ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper tries to discuss the mobility management when Internet technology is applied along the whole path from spacecraft to ultimate customers in ground. In addition to Mobile IP protocol, micromobility solution is introduced during cross-support. Those competing micromobility solutions in mobile network research area are compared to select one that is most suitable to space network topology characteristics and operation traditions. Other issues are also taken into account, such as deployment and compatibility with Mobile IP when cross-support is not provided. Simulation comparison for hand-off performance with and without micro-mobility solution during cross-support is presented to justify our proposition.

One of the trickiest challenges introduced by cellular communications networks is mobility prediction for Location Based-Services (LBSs). Hence, an accurate and efficient mobility prediction technique is particularly needed for these networks. The mobility prediction technique incurs overheads on the transmission process. These overheads affect properties of the cellular communications network such as delay, denial of services, manual filtering and bandwidth. The main goal of this research is to enhance a mobility prediction scheme in cellular communications networks through three phases. Firstly, current mobility prediction techniques will be investigated. Secondly, innovation and examination of new mobility prediction techniques will be based on three hypothesises that are suitable for cellular communications network and mobile user (MU) resources with low computation cost and high prediction success rate without using MU resources in the prediction process. Thirdly, a new mobility prediction scheme will be generated that is based on different levels of mobility prediction. In this thesis, a new mobility prediction scheme for LBSs is proposed. It could be considered as a combination of the cell and routing area (RA) prediction levels. For cell level prediction, most of the current location prediction research is focused on generalized location models, where the geographic extent is divided into regular-shape cells. These models are not suitable for certain LBSs where the objectives are to compute and present on-road services. Such techniques are the New Markov-Based Mobility Prediction (NMMP) and Prediction Location Model (PLM) that deal with inner cell structure and different levels of prediction, respectively. The NMMP and PLM techniques suffer from complex computation, accuracy rate regression and insufficient accuracy. In this thesis, Location Prediction based on a Sector Snapshot (LPSS) is introduced, which is based on a Novel Cell Splitting Algorithm (NCPA). This algorithm is implemented in a micro cell in parallel with the new prediction technique. The LPSS technique, compared with two classic prediction techniques and the experimental results, shows the effectiveness and robustness of the new splitting algorithm and prediction technique. In the cell side, the proposed approach reduces the complexity cost and prevents the cell level prediction technique from performing in time slots that are too close. For these reasons, the RA avoids cell-side problems. This research discusses a New Routing Area Displacement Prediction for Location-Based Services (NRADP) which is based on developed Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). The NRADP, compared with Mobility Prediction based on an Ant System (MPAS) and the experimental results, shows the effectiveness, higher prediction rate, reduced search stagnation ratio, and reduced computation cost of the new prediction technique.

The number of studies estimating neighbourhood effects has increased rapidly during the last two decades. Although results from these studies vary, a majority find at least small effects. But to what extent can we trust these estimates? Neighbourhood effect studies face many serious methodological challenges, of which some are related to the fact that people move. The mobility of individuals may cause neighbourhoods to change over time, result in exposure times that are too short and seriously bias estimates. These methodological problems have not been given enough attention in the neighbourhood effect literature: no study controls for them all, and implications of mobility are rarely included in theoretical discussions of neighbourhood effects. In a comprehensive summary and five different papers, I argue that the two scholarly fields of residential mobility and neighbourhood effect studies are intrinsically connected and that any arbitrary separation between the two is both conceptually problematic and risks leading to erroneous conclusions. Studies of neighbourhood effects must address the problems caused by mobility, before it can be convincingly argued that results actually show neighbourhood effects. To do this, longitudinal data are necessary. Furthermore, the connection between the two fields may also have implications for studies of residential mobility.

Objective: To gather knowledge related to patient satisfaction and mobility with lower limb prosthetic and orthotic devices and to investigate satisfaction with services received. Another purpose of this study is to analyze potential differences between orthotic and prosthetic patients in relation to patient satisfaction and mobility. Design: Cross-sectional study Subjects: 21 participants with a mean age of 58 (SD 16) with an average duration of use of devices of 10 (SD 10) years. 12 out of the 21 participants were orthotic users and 9 were prosthetic users. Methods: Patients were asked to complete two questionnaires, one regarding satisfaction with assistive device and service (QUEST 2.0) and one regarding mobility. Results: Patients mean score regarding satisfaction with assistive device and service were 4.0 (SD 0.8) and 4.2 (SD 1.0) respectively. 91% reported that they had the ability to walk at least 100 meters with their assistive device. The areas where participants experienced most difficulties were walking on uneven ground (70%), walking up and down a hill (57%) and walking on stairs (57%). Conclusion: Overall this study demonstrates that participants were quite satisfied with their assistive device and the service received by the P&O clinic. No statistically significant differences regarding satisfaction with assistive device and service, or mobility, were found between prosthetic and orthotic participants.

In this thesis, I follow the expatriate as a category, subject, identity and orientation from a starting point of the knowledge of the successful expatriate in the Global Mobility Industry to an end point, Singapore. Focusing on British migrants going to Singapore, I follow the expatriate as a mobile subject and mobile identity. Although the expatriate is a common nomenclature denoting a skilled migrant who lives abroad for a short period of time, I argue that the term expatriate is not axiomatic in describing this type of mobility. Rather, the thesis seeks to uncover what is obscured by and conveyed through the term, how people fit within it or against it, how its use and meaning is produced and negotiated. This builds upon previous literature on expatriates that focuses attention on how their lives play out abroad. However, I develop this literature to argue that the expatriate is produced, in part, through the processes that inform their move. I draw upon management discourse which frames expatriation as being like a ‘journey’ from home to abroad, with the management of how this journey is undertaken contributing to how the expatriate experience is understood. Drawing upon the discourse of the successful expatriate, I start by looking at the Global Mobility Industry, an industry that directs itself towards assisting in the management of expatriates. This industry I suggest performs itself as being expert in knowing how to manage the expatriate, a portrayal that enacts the industry into being. The discourse of the successful expatriate is performative in other ways, as it produces a normal expatriate experience, in terms of how the expatriate understands the abroad, and the normal emotional response to this. This normal expatriate experience is learnt by the British migrant through their journey abroad. The end point of the journey here is Singapore, looking at how British migrants orient themselves through the term expatriate. Through this, I argue then that there is no single way in which we can understand the expatriate, but there are multiple ways in which the term is put to use. These different understandings can be contradictory, but they work to bring into conversation ways in which cultural difference between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ are produced, performed and practised.

No description available.

This thesis derives and validates Performance Indicators for Safe Mobility for Older Road Users in Urban Areas. Performance Indicators are objective, auditable parameters, which when used as a set can provide additional information to decision-makers about the operation of the transport system. Great Britain, in common with many countries across Europe has an ageing population. The proportion of older people who hold a driving licence and have the use of a car is also expected to rise, with future generations of older people travelling further and more frequently than previous generations. Older road users are already over-represented in traffic fatalities, particularly in urban areas. Measures to protect older road users from risk in traffic will be of crucial importance as the population ages. However, against this background the need remains for them to access key facilities such as shops, leisure activities and health care. Maintaining independent mobility is essential in maintaining mental and physical health. Traditionally, outcomes-based measures such as accident or casualty figures have been used to monitor road safety. Techniques such as hotspot analysis have identified locations on the road network where accident numbers are high, allowing modifications to road infrastructure to be designed and implemented. Using outcomes measures alone however, it is difficult to ascribe improvements in accident or casualty figures to particular policy interventions. Moreover, the effect of road safety interventions on other related policy areas mobility being one is impossible to assess without access to detailed, disaggregated exposure data. To make fully informed policy decisions about infrastructure design and how it affects older users, a better understanding of the linkages between safety and mobility is required. Performance Indicators offer the possibility to look at these linked policy objectives within a single framework. Focus group data was used in conjunction with the results of previous studies to identify the infrastructure features which present a barrier to older users safe mobility in urban areas. These included factors which increased risk, such as wide carriageways, complex junctions and fast-moving traffic, and factors which hindered mobility, such as uneven or poorly maintained pavements, poor lighting and traffic intrusion. A thematic audit of infrastructure in a case study city (Coventry) was undertaken, in order that the incidence of such infrastructure could be recorded. It was found that in many areas of the city, safe mobility for older road users was not well provided for, with the majority of locations having barriers to safety and/or mobility for both drivers and pedestrians. The audit data was then used to calculate a set of Performance Indicators, presented via spider graphs, which describe the degree to which the infrastructure caters for the safety and mobility of older drivers and pedestrians. The spider graphs allow for easy comparisons between the different geographical areas, and also between the different policy areas, allowing policy priorities to be identified. The calculated Performance Indicators were validated using case studies collected from the focus group participants. The case studies identified features that affected travel habits by causing a change of route or change of mode, providing evidence of the link between infrastructure design and safe mobility for older users. The results of the Performance Indicator analysis were then compared to accident figures, in order to identify differences between the two approaches, and to understand what policy implications would result from a monitoring framework that used Performance Indicators for safe mobility, rather than outcomes-based measures alone. One implication of the Performance Indicator approach is that it may identify different areas for priority action from those identified by accident or casualty figures. A location which does not have high accident numbers may nevertheless perform poorly on a Safety Performance Indicator measure. This is because older users who feel at risk make different route or mode choices to avoid the infrastructure, the lower accident rate being explained by lower exposure to risk. Conversely, measures to promote independent mobility for older users may increase their accident involvement, not because the environment becomes more risky, but because the exposure of older users to risk increases, because they are willing and able to walk or drive in an area they previously avoided. The thesis concludes that infrastructure design does not currently cater well for the needs of older pedestrians and drivers, and that a framework which incorporated Performance Indicators could make more explicit the trade-offs between safety and mobility, and between different categories of user. This additional information would enable policy makers and practitioners to make more informed decisions about how to prioritise competing objectives in complex urban areas.

<p>One of the main trends in the IT field today is to provide more mobility to existing IT based systems and users. With this trend, more and more people are using mobile financial transactions due to a widespread proliferation of mobile phones and wireless technologies. One of the most important concerns with such transactions is their security. The reasons are based on weaknesses of wireless protocols and additional requirements for handling of financial data. These aspects make mobile financial transactions and applications even more vulnerable to fraud and illegal use than similar transactions performed over fixed networks.</p><p> </p><p>There are two important aspects related to security in mobile environments. First, security features provided by the communication protocols, such as GSM, SMS, Bluetooth, Mobile Internet, etc. are not adequate. Some security algorithms used by these protocols have even been broken, what requires upper layer applications to provide comprehensive protection in order to compensate the shortcomings of a transportation layer. Second, mobile devices have limited capabilities, limited processing speed, limited storage, etc, so that many security mechanisms are not suitable for mobile environments. Therefore, new, effective, lightweight and flexible security solutions are required.</p><p> </p><p>In order to solve these two groups of security issues, in this research we created a service-oriented security infrastructure for mobile financial transactions and applications. Based on this infrastructure, we also designed and implemented a system, which is called <em>SAFE</em> (Secure Applications for Financial Environment), that represents a secure, convenient and reliable large–scale infrastructure for mobile financial transactions. The components of the system are Secure Mobile Wallet and three <em>SAFE</em> servers: Communications (Gateway) Server, IDMS (Identity Management System) Server, and Payment Server. Those core infrastructure components with secure messages exchanged between them provide a number of secure financial services. These services may be used for various types of mobile transactions: m–Banking, m–Commerce, m–Ticketing, m-Parking, m–Loans, etc. all supported by additional Application Services Provider servers, connected to the <em>SAFE</em> security system. This report gives the details of the concept design and current implementation of the <em>SAFE</em> system.</p> / QC20100608 / Secure Applications for Financial Environments (SAFE) Project

With an aging population there is a growing need to assist people with disabilities. Particularly crucial is assisting people who cannot stand between positions necessary for everyday living, such as from a wheelchair to the toilet. It is unsafe to transfer people with direct manual techniques, thus a patient handling device is required. To reduce the burden on the healthcare system it is beneficial for disabled people to be cared for in-home. Many in-home caregivers may be physically impaired, thus patient handling devices for this use must require as little effort as possible. This thesis found that existing manual patient handling devices contained significant weaknesses when used for in-home care and there is potential to improve upon them. Expert interviews, computer modelling and physical models were used to develop a novel patient handling device which addresses these identified weaknesses. A reduction in the number of operator tasks, operation time and operation force was achieved. A method of supporting the patient solely by their upper body is required by the novel patient handling device, though an acceptable way of incorporating this has yet to be achieved. Testing of an upper body enclosure support revealed that a person may be supported by their lower thorax without substantial clamping or physical effort from the patient. Such a support has potential to be developed into an acceptable solution. Further development and testing in variable conditions encountered during practical patient handling is required.

This thesis considers how informational imperfections may give rise to advantages for those born to relatively rich parents. The first chapter focuses on the separation of some societies into different classes. Within the model, classes provide greater advantages to those from privileged backgrounds and, even in the absence of legal barriers preventing the lower classes from accessing skilled jobs, the skilled amongst them are still de facto denied access to high paying jobs through statistical discrimination. This chapter shows that there can be a net benefit from class discrimination, versus a classless state, when it creates information relating to the abilities of the upper class. This theme is expanded on in chapter two where a signalling model more explicitly describes the statistical discrimination suffered by some members of society. The advantage conferred on those from privileged backgrounds generates income dispersion, which in turn reinforces the advantages of the rich. If this feedback is strong enough, the model may exhibit multiplicity of steady states. This multiplicity of steady states is backward looking: the income dispersion today depends on the extent to which firms use the information available to them, which in turn depends on the income dispersion in the previous generation. The model of chapter two also demonstrates why societies with more "meritocratic" institutions may exhibit less intergenerational income mobility: the income dispersion that meritocracy creates increases the value of a privileged upbringing. The final chapter adds parental investment to the model. In doing so it brings the model more squarely in line with the statistical discrimination literature, although the model does not exhibit a multiplicity of equilibria. There is a unique optimal investment rule for parents. Exogenous shocks to meritocracy are again examined. Meritocracy increases income variance and hence, from behind the veil of ignorance, creates greater uncertainty over the income an individual will receive. The model describes how a risk averse person might prefer to be born into an economy where they expect to be poorer but avoid this increased uncertainty, and so despite raising incomes, meritocracy may make agents, on average, more unhappy.