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This article offers a longitudinal perspective on communications during election campaigns from a political-party perspective, where strategic considerations about digital media are compared across time. Our analysis is grounded on the concepts of hybridisation and data-driven campaigning, where digital technology tends to play a central role without replacing all traditional campaign features. Empirically, the study is based on a longitudinal analysis of four election campaigns in Sweden during 2010–2022. The analysis shows that Swedish political parties have gradually integrated digital campaign features in their structure and strategy. The process is not linear, but rather back and forth, as party perceptions of the importance of communication channels vary across time. The results imply a development where all parties, regardless of size and ideology, are increasingly making rational judgments of which combinations of old and new campaign methods and communication channels are most effective.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate how Quran burning is portrayed in Aftonbladet's reporting. The study is intended to examine three Quran burnings with each other in order to compare Aftonbladet's reporting. In addition to the portrayal of Quran burning, the study has investigated how the practitioners of Quran burning are portrayed in Aftonbladet. Using a thematic content analysis, the study's text material has been analyzed to produce a result. How an event is portrayed in the media in turn affects how the news is perceived by its audience. ​Therefore, we believe that it is socially relevant to investigate how Quran burning is portrayed, because in Sweden everyone has the right to express themselves freely. Based on the study's thematic analysis, we can see a connection in Aftobladet's reporting on Quran burning. Generally, violent protests and reactions are presented as a consequence of the Quran burnings. In Aftonbladets culture-, editorial- and commentary texts, the Quran burnings are portrayed as a hate crime, more than the right to express oneself freely. As Quran burning appears as a hate crime, the audience's attitude towards Quran burning tends to become more negative In the reporting about Rasmus Paludan and Salwan Momika, who both burned the Quran, Aftonbladet has made different choices in its presentation. Paludan is portrayed as a provocateur who uses freedom of speech in Sweden to provoke. His political affiliation is prominent in Aftonbladet's reporting and his gatherings are portrayed as provocative. Salwan Momika's nationality is not prominent and his Quran burning is not portrayed as provocative.

In this paper we will prove a series of $q$-identities suggested by the realisation of certain conformal field theories by so-called `coupled free fermions'. We will consider $q$-series arising from coupled free fermions constructed by the parafermion coset construction as well as from scaled root lattices, and some interesting relations between the two.

We study a specific class of CFTs that involve coupled free fermions, arising from parafermion CFTs and lattice constructions. We analyse their representation spaces and the underlying exclusion statistics of coupled free fermions using specific bases. In one particular case, we reveal an unexpected connection between the coset construction of parafermions, the lattice construction, and and orbifold thereof. This connection is supported by proving a range of character identities within the context of coupled free fermions. Simultaneously, we obtain explicit expressions of certain string functions in terms of Dedekind eta functions.

Huvudsyftet med denna rapport var att beräkna klimatpåverkan från ett utfört stabilitetshöjande åtgärdsprojekt inom Älvängens västra industriområde, Ale kommun, baserat på projektspecifika mängduppgifter och klimatdata. Klimatberäkningarna omfattar samtliga utförda åtgärder, dvs. tryckbank, avlastningsschakt och naturanpassade erosionsskydd. Den totala klimatpåverkan (moduler A1-A5 och D) från det utförda åtgärdsprojektet uppgår till 934,8 ton CO2e, varav modul A1-A5 står för 88,7 % (832,9 ton CO2e) och modul D för 10,9 % (101,9 ton CO2e). I denna studie avser modul D klimatpåverkan i samband med den minskade elproduktionen (42,97 MWh per år) vid Lilla Edets vattenkraftverk, eftersom den anlagda tryckbanken utmed Göta älv skulle kunna orsaka en genomsnittlig dämningseffekt på 1,4 mm. När det gäller fördelningen av den totala klimatpåverkan mellan de olika åtgärderna svarar tryckbank för 89,9 % (totalt 840,6 ton CO2e inklusive modul D), avlastningsschakt för 8,4 % (78,6 ton CO2e) och erosionsskydd för 1,4 % (13,2 ton CO2e). Klimatpåverkan från åtgärden med tryckbank (738,7 ton CO2, modul A1-A5) är till stor del kopplad till tryckbanksmassor (45,1 %) och dieselförbrukning av arbetsmaskiner på arbetsplatsen (42,2 %). Tryckbanksmassornas klimatpåverkan kommer från produktionsskedet (33 %), följt av transport (12,1 %). Bidraget från dieselförbrukningen på arbetsplatsen fördelas mellan arbetsmaskiner på följande sätt: mudderverk (utläggning av tryckbanksmassor) 17 %, bogserbåt (transport av tryckbanksmassor mellan utlastningspunkt och utläggningsområden) 9,3 %, hjullastare (transport av tryckbanksmassor från upplag till utlastningspunk) 9,1 % och grävmaskin (utlastning av massor från utlastningspunk till pråmar) 6,8 %. För att ytterligare minska den totala klimatpåverkan från det utförda åtgärdsprojektet bör fokus läggas på bland annat inköp och transport av bergkrossprodukter med mindre klimatpåverkan. Dessutom skulle det vara värdefullt att undersöka möjligheter att min

Purpose and aim: Our study investigates the phenomenon of nostalgic football apparel consumption, emphasizing the interactive cultural processes that shape nostalgic feelings and in turn influence consumer behavior. Despite the prevalence of nostalgia marketing in various industries, the sports apparel sector, particularly football, has been slow to capitalize on this trend and simultaneously research has predominantly concentrated on the corporate perspective rather than on consumer behavior. Method: By employing an abductive research approach, combining both deductive and inductive methods. Through qualitative data collection, being three separate focus groups, the study has presented valuable and deep insights into how nostalgic football apparel consumers think about the subject. Through a thorough thematic data analysis, three major themes of evidence linked to the research question emerged. Findings: The findings highlight significant theoretical implications for understanding consumer behavior in nostalgia marketing and offer practical insights for marketers aiming to leverage nostalgia in product design and branding. We find evidence that the interactive cultural process of valuing products shapes the nostalgic aspects of football apparel to a high extent, and therefore has a major impact when it comes to consumer behavior related to nostalgic football apparel. Implications: The main implications of our study add to the body of nostalgia marketing, and in particular nostalgia in sports marketing. The study also identifies limitations and suggests avenues for future research to further explore the dynamic interplay between nostalgia and consumer behavior in different contexts.

Slutrapporten är framtagen med ekonomiskt stöd från Trafikverket Skyltfonden. Ståndpunkter, slutsatser och arbetsmetoder i rapporten reflekterar författaren och överensstämmer inte med nödvändighet med Trafikverkets ståndpunkter, slutsatser och arbetsmetoder inom rapportens ämnesområde. Sverige är ett föregångsland när det gäller trafiksäkerhet för barn i bil med tydliga regler och rekommendationer som kommuniceras till föräldrar tidigt under föräldraskapet. Barn med funktionsnedsättning har dock ofta behov som inte helt kan tillgodoses av de allmänna rekommendationer som finns. Det gäller barn med olika typer av funktionsnedsättningar där det finns ett stort behov hos vårdnadshavare att få råd och stöd i sin strävan att även det funktionsnedsatta barnet ska kunna färdas med god trafiksäkerhet. I början av 2000-talet publicerades skriften Åka Säkert – om trafiksäkerhet för barn med funktionsnedsättning. Åka Säkert var en väl fungerande kunskapskälla och ”handbok” som fungerade väl under en lång period. Tiderna förändras dock och efter 20 år var det uppenbart att delar av innehållet i den tidigare skriften hade blivit inaktuellt eller direkt felaktigt. Behovet av ett uppdaterat kunskapsstöd anpassat efter ny kunskap och dagens verklighet var därför stort. I aktuellt projekt har projektgruppen uppdaterat det äldre materialet från skriften Åka Säkert, samlat ny information och förankrat resultatet hos trafiksäkerhetsforskare. Textmaterialet har sedan utvecklats till ett digitalt kunskapsstöd som granskats av såväl trafiksäkerhetsforskare som andra yrkesverksamma inom området, brukarorganisationer och av vårdnadshavare till barn med funktionsnedsättning. Materialet har publicerats på en självständig och öppen hemsida som är allmänt tillgänglig sedan mars 2024, se www.akasakert.se Information om hemsidan har spridits i projektgruppens kontaktnät och organisationer samt till målgruppen inom brukarorganisationerna. Projektet har också presenterats på hjälpmedelsmässan

In remote sensing, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology plays an important role in various environmental and geological studies. One of its usage is water extraction, which can be used as an important research tool in the fields of natural resources and environmental protection research, as well as natural disaster prevention. This study analyzes the results of water body extraction in the Lake Mälaren by using SAR technology represented by Sentinel 1 based on its four different single polarization modes (VV VH HV HH), aiming to analyze the differences between its accuracy and polarization and determine the best polarization mode. In general, VV has the highest accuracy and HH has the lowest, and the sensitivity to the signal reflected by a smooth surface such as the water surface has become the main explanation. For areas such as the study area where the water body and land boundary are clearly defined, the use of Vv polarization is undoubtedly the most appropriate., Inom fjärranalysvetenskapen spelar syntetisk aperturradar-teknik (SAR) en viktig roll i olika miljö- och geologiska studier. En sådan användning är vattenutvinning, som kan fungera som ett viktigt forskningsverktyg inom områden som naturresurs- och miljöskyddsforskning och förebyggande av naturkatastrofer. Denna studie analyserar SAR-teknologin som representeras av Sentinel 1, baserat på dess fyra olika enkelpolarisationslägen (VV VH HV HH), för att utföra tröskelmetodens vattenutvinningsresultat i Mälarens vatten, med syfte att analysera dess noggrannhet och skillnaden mellan polarisationer bestämmer den bästa polarisationsmetoden. I allmänhet har VV den högsta noggrannheten och HH den lägsta, och känsligheten för signaler som reflekteras av släta plan som vattenytan har blivit den främsta förklaringsorsaken. För områden som studieområdet med tydliga vatten-landgränser är det utan tvekan det lämpligaste att använda Vv-polarisering.

Detta kandidatarbetets syfte var att bibehålla den mänskliga input som 2D-animation har och föra över det till 3D-animation. 3D-animationen ska vara trovärdig och efterlikna 2D-animation. Den ska avbilda lokomotion, gång- och springcyklar, och är menat för en tvåbent karaktär i ett third-personspel. Karaktären animerades i rörelse genom att studera lokomotion och grunderna samt teknikerna avanimation. Med användandet av en iterativ designprocess, och med inspiration från regissören Hayao Miyazakis verk, skapades flera 2D- och 3D-animationer. 3D-animationerna skapades i set av två – eninterpolerad version och en version som är stiliserad för att efterlikna 2D-animation, vilket gjordes med hjälp av tekniker från 2D-animation, främst med pose-to-pose animation och timing. Detta var sedan renderat och två korta videor skapades som visar skillnaderna på den interpolerade och stiliserade animationen. 3D-animationerna jämfördes även med den skapade 2D-animationen. Resultatet är 3D-animationer som bibehåller den mänskliga inputen och ger en känsla av 2D-animationer., The purpose of this thesis was to find a way to keep the human input of 2D animation and put it into 3D animation. The 3D animation should be believable and should look like 2D animation. It should also depict locomotion, walk and run cycles, and is meant for a bipedal character in a third-persongame. This character was animated by studying locomotion and the basics and techniques of animation. By using an iterative design process, and with inspiration from the director Hayao Miyazaki’s works, several 2D and 3D animations were created. The 3D animations were created insets of two – one interpolated version and a version that is stylised to look like 2D animation, which was done by using 2D animation techniques, mostly with pose-to-pose animation and timing. This was later rendered and made into two short videos that shows the differences in the interpolated and the stylised animation. The 3D animations were also compared with the created 2D animation. The results are 3D animations that keep the human input and give a feel of 2D animations.

Synchronous generators used in large-scale power generation require an excitation system to regulate the output voltage. In a recent study, a self-excited generator equipped with rotor mounted harvesting coils produced the required excitation power by itself; removing the need for an external supply and associated hardware. The goal of this thesis is to develop a prototype excitation system for such a generator. The thesis examines active rectification of the harvesting coil voltage and how the resulting voltage can be used to drive the generator's field winding current. Prototype hardware was developed following tests of the power electronics and control systems in MATLAB's Simulink software.

This study investigates how members of party youth wings perceive their respectiveyouth wings and identifies areas they believe require improvement. Empirically, thestudy surveys the youth wings of eight Swedish political parties, exploring members’experiences using open-ended questions. The findings confirm that political andsocial aspects hold greater importance for youth wing members compared tomaterial benefits. Additionally, the analysis reveals how members view the youthwing as a transformative community fostering personal growth, self-exploration andthe development of values. Notably, the youth wing is seen as a community unifiedby shared values, with a collective vision for the world and a focus on collaborativeefforts to realize that vision. Challenges include expectations set by the motherparty, such as campaigning and career aspirations, and negative perceptions of thecompetitive political landscape, citing conflicts and factionalism., Unga och organiserad politik ‑ en medlemsstudie av de svenska riksdagspartiernas ungdomsförbund (UnOP)

Vikten av återhämtning mellan arbetspassen blev aktuellt igen den 1 oktober 2023 när EU införde regleringar i arbetstidslagen avseende dygnsvila. Det innebar förändringar i hur arbete planeras, framförallt inom vård- och omsorg där medarbetare ofta arbetat både med snabba returer och delade turer. Med anledning av detta ämnar denna litteraturstudie ta reda på vad tidigare forskning säger kring området dygnsvila och skiftarbete relaterat till vårdpersonalens möjlighet till återhämtning. För att besvara syftet har vi formulerat följande forskningsfråga: Vad framträder i tidigare forskning om dygnsvila och skiftarbete relaterat till vårdpersonalens möjlighet till återhämtning? Studiens resultat redovisas i tre identifierade huvudkategorier: Störningar i sömn och vakenhet, risker med kort dygnsvila och sociala aspekter. Resultatet visar att användning av EU:s nya direktiv gällande dygnsvila har stöd i tidigare forskning. Studiernas resultat visar få redovisade negativa konsekvenser som talade emot de nya direktiven. En negativ konsekvens vårdpersonalen som studeras i de olika studierna lyfter fram är förmågan eller möjligheten att få bestämma själv över sin arbetstid. Möjligheten för medarbetarna att arbeta intensivt i perioder för att sedan vara ledig en längre tid försvinner med de nya direktiven. Utifrån studien är slutsatsen att det finns stöd i tidigare forskning att använda sig av EU:s nya direktiv då det kommer till dygnsvila både ur ett medarbetarperspektiv och ur ett arbetsgivarperspektiv. Studien bidrar med information om varför det är bra med EU:s striktare direktiv samt varför det är viktigt att medarbetarna får återhämtning.

Between 2019 and 2023, media researchers from Södertörn University in UNISINOS and Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) in Brazil, engaged in a collaborative effort to explore Scandinavian and South American perspectives on mediatisation, connecting universities from opposite sides of the world. The project aimed to promote a nuanced understanding of mediatisation theory from different cultural perspectives and media studies traditions, dismantle epistemological barriers, and provide new insights into societies undergoing the process of mediatisation. The chapters presented in this volume are grounded on the mobility of researchers across both countries where a productive knowledge exchange contributed to diversify epistemological, empirical, and methodological approaches to mediatisation theory, and provide new perspectives on mediatisation theory in contested media scenarios in Sweden, Brazil, and beyond., Mediatisation: Empirical, Epistemological and Methodological Inferences from Media Research in Brazil and Sweden

Political parties’s choices of who leads them can have a majorbearing on politics. Recent research shows that selectionprocedures exhibit considerable variation, even among parties inbroadly comparable European parliamentary democracies. Themost common analytical approach is to focus on the ‘officialstory’ – that is, what the parties’ statutes say that they do whenselecting a leader. This, in turn, implies a heavy emphasis on thefinal stage of the selection procedure, in which the decisionabout who will lead the party is made by the ‘selectorate’. Yetthis, the ‘official story’, is only a part of the process, and quiteoften not even the most important part. In this article, we seek tomake the classification of selection processes more manageableand meaningful. We propose a typology of the ‘mode’ ofselection, in which the emphasis is on the management ofcompetition for the leader’s position before the decision reachesthe selectorate. We identify five modes of competition: open,enclosed, filtered, enclosed and filtered, and managed., PartLead

The study explores the perspectives of political parties regarding news media coverage in election campaigns. By analyzing official post-election analyses produced by Swedish political parties from 2010 to 2022, the study offers a novel approach to the study of political party views of news media. The findings largely support the arguments proposed by mediatization literature, highlighting the significance of media in party communication. Parties display eagerness to attract positive media attention while expressing regret over inadequate or negative publicity. More surprisingly, there is a lack of references to media bias in the reports, suggesting that the hostile media effect is not a major concern among Swedish parties. Despite criticisms related to irrelevant reporting and perceived negative coverage, party perceptions towards the media remains predominantly neutral. The study contributes to the understanding of the complex relationship between political parties and news media in the context of election campaigns.

Den snabba omvandlingen inom textilindustrin drivs av ökande miljömedvetenhet och efterfrågan från intressenter på rättvis handel, ekologiska kläder och gröna alternativ. Cirkulär ekonomi inom textilindustrin krävs för att göra industrin mer hållbar och minska negativa miljöeffekter. Uppsatsen undersöker hur väl textilföretags syn på cirkulär ekonomi överensstämmer med konsumenternas, med utgångspunkt i sju centrala principer kopplade till European Sustainability Reporting Standards. En mixad metod används i form av kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med företagsrepresentanter och en kvantitativ enkät till konsumenter. Jämförelsen analyseras genom kategorisering av svaren. Resultatet visar att konsumenter värderar principerna högt och har höga krav på att textilföretag integrerar cirkulär ekonomi. Företagen är mer försiktiga och saknar verktyg för omställningen, men ambitionen finns. Slutsatsen är att det finns en skild syn mellan företag och konsumenter, vilket är värdefullt att förstå för att företag ska kunna möta konsumenternas förväntningar, och stärka relationen för gemensamt värdeskapande.

Syftet med studien var att genom intervjuer beskriva och analysera fritidslärares uppfattningar om elevers digitala intressen och användningen av digitala verktyg på fritidshemmet. Studiens resultat har genom en tematisk analys kommit fram till kategorier som sedan tolkas med hjälp av begrepp från det sociokulturella perspektivet. Resultatet i denna studie visar att fritidslärare har en positiv grundton i deras sätt att tala om fritidshemmet som en arena för elevers digitala intressen och användning av digitala verktyg. Vidare visar studiens resultat på att samtal kring digitala- intressen och verktyg är en central del i fritidslärares arbete med digitala verktyg. Slutligen belyser studien fritidslärares uppfattningar, att elevers digitala intressen inte alltid är helt enkla att tillgodose och att det finns ett begränsat handlingsutrymme., Godkänt datum: 2024-05-27

This thesis investigated if there was an association between board member turnover and gender, alongside the investigation of potential gender-related differences during periods of declining firm performance. The performance variables examined included ROA, EBIT, and Stock Returns. The study encompassed a sample of 291 firms listed on Nasdaq Stockholm Large, Mid, and Small Cap between the years 2020 and 2022 yielding 600 firm-year observations. The thesis used a Poisson regression model to test the hypotheses. We found that the additions of female board members are more likely to follow female departures, and that the association was driven by the independent female board member subsample. Furthermore, the thesis did not uncover any significant statistical evidence indicating differential treatment between women and men when firm performance deteriorates, in the form of an increased likelihood of board turnover for women. Instead, we found that non-independent male board turnover was significantly negatively related to stock returns.

Background: In an era defined by urgent global crises such as climate change, businesses encounter multifaceted challenges alongside the imperative for sustainable development. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) by the European Union (EU) in 2024 reflects a pivotal response to this pressing need. The purpose of the framework is to increase transparency and engage companies in sustainability actions. The defense industry is one sector with high confidentiality regarding data sharing. As stakeholders navigate this complex landscape, understanding the impact of CSRD preparation on sectors like defense becomes increasingly important. Purpose: The purpose of this bachelor's thesis is to examine how the preparations for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) influence the Swedish Defense Industry. The researcher employs the theoretical frameworks of "stakeholder theory" and “institutional theory” for this purpose. Method: The research used a qualitative methodology, employing interviews with firms operating within the defense sector and with experts within the CSRD-field. The adoption of this methodological approach facilitates researchers and readers in attaining a holistic comprehension of the dynamics of the defense industry and the repercussions and impacts of the implementation of CSRD. Conclusion: The results show the need for well-established preparation within companies in order to succeed with the implementation of CSRD. Findings show that a change in the infrastructure will be required within the Swedish defense industry to collect all information for sustainability reporting due to classified information. Additionally, the result of valuable communication is emphasized among the companies. Lastly, the stakeholders within the industry need to be included in the dialogue to increase awareness of expectations aligned with CSRD.

Forskningsfrågor: Hur definierar och prioriterar företaget sina intressenters krav och förväntningar? Utifrån intressenters krav och förväntningar, vad prioriteras? Syfte: Syftet med undersökningen är att studera hur ett företag identifierar, prioriterar och hanterar intressenters krav och förväntningar, samtidigt som de håller sig inom ramen för de krav som CSRD och flera ISO-standarder ställer på företaget. Vidare syftar studien till att kartlägga hur företaget bäst balanserar och prioriterar intressenternas behov och förväntningar. Metod: Studien genomfördes som en kvalitativ studie med en abduktiv ansats. Undersökningen har skett genom intervjuer som har analyserats genom en tematisk analysmetod. Slutsats: Det går att dra slutsatsen att företaget definierar och prioriterar krav och förväntningar utifrån standarder och direktiv som är gällande för detta företag, med ett särskilt fokus på kvalitet för kunder samt efterlevnad av lagkrav och ägardirektiv. Intressenternas krav och förväntningar identifieras samt prioriteras genom att hålla god kommunikation, även i enlighet med de standarder, direktiv och lagkrav som företaget följer., Research questions: How does the company define and prioritize the demands and expectations of its stakeholders? Based on the demands and expectations of stakeholders, what is prioritized? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how a company identifies, prioritizes and manages stakeholder demands and expectations, while adhering to the requirements set by the CSRD and various ISO standards. Furthermore, the study aims to map out how the company can best balance and prioritize the needs and expectations of its stakeholders. Method: The study was conducted as a qualitative study with an abductive approach. The research was carried out through interviews that were analyzed using a thematic analysis method. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the company defines and prioritizes demands and expectations based on the standards and directives applicable to the company, with a particular focus on quality for customers as well as compliance with legal requirements and ownership directives. The stakeholders' demands and expectations are identified and prioritized by maintaining good communication, also in accordance with the standards, directives and legal requirements that the company adheres to.

Purpose: This article explores the concept of “heritage futures”, the role of heritage in managing relations between present and future societies. It assesses how thinking strategically about the future changes, complicates and contextualises practices of heritage. What might an attention to the future bring to work in heritage, and simultaneously, what challenges—both practical and ethical—arise? Design/methodology/approach: This article takes the form of a conversation about the nature of heritage futures and how such a project may be implemented in both heritage practice and field research in heritage studies. The two authors are heritage scholars who integrate heritage futures questions into their research in different ways, and their conversation uncovers potentialities and difficulties in the heritage futures project. Findings: The discussion covers the particular ethical issues that arise when the dimension of time is added to heritage research and practice, including questions of continuism, presentism and specificity. The conversation argues for the importance of considering the future in heritage studies and heritage practice and that this forms a key part of understanding how heritage may be part of building a sustainable present and future. Originality/value: The future is an under-examined concept within heritage studies, even as heritage is often framed as something to be preserved “for future generations”. But what impact might it have on heritage practice to really consider what this means, beyond the platitude? This article suggests that heritage scholars and practitioners direct their attention to this often-neglected facet of heritage., UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

In this programme, we map and examine local labour market programmes (LLMPs) at the municipal level in Sweden. This includes their institutional structure and organisation, as well as the experiences of participants in the programmes, using a longitudinal approach with the aim to improve LLMPs. The long-term goal is to increasing the inclusion of LLMP participants in working life. To answer the programme’s questions, data will be collected and analysed within the four work packages. In each work package, a mixed-method approach is applied with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The programme is informed by three overarching general theoretical approached, tying together institutional ethnography, intersectional studies of structural inequalities on different levels, and the role of emotions in everyday work. At the organisational level (WP 1), we will investigate the circumstances under which LLMPs are performed and negotiated by those involved. Here, the internal organisation, activities and methods are the focus. This approach will result in knowledge about the characteristics of these organisations and the factors promoting the inclusion of underrepresented groups in working life. By examining the activities in LLMPs (WP 2), we will be able to determine how their institutional structure differs between regions in Sweden, how the different municipalities work with labour market policy, how they translate national policy into the local context, how they organise their work and which initiatives they choose to adopt. By examining the individual experiences of those who are directly affected by such incentives (WP 3), knowledge and understanding will be obtained of the connections between experiences and labour market policies. This will give important insights into the functioning of local programmes and of the opportunities to create entry into the labour market. Furthermore, in WP4 we will develop and test an effect evaluation of work methods u

Unga och organiserad politik ‑ en medlemsstudie av de svenska riksdagspartiernas ungdomsförbund (UnOP), En skola i demokrati? En studie av politiska företrädares skolbesök (SkolDem)

The Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group of the European Social Work Research Association (DARSIG) dedicated a pre-conference event at the 2023 European Conference for Social Work Research in Milan, Italy, to the application of innovations using big data and machine-learning algorithms in social work risk assessment and decision-making processes. Here, we share some ideas from these discussions.

This article compares surveillance-related experiences and attitudes of two generations of media users in countries with different historical surveillance regimes (Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden) and analyzes the predictors of the attitudes toward contemporary surveillance. A large-scale online survey (N = 3221) reveals that attitudes toward online state and corporate surveillance are interrelated; the two attitudinal components are, however, generation-specific, having different predictors. Tolerance toward state surveillance is more characteristic of the older group, being predicted by trustful and obedient attitudes toward state authorities and institutions. Tolerance toward corporate dataveillance is more characteristic of the younger group, being predicted by active and self-confident media use. While the socio-historical context molds the intergenerational gaps in surveillance-related experiences and attitudes, individual-level experiences of state surveillance do not predict tolerance toward either type of contemporary surveillance, suggesting that global techno-cultural developments are probably more powerful factors than past experiences in forming generation-specific attitudes.

Mediatization discourse has so far mainly been centered on media from institutional or social-constructionist approaches. The technological developments within communications industries coupled with the wider societal process of datafication might, however, beg for dusting off the smaller, although the long-time existing, technological approach to mediatization as a complement to the two other approaches, in order to understand aspects of automation and human-machine communication. This theoretical article explores how existing mediatization approaches can refocus to include lessons learned from human-machine communication. The first section accounts for the main mediatization approaches. The second section discusses debates on communication, artificiality, and meaning-making. The last section takes the example of the recruitment interview for discussing how mediatization theory can benefit from including a technological approach with influx from human-machine communication, as well as how human-machine communication can learn from wider discussions within mediatization theory.

In ‘Requiem for the Media’ (1971), the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard discusses the emancipatory affordances of the media. Can media be used to improve society? Should social movements use new media to coordinate their activities, organise and reach out with their message? In today’s media society, it seems obvious that the answer to these questions is yes. Everyone who wants to change society - whether political movements, companies, organisations or others - adheres to a ‘media strategy’. However, Baudrillard is dismissive of the media’s possibilities to contribute to progressive social change. His text can thus provide interesting perspectives on the interaction between media and politics and on the role of the media in society in general. What is now known as ‘mediatisation’ is anticipated by Baudrillard and his structuralist analysis of the ‘symbolic exchange’, which remains valid for those who aim to analyse such mediatisation processes. With the rise of digital media, Baudrillard’s text has arguably become increasingly relevant over time, as a large part of its content revolves around the (im)possibility of dialogue and interaction via mediated communication.

As research fields, mediatization and Human-Machine Communication (HMC) have distinct historical trajectories. While mediatization research is concerned with the fundamental interrelation between the transformation of media and communications and cultural and societal changes, the much younger field of HMC delves into human meaning-making in interactions with machines. However, the recent wave of “deep mediatization,” characterized by an increasing emphasis on general communicative automation and the rise of communicative AI, highlights a shared interest in technology’s role within human interaction. This introductory article examines the trajectories of both fields, demonstrating how mediatization research “zooms out” from overarching questions of societal and cultural transformations, while HMC tends to “zoom in” to approach the concrete situatedness of the interaction between humans and machines. It is argued that we need to combine both perspectives to better understand how the automation of communication transforms the social construction of culture and society. This article offers an overview of the key themes explored in this thematic issue, highlighting the productive intersection of HMC and mediatization within each article. Additionally, it identifies potential avenues for future research emerging from this fruitful intersection., Correspondence Address: A. Hepp; Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen, Bremen, Linzer Str. 4-6, 28359, Germany; email: hepp@uni-bremen.de

This article explores the ways in which what we call the analogue and the datafied mindsets perceive the functioning of the datafied world. Based on a qualitative interview study of two generations of media users in Estonia, Portugal, and Sweden, we present and analyze underlying patterns in participants’ media attitudes and related practices. We show that belonging to a media generation does not always produce a homogeneous mindset or a uniform attitude toward media technologies. These mindsets, being ideal-typical constructs, are not bound to individuals: the same person can display features of the analogue and the datafied mindset in relation to different parts of the datafied world. One mindset does not replace the other but rather adds another layer to the social action of the individuals. The mindsets are multi-dimensional and molded by contrasting understandings, indicating that the tenacious structures of the analogue world linger on in the datafied social space.

Classical gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have two distinct emission episodes: prompt emission from ultra-relativistic ejecta and afterglow from shocked circumstellar material. While both components are extremely luminous in known GRBs, a variety of scenarios predict the existence of luminous afterglow emission with little or no associated high-energy prompt emission. We present AT 2019pim, the first secure example of this phenomenon to be identified. Serendipitously discovered during follow-up observations of a gravitational-wave trigger and located in a contemporaneous TESS sector, it is hallmarked by a fast-rising (t ~ 2 hr), luminous (M_UV,peak ~ -24.4 mag) optical transient with accompanying luminous X-ray and radio emission. No gamma-ray emission consistent with the time and location of the transient was detected by Fermi-GBM or by Konus, placing strong limits on an accompanying GRB. We investigate several independent observational aspects of the afterglow in the context of constraints on relativistic motion and find all of them are consistent with an initial Lorentz factor of Gamma_0 ~ 30-50, significantly lower than in any well-observed GRB and consistent with the theoretically-predicted "dirty fireball" scenario in which the high-energy prompt emission is stifled by pair production. However, we cannot rule out a structured jet model in which only the line-of-sight material was ejected at low-Gamma, off-axis from a classical high-Gamma jet core. This event represents a milestone in orphan afterglow searches, demonstrating that luminous afterglows with weak or no detectable gamma-ray radiation exist in nature and can be discovered by high-cadence optical surveys., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS

Background Rapamycin is an inhibitor of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) protein kinase, and preclinical data demonstrate that it is a promising candidate for a general gero- and neuroprotective treatment in humans. Results from mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease have shown beneficial effects of rapamycin, including preventing or reversing cognitive deficits, reducing amyloid oligomers and tauopathies and normalizing synaptic plasticity and cerebral glucose uptake. The “Evaluating Rapamycin Treatment in Alzheimer’s Disease using Positron Emission Tomography” (ERAP) trial aims to test if these results translate to humans through evaluating the change in cerebral glucose uptake following six months of rapamycin treatment in participants with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Methods ERAP is a six-month-long, single-arm, open-label, phase IIa biomarker-driven study evaluating if the drug rapamycin can be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Fifteen patients will be included and treated with a weekly dose of 7 mg rapamycin for six months. The primary endpoint will be change in cerebral glucose uptake, measured using [18F]FDG positron emission tomography. Secondary endpoints include changes in cognitive measures, markers in cerebrospinal fluid as well as cerebral blood flow measured using magnetic resonance imaging. As exploratory outcomes, the study will assess change in multiple age-related pathological processes, such as periodontal inflammation, retinal degeneration, bone mineral density loss, atherosclerosis and decreased cardiac function. Discussion The ERAP study is a clinical trial using in vivo imaging biomarkers to assess the repurposing of rapamycin for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. If successful, the study would provide a strong rationale for large-scale evaluation of mTOR-inhibitors as a potential disease-modifying treatment in Alzheimer’s disease. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT06022068, date of registration 2023–08-30.

We observe a high level of imbalance in the accuracy of different classes in the same old task for the first time. This intriguing phenomenon, discovered in replay-based Class Incremental Learning (CIL), highlights the imbalanced forgetting of learned classes, as their accuracy is similar before the occurrence of catastrophic forgetting. This discovery remains previously unidentified due to the reliance on average incremental accuracy as the measurement for CIL, which assumes that the accuracy of classes within the same task is similar. However, this assumption is invalid in the face of catastrophic forgetting. Further empirical studies indicate that this imbalanced forgetting is caused by conflicts in representation between semantically similar old and new classes. These conflicts are rooted in the data imbalance present in replay-based CIL methods. Building on these insights, we propose CLass-Aware Disentanglement (CLAD) to predict the old classes that are more likely to be forgotten and enhance their accuracy. Importantly, CLAD can be seamlessly integrated into existing CIL methods. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CLAD consistently improves current replay-based methods, resulting in performance gains of up to 2.56%., Comment: AAAI2024

Continual learning (CL) aims to empower models to learn new tasks without forgetting previously acquired knowledge. Most prior works concentrate on the techniques of architectures, replay data, regularization, \etc. However, the category name of each class is largely neglected. Existing methods commonly utilize the one-hot labels and randomly initialize the classifier head. We argue that the scarce semantic information conveyed by the one-hot labels hampers the effective knowledge transfer across tasks. In this paper, we revisit the role of the classifier head within the CL paradigm and replace the classifier with semantic knowledge from pretrained language models (PLMs). Specifically, we use PLMs to generate semantic targets for each class, which are frozen and serve as supervision signals during training. Such targets fully consider the semantic correlation between all classes across tasks. Empirical studies show that our approach mitigates forgetting by alleviating representation drifting and facilitating knowledge transfer across tasks. The proposed method is simple to implement and can seamlessly be plugged into existing methods with negligible adjustments. Extensive experiments based on eleven mainstream baselines demonstrate the effectiveness and generalizability of our approach to various protocols. For example, under the class-incremental learning setting on ImageNet-100, our method significantly improves the Top-1 accuracy by 3.2\% to 6.1\% while reducing the forgetting rate by 2.6\% to 13.1\%., Comment: Accepted by CVPR 2024

Low-rank adaptation (LoRA) is one of the most popular task-specific parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods on pre-trained language models for its good performance and computational efficiency. LoRA injects a product of two trainable rank decomposition matrices over the top of each frozen pre-trained model module. However, when applied in the setting of privacy-preserving federated learning (FL), LoRA may become unstable due to the following facts: 1) the effects of data heterogeneity and multi-step local updates are non-negligible, 2) additive noise enforced on updating gradients to guarantee differential privacy (DP) can be amplified and 3) the final performance is susceptible to hyper-parameters. A key factor leading to these phenomena is the discordance between jointly optimizing the two low-rank matrices by local clients and separately aggregating them by the central server. Thus, this paper proposes an efficient and effective version of LoRA, Federated Freeze A LoRA (FFA-LoRA), to alleviate these challenges and further halve the communication cost of federated fine-tuning LLMs. The core idea of FFA-LoRA is to fix the randomly initialized non-zero matrices and only fine-tune the zero-initialized matrices. Compared to LoRA, FFA-LoRA is motivated by practical and theoretical benefits in privacy-preserved FL. Our experiments demonstrate that FFA-LoRA provides more consistent performance with better computational efficiency over vanilla LoRA in various FL tasks., Comment: published at ICLR 2024, full paper 17 pages

For privacy and security concerns, the need to erase unwanted information from pre-trained vision models is becoming evident nowadays. In real-world scenarios, erasure requests originate at any time from both users and model owners. These requests usually form a sequence. Therefore, under such a setting, selective information is expected to be continuously removed from a pre-trained model while maintaining the rest. We define this problem as continual forgetting and identify two key challenges. (i) For unwanted knowledge, efficient and effective deleting is crucial. (ii) For remaining knowledge, the impact brought by the forgetting procedure should be minimal. To address them, we propose Group Sparse LoRA (GS-LoRA). Specifically, towards (i), we use LoRA modules to fine-tune the FFN layers in Transformer blocks for each forgetting task independently, and towards (ii), a simple group sparse regularization is adopted, enabling automatic selection of specific LoRA groups and zeroing out the others. GS-LoRA is effective, parameter-efficient, data-efficient, and easy to implement. We conduct extensive experiments on face recognition, object detection and image classification and demonstrate that GS-LoRA manages to forget specific classes with minimal impact on other classes. Codes will be released on \url{https://github.com/bjzhb666/GS-LoRA}., Comment: Accepted by CVPR 2024

Understanding social interactions involving both verbal and non-verbal cues is essential for effectively interpreting social situations. However, most prior works on multimodal social cues focus predominantly on single-person behaviors or rely on holistic visual representations that are not aligned to utterances in multi-party environments. Consequently, they are limited in modeling the intricate dynamics of multi-party interactions. In this paper, we introduce three new challenging tasks to model the fine-grained dynamics between multiple people: speaking target identification, pronoun coreference resolution, and mentioned player prediction. We contribute extensive data annotations to curate these new challenges in social deduction game settings. Furthermore, we propose a novel multimodal baseline that leverages densely aligned language-visual representations by synchronizing visual features with their corresponding utterances. This facilitates concurrently capturing verbal and non-verbal cues pertinent to social reasoning. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach with densely aligned multimodal representations in modeling fine-grained social interactions. Project website: https://sangmin-git.github.io/projects/MMSI., Comment: CVPR 2024 Oral

Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) has emerged as a popular machine learning paradigm, enabling model training across the data and the task parties with different features about the same user set while preserving data privacy. In production environment, VFL usually involves one task party and one data party. Fair and economically efficient feature trading is crucial to the commercialization of VFL, where the task party is considered as the data consumer who buys the data party's features. However, current VFL feature trading practices often price the data party's data as a whole and assume transactions occur prior to the performing VFL. Neglecting the performance gains resulting from traded features may lead to underpayment and overpayment issues. In this study, we propose a bargaining-based feature trading approach in VFL to encourage economically efficient transactions. Our model incorporates performance gain-based pricing, taking into account the revenue-based optimization objectives of both parties. We analyze the proposed bargaining model under perfect and imperfect performance information settings, proving the existence of an equilibrium that optimizes the parties' objectives. Moreover, we develop performance gain estimation-based bargaining strategies for imperfect performance information scenarios and discuss potential security issues and solutions. Experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed bargaining model.

With the rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs), significant progress has been made in multi-agent applications. However, the complexities in coordinating agents' cooperation and LLMs' erratic performance pose notable challenges in developing robust and efficient multi-agent applications. To tackle these challenges, we propose AgentScope, a developer-centric multi-agent platform with message exchange as its core communication mechanism. The abundant syntactic tools, built-in agents and service functions, user-friendly interfaces for application demonstration and utility monitor, zero-code programming workstation, and automatic prompt tuning mechanism significantly lower the barriers to both development and deployment. Towards robust and flexible multi-agent application, AgentScope provides both built-in and customizable fault tolerance mechanisms. At the same time, it is also armed with system-level support for managing and utilizing multi-modal data, tools, and external knowledge. Additionally, we design an actor-based distribution framework, enabling easy conversion between local and distributed deployments and automatic parallel optimization without extra effort. With these features, AgentScope empowers developers to build applications that fully realize the potential of intelligent agents. We have released AgentScope at https://github.com/modelscope/agentscope, and hope AgentScope invites wider participation and innovation in this fast-moving field., Comment: We have released code on https://github.com/modelscope/agentscope

The application of formulas is a fundamental ability of humans when addressing numerical reasoning problems. However, existing numerical reasoning datasets seldom explicitly indicate the formulas employed during the reasoning steps. To bridge this gap, we propose a question answering dataset for formula-based numerical reasoning called FormulaQA, from junior high school physics examinations. We further conduct evaluations on LLMs with size ranging from 7B to over 100B parameters utilizing zero-shot and few-shot chain-of-thoughts methods and we explored the approach of using retrieval-augmented LLMs when providing an external formula database. We also fine-tune on smaller models with size not exceeding 2B. Our empirical findings underscore the significant potential for improvement in existing models when applied to our complex, formula-driven FormulaQA., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 7 tables

Vertebral body (VB) segmentation is an important preliminary step towards medical visual diagnosis for spinal diseases. However, most previous works require pixel/voxel-wise strong supervisions, which is expensive, tedious and time-consuming for experts to annotate. In this paper, we propose a Weakly supervised Iterative Spinal Segmentation (WISS) method leveraging only four corner landmark weak labels on a single sagittal slice to achieve automatic volumetric segmentation from CT images for VBs. WISS first segments VBs on an annotated sagittal slice in an iterative self-training manner. This self-training method alternates between training and refining labels in the training set. Then WISS proceeds to segment the whole VBs slice by slice with a slice-propagation method to obtain volumetric segmentations. We evaluate the performance of WISS on a private spinal metastases CT dataset and the public lumbar CT dataset. On the first dataset, WISS achieves distinct improvements with regard to two different backbones. For the second dataset, WISS achieves dice coefficients of $91.7\%$ and $83.7\%$ for mid-sagittal slices and 3D CT volumes, respectively, saving a lot of labeling costs and only sacrificing a little segmentation performance., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1412.7062 by other authors

Spinal metastasis is the most common disease in bone metastasis and may cause pain, instability and neurological injuries. Early detection of spinal metastasis is critical for accurate staging and optimal treatment. The diagnosis is usually facilitated with Computed Tomography (CT) scans, which requires considerable efforts from well-trained radiologists. In this paper, we explore a learning-based automatic bone quality classification method for spinal metastasis based on CT images. We simultaneously take the posterolateral spine involvement classification task into account, and employ multi-task learning (MTL) technique to improve the performance. MTL acts as a form of inductive bias which helps the model generalize better on each task by sharing representations between related tasks. Based on the prior knowledge that the mixed type can be viewed as both blastic and lytic, we model the task of bone quality classification as two binary classification sub-tasks, i.e., whether blastic and whether lytic, and leverage a multiple layer perceptron to combine their predictions. In order to make the model more robust and generalize better, self-paced learning is adopted to gradually involve from easy to more complex samples into the training process. The proposed learning-based method is evaluated on a proprietary spinal metastasis CT dataset. At slice level, our method significantly outperforms an 121-layer DenseNet classifier in sensitivities by $+12.54\%$, $+7.23\%$ and $+29.06\%$ for blastic, mixed and lytic lesions, respectively, meanwhile $+12.33\%$, $+23.21\%$ and $+34.25\%$ at vertebrae level.

Machine learning models have demonstrated remarkable efficacy and efficiency in a wide range of stock forecasting tasks. However, the inherent challenges of data scarcity, including low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and data homogeneity, pose significant obstacles to accurate forecasting. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach that utilizes artificial intelligence-generated samples (AIGS) to enhance the training procedures. In our work, we introduce the Diffusion Model to generate stock factors with Transformer architecture (DiffsFormer). DiffsFormer is initially trained on a large-scale source domain, incorporating conditional guidance so as to capture global joint distribution. When presented with a specific downstream task, we employ DiffsFormer to augment the training procedure by editing existing samples. This editing step allows us to control the strength of the editing process, determining the extent to which the generated data deviates from the target domain. To evaluate the effectiveness of DiffsFormer augmented training, we conduct experiments on the CSI300 and CSI800 datasets, employing eight commonly used machine learning models. The proposed method achieves relative improvements of 7.2% and 27.8% in annualized return ratio for the respective datasets. Furthermore, we perform extensive experiments to gain insights into the functionality of DiffsFormer and its constituent components, elucidating how they address the challenges of data scarcity and enhance the overall model performance. Our research demonstrates the efficacy of leveraging AIGS and the DiffsFormer architecture to mitigate data scarcity in stock forecasting tasks.