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- Ahmed, Mobyen Uddin
(författare)
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A case-based multi-modal clinical system for stress management
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- A difficult issue in stress management is to use biomedical sensor signal in the diagnosis and treatment of stress. Clinicians often make their diagnosis and decision based on manual inspection of physiological signals such as, ECG, heart rate, finger temperature etc. However, the complexity associated with manual analysis and interpretation of the signals makes it difficult even for experienced clinicians. Today the diagnosis and decision is largely dependent on how experienced the clinician is interpreting the measurements. A computer-aided decision support system for diagnosis and treatment of stress would enable a more objective and consistent diagnosis and decisions.A challenge in the field of medicine is the accuracy of the system, it is essential that the clinician is able to judge the accuracy of the suggested solutions. Case-based reasoning systems for medical applications are increasingly multi-purpose and multi-modal, using a variety of different methods and techniques to meet the challenges of the medical domain. This research work covers the development of an intelligent clinical decision support system for diagnosis, classification and treatment in stress management. The system uses a finger temperature sensor and the variation in the finger temperature is one of the key features in the system. Several artificial intelligence techniques have been investigated to enable a more reliable and efficient diagnosis and treatment of stress such as case-based reasoning, textual information retrieval, rule-based reasoning, and fuzzy logic. Functionalities and the performance of the system have been validated by implementing a research prototype based on close collaboration with an expert in stress. The case base of the implemented system has been initiated with 53 reference cases classified by an experienced clinician. A case study also shows that the system provides results close to a human expert. The experimental results suggest that such a system is valuable both for less experienced clinicians and for experts where the system may function as a second option.
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- Akan, Batu, 1981-
(författare)
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Human Robot Interaction Solutions for Intuitive Industrial Robot Programming
- 2012
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Over the past few decades the use of industrial robots has increased the efficiency as well as competitiveness of many companies. Despite this fact, in many cases, robot automation investments are considered to be technically challenging. In addition, for most small and medium sized enterprises (SME) this process is associated with high costs. Due to their continuously changing product lines, reprogramming costs are likely to exceed installation costs by a large margin. Furthermore, traditional programming methods for industrial robots are too complex for an inexperienced robot programmer, thus assistance from a robot programming expert is often needed. We hypothesize that in order to make industrial robots more common within the SME sector, the robots should be reprogrammable by technicians or manufacturing engineers rather than robot programming experts. In this thesis we propose a high-level natural language framework for interacting with industrial robots through an instructional programming environment for the user. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to bring robot programming to a stage where it is as easy as working together with a colleague.In this thesis we mainly address two issues. The first issue is to make interaction with a robot easier and more natural through a multimodal framework. The proposed language architecture makes it possible to manipulate, pick or place objects in a scene through high level commands. Interaction with simple voice commands and gestures enables the manufacturing engineer to focus on the task itself, rather than programming issues of the robot. This approach shifts the focus of industrial robot programming from the coordinate based programming paradigm, which currently dominates the field, to an object based programming scheme.The second issue addressed is a general framework for implementing multimodal interfaces. There have been numerous efforts to implement multimodal interfaces for computers and robots, but there is no general standard framework for developing them. The general framework proposed in this thesis is designed to perform natural language understanding, multimodal integration and semantic analysis with an incremental pipeline and includes a novel multimodal grammar language, which is used for multimodal presentation and semantic meaning generation.
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- Akbari, Keramatollah, 1961-
(författare)
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Impact of Radon Ventilation on Indoor Air Quality and Building Energy saving
- 2009
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Industrial living is caused much people do live and work in closed and confined places; offices and residential buildings. This is why in this new world more fresh air which is generally provided by forced ventilation plays a vital role in living of human being. Furthermore because of many different indoor pollutants, like radon and artificial pollutants, the amount of fresh air and in turn the energy consumption has increased. This energy consumption related to ventilation has reached up to about 30 percent of energy used of building section. So making interaction between indoor air quality (IAQ) and optimization of energy saving is a necessary work. Radon as a natural pollutant is occurred in environment and in many countries threatens people health whereas is called the second causes of cancer. For reducing radon concentration in residential building at the acceptable level forced ventilation is used usually. Ventilation can improve IAQ but in the other side would increase the energy consumption in building sector and just now the contribution of ventilation exceeds up 50 percent of building sector's share. The aim of this thesis is to study the impact of ventilation on indoor radon by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to achieve indoor air quality and energy efficiency. Application of CFD as a new technology, because of its cost and time savings, and on the other side, of its flexibility and precision is increasingly grown and can be used as a very important and valuable tool for the prediction and measurement of radon distribution in a ventilated building . Currently, measurement techniques and proposed standards and regulations of indoor pollutants and ventilation, particularly related to indoor radon cannot be able to provide a secure, safe and energy efficient indoor climate. This is why the indoor airflow distribution is very complex and with changing building geometry and operation condition, the treatment of air flow pattern, substantially would be changed, whereas the rules are usually independent of the buildings features. Furthermore, the indoor standards and regulations are based on average amount of pollutants in a room, whereas the pollutant distributions aren't identical and are varied throughout the room. Then the current techniques aren't so exactly valuable and acceptable.From different methods which is privilege to control pollutants, ventilation method is applicable in existing buildings. Designing effective ventilation can reduce radon concentration to very level low with regarding energy conservation remarks. This thesis presents results from simulation studies on ventilation and radon mitigation in residential buildings, in view points of indoor air quality and energy savings. The CFD technique is applied to predict, visualize and calculate of mixture radon-air flow. The distribution of indoor radon concentration, air velocity and room temperature also have considered together for achieving indoor air quality and energy saving. The results are also compared with the experimental data and related previous works. It was found that with increasing ventilation rate, the radon concentration is decreased, but the location of ventilation system is also important. From the simulation results, it is observed that within the ventilated room, there are some zones, which are good for living and somewhere is more polluted. The traditional radon detectors basically show the average value of radon content in 1m3 of air. That is why detector measuring is not exact and safe. Simulation results proved that floor heat can be supported ventilation effect and speed up the mixture movement. Floor heating reinforces the buoyancy effect, which is useful to reduce radon content in the floor (seating area) and then lower ventilation rate can be applied.
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- Andersson, Anna, 1974-
(författare)
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A framework supporting the collaboration between the logistics- and the product development process
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- In the competitive environment of today’s global markets, the demands of customers are increasing. They expect to get the best product at the lowest price with immediate availability. Logistics, including transportation, inventory maintenance, order processing, purchasing, warehousing, materials handling, packaging, customer service standards, and product scheduling must continuously be developed to meet the challenges of the market. The globalization, with longer distances to customers and suppliers, and the progressing trend of outsourcing are examples of why the importance of logistics has increased over the last few years.A considerable part of the final product cost is frozen during the early product development phases. In the early phases of the product development process, the cost of making design changes is low compared to making changes later in the product development process. The product development decisions made in the early phases of the product development process have considerable impact on future manufacturing and logistics activities as well.The objective of this research project is to develop a framework supporting the collaboration between the logistics- and the product development process. To do this, it has been essential to analyze which parameters influence the efficiency of the logistics process and the interface between the logistics- and the product development process. Also, to investigate how the logistics department can be integrated earlier in the product development process has been of interest. This has been done through both a theoretical review and also through a number of case studies.The result and conclusion of this project is a framework that gives support for what to focus on, how to collaborate, in which phases collaboration is meaningful, and which persons need to be involved in the different product development phases. Working as the framework suggests will, hopefully, give closer collaboration between the logistics- and the product development process than without this supportive framework. The expectation of the collaboration is an earlier integration of the logistics department in the product development process and through this influence and increase the efficiency of the logistics process.
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- Andersson, Carina, 1970-
(författare)
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Upplevelser av budskap
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- När användbarheten studeras av den information som presenteras i ett användargränssnitt på en datorskärm kan det framkomma vad som fungerar effektivt och korrekt. I sådana sammanhang förs sällan någon diskussion om hur den information som presenteras kommunicerar med en användare.Syftet med detta forskningsprojekt är att på ett generellt plan öka kunskapen om olika analytiska perspektiv för att studera den information som presenteras i ett användargränssnitt på en datorskärm, som ett led till att skapa begriplig information för människor. Mer preciserat är syftet att få en djupare förståelse för hur en informationslämnare kan kommunicera med en informationsanvändare genom den information som presenteras i ett användargränssnitt. Målet med forskningsprojektet är att presentera ett antal relevanta analytiska perspektiv som kan användas för att beskriva hur presenterad information i ett användargränssnitt kan kommunicera med en användare. Forskningsresultatet bidrar med ett ramverk som kan ligga till grund för ett analysstöd. Forskningsresultatet bidrar även med en ansats för framtida forskning inom området.Forskningsprojektet bygger på fyra fallstudier. Analysobjekten i fallstudierna utgörs av fyra olika användargränssnitt på datorskärm, vilka används inom olika myndigheter, organisationer och företag. Vartdera användargränssnittet och dess informationsdesign studeras med hänsyn till: informationslämnarnas önskemål och intentioner, informationsanvändarnas upplevelse och förståelse av information och kontexters påverkan.De slutsatser som dras är bland annat att informationsdesign i ett användargränssnitt på datorskärm upplevs och förstås av användare i samklang med inre, när och yttre kontext. Dessa kontexter kan studeras utifrån tre olika perspektiv, ett semiotiskt, ett retoriskt och ett narrativt perspektiv. En sådan analys kan framhäva den kommunikation som sker mellan de budskap som informationslämnaren vill berätta, hur den presenterade informationen i användargränssnittet arrangeras och komponeras och hur olika kontexter påverkar användarnas upplevelse och förståelse av den information som presenteras.
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- Andersson, Elisabeth C, 1951-
(författare)
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En utbildning i processledarskap avseende mångfald
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- Med bidrag från Europeiska Socialfonden startades ett projekt kallat JämBredd vid Mälardalens hög-skola för att utbilda i jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor. En del i detta projekt har varit en högskoleutbildning i processledarskap. Målsättningen var att utforma en kompetenshöjande ledarskapsutbildning för skapande av förändringsprocesser i ett mångkulturellt arbetsliv. Skolor, tingsrätt, olika kommunala vårdinrättningar, bostadsföretag och högskola har alla efterfrågat kunskap i jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor, allt för att skapa bättre tankeutbyten, både inom verksamheten och vid kundkontakter. Alla deltagare hade någon form av ledarskap i sina olika verksamheter. Yrkesrollerna hos de 33 deltagare vid starten av utbildningen var rektorer på förskola eller skola, chefer inom olika kommunförvaltningar, personalhandläggare, genuspedagoger, lektor, studievägledare samt administratörer inom olika kommuner, landsting och vid tingsrätt. Processledarutbildningen gavs i nio stycken så kallade utbildningsmoduler under ett år. Arbetsformerna varierade med olika innehåll av forskare/föreläsare inom jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor. Utbildningsmodulerna var heldagsutbildningar och var förlagda utanför högskolan.Det övergripande syftet i studien är att urskilja lär- och förändringsprocesser inom jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor hos deltagare i processledarutbildningen. Ett annat syfte är att utveckla en utbildningsmodell att användas för kompetenshöjning rörande jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor inom olika verksamheter. Frågeställningarna är: Hur har deltagandet i utbildningen medfört ökade kunskaper i jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor? Hur har utbildningen gett deltagarna utökade kunskaper som bidragit till utveckling av förändringsarbetet rörande jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor? Vilka faktorer kan ses som viktiga i förändringsarbetet avseende jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor? Vilka slutsatser kan dras utifrån utvärderingen till bidrag för framtida utveckling av processledarutbildningen?Forskningsstrategin har varit aktionsforskning. Aktionsforskaren har följt hela lärprocessen under ett år och utvärderat utbildningen med hjälp av datainsamling från observationer, visuell metod, intervjuer och enkäter. Resultatet visade en insikt hos deltagarna att ha erhållit ökade kunskaper inom mångfaldsområdet som främst berodde på två faktorer: Ett skäl var att föreläsarna var kunniga forskare i olika mångfaldsfrågor och delade med sig av sin kunskap till deltagarna. Det andra skälet var att det fanns gott om tid för eftertanke, referensläsning och skapande av bland annat nätverk då utbildningstiden varade hela året. Det slutliga resultatet påvisade också en utbildningsmodell som kan användas för att skapa ökad kunskap i mångfaldsfrågor inom olika verksamheter. Resultatet visar samstämmiga svar från deltagarna i utbildningen, enligt ovan, och kan därmed sägas vara relevant för fortsatt utbildning i jämställdhets- och mångfaldsfrågor. Via den här utbildningen i processledarskap har deltagarna dels fått ökande kunskaper och dels fått hjälpmedel för att driva förändringsprocesser, som i sin tur kan leda till att medarbetare får större kunskap i mångfaldsfrågor.
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| 10. |
- Andersson, Mona, 1948-
(författare)
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Botvids väg till rätt vård
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt)abstract
- The patient Botvid´s way to right care. The planning process of an inter-organizational care pathway project.A general problem in an elderly patient’s care – and rehabilitation process, which involves different care providers, is that there is no one single staff that is responsible for the whole “production process” i.e. from diagnosis to completed treatment. All too often care providers focus on their own part of the process with insufficient communication with other providers, resulting in low quality of care. Poor co-operation also leads to increased demand for check-ups, unproductive waiting time, duplication of work and other inefficiencies. A solution to these co-ordination problems can be to introduce process orientation (integrated care pathways). A process view requires the concerned staff to look at their own work with other eyes. The process view implies that they need to change focus to what is best from the patient’s point of view.Experiences from earlier reforms, that were centrally initiated and managed, show that the concerned staff (doctors, nurses etc.) had too little influence during the planning and implementation phases. Several official reports therefore call attention to the need for broad participation from all of the different staff categories in organizational development.In this thesis a qualitative case study of the planning process of an inter-organizational project between primary care, hospital treatment and municipality care is presented. The aim of the project was to develop an organization that could support a process view among the care providers. The focus of the thesis is on how the project management acted to shape the necessary conditions for a process view to enable the professional staff to participate, and on the role that the change strategy played in this connection.The results show that the professional staff had an active role in the management of the project. The initiator was a doctor, who managed the project team of 50 care staff together with a project leader. This team had a series of meetings and conferences during ten months. By exchanging ideas and experiences they found solutions to the operative problems that were the starting points for the project. They developed an action plan in consensus, with prioritized activities, which is now to be implemented.
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