Mid Sweden University

The paper deals with water leakage beyond the meter at household level. The automatic leakage detection is emerging as priority task for scientists and technicians. Each possible solution must include the use of smart meters for the continuous survey of domestic water consumption. Water smart meters aren't widespread yet, and the few either are prototypes or exhibit not adequate battery and communication performance. The authors, participants to the EMPIR 17IND13 Metrowamet project, propose an embedded system that can work with different water sensors, whose characteristics have been suitably designed for respecting stringent requirements of energy efficiency, computational burden and wireless transmission capability. 

The investigation was initiated because of the high workload of the sellers and, additionally, because the Tunadal sawmill has received low ratings in customer surveys. Thus,  two main approaches are adopted here,  the first being to investigate which of the three methods  of working, namely, market divided flow organization, function organizationand flow organization with collaboration, proves to be the most beneficial. The second is to investigate whether there is an available method to ease the daily work. A literature review has been made in order to determine more efficient ways for the sellers to work in the Tunadal sawmill. During the investigation, an in-depth investigation into the total quality management using a balanced scorecard as a management tool was conducted. To identify the current problems, interviews and workshops were conducted with the department members. A customer survey was sent to the customers in order to obtain some indication in relation to their opinions. The results showed that there are many unnecessary working operations such as control, duplication of work and problem solving. Communication between the various departments and individuals proved to sometimes be poor.  A major reason for the sellers’ problems regarding workload was due to the unavailability of goods on the discharge date. Many benefits are associated with the collaborative flow organization as this increases the holistic view and can assist in relation to communication. The function based method of working would, however, lead to greater isolation of the functions in the business. Very little work regarding identification of problems that occur in the processes exists and focus on working with improvements is limited. It would be advantageous to work with total quality management using the balanced scorecard as a management tool in the flow organization based on cooperation as this also promotes the holistic approach.

Keywords:Efficiency improvement, total quality management, balanced

Age of Information (AoI) is a critical metric in status update systems as these systems require the fresh updates. This letter investigates the uplink of an Internet-of-Thing (IoT) network where L nodes transmit their information packets to a base station. The effects of the arrival rate of packets at the nodes, the number of nodes in the system, and queue length of each node have been studied by devising a discrete time Markov chain (MC) model. This model helps in predicting the values of AoI and probability of packet drops in such systems. The notion of first-in first-out is used for queuing, which transmits the oldest packet first, resulting in decreasing the overall AoI of the system. The results show that AoI increases with the increase in queue length, number of nodes and arrival rate and we quantify the aforementioned metrics using the MC model. The results found using the MC model are also validated using extensive simulations. © 2012 IEEE.

Age of Information (AoI) has been introduced to characterize the newness of data which is observed in real time. In other words, it is the measure of time elapsed since the generation of last received update about a process and is a vital metric in networks such as Internet of things (IoTs), especially when the application demands fresh updates. Most of the applications require fresh data e.g., applications related to environmental monitoring, smart agriculture, body area networks etc. On the other hand backscatter communication promises to resolve one of the most challenging issues of IoT devices, i.e., making them capable for communication without the batteries. The importance of AoI in backscatter communication is paramount to gauge performance of backscatter IoT networks. This chapter addresses the significance of AoI in backscatter communication and suggests some techniques to design a communication system with minimum AoI, maximum energy efficiency, and minimum outage. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The starting point for the study was that the Swedish Prison and Probation Service received criticism from the Committee on the Rights of the Child when it comes to children of parents who are deprived of their liberty, criticism that children travel far to visit their parents, and criticism that children who travel far may not automatically extend their visit to certain institutions. At the same time, research has pointed to challenges and important conditions for considering the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the prison service. In a Swedish context, after the Convention on the Rights of the Child becomes law in Sweden in 2020, the organizational development with regard to fulfilling children's rights in the public sector has been relatively unexplored. The research aims to fill part of that knowledge gap. The purpose of the study is to see how the Swedish Prison and Probation Service develops with regard to compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The issues focus on how the prison service improves its activities in order to constantly consider the Convention on the Rights of the Child in matters concerning children. The study was conducted through a qualitative study. Data collection for this study was done through semi-structured interviews, nine respondents who are children's representatives at different levels in the hierarchy in the region west. The study shows that the Swedish Prison and Probation Service controls processes centrally from above by informing legislation, national guidelines for communicating how the Convention on the Rights of the Child is taken into account to regions and then to local units. Then each unit interprets the guidelines in the way that suits the unit type, such as detention, institution, or probation. The study shows that more cooperation is needed between different authorities to promote work for the best interests of the child. According to the study, however, it is not enough to consider children's conventions in the handbooks or through training, but there must be a personal commitment on the part of employees considered customer-oriented.

Celulose nanofibers are lightweight, recycable, biodegradable, and renewable. Hence, there is a great interest of using them instead of fossil-based components in new materials and biocomposites. In this study, we disclose an environmentally benign (green) one-step reaction approach to fabricate lactic acid ester functionalized cellulose nanofibrils from wood-derived pulp fibers in high yields. This was accomplished by converting wood-derived pulp fibers to nanofibrillated “cellulose lactate” under mild conditions using lactic acid as both the reaction media and catalyst. Thus, in parallel to the cellulose nanofibril production, concurrent lactic acid-catalyzed esterification of lactic acid to the cellulose nanofibers surface occured. The direct lactic acid esterification, which is a surface selective functionalization and reversible (de-attaching the ester groups by cleavage of the ester bonds), of the cellulose nanofibrils was confirmed by low numbers of degree of substitution, and FT-IR analyses. Thus, autocatalytic esterification and cellulose hydrolysis occurred without the need of metal based or a harsh mineral acid catalysts, which has disadvantages such as acid corrosiveness and high recovery cost of acid. Moreover, adding a mineral acid as a co-catalyst significantly decreased the yield of the nanocellulose. The lactic acid media is successfully recycled in multiple reaction cycles producing the corresponding nanocellulose fibers in high yields. The disclosed green cellulose nanofibril production route is industrial relevant and gives direct access to nanocellulose for use in variety of applications such as sustainable filaments, composites, packaging and strengthening of recycled fibers. 

There is a growing demand for the utilization of sustainable materials, such as cellulose-based alternatives, over fossil-based materials. However, the inherent drawbacks of cellulosic materials, such as extremely low wet strength and resistance to moisture, need significant improvements. Moreover, several of the commercially available wet-strength chemicals and hydrophobic agents for cellulosic material treatment are toxic or fossil-based (e.g., epichlorohydrin and fluorocarbons). Herein, we present an eco-friendly, high-yield, industrially relevant, and scalable method inspired by birch bark for fabricating hydrophobic and strong cellulosic materials. This was accomplished by combining simple surface modification of cellulosic fibers in water using colloidal particles of betulin, an abundant triterpene extracted from birch bark, with sustainable chemical engineering (e.g., lignin modification and hot-pressing). This led to a transformative process that not only altered the morphology of the cellulosic materials into a more dense and compact structure but also made them hydrophobic (contact angles of up to >130°) with the betulin particles undergoing polymorphic transformations from prismatic crystals (betulin III) to orthorhombic whiskers (betulin I). Significant synergistic effects are observed, resulting in a remarkable increase in wet strength (>1400%) of the produced hydrophobic cellulosic materials.

In this work, photoresponsive nanomechanical systems were prepared through the intercalation of positively charged photoswitching molecular jacks (azobenzene ionic liquids, Azo-ILs) within montmorillonite (MMT) layers (MMT@Azo-ILs). The study shows that MMT@Azo-ILs are photosensitive and the synthesized molecular jacks could change the basal distances of MMT layers upon UV irradiation. These changes come from changes in the structure and geometry of Azo molecules (i.e., cis-trans isomerization) between clay layers upon UV irradiation. The prepared photoresponsive nanomechanical systems were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM). Moreover, the in vitro release studies were performed in different conditions (upon UV irradiation and darkness) in pH 5.8 at 34 ± 1 °C, and it was found that the release rates from drug loaded MMT@Azo-ILs were higher upon UV irradiation in comparison with the release rates in darkness. According to the release studies, the prepared photoresponsive carriers might be considered as an excellent potential candidate in order to formulate smart sunscreens. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

In this paper we present an integrating CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) circuit to be used with scintillator type X-ray sensors for intra oral dental X-ray imaging systems. Different pixel architectures were constructed to explore their performance characteristics and to study the feasibility of the development of such systems using the CMOS technology. A prototype 64×80 pixel array has been implemented in a CMOS 0.8 μm double poly n-well process with a pixel pitch of 50 μm. A spectral sensitivity measurement for the different pixels topologies, as well as measured X-ray direct absorption in the different APSs are presented. A measurement of the output signal showed a good linearity over a wide dynamic range. This chip showed that the very low sensitivity of the CMOS APSs to direct X-ray exposure adds a great advantage to the various CMOS advantages over CCD-based imaging systems.

We present in this paper an integrating CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) circuit coated with scintillator type sensors for intra-oral dental X-ray imaging systems. The photosensing element in the pixel is formed by the p-diffusion on the n-well diode. The advantage of this photosensor is its very low direct absorption of X-rays compared to the other available photosensing elements in the CMOS pixel. The pixel features an integrating capacitor in the feedback loop of a preamplifier of a finite gain in order to increase the optical sensitivity. To verify the effectiveness of this in-pixel preamplification, a prototype 32 x 80 element CMOS active pixel array was implemented in a 0.8 mum CMOS double poly, n-well process with a pixel pitch of 50 mum. Measured results confirmed the improved optical sensitivity performance of the APS. Various measurements on device performance are presented.

Hybrid pixel array detectors for X-ray imaging are based on different technologies for sensor and readout electronics. The readout electronics are based on standard CMOS technologies that are experiencing continuously rapid improvements by means of down-scaling the feature sizes, which in turn lead to higher transistor densities, lower power consumption, and faster circuits. For pixel-array imaging sensors the improvements in CMOS technology opens up new possibilities of integrating more functionality in the pixels for local processing of the sensor data. However, new issues related to the tight integration of both analog and digital processing circuits within the small area of a pixel must also be evaluated.

The advantages of down-scaling the CMOS technology can be utilized to increase the spatial resolution by reducing the pixel sizes. Recent research indicates however that the bottleneck in reaching further spatial resolution in X-ray imaging sensors may not be limited by the circuit area occupied by the functions necessary in the pixels, but are instead related to problems associated with charge-sharing of charges generated by the sensor which are distributed over a neighbourhood of pixels and will limit the spatial resolution and lead to a distortion of the energy spectrum. In this thesis a mechanism to be implemented in the readout circuits is proposed in order to suppress the charge-sharing effects. The proposed architecture and its circuit implementation are evaluated with respect to circuit complexity (area) and power consumption. For a photon-counting pixel it is demonstrated that the complete pixel, with charge-sharing suppression mechanism, can be implemented using 300 transistors with an idle power consumption of 2.7μW in a 120nm CMOS technology operating with a 1.2V power supply.

The improvements in CMOS technology can also be used for increasing the range of applications for X-ray imaging sensors. In this thesis, an architecture is proposed for multiple energy discrimination, called color X-ray imaging. The proposed solution is the result of balancing the circuit complexity and the image quality. The method is based on color sub-sampling with intensity biasing. For three-level energy discrimination, that corresponds to color imaging systems for visible light with R, G, and B color components, the increase in circuit complexity will be only 20% higher than that for the Bayer method but results in significantly better image quality.

As the circuit complexity in the digital processing within each pixel is increased, the digitally induced noise may play an increasingly important role for the signal-to-noise ratio in the measurements. In this thesis an initial study is conducted regarding how the digital switching noise affects the analog amplifiers in the photon-counting pixel.

This work proposes an efficient circuit implementation of a mechanism for charge-sharing suppression in photon-counting pixel arrays based on current-mode circuits for the analog parts. The additional circuits needed for charge-sharing suppression in a four-pixel cluster, leads to an increase in power consumption of 36% and only a marginal increase in circuit area. The implemented pixel with window-discrimination, managing charge-sharing in a four-pixel cluster and with an event-counter of 13 bits, consists of 300 transistors and has a power consumption of 2.7 μW when idle. It is implemented in a 120nm CMOS process and the presented results are based on simulations.

This paper proposes an area- and power-efficient implementation of the read-out electronics for color X-ray pixel detectors for imaging. Introducing multiple levels of energy discrimination will increase the complexity of the read-out electronics in each pixel. The proposed architecture has full resolution for the intensity and reduced resolution for the energy spectrum (color), which leads to a good compromise of image quality and circuit complexity. We show that the increase in complexity, compared to single energy-range pixel, will lead to increase in circuit area of less than 20%.

This paper describes a generalized architecture for real-time component labeling and computation of image component features. Computing real-time image component features is one of the most important paradigms for modern machine vision systems. Embedded machine vision systems demand robust performance, power efficiency as well as minimum area utilization. The presented architecture can easily be extended with additional modules for parallel computation of arbitrary image component features. Hardware modules for component labeling and feature calculation run in parallel. This modularization makes the architecture suitable for design automation. Our architecture is capable of processing 390 video frames per second of size 640x480 pixels. Dynamic power consumption is 24.20mW at 86 frames per second on a Xilinx Spartran6 FPGA.

Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka om värmeenergin från CO2 kyl-/frysaggregat i en livsmedelsbutik kan motsvara värmeenergibehovet till butiken och byggnaden samt undersöka möjligheten att minska vattenförbrukningen till att nödkyla värmeväxlare.  Genom litteraturstudie och datainsamling av relevanta parametrar, beräknades värmeenergibehovet för byggnaden, butiken och den producerade värmeenergin från kylanläggningen. En energibalansberäkning utfördes för att verifiera resultat och kartlägga hur värmeenergin fördelas i de olika delarna av värmeåtervinningskretsen. En förbättringsåtgärd presenterats för att sänka värmeåtervinnings returledningstemperatur och med det kan vattenförbrukningen minskas.

In today's society, many IT organizations have strived to implement system development to improve and streamline information management in an effort to streamline the entire organization. The first step in system development is to identify the problems experienced by the company. This study focuses on studying delivery systems at IT companies in order to identify problems and quality shortcomings in that system. The delivery system is used daily by employees at the fall company. It was noted that several problems have arisen when the system is not automated. Employees have different problems that they want to avoid. For example, employees must enter manually to change what has been generated by the system. This leads to waste times and increases the risk of failure. Research in the areas of system development and process development stresses the importance of developing or improving IT processes to achieve the required quality. The study has been conducted by observing and interviewing employees who work with the delivery system. The results of this study present three major problems that the system has today. These are installation guide, system usability and requirement specification. The Installation Wizard is a document that consists of all modules to be installed at the customer for the version to be released along with other necessary information about the deliveries or modules. This document is not generated by the system today but is manually created by the employees. This requires a lot of manual work and time to check and make sure they have got them all. Regarding the second issue, the current system lacks some features that make usability very complex and that takes time to learn how it works. Finally, the company has no clear requirement management process, which means that the company delivers a module or service that does not meet its requirements and expectations. The study also represents solutions to address these issues.  

Today Delta Terminal AB rents a warehouse, the expenses of the warehouse are much higher than the income and therefore Delta Terminal Ab wants to relocate the warehouse to a different building that they own. The current warehouse is approximately 7900 𝑚2and the intended local is 6400𝑚2. Because of the differ-ence in size between the two warehouses, it is important that the products are placed so that the bearing surface is filled as much as possible without damag-ing the products. To reduce the driving distance in the warehouse the products are placed after a categorization technique called double ABC-analysis, where the delivery frequency is the main factor. To verify that the products fit in the warehouse calculations were made on the fill rate, a localization and product placement were also made based on the categorization. The information is taken from a literature review, scientific articles, previous studies, discussions with the staff at Delta Terminal AB and from each client who has a product in the warehouse. The study shows that the products Delta Terminal AB has in stock will not fit in the intended warehouse and that Delta Terminal AB needs at least 48 m2 to store leftover products.

In this paper, we design a navigation policy for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) where mobile base stations (BSs) are deployed to improve the data freshness and connectivity to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. First, we formulate an energy-efficient trajectory optimization problem in which the objective is to maximize the energy efficiency by optimizing the UAV-BS trajectory policy. We also incorporate different contextual information such as energy and age of information (AoI) constraints to ensure the data freshness at the ground BS. Second, we propose an agile deep reinforcement learning with experience replay model to solve the formulated problem concerning the contextual constraints for the UAV-BS navigation. Moreover, the proposed approach is well-suited for solving the problem, since the state space of the problem is extremely large and finding the best trajectory policy with useful contextual features is too complex for the UAV-BSs. By applying the proposed trained model, an effective real-time trajectory policy for the UAV-BSs captures the observable network states over time. Finally, the simulation results illustrate the proposed approach is 3.6 % and 3.13 % more energy efficient than those of the greedy and baseline deep Q Network (DQN) approaches. 

The accelerated move towards the adoption of the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) paradigm has resulted in numerous shortcomings as far as security is concerned. One of the IIoT affecting critical security threats is what is termed as the ” False Data Injection” (FDI) attack. The FDI attacks aim to mislead the industrial platforms by falsifying their sensor measurements. FDI attacks have successfully overcome the classical threat detection approaches. In this study, we present a novel method of FDI attack detection using Autoencoders (AEs). We exploit the sensor data correlation in time and space, which in turn can help identify the falsified data. Moreover, the falsified data are cleaned using the denoising AEs. Performance evaluation proves the success of our technique in detecting FDI attacks. It also significantly outperforms a support vector machine (SVM) based approach used for the same purpose. The denoising AE data cleaning algorithm is also shown to be very effective in recovering clean data from corrupted (attacked) data.

Digital technology offers new ways to meet patients, which is more relevant than ever during thecurrent pandemic. The digitalisation is mainly intended to make healthcare more efficient in orderto treat more patients. Previous research suggests that the human aspect of digitalisation hasreceived less attention than technical issues. The new technology brings new ways for thehealthcare profession to carry out its work. The purpose of this study is to investigate how theemployee experience a digitized work process in a primary care setting.This qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with six informantswithin a private primary care group in Västernorrland. The Primary care organisation is at thebeginning of their digitization journey and when interviewed, only a few employees had tried howit is like to work digitally. The collected material has been clarified through a content analysisfocusing on the content of three of the cornerstones in the cornerstone model; quality (continuousimprovement), participation and the customer value.The study reveals that the informants feel that a digitized way of working can provide time savingsthrough more effective assessments. At present, however, the new technology is not perceived ascompletely reliable and needs to be improved to function as intended. In the digital work process,the informants believe that the nurse will probably play a more central role. The interviewees alsobelieve that trust in each other, clear roles and that everyone is well informed about what the digitalwork process sustains, is of great importance.

Purpose

Quality management and Lean initiatives are currently widespread in the Swedish municipal sector. It is also made clear that all Lean initiatives should be initiated to benefit the customer and not for internal organizational reasons. However, the practices currently used for understanding value creation in the municipalities tend to focus heavily on the use of numerical, quantitative approaches. In sharp contrast, the growing field of, for example, design thinking argue that qualitative approaches are key when it comes to getting closer to the citizens, establishing new levels of understanding and thereby inspiring new and better solutions. In sum, it seems likely that municipalities are struggling with developing quality due to relying, in too one-sided on the use of quantitative rather than qualitative approaches to understand and spark new levels of value creation. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with a review of research concerning qualitative approaches for understanding and co-creating value in municipal quality development.

Methodology/Approach The paper is based on a literature review.

Findings The paper provides an overview of previous research concerning practices for evaluating and understanding value creation in the context of a municipal quality development.

Value of the paper

This overview is of value for practitioners within the context, as well as researchers that wants to contribute within this area.

Genom att kartlägga smältugnarna och dess kylvattensystem inom Åkers Sweden AB har en studie genomförts för att analysera vilken potential det finns till att ytterligare återvinna överskottsenergi. Detta har genomförts för att uppfylla de av Sverige ställda miljö- och energi-mål till år 2030 som dels handlar om att vi behöver energieffektivisera våra processer och tillföra mindre energi för att uppnå samma resultat som tidigare.

Uppdraget är genomfört på uppdrag av Åkers Ledningsgrupp som önskar förstå om det finns tekniska och ekonomiska förutsättningar att starta upp ett projekt för att investera i ett energilager. Överskottsenergi som idag inte kan tillvaratas kyls bort med sjövatten vilket kan betraktas som ett rent energislöseri.

Resultatet påvisar att det finns en potential till att återvinna ytterligare 2 GWh överskottsenergi vilka är möjliga att lagra i ett energilager till en investeringskostnad på 21 MSEK.

Total quality development has become a strongly recurring concept within organizations, which requires that quality work be integrated throughout the organization in order to achieve success. Continuous improvement work is critical in quality development to maintain competitiveness; companies that do not improve risk falling behind. Effective organizations that continuously improve tend to have a pervasive organizational culture characterized by job satisfaction, a certain leadership behavior and an ability to retain their employees. An adaptation of the quality work according to the organization's specific needs leads to profitability, sustainability and customer satisfaction. The implementation of continuous improvements plays a decisive role in shaping the company's organizational culture and affects both employees and managers. The purpose of this study was to explore how employees and manager in a group within a private company experience how work with continuous improvements takes place and how employees and manager experience that continuous improvements contribute to developing the organizational culture in the company. 

The data collection method for this study was quantitative with a qualitative element. A survey was conducted with closed survey questions and two open questions. The respondents for the survey were employees in a group within a private IT company. In addition, a qualitative semi-structured interview was held with the manager of the selected group. The result of this study showed that there is a consistently high degree of perceived improvement work and a strong organizational culture.  Being able to work with continuous improvements to adapt to the changes continues to be important for both employees and managers. 

The following report reflects a degree project carried out at Solör Bioenergi, the project has aimed to evaluate the high proportion of unburned that occurs during their combustion. Solör owns the plant in Nora and supplies the town with district heating. This is done by burning biomass and the fuel consists of sawdust and stemwood chips. During a large part of the heating season, these fuels are mixed with each other. But during the warm season, only sawdust is burned. For the evaluation, information from course literature has been collected. Together with studying of research reports, they have helped to gather knowledge for the project and what factors can affect an combustion. The results of the literature study have been compared with a performed current situation analysis together with several interviews with operating technicians, plant managers and external contractors. This working methodology has created an overall picture of combustion in the boiler and has enabled the design of a list of proposed measures. The list can be found in a separate section, together with a financial calculation. The reliability of the recommended measures has also been confirmed with a test run, where applied theory has improved combustion. A general conclusion that can be drawn after the work shows how important a good process control is for increased fuel utilization, this can be summarized with the basic rule for the design of control systems:

-What can be automated, should be automated.

In cardiac auscultation, the ability to clearly hear any existing murmur sounds in heart sounds is crucial for proper diagnosis. This work aims to improve heart sound by the use of a stethoscope array and beamforming technique. The stethoscope array comprises four piezo elements for measurement, placed on the edges of a 40mm by 40mm rectangle. The directionality of the piezo elements reduces the effect of ambient noise in the measurement. The signal amelioration is achieved by isolating the systole and diastole sounds, and independently applying the delay-and-sum beamforming. This thereby makes any existing murmur sounds in the systole and/or diastole more audible and clearer to aid diagnosis. Finally, the designed stethoscope array and signal processing shows a gain of up to 33% for measured healthy heart samples, and up to 63% increase in murmur sound gain for measured sample with medically confirmed murmur. 

Många amputerade upplever att deras protessystem inte är lika anpassningsbara som de hoppats på. Dagens protes­system är utformade med låsta komponenter vilket begrän­sar användarens möjlighet att anpassa systemen till specifika ändamål. Därför påbörjades ett projekt med målet att under­söka om det finns möjlighet att skapa en snabbkoppling till protessystem genom att framställa ett konstruktionsförslag av ett lösningsalternativ. I starten av projektet påbörjades en problemformulering för att undersöka om problemen uppvisade några beroenden eller påverkade andra poster inom det framställda flödesschemat. Efter genomförd problemformulering påbörjades förstudierna för att samla in relevant information till genomförandet av projektet, där förstudien genomfördes med hjälp av en konkurrensanalys, funktionsanalys och enkätundersökning. Efter att förstudien var avklarad påbörjades en designprocess för att framställa ett konstruktionsförslag av ett lösningsförslag. Under designprocessens start formulerades en kravspecifikation så att konstruktionsförslaget hade något att förhålla sig till, och sedan påbörjades modelleringen av ett konstruktionsförslag med hjälp av Solidworks. En prototyp framställdes i plast med hjälp av en 3D- printer för att kontrollera passform av ingående komponenter och slutligen så undersöktes konstruktionsförslagets hållfasthet i Solidworks med hjälp av hållfasthetssimuleringar. Genomförandet av projektet har resulterat i en framställning av konstruktionsmaterial, prototyp, konstruktionsritningar till ett konstruktionsförslag av en snabbkoppling till protessystem. Konstruktionsförslaget kallat Hydra Coupler förser protesanvändare med möjligheten att enkelt byta proteskomponenter efter ändamål utan behov av externa verktyg, och Hydra Coupler kan även inneslutas av kosmetik utan att förlora funktionalitet.

Postural sway is a critical measure for evaluating postural control, and its analysis plays a vital role in preventing falls among the elderly. Typically, physiotherapists assess an individual's postural control using tests such as the Berg Balance Scale, Tinetti Test, and time up-and-go test. Sensor-based analysis is available based on devices such as force plates or inertial measurement units. Recently, machine learning methods have demonstrated promising results in the sensor-based analysis of postural control. However, these models are often complex, slow, and energy-intensive. To address these limitations, this study explores the design space of lightweight machine learning models deployable to microcontrollers to assess postural stability. We developed an artificial neural network (ANN) model and compare its performance to that of random forests, gaussian naive bayes, and extra tree classifiers. The models are trained using a sway dataset with varying input sizes and signal-to-noise ratios. The dataset comprises two feature vectors extracted from raw accelerometer data. The developed models are deployed to an ARM Cortex M4-based microcontroller, and their performance is evaluated and compared. We show that the ANN model has 99.03% accuracy, higher noise immunity, and the model performs better with a window size of one second with 590.96 us inference time. 

Acoustic emission (AE) is a widely used non-destructive test method in structural health monitoring applications to identify the damage type in the material. Usually, the analysis of the AE signal is done by using traditional parameter-based methods. Recently, machine learning methods showed promising results for the analysis of AE signals. However, these machine learning models are complex, slow, and consume significant amounts of energy. To address these limitations and to explore the trade-off between model complexity and the classification accuracy, this paper presents a lightweight artificial neural network model to classify damage types in concrete material using raw acoustic emission signals. The model consists of one hidden layer with four neurons and is trained on a public acoustic emission signal dataset. The created model is deployed to several microcontrollers and the performance of the model is evaluated and compared with a state-of-the-art machine learning model. The model achieves 98.4% accuracy on the test data with only 4019 parameters. In terms of evaluation metrics, the proposed tiny machine learning model outperforms previously proposed models 10 to 1000 times. The proposed model thus enables machine learning in real-time structural health monitoring applications. 

A common problem with production equipment at Eberspächer is downtime where the root cause is difficult to identify. The use of sophisticated systems that isolate the source of the error can reduce the remediation time and therefore be of great benefit to productivity. The following report examines how to automate the restoration of a machine focused on measurement and quality control, to an original mode where operating personnel can resume production after a downtime. Initially, work began on a literature study from which information was obtained about the various automated parts of the measuring cell. Furthermore, the machine's PLC program was also studied to try to understand what the code in the various programmed blocks does. The programming of the automated recovery was done in accordance with Eberspächer's guidelines and specification. Based on collected information about the machine's function, it has been possible to create a program with the desired functionality. The conclusion that can be drawn from this work is that there are great advantages to automating functions that can be difficult and require a lot of the user. The automated reset is a good example of a feature where there are economic, ecological and ergonomic benefits of making a complicated action manageable.

I denna uppsats skriver jag om hur man skapar en intressant och spännande kontrast mellan olika material och mönster i min examensmöbel. Jag beskriver även kortfattat hur jag kom fram till just detta, samt varför jag valde de metoder jag använde mig av.

Jag valde mellan vanlig brun MDF-skiva, Valchromat (genomfärgad MDF-skiva) och en färg.

This study describes a novel sustainable concept for the scalable direct fabrication and functionalization of nanocellulose from wood pulp with reduced energy consumption. A central concept is the use of metal-free small organic molecules as mediators and catalysts for the production and subsequent versatile surface engineering of the cellulosic nanomaterials via organocatalysis and click chemistry. Here, “organoclick” chemistry enables the selective functionalization of nanocelluloses with different organic molecules as well as the binding of palladium ions or nanoparticles. The nanocellulosic material is also shown to function as a sustainable support for heterogeneous catalysis in modern organic synthesis (e.g., Suzuki cross-coupling transformations in water). The reported strategy not only addresses obstacles and challenges for the future utilization of nanocellulose (e.g., low moisture resistance, the need for green chemistry, and energy-intensive production) but also enables new applications for nanocellulosic materials in different areas.

This chapter describes the cooperative strategy of combining metal catalyst activation with aminocatalysis, with a focus on the metal acting as a Lewis acid catalyst. It gives examples where the metal catalyst promotes the reactivity of different substrates by the formation of reactive intermediates. These intermediates can act either as electrophiles or nucleophiles, which in turn can couple with nucleophilic enamine or electrophilic iminium intermediates formed between the carbonyl compounds and aminocatalyst. The chemical transformation ensues via the merging of the enamine and π‐allyl‐Pd complex via asymmetric counteranion‐direct catalysis (ACDC). Subsequently, several groups reported different co‐catalytic systems and chemical strategies for the α‐allylic alkylation of aldehydes and ketones. Cordova and coworkers reported the first example where iminium activation catalysis is combined with metal catalyst activation cooperatively. The stratagem was demonstrated for the catalytic enantioselective conjugate silyl addition to α,β‐unsaturated aldehydes.

” The new normal” as it is called regarding the hybrid work methods when organizations have had to change their working format, is here to stay. Organizations have had to adapt in order to continue operating as the world undergoes constant changes, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees have transitioned from working in the workplace, to work from home because of the restrictions, and today, they have had to alternate between working remotely and working in the workplace in a hybrid version. The authors of this study, as a result of this, have been interested in examining and increasing the knowledge of how a leader’s work with continuous improvement changes with hybrid work methods. The study used a qualitative research method, and the authors conducted eight semi-structured interviews. The collected data was thematically analyzed. In summary, the conclusion has been that leaders believe it is appropriate to use the strategies off differentiated and integrated cognitive processes, according to the theory, to work with continuous improvements in the hybrid work methods. Leaders have experienced challenges in working with continuous improvements in the hybrid work methods such as lack of engagement, isolation, and lack of social interaction. Leaders have also experienced opportunities such as flexibility, increased digitalization, and the ability to attract a wider range of competence. Based on the identified challenges and opportunities in continuous improvements in the work hybrid method, the authors of this study have with help of collected data from leaders, developed a checklist for how leaders can navigate continuous improvement in the hybrid work method.

On-shelf availability is a measure of how available a product is for a shopper in a store. The products should be in the place where the shopper expects it and at the time the shopper wants to buy it. To ensure a high Onshelf availability store clerks must move around the store and look for products that must be replenished and products that are misplaced. However, this task is rather time consuming since there are usually hundreds of different products to keep track of in a store. This thesis therefore, aims to simplify this task for store clerks by creating an automatic system that can identify “out of stocks” and misplaced products. Different state of the art object detection algorithms and image classification methods were evaluated in order to solve this task. The object detection algorithms were used to find products and gaps on store shelves and were trained with a relatively small dataset. The bounding boxes obtained from the object detection algorithm was then forwarded to an image classification algorithm in order to predict the label of the product. The training data of the classification dataset consisted of a small dataset with 29 different detergent products. All the algorithms were evaluated on speed and F1-score while the object detection algorithms were also evaluated on an average precision with an intersection of union as 0.5 and 0.75. The results indicate that it is possible to use deep learning in order to improve on-shelf availability. However, the methods might only perform good on the small datasets used in this thesis. Furthermore, since no real test have been made in a real-life supermarket it is impossible to say for certain if it would indeed improve on-shelf availability.

Flygplats logistik

Quality culture is part of the organizational culture and an important part of maintaining or changing an organizational culture is the leadership. In school organizations there are many demands on the content and quality of the activities in terms of laws and governing documents. The systematic quality work must include teachers, other employees, students and their guardians. The person ultimately responsible for the work at the school unit is the school's principal. A state surevey published in 2021 describes the complex function that an effective school library should have. The state survey emphasizes the importance of the principal's leadership in order for the school library to be part of the teaching and that the quality of the school library must be high. The purpose of this the survey is to explore which underlying values are favorable for the school library's quality work. What characterizes the organizational culture of successful school libraries and in what way are they managed and organized. This survey is designed through a qualitative method and has an abductive approach. Empirical data was collected through ten semi-structured interviews. The results showed that even if there is no pronounced work with total quality management in the school libraries inlcuded in this survey, quality culture values are found. In addition to these, a co-leadership based on competence and participation appears. The meaning of leadership becomes an individual and a collective process that requires both leaders, followers and meaning-making context. The work with the school library becomes a clear part of the school's development. The starting point for both the principal and the school librarian is the action plan which is locally designed for the school library.

Denna rapport är resultatet av ett examensarbete som utförts isamarbete med byggföretaget K360 i Uppsala. De arbetar medkakling av badrum i renovering och nybyggnation. En fallstudiehar besvarat forskningsfrågan “Hur kan byggföretag i Sverigegenom materialval och arbetssätt i samband med kakling avbadrum, minska sina koldioxidutsläpp och sin användning avfarliga ämnen?”. Materialen avser avjämningsmassa, fästmassa ochkakel. Litteraturstudierna bygger på rapporter och skrifter frånstatliga institutioner, kommuner, företag och tidningsartiklar. Dettycks saknas forskning om avjämning och fästmassa. Litteraturenberör klimatneutral betong, farliga ämnen, avfallshantering ochföretagskultur och visar följande. Cementen i betong ger högakoldioxidutsläpp. I klimatneutral betong har delar av cementenbytts ut mot bl.a. flygaska. Den gör att betongen eller avjämningentorkar långsamt. Cementindustrin forskar på metoder för attminska sina koldioxidutsläpp. En annan studie bygger på en teoriatt normaltorkande avjämning möjliggör klimatneutraltbetongbjälklag då den fungerar som fukt- och alkalispärr. Denempiriska studien beräknas färdig 2021. Farliga ämnen skaminskas och mycket farliga ämnen ska fasas ut. Dessa ärcancerframkallande, hormonstörande, svårnedbrytbara, kraftigtallergiframkallande och förändrande av arvsmassa ellerfortplantning. Försiktighetsprincipen bör tillämpas då det saknasforskning om många ämnens miljöpåverkan i kombination medandra. I cementbaserade fästmassor och avjämningsmassor kan detfinnas plasttillsatser som medför giftiga biocider. Det finnsnaturliga alternativ. Avfall bör i första hand minimeras, sedanåteranvändas, materialåtervinnas, energiutvinnas och sistdeponeras. I K360s miljöpolicy står att de värnar ommedarbetarnas delaktighet. Litteraturen stödjer delaktighet ochyrkesstolthet som drivkraft till ett företags kvalitetsutveckling därmiljö är en del. Beslut ska baseras på fakta som kräverkommunikation men K360 saknar idag forum för miljö- ochklimatfrågor. Sju kvalitativa intervjuer har genomförts medplattsättare och projektledare. Alla intervjuade anser att miljö- ochklimatfrågor är viktigt. Samtliga plattsättare strävar efter attminska spillet genom planering och beräkning av materialåtgång.Detta blir lättare med mer erfarenhet. För att effektivt kunnaanvända kakelplattorna krävs tid för planering och logiskttänkande. Tidsbrist, standarden för att kapa kakelplattor, mått ochutformning av badrummen utgör hinder för att förebygga spill.Möjligheterna för detsamma är att i projekteringsstadiet anpassatidsplan, badrummets mått och kakel. Allt material återvinns närmöjlighet ges. Beställarens krav och pris styr materialvalet. Andrafaktorer är låg vikt och att det fungerar med befintliga material.Plattsättare och projektledare uttrycker tilltro till att materialet ärkontrollerat för farliga ämnen. Överlag saknar de kunskap ommaterialens innehåll och möjligheten att påverka materialvaletupplevs vara litet. En produktjämförelse jämför fästmassornaCentro FK# 1000 som K360 använder mycket och Haga 325 Bio-Platten- und Fliesenkleber. Produkterna är likvärdiga ochcementbaserade. Centros innehåller plasttillsatser medan Hagasbara naturliga tillsatser. Diskussionen tar upp om ett riktatlitteratursökande kan ha lett till att källor missats och att källorfrån företag kan vara vinklat. Hänvisningar från kommunen ochoberoende källor stärker informationen. Vidare diskuteras omtilliten hos informanterna till materialkontrollerna är frånsägandeav ansvar men flera uttalanden pekar på starkt ansvarskännande.Slutsatsen från produktjämförelsen är att ett byte från Centro tillHaga skulle minska potentiellt farliga ämnen. Andra slutsatsersom dras är att det saknas klimatneutral avjämningsmassa påmarknaden men det kan komma att visa sig att normaltorkandeavjämning är att föredra. Företaget saknar idag forum för internkommunikation om miljöfrågor vilket gör att information fastnarhos enskilda individer. Rapporten rekommenderar K360 att avsättaresurser för att uppdatera sig om materialinnehåll ochmiljöutveckling, skapa forum och vägar för intern kunskaps- ocherfarenhetsöverföring, sprida information om material ocharbetssätt till beställare och producenter av material, fortsätta medcementbaserad avjämning och byta mot klimatneutral cement iframtiden.

Stovepipes, or also called silos, appear in many different organizations and sectors and contribute to problems when employees or managers tend to look more to their own, or the individual departments, objectives rather than to the organizations. The purpose of this study was to identify different communicative factors that promote stovepipes in order to further identify the most critical factor to disarm. A case study has been done at a selected company, with a stovepipe structure, in order to achieve the purpose of the study. The case study has included interviews and observations to identify different problem areas which then have been compared with three communicative factors identified in previous studies. The factor that had the most connections to the problem areas have been considered the most critical factor. The result of the study indicates that “A lack of understanding each other's work” is the most critical factor in stovepipe structures and that it can be prevented by following five recommendations: bring up positive collaboration continually, raise problems with each other instead of with others, identify different communication paths in and between the departments, implement a long-term model for preventing stovepipes and set up workshops between the involved departments. The conclusion of the study is that stovepipes create several undesirable effects in the organization but that the efforts to counter these problems do not have to be complicated. Following five small steps into a better collaboration and communication can be enough to be on your way to a better organizational structure.

When investigating the construction industry's lack of digitization, it is often explained that it is because of a conservative culture. The purpose of this study has been to problematize the labelling as conservative and to study a company in the industry to gain a deeper understanding of what other problems that may exist. Based on this, three research questions were identified which the study had as a goal to answer. These are: how the construction industry can be said to be conservative, how the conservatism is expressed, and what other barriers that exists that cannot be said to be derived from conservatism. The study has been conducted through a case study at Skanska Sverige AB with Region Hus Norr as a delimitation. Furthermore, it has been divided into two phases where semi-structural interviews and a document review have been used as the basis for a description of the current situation. The result shows that it is not a representative state of the construction industry to say that it is conservative, and during the case study no underlying expressions of conservatism was observed. On the other hand, there are several other areas that are considered as the reason for a slow development. The conclusions drawn is that the way the Swedish Public Procurement Act is conducted today is one of the reasons for this. An accelerated change process where some steps in the change management models are skipped is also seen as a reason. Furthermore, there are signs of that the current processes not always support efficient digitization, which indicates that the work in some cases only move from an analog to a digital state. Lastly, an indication of a stove pipe structure in the development area has been observed during the study, which can affect the efficiency and target improvement in a negative way.

When investigating the construction industry's lack of digitization, it is often explained that it is because of a conservative culture. The purpose of this study has been to problematize the labelling as conservative and to study a company in the industry to gain a deeper understanding of what other problems that may exist. Based on this, three research questions were identified which the study had as a goal to answer. These are: how the construction industry can be said to be conservative, how the conservatism is expressed, and what other barriers that exists that cannot be said to be derived from conservatism. The study has been conducted through a case study at Skanska Sverige AB with Region Hus Norr as a delimitation. Furthermore, it has been divided into two phases where semi-structural interviews and a document review have been used as the basis for a description of the current situation. The result shows that it is not a representative state of the construction industry to say that it is conservative, and during the case study no underlying expressions of conservatism was observed. On the other hand, there are several other areas that are considered as the reason for a slow development. The conclusions drawn is that the way the Swedish Public Procurement Act is conducted today is one of the reasons for this. An accelerated change process where some steps in the change management models are skipped is also seen as a reason. Furthermore, there are signs of that the current processes not always support efficient digitization, which indicates that the work in some cases only move from an analog to a digital state. Lastly, an indication of a stove pipe structure in the development area has been observed during the study, which can affect the efficiency and target improvement in a negative way.

Several pressures on planetary boundaries are directly linked to the production of goods and services driven by people's ever-increasing spending of money to improve their material living standard beyond a comfortable life. The over-spending on material consumption by people in industrialized countries, and in the growing middle and upper classes of developing countries, constitutes a serious threat to the planet, does not boost individual happiness, and exposes citizens in a society to inequalities known to negatively affect their well-being. Owing to economic means and psychological factors spurring consumption, affluence increases spending on consumption of expensive luxury goods and services that aggregated have detrimental effects on the planet. We conjecture that these effects are increased by consumer credit enabling moderately affluent people to match their peers’ and the very affluent people's spending on expensive luxury consumption, and making less affluent people over-spend money on purchases of inexpensive short-lived fast-fashion consumer products. In addition to other means to curtail current unsustainable consumption levels, our analysis highlights that consumer credit may need to be restricted. 

Stroke is a globally increasing disease and speech and language deficiencies are common in stroke survivors. To facilitate medical caregivers in their professional work and to improve patients’ quality of life, technology can play an important role.  However, the use and acceptance of technology are uncertain and more research is needed in this direction. This study evaluates the technology acceptance and adoption of an online speech and language assessment application. The evaluation focused Design Science Research strategy was adopted for that purpose. Two physiotherapists, one occupational therapist and three speech therapists participated in the study. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) was used as the theoretical base for interview questions formation and data analysis. The study findings show that the suggested application is useful and easy to use; however, it should be more synchronised with speech therapists’ daily work routines. The speech therapists stressed that functionalities of the application should be designed in close collaboration with them, and it should be compatible with the already existing systems and services in place.  Due to the impairments after stroke, the patients have some specific preferences for software and hardware such as a tablet with touch pen is the preferred hardware. Additionally, the interface should have bigger text fonts and pictures, and highly contrastive colours in the graphics should be used for patients’ convenience. The user’s privacy and security, patient’s current health, and their previous knowledge and experience about technology were also found important determinants for intention to use the given technology. 

Speech and language relearning are challenging for stroke survivors as well as for medical caregiv-ers. After a stroke, a patient’s ability to read, write, speak, and listen is decreased to different degrees, which results in a compromised independent life and a decreased quality of life for the patient. Tech-nology enhances systems can play a vital role in this context. However, the available software are not specifically built for after the stroke patient’s needs. This paper is therefore aimed to gather require-ments for designing a tailor-made speech relearning software application for stroke survivors. A de-sign science approach was adopted, where different stakeholders such as medical caregivers and in-formation technology consultants were involved in the process. The well-informed and experienced participants in their fields highlighted some important requirements such as different types of inter-face for a patient than speech therapist with extra management functionality for speech therapists so that they can adjust the relearning exercises according to the patient’s needs. Software requirements vary from patient to patient where the intensity of speech and language impairments, general medical condition of the patient, age, prior experience, and knowledge about the information of the patient and social setup of the patient plays an important role. Since stroke is most common in adults and adults learn differently than children, adult learning theory might help understand the patients' needs. There-fore, adult learning principles were involved in the requirement analysis process. The established re-quirements will be used for the development of speech and language relearning software.

Stroke is a common and severe disease that can be found in all regions across the globe, and not onlyamong older adults. Result of a stroke can be death, or a variety of disabilities caused by impairments indifferent brain functions. This chapter discusses technology enhanced stroke rehabilitation from a threefoldview of cognitive, motoric and speech rehabilitation. The important research question was: Whatwould be the requirements for technology-enhanced stroke rehabilitation in the areas of cognitive, motoricand speech rehabilitation? The study was carried out with a requirement-focused Design Science approachcollecting data with semi-structured interviews. Informants were selected in a purposive sampling choosingprofessionals with valuable knowledge and skills in stroke rehabilitation. The findings in this study havegenerated useful general requirements for a future implementation and testing of technology enhancedstroke rehabilitation. Within each of the three rehabilitation categories cognitive, motoric and speech, thereseems to be potential for successful use of technology enhanced services. This development ofrehabilitation services must follow the fundamental principle for all forms of stroke rehabilitation: eachpatient needs a personalised treatment. However, in all three rehabilitation categories, there is a need todefine more specific requirements based on feedback from stroke patients testing the rehabilitationservices.