Untripped SUV Rollover Detection and Prevention

Untripped SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle) rollovers are dangerous and possibly lethal accidents. This thesis address some issues in the detection and prevention of untripped SUV rollovers. Before a rollover can occur, the wheels on one side must lose road contact. The wheel lift-off situation is chosen as the critical situation to be avoided. If wheel lift-off is prevented, then rollover is prevented as well. A new kinetic energy based measure, that indicates an imminent wheel lift-off, is introduced. This measure is used by a gain scheduled LQ (Linear Quadratic) controller to prevent wheel lift-off. The LQ-controller outputs the desired changes of the forces acting on the chassis. These force changes are mapped to braking and traction system commands by a control allocator. Three different control allocation approaches were evaluated, including a new convex optimization approach. The convex optimization approach seems to work well. The controller is capable of preventing wheel lift-off in the simulated test cases, and the results are promising

Clinical consequences of acrylic intraocular lens material and design: Nd:YAG-laser capsulotomy rates in 3 x 300 eyes 5 years after phacoemulsification

Background/aims To investigate the incidence of Nd:YAG-laser treatment for posterior capsular opacification (PCO) over a period of 5 years from phacoemulsification in an unselected population, comparing outcomes for three acrylic intraocular lenses (IOLs). Methods Retrospective longitudinal cohort study comprising 900 eyes. Three subgroups of 300 eyes, receiving the AR40, AR40e (Abbott Medical Optics, Santa Ana, California), or BL27 (Bausch andamp; Lomb, Rochester, New York) IOL respectively, were compared. Data on patient age, gender, IOL type, dates of cataract surgery, Nd:YAG-laser treatment and/or death, and visual acuities before/after cataract surgery/Nd:YAG-laser treatment were collected from five sources: cataract operation register, patient administration system, quality control system for cataract operations, Nd:YAG-laser treatment register and clinical patient records. Results 216 eyes (24%) received Nd:YAG-laser treatment over a 5-year period. Statistically significant differences (pandlt;0.001, chi(2) test) were found between treatment rates for the three IOLs: AR40 73 eyes (24%), BL27 91 eyes (30%) and AR40e 52 eyes (17%). Eyes of patients who died during the follow-up period had fewer treatments (23/266, 8.6%) than eyes of patients living (193/634, 30%) at the end of the follow-up period. Conclusion In comparison with a hydrophobic acrylic IOL with sharp posterior optic edge, a hydrophilic acrylic IOL was associated with almost twice the number of Nd:YAG-laser treatments over the 5-year period. The results are useful for discussing the economic long-term consequences of choosing an IOL with a design that makes PCO development more or less likely. Caution is advised when applying data from post-mortem PCO studies on living populations

Reasons for Reorganization of Software Application Hosting and its Connection to Resilience in Software and Processes

This paper suggests reasons why an organisation starts the process of reorganising software applications hosting and how these reasons are connected with resilience in software applications used and in business processes. The decision investigated is a sourcing decision process in a Swedish municipality. The main reason for starting the sourcing decision process was that the municipality needed to increase the control over software applications that were being used. This can be compared to centralisation versus decentralisation of hosting and the role it plays in delivering services 24 hours, seven days a week. It can be concluded that citizens would perform more of the services which the municipality's employees did before. This demands a higher level of resilience between software, processes and users in the future. This needed increase in resilience could be seen as a decisive factor for organisations to start a reorganisation regarding the hosting of software applications

Benzodiazepine and opioid dependence. Clinical and meta-analytical studies.

The thesis contains 4 papers, two clinical studies and two meta-analyses. In the BZD taper study (Paper I) 21 BZD dependent (DSM-IV) patients were included for a 10-day inpatient detoxification. The average defined daily dose (DDD) was 4.7 doses. Withdrawal symptoms were not more pronounced compared to more extended detoxification procedures reported in literature. Five patients, all with concomitant codeine dependence and a more pronounced BZD tolerance, dropped out after 2-3 days. In the dependence rate study (Paper II) the frequency of prescribed drug dependence among 130 alcohol dependent patients in open care, 23 long-term institutionalized alcoholics, and 120 healthy controls were analysed. Alcoholics were more often dependent on total prescribed drugs, BZD and zopiclone than healthy controls 17% versus 2%, 15% versus 1%, and 5% versus 0%. Institutionalized alcoholics had higher rates than outpatient alcoholics. 1/5 of the BZD dependent and 1/3 of the opioid dependent patients reported high tolerance, DDD > 4.0 of each drug. Common for the third and forth paper was the meta-analytical technique. In the methadone paper 8 RCT were included with 1,511 patients. In the naltrexone study 15 RCT were included with 990 patients. In the methadone review (Paper III) retention in treatment was higher (d=0.90), and opioid abuse and criminality was lower (d=0.61) and (d=0.35) respectively compared to controlled conditions. Type of study design (gradual detoxification, placebo or untreated controls) could explain some of the heterogeneity found. In the naltrexone review (Paper IV) naltrexone was significantly better than controlled conditions in reducing the number of opioid positive urines (d=0.44). If the retention level in the experimental group increased above a certain level naltrexone was also significantly better than the controls for difference in retention (d=0.31), craving (d=1.50), re-arrest (d=0.63), and success (d=0.43). Contingency management increased retention rate and naltrexone use resulting in a reduced number of opioid positive urines

Designing a Tool for Measuring IT Process Maturity in an Agile Development Context

This paper presents the design of a tool for recurring quantitative self-assessment of IT Service Management (ITSM) process maturity in an agile environment. Continual improvement of ITSM processes can be measured by performing a process maturity assessment, comparing the organization’s process performance against a best-practice reference set of processes. In this paper we report a project that has developed a quantitative measuring survey-based tool. The specific context for the research is a financial institution that has adopted agile development. This change brought on an increased need to monitor ITSM process performance, and a Design Science Research (DSR) project was launched to create an ITSM maturity assessment tool. The results show that a company-wide ITSM process maturity assessment can be established as a survey-based self-assessment, and that the aggregate scores from this self-assessment present a good indicator of the organization’s process performance, especially when complemented by a reference score. A key learning from the study is that the iterative DSR methodology made it possible to create a system that in good way measure ITSM process maturity

IS CAPABILITIES FOR ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION - FEENY-WILLCOCKS FRAMEWORK REVISITED

This paper discusses the need of IS capabilities when introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) from a suppliers\u27 perspective. This perspective is vital because of the lack of research and because suppliers of technology have extensive experience and influence during a customer\u27s adoption of RPA. RPA adoption requires developing a relationship consisting of internal and external actors with potential mutual benefits that will be further explored in this paper. For analysis, we revisit an existing framework by Feeny-Willcocks focused on critical core IS capabilities for exploiting new technologies. Therefore, the discussions presented in this paper will complement existing internal perspectives on the adoption of RPA. Our conclusions point towards the benefits of applying the suggested framework in an RPA context. The framework enables a systemic overview of essential organizational capabilities, relationships and dimensions when successfully exploiting RPA. The framework also assists in clarifying which capabilities are crucial and reveals necessary dependencies between them

Management of Information Systems Outsourcing: Challenges and Lessons Learned

To be successful in Information Systems (IS) outsourcing the necessity of better management practices has been pointed out.This research contributes to the knowledge base on management of IS outsourcing by addressing management of ISoutsourcing relationships. The research describes two cases of IS outsourcing relationships that differ in type of activityoutsourced, IS development versus IS maintenance and operation, and relationship composition. From the cases lessonslearnt are identified which with support from IS outsourcing literature are proposed as propositions for management of ISoutsourcing. It can be concluded that if the propositions, related to negotiation, communication and way of working, areadopted in an early stage they could contribute to successful IS outsourcing relationships. Another conclusion is that the ISoutsourcing management approach should not differ between type of IS activity outsourced, but rather reflect the nature ofthe IS activity; if it is a simple or complex activity

Critical Success Factors affecting Decision Support System Success, from an end-user perspective

In the history of DSS literature numerous of researchers have investigated the state of DSS and attempts have been made to develop an understanding for the role of certain critical success factors affecting the implementation success. However, the cumulative knowledge is in the literature suggested to be li-mited and regularly placing the end-user outside the centre of focus. This thesis have included these reporting and concen-trated on building a cumulative theoretical framework of IS re-search applicable to the field of DSS, starting from Wixom & Watson’s research model from 2001. Via a multi-method en-tailing the built up theoretical framework and two expert inter-views a research model was designed, which subsequently was tested and evaluated through a survey in order find the answer to which critical success factors that significantly affects end-users perceived net benefits of a DSS post-implementation. By analyzing the survey result, this study identified three factors that significantly affect end-users perceived net benefits, name-ly Data Quality, Problem Match and Support Quality. The the-sis finishes with a discussion and conclusion of how the find-ings can contribute to the field of research and practice, and how further studies can follow on where this thesis finishes

Relativism in the Cloud: Cloud Sourcing in virtue of IS Development Outsourcing - A literature review

Nowadays Cloud Computing and Cloud Sourcing is on the agenda in many organizations. Many Chief Information Officers (CIOs) that urge for alternatives to traditional outsourcing are interested in how they can take advantage from Cloud Computing, by sourcing Information Technology (IT) from the cloud. This paper provides an overview of the research direction of Cloud Sourcing in the IS field. A literature review based on selected papers from top Information Systems (IS) journals and conferences were conducted. Findings from the review indicate that the attention of Cloud Sourcing in IS literature has mainly been directed towards security and risk as well as adoption issues, and that Cloud Sourcing is claimed to be the next generation of outsourcing. Unfortunately, this is where this strong claim ends without any further evidence, which indicate that there is a need for more research on Cloud Sourcing, especially in the direction of investigating relationships and implications when organizations start using Cloud Sourcing

Sourcing motives behind sourcing decisions exposed through the Sourcing Decision Framework

There is no doubt that information systems (IS) are the backbone of today’s organizations. Having an initial inspection on sourcing motives in the financial sector it can be stated that resources used in development of information systems (IS) are seen as an important factor for sustained competitive advantage. However, it can be claimed that it depends to a high extent on the application of different sourcing modes. This leads us to a closer inspection on sourcing motives through selected case studies and the following research question: How can motives for sourcing options of IS-development be explained? The empirical investigation on sourcing decisions and the motives behind, in addition to a literature review on sourcing decisions and sourcing options ends in four propositions. These propositions are then used in tandem with the findings from the empirical data for initial development of the Sourcing Decision Framework (SDF). Ultimately, what is at stake here is our framework (SDF) that from the initial development and the first test has shown to be purposive and could be further developed to a useful framework for analyzing sourcing decisions and as a guiding tool for decision-makers when deciding on sourcing options for IS-development