Although many efforts have been exerted to increase safety on construction sites, it has never been easy to run a construction project with zero accidents. Previous research indicated that lessons learned from previous projects could help construction professionals prevent repetitive mistakes, but those lessons are based on individual experience, and therefore it is difficult to document and reuse them. Various web-based database systems were suggested to better manage this tacit knowledge in construction, but transforming someone's tacit knowledge into value for the next project using these systems is still challenging. Well-designed computer games often offer a number of constructive instructional features especially for young generations who have grown up in an era of computer games. Research in education reports that visual presentation facilitates the human's cognitive process. Would visual representation of tacit knowledge in a computer game help construction professionals acquire tacit knowledge and use it to reduce repetitive accidents on construction sites? In order to figure out whether visual presentation of accident cases in a computer game could improve tacit knowledge acquisition and retention, a prototype Xbox 360 computer game presenting accident scenes using 3D computer models was developed and tested with college students working in the field of construction management. The game had 3D construction site accident scenes with treasure boxes hidden and the players had to find the treasure boxes and read the information obtained from it. The treasure boxes were placed relative to the information they carried. The text part had the same accident scenes explained in text with details of what should have been followed to avoid the accident. Students from the field of construction management and civil engineering were requested to participate in the test. Each participant went through two accidents in text and two accidents in the game environment and answered a set of 16 questions based on the knowledge they gained. There was no time limit for the test. They also had to answer an exit question as to which training method they preferred. The participants were asked to come again on the seventh day to answer a set of 16 questions without going through any training to check the retention of knowledge. Statistically we can say that on an overall basis visual training had more correct answers than text for knowledge dissemination as well as retention. But there was no statistical difference seen in the number of correct answers obtained from dissemination and retention tests for text as well as visual training.

Customized information service is very important for service provider nowadays. Traditional selective dissemination, as widely discussed in library community requires users¡¦ involvement and only serves a limited amount of users. In this thesis, we propose to employ data mining techniques to discover knowledge in circulation databases so as to provide customized service in library new book recommendation. Our research¡¦s data source is from National Sun Yat-Sen University¡¦s library. We follow a standard data mining procedure and report our experience in this thesis. Our research uses patron concept hierarchy and book hierarchy with given support threshold and confidence threshold to derived association rules with patron types being antecedent and book types being subsequent. Four algorithms, namely SBSP, SBMP, LatSBMP, MBMP are proposed to facilitate patron and book hierarchy search. Their complexities are compared analytically.

Abstract Libraries have long been widely recognized as import information-offering institutes. Thousands of new books are acquired per month by our university¡Xa mid-sized university in Taiwan), and patrons may have difficulties identifying the small set of books that really interest them. This gives rise to the problem of finding an effective way to recommend patrons the newly arrived books in a library. In this work, we address this problem in finding generalized association rules between patrons and books. We first discuss how to identify relevant but independent patron attributes in regard of the books they checked out. Then, we propose a set of algorithms for generating large itemsets and evaluate their performance experimentally. In addition, we define interestingness of rules and propose an algorithm for pruning uninteresting rules. Finally, we apply our approach to the circulation data of National SUN Yat-Sen University library and report our experiences.

This thesis considers the use and potential of digital technologies for those responsible for photographic collections in public libraries. Using the Birmingham Central Library as a case study, the research has explored how information comn1unication technologies have impacted on the way in which photographic in1ages are created, stored and disseminated. The study provides an overview of both the British library service and the role of archives within this public provision. Following an examination of the characteristics of digital media and a range of issues relating to the preservation, dissemination and economic exploitation of photographic il1aterials in digital form, the thesis goes on to adopt a variety of research strategies, including a number of empirical projects used to assimilate information relating to the practical application of information communication technologies by those working in public libraries. The major outcome of the research, identified in the later sections of the thesis, has been to n1ake a unique contribution to the field of knowledge relating to the provision of digital resources by those responsible for photographic collections residing in archives within public libraries in the United Kingdom. The conclusions to emerge from the theoretical and empirical research contribute to knowledge by providing current information about the utilisation of digital technologies for the purposes of enhancing access to photographic material held within public library archives, whilst also considering possible future developments relating to the area of investigation.

The Delphi method was used to investigate the use of dance and movement in knowledge dissemination by systematically accessing and synthesizing the knowledge of researchers and dancers who have used this particular artistic method. The expert panel included three researchers (two also identifying as dancers) who had used dance as a tool to disseminate research findings in formal research. Two rounds of online Delphi questionnaires were used to generate data. The study’s findings included several categories of consensus reached amongst participants: (a) using dance for the purposes of knowledge dissemination is complex, time-consuming, and requires expertise, (b) dance is a useful and valid means for disseminating research findings both in qualitative and quantitative projects, (c) movement and dance are common to all humans, provide a common base or means for interaction, and provide a legitimate way of knowing, expressing knowledge and concepts either differently or sometimes better than language, (d) dance is not appropriate to use in all research projects and there is no singular procedure, (e) dance evokes emotional, visceral, and embodied responses that cannot be predicted, and (f) researchers ethical care and responsibility exceeds typical considerations and extends to others members such as the dancers and audience members. Differences of opinion arose about researchers’ ethical responsibilities associated with level of care for audience members when using dance as a knowledge dissemination strategy. The current study’s findings extend knowledge and understanding about the use of dance in research dissemination, and have implications for future research and research practice.

For some time, youth worldwide have faced high levels of unemployment, up to twice as high as adults in Canada (Quintini, Martin, & Martin, 2007). In an environment proliferated with economic recovery initiatives responding to the global economic downturn that began in 2008 (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010), navigation towards employment for youth is complex and dynamic. Many rural communities were damaged by the global economic downturn, particularly in eastern Ontario (Jinha, 2009). The value of career education in supporting youth with transition from school-to-work is widely supported (Bell & O’Reilly, 2008). To my knowledge, a teacher’s perspective on teaching compulsory career studies within times of significant economic challenge has remained unexplored. Using two strands of data collection, document analysis was used to describe policies and strategies that comprised the Canadian and Ontario governments’ responses to the global economic downturn and the provincial policy on career education. I undertook interviews with a career studies teacher to document her knowledge of Canadian and Ontario governments’ responses, and how and from where she gained this knowledge. The teacher’s perceptions of challenges faced by career studies students’ when seeking employment, and of what this knowledge contributed to her teaching practice were also reported. The documents revealed that Canadian and Ontario governments’ had responded to the global economic downturn with similar policies and strategies, influenced by future economic security. The Ministry of Education curriculum documents included economy which was linked with the students’ learning and to the expectations of the curriculum. The teacher had limited knowledge of federal and provincial policies and strategies, although she saw connections to the career studies curriculum. The teacher supported her career studies practice through experience gained in a combined role as a teacher of cooperative education and business subjects, and the experience of colleagues. I concluded that the teaching of career studies was influenced by the teacher’s other teaching subjects, and career studies teachers’ need access to appropriate, current resources to meet curriculum expectations. Expanding the program to full-credit status might allow teachers greater flexibility to tailor the career studies program to meet individual students’ needs. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-27 11:37:15.56

Borrelia burgdorferi is an elongated and helically shaped bacterium that is the causal agent of the tick-borne illness Lyme disease. The disease manifests with initial flu-like symptoms and, in many cases, the appearance of a skin rash called erythema migrans at the site of the tick bite. If left untreated the disease might cause impairment of various organs such as the skin, heart, joints and the nervous system. The bacteria have a parasitic lifestyle and are always present within a host. Hosts are usually ticks or different animals and birds that serve as reservoirs for infection. B. burgdorferi are unable to synthesize building blocks for many vital cellular processes and are therefore highly dependent on their surroundings to obtain nutrients. Because of this, porins situated in the outer membrane, involved in nutrient uptake, are believed to be very important for B. burgdorferi. Except for a role in nutrient acquisition, porins can also have a function in binding extracellular matrix proteins, such as integrins, and have also been implicated in bacterial adaptation to new environments with variations in osmotic pressure. P13 and P66 are two integral outer membrane proteins in B. burgdorferi previously shown to have porin activities. In addition to its porin function, P66 also has integrin binding activity. In this thesis, oligomeric structures formed by the P13 and P66 protein complexes were studied using the Black lipid bilayer technique in combination with nonelectrolytes. Initial attempts were also made to study the structure of P13 in Nanodiscs, whereby membrane proteins can insert into artificial lipid bilayers in their native state and the structure can be analyzed by electron microscopy. In addition, the role of P13 and P66 in B. burgdorferi osmotic stress adaptation was examined and also the importance and role of the integrin-binding activity of P66 in B. burgdorferi infections in mice. Using Black lipid bilayer studies, the pore forming activity of P13 was shown to be much smaller than previously thought, exhibiting activity at 0.6 nS. The complex formed by P13 was approximately 300 kDa and solely composed of P13 monomers. The channel size was calculated to be roughly 1.4 nm. Initial Nanodisc experiments showed a pore size of 1.3 nm, confirming the pore size determined by Black lipid bilayer experiments. P66 form pores with a single channel conductance of 11 nS and a channel size of 1.9 nm. The porin assembles in the outer membrane into a large protein complex of 420 kDa, containing exclusively P66 monomers. The integrin-binding function of P66 was found to be important for efficient bacterial dissemination in the murine host but was not essential for B. burgdorferi infectivity. Neither P13 nor P66 had an active role in osmotic stress adaptation. Instead, two p13 paralogs were up-regulated at the transcript level in B. burgdorferi cultured under glycerol-induced osmotic stress. / Borrelia burgdorferi är en bakterie med många unika egenskaper som orsakar sjukdomen Lyme borrelios. Borrelia kan idag lätt behandlas med antibiotika om sjukdomen upptäcks i ett tidigt stadium. Det är först om sjukdomen tillåts fortgå som symptom som nervsmärta och ansiktsförlamning kan uppstå och dessutom vara svåra att koppla till en Borrelia-infektion. Multiresistenta bakterier har blivit en stor del av vår vardag och även om Borrelia-bakterierna idag inte är resistenta mot flertalet antibiotika är det kanske speciellt viktigt, innan det är för sent, med forskning som kan leda till upptäckter av unika angreppsställen för nya läkemedel. Målet med denna avhandling var att studera hur två Borrelia proteiner, P13 och P66, ser ut, är uppbyggda och även vilken funktion de har. Dessa proteiner är tänkbara vaccinkandidater eftersom de sitter i yttre membranet hos bakterierna och sticker ut på ytan mot våra värdceller, vilket gör att vi reagerar mot dem vid en infektion. P13 och P66 är också viktiga kanaler för bakterierna vid upptag av näringsämnen och byggstenar från omgivningen. Ämnen som bakterierna inte kan producera själva. Pga. denna funktion är P13 och P66 tänkbara proteiner för blockering med ett läkemedel som skulle förhindra bakterien från att föröka sig i och med att de förlorar möjligheten att tillgodogöra sig näring. Detta i sin tur skulle leda till att vårt eget immunförsvar hinner rensa undan bakterierna innan infektionen blivit för stor och vi blivit sjuka. P66 har förutom porin funktionen även en adhesions funktion när proteinet kan binda integriner som sitter på olika typer av celler i vår kropp, bl. a. immunceller och epitelceller i våra blodkärl och vävnader. Den integrin bindande funktionen är viktig för bakterierna vid en infektion eftersom det gör det möjligt för bakterierna att binda till våra celler. Ett steg som är viktigt för att de senare ska kunna ta sig ut från blodkärlen till våra vävnader. P13 och P66 visade sig kunna bilda stora proteinkomplex i ytter membranet hos bakterierna med en storlek på 300 kDa respektive 420 kDa. De är inga specifika poriner som bara kan transportera en viss typ av molekyl med t.ex. en viss laddning, utan kan ombesörja upptaget av många olika typer av ämnen. Eliminering av p66 orsakade att ett annat adhesionsprotein, uppreglerades. En omplacering av ett normalt cytoplasmatiskt lokaliserat chaperon-protein till ytter-membranet hos bakterierna kunde också ses i frånvaro av P66. Chaperonet GroEL har i andra bakterier, bl. a. Helicobacter pylori, bakterien som orsakar magsår, beskrivits som ett protein som kan förflytta sig till ytan av bakterierna och där ha en liknande funktion som P66, dvs. att binda extracellulära matrisprotein. Förändringen i uttryck av adhesionsproteinet och förflyttningen av chaperonet till membranet var en följd av p66-eliminering och mest troligt ett sätt för bakterierna att komplettera den förlorade integrinbindande funktionen av P66. Det har tidigare visats att poriner är involverade i skyddet mot osmotisk stress i andra bakterier. Denna funktion hos P13 och P66 i Borrelia kunde inte ses när bakterier utsattes för osmotisk stress med glycerol, som orsakar en form av membranstress. Däremot kunde vi med hjälp av transkriptomanalys se att Borrelia-bakterier uppreglerade transkriptionen av två paraloger till P13 vid hyper-osmotisk stress. Borrelia bakteriens användning av dessa paraloga proteiner har tidigare trotts ske enbart i frånvaro av ett funktionellt P13 protein. Nu visade det sig att P13-paraloger har en egen funktion även i närvaro av P13, nämligen att vara involverade i regleringen av hyperosmotisk stress och därmed skydda bakterierna i denna stressituation. Andra gener som påverkades av osmotisk stress med glycerol var gener för stressfaktorer och pumpar i inre membranet hos bakterien.

The popularity of the Internet and cellular networks in recent years has led to widespread use of these networks for data dissemination. Advancements in wireless communications networks like Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 5G networks indicate a trend towards higher speed mobile networks accessed by users with increasingly sophisticated mobile devices. These advancements do not include the means for users to leverage increased wireless network transmission rates by disseminating heterogeneous data. The ability to share heterogeneous data entirely through mobile networks illustrates a communications methodology where end users determine what data will be shared with no limitations based on content. Advances in this domain have introduced many aspects of this methodology on a global scale but have not addressed how heterogeneous data can be defined and distributed by end users. This thesis proposes a communications architecture for the dissemination of heterogeneous data in real-time. The implementation of this communications architecture is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and proposes modifications to the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to permit the distribution of heterogeneous data through synchronous and asynchronous data transmission. A communications protocol is introduced defining a broker, data consumers, data producers and a message format. Algorithms for session management and packet processing are provided in an embedded system called the Reconfigurable Multimedia Collaborative System (RMCS). Results for the communications architecture demonstrate the successful generation and transmission of heterogeneous data in real-time using the proposed modifications to SIP. The successful operation of packet generation algorithms and related functions in hardware is also provided to demonstrate the means through which this architecture could be provided through hardware for optimal performance and to facilitate its implementation into mobile devices.

Video dissemination over Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) is an attractive technology which supports many novel applications. Hence, the merit of this thesis has twofold. Firstly, we evaluate and compare three routing techniques and two error resilience techniques. We select a sender-based routing technique called SUV and compare it with the other two selected receiver-based routing techniques named REACT-DIS and CDS. The results, more specifically, show that the receiver-based solutions outperform the sender-based solution. In addition, only CDS method fulfils the general quality requirements as it is the best that reduces redundancy packets and covers the whole topology. The results also indicate that the video coding scheme, Interleaving, can fix the multiple consecutive packet losses and guarantee reliable video qualities over VANETs. Network Coding, however, fails to provide satisfactory video quality for urban scenarios. This study next combines the selected receiver based routing techniques and the two error resilience techniques. We find the best combination is Interleaving over CDS. Secondly, we design a quality guaranteed video dissemination protocol for urban VANETs scenarios. Based on our comparison result, our protocol selects the CDS and Interleaving as the routing and error resilient techniques. To fix the single packet loses caused by the topology’s intermittent disconnection and collisions, we propose a store-carry-broadcast scheme for the nodes to re-transmit the local buffer saved packets. The results, when compared to the selected techniques and combinations, show that our proposed protocol is the most efficient one in terms of packet delivery, delay, overhead and video quality.

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