Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

<p> </p><p>This study is an analysis of the traffic situation for pedestrians and bicyclist, unprotected road users, in Accra’s Central Business District. A Swedish method, Calm streets, is used to identify conflicts in the mixed traffic situation. The findings reveal a large amount of conflicts between unprotected road users and motor vehicles. These conflicts cause congestions which have negative implications on the environment, health and economy.</p><p>In addition an assessment of the quality of and access to pedestrian and bicycle facilities were conducted. This assessment indicates that the quality and access to the facilities are in general low, especially for the disabled, elderly and children. A larger Traffic Network Analysis and a Cost Benefit Analysis are needed to address these problems for stakeholders and decision makers.</p><p> </p>

Στη συγκεκριμένη Διπλωματική εργασία μελετώνται μέθοδοι κατασκευής συστήματος αναγνώρισης κακόβουλων - spammer χρηστών στο Διαδίκτυο. Συγκεκριμένα, επικεντρωνόμαστε στα Συστήματα Κοινωνικής Σελιδοσήμανσης, που αποτελούν έναν από τους βασικότερους τομείς σήμερα στο Διαδίκτυο. Οι μέθοδοι που χρησιμοποιούνται βασίζονται στο επιστημονικό πεδίο της Μηχανικής Μάθησης. Δοσμένου ενός πραγματικού συνόλου δεδομένων που περιγράφει έναν από τους πιο δημοφιλής Ιστότοπους Κοινωνικής Σελιδοσήμανσης, τον BibSonomy, εξάγονται χαρακτηριστικά σημασιολογικής φύσεως και εισάγονται σε ταξινομητές ώστε να διερευνηθεί η απόδοσή τους και να ευρεθούν οι βέλτιστες ρυθμίσεις τους στη διαδικασία ταυτοποίησης spammer και νόμιμων χρηστών. / In this Thesis are studied methods of designing a system that identifies malicious – spammer users on the Internet. In particular, we focus on Social Bookmarking Systems, which form one of the key areas on the Internet today. Methods are based on the scientific field of Machine Learning. Given a real dataset that describes one of the most popular Social Bookmarking website, BibSonomy, semantic features are extracted and introduced at classifiers in order to investigate the performance and determine the best settings in the process of identifying spammer and legitimate users.

Ζούμε μία εποχή τεχνολογικών εξελίξεων και τεχνολογικών αλμάτων με το Διαδίκτυο να γίνεται ένας από τους βασικότερους εκφραστές των νέων τεχνολογικών τάσεων. Ωστόσο, ο τρόπος λειτουργίας του και δόμησής του παρουσιάζει εξαιρετικά μεγάλη ανομοιογένεια με αποτέλεσμα οι χρήστες να βρίσκονται συχνά μπροστά από αδιέξοδο στην προσπάθεια αναζήτησης πληροφορίας. Άλλωστε η ύπαρξη εκατομμυρίων domains οδηγεί σε δυσκολίες κατά την αναζήτηση πληροφορίας. Η έρευνα που πραγματοποιείται επικεντρώνεται στους δικτυακούς τόπους που αποτελούν πηγές ενημέρωσης και πιο συγκεκριμένα στα ειδησεογραφικά πρακτορεία ειδήσεων, αλλά και στα blogs. Μία απλή αναζήτηση αποκάλυψε περισσότερους από 40 δικτυακούς τόπους από μεγάλα ειδησεογραφικά πρακτορεία στην Αμερική. Αυτό σημαίνει πως στην προσπάθεια αναζήτησης μίας είδησης και δη, όλων των πτυχών της, κάποιος θα πρέπει να επισκεφθεί αν όχι όλους, τους περισσότερους από αυτούς τους δικτυακούς τόπους για να εντοπίσει στοιχεία για το θέμα που τον ενδιαφέρει. Σε αυτό το «πρόβλημα» ή έστω σε αυτή την επίπονη διαδικασία, έχει γίνει προσπάθεια να δοθούν λύσεις μέσα από τη χρήση των καναλιών επικοινωνίας RSS και μέσα από προσωποποιημένους δικτυακούς τόπους που διαθέτουν τα μεγάλα ειδησεογραφικά πρακτορεία ή ακόμα και από τους μηχανισμούς αναζήτησης που αυτοί διαθέτουν. Σε κάθε περίπτωση όμως, υπάρχουν σημαντικά μειονεκτήματα που συχνά οδηγούν και πάλι το χρήστη σε αδιέξοδο. Τα κανάλια επικοινωνίας δε φιλτράρουν πληροφορίες, τροφοδοτώντας τους RSS readers των χρηστών με πληθώρα πληροφοριών που δεν αφορούν τους χρήστες ή ακόμα είναι ενοχλητικές για αυτούς. Για παράδειγμα η προσθήκη δύο (2) μόνον καναλιών από Ελληνικά μεγάλα ειδησεογραφικά portals μας οδήγησε στη λήψη περισσότερων από 1000 ειδήσεων καθημερινά. Από την άλλη, η χρήση των microsites που έχουν οι δικτυακοί τόποι επιβάλει στους χρήστες την επίσκεψη σε όλους τους δικτυακούς τόπους που τους ενδιαφέρουν. Όσον αφορά στη χρήση των μηχανών αναζήτησης, ακόμα και οι πιο μεγάλες από αυτές συχνά επιστρέφουν εκατομμύρια αποτελέσματα στα ερωτήματα των χρηστών ή πληροφορίες που δεν είναι επικαιροποιημένες. Τέλος, επειδή οι δικτυακοί τόποι των ειδησεογραφικών πρακτορείων δεν έχουν κατασκευαστεί για να προσφέρουν εκτενείς υπηρεσίες αναζήτησης ειδήσεων, είναι συχνό το φαινόμενο είτε να μην προσφέρουν καθόλου υπηρεσία αναζήτησης, είτε η υπηρεσία που προσφέρουν να μη μπορεί να απαντήσει με δομημένα αποτελέσματα και αντί να βοηθά τους χρήστες να εντοπίσουν την πληροφορία που αναζητούν, να τους αποπροσανατολίζει. / We live an era of technology advances and huge technological steps where the Internet becomes a basic place of demonstration of the technology trends. Nevertheless, the way of operation and construction of the WWW is extremely uneven and this results in dead-ends when the users are trying to locate information. Besides the existence of billions of domains leads to difficulties in difficulties in recording all this information. The research that we are doing, is focused on websites that are sources of information and specifically news portals and informational blogs. A simple search on the Internet led to more than 40 large scale press agencies in America. This means that when trying to search for information and more specifically a news article in all its existences somebody has to visit all the websites. This problem, or at least this tedious task is of major concern of the research community. Many solutions were proposed in order to overcome the aforementioned issues with usage of RSS feeds or personalized microsites, or even analytical search applications. In any occasion there are many disadvantages that lead the user to a dead-end again. The RSS feeds do not filter information and they feed the user’s RSS readers with large amounts of information that most of it is not of the user’s concern. For example, a simple addition of 2 rss feeds from large Greek portals led to receipt of more that 1000 news articles within a day! On the other side, the usage of microsites that many websites support is a solution if and only if the user visits every single website and of course have and maintain an account to each one of them. The search engines are an alternative but lately, due to the expansion of the WWW, the results to simple queries are often million or the first results retrieved are outdated. Finally, the websites of the major news agencies are not directly constructed to offer extensive searching facilities and thus they usually offer search results through support of a large well-known search engine (eg. Google). According to the aforementioned the research that we are conducting is furthermore focused on the study of techniques and mechanisms that try to give a solution to the everyday issue of being informed about news and having a spherical opinion about an issue. The idea is simple and lies on the problem of the Internet: instead of letting the user do all the search of the news and information that meet their needs we collect all the informationand present them directly to the user, presenting only the information that meet their profile. This sounds pretty simple and logical, but the implementation we have to think of a number of prerequisites. The constraints are: the users of the Internet speak different languages and they want to see the news in their mother language and the users want access to the information from everywhere. This implies that we need a mechanism that would collect news articles from many – if not all – news agencies worldwide so that everybody can be informed. The news articles that we collect should be furthermore analyzed before presented to the users. In parallel we need to apply text pre-processing techniques, categorization and automatic summarization so that the news articles can be presented back to the user in a personalized manner. Finally, the mechanism is able to construct and maintain a user profile and present only articles that meet the profile of the user and not all the articles collected by the system. As it is obvious this is not a simple procedure. Substantially it a multilevel modular mechanism that implements and uses advanced algorithm on every level in order to achieve the required result. We are referring to eight different mechanisms that lead to the desired result. The systems are: 1. Retrieve news and articles from the Internet –advaRSS system 2. HTML page analysis and useful text extraction – CUTER system. 3. Preprocess and Natural Language Processing in order to extract keywords. 4. Categorization subsystem in order to construct ontologies that assigns texts to categories 5. Article Grouping mechanism (web application level) 6. Automatic Text Summarization 7. Web based User Personalization Mechanism 8. Application based User Personalization Mechanism The subsystems and system architecture is presented in figure 1: The procedure of fetching articles and news from the WWW is a procedure that includes algorithms that fetch data of the large database that is called internet. In this research we have included algorithms for instant retrieval of articles and the mechanism has furthermore mechanism for fetching HTML pages that include news articles. As a next step and provided that we own HTML pages with articles we have procedures for efficient useful text extraction. The HTML pages include the body of the article and information that are disrelated to the article like advertisements. Our mechanism introduces algorithms and systems for extraction of the original body of the text out of the aforementioned pages and omitting any irrelevant information. As a furthermore procedure of the same mechanism we try and extract multimedia related to the article. The aforementioned mechanism are communicating directly with the Internet.

Η διατριβή αυτή αποτελείται από τέσσερα κεφάλαια. Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο, δίνεται ο ορισμός της αργκό και η ιστορία της, στοιχεία που διαμορφώνουν την επικοινωνιακή της διάσταση καθώς και τα χαρακτηριστικά της, τα οποία εμφανίζονται σε όλα τα είδη αργκό, και που παραθέτω στη συνέχεια, αναλύοντάς τα καθένα διεξοδικά. Στη συνέχεια του ίδιου κεφαλαίου, μελετώ το φαινόμενο του δανεισμού καθώς και τους λόγους για τους οποίους οι περισσότερες γλώσσες δανείζονται από την Αγγλική καθιστώντας την τελικά κυρίαρχη γλώσσα. Στο δεύτερο κεφάλαιο, αναλύω τα λεξιλόγια σε μορφολογικό επίπεδο, κάνοντας εκτενή αναφορά σε όλα τα μορφολογικά στοιχεία που αναδύονται μέσα από τη μελέτη των περιθωριακών λεξιλογίων. Στη συνέχεια του κεφαλαίου, ο αναγνώστης εισάγεται στο σημασιολογικό κομμάτι της μελέτης αυτής, ο οποίος αποτελεί ουσιώδη ρόλο στην χρήση της γλώσσας. Στο τρίτο κεφάλαιο, μελετάται η σημασία του πολιτισμού και του ατόμου στη διαμόρφωση των περιθωριακών γλωσσών καθώς αντιβαίνει σε πολλούς κανόνες του επιστητού. Τέλος, στο τέταρτο και τελευταίο κεφάλαιο, παραθέτω τα συμπεράσματά μου, ύστερα από εκτενή μελέτη των στοιχείων που συνέλεξα καθόλη τη διάρκεια συλλογής και έρευνας των λεξιλογίων της αργκό. / This research contains four chapters. In the first chapter slang and its history are defined, as well the elements that form its communicating dimension and features, which are presented in every kind of slang, and I quote them, every single one thoroughly. In the same chapter, I study the borrowing phenomenon as well the reasons why most languages borrow from English language making it master language. In the second chapter, I analyze vocabularies’ form targeting in their elements that come from marginal vocabularies. Later the reader is introduced in the semantic part of this study, which is the main part of the language use. In the third chapter, is studied the meaning of culture and person in the formation of marginal language because it’s against many rules of science and knowledge. Finally, in fourth and last chapter, I make my conclusions, after further study of elements I collected during my research of slang vocabularies.

Στα πλαίσια της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας, ασχολούμαστε με την αυτόματη κατηγοριοποίηση των αποτελεσμάτων των αναζητήσεων στον Παγκόσμιο Ιστό. Αρχικά, ορίζουμε τα χαρακτηριστικά των σελίδων που είναι κατάλληλα για κατηγοριοποίηση με βάση την πρόθεση του χρήστη. Έπειτα, με χρήση μεθόδων μείωσης της διαστατικότητας επιλέγουμε τα πιο αντιπροσωπευτικά από τα χαρακτηριστικά αυτά και αξιολογούμε την απόδοση διάφορων αλγορίθμων κατηγοριοποίησης. Ακολούθως, επιλέγουμε τον αλγόριθμο κατηγοριοποίησης που βασίζεται στα επιλεγμένα χαρακτηριστικά και επιτυγχάνει την καλύτερη απόδοση. Εφαρμόζοντας τον αλγόριθμο, κατηγοριοποιούμε τα αποτελέσματα των αναζητήσεων στον Παγκόσμιο Ιστό. Τέλος, προτείνουμε μια μέθοδο εξαγωγής όρων από τα κατηγοριοποιημένα αποτελέσματα και επαναδιατύπωσης του ερωτήματος με βάση τον σκοπό αναζήτησης του χρήστη. / In this thesis, we tackle the problem of automatic classification of search results in Web environment. First, we define web pages features that are convenient for classification based on the user’s intent. Next, we use dimensionality reduction techniques to choose the most representative features and we evaluate different classification algorithms. We choose the most efficient classification algorithm based on chosen features and by using it, we classify the results retrieved from web searches. In the end, we propose a method to extract terms from the classified results and to reformulate the query based on user intent.

La mobilité est aujourd’hui au cœur des préoccupations citoyennes et gouvernementales. Une explication possible à cette difficulté à résoudre les problèmes de mobilité est que les besoins réels des usagers des transports ne sont pas (ou sont faiblement) pris en compte dans la conception de nouveaux systèmes de transports. C’est pourquoi la participation des usagers dans des projets de conception se développe depuis quelques décennies. Elle est motivée par l’idée que les usagers ont une meilleure connaissance de leurs propres besoins et peuvent donc contribuer à développer des solutions innovantes. Cependant, il est nécessaire de proposer des outils qui optimisent les contributions des usagers au processus de conception créative et donc, en amont, d’identifier la nature ainsi que les leviers et les freins à la participation des usagers dans ce processus. Dans les trois études que nous avons réalisées, nous observons que les usagers contribuent principalement au processus de co-conception créative en fournissant des informations sur leurs besoins réels et leurs attentes. Mais pour que ces besoins et attentes soient réellement pris en compte, il est nécessaire d’outiller la conception créative en proposant une méthode qui permette de mettre à profit les contributions de chacun et de donner aux usagers un poids décisionnel équivalent à celui des concepteurs. Par ailleurs, le développement de logiciels de réalité virtuelle peut constituer un facilitateur de la co-conception créative, dans la mesure où il stimule la génération d’idées. De plus, la réalité virtuelle permet de créer de nouveaux environnements pouvant développer les capacités des usagers à se projeter dans un futur proche et imaginer des solutions plus créatives. / Mobility is nowadays one of the main concerns of citizens and governments. One possible way to explain these difficulties to solve mobility problems would be that real problems of transportation users would be not (or weakly) accounted in the design of new transportation systems. In this perspective, user participation in design projects is increasingly practiced since a few decades. It is motivated by the idea that users have a better knowledge of their own needs and then may contribute to develop innovative solutions. However it is necessary to propose some tools to optimize the users’ contributions to creative design process, and then necessary to identify the nature as well as the levers and barriers to user participation in this process. In the three studies we conducted, we observe that users mainly contribute to creative co-design process by supplying information about their real needs and expectations. However, in order to really account these needs and expectations, it is necessary to tool up creative design with a method which allows to take advantage of the contributions of each participant and to give users a decision-making power equivalent to that of experts. Furthermore, the development of virtual reality software may constitute a lever for creative co-design, in so far as it stimulates the generation of solutions. Moreover, virtual reality allows creating new environments to develop users’ skills to project themselves in a near future and then imagine more creative solutions.

Internet use is considered a lever for empowering patients, levelling inequalities and reducing healthcare expenditure. However, with digital inclusion, health provision quality and health system efficiency high on the UK and EU policy agendas, we need to better understand the relationship between Internet use and health outcomes to assess potential benefits and adverse effects. This research addresses the question of how Internet use influences individuals' health service use and their perceived health in the context of England. Focusing on health information-seeking, it analyses variations across different kinds of users, mechanisms between Internet use and both health outcomes, and the role of individual and contextual factors in this relationship. To answer this question, this research uses a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data from the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), the English census and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) was connected through spatial microsimulation based on output areas. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, primarily with former OxIS participants from output areas in the quantitative strand. The quantitative data was revisited based on emerging interview themes. The results indicate that Internet use influences perceived health and health service use via various mechanisms based on the Internet's content, mediation and connection affordances. However, the boundaries between users and non-users are blurry and outcomes vary for different types of individuals, classified here as learners, pragmatists, sceptics, worriers, delegators and adigitals. Age, education, socioeconomic status, long-term health conditions, and geographic context influence Internet use and health outcomes separately, while the social context shapes their relationship too. These findings advance the theoretical understanding of Internet-based health outcomes, and provide practical implications for health professionals and policymakers with insights down to the local level. Moreover, this research demonstrates how novel insights for public wellbeing can be derived from qualitatively enriched secondary data in privacy-preserving and cost-effective ways.

This thesis investigated the development of the Global Standard for the Identification of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA Standard), which is a new approach to identifying important sites for biodiversity. Key Biodiversity Areas are defined as sites contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity. The KBA Standard was developed through a global stakeholder engagement process convened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Joint Task Force on Biodiversity and Protected Areas (IUCN Task Force). The engagement process included four main components: (i) technical workshops with subject experts; (ii) interviews and an online questionnaire with end-users; (iii) regional events with additional interested stakeholders; and (iv) an open online consultation where stakeholders were invited to review the draft KBA Standard. The aim of this thesis was to use an action research approach to work with the IUCN Task Force to analyse the end-user component of the global stakeholder engagement process. End-users were defined during the engagement process as those who lead or influence decision-making processes linked to mechanisms that secure biodiversity or that avoid biodiversity loss. The main objectives of this research were to: (i) clarify the purpose of engaging end-users by examining the use of normative, instrumental, and substantive rationales; (ii) use mixed methods to gain an understanding of end-users’ needs and concerns; (iii) categorise and analyse end-users’ needs and concerns by sector and region; (iv) assess the end-user engagement process through a summative evaluation; (v) examine how end-user input was used to inform the development of the KBA Standard; and (vi) develop a set of recommendations related to global end-user engagement practice. The analysis indicated that the IUCN Task Force used a blend of instrumental and substantive rationales to justify engaging end-users. Five main categories of end-user needs and concerns emerged from the analysis of the qualitative interview data: (i) the need for communication and local stakeholder engagement; (ii) the potential for the KBA Standard to either complement or conflict with existing approaches; (iii) the need for clarity regarding the scale at which KBAs can be identified (i.e. global, regional, and/or national); (iv) concerns about the implementation of the KBA Standard, including data availability, timeliness, and resources; and (v) comments about how KBAs inform decision-making, including management options, sustainable use, and prioritisation. These topics were examined in depth through the qualitative interviews and in breadth through the quantitative questionnaire. The results demonstrate a high level of convergence in opinion on many topics; however, four topics resulted in a divergence in opinion between end-users, including: (i) the scale at which KBAs are identified; (ii) the prioritisation of KBAs over other areas; (iii) whether KBA data should be made freely available; and (iv) whether development activities should be permitted in KBAs. These areas of divergence were analysed further by categorising end-user questionnaire responses by sector and region. The results have important implications for how end-users are identified, categorised, and engaged and highlight the complex and individual nature of end-users’ needs and concerns. The summative evaluation analysed the purpose, process, outputs, and outcomes against a typology of engagement and principles of good practice for international standard setting to reflect upon how end-users’ needs and concerns were integrated into the development of the KBA Standard. This indicated both the strengths and weaknesses of the engagement approaches used and informed the development of 11 recommendations to inform future similar processes. This thesis ultimately helps to bridge the gap between stakeholder engagement theory and practice and provides insight into the challenges and benefits of using a mixed methods action research approach to investigate a global stakeholder engagement process.

Aside from drug users who are addicted and sometimes need expert aid, there are also individuals who can prevent the unfavourable consequences of drug use, i.e. the controlled users. These users are concealed and official records about them do not exist. This diploma thesis deals with the controlled users and their social impact. During the recent years researchers focused mainly on the controlled use of hard drugs, such as heroin or cocaine, but there is still only a very few studies dealing with the controlled use of cannabis drugs. In the theoretical part of the work cannabis is characterised from general and botanical point of view and its basic kinds (cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis) and forms (marijuana, bhang, bhang oil) are described. Next chapter is dedicated to a brief history of cannabis drugs in the world. Other discussed topics are cannabis as a remedy as well as health consequences of cannabis drugs use. Next, the most frequent social circumstances which can cause an individual to start taking cannabis drugs are described and a typology of cannabis drugs users is introduced. The last chapter deals with the theoretical models of controlled drug use and the theory of controlled drug use in general. The aim of the work was to find out what relationship the controlled users of cannabis substances have to the respective drug. Two research questions were formulated. The first one is about whether the cannabis drug use caused any significant change in the lives of controlled users or not. The second one's purpose is to find out when it is not suitable for the controlled users of cannabis drugs to use the drug. The research sample consisted of 12 communication partners from Pilsen, seven male and five female, in the age between 21 and 35 years. The communication partners were selected for the research by snowball method. Only those individuals who were over 18 and have at least two year experience with the respective substance were selected for the research to ensure that only controlled users and no experimental users are included. Another condition was at least ten separate experiences with the use of respective drug. Individuals under research must not have suffered any damage from the cannabis drug use and must not have undergone any drug addiction treatment. The communication partners also must not have been legally prosecuted with regard to drugs. The research took place between January and April 2015. The empirical part of the work is based on a qualitative research. Data were collected via narrative interviews. In the course of this type of interview the individual under study is encouraged to narrate freely. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and are enclosed in the attachments section of the work. The data obtained from the interviews were compiled via anchored theory. The first two degrees of coding were employed in the work open coding and axial coding. The work can serve as a practical guide for cannabis drug users to become controlled users of these substances or to achieve total abstinence. It can also be used to provide complex information about the topic to general public.