Moisture safety strategy for construction of CLT structures in a coastal Nordic climate

To reduce the carbon impact of new buildings, wood is seeing increased use as a structural material. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated wood (glulam) elements allow the construction of multi-storey buildings. However, wood is vulnerable to moisture, especially when naked wood is exposed to weather during the construction process. This paper presents the moisture strategy employed during the construction of a four-storey CLT/glulam building in Trondheim, Norway. The building was constructed without the use of a weather-protective tent, requiring alternative protective measures. The construction of the main structure was scheduled to be as short as possible. Local protective measures were employed to protect the structure from rain and free water was removed after rain events. The project was closely supervised by the client, with particular care for moisture control. Moisture was regularly measured at 50 points throughout the building. No wooden surfaces were encapsulated until a wood moisture content below 15 weight-% was measured. The performance of the moisture strategy was evaluated using measurements of wood moisture, indoor climate, airtightness, and visual inspections. The wood moisture content quickly decreased as the building envelope was assembled, indicating that drying was well facilitated. In the first year after construction, gaps between the flooring and baseboards were observed, suggesting that the wooden elements have experienced some shrinkage. The moisture safety strategy is deemed to have been generally successful. The overall experiences were important in the development of new recommendations in the SINTEF Building Research Design Guides for CLT structures.publishedVersio

Intensity Control During Block-Periodized High-Intensity Training : Heart Rate and Lactate Concentration During Three Annual Seasons in World-Class Cross-Country Skiers

Purpose: To describe heart rate (HR) and blood lactate (Bla−) responses during high-intensity interval training (HIT) in a long-term block-periodized HIT regimen in world-class cross-country (XC) skiers. Methods: Data were collected in 14 world-class female XC skiers (aged 25 ± 5 years; body mass, 60.4 ± 6.5 kg; and maximal HR, 194 ± 8 beats · min−1) throughout three entire seasons. The HR and Bla− values were determined at the end of 572 intervals performed during 63 sessions and 17 HIT blocks utilizing different exercise modes: running, running with poles, and skiing (on-snow and roller ski) with classic and skating techniques. Results: The mean HR was 91 ± 3% of HRmax with a corresponding Bla− of 7.3 ± 2.1 mmol · L−1. The average HR and Bla− values were relatively similar across the different exercise modes, except for a lower HR (~90 vs. 92% of HRmax) for on-snow and roller ski classical skiing and lower Bla− values (5.9 vs. 7.0–7.8 mmol · L−1) for on-snow classical skiing compared to the other modes, both P < 0.05. An increase in HR and Bla− was observed from interval working periods 1 to 3 (90–92% of HRmax and 6.5–7.7 mmol · L−1) and further from 3 to 5 (92–93% of HRmax and 7.7–9.0 mmol · L−1), all P < 0.05. Conclusions: We describe long-term use of HIT-block periodization among world-class XC skiers who achieved target HR and Bla− levels in all six exercise modes employed. According to athletes and coaches, the key to successful blocks was intensity control to allow for high-quality HIT sessions throughout the entire HIT block.publishedVersionUnit Licence Agreemen

Non-respondents do not bias outcome assessment after cervical spine surgery: a multicenter observational study from the Norwegian registry for spine surgery (NORspine)

Background - The Norwegian registry for spine surgery (NORspine) is a national clinical quality registry which has recorded more than 10,000 operations for degenerative conditions of the cervical spine since 2012. Registries are large observational cohorts, at risk for attrition bias. We therefore aimed to examine whether clinical outcomes differed between respondents and non-respondents to standardized questionnaire-based 12-month follow-up. Methods - All eight public and private providers of cervical spine surgery in Norway report to NORspine. We included 334 consecutive patients who were registered with surgical treatment of degenerative conditions in the cervical spine in 2018 and did a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected register data and data on non-respondents’ outcomes collected by telephone interviews. The primary outcome measure was patient-reported change in arm pain assessed with the numeric rating scale (NRS). Secondary outcome measures were change in neck pain assessed with the NRS, change in health-related quality of life assessed with EuroQol 5 Dimensions (EQ-5D), and patients’ perceived benefit of the operation assessed by the Global Perceived Effect (GPE) scale. Results - At baseline, there were few and small differences between the 238 (71.3%) respondents and the 96 (28.7%) non-respondents. We reached 76 (79.2%) non-respondents by telephone, and 63 (65.6%) consented to an interview. There was no statistically significant difference between groups in change in NRS score for arm pain (3.26 (95% CI 2.84 to 3.69) points for respondents and 2.77 (1.92 to 3.63) points for telephone interviewees) or any of the secondary outcome measures. Conclusions - The results indicate that patients lost to follow-up were missing at random. Analyses of outcomes based on data from respondents can be considered representative for the complete register cohort, if patient characteristics associated with attrition are controlled for

Internet of Robotic Things Intelligent Connectivity and Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT) have developed rapidly in the past few years, as both the Internet and “things” have evolved significantly. “Things” now range from simple Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices to smart wireless sensors, intelligent wireless sensors and actuators, robotic things, and autonomous vehicles operating in consumer, business, and industrial environments. The emergence of “intelligent things” (static or mobile) in collaborative autonomous fleets requires new architectures, connectivity paradigms, trustworthiness frameworks, and platforms for the integration of applications across different business and industrial domains. These new applications accelerate the development of autonomous system design paradigms and the proliferation of the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT). In IoRT, collaborative robotic things can communicate with other things, learn autonomously, interact safely with the environment, humans and other things, and gain qualities like self-maintenance, self-awareness, self-healing, and fail-operational behavior. IoRT applications can make use of the individual, collaborative, and collective intelligence of robotic things, as well as information from the infrastructure and operating context to plan, implement and accomplish tasks under different environmental conditions and uncertainties. The continuous, real-time interaction with the environment makes perception, location, communication, cognition, computation, connectivity, propulsion, and integration of federated IoRT and digital platforms important components of new-generation IoRT applications. This paper reviews the taxonomy of the IoRT, emphasizing the IoRT intelligent connectivity, architectures, interoperability, and trustworthiness framework, and surveys the technologies that enable the application of the IoRT across different domains to perform missions more efficiently, productively, and completely. The aim is to provide a novel perspective on the IoRT that involves communication among robotic things and humans and highlights the convergence of several technologies and interactions between different taxonomies used in the literature.publishedVersio

LEARNING TEAMWORK IS NOT AN EVENT; IT’S A JOURNEY: IMPLEMENTING THE TEAMSTEPPS® TEAM TRAINING PROGRAM IN BACHELOR OF NURSING EDUCATION TO ENHANCE PATIENT SAFETY

Aim: The overall aim of the thesis was to implement a longitudinal team training intervention in bachelor of nursing education and describe students’ reactions to team training, explore changes in their attitudes toward teamwork, and describe how they experienced teamwork skills in practice. Methods: This thesis is based on three studies, using quantitative and qualitative methods. Study Ⅰ investigated the validity and reliability of the Norwegian version of the Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire (T-TAQ) when used in a sample of nursing students (n = 509). Data were analyzed via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Ⅰ). In study Ⅱ and Ⅲ a team training intervention was conducted in a cohort of nursing students over 26 months. In Study Ⅱ, attitudes to teamwork were measured using the TTAQ at baseline (T0) and after the passage of 10 months (T1) and 24 months (T2) in the intervention and control groups. A total of 295 students participated. Data were analyzed using inferential and descriptive statistics (Ⅱ). In Study Ⅲ, students’ team training experiences and their use of teamwork skills in practice were examined via focus group interviews (n = 22). Data were analyzed via inductive content analysis (Ⅲ). Main results: The Norwegian version of the T-TAQ has some potential to display reliable and valid answers when used in a sample of nursing students (Ⅰ). Nursing students who participated in the team training showed significantly positive attitudinal changes with regard to teamwork (Ⅱ). Students initially experienced team training as complex and theoretical, but team training gradually increased their awareness that the practical application of teamwork skills facilitates the sense of being a team member, while also enhancing learning and patient safety in clinical practice (Ⅲ). Conclusion: It is recommended that the Norwegian version of the T-TAQ be considered unidimensional when used in a sample of nursing students. Team training positively affects students’ attitudes toward teamwork. However, grasping the principles of teamwork and the relevance of team training requires repeated training. The use of teamwork skills enhances students’ experiences of belonging to a team, enhance learning and patient safety in clinical placements. Team training should be an integrated part of the bachelor of nursing program to enhance patient safety

Trygt, lærerikt og realistisk, både, ja og nei: en intervjuundersøkelse av hvordan intensivsykepleiere og studenter i videreutdanning i intensivsykepleie oppfatter å delta i full-skala simulering av akuttsituasjoner med fokus på teamarbeid

NORSK: Utvikling av avanserte pasientsimulatorer har vært enorm de siste ti årene. Full-skala simulering er en pedagogisk metode som blir stadig mer brukt i utdanning og fagutvikling. Den har vist seg å være en egnet metode til å trene på akuttsituasjoner og spesielt med fokus på teamarbeidet i akuttsituasjoner (CRM). Hvordan intensivsykepleiere oppfatter å øve på akuttsituasjoner med fokus på CRM trening er lite beskrevet. Hensikten med denne studien er å beskrive hvordan intensivsykepleiere og studenter i videreutdanning i intensivsykepleie oppfatter å delta i full-skala simulering med fokus på teamarbeid. Fem grupper med intensivsykepleiere og studenter i videreutdanning deltok i to scenarioer med ulike akuttsituasjoner. Fokusgruppeintervjuer ble brukt til datainnsamling. Analyse ble gjort ved hjelp av kvalitativ innholdsanalyse. Funnene i studien består av et tema og tre kategorier med tilhørende subkategorier. Tema var at det å delta i simuleringen var både trygt og utrygt, det var en læresituasjon, men oppfattes også som en test av seg selv, og det var også realistisk og kunstig på samme tid. Kategoriene var at informantene var spent på å vise egne prestasjoner, de oppfattet simuleringen som både utfordrende og lærerik. Situasjonen ble oppfattet som fremmed, og det var både realistisk og kunstig å delta i scenarioene. Funnene kan bidra til å gi økt forståelse for hvor kompleks full-skala simulering er, og vise mangfoldet i deltagernes oppfatninger. Funnene samsvarer med tidligere forskning. Forslag til videre forskning er å undersøke hvordan kunnskaper fra teamtrening bedre kan implementeres i praksis. Det vil også være interessant å få mer kunnskap om hvordan full skala simulering kan tilrettelegging for bruk i større grupper

User profiling for diverse user contexts

The amount of content available for consumption online is increasing tremendously. This make the job of recommender systems more important, and at the same time, more demanding. Context-aware recommender systems might be a solution to this problem. This work set out to discover user contexts dynamically by collecting contextual information from user actions and perform cluster analysis on the data collected. User interests are collected from user actions as well, and are sorted into groups based on the contexts discovered. These sorted interests are considered the users’ user profile. The user profiles are in turn used to recommend news articles based on the interests of the users, where the users can select what context to receive recommendations from. The results and evaluation of the system show that the approach used in this work is not very successful and adjustments are recommended to improve the results. The system designed and implemented in this work is only able to identify two very broad contexts based on user data

Lesing i samfunnsfag. Hvordan kan man arbeide med lesing som grunnleggende ferdighet i samfunnsfag for å styrke undervisningen?

Denne undersøkelsen tar utgangspunkt i problemstillingen ”Hvordan kan man arbeide med lesing som grunnleggende ferdighet i samfunnsfag for å styrke undervisningen?” For å forsøke å svare på dette spørsmålet laget vi tre utdypende forskningsspørsmål som tar for seg hvordan fokus på lesing som grunnleggende ferdighet påvirker samfunnsfagundervisningen, hvilke elementer ved lesing man bør ta hensyn til for å styrke samfunnsfagundervisningen og hvordan man kan arbeide med lesing i samfunnsfag med elever med spesielle utfordringer som for eksempel fremmedspråklighet. I undersøkelsen er det benyttet både kvalitativ og kvantitativ metode, gjennom intervju og spørreskjema. Empirien fra undersøkelsene ble behandlet og foretatt analyse av for å se etter interessante funn. Gjennom vår analyse fant vi ut at det er mange ulike faktorer som spiller inn på lærernes didaktiske valg i forhold til arbeid med lesing som grunnleggende ferdighet i samfunnsfag. Det viste seg også at mange lærere la stor vekt på ulike lesestrategier, for å øke elevenes lesemotivasjon og læringsutbytte av lesingen av samfunnsfaglige tekster. Studien ga også interessante funn i forbindelse med lesing og tilpasset opplæring, der lærerne beskrev arbeid med fremmedspråklighet, lærevansker og motivasjonsmangel