Burkina Faso and Sweden - A discourse analysis of public politics in the field

This thesis analyse different understanding of the world how this leads to different actions with real consequences for people. In a public policy chain from the government of Sweden down to the field in Burkina Faso, civil servants have been interviewed in order to identify changes in discourses and what they may potentially mean. The use of qualitative data gives a deeper understanding of how individuals can affect the outcomes in a policy process, this is especially important in a multi factor environment with cross culture implementation like the field of development aid. The changes can be understood as results policy slippages and policy resistance among involved actors. The chain of potential policy changes can on an aggregated and looped cycle cause policy failures, which cannot easily be understood by normal evaluations. This thesis put forward the need for a discursive perspective in the different stages of a policy process in order to increase the efficiency the policy creation, implementation and evaluation and hence increase results and minimize costs

On the Capacity of the Wiener Phase-Noise Channel: Bounds and Capacity Achieving Distributions

In this paper, the capacity of the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, affected by time-varying Wiener phase noise is investigated. Tight upper and lower bounds on the capacity of this channel are developed. The upper bound is obtained by using the duality approach, and considering a specific distribution over the output of the channel. In order to lower-bound the capacity, first a family of capacity-achieving input distributions is found by solving a functional optimization of the channel mutual information. Then, lower bounds on the capacity are obtained by drawing samples from the proposed distributions through Monte-Carlo simulations. The proposed capacity-achieving input distributions are circularly symmetric, non-Gaussian, and the input amplitudes are correlated over time. The evaluated capacity bounds are tight for a wide range of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) values, and thus they can be used to quantify the capacity. Specifically, the bounds follow the well-known AWGN capacity curve at low SNR, while at high SNR, they coincide with the high-SNR capacity result available in the literature for the phase-noise channel.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Communications, 201

Warum die Gefährten des Odysseus nach dem Genuß von Lotos die Rückkehr vergaßen

Bakgrund: Som en följd av organisationernas förändrade behov och krav på mer flexibla lösningar har det blivit allt viktigare för företagen att på ett smidigt sätt hantera förändringar. Kvalitetsarbete är ett förfarande som allt mer har kommit att användas inom företag för att åstadkomma utveckling och engagemang för förändring. Kvalitetsarbete drivs vanligtvis för att höja kvaliteten på ett företags produkter. Arbetet är omfattande och påverkar personalen på olika sätt. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att dels undersöka fallföretagens mognadsnivå enligt CMMI skalan, dels undersöka hur kvalitetsarbete påverkar personalen i avseende på stress och konflikter. Genomförande: För att få reda på hur kvalitetsarbete påverkar personalen har vi intervjuat personer på tre företag med olika erfarenheter av kvalitetsarbete. Resultat: Våra resultat tyder på att personalen påverkas av kvalitetsarbete. Vi har i denna studie kunnat se tendenser att kvalitetsarbete påverkar personalen positivt i avseende på konflikter. Detta för att kvalitetsarbete tydliggör ansvarsfördelningar och därigenom minskar risken för uppkomsten av de konflikter som är av negativ karaktär. Däremot har vi i denna studie inte kunnat se att kvalitetsarbete resulterar i en minskad stress hos de anställda

Prediction of position errors for an industrial robot, using a model of the robot with parameters acquired from the clamping procedure

A robot should follow a given path as accurately as possible. There are however almost always deviations from the desired path, and when the deviations become too large it may be a problem. Some of the deviations stem from transmissions of the robot, and the deviations become more pronounced when there are process forces and gravitational forces present, that affect the transmissions. When position is measured and controlled on the motor side, characteristics of the transmission are not accounted for in the control of the robot, resulting in deviations from the desired path. There are also deviations from the desired path that stem from links of the robot, due to process forces and gravitational forces that affect the links. To predict the deviations that stem from the transmissions, models of the transmissions were developed and used. Models that should be able to predict the deviations that stem from the links were also developed. To acquire data about the characteristics of the transmissions of a robot, tailored experiments were performed. To acquire the data, the robot’s end-effector was locked to a stiff point in space, the robot’s motors were run, and the robot’s sensors were used to log the data. This procedure is known as a clamping procedure. The collected data were processed to derive parameters that were used in the models of the transmissions. The robot that was used was a KR 300 R2500 ULTRA, which is an industrial robot with six degrees of freedom. Simulations with the models of the transmissions were able to recreate the data from the clamping procedure with great accuracy. This shows that the models of the transmissions, with the parameters derived from the clamping procedure, capture characteristics of the robot, that are not taken into account in the control of the robot, which leads to deviations from the desired path. The next step, that is not a part of this thesis, is to use a model of the whole robot, that contains the models of the transmissions and the links, and to validate that the robot model can recreate the deviations from a given path that the robot takes

The Stockholm Study: Over 30 years’ Observation of the Effect of Oral Infections on Systemic Health

The Stockholm Studies are a series of investigations started in 1985 and still ongoing. Out of 105,798 inhabitants, aged 30 and 40 years and living in the greater Stockholm area in Sweden, 3273 subjects were randomly selected. Of them, 1676 were clinically examined focusing on oral health. The subjects were then followed up using national population and health registers in order to study associations between oral health parameters and systemic health outcomes and finally death. The 35 years of observation provides unique possibilities to analyze, for example, how periodontitis links to a number of systemic health issues. The results have consequently provided numerous new associations and confirmed earlier observations on how poor oral health is associated with heart diseases and cancer

Дополнительные критерии для дифференцировки в психоневрологической практике

ПСИХИАТРИЯПСИХИЧЕСКИЕ РАССТРОЙСТВАНЕВРОТИЧЕСКИЕ СОСТОЯНИЯШИЗОФРЕНИЯЭПИЛЕПСИ

The Stockholm Study: Over 30 years’ Observation of the Effect of Oral Infections on Systemic Health

The Stockholm Studies are a series of investigations started in 1985 and still ongoing. Out of 105,798 inhabitants, aged 30 and 40 years and living in the greater Stockholm area in Sweden, 3273 subjects were randomly selected. Of them, 1676 were clinically examined focusing on oral health. The subjects were then followed up using national population and health registers in order to study associations between oral health parameters and systemic health outcomes and finally death. The 35 years of observation provides unique possibilities to analyze, for example, how periodontitis links to a number of systemic health issues. The results have consequently provided numerous new associations and confirmed earlier observations on how poor oral health is associated with heart diseases and cancer

The Stockholm Study : Over 30 years' Observation of the Effect of Oral Infections on Systemic Health

The Stockholm Studies are a series of investigations started in 1985 and still ongoing. Out of 105,798 inhabitants, aged 30 and 40 years and living in the greater Stockholm area in Sweden, 3273 subjects were randomly selected. Of them, 1676 were clinically examined focusing on oral health. The subjects were then followed up using national population and health registers in order to study associations between oral health parameters and systemic health outcomes and finally death. The 35 years of observation provides unique possibilities to analyze, for example, how periodontitis links to a number of systemic health issues. The results have consequently provided numerous new associations and confirmed earlier observations on how poor oral health is associated with heart diseases and cancer.Peer reviewe

Turbulence observations on soundings balloons: geophysical Interpretations based on instrumental revisions

Turbulence is of fundamental importance for energy transport in the atmosphere. In this work, several severe instrumental effects on turbulence measurements from sounding balloons are investigated. They are circumvented with the new LITOS version that has been developed and tested against another instrument in the course of this thesis. Furthermore, LITOS is used for two geophysical case studies: First, we investigate turbulence generation by wave breaking. Second, we interpret a measurement where small-scale turbulence influences large-scale weather patterns around the jet stream.Turbulenz ist von fundamentaler Bedeutung für den Energietransport in der Atmosphäre. In dieser Arbeit werden wichtige instrumentelle Effekte von ballongestützten Turbulenzmessungen untersucht. Die neue, im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entwickelte und vergleichend getestete Version des LITOS-Instruments umgeht diese Beeinflussungen. Des Weiteren wird LITOS für zwei geophysikalische Fallstudien genutzt: Erstens untersuchen wir Turbulenzentstehung durch Wellenbrechen. Zweitens interpretieren wir eine Messung, bei der kleinskalige Turbulenzen großskalige Wettergeschehen am Jet-Stream beeinflussen

Gender-Specific Adverse Effects of Mono-Ethylhexyl Phthalate on Steroidogenesis in Immature Granulosa Cells and Rat Leydig cell Progenitors in vitro

Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, one of the phthalates most widely distributed in the environment, causes reproductive toxicity that is attributable to the action of its primary metabolite, mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP). Here, we have investigated the effects of MEHP on steroidogenesis by primary cultures of rat Leydig cell progenitors and immature granulosa cells. This phthalate stimulated basal steroidogenesis and steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) expression in both types of steroidogenic cells. However, when MEHP was incubated with (Bu)2cAMP, steroid production was increased in granulosa cells and suppressed in Leydig cell progenitors, a process associated with up-regulation of StAR expression. Our data suggest that MEHP exerts gender-specific adverse effects on the hormonal function of the developing gonads. This may be involved in the development of pathological conditions including disorders of prenatal sex development that may attenuate future reproductive health