Olof Johansson

Do elderly couples have a better prospective memory than other elderly people when they collaborate

A naturalistic study investigated how memory tasks affected group productivity for two individuals working in three kinds of group constellations: old married couples, old non-friend pairs, and nominal groups of two individuals working on their own. The retrospective memory task was to recall episodic information given on a visit to a university campus. The prospective memory task was to remind the participants of actions to be performed during the visit. The prospective memory tasks were event-based or time-based. The delay or retention interval was also manipulated. In addition, an interview on how the elderly handled remembering during daily life was included. The results suggest that: (1) dyads suffered from collaboration relative to the predicted potential, replicating earlier research; old married couples did not reduce the same productivity loss as clearly as friends did in former studies; the couples who claimed that they used a transactive memory system, however, achieved the same productivity as the nominal pairs (i.e. the predicted potential; (2) the task effects produced unexpected results, some of which could be accounted for by the naturalistic setting used. Copyright

Successful Principalship – The Swedish Case

Over the past three decades, the forces of globalisation – economic, political and cultural – have significantly affected institutions and people across the world: altering in some ways the very terrain of public and private life. Public education has in no small way been challenged by new realities and new demands in an increasingly interdependent yet competitive world environment. School principals are uniquely positioned as formal leaders of diverse and complex educational systems to mediate the often times opposing forces of globalisation and localism with their communities. This article examines school leaders’ understanding of their work and their work role priorities, especially with regard to teaching and learning, within a policy environment characterised by increasingly convergent policy and leadership discourse. Two major questions are addressed, theoretically and empirically: in what ways do school principals in Sweden, which has strong democratic traditions, address the tension between localism and national interests and the press for conformity to new global imperatives and demands; and to what degree, if any, has globalisation created a new hegemony in school leadership? It is concluded that school principals in Sweden respond to questions about their schools without any reference to new global imperatives and demands. Their attention was generally related to national demands. Also, we see no clear evidence that globalisation has created a new hegemony in school leadership in Sweden.

Configurable Design Matrixes for Systems Engineering Applications

This paper presents a formalized approach to specify and implement design matrix support for systems engineering applications that structure large and complex product models. Design matrixes can clearly visualize the relationships between large amounts of hierarchically structured engineering objects and higher level systems engineering design objects like requirements and functions in the product model. Examples of structures that can be lied out along the X and Y axis of a design matrix are stakeholder trees, requirement trees, function-means trees, product concept trees, and implementation trees. The cells of the design matrix visualize how corresponding objects at the axes relate to each other. One benefit with configurable design matrixes is that the information content and layout of a design matrix can be specified by a user, and all software implementation effort is handled automatically by a generic software framework that is included in the engineering application. The paper provides an overview of the theory behind a formal specification language for configurable design matrixes. It gives examples of design matrix specifications and screen shoots of instances of these design matrixes generated by a prototype engineering application called FMDesign. The examples of different types of design matrixes are taken from a aircraft product model of a small business jet. A formal software specification of the design matrix specification language and the example engineering application is provided in UML class diagrams.Copyright

Conceptual Design Using Generic Object Inheritance

Conceptual design for complex products like aircraft and power plants requires a considerable effort since the product models become very large if they are to cover all important aspects for differ ...

Using an Extended ER-Model Based Data Dictionary to Automatically Generate Product Modeling Systems

The complexity of industrial artifacts such as power plants, aircrafts etc., is continuously growing. Typically for such advanced products is that they are hybrids of various technologies and contain several types of engineering models that are related in a complex fashion. For power plant design, there are functional models, mechanical models, electrical models etc.

FMDesign: A Tool and Interchange Format for Product Concept Designs

This paper presents a formalized approach to design product models in the product concept evaluation phases, and exchange the models with other engineering tools using open formats like XML and relational database tables. FMDesign is used for designing product concepts with the aid of integrated stakeholder trees, requirement trees, function-means trees, product concept trees, and implementation trees. It has its foundation in systems engineering and design methodology, and presents a formalization and integration with theory from software engineering that enable similar engineering tools to be implemented with automated model driven software implementation techniques that support the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The paper provides an overview of the theory behind the tool, its user interface, interchange formats and the formal software specification as an UML class diagram.© 2005 ASME