish mail order company. The studied business actions are placing orders, posing questions and making complaints. This is an important field to study since in distance selling companies, the more or less innovative communication media must be carefully evaluated from both the customers’ and the company’s point of view. Used in the right way, the business communication media might lead to a well-functioning customer communication, which facilitates closer customer relationships, customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Used in an ad-hoc manner, without a proper communication media strategy, the company might lose its chance to offer media that satisfy both the customers’ and the company’s needs. In the paper we discuss what makes the business action matrix a useful tool for analyzing a company’s communication media portfolio

Communication Media in Distance Selling

This paper focuses on communication media offered by distance selling companies. It also concentrates on possible as well as feasible business actions for customers to conduct through these media. The analysis distinguishes between communicative and material business actions. We examine the benefits of this separation when conducting business analysis in settings where there is a physical distance between the selling company and its customers. The paper also stresses the usefulness of focusing on both generic phases of the business interaction, and communicative and material business actions conducted within each phase. As a result of the study, a business action matrix is introduced to analyse different dimensions of business interactions and media

Global asymmetry of many-qubit correlations: A lattice gauge theory approach

We introduce a novel bridge between the familiar gauge field theory approaches used in many areas of modern physics such as quantum field theory and the SLOCC protocols familiar in quantum information. Although the mathematical methods are the same the meaning of the gauge group will be different. The measure we introduce, `twist', is constructed as a Wilson loop from a correlation induced holonomy. The measure can be understood as the global asymmetry of the bipartite correlations in a loop of three or more qubits; if the holonomy is trivial (the identity matrix), the bipartite correlations can be globally untwisted using general local qubit operations, the gauge group of our theory, which turns out to be the group of Lorentz transformations familiar from special relativity. If it is not possible to globally untwist the bipartite correlations in a state globally using local operations, the twistedness is given by a non-trivial element of the Lorentz group, the correlation induced holonomy. We provide several analytical examples of twisted and untwisted states for three qubits, the most elementary non-trivial loop one can imagine.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, title changed, results and content remain unchange

Mapping colors from paintings to tapestries: Rejuvenating the faded colors in tapestries based on colors in reference paintings

We addressed the problem of recovering or "rejuvenating" colors in a faded tapestry (the target image) by automatically mapping colors from digital images of the reference painting or cartoon (the source image). We divided the overall computational challenge into several subproblems, and implemented their solutions in Matlab: 1) quantizing the colors in both the tapestry and the referent painting, 2) matching corresponding regions in the works based on spatial location, area and color, 3) mapping colors from regions in the source image to corresponding regions in the target image, and 4) estimating the fading of colors and excluding color mapping of areas where color has not faded. There are a number of semi-global design parameters in our algorithm, which we currently set by hand, for instance the parameter that balance the effects of 1) matching color areas in the two images and 2) matching the spatial locations between the two images. We demonstrated our method on synthetic data and on small portions of 16th-century European tapestries of cultural patrimony. Our first steps in a proof-of-concept work suggest that future refinements to our method will lead to a software tool of value to art scholars

Swedish Foreign Direct Investments in Countries Transitioning into Stabilisation

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse how and why Swedish companies choose to enter a country transitioning into stabilisation. With a qualitative, abductive approach the thesis aims at an analytical generalisation. The explorative nature of the paper is made with a multi-case study. The empirical data was generated by interviews. The theoretical framework is the foundation, which the authors aimed at extending. From the analysis two modified models of the existing theories could be formed. The first links various entry strategies flexibly to each other, instead of the existing, rigid model. It was concluded that the most appropriate entry mode is through Greenfield investments. The second modified model is the prominent OLI-framework, which was extended with an additional aspect, Network of Contacts