Components from the historic method, information seeking, and the history of IDT were used in conjunction with systems thinking to create a framework to determine the status of documented artifacts related to the history of IDT. The study used the following steps: (a) conduct a literature review in order to explore possible components for the framework; (b) analyze the results of the literature review to provide a rationale for selection criteria of these components; (c) design the framework that will be used to search for documented artifacts; (d) develop the framework and operationalize the components; (e) evaluate the framework with operationalized components; (f) where necessary, revise the framework based upon tests of the framework; (g) report the results (h) design a way to share the framework and the status of documented artifacts. Sixty-nine documented artifacts were searched for using the framework and sixty were located. / Ph. D.

This thesis reports on the results of research conducted to determine whether technological adaptations to local environmental conditions can be observed through geospatial and artifact analysis of Safety Harbor collections from the Tampa Bay region of Florida. Past artifact and spatial analysis did not take advantage of modern technological advancements when studying how human-environmental interactions can influence certain adaptations to local conditions. In this project, GIS was used to reconstruct local aquatic environmental conditions of waterways adjacent to Safety Harbor sites. New statistical software programs have also proven themselves useful to archaeologists seeking to conduct hypothesis testing of artifact data. The Safety Harbor artifacts used in this analysis were accessed through the Alliance for Weedon Island Archaeological Research and Education (AWIARE) lab on Weedon Island. Fishing artifacts from these sites underwent hypothesis testing to identify any statistically significant morphological differences. Geospatial analysis was also conducted to determine if these differences correlate with differing aquatic environmental conditions. Technological adaptations to local conditions at these three sites were then compared to those previously identified in research on the Calusa. Ultimately, it was found through this research that Safety Harbor peoples did adapt their fishing technology differently depending on the aquatic environment adjacent to their occupation site. Additionally, the adaptations observed in Safety Harbor fishing technology were similar to those identified in research on the Calusa.

No description available.

This dissertation analyzes the basalt ground stone industry at the archaeological site of Tres Zapotes, Mexico. Artifacts and by-products were recovered in the excavations conducted by a University of Kentucky project directed by Christopher Pool. All contexts were examined, and the corpus of this study comprises the whole sequence of production, use, and discards of basalt such as by-products of manufacture, unfinished and finished tools, and discarded artifacts. In this opportunity was possible to study over time a change from the Early/Middle Formative period (Olmec occupation) a centralized and exclusionary political economic system to the Late/Terminal Formative period (Epi-Olmec occupation) when there was a corporate system. This work applied contemporary concepts in social sciences such as agency, practice theory, technological choice, and chaîne opératoire. The variation of raw materials over time was studied recoding physical characteristics and a sample of artifacts was analyzed with X-ray florescence in order to see variation in acquisition of rocks over time.

Children as young as three seem already to possess amazing knowledge about what practice in a certain context is appropriate and what is not. This study investigated very young children’s literacy practices in an artifact-rich environment, a children’s museum. It focused on young children’s experience of enculturation such as how they respond to the symbolic qualities of cultural artifacts as well as their experience of socialization with teachers and peers. The research methodology involved photography and semiotic analysis based on a post-discourse perspective derived from post-modernism, post-structuralism, and critical theory. Specifically, the works of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Baudrillard were the theoretical basis of this dissertation. The findings indicate that children's literacy practices were context contingent and power laden, and that photography, as a means to study embodied literacy experiences, froze the moment of habitus and capital and revealed children’s sociohistorical backgrounds and traces from the broader society. The implications for early school education and critical pedagogy are also discussed. / text

A large number of software projects exist and will continue to be developed that have textual requirements and textual design elements where the design elements should fully satisfy the requirements. Current techniques to assess the satisfaction of requirements by corresponding design elements are largely manual processes that lack formal criteria and standard practices. Software projects that require satisfaction assessment are often very large systems containing several hundred requirements and design elements. Often these projects are within a high assurance project domain, where human lives and millions of dollars of funding are at stake. Manual satisfaction assessment is expensive in terms of hours of human effort and project budget. Automated techniques are not currently applied to satisfaction assessment. This dissertation addresses the problem of automated satisfaction assessment for English, textual documents and the generation of candidate satisfaction assessments that can then be verified by a human analyst with far less effort and time expenditure than is required to produce a manual satisfaction assessment. Validation results to date show that automated satisfaction methods produce candidate satisfaction assessments sufficient to greatly reduce the effort required to assess the satisfaction of textual requirements by textual design elements.

Problem: The great interest towards the company’s values has contributed to it becoming more common for individuals to seek out organizations that have a strong corporate culture. Where you work and whom you work for has thus become the dominant factors instead of what you are working with. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how the corporate culture, the rational and emotional benefits are experienced by the employees of the company. The aim is also to examine whether the corporate culture can become a management control measure by good communication between employees within the organization. Methodology: The essay is based on a qualitative research method and empirical data were collected through interviews from the company MTR Stockholm. Theoretical Frame of reference, Edgar Schein, Three Levels of Culture, Seven dimensions. Results: The study has shown that there are different cultures within the company. But also that there is a strong corporate culture within the business, the respondents feel an affinity with working within the underground rather than working for the company MTR Stockholm.

In contrast with traditional extended depth-of-field approaches, we propose a depth-based deconvolution technique that realizes the depth-variant nature of the point spread function of an ordinary fixed-focus camera. The developed technique brings a single blurred image to focus at different depth planes which can be stitched together based on a depth map to output a full-focus image. Strategies to suppress the deconvolution's ringing artifacts are implemented on three levels: block tiling to eliminate boundary artifacts, reference maps to reduce ringing initiated by sharp edges, and depth-based masking to mitigate artifacts raised by neighboring depth-transition surfaces. The performance is validated numerically for planar and multidepth objects. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Lithic artifacts are used in the understanding of human history. In order to do so, analyses and categorizations are made of the artifacts with the use of several methods and terminology. In this thesis, the minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA) is used as method to analyze assemblages of lithic artifacts from 16 archaeological sites in Sweden. The sites date to Middle Mesolithic (c. 6800–5500 BC) and Late Mesolithic (c. 5500–3900 BC). The aim is to try to understand activities at the sites, and the theory of social organization is used. The results of the study indicate that it is possible to divide the sites into three types based on activity scenarios. In addition to this, the words ‘mobility’ and ‘sedentism’ are problematized in an attempt to understand how mobility and sedentism can be interpreted, both in the light of previous research and based on the results of this study. / Litiska artefakter används i förståelsen av människans historia. För att göra det, görs analyser och kategoriseringar av materialet med användning av flertalet metoder och terminologi. I den här uppsatsen, används minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA) som metod för att analysera samlingar av litiska artefakter från 16 arkeologiska platser (eng. sites) i Sverige. Platserna är daterade till mellanmesolitikum (ca 6800–5500 f.Kr.) och senmesolitikum (ca 5500–3900 f.Kr.). Syftet är att försöka förstå aktiviteter på platserna, och teorin om social organisation används. Studiens resultat indikerar att det är möjligt att dela in platserna i tre typer baserat på aktivitetsscenarion. Därtill, problematiseras orden ’mobilitet’ och ’sedentism’ i ett försök att förstå hur mobilitet och sedentism kan tolkas, både i ljuset av tidigare forskning och baserat på resultaten av den här studien.

Le photopléthysmogramme (PPG) est un signal optique acquis à partir de l’oxymètre de pouls, dont l’usage principal consiste à mesurer la saturation en oxygène. Avec le développement des technologies portables, il est devenu la technique de base pour la surveillance de l’activité cardio-respiratoire des patients et la détection des anomalies. En dépit de sa simplicité d'utilisation, le déploiement de cette technique reste encore limité pour deux principales raisons : 1. L’extrême sensibilité du signal aux distorsions. 2. La non-reproductibilité entre les sujets et pour les mêmes sujets, en raison de l'âge et des conditions de santé. L’objectif de cette thèse est le développement de méthodes robustes et universelles afin d’avoir une estimation précise de la fréquence respiratoire (FR) indépendamment de la variabilité intra et interindividuelle du PPG. Plusieurs contributions originales en traitement statistiques du signal PPG sont proposées. En premier lieu, une méthode adaptative de détection des artefacts basée sur la comparaison de modèle a été développée. Des tests par la technique Random Distortion Testing sont introduits pour détecter les pulses de PPG avec des artefacts. En deuxième lieu, une analyse de plusieurs méthodes spectrales d’estimation de la FR est proposée. Afin de mettre en évidence la robustesse des méthodes proposées face à la variabilité du signal, plusieurs tests ont été effectués sur deux bases de données avec de différentes tranches d'âge et des différents modes respiratoires. En troisième lieu, un indice de qualité respiratoire spectral (SRQI) est conçu dans le but de communiquer au clinicien que les valeurs fiables de la FR avec un certain degré de confiance. / One promising area of research in clinical routine involves using photoplethysmography (PPG) for monitoring respiratory activities. PPG is an optical signal acquired from oximeters, whose principal use consists in measuring oxygen saturation. Despite its simplicity of use, the deployment of this technique is still limited because of the signal sensitivity to distortions and the non-reproducibility between subjects, but also for the same subject, due to age and health conditions. The main aim of this work is to develop robust and universal methods for estimating accurate respiratory rate regardless of the intra- and inter-individual variability that affects PPG features. For this purpose, firstly, an adaptive artefact detection method based on template matching and decision by Random Distortion Testing is introduced for detecting PPG pulses with artefacts. Secondly, an analysis of several spectral methods for Respiratory Rate (RR) estimation on two different databases, with different age ranges and different respiratory modes, is proposed. Thirdly, a Spectral Respiratory Quality Index (SRQI) is attributed to respiratory rate estimates, in order that the clinician may select only RR values with a large confidence scale. Promising results are found for two different databases.