Studies of Design and Assembly Defects on Integrated and Modular Architectures

It is known that despite companies’ efforts to improve the quality of their products, design and assembly defects results in large repair costs both in terms of repair and providing feedback to the origin of the defect. The purpose of this paper is to study these types of defects and the defect rates in design and assembly. The paper presents a web based questionnaire answered by 29 companies. The result shows that the defect rate (defects per product) spanned from 0.01 to 10. Also, design and assembly defects covered 46%, 23% respectively, of all occurred defects. A case study is also presented, performed at a company who recently implemented a modular architecture. In this company, defects from 5 700 integrated product architectures are compared with defects from 431 modular architectures. The average defect rate increased by 21.5% – from 0.65 to 0.79 – when a more modular architecture has been implemented. Furthermore, the study showed that the assembly defects have decreased while the design defects increased. The results presented in this paper will also support the development of the MPV (Module Property Verification) method which is briefly described.

Fan Culture as an Informal Learning Environment : Presentation of a NGL project

Fan culture is a subculture that has developed explosively on the internet over the last decades. Fans are creating their own films, translations, fiction, fan art, blogs, role play and also various forms that are all based on familiar popular culture creations like TV-series, bestsellers, anime, manga stories and games. In our project, we analyze two of these subculture genres, fan fiction and scanlation. Amateurs, and sometimes professional writers, create new stories by adapting and developing existing storylines and characters from the original. In this way, a "network" of texts occurs, and writers step into an intertextual dialogue with established writers such as JK Rowling (Harry Potter) and Stephanie Meyer (Twilight). Literary reception and creation then merge into a rich reciprocal creative activity which includes comments and feedback from the participators in the community. The critical attitude of the fans regarding quality and the frustration at waiting for the official translation of manga books led to the development of scanlation, which is an amateur translation of manga distributed on the internet.  Today, young internet users get involved in conceptual discussions of intertextuality and narrative structures through fan activity. In the case of scanlation, the scanlators practice the skills and techniques of translating in an informal environment. This phenomenon of participatory culture has been observed by scholars and it is concluded that they contribute to the development of a student’s literacy and foreign language skills. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the fandom related to Japanese cultural products such as manga, anime and videogames is one of the strong motives for foreign students to start learning Japanese. This is something to take into pedagogical consideration when we develop web-based courses. Fan fiction and fan culture make it ​​possible to have an intensive transcultural dialogue between participators throughout the world and is of great interest when studying the interaction between formal and informal learning that puts the student in focus

Mobile systems for monitoring Parkinson's disease

A challenge for the clinical management of Parkinson's disease (PD) is the large within- and between-patient variability in symptom profiles as well as the emergence of motor complications which represent a significant source of disability in patients. This thesis deals with the development and evaluation of methods and systems for supporting the management of PD by using repeated measures, consisting of subjective assessments of symptoms and objective assessments of motor function through fine motor tests (spirography and tapping), collected by means of a telemetry touch screen device. One aim of the thesis was to develop methods for objective quantification and analysis of the severity of motor impairments being represented in spiral drawings and tapping results. This was accomplished by first quantifying the digitized movement data with time series analysis and then using them in data-driven modelling for automating the process of assessment of symptom severity. The objective measures were then analysed with respect to subjective assessments of motor conditions. Another aim was to develop a method for providing comparable information content as clinical rating scales by combining subjective and objective measures into composite scores, using time series analysis and data-driven methods. The scores represent six symptom dimensions and an overall test score for reflecting the global health condition of the patient. In addition, the thesis presents the development of a web-based system for providing a visual representation of symptoms over time allowing clinicians to remotely monitor the symptom profiles of their patients. The quality of the methods was assessed by reporting different metrics of validity, reliability and sensitivity to treatment interventions and natural PD progression over time. Results from two studies demonstrated that the methods developed for the fine motor tests had good metrics indicating that they are appropriate to quantitatively and objectively assess the severity of motor impairments of PD patients. The fine motor tests captured different symptoms; spiral drawing impairment and tapping accuracy related to dyskinesias (involuntary movements) whereas tapping speed related to bradykinesia (slowness of movements). A longitudinal data analysis indicated that the six symptom dimensions and the overall test score contained important elements of information of the clinical scales and can be used to measure effects of PD treatment interventions and disease progression. A usability evaluation of the web-based system showed that the information presented in the system was comparable to qualitative clinical observations and the system was recognized as a tool that will assist in the management of patients.

qtl.outbred: Interfacing outbred line cross data with the R/qtl mapping software

Background qtl.outbred is an extendible interface in the statistical environment, R, for combining quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping tools. It is built as an umbrella package that enables outbred genotype probabilities to be calculated and/or imported into the software package R/qtl. Findings Using qtl.outbred, the genotype probabilities from outbred line cross data can be calculated by interfacing with a new and efficient algorithm developed for analyzing arbitrarily large datasets (included in the package) or imported from other sources such as the web-based tool, GridQTL. Conclusion qtl.outbred will improve the speed for calculating probabilities and the ability to analyse large future datasets. This package enables the user to analyse outbred line cross data accurately, but with similar effort than inbred line cross data.

"Dare to share!" : Bikt, moderskap och motstånd i Den stora mammabikten

”Dare to share!”: Confession, motherhood and resistance in The great mother confession This article explore the meaning of confession in a commercial, secular event – The great mother confession (TGM). The event is understood as imbedded in a therapeutic culture where emotional disclosure, in the form of confessions, is a highly valued practice. In a web-based confession-blog that constitutes part of the TGM-concept, confessions serve to free mothers from supressing norms. The blog becomes an arena for a volatile community where burdening and ”forbidden” thoughts and emotions becomes generalised and disarmed, releasing mothers from guilt. When this function of the blog is questioned from a competing sub-discourse of the therapeutic, emphasising the disclosure of happiness, a struggle emerges over the authority to define the meanings of confession. TGM can be understood as having potential for serving as an arena for challenging norms, but even as norms are implicitly addressed the practice makes a halt at that point. Norms that are seemingly dissolved in responses to confessions are not questioned, only recognised, normalised and de-politicised.

Building a Learning Architecture : e-Learning and e-Services

With the rapid advancement of the webtechnology, more and more educationalresources, including software applications forteaching/learning methods, are available acrossthe web, which enables learners to access thelearning materials and use various ways oflearning at any time and any place. Moreover,various web-based teaching/learning approacheshave been developed during the last decade toenhance the capability of both educators andlearners. Particularly, researchers from bothcomputer science and education are workingtogether, collaboratively focusing ondevelopment of pedagogically enablingtechnologies which are believed to improve theinfrastructure of education systems andprocesses, including curriculum developmentmodels, teaching/learning methods, managementof educational resources, systematic organizationof communication and dissemination ofknowledge and skills required by and adapted tousers. Despite of its fast development, however,there are still great gaps between learningintentions, organization of supporting resources,management of educational structures,knowledge points to be learned and interknowledgepoint relationships such as prerequisites,assessment of learning outcomes, andtechnical and pedagogic approaches. Moreconcretely, the issues have been widelyaddressed in literature include a) availability andusefulness of resources, b) smooth integration ofvarious resources and their presentation, c)learners’ requirements and supposed learningoutcomes, d) automation of learning process interms of its schedule and interaction, and e)customization of the resources and agilemanagement of the learning services for deliveryas well as necessary human interferences.Considering these problems and bearing in mindthe advanced web technology of which weshould make full use, in this report we willaddress the following two aspects of systematicarchitecture of learning/teaching systems: 1)learning objects – a semantic description andorganization of learning resources using the webservice models and methods, and 2) learningservices discovery and learning goals match foreducational coordination and learning serviceplanning.

Kravsammanställning samt utvärdering avbildvisningsprogramför diagnostik inom telepatologi : En fallstudiemed SIV-metoden som tillvägagångssätt

De flesta har i sin närhet någon som drabbats av cancer och sjukdomsfallen har ökat genom åren. Den yrkesgrupp som ställer diagnos av denna sjukdom är patologer. Bristen på patologer är idagsläget stor och det finns därför ett behov av att finna effektiva lösningar för att möta denna brist och en ökande mängd patienter. För att digitalisera vävnadsproven som diagnostiseras, scannas dessa in med en glasscanner. Dessa digitala bildfiler kan sedan visas i ett bildvisningsprogram och delas digitalt mellan patologer på distans. Detta begrepp kallas för telepatologi. Studien utgår utifrån följande frågeställningar: Vilka krav är väsentliga och bör ingå i en utvärdering för bildvisningsprogram avsedda för diagnostik inom telepatologi? Vilket bildvisningsprogram är mest lämpat att implementeras i ett webbaserat system baserat på dessa väsentliga krav? Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka krav som är väsentliga och bör ingå i en utvärdering av bildvisningsprogram avsedda för diagnostik inom telepatologi, samt att utföra en utvärdering av ett urval bildvisningsprogramvaror med hjälp av dessa krav. En fallstudie genomfördes med datainsamlingsmetoderna: intervjuer med två personer från studiens samarbetspartner CGM, Frågeformulär där Sveriges patologer var respondenter samt dokumentstudier för att samla in information gällande bildvisningsprogrammen. Studien tillämpar utvalda delar ur Anders G. Nilssons SIV-metod som tillvägagångsätt för att samla in krav samt för att göra ett urval av bildvisningsprogram som sedan utvärderas gentemot dessa krav. Resultaten av datainsamlingarna analyserades och ledde till ett kravdokument med väsentliga krav.Tre så kallade utslagsgivande faktorer bland dessa krav var att bildvisningsprogrammet måste vara webbaserat utan installation på klient, funktioner för in- och ut-zoomning samt panorering måste finnas. Utvärderingen av utvalda bildvisningsprogram visade slutligen att OpenSlide var mest lämpad att implementeras i ett webbaserat system.

Automatic and objective assessment of alternating tapping performance in Parkinson’s disease

This paper presents the development and evaluation of a method for enabling quantitative and automatic scoring of alternating tapping performance of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Ten healthy elderly subjects and 95 patients in different clinical stages of PD have utilized a touch-pad handheld computer to perform alternate tapping tests in their home environments. First, a neurologist used a web-based system to visually assess impairments in four tapping dimensions (‘speed’, ‘accuracy’, ‘fatigue’ and ‘arrhythmia’) and a global tapping severity (GTS). Second, tapping signals were processed with time series analysis and statistical methods to derive 24 quantitative parameters. Third, principal component analysis was used to reduce the dimensions of these parameters and to obtain scores for the four dimensions. Finally, a logistic regression classifier was trained using a 10-fold stratified cross-validation to map the reduced parameters to the corresponding visually assessed GTS scores. Results showed that the computed scores correlated well to visually assessed scores and were significantly different across Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale scores of upper limb motor performance. In addition, they had good internal consistency, had good ability to discriminate between healthy elderly and patients in different disease stages, had good sensitivity to treatment interventions and could reflect the natural disease progression over time. In conclusion, the automatic method can be useful to objectively assess the tapping performance of PD patients and can be included in telemedicine tools for remote monitoring of tapping.

First-principle data-driven models for assessment of motor disorders in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an increasing neurological disorder in an aging society. The motor and non-motor symptoms of PD advance with the disease progression and occur in varying frequency and duration. In order to affirm the full extent of a patient’s condition, repeated assessments are necessary to adjust medical prescription. In clinical studies, symptoms are assessed using the unified Parkinson’s disease rating scale (UPDRS). On one hand, the subjective rating using UPDRS relies on clinical expertise. On the other hand, it requires the physical presence of patients in clinics which implies high logistical costs. Another limitation of clinical assessment is that the observation in hospital may not accurately represent a patient’s situation at home. For such reasons, the practical frequency of tracking PD symptoms may under-represent the true time scale of PD fluctuations and may result in an overall inaccurate assessment. Current technologies for at-home PD treatment are based on data-driven approaches for which the interpretation and reproduction of results are problematic.  The overall objective of this thesis is to develop and evaluate unobtrusive computer methods for enabling remote monitoring of patients with PD. It investigates first-principle data-driven model based novel signal and image processing techniques for extraction of clinically useful information from audio recordings of speech (in texts read aloud) and video recordings of gait and finger-tapping motor examinations. The aim is to map between PD symptoms severities estimated using novel computer methods and the clinical ratings based on UPDRS part-III (motor examination). A web-based test battery system consisting of self-assessment of symptoms and motor function tests was previously constructed for a touch screen mobile device. A comprehensive speech framework has been developed for this device to analyze text-dependent running speech by: (1) extracting novel signal features that are able to represent PD deficits in each individual component of the speech system, (2) mapping between clinical ratings and feature estimates of speech symptom severity, and (3) classifying between UPDRS part-III severity levels using speech features and statistical machine learning tools. A novel speech processing method called cepstral separation difference showed stronger ability to classify between speech symptom severities as compared to existing features of PD speech. In the case of finger tapping, the recorded videos of rapid finger tapping examination were processed using a novel computer-vision (CV) algorithm that extracts symptom information from video-based tapping signals using motion analysis of the index-finger which incorporates a face detection module for signal calibration. This algorithm was able to discriminate between UPDRS part III severity levels of finger tapping with high classification rates. Further analysis was performed on novel CV based gait features constructed using a standard human model to discriminate between a healthy gait and a Parkinsonian gait. The findings of this study suggest that the symptom severity levels in PD can be discriminated with high accuracies by involving a combination of first-principle (features) and data-driven (classification) approaches. The processing of audio and video recordings on one hand allows remote monitoring of speech, gait and finger-tapping examinations by the clinical staff. On the other hand, the first-principles approach eases the understanding of symptom estimates for clinicians. We have demonstrated that the selected features of speech, gait and finger tapping were able to discriminate between symptom severity levels, as well as, between healthy controls and PD patients with high classification rates. The findings support suitability of these methods to be used as decision support tools in the context of PD assessment.

Teaching Intercultural Communication in Foreign Language Education through Video Conferencing

Since 1980s, Western linguists and specialists on second language acquisition have emphasized the importance of enhancing students’ intercultural communication competence in foreign language education. At the same time, the demand for intercultural communicative competence increased along with the advances of communication technology with its increasingly global reach and the process of globalization itself.In the field of distance language education, these changes have resulted in a shift of focus from the production and distribution of learning materials towards communication and learning as a social process, facilitated by various internet-based platforms. The current focus on learners interacting and communicating synchronously trough videoconferencing is known as the fourth generation of distance language education. Despite the fact that teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) faces the same or even greater challenges as teaching other languages, the intercultural communication perspective is still quite a new trend in CFL and its implementation and evaluation are still under development. Moreover, the advocates of the new trends in CFL have so far focused almost exclusively on classroom-based courses, neglecting the distance mode of CFL and leaving it as an open field for others to explore. In this under-researched context, Dalarna University (Sweden), where I currently work, started to provide web-based courses of the Chinese language in 2007. Since 2010, the Chinese language courses have been available only in the distance form, using the same teaching materials as the previous campus-based courses. The textbooks used in both settings basically followed the functional nationalism approach. However, in order to catch up with the main trend of foreign-language education, we felt a need to implement the cross-cultural dimension into the distance courses as well. Therefore in 2010, a pilot study has been carried out to explore opportunities and challenges for implementing a cross-cultural perspective into existing courses and evaluating the effectiveness of this implementation based on the feedback of the students and on the experience of the teacher/researcher.

Den litteraturvetenskapliga receptionsforskningen och internet : en metoddiskussion

Reader-Response Criticism and the Internet: A Methodological Discussion This article explores connections between Internet-based research and reader-response criticism, aiming to critically discuss the methodologies used in this particular field of research. First, the history of reader-response studies is briefly presented, with reference to theorists such as Richards, Rosenblatt, Robbe-Grillet, Iser and Jauss. It is noted that, for the past 15 years, people have utilised the Internet as a basis for the discussion of literary and reading-related topics. Researchers in this field may access reviews and commentaries on open web-based venues such as personal homepages, blogs and online forums (i.e. message boards and discussion sites). The material available on these sites is interesting because of its "spontaneous" nature; that is, such material has been formulated and uploaded without the interference of the researcher. The article presents one concrete example of an Internet-based reader-response study, discussing a number of pros and cons of the chosen methodology– including some important ethical considerations that arise when the researcher’s corpus is composed of material taken from the Internet. One of the conclusions of the paper is that many aspects of the general public’s web-based responses to literature are yet to be explored by the research community.

Designens betydelse vid val av boxvin : En studie om konsumenters preferenser av designfaktorer på bag-in-box-vin.

På den svenska marknaden står bag-in-box-vin för över 50 procent av allt vin som säljs och Sverige är det land där bag-in-boxen fått starkast fäste i världen (Fremin, 2012). Det gör att bag-in-box-förpackningen är en stor och betydelsefull produkt för vintillverkare och att ha kunskap om säljande design är viktigt för grafiska formgivare samt övriga involverade företag. Den föreliggande studiens syfte var att undersöka vilka designfaktorer på bagin- box-förpackningar som påverkar konsumenternas val av vin i Sverige. Studien innefattade en visuell kartläggning som ämnade ge en överblick av utbudet på ett Systembolag. Detta genomfördes för att skapa en grund till den webbaserade enkätundersökningen som genomfördes under våren 2015. Resultaten visade att majoriteten av respondenterna valde vin baserat på förpackningens utseende och ansåg att de påverkades främst av färg, typsnitt, illustrationer och varumärken. Resultaten visade också att ju högre vinkunskap konsumenterna hade desto mindre påverkade designen deras val. Kvinnor och män hade generellt olika åsikter angående hur stor påverkan de olika designfaktorerna hade vid valet av bag-in-box-vin. Denna studie är endast ett avstamp till ett ämne som innefattar många påverkande faktorer. Det betyder att mer forskning krävs inom ämnet innan helt sanningsenliga resultat kan fastställas.

Informations- och kommunikationsteknologi som stöd för patienter med astma och kronisk obstruktiv lungsjukdom avseende egenvård. En litteraturstudie.

Bakgrund: Astma och KOL är två vanlig kroniska sjukdomar som är kopplade till stort sjukdomslidande och lägre livskvalité. Många personer som idag lever med sjukdomarna lever isolerat från andra. Idag har vi en ständig utveckling av sociala nätverk som öppnar en ny möjlighet för egenvård. Egenvård kan göra att patienter får en bättre vardag samt att det lättare kan få ett socialt umgänge. Syfte: Syftet är sammanställa befintlig litteratur och där undersöka hur informations- och kommunikationsteknologi underlättar egenvården för patienter med astma och KOL. Metod: Litteraturstudie där artiklarna söktes i databaser för omvårdnadsvetenskap så som Web Of Science, pubmed och Cinahl. Litteraturstudien baseras på 16 vetenskapliga artiklar som både är kvalitativa och kvantitativa. Artiklarna som valdes är inte äldre än 10 år gamla, skrivna på engelska och publicerade i en vetenskaplig tidning. Resultat: Resultatet som artiklarna påvisade är grundade på IKT i form av datorer, mobiltelefoner, surfplattor och web-baserad program. Artiklarna visar att egenvården kan förbättras genom ökad livskvalité, bättre kommunikation och bättre sjukdomsinsikt när man använder IKT. Slutsats: IKT är en viktig roll i våran hälso- och sjukvård idag. Det finns dock liten forskning på hur egenvården kring astma och KOL påverkas av IKT. Den forskning som finns pekar åt är att den förbättrar för patienter. Det behövs även mer forskning kring IKT som en resurs för egenvård kring ett omvårdnadsperspektiv.

Internal validity of the Swedish Maternal Health Care Register

Background: The Swedish Maternal Health Care Register (MHCR) is a national quality register that has been collecting pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum data since 1999. A substantial revision of the MHCR resulted in a Web-based version of the register in 2010. Although MHCR provides data for health care services and research, the validity of the MHCR data has not been evaluated. This study investigated degree of coverage and internal validity of specific variables in the MHCR and identified possible systematic errors. Methods: This cross-sectional observational study compared pregnancy and delivery data in medical records with corresponding data in the MHCR. The medical record was considered the gold standard. The medical records from nine Swedish hospitals were selected for data extraction. This study compared data from 878 women registered in both medical records and in the MHCR. To evaluate the quality of the initial data extraction, a second data extraction of 150 medical records was performed. Statistical analyses were performed for degree of coverage, agreement and correlation of data, and sensitivity and specificity. Results: Degree of coverage of specified variables in the MHCR varied from 90.0% to 100%. Identical information in both medical records and the MHCR ranged from 71.4% to 99.7%. For more than half of the investigated variables, 95% or more of the information was identical. Sensitivity and specificity were analysed for binary variables. Probable systematic errors were identified for two variables. Conclusions: When comparing data from medical records and data registered in the MHCR, most variables in the MHCR demonstrated good to very good degree of coverage, agreement, and internal validity. Hence, data from the MHCR may be regarded as reliable for research as well as for evaluating, planning, and decision-making with respect to Swedish maternal health care services.