Balancing Structure and Learning in an Open Prison

Leira Prison is a branch of Trondheim Prison, functioning as a relatively small,open prison with a maximum capacity of only 29 inmates. Leira Prison appliesthe method ‘consequence pedagogy.’ This article aims to pinpoint howconsequence pedagogy is executed at Leira. 50% of the Leira inmates arereleased back into society, while new ones enter the prison. It is thereforeinteresting to see how they balance structure and at the same time adjust tochanges, enabling Leira Prison to continue as a learning organization. This articleidentifies three items, consequence pedagogy and the view of humans,maintenance of the philosophy and coherence in the community, and selfregulationof justice through interaction. The use of consequence pedagogyis deeply aligned to their positive view of humans and has generated a constructiveorganization based on empowerment and involvement of both staffand inmates. Consequently, management, staff and inmates maintain thephilosophy of consequence pedagogy through interaction and self-regulation.However, questions regarding the fundamentals of the consequence pedagogyare not raised

Large-Scale Granulation of CaO-Based Pellets for High-Temperature Carbon Dioxide Capture

Abstract Pelletized CaO-based sorbents are made for the use in Moving Bed Carbonate Looping (MBCL) technology capturing CO2 at a low partial pressure of CO2 and high temperature, producing approximately 100% pure CO2. Developing this technology will be an important step in reducing CO2 emissions and prevent temperature increase on the globe. The main goal of this thesis was to develop a procedure for making these pellets in large scale. Material properties such as good CO2-capture capacity and stability, and good mechanical strength are important. A "rotary drum" granulation machine was used to produce granules made of 100g calcined dolomite/cement ADDA, calcium aluminate cement, extra magnesium and zirconium with water as a liquid binder. The preparation method lasted for two days due to the exothermic reaction between dolomite/ADDA and water, and water was slowly added to avoid early strength gain and increased hydration kinetics at higher temperatures. Six pellets based on calcined dolomite were made; NO-1 (pure dolomite), NO-3 (1.9% Zr from nitrates), NO-6 (1.6% Zr from ZrCl4 and 5.8%Al from cement), NO8 (2.9%Mg from magnesium nitrate and 5.5%Al (from cement)), NO-10 (6.1%Al from cement) and NO-12 (1.6% Zr from nitrates and 5.8%Al from cement). In addition, four pellets were made of cement ADDA. Results from nitrogen adsorption/desorption showed largest surface area for unpromoted pellets and smallest pores for the doped samples. Scanning electron microscope pictures, and mechanical tests seem to demonstrate good performance of pellets NO-3, NO-8 and NO-10. They have a similar pellet surface and sphericity, low cumulative attrition loss and weight loss in each drop in the falling test. The x-ray diffraction identified phases of mayenite (Ca12Al14O33), which might be the reasons for the excellent mechanical strength of NO-8 and NO-10. Results from sorption/desorption cycling in a thermogravimetric analyzer with 8% steam demonstrated promising CO2-carrying capacity and stability over 34 cycles for all pellets. Even though sample NO-1 has the worst stability, the stability was surprisingly high compared to other studies on powdered dolomite which have shown poor cyclic stability. The reason might be the preparation method and the raw material (calcined dolomite (3h 800◦C) <106µm) used, but further investigation and calibration of the TGA are necessary. Sample NO-12 showed that the up-scaling procedure is comparable to small-scale granulation. The best cyclic stability is found for sample NO-8 and NO-12 believed to be due to doping by magnesium/aluminum, and zirconium/aluminum. Al, Mg, and Zr inhibit sintering due to higher melting points of the mixed oxides (mayenite and CaZrO3). The kinetic study demonstrated the fastest reaction rate for 650◦C at a high CO2 concentration in the reaction controlled regime. At low partial pressures of CO2, 620◦C gave faster reaction kinetics than 650◦C, due to higher driving force. A pellet size of 250µm-1.2mm indicated minimal diffusion limitations, and smooth s-curves during sorption at 650◦C, reaching 80% of their capacity in 5 minutes

Global Models for Time Series Forecasting With Applications to Zero-Shot Forecasting

Globale tidsrekkemodeller er tilpasset til et sett med tidsrekker. Dette er i motsetning til lokale tidsrekkemodeller som er tilpasset individuelle tidsrekker. En global tilnærming kan motvirke overtilpasning siden vi bruker færre parametere per tidsrekke. Når antall tidsrekker øker, vil påvirkningen til hver tidsrekke på modellens parametere bli mindre. Det kan føre til vellykket prediksjon av tidsrekker modellen ikke har blitt tilpasset. Dette kalles blind prediksjon. Denne oppgaven bruker globale tidsrekkemodeller til å predikere det populære M4 datasettet fra M4 konkurransen. M4 datasettet har mer enn 100,000 tidsrekker og er en populær referanse for generelle, envariate tidsrekkemodeller. Vi tilpasser også globale tidsrekkemodeller på et større datasett fra Federal Reserve of Economic Data (FRED) og bruker denne globale modellen til blind prediksjon av M4 datasettet. Vi vil trekke frem tre funn. For det første ville et enkelt flerlags perceptron (MLP) kunne kommet på andreplass i M4 konkurransen om den ble tilpasset som en global modell. Dette står i kontrast til den lokale MLP referansemodellen fra konkurransen som var rangert som 57 av 59 modeller. For det andre kan et MLP predikere M4 datasettet bra også ved blind prediksjon. En MLP per frekvens ville vært rangert som nr 10 og en modell for alle frekvensene ville vært nr 14. Dette er foran alle de klassiske statistiske referansemodellene beregnet på M4 datasettet. Til slutt, om vi har en modell per frekvens tilpasset FRED datasettet, så kan vi tilpasse kun de siste to lagene til M4 datasettet og oppnå tilsvarende presisjon som om vi hadde tilpasset hele modellen. Det er vanskelig for en modell som er tilpasset alle frekvensene på FRED datasettet å oppnå liknende resultater. En sannsynlig årsak er at denne modellen er mer utsatt for forskjeller i fordelingen til de to datasettene. Suksessen til globale tidsrekkemodeller på M4 datasettet, både ved bruk av M4 og ved blind prediksjon, er et steg mot generelle globale tidsrekkemodeller. Videre arbeid kan utvide analysen med andre modelltyper, større og mer generelle datasett, og flere tidsrekkeproblemer i tillegg til prediksjon av M4 datasettet.Global time series models are fitted to a set of time series contrary to local models fitted to individual time series. A global approach can prevent overfitting for deep learning models by using fewer parameters per time series. As the number of time series gets increases, each time series contribute less to the model parameters. This can allow for successful zero-shot forecasting, which is forecasting using a model not fitted to the time series we wish to forecast. This thesis uses global time series models to forecast the popular M4 dataset from the M4 forecasting competition. The M4 dataset has 100,000 time series and is a popular benchmark for general univariate time series forecasting. We also fit a global model on a larger source dataset from the Federal Reserve of Economic Data (FRED) and use this global model to zero-shot forecast the M4 dataset. We highlight three of our findings. First, simple multilayer perceptrons (MLP) could have ranked \nth{2} in the M4 forecasting competition when trained as global models. This contrasts with the local MLP benchmark from the competition that ranked \nth{57} out of 59 entries. Second, simple MLPs are also able to forecast the M4 dataset well in a zero-shot setting. One model per frequency ranks \nth{10}, and one model for the full dataset ranks \nth{14}. This is ahead of all of the statistical benchmarks that are fitted to the M4 dataset. Lastly, using one pretrained model from FRED per frequency, we can retrain only the last two layers to reach similar performance to the full model trained on the M4 dataset. One model for all frequencies struggles with the same task, likely because it is more prone to differences in the source and target dataset distributions. The success of global models on the M4 dataset, both using the M4 dataset and in a zero-shot setting, is a step toward general global models. Future work can expand the analysis with other model types, larger and more general datasets, and more time series tasks besides forecasting the M4 dataset

Hydrodynamic Investigation of Central Hauling Pools for Longline Vessels

Dragerbrønnen har nå blitt en industristandard for linefartøy, men der har ikke vert mye forsking og utvikling på dragerbrønnen siden det første fartøyet ble sjøsatt i 1998. Skipsredere og designere har nå funnet rom for forbedringer. Denne hovedoppgaven vil ta for seg to forskjellige aspekter ved dragerbrønnen. Det første aspektet ser på langskips plasseringen av dragerbrønnen og linerullen, for å finne posisjonen hvor linerullen opplever minst vertikal akselerasjon. Denne posisjonen er ønsket for å minske tapet av fisk under haling og begrense strekket på lina. Dette var undersøkt ved hjelp av programvarer som numerisk estimer fartøysrespons, ved hjelp av 2D stripeteori. Resultatene viser at posisjonen til linerullen og dragerbrønnen er spesielt sensitive i møtende sjø, og den ideal plasseringen av linerullen og dragerbrønnen er aktenfor fartøyets oppdriftssenter. Der var på den andre siden noen begrensingene med resultatene, og disse er videre utdypet i dokumentet. Det andre aspektet ved oppgaven så på utformingen av dragerbrønn røret. De første linebåtene bygget med dragerbrønn hadde et elliptisk rør, men dette ble endret til et sirkulært rør for å spare plass og at manøvreringen over linen visste seg å være enklere enn først antatt. Men noen ønskede effekter vart samtidig tapt i overgangen, som var egenskapet til å skifte ut vannet inne i dragerbrønnen i lave hastigheter. Intensjonen var å undersøke forskjellige utforminger og fastslå hvilken utforming som ville bidra til mer sirkulasjon av vannet for å unngå en oppsamling av skitten vann inne i dragerbrønnen. Sirkuler, elliptisk og rektangulær utformede dragerbrønn rør var undersøkt, ved hjelp av numerisk fluiddynamikk simuleringer. En metode for å undersøke hvilken form som bidro til mest utskifting av vann ble utviklet, ved hjelp av passiv skalar transport. Den elliptiske og rektangulære dragerbønn røret visste potensiale, men der var på samme tid noen begrensinger ved den utvikla metoden.The central hauling pool has now become an industry standard for the longline fishing vessels. On the other hand, there has not been done much research on the purpose-built moonpool for longline fishing since the first vessel was launched in 1998. Ship owners and ship designers have now found room for improvements, which this thesis addresses. Two different aspects of the moonpool for the longline vessel were investigated in this thesis. The first aspect looked at the longitudinal placement of the moonpool and rail-roll, to find the location where the rail-roll has the lowest vertical acceleration to avoid tearing the fish of the hooks during hauling, and at the same time limiting the strain on the longline. This aspect was investigated with the use of a numerical vessel response estimation software, which utilized 2D strip theory. The results show that the positioning of the rail-roll moonpool is especially sensitive for head seas wave conditions and that the ideal placement of the rail-roll is aft of the longitudinal center of buoyancy. There was however some limitations for the results obtained, and this is further elaborated within the body of this document. The second aspect that was investigated in this thesis was the shape of the moonpool pipe. The first longline moonpools had an elliptical shape, but this shifted towards a circular shape to save space and that the maneuvering over the longline proved to be easier than first anticipated. Furthermore, some desired effects were at the same time lost in the transition, which was the ability to clean the water inside the moonpool at low speeds. The intention was to evaluate three different shapes to determine which form that was resulting in more circulation of the water to avoid an accumulation of the dirty water inside the moonpool. Circular, elliptical and rectangular shaped moonpool pipes were subjects for investigation, and this was carried out using computational fluid dynamics simulations. A method with the use of passive scalar transport was developed to be able to differentiate between the different shapes by tracking the ability to clean the water in the moonpool. The results show that the elliptical and rectangular moonpool shapes provide a better behavior of cleaning out dirty water, but there was at the same time some shortcomings with the method developed

Housekeeping genes for quantitative expression studies in the three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus

Background During the last years the quantification of immune response under immunological challenges, e.g. parasitation, has been a major focus of research. In this context, the expression of immune response genes in teleost fish has been surveyed for scientific and commercial purposes. Despite the fact that it was shown in teleostei and other taxa that the gene for beta-actin is not the most stably expressed housekeeping gene (HKG), depending on the tissue and experimental treatment, the gene has been us Results To establish a reliable method for the measurement of immune gene expression in Gasterosteus aculeatus, sequences from the now available genome database and an EST library of the same species were used to select oligonucleotide primers for HKG, in order to perform quantitative reverse-transcription (RT) PCR. The expression stability of ten candidate reference genes was evaluated in three different tissues, and in five parasite treatment groups, using the three algorithms BestKeeper, geNorm and N Conclusion As they were the most stably expressed genes in all tissues examined, we suggest using the genes for the L13a ribosomal binding protein and ubiquitin as alternative or additional reference genes in expression analysis in Gasterosteus aculeatus.

Forecasting the Price of Crude Oil: - The Predictive Power of Futures Prices and Realized Volatility

This paper studies the predictability of the crude oil spot price using futures prices and realized volatility of spot prices. Over the short-term, the simple no-change forecast works better than forecasts based on futures prices. Across long-term horizons futures-based forecasts perform better. Both these types of forecasts, the simple no-change forecast and forecasts based on futures prices, can be improved by incorporating realized volatility as an additional predictor. Moreover, realized volatility can also predict changes in futures prices. Altogether, realized volatility plays an important role in forecasting oil prices

Intestinal cellular localization of PCNA protein and CYP1A mRNA in Atlantic salmon Salmo salar L. exposed to a model toxicant

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aim of the study was to examine the intestinal cellular localization of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and cytochrome P450 A1 (CYP1A) expression in Atlantic salmon <it>Salmo salar </it>L. exposed to a model toxicant. The stress response was induced by intraperitoneal injection of four salmon with a single dose (50 mg/kg) of the CYP1A inducer β-naphthoflavone (BNF) and intestinal tissue (mid and distal intestine; MI and DI) was sampled seven days later. Samples for histology and gene transcription analysis were collected from four exposed fish and four control fish. PCNA was assessed by immunohistochemistry, CYP1A mRNA was studied by <it>in situ </it>hybridization (ISH) and finally the transcription of five genes was quantified by real-time quantitative RT-PCR (real-time RT-PCR); two detoxifying genes (CYP1A and glutathione S-transferase; GST), a stress marker gene (heat shock protein 70; HSP70), PCNA and a gene marker of apoptosis (caspase 6A).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>PCNA protein and CYP1A mRNA were successfully localized in the intestinal cells (MI) of both experimental groups. At the cellular level, BNF significantly lowered intestinal cell proliferation and increased the CYP1A mRNA levels compared to the control group. The real-time RT-PCR data, which showed an increased mRNA expression both in the MI and DI of 139- and 62-fold, respectively, confirmed the increased cellular CYP1A mRNA levels detected using ISH. HSP70 expression was also up-regulated in the exposed fish. The other examined genes did not show any differential regulation in the experimental fish group.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study showed that CYP1A mRNA had a specific intestinal cellular transcription pattern in Atlantic salmon exposed to BNF. At the cellular level CYP1A mRNA expression was always observed at or around the cell nucleus close to the basolateral cell membrane and at the tissue level CYP1A mRNA expression was most frequently observed in the basal and apex area of the intestinal folds. Taken together, a link between the intestinal detoxification system (CYP1A) and cell renewal system (PCNA) is indicated with these two processes being inversely correlated in BNF exposed fish.</p

Characterization of an Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) embryonic stem cell cDNA library

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Atlantic cod is an ecologically and economically important North Atlantic fish species and also an emerging aquaculture species. To study gene expression in Atlantic cod embryonic stem (ES) cells, our goal was to generate and analyze expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from an ES cell cDNA library of mRNA consisting of approximately 3,900 ESTs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We sequenced 3,935 EST clones using a directional cDNA library made from pooled ES cells harvested at the blastula stage. Quality filtering of these ESTs allowed identification of 2,719 high-quality sequences with an average length of 442 bp containing 368 contigs and 1,276 singletons (1,644 unique sequences). BLASTX searches produced 889 significant (E-value < 10^-3) hits, of which 698 (42.5%) were annotated with Gene Ontology terms (E-value < 10^-6). The number of unknown unique sequences was 946 (57.5%). All the high-quality EST sequences have been deposited in GenBank (GenBank: 2,719 sequences in UniGene library dbEST id: 22,021). Gene discovery and annotations are presented and discussed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This set of ESTs represents one of the first attempts to describe mRNA in ES cells from a marine cold-water fish species, and provides a basis for gene expression studies of Atlantic cod ES cells.</p

Unsupervised Band Selection with SPPF: A Spectral-Spatial Fuzzy Clustering Approach

Anskaffelsen av et hyperspektralt bilde (HSI) innebærer å fange flere spektrale bånd innenfor et bestemt bølgelengdeområde. Behandling av HSIer er imidlertid krevende på grunn av den enorme mengden data. Båndseleksjons (BS) metoder er avgjørende for å håndtere utfordringen med høy dimensjonalitet og redundans av HSI data. Selv om det finnes flere unsupervised BS metoder, er det behov for ytterlige forskning knyttet til utnyttelse av romlig informasjon. For å adressere dette foreslås en forbedret hybrid av partikkelsvermoptimalisering (PSO) med fuzzy clustering (FCM), som inkorporerer romlig informasjon. Denne unsupervised BS-teknikken tar sikte på å forbedre HSI-klassifisering ved å håndtere utfordringene med høy dimensjonalitet og redundans i hyperspektral data. Nyvinningen med denne tilnærmingen, referert til som Superpixel PSO-FCM (SPPF), ligger i utvidelsen av PSO-FCM ved å utnytte både spektral og romlig informasjon. Forskjellige avstandsmålinger som inkorporerer romlig informasjon blir presentert, og deres effekt på klassifiseringsytelse og effektivitet utforskes gjennom eksperimenter. For bedre å velge et delsett av bånd som effektivt representerer hele HSIer, samtidig som redundans minimeres, foreslår denne oppgaven å kombinere avstandsmålingene med forskjellige metoder å velge bånd fra en gruppering. Evaluering av ytelsen på tre forskjellige HSIer viser de lovende resultatene av den foreslåtte metoden.Acquiring a hyperspectral image (HSI) involves capturing multiple spectral bands within a specific wavelength range. However, processing HSIs is computationally demanding due to the immense amount of data. Band selection (BS) methods are crucial in mitigating the challenge of high dimensionality and redundancy of HSI data. While several unsupervised BS techniques are available, such as those based on clustering, there is a need for further exploration into leveraging spatial information. To address this gap, an improved hybrid of the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with fuzzy clustering (FCM) is proposed, incorporating spatial information. This unsupervised BS technique aims to enhance HSI classification by addressing the challenges of high dimensionality and redundancy in hyperspectral data. The novelty of this approach, referred to as Superpixel PSO-FCM (SPPF), lies in the extension of PSO-FCM by leveraging both spectral and spatial information. Different distance measures incorporating spatial information are presented, and their effect on classification accuracy and efficiency is explored through experiments. To better select a subset of bands that effectively represents the entire HSI, while minimizing redundancy, the thesis proposes combining the distance measures with different cluster-representative selection techniques. Performance evaluation on three HSIs showcases the promising results of the proposed method