| 1. |
- Funke, Michael, 1966-
(författare)
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Regulating a Controversy : Inside Stakeholder Strategies and Regime Transition in the Self-Regulation of Swedish Advertising 1950–1971
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis concerns the development of the self-regulation of advertising in Sweden from 1950 until 1971. Self-regulation was initiated in the 1930s due to a business desire to regulate fair competition in marketing, and while it initially was a minor operation, the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by extensive development. When self-regulation was overtaken by state policies in 1971, it included several interlocking systems, of which parts survived the introduction of the state regime. The thesis’ aim has been to analyze how the rapid regime transitions in the self-regulation regime can be understood.The existing literature identifies four major transitions that occurred during the studied time period. To understand them, the thesis has studied the policy processes leading up to these transitions. Focus has been on the business interest organizations that controlled the regime and their regulatory strategies. Theoretically, the analysis has departed from the hypothesis that tensions between these organizations, due to their members’ different market interests and varying levels of exposure to regulation and public badwill, to a significant degree informed their strategic choices as well as policy outcomes.The results show that the policy processes preceding the regime transitions were characterized by internal tensions, whereby organizations representing advertisers, and to a lesser degree media carriers, due to their members’ higher level of exposure to regulation and public badwill, successfully supported stronger market policing, while ad agencies, being less exposed, as well as a peak industry organization for the proliferation of marketing largely opposed such measures, preferring a more lenient regulation. However, due to increased exposure to regulation and bad will, the ad agencies finally abandoned their opposition and took the lead in regulatory innovation through the introduction of an extensive clearance program that survived the launch of the state regime, becoming a key component in the co-regulatory structure that followed.
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| 2. |
- Lü, Bo, 1986-
(författare)
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Nano- and mesoscale morphology evolution of metal films on weakly-interacting surfaces
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Thin films are structures consisting of one or several nanoscale atomic layers of material that are used to either functionalize a surface or constitute components in more complex devices. Many properties of a film are closely related to its microstructure, which allows films to be tailored to meet specific technological requirements. Atom-by-atom film growth from the vapor phase involves a multitude of atomic processes that may not be easily studied experimentally in real-time because they occur in small length- (≤ Å) and timescales (≤ ns). Therefore, different types of computer simulation methods have been developed in order to test theoretical models of thin film growth and unravel what experiments cannot show. In order to compare simulated and experimental results, the simulations must be able to model events on experimental time-scales, i.e. on the order of microseconds to seconds. This is achievable with the kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) method.In this work, the initial growth stages of metal deposition on weakly-interacting substrates is studied using both kMC simulations as well as experiments whereby growth was monitored using in situ probes. Such film/substrate material combinations are widely encountered in technological applications including low-emissivity window coatings to parts of microelectronics components. In the first part of this work, a kMC algorithm was developed to model the growth processes of island nucleation, growth and coalescence when these are functions of deposition parameters such as the vapor deposition rate and substrate temperature. The dynamic interplay between these growth processes was studied in terms of the scaling behavior of the film thickness at the elongation transition, for both continuous and pulsed deposition fluxes, and revealed in both cases two distinct growth regimes in which coalescence is either active or frozen out during deposition. These growth regimes were subsequently confirmed in growth experiments of Ag on SiO2, again for both pulsed and continuous deposition, by measuring the percolation thickness as well as the continuous film formation thickness. However, quantitative agreement with regards to scaling exponents in the two growth regimes was not found between simulations and experiments, and this prompted the development of a method to determine the elongation transition thickness experimentally. Using this method, the elongation transition of Ag on SiO2 was measured, with scaling exponents found in much better agreement with the simulation results. Further, these measurement data also allowed the calculation of surface properties such as the terrace diffusion barrier of Ag on SiO2 and the average island coalescence rate.In the second part of this thesis, pioneering work is done to develop a fully atomistic, on-lattice model which describes the growth of Ag on weakly-interacting substrates. Simulations performed using this model revealed several key atomic-scale processes occurring at the film/substrate interface and on islands which govern island shape evolution, thereby contributing to a better understanding of how 3D island growth occurs at the atomic scale for a wide class of materials. The latter provides insights into the directed growth of metal nanostructures with controlled shapes on weakly-interacting substrates, including twodimensional crystals for use in catalytic and nano-electronic applications.
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| 3. |
- Borghei, Benny Behbood, 1980-
(författare)
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Incumbent Actors in Sectoral Transformations Towards Sustainability : A sociotechnical study of the European heavy commercial vehicles sector
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Industrial sectors need to be transformed in response to the increasing demands for environmental sustainability as one of the greatest challenges in the modern times. In social science research, extensive efforts have been made over the recent decades to formulate comprehensive theories about transformation of various sectors such as energy, manufacturing, agriculture, food and transportation. Accordingly, ‘sustainability transitions’ have emerged as a research field dedicated to the study of far-reaching sociotechnical transformations.Understanding sectoral transformations and how different actors can get involved in sustainability transitions are in the heart of these efforts. Of particular importance is the involvement of industry incumbents that hold established positions and considerable amounts of knowledge, resources, and technological competence built upon vigorous structures of the existing industrial setup. This in turn calls for more attention to the role of incumbents to actively participate in the transformation of established sectors towards sustainability.However, despite the potentials to get involved in processes of transformative change, incumbents are often neglected in transition theories, and their role is predetermined to resist the change. Incumbents are widely black-boxed as a homogenous group of actors to the extent that they are conceived as a single entity whose predefined role is to act as the guardians of the existing structures and defenders of the status-quo. While there are legitimate concerns about the power of incumbent firms, such one-sided views do not offer an inclusive approach in formulating multi-actor processes for sustainability transitions. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute to a more comprehensive theorization on the role of incumbent actors in sectoral transformations. The main research question is formulated as follows: how can incumbents act to facilitate sectoral transformations towards environmental sustainability?In answering this research question, the thesis offers an alternative perspective to the dominant view about incumbents in sustainability transition theories. It challenges prevailing assumptions by providing empirical evidence from the heavy commercial vehicles sector in Europe. The research findings show that incumbents are able to adopt various technological strategies ranging from incremental innovations with highly coordinated actions for reducing emission levels based on the established technologies, to the adoption of radical technological choices for introducing alternative propulsion technologies in the market. In fact, the strong position of incumbents can sometimes enable them to introduce radical innovations in established markets. The research findings also indicate that incumbents can act as learning agents or knowledge repositories to overcome the problem of isolation for new technological innovations by transferring knowledge and technologies over the boundaries of time and space. Moreover, incumbents can facilitate diffusion of radical innovations and ramp up the adoption of new technologies through standardization at the industry level. In addition, incumbents from a range of different sectors have been recognized as integrators for the development of new technological solutions that span over traditional boundaries. Hence, new industrial sectors can emerge through the integration of knowledge and technologies from various established sectors, and incumbents are at the heart of the integration processes due to their knowledge and familiarity of the established sectors.Finally, the theoretical implications from the thesis invite transition scholars to reconsider the role of incumbent actors in sustainability transitions, while the practical implications suggest that policy-makers need to pay more attention to the diversity of technology strategies of incumbent firms and their alignments for sectoral transformations towards sustainability.
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| 4. |
- Borgström, Johannes
(författare)
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Equivalences and Calculi for Formal Verification of Cryptographic Protocols
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Security protocols are essential to the proper functioning of any distributed system running over an insecure network but often have flaws that can be exploited even without breaking the cryptography. Formal cryptography, the assumption that the cryptographic primitives are flawless, facilitates the construction of formal models and verification tools. Such models are often based on process calculi, small formal languages for modelling communicating systems. The spi calculus, a process calculus for the modelling and formal verification of cryptographic protocols, is an extension of the pi calculus with cryptography. In the spi calculus, security properties can be formulated as equations on process terms, so no external formalism is needed. Moreover, the contextual nature of observational process equivalences takes into account any attacker/environment that can be expressed in the calculus. We set out to address the problem of automatic verification of observational equivalence in an extension of the spi calculus: A channel-passing calculus with a more general expression language. As a first step, we study existing non-contextual proof techniques for a particular canonical contextual equivalence. In contrast to standard process calculi, reasoning on cryptographic processes must take into account the partial knowledge of the environment about transmitted messages. In the setting of the spi calculus, several notions of environment-sensitive bisimulation has been developed to treat this environment knowledge. We exhibit distinguishing examples between several of these notions, including ones previously believed to coincide. We then give a general framework for comparison of environment-sensitive relations, based on a comparison of the corresponding kinds of environment and notions of environment consistency. Within this framework we perform an exhaustive comparison of the different bisimulations, where every possible relation that is not proven is disproven. For the second step, we consider the question of which expression languages are suitable. Extending the expression language to account for more sophisticated cryptographic primitives or other kinds of data terms quickly leads to decidability issues. Two important problems in this area are the knowledge problem and an indistinguishability problem called static equivalence. It is known that decidability of static equivalence implies decidability of knowledge in many cases; we exhibit an expression language where knowledge is decidable but static equivalence is not. We then define a class of constructor-destructor expression languages and prove that environment consistency over any such language directly corresponds to static equivalence in a particular extension thereof. We proceed to place some loose constraints on deterministic expression evaluation, and redefine the spi calculus in this more general setting. Once we have chosen an expression language, we encounter a third problem, which is inherent in the operational semantics of message-passing process calculi: The possibility to receive arbitrary messages gives rise to infinite branching on process input. To mitigate this problem, we define a symbolic semantics, where the substitution of received messages for input variables never takes place. Instead, input variables are only subject to logical constraints. We then use this symbolic semantics to define a symbolic bisimulation that is sound and complete with respect to its concrete counterpart, extending the possibilities for automated bisimulation checkers.
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| 5. |
- Geng, Ting, 1987-
(författare)
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Excited-state dynamics of small organic molecules studied by time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ultra-violet and visible light induced processes in small organic molecules play very important roles in many fields, e.g., environmental sciences, biology, material development, chemistry, astrophysics and many others. Thus it is of great importance to better understand the mechanisms behind these processes. To achieve this, a bottom-up approach is most effective, where the photo-induced dynamics occurring in the simplest organic molecule (ethylene) are used as a starting point. Simple substituents and functional groups are added in a controlled manner to ethylene, and changes in the dynamics are investigated as a function of these modifications. In this manner, the dynamics occurring in more complex systems can be explored from a known base.In this thesis, the excited state dynamics of small organic molecules are studied by a combination of time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and various computational methods in order to determine the basic rules necessary to help understand and predict the dynamics of photo-induced processes.The dynamics occurring in ethylene involve a double bond torsion on the ππ* excited state, followed by the decay to the ground state coupled with pyramidalization and hydrogen migration. Several different routes of chemical modification are used as the basis to probe these dynamics as the molecular complexity is increased. (i) When ethylene is modified by the addition of an alkoxyl group (-OCnH2n+1), a new bond cleavage reaction is observed on the πσ* state. When modified by a cyano (-CN) group, a significant change in the carbon atom involved in pyramidalization is observed. (ii) When ethylene used to build up small cyclic polyenes, it is observed that the motifs of the ethylene dynamics persist, expressed as ring puckering and ring opening. (iii) In small heteroaromatic systems, i.e., an aromatic ring containing an ethylene-like sub-structure and one or two non-carbon atoms, the type of heteroatom (N: pyrrole, pyrazole O: furan) gives rise to different bond cleavage and ring puckering channels. Furthermore, adding an aldehyde group (-C=O) onto furan, as a way to lengthen the delocalised ring electron system, opens up additional reaction channels via a nπ* state.The results presented here are used to build up a more complete picture of the dynamics that occur in small molecular systems after they are excited by a visible or UV photon, and are used as a basis to motivate further investigations.
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| 6. |
- Gossas, Thomas, 1976-
(författare)
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Protease Activity, Inhibition and Ligand Interaction Analysis : Developments and Applications for Drug Discovery
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study has focused on characterising protease-ligand interactions in the context of drug discovery. The proteases that have been studied are human matrix metallopeptidase 12 (MMP-12), HIV-protease and Hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3/NS4A protease. These studies have involved kinetic characterisation of protease-inhibitor interactions using biosensor technology, as well as determination of inhibition and activity regulation by using activity assays.The regulation of MMP-12 activity by calcium was proposed, based on the study of the calcium dependence of MMP-12 activity. Furthermore, it was shown that the high affinity of hydroxamate-based inhibitors of MMP-12 were due to slow dissociation of the enzyme-inhibitor complex by using a new biosensor assay for the study of interactions between MMP-12 and ligands.A study of the pH-dependency of protease-inhibitor interactions revealed that the interaction kinetics of HIV-protease inhibitors differed with pH in a way that could be related to the inhibitor structures. This suggested that the forces of interaction are different in the association and dissociation phases of an interaction. Furthermore, it demonstrated the usefulness of pH as a variable in characterising protein-ligand interactions.Results applicable in the discovery of drugs against Hepatitis C were obtained, with the analysis of structure-activity relationships of novel inhibitors. Furthermore, the mode of binding imposed by key functional groups of the inhibitors was explored by investigating the effect of pH on the interactions with NS3.The results show the importance of using appropriate model systems for drug discovery by selecting relevant targets and assay conditions. Furthermore, the usefulness of kinetic rate information in drug discovery is demonstrated. Thus, by contributing to the knowledge of protease-ligand interactions, applicable to both protease inhibitor interactions and protease activity regulation, this thesis is expected to have an impact on the field of protease inhibitor development and drug discovery in general.
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| 7. |
- Gustafsson, Peter, 1994-
(författare)
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Ships, clouds, and waves : understanding ecosystems in traditional industries
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation builds on a jointly phenomenological and theoretical approach to investigate how traditional industries face challenges related to ecosystem innovation. Phenomenologically, it investigates how innovation within the shipbuilding industry affects the activities performed by firms that have traditionally filled the role of suppliers to shipyards. Innovations in digitalisation threaten to upend long-standing relationships and, as a result, have a substantial impact on the structure of the industry, which has a long history of intense competition, long industry cycles, stable products and services, and dependence on global trade. Theoretically, this dissertation is positioned in the growing literature on ecosystems, which takes a particular interest in how innovation creates new interdependencies between actors, interdependencies that need to be aligned for value to materialise. Through this literature, we have an understanding of how innovation can enable new forms of value to reach end users, how firms can orchestrate such activities, and how new entrants can draw on innovation to threaten established industries. However, we have yet to fully consider how ecosystems emerge and are orchestrated in industries characterised by preexisting interdependencies and latent ecosystem structures and the role of complementors in this process.These issues are examined through four research papers that build on each other to investigate different aspects of the emergence and orchestration of ecosystems in traditional industries. This research follows an abductive approach, meaning that through iteration between data and theory, new results have been generated. The data for the studies are drawn from two case studies within the shipbuilding industry. The papers present four main findings: first, the emergence of ecosystems is significantly impacted by preexisting interdependencies, particularly incentives to innovate and regulatory dependence. Second, these preexisting interdependencies lead to complementors taking a leading role in innovation that spur the emergence of new ecosystems. Third, this is carried out through market and nonmarket strategies as firms must engage with each other and international organisations. Fourth, the preexisting interdependencies also lead to collective orchestration which requires significant internal coordination to successfully perform but allows for market actors to have greater influence in regulatory matters. I arrive at these results by drawing on insights from resource dependence theory, collective action theory, and corporate political activities.
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| 8. |
- Hol, Jeroen D., 1981-
(författare)
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Sensor Fusion and Calibration of Inertial Sensors, Vision, Ultra-Wideband and GPS
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The usage of inertial sensors has traditionally been confined primarily to the aviation and marine industry due to their associated cost and bulkiness. During the last decade, however, inertial sensors have undergone a rather dramatic reduction in both size and cost with the introduction of MEMS technology. As a result of this trend, inertial sensors have become commonplace for many applications and can even be found in many consumer products, for instance smart phones, cameras and game consoles. Due to the drift inherent in inertial technology, inertial sensors are typically used in combination with aiding sensors to stabilize andimprove the estimates. The need for aiding sensors becomes even more apparent due to the reduced accuracy of MEMS inertial sensors.This thesis discusses two problems related to using inertial sensors in combination with aiding sensors. The first is the problem of sensor fusion: how to combine the information obtained from the different sensors and obtain a good estimate of position and orientation. The second problem, a prerequisite for sensor fusion, is that of calibration: the sensors themselves have to be calibrated and provide measurement in known units. Furthermore, whenever multiple sensors are combined additional calibration issues arise, since the measurements are seldom acquired in the same physical location and expressed in a common coordinate frame. Sensor fusion and calibration are discussed for the combination of inertial sensors with cameras, UWB or GPS.Two setups for estimating position and orientation in real-time are presented in this thesis. The first uses inertial sensors in combination with a camera; the second combines inertial sensors with UWB. Tightly coupled sensor fusion algorithms and experiments with performance evaluation are provided. Furthermore, this thesis contains ideas on using an optimization based sensor fusion method for a multi-segment inertial tracking system used for human motion capture as well as a sensor fusion method for combining inertial sensors with a dual GPS receiver.The above sensor fusion applications give rise to a number of calibration problems. Novel and easy-to-use calibration algorithms have been developed and tested to determine the following parameters: the magnetic field distortion when an IMU containing magnetometers is mounted close to a ferro-magnetic object, the relative position and orientation of a rigidly connected camera and IMU, as well as the clock parameters and receiver positions of an indoor UWB positioning system.
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| 9. |
- Ingo, Elisabeth, 1987-
(författare)
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Climbing up the hearing rehabilitation ladder
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Hearing impairment is a major public health problem, affecting communication and participation, and is associated with a range of health problems. Most individuals with perceived hearing impairment do not seek help, do not opt for rehabilitation (hearing aids), and do not use prescribed hearing aids adequately. Reducing the impact of hearing impairment and supporting healthy aging are important public health goals. Motivation, access to hearing health care, and poor societal awareness about hearing impairment, consequences, and rehabilitation options influence help-seeking. Offering online hearing screening has been proposed to improve hearing help-seeking, access to hearing health care, and to increase public knowledge about hearing and hearing impairment. Applying theories from health psychology (i.e. the Stages of change model) could help audiologists and other hearing health care professionals understand the psychological barriers that prevent people with hearing problems to seek help and take up rehabilitation. The overarching aim of this thesis was to investigate behaviors related to hearing rehabilitation (help-seeking, hearing aid uptake, and hearing aid use) in adults who fail an online hearing screening. A second aim was to explore the usefulness of the Stages of change model in predicting hearing rehabilitation related behavior in a self-selected online hearing screening sample. Studies I–IV show tentative support for offering online hearing screening and for supplementary interventions for increasing help-seeking and provide tentative support for Stages of change as a useful classification tool to indicate individual needs for further information and guidance. Future studies should contemplate integrating screening for multiple health-related factors associated with hearing impairment and to provide a clear and tailored pathway for each participant (e.g. referral to adequate health care or equivalent online intervention).
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| 10. |
- Kaislahti Tillman, Päivi, 1958-
(författare)
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Holocene climate and environmental change in high latitudes as recorded by stable isotopes in peat deposits
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis, stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in α-cellulose isolated from Sphagnum fuscum moss remains were used as climate proxies. The main focus was to implement the methods in records from high latitude peatlands in the Northern Hemisphere (west-central Canada and north-eastern European Russia), reconstruct palaeoclimate of the studied regions during the Holocene, and evaluate the compatibility of results with other proxy records, especially tree-ring isotope time-series. The variation of stable carbon and oxygen isotope ratios (δ13C, δ18O) in different moss plant components was investigated and differences between untreated plants and α-cellulose extracts were evaluated. The impact of peat decay on the stable isotope proxies was studied by colorimetric and chemical (C/N) methods. Temperature reconstructions were developed based on the statistically significant relationship between δ13C and modern summer temperature records. Wet/dry periods were derived from a combination of δ18O records, macrofossil analysis, and a peat humification record in west-central Canada. A tentative reconstruction of snow depth in north-eastern European Russian tundra and northern taiga was based on δ18O records. The most promising result of the thesis is that stable carbon isotope variability in α-cellulose isolated from Sphagnum fuscum stems can be used to reconstruct and quantify palaeotemperatures several millennia back in time and to reveal both long-term and rapid climate shifts from peat archives.
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