Blekinge Institute of Technology
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Conservation laws for a coupled variable-coefficient modified Korteweg–de Vries system in a two-layer fluid model
No full textWe find the Lie point symmetries of a coupled variable-coefficient modified
Korteweg–de Vries system in a two-layer fluid model. Then we establish its
quasi self-adjointness and
corresponding conservation laws
The Rocky Road: Why Usability Work is so Difficult
No full textAchieving product and process quality are among the central themes of software
engineering, and quality is an important factor in the marketplace. Usability
and user experience (UX) are two important aspects of quality, particularly for
interactive products. To achieve usability means producing products that let
users do things in a satisfactory, efficient and effective way. To develop
products with good UX, means going beyond usability, in ways that are still not
clear to us.
Achieving good usability and UX is hard. This thesis is concerned with
organizations which work towards these goals. This research is concerned with
understanding and improving the processes by which technology is designed and
developed, and understanding the demands and expectations users have. It is
about how companies can and actually develop products with good usability and
UX, and what stops them from working towards this as efficiently as they could.
We have viewed the usability and UX challenge from the viewpoints of Quality,
Organizations, and Institutions, with a focus on participatory design,
user-centred design and wicked problems.
The research can be characterised as empirical research performed over a period
of seven years, in close cooperation with industrial partners. The research was
performed using multiple data collection methods to create constructs and shape
theory. The field methods have ranged from being a participant observer, to
performing interviews and holding workshops with members of the participating
organisations. A case study approach was initially used, but focus soon moved
from case study methodology to a closer focus on grounded theory, and finally
the focus shifted to constructivist grounded theory.
The thesis contributes to the field of software engineering in several ways.
Usability has a long history within software engineering, human computer
interaction, and design science, but the different discourses within the fields
have meant that communication between the fields was problematic. The research
in this thesis has moved between the different fields, contributing to bridging
the gap between the areas.
It gives an illustration of how usability work actually takes place in
different types of companies, from a developer of operating systems for
smartphones, to a global engineering company, which knows that it must find
ways of working with, and measuring, usability and user experience. It gives
concrete knowledge about the way in which companies can work with usability
testing, and how they can provide information to satisfy the information needs
of different stakeholders.
It provides a discussion of the state of UX today, taking up the problems that
stop industry making use of the definitions and theories of UX that exist.
Thus, it gives an illustration of the different factors in product design,
development and sales, from dealing with organizational factors to satisfying
user needs, that all make usability work such a rocky road to navigate
Ground Moving Target Detection and Estimation with Different Sar Linear Flight Tracks
No full textThe paper proposes a groundmoving target detection and estimation method aiming
at UltraWide Band and -Beam (UWB) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. The
method is developed on the moving target detection by focusing technique and
requires a SAR system flying with two different linear flight tracks. The
method allows us to detect ground moving target, even hidden by clutter, and to
estimate the target parameters such as speed and direction of motion. The
accuracy of the estimations depends strongly on the computational cost and can
therefore be controlled
Stakeholder Values and Ecosystems
No full textThis report is the deliverable for Work Package 1 (WP1), Stakeholder Values and
Ecosystems, of the EU FP7 funded project RECODE (Grant Agreement No: 321463),
which focuses on developing Policy Recommendations for Open Access to Research
Data in Europe. WP1 focuses on understanding stakeholder values and ecosystems
in Open Access, dissemination and preservation in the area of scientific and
scholarly data (thus not government data). The objectives of this WP are as
follows:
• Identify and map the diverse range of stakeholder values in Open Access data
and data dissemination and preservation.
• Map stakeholder values on to research ecosystems using case studies from
different disciplinary perspectives.
• Conduct a workshop to evaluate and identify good practice in addressing
conflicting value chains and stakeholder fragmentation
ENVIRAN: Energy Efficient Virtual Radio Access Networks
No full textENVIRAN is a new research project aiming at the
research, design and deployment of new architectural solutions for network
virtualization and cognitive radio networks. The project is about developing
and testing a new network architecture, to enable innovation through
programmability and control of network functions and protocols. For doing this,
we solve different technical challenges. These are about network virtualization,
open architecture, reconfigurable software suite, virtual
base station and decision support system. Another important
part of the project is regarding the development of a cognitive
virtualization platform, to test the new developed solutions.
It is well known that cognitive radio technology is a key
concept suggested to use the radio frequency spectrum in a more efficient
manner than previous mobile networks. The difference in our case is that the
cognition is used not only to provide better resource use for bandwidth but
also for other categories of resources like energy/power consumption (by using,
e.g., green routing, cooperative/relay networking), hardware utilization (in
form of, e.g., virtual Base Stations, cognitive/reconfigurable wireless
devices), reduce the cost of supporting the required QoS/QoE, new business
models.
Cognition and virtualization concepts are used to increase the
efficiency of network management and resource utilization as well as to reduce
the power consumption and the cost of supporting the expected QoS/QoE for
communication. The expected research results will be tested, among others, in
the world-wide virtual network PlanetLab
A Decision Support Framework for Metric Selection in Goal-Based Measurement Programs: GQM-DSFMS
No full textSoftware organizations face challenges in managing and sustaining their
measurement programs over time. The complexity of measurement programs increase
with exploding number of goals and metrics to collect. At the same time,
organizations usually have limited budget and resources for metrics collection.
It has been recognized for quite a while that there is the need for
prioritizing goals, which then ought to drive the selection of metrics. On the
other hand, the dynamic nature of the organizations requires measurement
programs to adapt to the changes in the stakeholders, their goals, information
needs and priorities. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to use
structured approaches that provide transparency, traceability and guidance in
choosing an optimum set of metrics that would address the highest priority
information needs considering limited resources. This paper proposes a decision
support framework for metrics selection (DSFMS) which is built upon the widely
used Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach. The core of the framework includes an
iterative goal-based metrics selection process incorporating decision making
mechanisms in metrics selection, a pre-defined Attributes/Metrics Repository,
and a Traceability Model among GQM elements. We also discuss alternative
prioritization and optimization techniques for organizations to tailor the
framework according to their needs. The evaluation of the GQM-DSFMS framework
was done through a case study in a CMMI Level 3 software company
Patient-Nurse Anesthetist Interaction During Regional Anesthesia and Surgery Based on Video Recordings
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this study was to interpret and describe the
patient-nurse anesthetist (NA) interaction during regional anesthesia.
Design: Video recordings conducted during orthopedic surgery at a surgical
clinic in Sweden formed the basis for the study, in which three patients and
three NAs participated.
Methods: A hermeneutic analysis was conducted on the data.
Finding: The findings of the analysis demonstrated that the NA was in either
‘‘present’’ presence or ‘‘absent’’ presence in the awake patient’s visual field
during surgery. The NA’s professional actions at times dominated the patient’s
existential being in the intraoperative situation. The findings
conveyed insights about the patient-NA interaction that open up possibilities
for nurses to understand and reflect upon their own practice in an expanded way.
Conclusions: Using video recordings for reflections enables development of
professional skills that positively influence the care quality for patients
during regional anesthesia
Can a theory-based educational intervention change nurses' knowledge and attitudes concerning cancer pain management? a quasi-experimental design
No full textBACKGROUND:
Registered Nurses (RNs) play an important role in caring for patients suffering
from cancer pain. A lack of knowledge regarding pain management and the RNs'
own perception of cancer pain could act as barriers to effective pain
management. Educational interventions that target RNs' knowledge and attitudes
have proved promising. However, an intervention consisting of evidence-based
practice is a multifaceted process and demands behavioural and cognitive
changes to sustain the effects of the intervention. Therefore, our study aimed
to investigate if a theory-based educational intervention could change RNs'
knowledge and attitudes to cancer pain and pain management, both four and 12
weeks after the start of the intervention.
METHODS:
A quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent control groups was used. The
primary outcome was measured using a modified version of the instrument Nurses'
Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain (NKAS) at baseline, four weeks
and 12 weeks after the start of the intervention to evaluate its persistence.
The intervention's educational curriculum was based on the principles of
Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour and consisted of interactive learning
activities conducted in workshops founded on evidence-based knowledge. The RN's
own experiences from cancer pain management were used in the learning process.
RESULTS:
The theory-based educational intervention aimed at changing RNs knowledge and
attitudes regarding cancer pain management measured by primary outcome NKAS
resulted in a statistical significant (p<0.05) improvement of total mean score
from baseline to four weeks at the intervention ward.
CONCLUSIONS:
The findings of this study, suggest that a theory-based educational
intervention focused at RNs can be effective in changing RN's knowledge and
attitudes regarding cancer pain management. However, the high number of
dropouts between baseline and four weeks needs to be taken into account when
evaluating our findings. Finally, this kind of theory-based educational
intervention with interactive learning activities has been sparsely researched
and needs to be evaluated further in larger projects.Trial registration:
Clinical Trials. Gov: NCT01313234
Preliminary Results of Combining Thread-Level Speculation and Just-in-Time Compilation in Google’s V8
No full textWe present the first implementation of Thread-Level Speculation in combination
with Just-in-time compilation. The implementation is done in Google’s V8, a
well-known JavaScript engine, and evaluated on 15 popular web application
executing on 2, 4, and 8 core computers. Our results show an average speedup of
2.9 on 4 cores, without any JavaScript code modifications. Further, we have
found that the Just-in-time compilation time is significant, and that most
functions are lazily compiled (approximately 80%) and that V8 contains features
that are advantageous in Thread-Level Speculation
On Prioritized Spectrum Access in Cognitive Radio Networks with Imperfect Sensing
No full textCognitive Radio networks allow the unlicensed users
to share the available spectrum opportunities. However, this demands for
solving the problem of contention among multiple unlicensed user packets for
transmission. In our paper, we consider the Opportunistic Spectrum Access model
for packet transmission between two unlicensed users. We suggest a priority
scheme for a unlicensed user to concurrently transmit different types of
packets. Our scheme reserves a fixed number of queueing places in the buffer
for the prioritized packets. We study the transmission performance under both
the priority scheme and imperfect spectrum sensing, with respect to the
blocking probabilities, average transmission delay and transmission throughput
of unlicensed users packets. The Markov chain based numerical analysis is
validated by simulation experiments. Our results show
that the suggested priority scheme is able to enhance transmission throughput
of unlicensed users packets, together with significant decreased average
transmission delay and minor decreased total transmission throughput