Oljudens musik : En revolution i kompositionsteknik?

Noise music is created around sounds not often welcome in a musical context. Since the birth of electronic music in the 1950s a new perspective on composing has emerged. In electronic music, sounds and their timbre are as much important as melody, harmony and rhythm. This composing perspective is not often observed. Therefore I have examined a musical genre that stretches the boundaries of what we consider music, sound, noise, beautiful and terrible. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what aesthetic ideals noise musicians have when they create music. I examine the composing processes of three noise musicians, by asking the following questions: Do you compose in advance or do you improvise, how do your control of sound look like, how do you use the human voice and how do you categorize sound? The thesis is constructed around interviews I have made with the musicians and an extensive historical background concentrated on the alternative composing techniques that has led to the development of noise music. Among the results I found that these noise musicians always improvise with material, but the real essence of noise music is the character of the sounds, not their origins or material. Composing in advance for sound is a lot more difficult than traditional composing. Another result is that these noise musicians have extensive control of their instruments and can produce the sounds they wanted. They point out the importance of instruments that produce sound not directly controlled by themselves, something that create a musical quality that they aspire.

Separation and Execution of graphical engine on a cross platform IDE to enhance performance

“Biosim” is a simulation software which works to simulate the harvesting system.This system is able to design a model for any logistic problem with the combination of several objects so that the artificial system can show the performance of an individual model. The system will also describe the efficiency, possibility to be chosen for real life application of that particular model. So, when any one wish to setup a logistic model like- harvesting system, in real life he/she may be noticed about the suitable prostitution for his plants and factories as well as he/she may get information about the least number of objects, total time to complete the task, total investment required for his model, total amount of noise produced for his establishment in advance. It will produce an advance over view for his model. But “Biosim” is quite slow .As it is an object based system, it takes long time to make its decision. Here the main task is to modify the system so that it can work faster than the previous. So, the main objective of this thesis is to reduce the load of “Biosim” by making some modification of the original system as well as to increase its efficiency. So that the whole system will be faster than the previous one and performs more efficiently when it will be applied in real life. Theconcept is to separate the execution part of ”Biosim” form its graphical engine and run this separated portion in a third generation language platform. C++ is chosenhere as this external platform. After completing the proposed system, results with different models have been observed. The results show that, for any type of plants of fields, for any number of trucks, the proposed system is faster than the original system. The proposed system takes at least 15% less time “Biosim”. The efficiency increase with the complexity of than the original the model. More complex the model, more efficient the proposed system is than original “Biosim”.Depending on the complexity of a model, the proposed system can be 56.53 % faster than the original “Biosim”.

The Philosophy of Dissonant Children : Stanley Cavell's Wittgensteinian Philosophical Therapies as an Educational Conversation

Education is often understood as a process whereby children come to conform to the norms teachers believe should govern our practices. This picture problematically presumes that educators know in advance what it means for children to go on the way that is expected of them. In this essay Viktor Johansson suggests a revision of education, through the philosophy of Stanley Cavell, that can account for both the attunement in our practices and the possible dissonance that follows when the teacher and child do not go on together. There is an anxiety generated by the threat of disharmony in our educational undertakings that may drive teachers toward philosophy in educational contexts. Here Johansson offers a philosophical treatment of this intellectual anxiety that teachers may experience when they, upon meeting dissonant children, search for epistemic justifications of their practices—a treatment whereby dissonant children can support teachers in dissolving their intellectual frustrations.

Sociologin, hybriderna och den sociala verkligheten : exemplet kärnavfall

Sociology, hybrids and social reality: the case of nuclear waste The continuing technological transformation of nature means that sociology’s traditional vision of a sharp divide between nature and society is becoming ever harder to defend. Starting from Bruno Latour’s critique of modernity, and Nikolas Rose’s explorations of political power beyond the state, this article presents a framework for analysing the expanding wealth of hybrids of nature and society surrounding us today, and the problems of government they pose. These hybrids confront us with the need to rethink sociology’s conception of ‘the social’. With Latour’s help, the interplay of nature and society can be understood as subject to technical mediation, opening the way for studies of the varying arrangements through which different configurations of nature and society are produced. Rather than alternative social constructions of nature, what sociologists should be at pains to analyse and question are different programmes and strategies for bringing together natural and social forces in durable combinations. In the article, the geological disposal of nuclear waste serves as a useful example for exploring the fruitfulness of the analytical framework put forward. This complex undertaking constitutes just one component in a larger field of technoscientific endeavour that has irrevocably transformed nature while simultaneously re-making society. Addressing this case, we seek to reveal the promise of a sociology that does not bound ‘the social’ in advance, but rather makes the co-production of technology and society one of its most important objects of study.

Effekter av Internet of Things : Scenariobaserad studie som beskriver inledande effekter av Internet of Things i en verksamhet

Med begreppet "Internet of Things" menas att ett objekt ur den riktiga världen blir en del av internet. Tunabyggen i Borlänge planerar att implementera ett sådant informationssystem som med hjälp av sensorer och en ständig internetuppkoppling håller uppsikt över temperatur och luftfuktighet i utvalda lokaler. Det är ett enkelt system som till synes inte har så stora effekter på den nuvarande verksamheten. De ekonomiska effekterna går ofta att räkna på i förhand men effekterna på personal, miljö och rutiner kan glömmas bort. Vi har därför med detta examensarbete undersökt vilka inledande effekter som kan tänkas uppkomma efter implementering av ett nytt informationssystem med "Internet of Things" funktionalitet i en verksamhet. Detta sker inom kategorierna ekonomi, arbetsmiljö, miljöpåverkan och systemförvaltning. För att kunna besvara detta har vi gjort en fallstudie baserad på en scenariometodik som består av fyra faser. Fas 1, där vi fick vårt Case och skapade en förståelse för scenariofältet. Fas 2, där vi identifierade nyckelfaktorer. Detta har gjorts genom en litteraturstudie samt intervju med berörd personal på Tunabyggen. Fas 3, där analysen av dessa nyckelfaktorer skedde genom nulägesanalys och framtidsanalys av nyckelfaktorer. Fas 4, där vi genererade scenarier av de analyserade nyckelfaktorerna. Det har sedan gjorts en SWOT-analys för att belysa styrkor, svagheter, möjligheter och hot. Resultatet visar tydliga tecken på att det kommer att bli många effekter för Tunabyggen efter implementering av det nya informationssystemet som yttrar sig i alla kategorier. Slutsatsen är att vid implementation av ett informationssystem som detta är effekterna många. Detta är något som vi anser bör beaktas av alla verksamheter som har tankar på att införskaffa ett nytt informationssystem. De bör inte bara utvärdera informationssystem rent ekonomiskt utan borde ta i beaktning att det finns ett antal andra faktorer som har en avgörande roll om implementation av informationssystem ska bli lyckad.

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.