Context-aware computing requires software that can adapt to changes in context. When contextual circumstances trigger multiple adaptations, software must also understand the relationships between these adaptations and react according to the rules governing these relationships. Adaptable software needs a means to establish and interpret these rules in order to avoid any undesirable and potentially catastrophic conflicts. This dissertation designs and implements the Adaptation Rules Management API (ArmAPI). ArmAPI has been demonstrated to work with a Context-Oriented Programming variation for Java called ContextJ* to execute conflict-free adaptations in two software applications. ArmAPI allows programmers to define relationship types between adaptations, and transfers these definitions to Prolog facts and rules. The Prolog engine, encapsulated within ArmAPI, then works with imperative algorithms to determine the appropriate adaptations to execute based on the current set of facts, rules, and contextual circumstances. Context represents all of the conditions for all of the entities known to an observing device. In any environment, context represents a large amount of data that can influence a multitude of conflicting adaptations. This research provides an incremental step towards overcoming the problem of adaptation conflict by constructing an API that considers the relationship types of inclusion, exclusion, ordering, conditional dependency, and independence. The API has been validated via two prototypes that provide typical scenarios.

Background. Feelings of doubt and perseverative behaviours are key symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and have been linked to hyperactive error and conflict signals in the brain. While enhanced neural correlates of error monitoring have been robustly shown, far less is known about conflict processing and adaptation in OCD. Method. We examined event-related potentials during conflict processing in 70 patients with OCD and 70 matched healthy comparison participants, focusing on the stimulus-locked N2 elicited in a flanker task. Conflict adaptation was evaluated by analysing sequential adjustments in N2 and behaviour, i.e. current conflict effects as a function of preceding conflict. Results. Patients with OCD showed enhanced N2 amplitudes compared with healthy controls. Further, patients showed stronger conflict adaptation effects on reaction times and N2 amplitude. Thus, the effect of previous compatibility was larger in patients than in healthy participants as indicated by greater N2 adjustments in change trials (i.e. iC, cI). As a result of stronger conflict adaptation in patients, N2 amplitudes were comparable between groups in incompatible trials following incompatible trials. Conclusions. Larger N2 amplitudes and greater conflict adaptation in OCD point to enhanced conflict monitoring leading to increased recruitment of cognitive control in patients. This was most pronounced in change trials and was associated with stronger conflict adjustment in N2 and behaviour. Thus, hyperactive conflict monitoring in OCD may be beneficial in situations that require a high amount of control to resolve conflict, but may also reflect an effortful process that is linked to distress and symptoms of OCD.

This thesis provides a framework for viewing socio-political contexts and how these relate to interventionist projects. The framework draws on and combines strands from international relations and sociological perspectives of social interaction. The central question becomes how intervention and existing social contexts interact to produce unintended outcomes. It applies the analysis to two separate wider contexts: Afghanistan and Somalia, with a particular focus on the self-declared independent Somaliland as an internally generated and controlled transformational process. Unlike abstract directions of theoretical development the framework seeks to provide a platform that sets aside ideological assumptions and from which interventionist projects can be observed and evaluated based on literature, field observations and interviews. Drawing on such diverse influences as fourth generation peace and conflict studies, Morphogenetics, and social forces theory, the framework explores conditions and interest formations to capture instances of local agency that are part of a continuity of local realities. It views social interaction without imposing Universalist value assumptions, but also without resorting to relativism or raising so many caveats that it becomes impractical. It exposes the agency of local interest formations hidden beneath the discourses of ideologically framed conflicts. These social agents are often dismissed as passive victims to be brought under the influence of for example the state, but are in reality able to subvert, co-opt, constrain or facilitate the forces that are dependent on them for social influence. In the end, it is the modes of mobilisation that emerge as the most crucial factor for understanding the relevant social dynamics.