A Study on Software Requirements Specifications - some examples

The software requirements specification (SRS) is an important document, since it forms a basis for subsequent activities in the systems development process. In this thesis, nine SRSs are analyzed in order to demonstrate similarities and differences in SRS composition and requirements organization, and to show what type of requirements is the most common one. The results show that SRSs are structured either by following the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) standard 830 with three main sections (introduction – overview – list of requirements), or another structure (introduction – references – list of requirements). How the specific requirements in the SRSs are structured differ from SRS to SRS. The most frequent type of requirements is functional requirements. This shows that even though using standards might not be the only way to formulate documents, they are being used and serve their purposes, at least to some extent

Becoming Spectral:Toward a Media History of Ghosting

This article contextualizes contemporary forms of digital ghosting by examining how two of its historical precursors—Victorian calling culture and answering machines—have been represented in North American women’s magazines. To do so, we develop mediated avoidance as an analytical heuristic. This concept captures the material, relational and social dimensions of a set of understudied media practices that seek to strategically engage with the gaps that are inherent in all communication, to defer, deflect, or disrupt mediated connections. Representations of mediated avoidance from respective eras were found to reflect different anxieties over the management of the public/private divide. Calling culture relied on unpaid labor to facilitate the transmission of printed messages between bourgeoise women and was constrained by an array of social protocols that regulated interactions along conceptions of propriety. The disconnective features of answering machines, meanwhile, were represented as giving women the upper hand in courtship, as well as providing means for increased productivity and self-care, foreshadowing contemporary justifications of digital disconnection. Concerns over contemporary ghosting are discussed as produced by a spillage of media practices. Ghosting is considered acceptable in feminine-coded spheres like courtship. But it is viewed as inappropriate—sometimes even as signaling a broader social crisis—when it bleeds into other contexts, like when an employee ghosts their employer.This article contextualizes contemporary forms of digital ghosting by examining how two of its historical precursors—Victorian calling culture and answering machines—have been represented in North American women’s magazines. To do so, we develop mediated avoidance as an analytical heuristic. This concept captures the material, relational and social dimensions of a set of understudied media practices that seek to strategically engage with the gaps that are inherent in all communication, to defer, deflect, or disrupt mediated connections. Representations of mediated avoidance from respective eras were found to reflect different anxieties over the management of the public/private divide. Calling culture relied on unpaid labor to facilitate the transmission of printed messages between bourgeoise women and was constrained by an array of social protocols that regulated interactions along conceptions of propriety. The disconnective features of answering machines, meanwhile, were represented as giving women the upper hand in courtship, as well as providing means for increased productivity and self-care, foreshadowing contemporary justifications of digital disconnection. Concerns over contemporary ghosting are discussed as produced by a spillage of media practices. Ghosting is considered acceptable in feminine-coded spheres like courtship. But it is viewed as inappropriate—sometimes even as signaling a broader social crisis—when it bleeds into other contexts, like when an employee ghosts their employer

Being Accountable in Distributed Innovation Work

As a result of various driving forces, R&D and innovation processes are increasingly opened up for external influences and resources. This has lead to a changing nature of innovation work to become more distributed, networked and fragmented. In companies, a consequence of this is that hierarchically defined directives are transformed to lateral agreements. For the employee, a consequence of this is that they are increasingly expected to justify the value of distributed innovation practices in relation to both their firm and external contributors of innovation, and by doing so they involve themselves in a process were accountability is horizontally redistributed. In order to analyze this process, we use a case of open source software development, were developers from eleven firms, using open source in their professional practice, are interviewed. We show how distributed innovation processes leave the professional developer with the responsibility to select and assure that external resources becomes advantageous to their work, and how they use different types of justification to account for the value of this appropriation. We identify how accountability is formed by multiple logics, potentially leading to tensions between different logic of worth

THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF FINANCIAL SERVICES MARKETS AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS – Exploring FinTech development in Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands and Sweden

The recent expansion of FinTech companies supplying digitally sophisticated products and services on the financial markets is repeatedly linked with different ideas of digital disruption. The development is said to challenge traditional banks and their “one-stop-shop” business models and value chains, integrating a wide range of products under one “roof”. FinTechs thus emerge as a threat to conventional businesses models in the financial markets, and thereby also raise concern for the types of jobs that employees in traditional banking and finance may face in the future (Abassi et al., 2021; Rego, 2018). Previous research on this development often focuses on the innovation of new businesses. By investigating the broader institutional conditions addressing industrial relations in the FinTech sector, this report also provides knowledge about aspects conspicuously absent from many previous studies. This is crucial to our understanding of how different institutions shape the future labour market and the way FinTech companies and other financial actors acquire the skills needed to develop. The report draws on the analysis of four country cases (Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands and Sweden) all characterized by pervasive digital transformation of financial services. The report confirms an extensive digital transformation of financial services in all four countries studied, but our findings still suggest that FinTech companies do not necessarily disrupt existing businesses – at least not in a radical fashion. As the FinTech niche in all four countries appears to consolidate and influence the emergence of a new business ecology – in which conventional banks continue to play a key role – our analysis rather suggests that the development consists of an intense and innovative differentiation of market services. FinTechs primarily position themselves as partners to established businesses, providing technical solutions or even ideas that are bought by banks and thus co-opted or integrated through strategic partnerships (cf. Brandl and Hornuf, 2020; Hornuf et al., 2020). They also forge a position as intermediaries between the bank and the customer, utilizing open banking solutions based on customer and account-information from traditional banks. In doing so, they are shaping both a possibility to add new services, and for customers to utilize and get an overview of services from different actors on the market (cf. Lomachynska, 2020). Contrary to studies describing how digital services destroy job opportunities (Brynjolfsson and MacAfee, 2014; Umans et al., 2018), the report depicts a development that increases demand for new skills, urging us to look further into what types of jobs will be available to employees in banking and finance in the future (Abassi et al., 2021; Rego, 2018). At present, the rapid growth makes it difficult to provide a definitive answer as to what exactly these skill requirements will be. Our report nevertheless finds that that policymakers, business associations, and FinTech communities are more concerned with a lack of education and competence development satisfying demands for new combinations of tech and financial skills, than with the risk of job losses in the sector at large

JUSTIFYING THE VALUE OF OPEN SOURCE

Over the last decade, free and open source software (FOSS) has gradually become recognized by different actors in society outside the FOSS communities and increasingly incorporated in corporate software development contexts, challenging proprietary software practices. Most literature describing this transition is focusing on the value of using FOSS as an efficient alternative to established models for software development. This focus on efficiency and economic value of FOSS is not sufficient if we want to gain a deeper understanding of the many aspects of FOSS values in the intersection of corporations and movements In order to articulate these different values, we propose a theoretical framework of justificatory logics including a civic, domestic, inspirational, popular, market and industrial logic. First we make an analysis of the history of FOSS, identifying how these logics have developed over time. We argue that this development forms the backbone of an emerging configuration of these logics, manifesting a new spirit of FOSS in terms of the adoption of free and open source software, methods and practices in corporations today. This new spirit is then analyzed based on interviews with programmers employed by firms engaging in FOSS. By understanding how these justificatory logics come to play and interplay, corporations that want to adopt FOSS can gain strategic advantages beyond efficiency

Indolepropionic acid and novel lipid metabolites are associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes in the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study

Wide-scale profiling technologies including metabolomics broaden the possibility of novel discoveries related to the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes (T2D). By applying non-targeted metabolomics approach, we investigated here whether serum metabolite profile predicts T2D in a well-characterized study population with impaired glucose tolerance by examining two groups of individuals who took part in the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study (DPS); those who either early developed T2D (n = 96) or did not convert to T2D within the 15-year follow-up (n = 104). Several novel metabolites were associated with lower likelihood of developing T2D, including indole and lipid related metabolites. Higher indolepropionic acid was associated with reduced likelihood of T2D in the DPS. Interestingly, in those who remained free of T2D, indolepropionic acid and various lipid species were associated with better insulin secretion and sensitivity, respectively. Furthermore, these metabolites were negatively correlated with low-grade inflammation. We replicated the association between indolepropionic acid and T2D risk in one Finnish and one Swedish population. We suggest that indolepropionic acid, a gut microbiota-produced metabolite, is a potential biomarker for the development of T2D that may mediate its protective effect by preservation of alpha-cell function. Novel lipid metabolites associated with T2D may exert their effects partly through enhancing insulin sensitivity.Peer reviewe

Being filmed at work: How police perceive citizens\u27 use of cameras to conduct sousveillance

Today’s widespread use of camera-equipped smartphones means that anyone may easily be filmed in public, and - through social media - exposed to a large audience whilst conducting their daily work. Police officers belong to an occupation that frequently has to encounter this situation. The police is a public authority with a broad societal mission aimed at reducing crime and increasing security in society, but is also entitled to make use of force at work. The latter is a fact that places high demands on them to organize and conduct their work in accordance with applicable laws and guidelines to ensure legal security for citizens, and to provide transparency and accountability. We intend to investigate what consequences citizens’ use of this wearable technology with built in cameras have on police officers’ individual practices. This research in progress paper will therefore address the question: How do police perceive citizens’ use of cameras to document them while conducting work? To answer the question, we conducted a qualitative study using the Swedish Police as a case, where in-depth interviews with police officers constitute the main data source. Theoretically, we draw upon on research on technological affordances, accountability, surveillance and sousveillance

Alcoholic Beverage Preference and Dietary Habits in Elderly across Europe: Analyses within the Consortium on Health and Ageing: Network of Cohorts in Europe and the United States (CHANCES) Project

Introduction: The differential associations of beer, wine, and spirit consumption on cardiovascular risk found in observational studies may be confounded by diet. We described and compared dietary intake and diet quality according to alcoholic beverage preference in European elderly. Methods: From the Consortium on Health and Ageing: Network of Cohorts in Europe and the United States (CHANCES), seven European cohorts were included, i.e. four sub-cohorts from EPIC-Elderly, the SENECA Study, the Zutphen Elderly Study, and the Rotterdam Study. Harmonized data of 29,423 elderly participants from 14 European countries were analyzed. Baseline data on consumption of beer, wine, and spirits, and dietary intake were collected with questionnaires. Diet quality was assessed using the Healthy Diet Indicator (HDI). Intakes and scores across categories of alcoholic beverage preference (beer, wine, spirit, no preference, non-consumers) were adjusted for age, sex, socio-economic status, self-reported prevalent diseases, and lifestyle factors. Cohort-specific mean intakes and scores were calculated as well as weighted means combining all cohorts. Results: In 5 of 7 cohorts, persons with a wine preference formed the largest group. After multivariate adjustment, persons with a wine preference tended to have a higher HDI score and intake of healthy foods in most cohorts, but differences were small. The weighted estimates of all cohorts combined revealed that non-consumers had the highest fruit and vegetable intake, followed by wine consumers. Non-consumers and persons with no specific preference had a higher HDI score, spirit consumers the lowest. However, overall diet quality as measured by HDI did not differ greatly across alcoholic beverage preference categories. Discussion: This study using harmonized data from ~30,000 elderly from 14 European countries showed that, after multivariate adjustment, dietary habits and diet quality did not differ greatly according to alcoholic beverage preference

Governmental Surveillance - The balance between security and privacy

The increased digitalisation of society and recent developments in AI is laying the ground for surveillance capabilities of a magnitude we have not seen before. Surveillance can be conducted by several different actors in society, this project focuses on the Swedish police currently using a large ensemble of surveillance technologies. Earlier this year, significant legislative changes governing the police authorities use of digital surveillance were enacted. These changes mean that the police now have been given an extended mandate to use digital surveillance as part of their professional practice, which places demands on balanced decisions and informed responsibility. On the one hand, the police have an interest to use digital surveillance to increase efficiency and security in society; on the other hand, the police must balance their interests with citizen’s so-called integrity-interests and right to privacy. This study will therefore examine to what extent the Swedish Police Authority pay attention to questions such as integrity and privacy when introducing digital surveillance. The study is guided by the following questions: (i) What opportunities can be related to the implementation and use of digital surveillance in police work? (ii) What kind of challenges do the increasing use of digital surveillance create between organisational governance, police officers’ work practice, and the integrity of citizens - and how do the police tackle these challenges? Theoretically, we draw on the established research fields on surveillance and privacy and empirically this study is designed as a qualitative study of the Swedish Police as our main case