The following thesis presents the design for a housing complex. The complex provides homes for two different segments of our population: single families and older or disabled persons and couples. Located in Old Town Alexandria Virginia, the project sits on the banks of the Potomac River. The question of integration is central to this thesis. The first design challenge is to integrate the older persons and persons with disabilities into the community. Successfully done, this will prevent the sense of separation and isolation that can often result when people's physical limitations restrict their access to the world around them. The second design challenge is to integrate the complex itself into an existing, homogenous Old Town Alexandria neighborhood. / Master of Architecture

Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés à la gestion dynamique des processus métiers. L’objectif étant de permettre d’une part, une exécution robuste qui prend en compte la dynamicité des différents éléments de processus métiers. D'autre part l’objectif est aussi de gérer les processus en prenant en compte les compétences nécessaires à leurs exécutions. Ce travail de thèse s’appuie sur l’approche BPM et plus précisément à sa phase d’exécution. Dans un monde de travail turbulent et en constante évolution, on parle souvent de modèles adaptables ou adaptatifs, de modèles qui s’enrichissent à chaque exécution et ne suivent pas un modèle structuré et prédéfini tel que le cas du BPM (Business Process Management) classique. En effet, les outils d’automatisation des processus métiers actuels ont été conçus pour fournir un soutien aux acteurs impliqués pour répondre aux questions : Qu'est-ce qui doit être fait? Qui est en charge de le faire? Quand faut-il être effectué? La plupart du temps ces systèmes sont prescriptifs. Ainsi, les acteurs impliqués ne sont pas seulement supportés, ils sont forcés à effectuer les tâches dans des séquences spécifiées. De surcroit, un processus flexible c’est un processus capable de changer que les parties qui ont besoin d'être changées tout en gardant la stabilité de ses autres parties. Dans ce contexte, parmi les approche prometteuses, l’approche orientée services offre aux entreprises une modularité permettant de remplacer facilement un composant par un autre, de le réutiliser et d’étendre son objectif en lui ajoutant un autre composant. De ce fait, dans le but de supporter l’agilité des processus métiers, nous proposons une approche combinant les trois approches suivantes : l’approche BPM, la gestion des compétences et l'approche orientée service dans un environnement social supportant le travail collaboratif. / In the modern economy, creating agile business processes is one of the conditions to obtain/ maintain competitive advantage on the market. Efficient organizations need to ensure that their business processes are flexible so that these processes can easily accommodate changes in regulations and policies. Actually, the management of business processes is supported by the BPM (Business Process Management) approach. It addresses the management, transformation and improvement of organizational operations. Yet, actual BPM does not feature the means to have a continuous adaptation of their business processes and quick adjustment of their models and resources allocation to meet changing environmental conditions. In this thesis, we aim to support the agility of business processes to ensure a continuous adaptation to changes. The agility of business processes, combined with the agility of employees and that of information technology are prerequisites for achieving business agility. To support agility at IT level, we use the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) approach. Indeed, the SOA can provide numerous benefits to the organization, enabling it to reduce complexity and increase flexibility through their reutilization and modularity features. Moreover, resources which are important assets in successful process’s implementation are widely supported with agile organization regarded as primordial factor for successful agility implementation. For this reason, we propose an approach that combines management of processes with the required skills to their execution and to better enhance the process flexibility we combine BPM with SOA in a social environment.

Recent developments in the field of education have led to a proliferation of educational technologies (or “ed-tech”), yet access to educational content for students with special needs remains a challenge. This research study aims to assess the current state of accessibility in emerging ed-tech and to identify barriers in enabling educational content to be born accessible. Detailed discussions with various ed-tech platforms revealed less of a need for technical tools, but a more prevailing need for knowledge and education around accessibility – what it means and how best to incorporate accessibility into their platforms. The more experienced teams advocate incorporating accessibility into product development right from the design phase, while the younger teams expressed challenges in navigating accessibility laws and the dire need for easy-to-follow guidelines and best practices. A detailed review of educators' content creation processes reveals multiple dependencies in the ecosystem of ed-tech where partnerships and compatibilities are crucial in enabling accessibility throughout the process. Likewise, an urgent need exists for increasing awareness of accessibility among instructors authoring educational content using emerging ed-tech.

This research aims to refresh and reinterpret the radical theory of associative rings using the base radical and base semisimple class constructions. It also endeavours to generalise some results about ideals of rings in terms of accessible subrings. A characterisation of accessible subrings is included. By applying the base radical and base semisimple class constructions to many of the known results in established radical theory a number of gaps are uncovered and closed, with the goal of making the theory more accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students and mathematicians in related fields, and to open up new areas of investigation. After a literature review and brief reminder of algebra rudiments, the useful properties of accessible subrings and the U and S operators independent from radical class connections are described. The section on accessible subrings illustrates that replacing ideals with accessible subrings is indeed possible for a number of results and demonstrates its usefulness. The traditional radical and semisimple class definitions are included and it is shown that the base radical and base semisimple class constructions are equivalent. Diagrams illustrating the constructions support the definitions. From then on, all radical and semisimple classes mentioned are understood to have the base radical and base semisimple class form. Subject to the constraints of this work, many known results of traditional radical theory are reinterpreted with new proofs, illustrating the potential to simplify the understanding of radical theory using the base radical and base semisimple class constructions. Along with reinterpreting known results, new results emerge giving further insight to radical theory and its intricacies. Accessible subrings and the U and S operators are integrated into the development. The duality between the base radical and base semisimple class constructions is demonstrated in earnest. With a measure of the theory presented, the new constructions are applied to examples and concrete radicals. Context is supported by establishing the relationship between some well-known rings and the radical and related classes of interest. The title of the thesis, Towards a Reinterpretation of the Radical Theory of Associative Rings Using Base Radical and Base Semisimple Class Constructions, reflects the understanding that reinterpreting the entirety of radical theory is beyond the scope of this work. The conclusion includes an outlook listing further research that time did not allow.

On étudie le contrôle de systèmes quantiques en dimension finie soumis à des champs laser externes. Après avoir examiné l'exemple concret de l'alignement d'une molécule diatomique en milieu dissipatif, on s'intéresse au problème spécifique du contrôle optimal, où l'objectif est d'amener le système d'un état initial à un certain état final tout en minimisant une fonctionnelle de coût. Le principe du maximum de Pontryagin (PMP) fournit les conditions nécessaires d'optimalité, en établissant que toute trajectoire optimale est la solution extrémale d'un problème étendu de structure Hamiltonienne. Dans ce contexte, on procède à l'analyse de deux systèmes particuliers. Le premier est un système dissipatif à 2 niveaux, dont on souhaite déterminer l'ensemble des trajectoires en temps minimum; le second est un système conservatif à 3 niveaux non complètement contrôlable, où une mesure projective permet d'assister le processus de contrôle.

<p>The Mobile phone has contributed to massive changes in the way that human beings communicate with each other and is a technology that is a part of society’s globalization. Opinions differ in the area of user interface where some feel that mobile phones exclude users such as senior citizens or users with an intellectual or a physical disability.</p><p>Universal Design –‘design for all’, is a vision that intends to bring about settings, products and services that suits as many people as possible irrespective of an individual’s needs and prospects. The criteria for ‘design for all’ are among other things flexibility, user friendliness, comprehensibility and a high tolerance for mistakes.</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate the mobile phones graphic user-interface from the theory of a universal design. From this general purpose the study look more closely at senior citizens perspective of mobile phones graphic user-interface. A qualitative study in the form of 4 interviews was used. All of the individuals that participated in the study felt that the mobile phone is a very good and beneficial invention. Mobile phones bring about a feeling of security and safety since it is felt that is always possible to reach family and friends in the event of a crisis. It is difficult to provide a interface that is Universal, because every individual is unique. Every individual has a different opinion on what is Universal Design and what is not. People have different needs of using the mobile phone and that’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to provide a universal design of the graphical user interface of a mobile phone.</p>

Cette thèse est consacrée à l'étude du groupe d'automorphismes de groupes agissant sur des arbres d'une part, et du rang des groupes de Coxeter d'autre part. Via la théorie de Bass-Serre, un groupe agissant sur un arbre est doté d'une structure algébrique particulière, généralisant produits amalgamés et extensions HNN. Le groupe est en fait déterminé par certaines données combinatoires découlant de cette action, appelées graphes de groupes. Un cas particulier de cette situation est celle d'un produit libre. Une présentation du groupe d'automorphisme d'un produit libre d'un nombre fini de groupes librement indécomposables en termes de présentation des facteurs et de leurs groupes d'automorphismes a été donnée par Fouxe-Rabinovich. Il découle de son travail que si les facteurs et leurs groupes d'automorphismes sont de présentation finie, alors le groupe d'automorphisme du produit libre est de présentation finie. Une première partie de cette thèse donne une nouvelle preuve de ce résultat, se basant sur le langage des actions de groupes sur les arbres. Un groupe accessible est un groupe de type fini déterminé par un graphe de groupe fini dont les groupes d'arêtes sont finis et les groupes de sommets ont au plus un bout, c'est-à-dire qu'ils ne se décomposent pas en produit amalgamé ni en extension HNN sur un groupe fini. L'étude du groupe d'automorphisme d'un groupe accessible est ramenée à l'étude de groupes d'automorphismes de produits libres, de groupes de twists de Dehn et de groupes d'automorphismes relatifs des groupes de sommets. En particulier, on déduit un critère naturel pour que le groupe d'automorphismes d'un groupe accessible soit de présentation finie, et on donne une caractérisation des groupes accessibles dont le groupe d'automorphisme externe est fini. Appliqués aux groupes hyperboliques de Gromov, ces résultats permettent d'affirmer que le groupe d'automorphismes d'un groupe hyperbolique est de présentation finie, et donnent une caractérisation précise des groupes hyperboliques dont le groupe d'automorphisme externe est fini. Enfin, on étudie le rang des groupes de Coxeter, c'est-à-dire le cardinal minimal d'un ensemble générateur pour un groupe de Coxeter donné. Plus précisément, on montre que si les composantes de la matrice de Coxeter déterminant un groupe de Coxeter sont suffisamment grandes, alors l'ensemble générateur standard est de cardinal minimal parmi tous les ensembles générateurs.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine the experience of participation among first line managers within community home care. The study is based on eight interviews with first line managers operating in a metropolitan area in Sweden. A majority of the interviewees worked in private companies. We have used two theories to interpret our empiri: Lean Production and Human Resource Management. The analysis resulted in seven themes: economy, leadership, participation, view on the organization, first line manager, private or municipally operated organization and expectations on the manager. Our results showed that all the interviewees experienced that they were participant in the organization. The participation however differed from interviewee to interviewee. The staff affected how the first line manager experienced participation. All interviewees believed that accessibility and presence were important factors for participation.

Disability is seen as a result of an interaction between a person and that person's contextual factors. Viewing disability in the context of the built environment, a better design of this environment helps to reduce the disability faced by an individual. In spite of significant research in Universal Design (UD), the existing methods provide insufficient guidance for designers: designers demand more specific examples of, and methods for, good universal design. Within the overarching goal of improving universal product design, the specific goal of this research is to determine if the ADA guidelines for architectural design can be adapted to product design. A methodology that foresees the accessibility issues while designing a product would be constructive. The new technique should be built on the pre-existing principles and guidelines. A user activity and product function framework is proposed for this translation using actionfunction diagrams. Specific goals include determining if the function-based approach is able to anticipate a functional change that improves product accessibility. Further, generate user activity and product function association rules that can be applied to the universal design of products. Proposed research activities are to identify thirty existing universal products and compare with its typical version to identify the function that introduces an accessibility feature. Next, categorize the observed changes in a product function systematically and extract trends from accessible architectural systems to generate rules for universal design of consumer products. For validation, the task is to select around fifteen consumer product pairs for validation of the generated rules to determine if the ADA guidelines can be adapted for universal product design using the proposed framework. The results of this research show promise in using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) lexicon to model user limitation. The actionfunction diagram provides a structured way to approach a problem in the early stage of design. The rules generated in this research translate to products having similar user-product interface.

The Mobile phone has contributed to massive changes in the way that human beings communicate with each other and is a technology that is a part of society’s globalization. Opinions differ in the area of user interface where some feel that mobile phones exclude users such as senior citizens or users with an intellectual or a physical disability. Universal Design –‘design for all’, is a vision that intends to bring about settings, products and services that suits as many people as possible irrespective of an individual’s needs and prospects. The criteria for ‘design for all’ are among other things flexibility, user friendliness, comprehensibility and a high tolerance for mistakes. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the mobile phones graphic user-interface from the theory of a universal design. From this general purpose the study look more closely at senior citizens perspective of mobile phones graphic user-interface. A qualitative study in the form of 4 interviews was used. All of the individuals that participated in the study felt that the mobile phone is a very good and beneficial invention. Mobile phones bring about a feeling of security and safety since it is felt that is always possible to reach family and friends in the event of a crisis. It is difficult to provide a interface that is Universal, because every individual is unique. Every individual has a different opinion on what is Universal Design and what is not. People have different needs of using the mobile phone and that’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to provide a universal design of the graphical user interface of a mobile phone.