This masters thesis describes possibilities and principles of gesture-based computer interface. The work describes general approaches for gesture control.  It also deals with implementation of the selected detection method of the hands and fingers using depth maps loaded form Kinect sensor. The implementation also deals with gesture recognition using hidden Markov models. For demonstration purposes there is also described implementation of a simple photo viewer that uses developed gesture-based computer interface. The work also focuses on quality testing and accuracy evaluation for selected gesture recognizer.

Segmenting image into multiple meaningful regions is an essential task in Computer Vision. Deep Learning has been highly successful for segmentation, benefiting from the availability of the annotated datasets and deep neural network architectures. However, depth-based hand segmentation, an important application area of semantic segmentation, has yet to benefit from rich and large datasets. In addition, while deep methods provide robust solutions, they are often not efficient enough for low-powered devices. In this thesis, we focus on these two problems. To tackle the problem of lack of rich data, we propose an automatic method for generating high-quality annotations and introduce a large scale hand segmentation dataset. By exploiting the visual cues given by an RGBD sensor and a pair of colored gloves, we automatically generate dense annotations for two-hand segmentation. Our automatic annotation method lowers the cost/complexity of creating high-quality datasets and makes it easy to expand the dataset in the future. To reduce the computational requirement and allow real-time segmentation on low power devices, we propose a new representation and architecture for deep networks that predict segmentation maps based on Voronoi Diagrams. Voronoi Diagrams split space into discrete regions based on proximity to a set of points making them a powerful representation of regions, which we can then use to represent our segmentation outcomes. Specifically, we propose to estimate the location and class for these sets of points, which are then rasterized into an image. Notably, we use a differentiable definition of the Voronoi Diagram based on the softmax operator, enabling its use as a decoder layer in an end-to-end trainable network. As rasterization can take place at any given resolution, our method especially excels at rendering high-resolution segmentation maps, given a low-resolution image. We believe that our new HandSeg dataset will open new frontiers in Hand Segmentation research, and our cost-effective automatic annotation pipeline can benefit other relevant labeling tasks. Our newly proposed segmentation network enables high-quality segmentation representations that are not practically possible on low power devices using existing approaches. / Graduate

Organizational leaders use lean training as a process improvement strategy to eliminate waste and inefficiencies in processes. Of the 91% of company leaders who believed lean training was important, 64% of those leaders expressed the perception that workers do not comprehend lean training and methodology. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore how healthcare managers successfully implemented lean training strategies to combat escalating costs. The target population consisted of healthcare managers in a single rural care hospital located in Tennessee who had implemented lean training strategies to train staff in lean principles and lean tools. The conceptual framework for this study was the general systems theory. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with healthcare managers, document review of public hospital data, and public quality reports. Member checking of interview data was used to strengthen the credibility of the findings. Yin's 5-phase qualitative data analysis process was used consisting of compiling the data, disassembling the data, reassembling the data, interpreting the data, and concluding the data. Themes emerged resulting from the use of methodological triangulation of collected data to include improving quality of patient care, teamwork and collaboration, hands-on learning, and training the trainers. The application of the findings may contribute to social change by identifying strategies related to lean training to address inefficiencies, improve quality patient care, and provide a safer healthcare environment.

Recently there has been a keen interest in the area of mathematics and finding the best methods of instruction. For instance, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has placed new levels of accountability on educators for the success of students with their education, especially in mathematics. Certain areas of mathematics, such as Algebra, have been known to challenge students to think abstractly. This has become a difficult task for educators to accomplish. The challenge of teaching algebra becomes apparent when students do not comprehend the abstract reasoning of algebra. Many students need help with the transition from numerical calculation to the abstract reasoning required for algebra. This dissertation focuses on the best approaches to helping students with this transition. This dissertation investigates a mathematics program called Hands-On Equations (HOE), which is designed to help students learn abstract concepts taught in algebra with less difficulty. The program concentrates on the transition from numerical calculation to abstract reasoning by utilizing manipulatives. The objective of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of HOE in 9 th and 10 th grade. The research uses three pretests, three posttests, a three week retention test, a six week retention test, and benchmark tests to evaluate the academic growth of students in two set groups. The collected data is then quantitatively analyzed by applying simple t-tests and an ANOVA. Analysis of the data endorses HOE as being effective with solving linear equations at Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and with the three-week retention tests, which indicates HOE may be a positive factor in achieving success with linear equations. However, analysis of the data revealed HOE is not as effective with the six-week retention test or the benchmark test which indicates after six weeks and beyond, students do not retain the information to be successful on end of the year exams such as benchmarks. The findings from this study may be useful to educators who are contemplating implementing HOE or other such programs at their schools.

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Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur ett stöttande arbetssätt utvecklar barns ämneskunskaper i undervisning om flyta och sjunka som fenomen. I studien deltog förskolebarn i åldrarna två till fem år, som gick på en åldersblandad avdelning i en förskola i Mellansverige. Studien omfattade en undervisningsdesign av lärandeobjektet flyta/sjunka där barnen delades in i två olika grupper. Barnen undersökte fenomenet i ett praktiskt experiment genom att använda sig utav genomskinliga petflaskor fyllda med fyra olika innehåll. Tre av barnen fick ett stöttande arbetssätt i ett systematiskt undersökande, medan de andra tre barnen fick utforska fenomenet på egen hand. Det empiriska datamaterialet bestod av videoupptagningar som sammanställdes och analyserades kvalitativt. Det teoretiska ramverket som användes var den sociokulturella teorin, för att tolka hur barnen uttryckte sin förståelse för det fysikaliska fenomenet. Vi utförde en tematisk analys av vår empiri. Resultatet visade att förskollärarnas förhållningssätt under undervisningen hade påverkan på barnens naturvetenskapliga ämneskunskap. Barnen som fick ett stöttande arbetssätt visade sin förståelse för fenomenet genom att uttrycka de naturvetenskapliga begreppen. Barnen som utforskade på egen hand visade att de hade tidigare erfarenheter av fenomenet, men utvecklade ingen ny ämneskunskap. I tillägg visade sig förskollärarnas förhållningssätt även påverka barnens möjligheter att kunna arbeta med systematiska undersökningar, i form av att barnen ställde hypoteser och diskuterade resultatet. / The purpose of the study is to contribute to our knowledge about how a supportive teaching approach helps develop children's scientific understanding and scientific competence during a hands-on activity about floating and sinking. The study involved two-to five-year-old preschool children in an age-mixed preschool in central Sweden. The children were divided into two separate groups. For this study we designed a lesson on the physical phenomenon of floating and sinking that included a hands-on activity. In this activity, children investigated the phenomenon in a practical experiment using transparent pet bottles filled with four different contents. Three of the children had a supportive teaching approach in a systematic investigation, while the other three children were allowed to explore the phenomenon on their own. The empirical data material consisted of video recordings which were analysed qualitatively. The theoretical framework, the sociocultural theory was used to interpret how the children expressed their understanding of the physical phenomenon. We performed a thematic analysis of our empirical data. The results show that the preschool teachers' approach during teaching had an impact on the children's scientific subject knowledge. The children who had a supportive teaching approach showed that they had knowledge about the phenomena by expressing the scientific concepts. The children who investigated on their own showed that they had experience of the phenomena, but they didn’t develop any new knowledge. In addition, the preschool teachers' attitudes also proved to affect the children's opportunities to work with systematic investigations, by using hypotheses and discuss the results.

The College of Public Health at East Tennessee State University started a program in 2011 to teach the skills needed to protect and promote health and well-being in resource-limited settings. The need to provide public health services in resource-limited settings exists in both wilderness and isolated settings and when a disaster disrupts basic societal infrastructure. In these settings, lives may depend on the ability to provide water, sanitation, hygiene, shelter, first aid, and other basic services. Over the last decade, the college expanded the program considerably into what is now known as Project EARTH (Employing Available Resources to Transform Health) that now includes several different academic courses as well as programs designed to develop innovative solutions to address the needs of people in resource-limited settings. Working in a resource-limited setting requires effectively utilizing locally available resources to improve and protect people's health and well-being. Project EARTH focuses on teaching students to design and create specific products for these situations while progressively honing those cross-cutting skills necessary to work effectively in these settings-notably teamwork, creativity, and resilience. To this end, Project EARTH implements a sequential learning process that includes significant hands-on training and simulated experiences with debriefing opportunities at the end of each activity. Project EARTH may serve as a useful model for others considering a similar training program.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSes) form the core of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and critical infrastructures. These systems use computers to control and monitor physical processes in many critical industries including aviation, industrial automation, transportation, communications, waste treatment, and power systems. Increasingly, these systems are connected with corporate networks and the Internet, making them susceptible to risks similar to traditional computing systems experiencing cyber-attacks on a conventional IT network. Furthermore, recent attacks like the Stuxnet worm have demonstrated the weaknesses of CPS security, which has gained much attention in the research community to develop more effective security mechanisms. While this remains an important topic of research, often CPS security is not given much attention in undergraduate programs. There can be a significant disconnect between control system engineers with CPS engineering skills and network engineers with an IT background. This thesis describes hands-on courseware to help students bridge this gap. This courseware incorporates cyber-physical security concepts into effective learning modules that highlight real-world technical issues. A modular learning approach helps students understand CPS architectures and their vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks via experiential learning, and acquire practical skills through actively participating in the hands-on exercises. The ultimate goal of these lab modules is to show how an adversary would break into a conventional CPS system by exploiting various network protocols and security measures implemented in the system. A mock testbed environment is created using commercial-off-the-shelf hardware to address the unique aspects of a CPS, and serve as a cybersecurity trainer for students from control system or IT backgrounds. The modular nature of this courseware, which uses an economical and easily replicable hardware testbed, make this experience uniquely available as an adjunct to a conventional embedded system, control system design, or cybersecurity courses. To assess the impact of this courseware, an evaluation survey is developed to measure the understanding of the unique aspects of CPS security addressed. These modules leverage the existing academic subjects, help students understand the sequence of steps taken by adversaries, and serve to bridge theory and practice. / Master of Science

Résumé: Le rapport entre la morale et la politique est un des plus vieux problèmes et des plus durables que s’est posé la philosophie morale, la philosophie politique, et plus récemment la philosophie du droit. Pour certains, la Morale, au sens large, doit guider les actions humaines dans toutes les sphères d’activité et les individus devraient ainsi, au mieux de leur capacité, chercher à se conformer à ses exigences. Dans ce cas, il ne peut y avoir de dilemme moral entre les exigences normatives issues de l’univers politique et les exigences, prétendument universelles, de la Morale. En contrepartie, d’autres suggèrent que l’on peut être justifié d’enfreindre, à certains moments, les exigences que l’on considère comme morales dans la vie « ordinaire » étant donné le caractère adversatif de la politique. Le dilemme se présente, ainsi, comme une tension entre deux normativités qui suggèrent une distinction entre ce qui relève du public et ce qui relève du privé. C’est en voulant répondre à ce dernier problème que s’est développé une littérature qui porte au cœur de sa conception le problème de la justification morale d’une action politique qui est moralement condamnable. Dans son ensemble, ce mémoire s’intéresse à analyser comment la littérature portant sur le problème des mains sales traite la question du couple conceptuel public – privé. Nous soutenons, qu’en retenant la possibilité d’une réelle distinction entre ces deux univers à normativités différentes, l’hypothèse qu’il y a effectivement une tension entre le domaine privé et le domaine public, qui ne peut totalement se soumettre aux exigences de la morale étant donné les particularités de l’action politique. Ceci étant dit, nous désirons nuancer une telle prise de position qui fait écho aux écrits de Machiavel. Ainsi, nous soutiendrons que cette distance entre le public et le privé est bien réelle, cependant, elle ne se présente pas aussi radicalement. Plutôt, elle se présente comme une distinction qui est liée à l’enjeu de l’évaluation, du jugement moral, faite par les individus qui sont hors de la politique et de ceux étant à l’intérieur de la politique. / Abstract: The relationship between Morality and the political reflection is one of the oldest problems and of the most long-lasting that arose in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and more recently in philosophy of law. For some, Morality, in its broader sense, has to guide human actions in all the spheres of activity and individuals should so, at the best of their capacities, try to conform to its requirements. Which amount to say that it cannot have a moral dilemma between the normative requirements from the political realm and the requirements, supposedly universal, of Morality. In return, others suggest that it can be justified to violate requirements which we consider, in « ordinary life », as moral, given that the purpose of the so immoral, political, action is exactly the preservation and the development of morality. Here, the dilemma appears as a tension between two normativities who suggest a distinction between what is a matter of the public and what is a private matter. In the attempt to address this problem a vast literature has developed and it carries at the heart of its conception a debate which seems difficult to solve: the problem of the moral justification of a political action which is morally reprehensible. In overall, this master thesis is interested to analyze how the literature, concerning the « problem of dirty hands », handle the question of the abstract couple « public and private ». We support, by retaining the possibility of a real distinction between these two normative realms, the hypothesis that there is an actual tension between the private domain and the public domain, which cannot totally submit itself to the requirements of the morality, given the peculiarities of the political actions. Having said that, we wish to temper such a stand, which echoes Machiavelli’s papers. We shall argue that this tension between the public and the private is real; however, it does not appear so radically. Rather, it appears as a distinction which bound to the stake of the evaluative approach, in the moral judgement, between individuals who are outside the realm of politics and those being inside its realm.

This thesis reports a qualitative study of the use of multimodal technologies in museums— specifically, it examines the relationship between visitor engagement and learning, focusing on the use of multimodal technologies during school trips. The study was conducted in the Natural History Museum and the Churchill Museum, both in London, with participants from several secondary schools. These sites were chosen due to their concern for the added value of learning and public engagement, including their education-orientated investments in technology, museum activities, and architecture. In the course of data collection, visits were made to six schools and both museum sites; the participants included 117 students, 18 teachers, three museum educators, and eight museum curators and media designers. The study used a combination of video data analysis, stimulated recall interviews, document analysis, and engaging students in talk and reflection about their visit both at the museum and afterwards. The qualitative approach and multimodal analysis identify how the students’ social interactions help them construct learning through decontextualised bodily movements, which trigger contextualised discussion. The study demonstrates how multimodal analysis can be used in research to capture a wide scope of information, while maintaining a micro-level of analysis and understanding—here, capturing the detail of students’ interactions and perceptions. The findings suggest that the learning experience in museums is produced through multiple layers of interaction and through the exchange of physical and psychological behaviour among people, resources, and space. Here, the multimodal technologies with which the students engaged essentially acted as initial platforms for sensory stimuli and social interaction, supporting their peer communication and motivating them to further explore both the given topic and their own understanding of their learning methods. It was the students’ further conversation, observation, and participation, however, that created a more meaningful and entertaining learning experience in the museums.