The first codes of the Internet made their tentative steps along the information highway in 1969, connecting two computers at UCLA. Since that time, the Internet has grown beyond institutions of research and scholarship. It is now a venue for commerce, popular culture and political discourse. The last decade, following the development of the World Wide Web, has seen access to the Internet, particularly in wealthy countries such as Australia, spread throughout the majority of the population. While this proliferation of users has created many opportunities, it also profiled questions of disadvantage. The development and continuation of a digital divide between the information ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ was framed as a problem of ‘access.’ In the context of the increasing population online, debates into social inequity have been directed at technical barriers to access, the physical infrastructure and economic impediments to the adoption of the medium by all members of society. This doctoral research probes questions of access with greater subtlety, arching beyond the spread of broadband or the expansion of computers into schools. Forging dialogues between Internet and Cultural Studies, new theories of the screen – as a barrier and border – emerge. It is an appropriate time for such a study. The (seemingly) ever expanding growth in Internet access is stalling. New approaches are required to not only understand the pattern of events, but the type and mode of intervention that is possible. This doctoral research takes theory, politics and policy to the next stage in the history of digital access. By forging interdisciplinary dialogues, the goal is to develop the concept of ‘cultware’. This term, building on the history of hardware, software and wetware, demonstrates the imperative of understanding context in the framing and forging of exclusion and disempowerment. Mobilising the insights of postcolonial theory, Popular Cultural Studies, literacy theory and socio-legal studies, a new network of exclusions emerge that require a broader palette of interventionary strategies than can be solved through infrastructure or freeing codes. Commencing with the Universal Service Obligation, and probing the meaning of each term in this phrase and policy, there is a discussion of networks and ‘gates’ of the Digital Empire. Discussions then follow of citizenship, sovereignty, nationalism and the subaltern. By applying the insights of intellectual culture from the analogue age, there is not only an emphasis on the continuities between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, but a confirmation of how a focus on ‘the new’ can mask the profound perpetuation of analogue injustices. Access to the Invisible Empire occurs for each individual in a solitary fashion. Alone at the screen, each person is atomised at the point where they interface with the digital. This thesis dissects that point of access. The three components of access at the screen – hardware, software and wetware – intersect and dialogue. All three components form a matrix of access. However, the ability to attain hardware, software and wetware are distinct. An awareness of how and where to attain these literacies requires the activation of cultware, the context in which the three components manifest. Without such an intersection, access is not possible. The size of the overlap determines the scale of the gateway and the value of access. There is an interaction between each of these components that can alter both the value of the access obtained and the point at which the gateway becomes viable and stable for entry into the digital discourse. A highly proficient user with developed wetware is able to extract more value, capital and currency from hardware and software. They have expert knowledge in the use of this medium in contrast to a novice user. In dissecting the complexity of access, my original contribution to knowledge is developing this concept of cultware and confirming its value in explaining digital inequalities. This thesis diagnoses the nodes and structures of digital and analogue inequality. Critical and interpretative Internet Studies, inflected and informed by Cultural Studies approaches and theories, offers methods for intervention, providing contextual understanding of the manifestations of power and social justice in a digital environment. In enacting this project, familiar tropes and theories from Cultural Studies are deployed. Particular attention is placed on the insights of postcolonial theorists. The Invisible Empire, following the path of the digital intellectual, seeks to act as a translator between the digital subaltern and the digital citizen. Similarly, it seeks to apply pre-existing off screen theory and methodology to the Invisible Empire, illuminating how these theories can be reapplied to the digitised environment. Within this context, my research provides a significant and original contribution to knowledge in this field. The majority of analyses in critical and interpretative Internet Studies have centred on the United States and Europe. While correlations can be drawn from these studies, there are features unique to the Australian environment, both socially and culturally, as well as physical factors such as the geographic separation and sparse distribution of the population, that limit the ability to translate these previous findings into an Australian context. The writer, as a white Australian, is liminally positioned in the colonial equation: being a citizen of a (formerly) colonised nation with the relics of Empire littering the symbolic landscape, while also – through presence and language – perpetuating the colonization of the Indigenous peoples. This ‘in-betweenness’ adds discomfort, texture and movement to the research, which is a fundamentally appropriate state to understand the gentle confluences between the digital and analogue. In this context, the screen is the gateway to the Invisible Empire. However, unlike the analogue gate in the city wall that guards a physical core, these gates guard a non-corporeal Invisible Empire. Whereas barbarians could storm the gates of Rome without the literacy to understand the workings of the Empire within, when an army masses to physically strike at these gates, the only consequences are a broken monitor. Questions cannot be asked at the gate to an Invisible Empire. There is no common space in which the digital subaltern and the digital citizen cohabitate. There is no node at which translation can occur. These gates to the Invisible Empire are numerous. The walls cannot be breached and the gates are only open for the citizenry with the required literacy. This literacy in the codes of access is an absolute requirement to pass the gates of Invisible Empire. The digital citizen transverses these gates alone. It is a point where the off screen self interfaces the digital self. Social interaction occurs on either side of the screen, but not at the gateway itself. Resistance within the borders of Invisible Empire is one of the founding ideologies of the Internet, tracing its origin back to the cyberpunk literature that predicted the rise of the network. However this was a resistance to authority, both on and off screen, by the highly literate on screen: the hacker and the cyber-jockey. This thesis addresses resistance to the Invisible Empire from outside its borders. Such an intervention is activated not through a Luddite rejection of technology, but by examining the conditions at the periphery of Empire, the impacts of digital colonisation, and how this potential exclusion can be overcome. Debates around digital literacy have been deliberately removed or bypassed to narrow the debate about the future of the digital environment to a focus on the material commodities necessary to gain access and the potential for more online consumers. Cultware has been neglected. The Invisible Empire, like its analogue predecessors, reaches across the borders of Nation States, as well as snaking invisibly through and between the analogue population, threatening and breaking down previous understandings of citizenship and sovereignty. It invokes new forms of core-periphery relations, a new type of digital colonialism. As the spread of Internet access tapers, and the borders of Empire close to those caught outside, the condition of the digital subaltern calls for outside intervention, the place of the intellectual to raise consciousness of these new colonial relations, both at the core and periphery. My doctoral thesis commences this project.

Studies of nonresident fathers have largely neglected the influence of their personality on their contact and involvement with children. The present two-stage study, using quantitative and qualitative data collection methods, undertook to investigate the extent to which selected personality characteristics influenced nonresident fathers� continued engagement with children. The study initially collected demographic and personal data from two hundred and sixty nonresident fathers throughout Australia. This first stage of data collection focussed on fathers� experience of the separation and their subsequent frequency and level of contact and their level of involvement with children. It included several multi-item variables, which measured nonresident fathers� relationships with former partners and children, their adjustment to their new parental role, their role satisfaction and role strain. It also included measures of fatherhood salience, nonresident fathers� parental authority within the separated family, their satisfaction with that authority, their attitude to child support and their perception of resident mothers� attitude to contact. It also administered abridged Sensitivity and Impulsivity scales devised by Eysenck (1969). At the second stage of the study, one hundred and thirty-five of these fathers participated in an interview. One hundred and twenty of them completed a personality questionnaire, which measured scores on the four folk scales of Responsibility, Socialization, Self-control and Good Impression, taken from the California Psychological Inventory. The study found Socialization was the only selected personality characteristic to be significantly associated with nonresident fathers� engagement with children. All four folk scales were positively correlated with nonresident fathers� role adjustment, which was significantly associated with nonresident fathers� contact and was part of the model best predicting their involvement with children. Results showed that nonresident fathers� scores on the Sensitivity measure were negatively associated with role adjustment. Most nonresident fathers in the study had frequent contact with children but limited involvement with them. They reported having little scope to share in parental decision making or to be involved in children�s schooling. The study found fatherhood salience, role adjustment, parental authority and attitude to child support to be positively associated with engagement. It showed interparental hostility, interparental conflict and nonresident fathers� role strain to be negatively correlated with engagement. The study also found that dissatisfaction with parental authority within the separated family, role strain and a negative attitude to child support were associated with ongoing interparental hostility. Qualitative data confirmed nonresident fathers� common experience of being marginalised within the family. They also revealed that many participants went to great lengths to maintain some parental relevancy for their children, despite social and legal systems tending to impede them from meeting parental responsibilities and caring for their children.

<p>STOTP-M (SAS Component) har fått luftriggar från SAS-Braathens Stavanger och uppgiften är att iordningställa dessa och fasa in komponenter för provning.</p><p>STOTP-M har tidigare ej utfört komponentprovning i rigg och ska nu ta fram procedurer för dokumentation av detta. Som ett led i detta ska en databas arbetas fram där provaren kan lagra information från provning. Denna information ska senare kunna användas för att åtgärdsbestämma underhållet av komponenter. Åtgärdsbestämning av de nya komponenternas fel är i nuläget svårt då inget tidigare underhåll är utfört av verkstaden.</p><p>När en komponent kommer in för underhåll kan det vara svårt att direkt säga vad som är fel på den. Därför utför man en pre-test för att bestämma de åtgärder och reparationer som sedan ska genomföras.</p><p>Detta examensarbete syftar till att skapa en databas för lagring av detta testresultat samt utfört underhåll på komponenter. Detta medför att man i framtiden kan få en bra bild över vad som fallerar i komponenten beroende på vilken typ av reason for removal som har inträffat.</p><p>Utöver databasen har även en felanalys på tre luftkomponenter genomförts. Denna analys innefattar en felbeskrivning för olika typer av reason for removal, samt vad som måste repareras/bytas vid varje underhållstillfälle.</p><p>Resultatet syftar till att ge ett förbättrat underhåll av de tre analyserade komponenterna. Dessutom ska man i framtiden med hjälp av databasen på ett effektivt sätt kunna lagra och få fram information kring varje komponent, som i sin tur ska leda till en effektivare åtgärdsbestämning. Eftersom felanalysens inriktning är med avseende RFR så kan det ge en felindikation på komponenten redan vid incoming test, och med hjälp av databasen har man procedurerna för hela provningen.</p> / <p>STOTP-M (SAS Component) have received air-rigs from SAS-Braathens Stavanger and the task is to put them in use so different type of components can be tested.</p><p>STOTP-M has never before performed any component testing in air-rigs and is now creating procedures for documentation of this.</p><p>As a part of this work a database has to be created so that the person who is performing the tests can store the results.</p><p>This information will later determine the level of disassembly for different types of failures. To determine the level of disassembly for different types of failures is today very hard because the shop has never performed earlier maintenance of this kind.</p><p>When a component enter the shop it can be very hard to find the faulty parts that caused the failure. Based on this a pre-test is accomplished where you deside what actions to perform in the shop.</p><p>In this thesis a database is created where you can store the data from the pre-test and also the performed work on the component. This will in the future give a good image of what parts in the component that will break down depending on what type of reason for removal that have occured.</p><p>In addition to the database an failure analysis on three pneumatical components have been performed. This analysis includes a failure description for different types of reason for removals, and what actions to implement for each shop visit.</p><p>The results from the analysis will give a better maintenance of the three analysed components. In the future the database will in effective way store and supply information from all the components, which will lead to more effective measures.</p><p>Because the failure analysis is with consideration to reason for removal it will give the failure indications on the component already in the incoming test, and with the help of the database the mechanic will have the procedures for the test.</p>

Interference from other adjacent users in wireless applications is a major problem in direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA). This is also known as the near-far problem where a strong signal from one user interferes with other users. The current approach to deal with the near-far problem in DS-CDMA systems is to use strict transmitter power control. An alternative approach is to use near-far resistant receivers. The practical near-far resistance receiver structure is the adaptive decorrelating detectors since it avoids complex matrix inversion. The existing CDMA standard known as IS-95 uses a long signature code sequence. However for simplicity, the adaptive multi-user receiver uses short signature code sequence. The problem is that adaptive receivers lose near-far resistance as the number of users increases in the system. This thesis describes a novel method of multistage decision feedback cancellation (DFC) scheme immune from the near-far problem. The performance of the new DFC structure is constructed using three different adaptive algorithms: the least mean squared (LMS), the recursive least squared (RLS) and the linearly constraint constant modulus (LCCM) adaptive algorithms. It is found that LMS adaptive algorithm provides the best result considering its simple hardware complexity. It is also found that the LMS adaptive receiver along with the DFC structure provides a better bit synchronization capability to the over all system. Since the receiver is near-far resistant, the LMS adaptive receiver along with the decision feedback cancellation structure also performs better in the presence of Rayleigh fading. / Graduation date: 1998

IS-95, an interim standard proposed for future digital personal communications systems, uses two levels of encoding of digital data for error control and compatibility with code-division multiple access (CDMA) transmission. The data is first convolutionally encoded and the resulting symbols are interleaved and then groups are encoded as orthogonal Walsh sequences. Decoding these two separate encodings is traditionally done in separate sequential steps. By combining the decoding and applying feedback of the final decision of the second level of decoding to the first level decoder it is possible to reduce the error rate of the decoder. Each Walsh sequence encodes six non-adjacent symbols of the convolutional code. The receiver computes an estimate of the probability that each of the sixty-four possible Walsh sequences has been sent, and uses this estimate as an estimate for each of the convolution symbols which specified the Walsh sequence. Since the convolution symbols are non-adjacent, it is likely that the actual value of some of the earlier symbols will have been determined by the final decoder before later symbols specifying the same Walsh sequence are used by the convolution decoder. The knowledge of the values of these symbols can be used to adjust the probability estimates for that Walsh sequence, improving the likelihood that future convolutional symbols will be correctly decoded. Specific metrics for estimating probabilities that each convolutional symbol was sent were tested with and without the proposed feedback, and error rates were estimated based on extensive computer simulations. It was found that applying feedback does improve error rates. Analytical methods were also applied to help explain the effects. / Graduation date: 1996

No description available.

The objectives of this thesis are to: 1) obtain a snapshot of callers of 211 Toronto, a free information and referral service, understanding how representative they are of Toronto’s general population; 2) understand how 211 Toronto callers seeking health-related information use the information they obtain when contacting the service and their overall level of satisfaction, and; 3) better understand the experience and information needs of recent immigrants struggling to navigate an unfamiliar health care system. The study had three phases: 1) a cross-sectional phone interview with 211 Toronto callers; 2) a follow-up phone interview of 211 Toronto callers who had asked health-related questions; and, 3) qualitative interviews with callers who were Spanish speakers from Latin American countries. Participants were randomly selected adult callers living within the boundaries of Toronto’s Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Respondents were compared with the general adult population living in Toronto’s CMA, using 2001 Census data, to identify under- or overrepresented population groups. A sub-set of callers who had asked health-related questions was followed up to understand how they had used the information received and their level of satisfaction with the service. Qualitative interviews were conducted with callers who were recent immigrants and native Spanish speakers from Latin America to explore their post-migration experiences. Recent immigrants experience significant information challenges. Health-related questions reflect the multifaceted nature of the concept of health in the experience of users. Negative experiences with the health care system are common. Recent immigrants have access to disorganized, confusing, often poor quality information. 211 Toronto represents an efficient and effective way to gain access to information but does not achieve its full potential. Newcomers should receive timely, appropriate, and reliable information on existing health and health-related services as soon as possible after they relocate to Canada. Appropriate information should also be made available to potential immigrants in their countries of origin. Information and communication technologies should be used to support newcomers, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of services such as 211 Toronto.

Judges and lawyers have embraced class proceedings as fulfilling an access to justice objective. In the more than fifteen years since the introduction of class proceedings legislation in Ontario, however, few have sought to evaluate whether or to what extent class actions have improved access to justice. The author begins to fill that void by first exploring various meanings of access to justice, and then examining in detail the initiation and settlement of class actions, and the controversial issue of counsel fees, using both doctrinal analysis and empirical data representing the class action practices of more than 75 plaintiff-side lawyers. She concludes that there are several aspects of class action practice and jurisprudence that fall short of advancing access to justice to its fullest extent, and calls for further socio-legal analysis to measure the impact, and evaluate the success, of class actions.

Canadian citizens’ inability to access courts has been a subject of controversy for decades. Despite widespread evidence that Canada’s legal aid system is faltering, governments continue to be unwilling to commit the resources necessary to remedy the problem. In this thesis, the author argues that people’s inability to access courts and obtain legal representation not only has implications for their rights and interests, but may also undermine judicial independence. Judicial independence, the author claims, is best understood as a variable bundle of rights, guarantees and powers conferred on courts and judges that preserves and enhances their abilities to adjudicate impartially, maintain a constitutional distribution of powers and uphold the rule of law. Since people’s inability to access courts can impair the judiciary’s ability to preserve these values, judicial independence is undermined. The author claims that it is possible to correct problems of inaccessibility by appointing state-funded counsel in appropriate circumstances.

Canadian citizens’ inability to access courts has been a subject of controversy for decades. Despite widespread evidence that Canada’s legal aid system is faltering, governments continue to be unwilling to commit the resources necessary to remedy the problem. In this thesis, the author argues that people’s inability to access courts and obtain legal representation not only has implications for their rights and interests, but may also undermine judicial independence. Judicial independence, the author claims, is best understood as a variable bundle of rights, guarantees and powers conferred on courts and judges that preserves and enhances their abilities to adjudicate impartially, maintain a constitutional distribution of powers and uphold the rule of law. Since people’s inability to access courts can impair the judiciary’s ability to preserve these values, judicial independence is undermined. The author claims that it is possible to correct problems of inaccessibility by appointing state-funded counsel in appropriate circumstances.