This dissertation follows the topic of media and visual communication with relations to art. The theoretical part explains the usage and influence of such medias in the past and present, the communication between people and their visual statements, their psychological effects in connection to the manipulation of the picture. The practial part on the other hand, further explains the precise catastrophical events in the news and their overall effect in connection to personal explenations of said catastrophy. The last, Didaktical part, goes into detail on the transformation of catastrophies and possibility of applicating the medial education into the general creative uprbringing. Key Words Media, communcation, visual statements, manipulation of picture, catastrophy, medial education Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Biomedical applications offer an exciting growth opportunity for wireless sensor networks. However, radio frequency communication is problematic in hospital environments that are susceptible to interference in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands. Also, RF is inherently insecure as eavesdroppers can easily pick up signals. The Intra-Body Network (IBNet) proposes a novel communication model for biomedical sensor networks. It seeks the convenience of wireless communication while avoiding interference and privacy concerns associated with RF. IBNet's solution is to utilize a subject's own body tissue as a transmission medium. Assuming that transmissions are contained within the body, IBNet solves otherwise complex problems of privacy and interference. Unfortunately, transmitting through the same medium in which we sense creates a new type of conflict; it is possible that one sensor's network transmission might corrupt an adjacent sensor's sample data. We present Body Language, a set of protocols that arbitrate IBNet's sampling/communication conflict while providing basic services such as dynamic node discovery, network configuration, quality of service, and sensor sample collection. Body Language seeks to provide these services and solve IBNet's unique communication challenges while minimizing hardware resource requirements and hence sensor node cost. In order to prove Body Language feasibility, we created an IBNet prototype environment where the protocols were demonstrated on real hardware and in real time. The prototype also offers important insight into the Body Language's computational resource requirements. Our results show that Body Language provides all services required by IBNet and it does so with a very modest footprint.

Recent research indicates that the Internet (or Net) is currently being used at many post-secondary institutions in support of traditional, classroom-based instruction. From 1994 to 2002, the percentage of post-secondary classes using the Web as a research tool and E-mail as a method of communication has increased almost ten fold. An extensive literature on the evaluation of the Internet as an educational technology has developed in recent years; however, there are some gaps that need to be filled to provide a more complete understanding of the Internet and its use by post-secondary students. First, most of the studies focus primarily on student usage of the Net, and less so on the value (or the advantages and disadvantages) and the utility (or usefulness) associated with that usage. Second, many of these studies make a distinction between the research and communication functions of the Internet. While I argue that this is an appropriate distinction, many examine one function or the other only – and not both simultaneously. The central research problem that this study addresses is helping to fill those two gaps in the evaluation literature by examining in detail student usage, value and utility of the Net as a research and/or communication tool for post-secondary students in support of classroom-based instruction. Drawing upon work from the fields of media studies, learning theory, and theories of communication, I establish a "Net as Tool" framework and adopt a uses and gratifications approach to examine student use of the Net. The three main inter-related concepts of usage, value and utility are used as organizing themes for the study, and I designed and developed a survey instrument to gather original quantitative data from post-secondary students in both Canada and Australia to fully examine those concepts. Two focus group sessions were designed to supplement this quantitative data with qualitative findings (and to generate more in-depth insights into student usage, value and utility of the Net as a research and/or communication tool). The results presented in this study have both theoretical and practical importance. In regards to the theoretical side, I have identified the underlying dimensions of usage, value, and utility, and highlighted what makes the Net valuable and useful as a research and/or communication tool. Additionally, I have identified the factors which are related to usage, value, and utility, and explored the inter-related nature of those three concepts. I concluded my study with an outline of the importance of the skill of digital literacy so that students can cope effectively with the online environment. These findings are significant because they help to fill some specific gaps in the evaluation knowledge of the Net in post-secondary education. In addition, I have developed a practical strategy which suggests how the Net could be used most effectively by students as a research and/or communication tool in support of classroom based instruction. The areas addressed by the strategy include access, infrastructure, technical support, training, integration into the curriculum, and appropriate use of the tool. The overall strategy is important because it contributes to our understanding of the Net as an educational tool, and it outlines ways to address the issue of the digital divide within post-secondary education. It is hoped the strategy will be useful to training staff, post-secondary administrators, instructors, and students.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in next generation wireless systems provides high downlink data rates by employing frequency-domain scheduling and rate adaptation at the base station (BS). However, in order to control the significant feedback overhead required by these techniques, feedback reduction schemes are essential. Best-m feedback is one such scheme that is implemented in OFDM standards such as Long Term Evolution. In it, the sub channel (SC) power gains of only the m strongest SCs and their corresponding indices are fed back to the BS. However, two assumptions pervade most of the literature that analyze best-m feedback in OFDM systems. The first one is that the SC gains are uncorrelated. In practice, however, the SC gains are highly correlated, even for dispersive multipath channels. The second assumption deals with the treatment of unreported SCs, which are not fed back by the best-m scheme. If no user reports an SC, then no data transmission is assumed to occur. In this thesis, we eschew these assumptions and investigate best-m feedback in OFDM systems with correlated SC gains. We, first, characterize the average throughput as a function of correlation and m. A uniform correlation model is assumed, i.e., the SC gains are correlated with each other by the same correlation coefficient. The system model incorporates greedy, modified proportional- fair, and round robin schedulers, discrete rate adaptation, and non-identically distributed SC gains of different users. We, then, generalize the model to account for feedback delay. We show in all these cases that correlation degrades the average throughput. We also show that this effect does not arise when users report all the SC power gains to the BS. In order to mitigate the reduction in the average throughput caused by unreported SCs, we derive a novel, constrained minimum mean square error channel estimator for the best-m scheme to estimate the gains of these unreported SCs. The estimator makes use of the additional information, which is unique to the best-m scheme, that the estimated SC power gains must be less than those that were reported. We, then, study its implications on the downlink average cell throughput, again for different schedulers. We show that our approach reduces the root mean square error and increases the average throughput compared to several approaches pursued in the literature. The more correlated the SC gains, greater is the improvement.

In 2024, widespread usage of generative AI affects ComDev practitioners in their day-today jobs and have far-reaching implications for our societies. This thesis aims to (1) discover if humanitarians communicate about GenAI ethically and responsibly, (2) examine the existing power dynamics in shaping the discourses, and (3) determine if AI ethical frameworks help to safeguard the interests of vulnerable communities effectively. Though existing paradigms in Critical ICT4D and Digital for Development have suggested the need for critical reflections, this thesis has identified a gap in practical recommendations for Communication for Development. This research was conducted using a semi-systematic literature review and critical discourse analysis with two coding cycles on NVivo. Subsequently, themes, stakeholder maps, and a longitudinal analysis were derived to provide a practical toolkit to ComDev practitioners. Currently, there are multiple discussions and workshops in the area of GenAI in Geneva. However, the digital divide remains an ICT4D problem. Despite a boom in AI regulations and frameworks, organisations work in silos and maximise profits. Thus, there is a need for cross-sector collaboration and de-colonial programmes to mitigate the risks of the digital divide for vulnerable communities.