Measuring Application Availability,Usage and Performance : Implementation of EnView System

The main objective for this degree project is to implement an Application Availability Monitoring (AAM) system named Softek EnView for Fujitsu Services. The aim of implementing the AAM system is to proactively identify end user performance problems, such as application and site performance, before the actual end users experience them. No matter how well applications and sites are designed and nomatter how well they meet business requirements, they are useless to the end users if the performance is slow and/or unreliable. It is important for the customers to find out whether the end user problems are caused by the network or application malfunction. The Softek EnView was comprised of the following EnView components: Robot, Monitor, Reporter, Collector and Repository. The implemented system, however, is designed to use only some of these EnView elements: Robot, Reporter and depository. Robots can be placed at any key user location and are dedicated to customers, which means that when the number of customers increases, at the sametime the amount of Robots will increase. To make the AAM system ideal for the company to use, it was integrated with Fujitsu Services’ centralised monitoring system, BMC PATROL Enterprise Manager (PEM). That was actually the reason for deciding to drop the EnView Monitor element. After the system was fully implemented, the AAM system was ready for production. Transactions were (and are) written and deployed on Robots to simulate typical end user actions. These transactions are configured to run with certain intervals, which are defined collectively with customers. While they are driven against customers’ applicationsautomatically, transactions collect availability data and response time data all the time. In case of a failure in transactions, the robot immediately quits the transactionand writes detailed information to a log file about what went wrong and which element failed while going through an application. Then an alert is generated by a BMC PATROL Agent based on this data and is sent to the BMC PEM. Fujitsu Services’ monitoring room receives the alert, reacts to it according to the incident management process in ITIL and by alerting system specialists on critical incidents to resolve problems. As a result of the data gathered by the Robots, weekly reports, which contain detailed statistics and trend analyses of ongoing quality of IT services, is provided for the Customers.

Combined solar and pellet heating systems for single-family houses : How to achieve decreased electricity usage, increased system efficiency and increased solar gains

In Sweden, there are about 0.5 million single-family houses that are heated by electricity alone, and rising electricity costs force the conversion to other heating sources such as heat pumps and wood pellet heating systems. Pellet heating systems for single-family houses are currently a strongly growing market. Future lack of wood fuels is possible even in Sweden, and combining wood pellet heating with solar heating will help to save the bio-fuel resources. The objectives of this thesis are to investigate how the electrically heated single-family houses can be converted to pellet and solar heating systems, and how the annual efficiency and solar gains can be increased in such systems. The possible reduction of CO-emissions by combining pellet heating with solar heating has also been investigated. Systems with pellet stoves (both with and without a water jacket), pellet boilers and solar heating have been simulated. Different system concepts have been compared in order to investigate the most promising solutions. Modifications in system design and control strategies have been carried out in order to increase the system efficiency and the solar gains. Possibilities for increasing the solar gains have been limited to investigation of DHW-units for hot water production and the use of hot water for heating of dishwashers and washing machines via a heat exchanger instead of electricity (heat-fed appliances). Computer models of pellet stoves, boilers, DHW-units and heat-fed appliances have been developed and the parameters for the models have been identified from measurements on real components. The conformity between the models and the measurements has been checked. The systems with wood pellet stoves have been simulated in three different multi-zone buildings, simulated in detail with heat distribution through door openings between the zones. For the other simulations, either a single-zone house model or a load file has been used. Simulations were carried out for Stockholm, Sweden, but for the simulations with heat-fed machines also for Miami, USA. The foremost result of this thesis is the increased understanding of the dynamic operation of combined pellet and solar heating systems for single-family houses. The results show that electricity savings and annual system efficiency is strongly affected by the system design and the control strategy. Large reductions in pellet consumption are possible by combining pellet boilers with solar heating (a reduction larger than the solar gains if the system is properly designed). In addition, large reductions in carbon monoxide emissions are possible. To achieve these reductions it is required that the hot water production and the connection of the radiator circuit is moved to a well insulated, solar heated buffer store so that the boiler can be turned off during the periods when the solar collectors cover the heating demand. The amount of electricity replaced using systems with pellet stoves is very dependant on the house plan, the system design, if internal doors are open or closed and the comfort requirements. Proper system design and control strategies are crucial to obtain high electricity savings and high comfort with pellet stove systems. The investigated technologies for increasing the solar gains (DHW-units and heat-fed appliances) significantly increase the solar gains, but for the heat-fed appliances the market introduction is difficult due to the limited financial savings and the need for a new heat distribution system. The applications closest to market introduction could be for communal laundries and for use in sunny climates where the dominating part of the heat can be covered by solar heating. The DHW-unit is economical but competes with the internal finned-tube heat exchanger which is the totally dominating technology for hot water preparation in solar combisystems for single-family houses.

A reason to believe : beliefs as an influence on students task solving

Upper secondary students’ task solving reasoning was analysed, with a focus on what grounds they had for different strategy choices and conclusions. Beliefs were identified and connected with the reasoning that took place. The results indicate that beliefs have an impact on the central decisions made during task solving. Three themes stand out: safety, expectation and motivation.

A Linguistic Analysis of the Written Production of Second Language Learners : The Variation of Article Usage by Adult Chinese Learners of English

This study aims to test Robertson’s lexical transfer principle, which posits that Chinese learners use demonstratives (particularly this) and the numeral one as markers of definiteness and indefiniteness. This is tested by analysing Chinese learners’ written production collected from the Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners 2.0 (SWECCL 2.0). The purpose is to understand the variation of article usage by adult Chinese learners of English. More specifically, the study examines to what extent articles, possessive and demonstrative pronouns are used in Chinese learners’ English and how definite and indefinite articles are used by the Chinese learners. Findings suggest that Robertson’s lexical transfer principle was corroborated by the present study. In addition, Chinese learners prefer to use demonstrative determiners, the possessive determiner our, and the numeral one to perform the function of marking definiteness and indefiniteness. In particular, the learners try to use the demonstrative determiners that and this in the anaphoric function instead of the definite article, and the demonstrative determiner those is frequently used in the cataphoric function. What is more, the learners use the numeral one as a marker of indefiniteness, and it is also used as a marker of definiteness in the anaphoric function. Further, the possessive determiner our is used as a marker of definiteness in larger situation uses referring to something unique. To this end, the study is able to show that the definite article is used to perform the function of marking indefiniteness, and in some particular contexts the definite article functions as a Chinese specifier in Chinese learners’ English. Also, the indefinite article is frequently used in quantifier phrases but is rarely used in other functions. There are three main reasons that may explain why Chinese learners use determiners variously. Firstly, the choice of determiners by Chinese learners is influenced by linguistic contexts. Secondly, because of learning strategies, Chinese learners try to ignore the anaphoric function and cataphoric function that they are not yet ready to process in article usage. Thirdly, interlanguage grammar influences the optionality in the use of articles. 

Learning Grammar : A study of upper secondary level students’ attitudes and beliefs concerning the learning of grammar

The communicative approach to language learning is widely taught in Western education, and yet its predecessor, the grammar-translation method, is still commonly employed in other parts of the world. In Sweden, the increasing popularity of the communicative approach is often justified by the high level of students’ communicative skills (Öhman, 2013). At the same time, students’ written texts and speech contain many grammatical errors (Öhman, 2013). Consequently, being aware of their tendency to produce grammatical errors, some students express beliefs regarding both the explicit and implicit learning of grammar (Sawir, 2005; Boroujeni, 2012). The objective of this thesis is to gain more knowledge regarding students’ beliefs concerning the learning of English grammar at the upper secondary level, in Sweden. With this purpose a survey was conducted in two schools in Sweden, where 49 upper-secondary English students participated. Qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to process the collected data. Despite some difference in the participants’ ages, there were many similarities in their attitudes towards the teaching and learning of grammar. The results show that the participants in both schools believe that only by applying both, explicit and implicit methods, can they obtain a high level of language proficiency. The results of this study can help teachers in planning different activities that enhance the students’ knowledge of grammar.