In a time when a host of new and untested democracies seek membership in international organisations founded on liberal norms, the question of how to include new members without jeopardizing community values has become of growing concern, particularly as the regulation of practices in sovereign states often relies on soft moral or political commitment rather than on hard legal obligation. The Council of Europe’s (CoE) monitoring of new members after entry represents a soft method of socialising newcomers. In the case of Ukraine, this process has been unusually difficult, and full of strife and open confrontation. This experience runs contrary to the belief that soft regulation is either harmonic or impossible. The aim of the thesis is to explore how a regulated process of inclusion develops over time, and to discuss how such a process can safeguard community values. The study shows that an interactive dynamic developed between the European and the Ukrainian levels. The political struggle in Ukraine was, through the actions of the political opposition in Ukraine and the CoE’s monitors, transformed into a contest in the CoE over how to interpret Ukraine’s membership promises. European values were protected by the evolution of a mode of governance based on responsiveness to local concerns and on public discussion. In the process, the legal and political systems of the CoE and Ukraine were intertwined in ever more complex webs of dialogue. By being grounded in both the Ukrainian and European political discourses, the process was able to sustain a critical discussion on the terms of the agreement and maintain its relevance for the actors involved. The monitoring process displays how community values and autonomy of a member state can be combined in an unexpected way without resulting in a hierarchical order. This may not fulfil the requirements of the international rule of law, but it is clearly a case of soft and responsive transnational regulation of state practices.

La tesi si occupa dell'educazione alla pace in prospettiva storica a partire dal Novecento, per cogliere come sia stata influenzata dai mutamenti culturali, sociali e antropologici di questo secolo. Si prende, poi, in considerazione lo scenario instauratosi con la guerra fredda e la minaccia nucleare, che pone l'uomo, per la prima volta, di fronte ad una prospettiva pantoclastica. La fine della guerra fredda, il postcolonialismo e nuove tipologie di conflitti permettono di cogliere le sfide che la globalizzazione pone al problema della pace. Si giunge a riflettere su come la riflessione pedagogica abbia fatto propri tali cambiamenti, per poi formulare itinerari educativi non anacronistici, ma capaci di aiutare a convivere con la complessità del reale, utilizzandola in maniera proattiva. Si conclude con un'analisi delle strategie concrete: conflict resolution e pratiche di memoria e riconciliazione. / Peace Education has been analyzed with an historical perspective since the twentieth century, in order to understand how it is affected by cultural, social and anthropological changes. Cold war scenery and nuclear threat are analyzed as specific situations that cause humanity to face a pantoclastic perspective for the first time. The end of the cold war, post-colonialism and new kinds of conflict allow globalization challenges to peace to be taken. The way pedagogical reflection has interiorized these changes is thus analyzed in order to propose non anachronistic educational programs that enable people to cohabit with contemporary complexity, using it in a proactive way. Analysis about practical strategies such as conflict resolution, memory and reconciliation conclude the research.

Context: In recent years, more and more people have started showing an increasing interest in distance or web-based education. Some of the reasons for this are the improvement in information and communication technology, as well as advancement in computer networking infrastructures. However, although computer technology has played an important role for the development of distance learning management systems, the underlying goal of such systems is the delivery of competitive and qualitative education via the distance learning environment. There have been a number of research studies and investigations in the field of Computer supported collaborative learning. This particular study is focused on the challenges associated with task execution in a distance learning environment as perceived by graduate students at a university. Objectives: The main focus or rationale behind this study is to investigate the importance of computer mediated communication tools in a virtual learning environment, as well as the problems facing the teachers or facilitators in their attempt to help learners (students) in the process of task execution, and towards achieving the learning goals in a web-based learning system. Methods: The author has adopted a qualitative case study approach. Questionnaires were sent out to some of the graduate students of BTH that participated in the online course under investigation, “Work integrated e-learning”, and some of these students were interviewed as well. Interviews were also conducted with two professors of Informatics and active researchers in distributed or e-learning in a University in Sweden that has had many years of experience in providing distance learning education. The empirical material was then analyzed, using cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as a theoretical framework Results: The results indicate that more communication and collaborative interaction is needed in the context of the studied e-learning management system. The students expected the provision of more video communication through the learning platform. Furthermore, the results show that the learning in the studied web-based environment is centered on the students.  Conclusions: The author concludes that in order to diminish the gap that exists between face-to-face learning/teaching and an e-learning environment, there is a need for the designers and facilitators of the e-learning management system to make this platform more interactive. Additionally, the author concludes that the concept of Open start free pace (OSFP) or strict deadlines may need to be introduced into distance learning education in order to solve the challenges facing the teachers and facilitators.

Développer la capacité de régulation de l'allure est un enjeu important en Education Physique et Sportive (EPS), notamment dans un objectif d'autonomie et de santé. Peu d'études s'attachent pourtant à proposer des méthodes pour y parvenir. Les différentes travaux de cette thèse ont pour objectifs de mieux comprendre les fondements des capacités de régulation émotionnelle et de l'allure, de proposer une méthode visant à leur acquisition et un outil d'estimation du niveau de motivation. En plus de la perception de l'effort (RPE) et du plaisir (P), nous avons testé l'évolution de l'envie de continuer (EDC) et d'arrêter l'exercice (EDA) dans différentes conditions expérimentales lors de courses intermittentes de 3 à 15 minutes autorégulées et semi-contrôlées chez des étudiants et des lycéens. Une performance maximale était demandée pour chaque test. Les résultats de nos études montrent que l'utilisation de ces paramètres présente un intérêt en EPS. Les élèves font varier leur réserve émotionnelle d'un niveau élevé vers un niveau faible du début à la fin des différentes courses mais conservent un niveau de réserve trop important pour la réalisation d'une performance maximale car ils privilégient le but de maîtrise prioritairement au but de performance. De façon illogique, les élèves s'investissent plus pour les durées de courses élevées du fait d'une discordance entre la représentation des capacités et celle de la tâche. De ce fait, un travail visant à optimiser le niveau d'investissement est à privilégier chez les élèves en EPS. Ainsi, le fait d'imposer une perception de l'effort durant les courses semi-contrôlées au moins égale au niveau moyen consenti lors des tests autorégulés de durées équivalentes suffit pour améliorer la performance (+14,2% et + 14,5% pour les courses de 3 et 6 minutes respectivement). La consigne consistant à imposer une RPE minimale correspondant à 120% de la RPE moyenne observée lors des courses autorégulées semble être le compromis idéal durant des courses intermittentes de 3 et 6 minutes (+ 18,4% et 18,5% pour les courses de 3 et 6 minutes respectivement). Ces améliorations obtenues en une seule séance sont bien supérieures à celles espérées durant un cycle entier d'EPS consacré au développement des ressources physiologiques. La détermination du rapport entre l'envie de continuer et le niveau de perception de l'effort constitue une bonne estimation du niveau de motivation à poursuivre l'exercice fatiguant. / Pacing strategy is of great importance for physical education, especially for health and autonomy. Rather, few studies have attempted to propose metbods to develop this capacity . The aims of this thesis were to better understand pacing strategy and emotional regulation, to develop novel methods to improve it and to estimatc the level of motivation. Rating of perceived exertion (R.PE), but also pleasure, the desire to stop and the desire to continue the exercise were used in different self-paced and semi-controlled 3 to 15 min runs. Secondary students bave to reach maximal performance for each test. Results showed that the use of these novel emotional parameters was of importance in physical educarion. The strategy which correspond to the evolution of emotional reserve between high to low level with time have been used by school participants even if emotional reserve is still conserve at the end of exercise in all conditions. Wbat is surprising is that the investment is more important for long than during short duration exercises. Optimal strategics for short runs have been developed in school participants. Performance was improved when a minimal RPE was imposed (+14.2% and + 14,5% for 3 and 6 minute runs: RPE ≥ average value of the self-paccd run). 120% of the average RPE of the self-pace run seems to be the optimal during 3 and 6 min runs (+18,4% and 18,5% for 3 and 6 min runs). These improvements, obtained after only 1 session, are more important than what could be hoped when training consists in developing physiological adaptations. The determination of the ratio between the desire 10 continue and R PF. seems to be a good estimation of the level of intensity during exercise

The thesis describes the design of scheme for access system with user authentication via smart cards. The first chapter explains various types of identification items used for authentication of users and different types of readers and terminals, followed by chapter 2 with a deeper insight on smart cards with focus on their types, what internal structure and principle of communication with card readers are used, etc. with primary focus on Java cards. The third chapter describes Java Card cryptography - especially elliptic curve cryptography used on this platform. The fourth part focuses on PACE protocol with subsections dedicated to the individual parts of the protocol and its applicability to smart cards environment. Chapter 5 explains the proposed design of the authentication scheme elaborated in the thesis, including a detailed description of specific parts, their funcionality and exemplary usage in the created applications.

The Diploma thesis is focused on reballing of BGA packages with the device PACE TF 2700. It describes the general types of BGA packages, their defects, importance of thermal management to the solder techniques, where it is also talked about the meaning of solders and fluxes for the joint. The work informs about the most common methods of reballing, the proper handling of components and the current situation with BGA stencils on the market. It briefly describes the device operation of PACE TF 2700, that is working on the convection and IR principle of heating components. It deals with the manufacturing of the template, dummy BGA packages, the test plates, creation of the thermo profile, comparing and examining the defects and their causes, which had the most significant impact on the results. The achievements would serve for comparing them with the results of the future laboratory exercises or as a subject for further works.

Building complex games like Grand Strategy Games for both PC and console is a costly endeavour. Normally, two different platforms imply two different User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) designs, even though it is the same game. If the game’s UI could have similar designs for both platforms, this costly obstacle could be overcome. This study aimed to take the first steps to look at “one UI to rule them all”. Due to the lack of existing research on this topic, this study had to begin from scratch. This led to a focus on existing strategy games on consoles, and an evaluation of the User Experience (UX) of these games. Considering the lack of Grand Strategy Games on consoles, eleven existing strategy games on console similar to Grand Strategy Games were chosen to be investigated further with the aim to find possible best practices and/or the most important aspects of the player’s experience in these games. Through discussion with game industry experts (experienced and senior UX designers), the UI and UX of strategy games on console were broken down and grouped as specific game interactions, with emphasis on the similarity to Grand Strategy Games. By using the defined game interactions, a quantitative survey was carried out to pinpoint the game interactions with the biggest impact on the player’s experience. The analysis of the results from the 864 respondents in the quantitative survey showed the importance of console first. It could be determined by looking at how well the only console first game of the survey did. Halo Wars 2 had the overall best-perceived experience in five out of the eight defined game interactions. Yet the participants preferred playing Halo Wars 2 on PC to an equal extent as they preferred to play it on consoles, concluding that console first seems to be the design approach to use when a game studio wants to ship a game simultaneously to both PC and consoles since it gives the overall best player experience. Furthermore, the pace, meaning the speed with which the player can execute specific in-game actions and reach their goals, was found to be a major factor in the player’s experience of the chosen strategy games on console. This led to a further developed definition of the pace through discussion and workshops with industry experts. Research then continued with remote and unmoderated playtests (qualitative usability testing) of two of the chosen games being most similar to Grand Strategy Games; Stellaris and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. These playtests aimed to find what are the most important aspects of the pace and how the pace affects the player's experience. When the participants were asked to rank what they thought has the biggest impact on the pace in the game, game mechanical aspects were ranked higher than UI and UX aspects of the pace. This shows the game mechanics to be more important than the UI and UX aspects of the pace when designing the pace in a game like Stellaris and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.

Animal behaviour is a state variable of the individual that deserves special attention given its determinant role in eco-evolutionary processes (Wolf et al. 2007 in Nature). The decomposition of the behavioural variation in between- and within-individual variability has revealed the existence of consistent between-individual differences referred to as personality or behavioural types (Dall et al. 2004 in Ecology Letters). Five axes of personality are usually recognized (exploration, aggressiveness, activity, sociability and boldness), and individual specificities along them tend to be correlated leading to what is known as behavioural syndromes. Recently, these patterns of covariation have been enlarged to accommodate movement behaviour within a personality-dependent spatial ecology theory (Spiegel et al. 2017 in Ecology Letters). Most animals tend to forage, reproduce and develop any activity within specific bounded space, which leads to the formation of home range (HR) areas (i.e., HR behaviour, Börger et al. 2008 in Ecology Letters). The increasing development of animal tracking technology is providing a huge amount of movement data revealing that HR behaviour is widespread among taxa and shows a large consistent variability, both at within- and between-individual level, which allows to define the existence of well-contrasted spatial behavioural types (SBTs). SBTs, as other personality traits, play an important role in selective processes as those impelled by harvesting activities. The Pace-of-Life-Syndrome (POLS) theory (Réale et al. 2010 in Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci), hypothesises on how personality traits are expected to be correlated with life history (LH) traits along the fast-slow continuum (Stearns 1992 in Oxford Univ. Press) in the broadest sense. Accordingly, patterns of covariation between specific SBTs, physiology-related features and LHs would be expected to exist whenever they maximize the animal performance in a given environment. However, the way in which behavioural variation at the within-species level is translated to the wide range of LH traits remains a fundamental yet unresolved question, mainly due to the lack of a proper theoretical framework (Mathot & Frankenhuis, March 2018 in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology). Thus, unrevealing the mechanisms behind is certainly scientifically very exciting but also socially relevant. In such a context, this PhD thesis aimed to address from conceptual, empirical and theoretical perspectives cornerstone questions in behavioural ecology: what are the feasible mechanisms underpinning the establishment of HR areas and within-species variation, what are their consequences for animal functioning and performance (i.e., in. LH traits) at the individual and eco-evolutionary levels, or what are the implications for the assessment and conservation of wildlife of the existence of SBTs. The PhD thesis focusses in a fish heavily exploited by recreational fishers but it aims to provide general reasoning applicable to a wide range of wild animals. First, the PhD thesis proposes a mechanistic theory of personality-dependent movement behaviour based on dynamic energy budget models (i.e., a behavioural-bioenergetics theoretical model). Second, integrated in the field of animal personality (i.e., decomposition of behavioural variability into within- and between-individual’s components), it addresses empirically the study of behavioural variability in the main axis of personality for a marine fish species and looked for evidences of whether personality-mediated differences in energy acquisition may exist. Aiming to support empirically the possible connections between personality traits and space-use behaviour, the thesis provides some insights on the application of a novel-tracking algorithm to analyse the movement of individual fish submitted to different experimental conditions. Third, it provides two examples of how applying HR-related theoretical concepts may improve the management of natural resources: attending the properties of HR may facilitate the assessment of wildlife using fixed monitoring sampling stations, and considering SBTs may influence the assessment of the status of wild fish stocks. Finally, the adaptive value of the proposed behavioural-bioenergetics theory is explored by means of dynamic optimization to understand the eco-evolutionary consequences related with HR variability. In summary, this PhD thesis makes an important contribution to behavioural ecology by developing a unifying theory to test the generality and adaptive value of POLS based on dynamic energy budgets. This behavioural-bioenergetics model connects (1) personality traits (2) HR behaviour, (3) physiology and (4) LH traits through an interwoven of mass/energy fluxes, within which they interact and feedback with the ecological context. Overall, from an eco-evolutionary perspective, the proposed framework constitutes a powerful tool for exploring the ecological role of HR behaviour and predicting what combination of behavioural traits would be evolutionally favoured in a given ecological context. Moving forward to including managerial scenarios, this unifying theory provides scientifically founded knowledge that would promote to improve natural resource management by attending the behavioural component of animal populations.

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From a big picture perspective, investing in energy efficiency in the existing stock of residential buildings in the United States brings unquestioned economic, employment and environmental benefits. The aggregation of energy and dollar savings from millions of small improvements in efficiency adds up to enormous regional and national savings. By employing cost-effective investments in building efficiency, we could reduce the cumulative energy use of America's housing stock by twenty-eight percent, save Americans $41 billion annually, abate 360 megatons of CO-2 (Choi Granade, et.al., 2009), and meet fifty percent or more of the expected electric load growth by 2025 (EPA, 2008). In Virginia alone investing in the efficiency of our existing stock of buildings could save the commonwealth's residents $2.2 billion annually by 2025 (ACEEE, 2008). But from the perspective of the individual property owner the potential benefits of investing in energy efficiency, although just as real, are either less obvious or have impediments to their attainment. Understanding and overcoming these micro-impediments to energy investing is essential to realizing the macro-benefits of energy efficiency. Consequently, any successful local energy program must tailor its efforts to address the barriers to investing in efficiency at the level of the individual consumer. This thesis, through an analysis of existing and emerging residential energy programs, along with a review of the behavioral and economic literature on the subject, aims to point out the micro-impediments to achieving macro-reductions in energy use. Becoming familiar with these obstructions on the level of the individual consumer is the first necessary step in producing model guidelines for a successful whole house local energy efficiency program. Although the basic tenets of these guidelines could be used as the basis for any locally organized energy program in the U.S., they are specifically tailored in this thesis for the Commonwealth of Virginia. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning