Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 292-306).

No / The Hospital Personnel, Nursing Care and Dying Patients study, undertaken in California in the mid 1960s, generated a body of work that continues to be influential in end of life care research. Key points from the study are summarised, as are contributions from researchers who have responded to Glaser and Strauss invitation to examine further settings and, in so doing, provide data that helps refine their theory. The example of people with heart failure in the contemporary UK is considered. Changes since the 1960s in the epidemiology of chronic illness, the pattern of service provision and in social and professional attitudes have reduced the contemporary relevance of Glaser and Strauss's insights into the ceremonial and temporal order of the clinic. However their findings about awareness contexts and a reluctance to discuss prognosis remain highly relevant.

Vývoj v informačním systému neustále zvyšuje nároky na účinnou, efektivní a adaptivní spolupráci mezi komponenty systému, aby se vyrovnal se změnami v systému a zaručil tak nejlepší výkon. K dosažení těchto požadavků byly zavedeny dva hlavní přístupy. Přístup k adaptaci umožňuje informačnímu systému přizpůsobit se změnám v kontextu informací systému a jeho okolního prostředí na základě adaptační strategie. Přístup ke zvyšování informovanosti zase napomáhá sledovat informace o kontextu a rozpoznat změny, které mohou proces adaptace vyvolat. V této práci představujeme obecný kontextově orientovaný model vlastní adaptivní architektury pro podporu softwarového systému s adaptačními funkcemi, které zaručují dostupnost systému, provozní podmínky a výkon. Navíc poskytujeme dvě případové studie v reálném životě jako důkaz konceptu použitelnosti našeho navrhovaného adaptačního přístupu.

Recent advances in technology are changing the way how everyday activities are performed. Technologies in the traffic domain provide diverse instruments of gathering and analysing data for more fuel-efficient, safe, and convenient travelling for both drivers and passengers. In this article, we propose a reference architecture for a context-aware driving assistant system. Moreover, we exemplify this architecture with a real prototype of a driving assistance system called Driving coach. This prototype collects, fuses and analyses diverse information, like digital map, weather, traffic situation, as well as vehicle information to provide drivers in-depth information regarding their previous trip along with personalised hints to improve their fuel-efficient driving in the future. The Driving coach system monitors its own performance, as well as driver feedback to correct itself to serve the driver more appropriately.

Weighted granular best matching algorithm is proposed for the operation of context matching in context-aware computing systems. New algorithm deals with the subjective, fuzzy and multidimensional characteristics of contextual information by using weights and a granular structure for contextual information. The proposal is applied on a case: CAPRA &ndash / Context-Aware Personal Reminder Agent tool to show the applicability of the new context matching algorithm. The obtained outputs showed that proposed algorithm produces the results which are more sensitive to the user&rsquo / s intention, more adaptive to the characteristics of the contextual information and applicable to a current Context-aware system.

This study examines patterns of negotiation between teachers and parents in junior high schools in Israel. These negotiations were examined on "parents' days" in three schools between four class teachers and 80 parents of students in their classes. Guided by interpretive approaches to the study of micro-social processes and their application in the models of Hargreaves (1972, 1991) and Strauss (1978, 1990), dealing with negotiations, strategies and working agreements, the study focused on observations of teacher-parent interactions and interviews with teachers and parents. It was found that teachers are guided on parents' day by both pedagogic and survival goals: they seek to advance the students in their studies and to care for their well-being through contact with the parents, but also to shift responsibility to the parents. The parents' goals on these days are to learn about their children's situation in the school, but also to win the teachers' support and sympathy for their children in order to help them advance. To achieve their goals each side uses resources to impress and convince the other side. The teachers emphasize their professional authority, their bureaucratic status and the knowledge they possess of the parents and their children. The parents use their status and rights as parents and the knowledge they possess of the school and the teachers. The findings also indicate that the teachers stress mainly the instructional aspect. This approach perpetuates the hierarchy existing in the education system and does not help to narrow the gaps between students from different socio-economic backgrounds. This indicates a direction for further study and investigation of the question as to how the school can be made to contribute to greater equality, among other things through changing the teachers' educational perception. Perhaps the main purpose of parents' day lies in its ritual functions, which are designed to serve the school organization and constitute a restatement of the common goals of teachers and parents, while supporting the ideology of parent participation and confirming the statuses and roles of teachers and parents. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Socio Education)

This study examines patterns of negotiation between teachers and parents in junior high schools in Israel. These negotiations were examined on "parents' days" in three schools between four class teachers and 80 parents of students in their classes. Guided by interpretive approaches to the study of micro-social processes and their application in the models of Hargreaves (1972, 1991) and Strauss (1978, 1990), dealing with negotiations, strategies and working agreements, the study focused on observations of teacher-parent interactions and interviews with teachers and parents. It was found that teachers are guided on parents' day by both pedagogic and survival goals: they seek to advance the students in their studies and to care for their well-being through contact with the parents, but also to shift responsibility to the parents. The parents' goals on these days are to learn about their children's situation in the school, but also to win the teachers' support and sympathy for their children in order to help them advance. To achieve their goals each side uses resources to impress and convince the other side. The teachers emphasize their professional authority, their bureaucratic status and the knowledge they possess of the parents and their children. The parents use their status and rights as parents and the knowledge they possess of the school and the teachers. The findings also indicate that the teachers stress mainly the instructional aspect. This approach perpetuates the hierarchy existing in the education system and does not help to narrow the gaps between students from different socio-economic backgrounds. This indicates a direction for further study and investigation of the question as to how the school can be made to contribute to greater equality, among other things through changing the teachers' educational perception. Perhaps the main purpose of parents' day lies in its ritual functions, which are designed to serve the school organization and constitute a restatement of the common goals of teachers and parents, while supporting the ideology of parent participation and confirming the statuses and roles of teachers and parents. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Socio Education)

Im Rahmen der Dissertation wurde ein Middlewaredienst entwickelt und realisiert. Es gestattet die dynamische Verwaltung heterogener Kontextquellen. Das zugrunde liegende Komponentenmodell selbstbeschreibender Context Provieder ermöglicht die lose Kopplung von Kontextquellen und -senken. Es wird durch Filter- und Konverterkomponenten zur generischen Providersselektion anhand domänenspezifischer Merkmale ergänzt. Die Kopplung der verteilten Dienstinstanzen erfolgt durch ein hybrides Peer-to-Peer-System. Dies trägt der Heterogenität der Endgeräte Rechnung, und erlaubt die skalierbare , verteilte Verwaltung von Kontextquellen in globalen Szenarien.

Several applications have been proposed for wireless sensor networks, including habitat monitoring, structural health monitoring, pipeline monitoring, and precision agriculture. Among the desirable features of wireless sensor networks, one is the ease of deployment. Since the nodes are capable of self-organization, they can be placed easily in areas that are otherwise inaccessible to or impractical for other types of sensing systems. In fact, some have proposed the deployment of wireless sensor networks by dropping nodes from a plane, delivering them in an artillery shell, or launching them via a catapult from onboard a ship. There are also reports of actual aerial deployments, for example the one carried out using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at a Marine Corps combat centre in California -- the nodes were able to establish a time-synchronized, multi-hop communication network for tracking vehicles that passed along a dirt road. While this has a practical relevance for some civil applications (such as rescue operations), a more realistic deployment involves the careful planning and placement of sensors. Even then, nodes may not be placed optimally to ensure that the network is fully connected and high-quality data pertaining to the phenomena being monitored can be extracted from the network. This work aims to address the problem of random deployment through two complementary approaches: The first approach aims to address the problem of random deployment from a communication perspective. It begins by establishing a comprehensive mathematical model to quantify the energy cost of various concerns of a fully operational wireless sensor network. Based on the analytic model, an energy-efficient topology control protocol is developed. The protocol sets eligibility metric to establish and maintain a multi-hop communication path and to ensure that all nodes exhaust their energy in a uniform manner. The second approach focuses on addressing the problem of imperfect sensing from a signal processing perspective. It investigates the impact of deployment errors (calibration, placement, and orientation errors) on the quality of the sensed data and attempts to identify robust and error-agnostic features. If random placement is unavoidable and dense deployment cannot be supported, robust and error-agnostic features enable one to recognize interesting events from erroneous or imperfect data.