An advanced architecture of learning system with flexible, mobile and joyful features for supporting ubiquitous learning is developed in this research. The architecture consists of five hardware key elements and a supporting information system to form a brand-new ubiquitous learning system. We call the designed and developed system as Ubiquitous Open-structured Neo-tech Edutainment (or u-ONE System for short) which includes learning robot, sensing input device, mobile computing device, mobile output device, wireless local network and u-ONE Software. The design and development of u-ONE System is guided by experiential learning theory, constructivism learning theory, and joyful learning element. Instruction, collaboration learning and self-learning of application modes are supported by u-ONE Software for realizing ubiquitous learning. The aim of this research is to design and develop a prototype of u-ONE System includes hardware and software components for supporting children¡¦s learning by using robot and RFID. Instructor and learners can meet at any place with their own gears to form a u-ONE System and start instruction and/or learning activities. Only instructors need to operate the control station for coordination; learners just intuitively interact with learning robot by a natural and person-to-person-liked interaction method. In u-ONE System, learners do not need to have good information technologies literacy such as the keyboarding skills which are especially crucial for the earlier childhood learners. Besides, many parents and educators are concerned of watching computer screen for a long time that may harm children¡¦s eyesight; u-ONE System provides an alternative solution for this. This research¡¦s experiment result found most learners could arouse their learning motivations and help them concentrate on learning activities. The class order is also improved for instructors more easily to control the behaviors of learners during the class.

Thèse de doctorat : Littérature générale et comparée : Paris 12 : 2006. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Pagination : 378 p. Bibliogr. p. 353-364. Index.

The concept of building work environment co- ordinator is a relatively new concept that has its origin in the amendment to the Working Environment Act which came into force on 1 January 2009. The terms; building work environment co-ordinator appointed for planning and design and building work environment co-ordinator for the execution of building or civil engineering work ushered in the industry. Once these disciplines complement one another, you can achieve a smooth handover to ensure a good and healthy working environment. In this thesis, we study a company in Uppsala and their operations and handover by interviewing the relevant staff in question. The result shows that there are currently no present guidelines for how and when the handover should take place, it is up to each individual to provide themselves with the relevant information. If the handover of the work environment would occur to the extent it should it would lead to minimized proportions of unforeseen risks and events that may occur during the production phase, which ultimately leads to a better and healthier working environment.

Vid utgrävningar utförda av brittiska arkeologer 1922 i staden Ur i Mesopotamienpåträffades i en grav ett sigill: U.9750. Hantverket är i mörkgrön steatit och är 0,036m X 0,024 m stort. Idag dateras det till den gammalakkadiska perioden ca 2250 f. Kr.Sigillet förvaras i Nationalmuseet i Irak och anses som ett av de mer betydelsefullaföremålen från perioden. Museet blev plundrat efter invasionen av Irak 2003. Det gåratt studera föremål, däribland sigillbilden U.9750 på hemsidan av Iraksnationalmuseum http://www.theiraqmuseum.com/. Stulet eller försvunnet materialfinns även publicerat i http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html. Sigillet anses vara enav Mesopotamiens största konstnärliga höjdpunkter inom konsthantverk eftersombilden på sigillet U.9750 har olika mönster och figurer samtidigt är utförd i ennaturlistisk stil.

This thesis presents a comprehensive account of the complex relationship between the British government and the domestic military-naval arms industry from the armistice in 1918 until the period of rearmament in the 1930s. Challenging traditional 'declinist' assumptions, it offers a multifaceted interpretation of the industry's strengths and weaknesses and its place in national security. In this regard, British governments always prioritised national interests over the private armament manufacturers' particular concerns and never formulated a specific policy to help them adjust to peacetime conditions. Indeed, the wartime experience of industrial mobilisation – the mass production of war material by ordinary firms – made specialist arms producers appear less important in supply planning: a view that proved more important than disarmament and retrenchment in damaging state-industry relations and, together with Britain's liberal economic traditions, helped to foster an enduring but exaggerated sense of relative weakness. Faced with the government's apparent indifference, the overextended arms industry underwent comprehensive internal reorganisation, led by Vickers and supported hesitantly by the Bank of England. This reduced the overall number of manufacturers but it also brought modernisation and a comparatively efficient nucleus for emergency expansion. Internationally, British firms retained a large share of the global arms market despite rising competition. Policymakers rarely accepted widespread public criticism that private armaments manufacture and trading were immoral but believed that the League of Nations' ambition to enforce all-encompassing international controls posed a far greater risk to British security. Although the government imposed unilateral arms trade regulations to facilitate political objectives, and was forced to address outraged popular opinion, neither seriously damaged the manufacturers' fortunes as the country moved towards rearmament. Indeed, the arms industry was never simply a victim of government policy but instead pursued an independent and ultimately successful peacetime strategy, before rearmament led to a cautious renewal of state-industry relations.

BACKGROUND: Over 30% of the British Army‟s Infantry Recruits who underwent training between 1999 and 2003 failed to complete their training. Previous studies have focused predominantly on identifying the cumulative reasons for failure. There is a dearth of research investigating the effect of failure on the individual recruit and what influences their ability to pass training. AIM: The overall aims of this study were: to achieve an understanding of the role that antecedent personal, social and demographic factors play in a British Army recruit‟s ability to complete basic training; to investigate the possibility of identifying predictive factors that would identify infantry recruits who were at risk of being unable to cope with the transition to life in the British Army; and to explore the reasons given by those recruits who failed to complete basic training to develop a more comprehensive understanding of why recruits fail. METHODS: All new army recruits joining the first and second battalion between September 2002 and March 2003 were invited to take part in the study. A biographical questionnaire based on a modified version of the US Army‟s 115 item biographical questionnaire form was self-completed prior to infantry training by all those agreeing to take part in the study. Study participants were monitored weekly throughout their training and the training outcome (pass/fail) was recorded. The data was randomly split into a development dataset (two thirds) and a test dataset (one third). Independent variables were grouped into five categories (Demographic & Physical Measurement, Education, Outdoor Education, Non-Physical Activity and Conduct and Behaviour) and tested univariably and multivariably to examine their association with training outcome in the development dataset using logistic regression. The multivariable model was then used to construct a score and its sensitivity and specificity was tested using the test dataset. All those within the study who failed to complete Infantry recruit training were invited to take part in a qualitative semi-structured exit interview. These interviews were analysed using framework analysis methodology. Findings from both the quantitative and qualitative analysis were integrated to determine whether prediction of failure was practicable and to develop an increased understanding of the impact that antecedent factors and training experiences contributed to training failure. RESULTS: Of the study cohort of 999 recruits 36.2% (n=362) failed. Within the failure group 74.4% (n=269) gave reasons to suggest that this was attributable to difficulties in adapting to life in the British Army Infantry. Factors associated with higher odds of failure were: absence of female siblings (p=0.005), aggressive coping strategies (p=0.013), use of ecstasy (p=0.02), evenings per week spent at the family home (p=0.032), truancy (p=0.039), an increased number of schools attended (p=0.046) and classroom behaviour (p=0.052). The area under the curve on the test dataset was 0.58 (0.501-0.65 95% CI). Analysis of the qualitative data suggested that there was a marked difference between the socio-personal identity of recruits who failed training and the organisational identity of the British Army Infantry. Cognitive dissonance and varying extremes of stress were reported by those recruits that failed during the transition to military life. CONCLUSION: A screening tool constructed from items of the biographical questionnaire was unable to predict failure in training with sufficient accuracy to recommend its routine use for new recruits to British Army Infantry training. This study has identified that there is a lack of fit between military identity and the socio-personal identity of the infantry recruit which results in dissonance and stress during the transition into the military. It is recommended that future studies should focus on how to reduce the psychological impact of the transition into infantry training.

This Doctoral dissertation investigates non-state military formations. Kilcullen’s notion of ‘Hearts and Minds’, which suggests that through engagement and diplomacy, populations can be persuaded to believe that an enhanced military will protect them, tends to lack capacity to recognize the population as identifying their own role in the conflict. The core problem is that discussions about engagement regularly remain meta-theoretical, a tool of soft-power at most and based on theories of hegemonic narratives and ‘cultural awareness’, and have had arguably little effect on mapping different armed-campaigns in an insurgency. This doctoral research project seeks to analyse the operative elements of narrative that ultimately allow for communities to mobilise for an armed anti-insurgency movement and, more importantly, permit community militias to provide for their own security and governance, as well as strive to deny the territory and human capital to the insurgents. Hence, this investigation takes the notion of security, counter-insurgency and anti-insurgency as a sociospatial phenomenon than solely an ideological issue. Accordingly, this research revisits anthropological and sociological data with the aim of demonstrating that non-state military formations have fundamental political context and military preferences than determined by culture or solely military objectives. More specifically, it advocates that ethnography is the way forward to map the societies in conflict, arguing that collective action will develop even in the absence of assistance from a superior military. This dissertation takes care not to make an anthropological comparison of the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies, but rather a political comparison. Local concepts and vocabularies are used, with supplementary presentations which map the sociospatial range which come to define the conflict and security. Local concepts and vocabularies provide background information on points in the anti-insurgency campaign, discussion of actors involved and information on specific context addressed. Each chapter in the dissertation contains very specific problematised issues which narrow the conditions of each case study, but adds to the overall understanding of non-state military formations. The set and study are designed to bring a parallel understanding to counter-insurgency engagement strategy that emphasise the local social structures over weak, centralised security structure.

At the beginning of WWII, British shipping was attacked by German submarines repeatedly. The Germans often tried to use the element of surprise in their attacks. Some attacks succeeded and others failed. But what does it take to conduct a surprise attack?   The purpose of this thesis is, based on theories dealing with the element of surprise, to examine the validity of the theories in two surprise attacks at the tactical level carried out by the German submarine U 47 in September and October 1939. The theory is explained through five independent variables; unpredictability, change of pace, analysis of the opponent, deception and initiative. The thesis uses case study methodology with a structured, focused comparison approach.   The results indicate that only three of the five variables appeared in both of the cases. The conclusion is that in order to conduct a surprise attack at the tactical level, the attack needs to be permeated with unpredictability, deception and initiative.

The Texas U-Beam standard designs were released in the 1990’s and have been used increasingly in bridges across the state since. While prototypes of the 54-in. deep prestressed concrete beam were built during the design phase, no full-scale load tests were performed. This study of the U-Beam had five goals: (i) determine the magnitude and location of stresses induced in reinforcing bars in the end region of the beam at prestress transfer, (ii) measure concrete curing temperatures in square and skewed end blocks, (iii) establish the vertical shear capacity of the standard section, (iv) evaluate interaction between behavior at prestress transfer and performance under shear-critical loads, and (v) identify design and detailing improvements and make recommendations. Eight full-scale Texas U54 prestressed concrete beams were fabricated to achieve these goals. Load testing of the first four of these beams revealed a critical weakness along the bottom flange-to-web interface of the beam. The weakness caused failures that occurred at loads well below the calculated shear capacity. Given the horizontal sliding observed, the failure mode was called horizontal shear. The next two beams were fabricated to test three modifications to the end-region design, two of which were deemed successful. The final two beam sections tested contained the recommended new standard reinforcement and concrete geometry. A method to evaluate the horizontal shear demand on and capacity of the bottom flange-to-web interface of prestressed concrete beams was developed. The calculations were formulated using the theories of beam bending and shear friction. This method was calibrated and verified using the U-Beam test data, a series of small-scale specimens, and results of shear tests in the literature. Stresses induced in reinforcing bars at prestress transfer met expectations set by existing codified equations. No modifications to the current U-Beam standard design are needed to manage these stresses. The induced stresses did not influence vertical shear behavior, and no interaction between the two is believed to exist for U-Beams. This dissertation contains the specifics of the beams tested and the data collected, and provides the details of recommended changes to the Texas U-Beam standard drawings. / text

South America provides an outstanding laboratory for studies of magmatism and crustal evolution because it contains older Archean-Paleoproterozoic cratons that amalgamated during Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent assembly, as well as a long history of Andean magmatism that records crustal growth and reworking in an accretionary orogen. We have attempted to reconstruct the growth and evolution of South America through U-Pb geochronology and Hf isotope analyses of detrital zircons from 59 samples of sand from modern rivers and shorelines. Results from 5,524 new U-Pb ages and 1,199 new Hf isotope determinations are reported. We have also integrated our data into a compilation of all previously published zircon geochronologic and Hf isotopic information, yielding a record that includes>42,000 ages and>1,600 Hf isotope analyses. These data yield five main conclusions: (1) South America has an age distribution that is similar to most other continents, presumably reflecting the supercontinent cycle, with maxima at 2.2-1.8 Ga, 1.6-0.9 Ga, 700-400 Ma, and 360-200 Ma; (2)<200 Ma magmatism along the western margin of South America has age maxima at 183 Ma (191-175 Ma), 151 Ma (159-143 Ma), 126 Ma (131-121 Ma), 109 Ma (114-105 Ma), 87 Ma (95-79 Ma), 62 Ma (71-53 Ma), 39 Ma (43-35 Ma), 19 Ma (23-15 Ma), and 6 Ma (10-2 Ma); (3) for the past 200 Ma, there appears to be a positive correlation between magmatism and the velocity of convergence between central South America and Pacific oceanic plates; (4) Hf isotopes record reworking of older crustal materials during most time periods, with incorporation of juvenile crustal materials at ~1.6-1.0 Ga, 500-400 Ma and ~200-100 Ma; and (5) the Hf isotopic signature of<200 Ma magmatism is apparently controlled by the generation of juvenile magmas during extensional tectonism and reworking of juvenile versus evolved crustal materials during crustal thickening and arc migration.