Solar energy exhibits at the popular science park Teknoland

The new Popular Science Park TEKNOLAND in Falun contains a number of interactive solar energy exhibits, including The Solar Heated Chess Board, The Solar Electric Playhouse, The Sudanese Solar Oven, and Solar Collector Optics. The TeknoTrix tutored children activities include solar thermal activities. Some related interactive exhibits are planned to be included during the summer and during coming years.

Tillämpning och utvärdering av kriterier för eTjänstetydlighet och handlingsbarhet : Actability, eTjänstetydlighet, MA/SIMM

A sequence of actions in the world have influenced the information science, one of these actions is the lateral movement in how companies use their IT-systems. IT-systems today, in comparison to before, are used by companies to improve their relationship with their customers. Every year a big amount of money is spent on developing and improving IT-systems. That is why it is important to develop and create IT-systems that are clear, and which encourage, enable and simplify a user’s action. There are criteria to use in actability and “eTjänstetydlighet”. I have in this thesis used acknowledged criteria for actability and “eTjänstetydlighet” to analyze two IT-systems that are equal to each other. This is to show how companies can develop and adjust their IT-system so that they will match today’s point of view. I have also in this thesis chosen to evaluate the usage of criteria for “eTjänstetydlighet” and that is because no one has done that before. The result of this thesis gave Monster and Proffice measures for how to develop their IT-systems. The result of this thesis also gave indications of fuzziness when using criteria for “eTjänstetydlighet”, however, I was able to use the criteria the way they were supposed to be used to fulfill their purpose.

Short Communication: A compelling argument for the gravity p-median model

The p-median model is used to locate P facilities to serve a geographically distributed population. Conventionally, it is assumed that the population always travels to the nearest facility. Drezner and Drezner (2006, 2007) provide three arguments on why this assumption might be incorrect, and they introduce the extended the gravity p-median model to relax the assumption. We favour the gravity p-median model, but we note that in an applied setting, Drezner and Drezner’s arguments are incomplete. In this communication, we point at the existence of a fourth compelling argument for the gravity p-median model.

An empirical test of the gravity p-median model

A customer is presumed to gravitate to a facility by the distance to it and the attractiveness of it. However regarding the location of the facility, the presumption is that the customer opts for the shortest route to the nearest facility.This paradox was recently solved by the introduction of the gravity p-median model. The model is yet to be implemented and tested empirically. We implemented the model in an empirical problem of locating locksmiths, vehicle inspections, and retail stores ofv ehicle spare-parts, and we compared the solutions with those of the p-median model. We found the gravity p-median model to be of limited use for the problem of locating facilities as it either gives solutions similar to the p-median model, or it gives unstable solutions due to a non-concave objective function.