• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
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Educational content recommendation is a cornerstone of AI-enhanced learning. In particular, to facilitate navigating the diverse learning resources available on learning platforms, methods are needed for automatically linking learning materials, e.g., in order to recommend textbook content based on exercises. Such methods are typically based on semantic textual similarity (STS) and the use of embeddings for text representation. However, it remains unclear what types of embeddings should be used for this task. In this study, we carry out an extensive empirical evaluation of embeddings derived from three different types of models: (i) static embeddings trained using a concept-based knowledge graph, (ii) contextual embeddings from a pre-trained language model, and (iii) contextual embeddings from a large language model (LLM). In addition to evaluating the models individually, various ensembles are explored based on different strategies for combining two models in an early vs. late fusion fashion. The evaluation is carried out using digital textbooks in Swedish for three different subjects and two types of exercises. The results show that using contextual embeddings from an LLM leads to superior performance compared to the other models, and that there is no significant improvement when combining these with static embeddings trained using a knowledge graph. When using embeddings derived from a smaller language model, however, it helps to combine them with knowledge graph embeddings. The performance of the best-performing model is high for both types of exercises, resulting in a mean Recall@3 of 0.96 and 0.95 and a mean MRR of 0.87 and 0.86 for quizzes and study questions, respectively, demonstrating the feasibility of using STS based on text embeddings for educational content recommendation. The ability to link digital learning materials in an unsupervised manner—relying only on readily available pre-trained models—facilitates the development of AI-enhanced learning.

Eelco Runia’s view of historical time is that the now and the past exert an alternating influence on each other. The most prominent expression of this is a dialogue between the historian and the historical actors in which the historian creates metonyms, replacement terms, for how historical actors are defined, which affects the description of the past. In this paper, Runia’s conception of historical time has been tested through an empirical investigation into the changing descriptions of the process of rejecting the aether hypothesis, 1858-2022. After the process of phasing the aether out of physics had previously been explained as being caused by the gradual acceptance of the theory of relativity, the cause was suddenly superseded in the 1990s by the Michelson-Morley experiment conducted in the 1880s. During the 21st century, however, the aether once again returned as a concept. The reason for the changes, is the conclusion, could possibly be due to the ambition to give a rational picture of the development of natural science at every point in time

This article investigates the media lives of a particular class taxonomy in the Swedish press from 1945 to 1976. Invented by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 1911, the ‘social group division’ system was abandoned in the early post-war period. Around the same time, however, it gained popularity in Swedish culture and political debate. While earlier research has noted that such bureaucratic class taxonomies – as in several other Western countries – conditioned how actors understood and created new knowledge about the population, this process of wider circulation remains understudied. Using insights from literature on ‘the social life of methods’ and the history of knowledge, which underline that knowledge is transformed by and transforms the contexts it circulates in, I show that print media was an arena for circulating and producing new meaning around class taxonomies. Although editorials shunned the social group division for incorrectly representing Swedish society and creating artificial class boundaries, journalists used the taxonomy to explain social structures. Furthermore, by interviewing ‘typical’ members of the different social groups, journalists made the system relatable and personal for their readers. In this context, the social groups were imagined as cultural communities, sharing cultural behaviours and preferences. Lastly, I analyse usages of the social group division in letters to the editor, which reveal that people felt they were being classified and wanted to offer their views of society, using the taxonomy in ways the experts had not intended. This study thereby contributes to the history of social taxonomies and class languages in the post-war period.

School as an Experimental Workshop: Dissemination of Knowledge and Experience from Experimental Teaching in Swedish Pedagogical Journals, 1920–1960. The purpose of the article is to look at how knowledge about experimental teaching was disseminated through educational journals 1920–1960. Throughout the period, there was an interest from teachers and schools to experiment with new ways of teaching. Educational journals had an important role here to spread knowledge from these experiences. During the interwar period, it was mainly teachers who acted as brokers and shared knowledge of their experiences from experimental teaching. The knowledge shared was often a mix of teachers’ experiences and pedagogical perspectives. During the 1950s, other brokers took up more space, such as researchers and school mangers. Although the journals shared pedagogical perspectives from different countries, rarely individual countries came into focus. Often here too it was a combination of perspectives that are presented via the articles on experimental teaching.

Abstract Building performance simulation (BPS) based on physical models is a popular method for estimating the expected energy savings from energy-efficient building retrofitting. However, for many buildings, especially older buildings, built several decades ago, an operator do not have full access to the complete information for the BPS method. Incomplete information comes from the lack of detailed building physics, such as the thermal transmittance of some building components due to the deterioration of components over time. To address this challenge, this paper proposed a data-driven approach to support the decision-making of building retrofitting selections under incomplete information conditions. The data-driven approach integrates the backpropagation neural networks (BRBNN), fuzzy C-means clustering (FCM), and generative design (GD). It generates the required big database of building performance through generative design, which can overcome the problem of incomplete information during building performance simulation and energy-efficient retrofitting. The case study is based on old residential buildings in severe cold regions of China, using the proposed approach to predict energy-efficient retrofitting performance. The results indicated that the proposed approach can model the performance of residential buildings with more than 90% confidence, and show the variation of results. The core contribution of the proposed approach is to provide a way of performance prediction of individual buildings resulting from different retrofitting measures under the incomplete physics condition.

Positive energy districts (PED) are neighborhoods with a net positive energy balance with the main goal to create sustainable districts that contribute to the energy transition. The three pillars energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy flexibility forms the foundation of PEDs, and ‘Quality of life’ is one of the key principles. Indoor swimming facilities for recreation and sports, also called aquatic centers or swimming halls, are important for healthy lifestyles. They are highly energy-demanding facilities due to the large volumes and strict heating- and ventilation requirements to ensure the health of staff, visitors, and bathers. The large energy consumption indicates good potential to reduce their energy use. One possibility might be to include aquatic centersin PEDs: the district could support the facility with locally produced renewable energy. There are also studies that investigates innovative solutions regarding aquatic centers that might have potential to increase resilience and flexibility in the district. However, one important aspect in studies on energy use in aquatic centers that is often neglected is the presence of disinfection by-products (DBP), which are found in the air and water of chlorinated swimming pools. Several DBPs can lead to health issues, such as asthma, eye irritation, and even cancer. There are often conflicting goals in studies on swimming halls. The connection between DBP and energy is currently missing, and it could lead to projects compromising health over energy savings. Based on a literature review, this study highlights the research gap between DBPs and energy use in swimming facilities. A suggestion is also presented to integrate swimming halls into PEDs with the aim of increasing possibilities for a healthy lifestyle, supporting the aquatic center’s energy demand with renewable energy, and exploring new solutions for flexibility and resilience in the district RESILIENT Energisystem Kompetenscentrum

Abstract The energy use of buildings is almost one-third of the global final energy use. Phase change Materials (PCMs) are substances that undergo phase transition when the surrounding temperature reaches their phase transition temperature. PCMs are reported to be a good candidate as a thermal storage buffer in building systems. Accordingly, PCMs may be able to regulate the indoor temperature while using less energy and thereby contributing in improving the energy performance of the building. In this project a trail to analyse the effect of PCMs in indoor temperature was carried out, in an experimental set-up, using a climate chamber. The chamber temperature is regulated as a sinusoidal profile with a cycle of 24 hours, with a maximum of 40 °C and a minimum of -10 °C. A cubic-box, is placed at the centre of the chamber, and is used as a representation of “building”. A board was made by encapsulating PCMs, with a melting temperature of 24 °C, to gypsum with a fraction of 20 wt%. The influence of PCM added gypsum board on inside temperature of the box is studied. Temperatures at different locations have been measured by thermocouples. The results indicated that the presence of PCM resulted in less temperature variation inside the box with the temperature holding close to the PCM transition temperature for a long period. Also, the PCM boards shifted the temperature profile. Further results are expected to determine the location of the PCM board that is most suitable to reduce the temperature variation inside the building.

The influence of kin on various outcomes is heavily debated. However, kinship size itself conditions the probability of potential effects. Socio-economic gradients in the prevalence, variance, and types of kin are, therefore, a vital aspect of the functions of kin. Unfortunately, these parameters are largely unknown. We used Swedish register data to enumerate consanguine and in-law kin across the life course of the 1975 birth cohort. We calculated differences in kinship size between this cohort’s income quartiles and educational groups. We decomposed how specific kin relations, generations, and demographic behaviours contributed to these differences. Among low socio-economic status (SES) groups, higher fertility in earlier generations resulted in more kin compared with high-SES groups. Low-SES groups had more horizontal consanguine kin, while high-SES groups had more in-laws. Lower fertility and higher union instability among low-SES men substantially narrowed SES differences in kinship size. Kinship size varied substantially within SES groups. Mismatch: En ny förklaring för nedgången i samboskap i Norden