Access to clean water and improved sanitation are basic human right. This quantitative, descriptive study sought to establish current water and sanitation coverage in Chirumanzu and Shurugwi districts in Zimbabwe and develop methods of assessing coverage using Geographic Information Systems. Google Earth was used to identify homesteads. Personal digital assistant-based forms were used to collect geo-referenced data on all water points and selected households. Geospatial analysis methods were used to calculate borehole water coverage. Using Google Earth, 29375 homesteads were identified. The water survey mapped 4134 water points; 821 were boreholes; and only 548 were functional. Functional borehole water coverage was: 57.3%, 46.2%, and 33.5% for distance from household to water point of within 1500 m, 1000 m, and 500 m respectively. Sanitation coverage was 44.3%, but 96% of the latrines did not meet Blair Ventilated Pit latrine standards. / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health) (Medical Informatics)

The Virginia Tech Center for Wireless Telecommunications' (CWT) Public Safety Cognitive Radio (PSCR) addresses the radio interoperability issues that plague many of the existing public safety radios — disparate frequency bands, incompatible modulation schemes and lack of active channel detection features. The PSCR allows the operator to scan for active channels, classify the detected channels, connect to any of the recognized waveforms and begin analog audio communication as well as bridge two incompatible waveforms together. The PSCR, although very useful, unfortunately is not portable enough to be used by public safety officials. The power requirement, processing requirement and equipment is respectively large, hungry and bulky. In this thesis, a possible solution to the portability problem is addressed by installing the PSCR in a public safety vehicle and using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) for remote access. The PDA allows the user to remotely scan, classify, talk, and bridge waveforms similar in operation to the PSCR. An ergonomically designed interface masks the channel and modulation selection procedure. This architecture can be extended to offer service to any remotely connected device. In the second part of this thesis, the concept of remote access is extended to a wide-area wireless public safety network. A public safety network consisting of heterogeneous devices is proposed utilizing a small number of backbone nodes. The major research focus of this section is the algorithm for distributing services across the network. Service discovery is optimized to reduce the overhead of service messages and multiple service distribution techniques are utilized depending on the location of the services. Simulation is performed to evaluate the performance of the service discovery protocol in terms of overhead, dissemination time and scalability. The proposed protocol is determined to be superior to the competition in the overhead and scalability tests. / Master of Science

在邁入知識經濟的現今社會中，企業的生產要素已轉變為以知識為基礎，而學習正是知識經濟時代增加企業競爭力的最佳利器。隨著科技的發展，線上學習(e-Learning)不論在傳統公司或電子化企業中已扮演著重要不可或缺的角色。線上學習的獨特性不但可使教育訓練的成本降低，更可以配合企業的全球化運作，這些優點吸引了許多公司開始規劃線上訓練。但由於目前線上學習多採用Web(World Wide Web)介面並且必須與網際網路連接，所以有發展上的限制且缺乏行動性。因此本研究將應用行動科技結合學習科技來克服這個問題。 　　本研究希望建構一行動學習設計並且整合知識庫，使得知識學習的來源不再僅侷限於學習教材，更能包含整個組織的知識。另外也設計一搜尋機制希望藉此能有效率地執行行動搜尋。 / In knowledge economy, the key factor of production is knowledge. Learning will be the best effective tool to increase the competitiveness in the knowledge-based economy. With the development of Information Technology, Electronic Learning (e-Learning) becomes important, indispensable in traditional business, and e-business. e-Learning with unique characteristics lowers training costs and makes organizational learning global. These benefits catch the attentions of the company to pursue e-Learning. However, the problem that e-Learning has to be Web-enabled (World Wide Web enabled) and Internet-based creates a technical and managerial barrier limits its development and lack the mobility. In our research, we aim to apply Mobile Technology with Learning Technology to overcome this problem. 　　Our research focuses on the design of a mobile learning (m-Learning) model that supports learning anywhere, anytime and any form. Beside, we develop an approach to integrate with knowledge repository. The learning scope will not be limited to instructional courseware. It includes organizational knowledge. The search assistant helps user to access relevant information with minimal effort and reduce the amount of information that needs to be transmitted.

<p>This thesis focuses on the delivery of government services to citizens with a particula r emphasis on enabling those who are at risk of exclusion from the digital society to gain access to it. Following in this direction, one of the frequently addressed issues concerning the accessibility of e-services and information in government websites is found to be the users’ unawareness concerning the location of the desired information or service. Consequently, the overall objective of the thesis is to find, develop, and assess a solution to provide citizens with a simple and effective means of accessing and utilizing e-government services in government websites. The solution might be seen as a contribution to preventing digital exclusion among citizens caused by difficulties associated with navigation and way-finding, as well as the complexity of the utilization of the digitally provided services.</p><p>To gain this objective, the thesis argues for the use of a digital assistant; i.e. an embodied conversational agent able to provide the user with the desired services or information by means of a dialogue. Influenced by a real life situation, the overall idea behind the use of a digital assistant is that since knowledge about the arrangement of available drugs in a pharmacy and a particular drug's whereabouts in that organization is of little concern to customers, so too should knowledge of the organization and the whereabouts of services and information in a website be of little consequence to users. Therefore, a digital assistant is expected to act in a similar manner to a human agent who possesses knowledge regarding the existing infor mation and services, their application area, and where these are stored.</p><p>In order to realize the defined objective, this thesis is organized to cover all stages of the research process; i.e. the identification of the users’ difficulties in the current sit uation, the development of a prototype of a digital assistant, and the assessment and evaluation of the suggested solution in both a laboratory environment and in a real life situation. The thesis concludes by gathering and placing the results of the conducted studies in to a bigger context to find out whether or not the use of digital assistants improves the delivery of e-government services and the citizen’s utilization of them, and also to clarify and present the research project’s practical and methodological findings. With reference to the findings addressing the identified difficulties in the currents situation, the conducted studies showed that a digital assistant solution, such as the one described in this thesis, offers contributions to the accessibility of e-government services. It was also found that a digital assistant could contribute to the delivery of egovernment services by: a) reducing the technology barrier caused by the traditional input/output technologies, b) reducing the navigation barrier caused by the conventional web design, c) reducing the mental load of the user, and d) adding benefits and subjective pleasing.</p><p>The other interesting finding concerns the contribution of the digital assistant’s “approach” to the development of egovernment services. In other words, going from a traditional design of web interfaces to a digital assistant approach is similar to moving from an inside out perspective to a strictly customer or citizen oriented perspective. This shift in perspective could be recognized as a small revolution and it has many consequences for the development of e-government services compared to the current traditions.</p><p>Taken together, these findings have lead to an improvement in the digital assistant developed in this thesis, and suggest possibilities for future work within this area of research.</p>

This thesis focuses on the delivery of government services to citizens with a particula r emphasis on enabling those who are at risk of exclusion from the digital society to gain access to it. Following in this direction, one of the frequently addressed issues concerning the accessibility of e-services and information in government websites is found to be the users’ unawareness concerning the location of the desired information or service. Consequently, the overall objective of the thesis is to find, develop, and assess a solution to provide citizens with a simple and effective means of accessing and utilizing e-government services in government websites. The solution might be seen as a contribution to preventing digital exclusion among citizens caused by difficulties associated with navigation and way-finding, as well as the complexity of the utilization of the digitally provided services. To gain this objective, the thesis argues for the use of a digital assistant; i.e. an embodied conversational agent able to provide the user with the desired services or information by means of a dialogue. Influenced by a real life situation, the overall idea behind the use of a digital assistant is that since knowledge about the arrangement of available drugs in a pharmacy and a particular drug's whereabouts in that organization is of little concern to customers, so too should knowledge of the organization and the whereabouts of services and information in a website be of little consequence to users. Therefore, a digital assistant is expected to act in a similar manner to a human agent who possesses knowledge regarding the existing infor mation and services, their application area, and where these are stored. In order to realize the defined objective, this thesis is organized to cover all stages of the research process; i.e. the identification of the users’ difficulties in the current sit uation, the development of a prototype of a digital assistant, and the assessment and evaluation of the suggested solution in both a laboratory environment and in a real life situation. The thesis concludes by gathering and placing the results of the conducted studies in to a bigger context to find out whether or not the use of digital assistants improves the delivery of e-government services and the citizen’s utilization of them, and also to clarify and present the research project’s practical and methodological findings. With reference to the findings addressing the identified difficulties in the currents situation, the conducted studies showed that a digital assistant solution, such as the one described in this thesis, offers contributions to the accessibility of e-government services. It was also found that a digital assistant could contribute to the delivery of egovernment services by: a) reducing the technology barrier caused by the traditional input/output technologies, b) reducing the navigation barrier caused by the conventional web design, c) reducing the mental load of the user, and d) adding benefits and subjective pleasing. The other interesting finding concerns the contribution of the digital assistant’s “approach” to the development of egovernment services. In other words, going from a traditional design of web interfaces to a digital assistant approach is similar to moving from an inside out perspective to a strictly customer or citizen oriented perspective. This shift in perspective could be recognized as a small revolution and it has many consequences for the development of e-government services compared to the current traditions. Taken together, these findings have lead to an improvement in the digital assistant developed in this thesis, and suggest possibilities for future work within this area of research.

In this thesis, the studies mainly focus on recent trends in novel MIMO antennas for indoor wireless communication system. Firstly, we propose a novel MIMO antenna for access-point application. This proposed antenna can reduce the lateral length of the conventional access-point antenna for MIMO application. Then, we present MIMO antenna designs for mobile devices such as PDA phones and laptop computers. Although these two devices are of different configurations, the PIFAs are applicable in these two devices, and their design rules are basically the same. Thus, for this study, the design consideration of the MIMO antenna will focus on S-parameter analysis. Detailed antenna designs and experimental results are presented and discussed in this thesis.

This study explores the application of wireless local area network (WLAN) in mobile learning. Although still in its infancy, Taiwan¡¦s government has devoted much resource on mobile learning as the extention of e-Taiwan project. National museums are among the key projects where the effectiveness of mobile learning can be soundly demonstrated. Taking national museums as observing objects, this study examines whether museum visitors appreciate WLAN environment within which personal digital assistants (PDA) operate as mobile educational tools. It further explores the key success factors that leads to successful deployment of mobile learning system. The researcher conducted a two-wave survey, firstly on museum visiters then on museum and e-learning experts for data gathering. Using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) as the research method, this study filters out the priority setting of those six categories as follows according to their significance: learning content, network connection, interface design, mareking and promotion, and business model. It also shows that the priority setting might change as a matter of time. As far as implication for education is concerned, the study suggests that, in the learning space of museum, PDA equipped with WLAN proves to be an appropriate mobile learning tool, notably useful in conducting blending learning and self-directed learning. Such finding should contribute to the understanding and further deployment of mobile learning activities in the context of museums. Keywords: wireless local area network (WLAN), mobile learning, blending learning, self-directed learning, personal digital assistant (PDA), fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP), key success factors, museum

Röststyrning och rösttolkning är ett gränssnitt mellan användare och dator som blivit vanligare i kommersiella produkter. Gränssnittet används i digitala assistenter, det vill säga en mjukvarubaserad tjänst utformad för att hjälpa användare att utföra digitala uppgifter. Dessa uppgifter inkluderar att svara på frågor, hantera scheman, hemkontroll, spela musik och mycket mer. Eftersom digitala assistenter är relativt nya så finns det ett behov av mer kunskap om hur man kan skapa applikationer för plattformen.Rapporten ger kunskap om hur utvecklingsprocessen ser ut för en röststyrd ap- plikation till Google Assistant. Detta görs med en fallstudie som ger en inblick i de olika design- och arkitekturval som ingår i mjukvaruutvecklingen. Resultatet beskriver lämpliga konversationsmönster för röstgränssnitt i röststyrda applikationer och ett lämpligt arkitekturmönster för kodbasen. Med hjälp av studien drogs slutsatser om vilka begränsningar som finns hos röststyrda applikationer. / Voice control and voice interpretation is an interface between users and computers that have become more common in commercial products. The interface is used in digital assistants, which is a software-based service designed to help users perform digital tasks. These tasks include answering questions, managing their schedules, home control, playing music and more. Because digital assistants are relatively new, there is a need for more knowledge about how to create applications for the platform.The report provides information on how the development process looks like for a voice-controlled application for Google Assistant. This is done by a case study that provides insight into the various design and architecture choices that are included in the software development. The result describes a suitable conversation pattern for voice interfaces in voice-controlled applications and an appropriate architecture for the codebase. The study draws conclusions about the limitations of voice-controlled applications.

Handheld devices have a limited amount of screen real estate. If a handheld device could take advantage of larger screens, it would create a more powerful user interface and environment. As time progresses, Moore's law predicts that the computational power of handheld devices will increase dramatically in the future, promoting the interaction with a larger screen. Users can then use their peripheral vision to recognize spatial relationships between objects and solve problems more easily with this integrated system. In the spillable environment, the handheld device uses a DiamondTouch Table, a large, touch-sensitive horizontal table, to enhance the viewing environment. When the user moves the handheld device on the DiamondTouch, the orientation of the application changes accordingly. A user can let another person see the application by rotating the handheld device in that person's direction. A user could conveniently use this system in a public area. In a business meeting, a user can easily show documents and presentations to other users around the DiamondTouch table. In an academic setting, a tutor could easily explain a concept to a student. A user could effortlessly do all of this while having all of his/her information on the handheld device. A wide range of applications could be used in these types of settings.