Alcohol abuse is often considered a young person's rite of passage and part of the maturing process. Indeed, the developmental periods when alcohol misuse and abuse are highest are those of adolescence and early adulthood. The focus for alcohol use research and funding over the years has been with adolescent prevention and intervention. Because of this focus on adolescents, little is being done to explore and to learn more about adult use and adult entry into treatment. Since the average age of the population is increasing, these attitudes toward alcohol use and treatment are no longer valid. Use, misuse, and abuse of alcohol in adulthood, especially that leading to addiction and then treatment, is a problem within the United States (US) that merits careful attention. The purpose of this dissertation research is to investigate specific aspects of entry into alcohol abuse treatment across stages of the life course. The investigation used the sequential life course theory of Levinson as the primary guiding theory and incorporated those aspects of Bronfenbrenner's social ecology theory used by Levinson. Specifically, with a population of approximately 94,000, this research examined the differences among individuals who began alcohol abuse treatment in mid-life and who experienced variations in time duration from the age of first use to the age of first treatment. Additionally, this research evaluated the timing of treatment episodes in light of the transitions within the life course as outlined by Levinson. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Social Work in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester 2003. / Date of Defense: May 14, 2003. / Alcohol, Abuse, Treatment, Across stages of the life / Includes bibliographical references. / C. Aaron McNeece, Professor Directing Dissertation; Rebecca Miles, Outside Committee Member; Dianne F. Harrison, Committee Member.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Jena.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 95).

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral?)--Teologiska fakultet i Upsala, 1904. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-186).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Tartu, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

De nos jours, l’ouverture à la concurrence stimule les fournisseurs de services à être de plus en plus compétitifs et à attirer de plus en plus d’abonnés afin de faire face aux fortes pressions du marché. L’approche user-centric, qui consiste à fournir le plus rapidement possible des services adaptés aux besoins de l’usager, attire de plus en plus d’attention suite à l’émergence de l’environnement ubiquitaire. L’interopérabilité, aussi bien celle entre utilisateur et service que celle entre les services, est favorisée par l’adoption de SOA (architecture orientée service) comme modèle de développement, ainsi que les services Web qui combinent les avantages de ce modèle avec les langages et technologies développés pour Internet.Notamment, la composition dynamique de service Web est considérée comme un atout majeur, qui permet de répondre à des requêtes complexes en combinant les fonctionnalités de plusieurs services au sein d’une session personnalisée. Les services sont divers et variés et des services similaires pourraient être fournis depuis des plateformes hétérogènes. Dans un environnement ubiquitaire, les utilisateurs sont mobiles, cette mobilité se manifeste aussi bien à travers les réseaux empruntés que les terminaux utilisés. Ceci entraine une possible mobilité de services (aussi bien en termes de serveur effectif qu’en termes de services équivalents). C’est dans ce contexte dynamique et ubiquitaire, qui est celui choisi par le projet ANR/UBIS (dont cette thèse est partiellement issue), que nous avons mené nos recherches sur le thème particulier de la médiation de composition dynamique de services web. Plus précisément, nous proposons une approche de médiation qui consiste à recenser puis organiser de divers services concrets (aussi bien SOAP que RESTFul) pour constituer une panoplie des services abstraits d’une part, puis, à partir desquels, à offrir aux usagers les possibilités de réaliser des services personnalisés selon leur besoins (logique métier) par composition dynamiquement de ces services abstraits et de leur association avec le service concret le plus approprié. Nous avons considéré les trois types de composition de services (SOAP/SOAP, SOAP/RESTful, RESTful/RESTful) dans notre médiation. Selon le souhait de l’usager, cette composition (Mashup du coté de médiateur) peut lui être retournée et que l’usager peut invoquer de manière autonome, ou bien le médiateur peut assurer la réalisation du service composé et fournir seulement le résultat final à l’usager. Dans ce dernier cas, les différentes mobilités peuvent être prises en compte par le médiateur, qui s’appuie sur les mécanismes de la communauté virtuelle préconisés par le projet UBIS pour activer les services concrets les plus appropriés correspondant à un service / Nowadays, high market pressure stimulates service providers to be more competitive in order to attract more subscribers. The user-centric approach, which aims to provide adapted services to user’s needs, is attracting a great attention thanks to the emergence of ubiquitous environment. The interoperability, either that between users and services or that among services, is favored by the adoption of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), as a development model as well as the Web services that combine the advantages of this model with the language and development technologies devoted to Internet-based applications. In particular, the dynamic Web service composition is currently the main practice which allows achieving enhanced services, as an answer to increasing complex requests by users for various types of services, by combining functionalities of multiple services within a single and personalized service session. Indeed, already available services are numerous and of various natures, similar services can be provided by heterogeneous platforms. In a ubiquitous environment, users are mobile, either by changing the access network or by changing the terminal, or even both of them. This leads in turn to potential needs on mobility of services, both in terms of the (physical) server and in terms of the (equivalent) services. It is in this dynamic and ubiquitous context that we have conducted our research. In particular, we focused on the particular topic of mediation of dynamic composition of web services. We proposed a mediation approach which consists in identifying and organizing various concrete services (both SOAP and RESTful) to form a set of abstract services, and, from this knowledge base, to provide users the possibility to realize personalized service session according to their needs through dynamic composition of some of the abstract services and their mapping to best suited concrete services. We considered three types of service composition (SOAP/SOAP, SOAP/RESTful, RESTful/RESTful) in our mediation. Depending on the user’s will, this composition (Mashup on the side of the mediator) can be returned to him/her, so that he/she can invoke it autonomously; or the mediator can ensure the realization of the composed services and provide only the final result to the user. In the latter case, the mediator can handle the aforementioned different mobility. This feature is achieved by exploring the mechanism of the virtual community to select the most appropriate concrete service corresponding to the abstract service and maintain the continuity of service while respecting its requested QoS. The virtual community has been developed within the ANR/UBIS project (to which part of this thesis is related).

Service Learning is an instructional approach that has been gaining national attention in the past several years. The concept was supported by John Dewey as early as 1915 but not given serious attention by educational leaders until about 30 years ago. Currently, a growing number of schools across the country are incorporating community service activities into the curriculum. In this study, seven individuals who were enrolled in such a course while in high school were interviewed. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the perceptions and experiences of these former high school students while enrolled in a service learning course coupled with the passage of time to reflect upon the experience. The major research questions were: 1. Does service learning foster in students the perception of a more empathetic nature in their understanding of the recipients of the service work? 2. Are the perceptions of the students as to their desire to perform volunteer work in the future affected by service learning experiences? 3. How do students perceive the usefulness of the service learning curriculum as to linking classroom work with the volunteer experience? Service learning was defined generally as a structured elective course that combines classroom instruction with volunteer service in the community. A qualitative design was chosen for the research as this method allowed for a more in depth description of the main focus of the study--the perceptions of these former students. The findings from this study support the inclusion of service learning courses in high schools; however, there was an overall consensus from the seven participants that work must be done by educators in order to provide more structured and viable curriculums for these courses. The participant responses were generally favorable regarding their actual volunteer experiences, supporting the assertion that volunteer work supported by a well designed service learning course increases a student's ability to feel empathy for others along with the desire to be a lifelong volunteer. / Ed. D.