| 1. |
- Viktorelius, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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Energy efficiency at sea : An activity theoretical perspective on operational energy efficiency in maritime transport
- 2019
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Science. - : Elsevier. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 52, s. 1-9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The mitigation of emission from shipping will require improvements in energy efficiency. In order to achieve this, sociotechnical changes are required, affecting all stakeholders within the shipping sector. Ship crews and their everyday work practices will play an especially important role in the transformation of the sector. It is therefore crucial to understand how new energy efficient technologies and practices are being introduced and enacted onboard ships. The case study reported in this paper investigates an attempt to improve the operational energy efficiency in a shipping company that was made by installing an energy monitoring system and introducing an energy saving policy onboard the ships in the fleet. The analytical framework in this paper is inspired by cultural-historical activity theory which is suggested as a novel and useful practice-based approach in energy studies. It is used in analyzing the contradictions and tensions in the work practices onboard the ships that preceded and followed the implementation of the energy monitoring system and energy saving policy. The empirical results revealed how the initial demand for operational energy efficiency and the subsequent introduction of the new monitoring system and policy gave rise to tensions in the existing activity systems onboard which crew members then tried, but did not always manage, to reconcile. It is concluded that a better understanding of the sociotechnical change processes, associated with organizational energy conservation and energy management, can be achieved if the situated paradoxes of practitioners’ everyday practices are examined.
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| 2. |
- Svensson, Idor, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Effects of assistive technology for students with reading and writing disabilities
- 2021
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Ingår i: Disability and Rehabilitation. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1748-3107 .- 1748-3115. ; 16:2, s. 196-208
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Assistive technology has been used to mitigate reading disabilities for almost three decades, and tablets with text-to-speech and speech-to-text apps have been introduced in recent years to scaffold reading and writing. Few scientifically rigorous studies, however, have investigated the benefits of this technology.Purpose: The aim was to explore the effects of assistive technology for students with severe reading disabilities.Method: This study included 149 participants. The intervention group received 24 sessions of assistive technology training, and the control group received treatment as usual.Results: Both the intervention and control groups improved as much in 1 year as the normed population did. However, gains did not differ between the groups directly after the intervention or at 1 year of follow-up.Conclusions: The use of assistive technology seems to have transfer effects on reading ability and to be supportive, especially for students with the most severe difficulties. In addition, it increases motivation for overall schoolwork. Our experience also highlights the obstacles involved in measuring the ability to assimilate and communicate text.
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| 3. |
- Reinholdsson, Tommy, et al.
(författare)
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Nudging green food: The effects of a hedonic cue, menu position, a warm-glow cue, and a descriptive norm
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Consumer Behaviour. - : Wiley. - 1472-0817 .- 1479-1838. ; 22:3, s. 557-568
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Meat consumption is associated with both public health risks and substantial CO2 emissions. In a large-scale field-experiment, we applied four nudges to the digital menus in 136 hamburger restaurants. The nudges promoted vegetarian food purchases by either (1) changing the menu position of vegetarian food, or aligning vegetarian food with (2) a hedonic, taste-focused nudge, (3) the warm-glow effect, or (4) a descriptive social norm. These nudges were thus aimed to shift salience toward a certain goal or the salience of a specific alternative. Vegetarian food purchases were measured in two datasets analyzing if nudges affected customers' "route " to ordering vegetarian food (29,640 observations), and the total number of vegetarian food sold during the intervention (346,081 observations). Results showed that the position nudge affected customers route to buying vegetarian food. More specifically, making the "green category " more accessible made more customers order through that category. Interestingly, this did not affect the total number of vegetarian sales. However, results indicate that nudges that utilize the salience of goals, in particular hedonic goals, may have an overall positive effect on total vegetarian sales.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainability—differently
- 2018
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Ingår i: Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series. - : Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika/Nicolaus Copernicus University. - 1732-4254 .- 2083-8298. ; 40:40, s. 7-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is increasingly appreciated how all societies contain many ‘wicked problems’ or socio-cultural challenges that are multidimensional, hard to pin-down and consequently extremely challenging to solve. Obtaining functional and inclusive societal organization is not a simple matter of ‘doing it’ by subscribing to winning formulae as there are, for example, many choices to be made in the process. Moreover, given that conceptual frameworks always guide thoughts, judgments and actions, how we relate to ‘sustainability’ specifically becomes relevant if we aim to achieve a more liveable society. This journal issue expressly engages with the consequent need to recognise this complexity. It assembles a set of ‘brave’ takes on far-advanced problems bedevilling conventionally conceptualised paths towards sustainability. Arguing against oversimplification that comes from domination of polarizing concepts and unquestioned practices and rhetorics, the aim is to foster explorations into new territories from which we may learn. Ultimately, the desire to deconstruct pernicious divisions and create new hybrid syntheses can progress sustainability.
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| 6. |
- Ahlström, Christer, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of driver sleepiness on fixation-related brain potentials
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Sleep Research. - : Wiley. - 0962-1105 .- 1365-2869. ; 29:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The effects of driver sleepiness are often quantified as deteriorated driving performance, increased blink durations and high levels of subjective sleepiness. Driver sleepiness has also been associated with increasing levels of electroencephalogram (EEG) power, especially in the alpha range. The present exploratory study investigated a new measure of driver sleepiness, the EEG fixation-related lambda response. Thirty young male drivers (23.6 +/- 1.7 years old) participated in a driving simulator experiment in which they drove on rural and suburban roads in simulated daylight versus darkness during both the daytime (full sleep) and night-time (sleep deprived). The results show lower lambda responses during night driving and with longer time on task, indicating that sleep deprivation and time on task cause a general decrement in cortical responsiveness to incoming visual stimuli. Levels of subjective sleepiness and line crossings were higher under the same conditions. Furthermore, results of a linear mixed-effects model showed that low lambda responses are associated with high subjective sleepiness and more line crossings. We suggest that the fixation-related lambda response can be used to investigate driving impairment induced by sleep deprivation while driving and that, after further refinement, it may be useful as an objective measure of driver sleepiness.
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| 7. |
- Vaga, S., et al.
(författare)
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Compositional and functional differences of the mucosal microbiota along the intestine of healthy individuals
- 2020
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 10:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gut mucosal microbes evolved closest to the host, developing specialized local communities. There is, however, insufficient knowledge of these communities as most studies have employed sequencing technologies to investigate faecal microbiota only. This work used shotgun metagenomics of mucosal biopsies to explore the microbial communities' compositions of terminal ileum and large intestine in 5 healthy individuals. Functional annotations and genome-scale metabolic modelling of selected species were then employed to identify local functional enrichments. While faecal metagenomics provided a good approximation of the average gut mucosal microbiome composition, mucosal biopsies allowed detecting the subtle variations of local microbial communities. Given their significant enrichment in the mucosal microbiota, we highlight the roles of Bacteroides species and describe the antimicrobial resistance biogeography along the intestine. We also detail which species, at which locations, are involved with the tryptophan/indole pathway, whose malfunctioning has been linked to pathologies including inflammatory bowel disease. Our study thus provides invaluable resources for investigating mechanisms connecting gut microbiota and host pathophysiology.
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| 8. |
- Gunnarsson, Bengt, 1954, et al.
(författare)
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Effects of biodiversity and environment-related attitude on perception of urban green space
- 2017
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Ingår i: Urban Ecosystems. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1083-8155 .- 1573-1642. ; 20:1, s. 37-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Green space in cities contributes to the quality of life for city dwellers, e.g., by increasing the opportunity for recreation. However, perception of urban green space is influenced by multiple factors. We investigated effects of biodiversity and environment-related attitudes on visual and auditory perceptions of urban green space. Field measurements of biodiversity were conducted in six sites across an urban gradient in Gothenburg, Sweden, and three categories of biodiversity—high, medium, low—were established. Households were sent a survey on aesthetic perception of urban green space, sound perception and the importance of trees and plants for the perception of bird species. Each respondent focused on the site that was located nearby. The environment-related attitudes comprised “Nature-oriented” and “Urban-oriented” persons and were based on participants’ own attitude estimations. It was shown that participants’ “subjective” aesthetic and sound-related perception of urban greenery were in line with the “objectively” measured subdivisions of high, medium and low biodiversity. So also were their estimations of the importance of trees and plants for perception of bird species in urban greenery, although differing only between high and medium/low biodiversity conditions. Persons rating themselves as highly nature-oriented were shown to give higher scores to urban green space aesthetics and to value greenery-related sounds higher, and to attach greater importance to trees and plants in their perception of bird species in urban greenery, than less nature-oriented persons. Highly urban-oriented persons compared to less urban-oriented persons did the same, but only regarding urban greenery-related aesthetics and sounds of nature. We conclude that environment-related attitudes influence perceptions of green space. Moreover, our findings support the idea that biodiversity per se also influences perceptions; people value green space significantly more with high than with low measured biodiversity. Urban planning needs to provide city inhabitants with green spaces that are species-rich, lush, varied and rich with natural sounds.
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| 9. |
- Ljung Aust, Mikael, 1973
(författare)
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Developing Theoretical and Empirical Definitions of Safety Problems in Driving Suitable for Active Safety Function Evaluation
- 2009
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In passive safety, the requirement specifications used for evaluation of protective functions are both standardised and specified at a high level of detail regarding evaluation scenario definition, performance metrics and pass/fail criteria. For active safety, while several propositions for evaluation scenarios have been made, neither these, nor performance metrics and pass/fail criteria have yet reached a similar level of detail and standardisation. The objective of this thesis is to address two underlying reasons for this difference. One is theoretical in nature. On a general level, a set of principles and concepts which capture the fundamental ideas of a field of science can be called a conceptual framework. For active safety function evaluation, such a framework is currently lacking. To address this issue, a conceptual framework called Situational control was developed. The framework integrates fundamental ideas relevant for active safety function evaluation into a holistic and practically applicable picture. Its applicability was demonstrated by applying it in the context of writing and implementing requirement specifications for active safety function evaluation.The second reason is of empirical character. To evaluate the extent to which active safety functions prevent and/or mitigate crashes, it is essential to characterize the sequence of events which leads to collisions in a way which includes information on causal factors. To do this, data from official databases (macroscopic data), and in-depth case studies is often used. Macroscopic data is usually statistically representative but has limited information on why crashes happen, while the opposite is true of case studies. Using the two in combination would therefore seem ideal. However, the principles for connecting them are far from clear and current approaches suffer inherent weaknesses. To address this issue, a generalization methodology which links information in case studies to macroscopic crash types, in a way which covers not only context but also causation similarity, was developed. The feasibility of the methodology was tested through application on three sets of intersection crash data. Results indicate that the methodology was sufficiently successful to warrant further exploration with larger data sets.
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| 10. |
- Hedblom, Marcus, et al.
(författare)
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Sounds of Nature in the City: No Evidence of Bird Song Improving Stress Recovery
- 2019
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Ingår i: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. - : MDPI AG. - 1660-4601 .- 1661-7827. ; 16:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Noise from city traffic is one of the most significant environmental stressors. Natural soundscapes, such as bird songs, have been suggested to potentially mitigate or mask noise. All previous studies on masking noise use self-evaluation data rather than physiological data. In this study, while respondents (n = 117) watched a 360 degrees virtual reality (VR) photograph of a park, they were exposed to different soundscapes and mild electrical shocks. The soundscapesbird song, bird song and traffic noise, and traffic noisewere played during a 10 min recovery period while their skin conductance levels were assessed as a measure of arousal/stress. No significant difference in stress recovery was found between the soundscapes although a tendency for less stress in bird song and more stress in traffic noise was noted. All three soundscapes, however, significantly reduced stress. This result could be attributed to the stress-reducing effect of the visual VR environment, to the noise levels being higher than 47 dBA (a level known to make masking ineffective), or to the respondents finding bird songs stressful. Reduction of stress in cities using masking with natural sounds requires further studies with not only larger samples but also sufficient methods to detect potential sex differences.
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