On Occurrence Of Plagiarism In Published Computer Science Thesis Reports At Swedish Universities

In recent years, it has been observed that software clones and plagiarism are becoming an increased threat for one?s creativity. Clones are the results of copying and using other?s work. According to the Merriam – Webster dictionary, “A clone is one that appears to be a copy of an original form”. It is synonym to duplicate. Clones lead to redundancy of codes, but not all redundant code is a clone.On basis of this background knowledge ,in order to safeguard one?s idea and to avoid intentional code duplication for pretending other?s work as if their owns, software clone detection should be emphasized more. The objective of this paper is to review the methods for clone detection and to apply those methods for finding the extent of plagiarism occurrence among the Swedish Universities in Master level computer science department and to analyze the results.The rest part of the paper, discuss about software plagiarism detection which employs data analysis technique and then statistical analysis of the results.Plagiarism is an act of stealing and passing off the idea?s and words of another person?s as one?s own. Using data analysis technique, samples(Master level computer Science thesis report) were taken from various Swedish universities and processed in Ephorus anti plagiarism software detection. Ephorus gives the percentage of plagiarism for each thesis document, from this results statistical analysis were carried out using Minitab Software.The results gives a very low percentage of Plagiarism extent among the Swedish universities, which concludes that Plagiarism is not a threat to Sweden?s standard of education in computer science.This paper is based on data analysis, intelligence techniques, EPHORUS software plagiarism detection tool and MINITAB statistical software analysis.

Optimization heuristic solutions, how good can they be? : With empirical applications in location problems

Combinatorial optimization problems, are one of the most important types of problems in operational research. Heuristic and metaheuristics algorithms are widely applied to find a good solution. However, a common problem is that these algorithms do not guarantee that the solution will coincide with the optimum and, hence, many solutions to real world OR-problems are afflicted with an uncertainty about the quality of the solution. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the usability of statistical bounds to evaluate the quality of heuristic solutions applied to large combinatorial problems. The contributions of this thesis are both methodological and empirical. From a methodological point of view, the usefulness of statistical bounds on p-median problems is thoroughly investigated. The statistical bounds have good performance in providing informative quality assessment under appropriate parameter settings. Also, they outperform the commonly used Lagrangian bounds. It is demonstrated that the statistical bounds are shown to be comparable with the deterministic bounds in quadratic assignment problems. As to empirical research, environment pollution has become a worldwide problem, and transportation can cause a great amount of pollution. A new method for calculating and comparing the CO2-emissions of online and brick-and-mortar retailing is proposed. It leads to the conclusion that online retailing has significantly lesser CO2-emissions. Another problem is that the Swedish regional division is under revision and the border effect to public service accessibility is concerned of both residents and politicians. After analysis, it is shown that borders hinder the optimal location of public services and consequently the highest achievable economic and social utility may not be attained.

Constructive alignment in Computer Engineering and Informatics departments at Dalarna University : An empirical investigation

Background: Constructive alignment (CA) is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes the alignment between the intended learning outcomes (ILOs), teaching and learning activities (TLAs) and assessment tasks (ATs) as well as creation of a teaching/learning environment where students will be able to actively create their knowledge. Objectives: This paper aims at investigating the extent of constructively-aligned courses in Computer Engineering and Informatics department at Dalarna University, Sweden. This study is based on empirical observations of teacher’s perceptions of implementation of CA in their courses. Methods: Ten teachers (5 from each department) were asked to fill a paper-based questionnaire, which included a number of questions related to issues of implementing CA in courses. Results: Responses to the items of the questionnaire were mixed. Teachers clearly state the ILOs in their courses and try to align the TLAs and ATs to the ILOs. Computer Engineering teachers do not explicitly communicate the ILOs to the students as compared to Informatics teachers. In addition, Computer Engineering teachers stated that their students are less active in learning activities as compared to Informatics teachers. When asked about their subjective ratings of teaching methods all teachers stated that their current teaching is teacher-centered but they try to shift the focus of activity from them to the students. Conclusions: From teachers’ perspectives, the courses are partially constructively-aligned. Their courses are “aligned”, i.e. ILOs, TLAs and ATs are aligned to each other but they are not “constructive” since, according to them, there was a low student engagement in learning activities, especially in Computer Engineering department.

Perceptions of Sustainability and Functional Aspects on Liquid Carton Board Packaging Materials versus Competing Materials for Juice Applications in Sweden

This research explores the downstream perceptions of liquid carton board versus competing materials in packaging applications for juice. The methodology used is focus groups. The context is sustainability and functional performance, and related potential implications for the beverage industry value chain. The purpose is to get a deeper insight and understanding of functionality in relation to juice beverage packaging. The results confirm that there is no optimal packaging for every juice product, but a multitude, depending on the distribution channel, retail outlet, customer preferences, and context of consumption. There are some general packaging preferences, but the main deciding criteria for purchase seem to be the product characteristics in terms of quality, taste, brand, price and shelf life. For marketing reasons, packaging has to be adopted to the product and its positioning, liquid carton board packaging seem to have some functional advantages in distribution and is considered as sustainable and functional among many consumers. Major drawbacks seem to be shape limitations, lack of transparency, and lack of a “premium look”. To improve packaging performance and avoid sub-optimization, actors in the beverage industry value chain need to be integrated in development processes.