Efforts to improve attractiveness of lower level engineering education

There are nine study programmes awarding the degree bachelor in engineering (högskoleingenjör) at the University of Gävle. Some of these have only a few applicants, even though the graduates are appreciated by a relatively large regional primary and secondary sector industry. A major revision of the programmes is planned. One objective is to increase the attractiveness of the programmes. In the revised programmes, students are proposed to study most courses together during the first year of study, even if they belong to different engineering specializations. This is intended to improve the study environment. Students in programmes with low numbers of applicants will become part of a richer and livelier student collective. However, the attractiveness could further be problematized by asking to whom higher education is attractive. A special focus will be on increasing the admission of students from groups in society that have been underrepresented in higher education. More specifically this may be linked to individual factors such as the educational level of parents, family income, immigrational background and geography. There may also be societal explanations in traditions of gendered professions. Engineering programmes, and especially some of the specializations at the university, are dominated by male students. This study focuses on how universities can take action to further increase the attractiveness of the engineering programmes, with a special regard to groups that are known to be underrepresented among the students

Science at the Amusement Park

What is up? What is down? What is a straight line? With beating heart we face the unusual movements. An amusement park is a large hands-on physics laboratory, full of rotating coordinate systems, free-falling bodies and vector additions. It gives ample opportunity to experience Newton's laws with eyes, hands and body. The amusement park Liseberg in Göteborg is the largest amusement park of Scandinavia. It has long physics traditions - Albert Einstein gave a talk at Liseberg in 1923! Liseberg has many rides well suited for physics investigations, using simple equipment, as well as electronic accelerometers. Some investigations can easily be adapted to the local playground. The heartbeat responds in different ways, both to the various accelerations and rotations of the body, but also to the thrill when in the queue. It can be monitored with electrodes on the body and the signal sent down to ground to be viewed in real-time by the classmates

A novel deep learning-based point-of-care diagnostic method for detecting Plasmodium falciparum with fluorescence digital microscopy

Background Malaria remains a major global health problem with a need for improved field-usable diagnostic tests. We have developed a portable, low-cost digital microscope scanner, capable of both brightfield and fluorescence imaging. Here, we used the instrument to digitize blood smears, and applied deep learning (DL) algorithms to detect Plasmodium falciparum parasites. Methods Thin blood smears (n = 125) were collected from patients with microscopy-confirmed P. falciparum infections in rural Tanzania, prior to and after initiation of artemisinin-based combination therapy. The samples were stained using the 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole fluorogen and digitized using the prototype microscope scanner. Two DL algorithms were trained to detect malaria parasites in the samples, and results compared to the visual assessment of both the digitized samples, and the Giemsa-stained thick smears. Results Detection of P. falciparum parasites in the digitized thin blood smears was possible both by visual assessment and by DL-based analysis with a strong correlation in results (r = 0.99, p <0.01). A moderately strong correlation was observed between the DL-based thin smear analysis and the visual thick smear-analysis (r = 0.74, p <0.01). Low levels of parasites were detected by DL-based analysis on day three following treatment initiation, but a small number of fluorescent signals were detected also in microscopy-negative samples. Conclusion Quantification of P. falciparum parasites in DAPI-stained thin smears is feasible using DL-supported, point-of-care digital microscopy, with a high correlation to visual assessment of samples. Fluorescent signals from artefacts in samples with low infection levels represented the main challenge for the digital analysis, thus highlighting the importance of minimizing sample contaminations. The proposed method could support malaria diagnostics and monitoring of treatment response through automated quantification of parasitaemia and is likely to be applicable also for diagnostics of other Plasmodium species and other infectious diseases.Peer reviewe

A search for leptoquarks with the ATLAS detector and hardware tracking at the High-Luminosity LHC

This thesis presents a search for pair-production of scalar leptoquarks, decaying into third-generation particles, using proton-proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and recorded by the ATLAS detector. It also presents the development of a hardware track trigger for the Phase-II upgrade of the ATLAS experiment. The search for pair-production of leptoquarks is performed using data collected by the ATLAS detector in 2015 and 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The total integrated luminosity of this data set amounts to 36.1 fb−1 . The search sensitivity is optimized for up-type leptoquarks where both leptoquarks decay to a b-quark and a τ -lepton. However, it also proves sensitive to down-type leptoquarks where both leptoquarks decay to a top-quark and a τ -lepton. The data is found to be compatible with the Standard Model, so exclusion limits are set on the leptoquark mass. After the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC, the ATLAS detector faces a 5–7 times increase in the number of simultaneous proton-proton collisions. To benefit from this increase in luminosity, the ATLAS detector has to maintain low trigger thresholds while keeping manageable trigger rates. A crucial part of the solution is the development of Hardware Tracking for the Trigger (HTT). The HTT first selects hit clusters in the inner tracking detector using associative memories and uses the selected clusters to perform linearized track-fits. This thesis presents the HTT system with focus on using the Hough transform as an alternative to associative memories to select clusters in the inner detector. The performance of the Hough transform is studied and a hardware implementation is discussed

The design and simulated performance of a fast Level 1 track trigger for the ATLAS High Luminosity Upgrade

The ATLAS experiment at the High Luminosity LHC will face a fivefold increase in the number of interactions per bunch crossing relative to the ongoing Run 2. This will require a proportional improvement in rejection power at the earliest levels of the detector trigger system, while preserving good signal efficiency. One critical aspect of this improvement will be the implementation of precise track reconstruction, through which sharper trigger turn-on curves can be achieved, and b-tagging and tau-tagging techniques can in principle be implemented. The challenge of such a project comes in the development of a fast, custom electronic device integrated in the hardware based first trigger level of the experiment. This article will discuss the requirements, architecture and projected performance of the system in terms of tracking, timing and physics, based on detailed simulations. Studies are carried out using data from the strip subsystem only or both strip and pixel subsystems

A search for leptoquarks with the ATLAS detector and hardware tracking at the High-Luminosity LHC

This thesis presents a search for pair-production of scalar leptoquarks, decaying into third-generation particles, using proton-proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and recorded by the ATLAS detector. It also presents the development of a hardware track trigger for the Phase-II upgrade of the ATLAS experiment. The search for pair-production of leptoquarks is performed using data collected by the ATLAS detector in 2015 and 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The total integrated luminosity of this data set amounts to 36.1 fb−1 . The search sensitivity is optimized for up-type leptoquarks where both leptoquarks decay to a b-quark and a τ -lepton. However, it also proves sensitive to down-type leptoquarks where both leptoquarks decay to a top-quark and a τ -lepton. The data is found to be compatible with the Standard Model, so exclusion limits are set on the leptoquark mass. After the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC, the ATLAS detector faces a 5–7 times increase in the number of simultaneous proton-proton collisions. To benefit from this increase in luminosity, the ATLAS detector has to maintain low trigger thresholds while keeping manageable trigger rates. A crucial part of the solution is the development of Hardware Tracking for the Trigger (HTT). The HTT first selects hit clusters in the inner tracking detector using associative memories and uses the selected clusters to perform linearized track-fits. This thesis presents the HTT system with focus on using the Hough transform as an alternative to associative memories to select clusters in the inner detector. The performance of the Hough transform is studied and a hardware implementation is discussed