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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

A study of in-cell television in a closed adult male prison : governing souls with in-cell television

Knight, Victoria January 2012 (has links)
In-cell television is now a permanent feature of prisons in England and Wales, and a key part of the experience of modern incarceration. In-cell television was formally introduced in 1998 and its introduction took twelve years to complete across the prison estate. Its introduction was not informed by research and no formal evaluation of in-cell television in prisons has taken place. This thesis, therefore extends the small body of prisoner audience research with an exclusive focus on capturing the experience of the use of in-cell television. The research aimed to examine the impact of in-cell television on social relations in prison life in one closed male adult prison. An ethnographic research strategy was adopted and was directly informed by Layder’s (2005) theory of ‘domains’ and his ‘adaptive’ approach was used to interrogate the data from interviews and from diaries. Data collection was carried out using two methods: semi-structured interviews with nineteen prisoners and nine staff, and nine structured diaries completed by prisoners. The thesis concluded that in-cell television provides a key therapeutic resource in prisons. The study suggests that this resource is widely adopted and utilised by prisoners, staff and the institution to ‘care’ for prisoners in line with self-governance techniques and strategies. Television is exploited by prisoners and staff to enable forms of personal and inter-personal control. The thesis extends what current prison policies state about the provision of in-cell television with regard to formal policies on the incentives and privileges system for prisoners and also the interventions to promote and secure safer custody. The placement of television inside prison cells has resulted in significant shifts in the social, temporal and spatial characteristics of prison life and the types of encounters prisoners experience. Social relations within the prison setting are now routinely extended and stretched beyond the confines of the prison space as a consequence of in-cell television. Television normalises the prison cell and thus legitimates this space to hold prisoners for long periods of time, typically without structured activity. As a consequence, television’s place in the modern prison has also come to represent an unanticipated resource in the package of care for prisoners. The thesis offers a revised perspective on the role of television in prison and significantly contributes to an understanding of emotional responses to incarceration and social relations both inside and outside the prison setting. Principles of governmentality and dimensions of personal and interpersonal control emerge as fundamental to the understanding of in-cell television and the thesis offers new and significant insights into prisoners’ emotionality and their experience of what have been referred to as the ‘pains’ of incarceration (Sykes 1958/1999). This understanding and theorising about prison life was achieved through a theoretical synthesis of Layder’s (2005) domains within concepts such as governance and self-regulation, rationalization of emotions, uses and gratifications of media use, domestication of television and reach.
2

Strategic Missile Defense: Russian and U.S. Policies and Their Effects on Future Weapons Proliferation

Nesbitt, Diana Marie 06 November 2015 (has links)
The purpose of this research is to study the effects that Russian, U.S., and NATO policies of deterrence have on strategic missile defense as well as how these policies and strategic missile defense affect future weapons proliferation. The aspects explored are the current Russian strategic forces and quality, Russian policies and strategies, the Phased Adaptive Approach, and U.S. and NATO policies and strategies. Mitigation of this pressing issue may be through open dialogue, a system to limit future U.S. and NATO interceptors and sensors, and a possible joint data exchange center.
3

A multi-resolution approach for modeling flow and solute transport in heterogeneous porous media

Gotovac, Hrvoje January 2009 (has links)
Subsurface processes are usually characterized by rare field experiments, sparse measurements,multi-resolution interpretations, stochastic description, related uncertainties and computational complexity. Over the last few decades, different computational techniques and strategies have become indispensable tools for flow and solute transport prediction in heterogeneous porousmedia. This thesis develops a multi-resolution approach based on Fup basis functions with compactsupport, enabling the use of an efficient and adaptive procedure, closely related to currentunderstood physical interpretation. All flow and transport variables, as well as intrinsic heterogeneity,are described in a multi-resolution representation, in the form of a linear combination ofFup basis functions. Each variable is represented on a particular adaptive grid with a prescribedaccuracy. The methodology is applied to solving problems with sharp fronts, and to solving flowand advective transport in highly heterogeneous porous media, under mean uniform flow conditions.The adaptive Fup collocation method, through the well known method of lines, efficientlytracks solutions with sharp fronts, resolving locations and frequencies at all spatial and/or temporalscales. The methodology yields continuous velocity fields and fluxes, enabling accurate andreliable transport analysis. Analysis of the advective transport proves the robustness of the firstordertheory for low and mild heterogeneity. Moreover, due to the accuracy of the improved Monte-Carlo methodology, this thesis presents the effects of high heterogeneity on ensembleflow and travel time statistics. The difference between Eulerian and Lagrangian velocity statisticsand the importance of higher travel time moments are indicative of high heterogeneity. The thirdtravel time moment mostly describes a peak and late arrivals, while higher moments are requiredfor early arrivals which are linked with the largest uncertainty. A particular finding is the linearityof all travel time moments, which implies that in the limit an advective transport in multi-Gaussian field becomes Fickian. By comparison, the transverse displacement pdf converges to aGaussian distribution around 20 integral scales after injection, even for high heterogeneity. Thecapabilities of the presented multi-resolution approach, and the quality of the obtained results,open new areas for further research. / Markprocesser karakteriseras ofta av fåtaliga fältexperiment, glesa mätningar, heterogenitet påolika skalor, slumpmässighet och relaterade osäkerheter, samt beräkningsmässiga svårigheter.Under de senaste årtiondena har olika beräkningstekniker och strategier blivit ovärderliga verktygför att förutspå vattenflöde och ämnestransport i heterogena porösa medier. Denna doktorsavhandling utvecklar ett angreppssätt med flerskaliga upplösningar baserat på Fup basis funktionermed kompakt stöd, som möjliggör en effektiv och anpassningsbar procedur, nära relaterad tillrådande fysiska tolkningar. Alla flödes- och transportvariabler, så väl som heterogeniteten, beskrivsav en flerskaligt upplöst representation, i form av linjära kombinationer av Fup basis funktioner.Varje variabel representeras på ett speciellt anpassningsbar gridnät med given noggrannhet.Metoden appliceras för att lösa problem med skarpa fronter, samt vattenflöde och advektivämnestransport i starkt heterogena porösa medier. Adaptive Fup collocation metoden tillsammansmed den välkända Method of lines, spårar effektivt lösningar med skarpa fronter och löserupp positioner och frekvenser på alla rums- och/eller tidsskalor. Metoden ger kontinuerliga hastighetsfältoch flöden, och möjliggör noggrann och tillförlitlig transportanalys. Analys av advektivtransport understöder stabiliteten i första-ordningens transport teori för låg och mild heterogenitet.Utöver detta, som resultat av noggrannheten i den förbättrade Monte-Carlo metodiken, visardenna avhandling effekten av hög heterogenitet på ensemble statistiken för flöden och transporttider.Skillnaden mellan Eulerisk och Lagrangian hastighetsstatistik och betydelsen av högrestatistiska moment för transporttider, indikerar hög heterogenitet. Det tredje transporttidsmomentetbeskriver huvudsakligen sannolikhetspiken och de långa transporttiderna, medan högremoment behövs för de korta transporttiderna, som har den största osäkerheten. En speciell upptäcktär linjäariteten i transporttidsmoment, som indikerar att advektiv transport i multi-Gaussiska fält blir Gaussisk i gränsen. Som jämförelse konvergerar sannolikhetsfunktioner förden transversella transportförflyttningen mot en Gaussisk fördelning vid runt 20 korrelationslängder efter injektion, även för hög heterogenitet. Förmågan i det presenterade angreppssättet med flerskalig upplösning, och resultatens noggrannhet, öppnar nya områden för fortsatt forskning. / QC 20100714
4

Assistance à la recherche documentaire par une approche adaptative à base d’agents et d’artefacts / Document research assistance by an adaptive approach based on agents and artifacts

El Guedria Sgaier, Zina 15 October 2018 (has links)
Le développement et la multiplication des systèmes et plateformes informatiques pour accéder à de l'information ne fait que s'accentuer depuis une trentaine d'années. Le grand volume d'information disponible a soulevé de nombreux défis scientifiques dans des domaines tel que la recherche d'information. Pour accéder à des documents regroupés dans un corpus numérique, il faut être en mesure d'exprimer son besoin en information, souvent sous la forme d'une requête, d'y associer les documents pertinents et de les présenter de la meilleure manière possible aux utilisateurs. La recherche documentaire dans un corpus documentaire thématique présentant un haut niveau de technicité dans la discipline concernée s'apparente à un processus de navigation guidé par un besoin d'information d'un utilisateur. Cette navigation nécessite l'usage d'outils classiques de recherche d'information pour sélectionner des documents pertinents en fonction d'une requête, mais ils doivent être complétés par des mécanismes de personnalisation et d'adaptation capable de faire évoluer la représentation du besoin en fonction des spécificités d'un utilisateur, de sa navigation en cours ou du corpus considéré. En effet, l'accès aux documents d'un corpus numérique soulève des problèmes liés à la recherche d'information, à la visualisation des résultats d'une requête et à la navigation entre les documents. Le processus de recherche d'information nécessite des améliorations et surtout l'intégration de l'utilisateur comme facteur principal à prendre en compte dans la recherche de satisfaction de son besoin informationnel. Nous considérons plusieurs approches pour aider un utilisateur dans sa recherche de documents. Une première assistance porte sur la reformulation de requêtes en visant un public d'utilisateurs peu familier avec les termes techniques du domaine et en difficulté pour exprimer sous la forme d'une requête leur besoin. La deuxième approche que nous proposons consiste à ne pas considérer l'utilisateur isolément mais à le rapprocher de ceux ayant exprimé des recherches similaires pour retrouver les documents qu'ils avaient jugés pertinents. Enfin, nous incluons des travaux issus du domaine de la recommandation afin de mieux cerner le besoin informationnel de l'utilisateur et l'aider à trouver plus facilement ce qu'il cherche en lui recommandant des ressources documentaires. Nous proposons dans cette thèse de traiter cette diversité d'influence par un système multi-agent interagissant par un environnement partagé représentant la navigation des utilisateurs, de manière à pouvoir adapter le système en utilisant l'une ou l'autre des techniques d'assistance proposées en fonction de l'expertise de l'utilisateur. Ce travail a été appliqué à une recherche documentaire dans un corpus numérique de documents juridiques. / The development and multiplication of information systems and platforms for information access has been accentuated over the past thirty years. The large volume of information available has raised many scientific challenges in different areas such as information retrieval. To access documents grouped in a digital corpus, one must be able to express his/her information need, often in the form of a query, to associate the relevant documents and present them in the best possible way to users. Document research in a thematic digital corpus presenting a high level of technicality in the concerned discipline can be considered as a browsing process driven by some information needs. Such browses requires the use of traditional information retrieval tools to select relevant documents based on a query But they can be improved by the use of customization and adaptation mechanisms in order to refine the representation of information needs according to the specificities of a user, his current browsing or the corpus considered. Indeed, access to digital documents raises problems related to the search for information, the visualization of the results of a query and the browsing between the documents. The process of information retrieval requires to be improved and especially by the integration of the user as a main factor to take into account in the search for satisfaction of his/her information needs. We consider several approaches to help users in their search for documents. A first assistance concerns the reformulation of queries by targeting an audience of users unfamiliar with the technical terms of the field and struggling to express in the form of a query their need. The second approach that we propose is not to consider the user in isolation but to bring it closer to those who have expressed similar research to find the documents they considered relevant. Finally, we include works from the field of the recommendation to better understand the informational needs of the user and help them find what they are looking for by recommending documentary resources. In this thesis, we propose to treat this diversity of influence by a multi-agent system interacting with a shared environment representing the users browsing so that the system may be adapted to use either assistance facilities according to the user's expertise. We applied our work for document research in a digital corpus of legal documents.

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