Organisational excellence stems from the dedicated commitment of peoplewho are motivated to work together and share similar values and visions about their results of their efforts. Organisational communication is linked to managerial effectiveness, the integration of work units across organisational levels and job communication satisfaction. The Department of Social Development can review their levels of communication and the interpersonal relationship in a bid to address their quality of productivity, satisfaction of employees, communication flow, and protocol and to bring changes in the life of the organisation. The success of an organisation is based on the communication levels, flow of information and how people interact. Communication systems within organisations, both human and technological, are responsible for creatively solving increasingly complex problems. The researcher has observed that lack of communication hampers service delivery and production in the Department of Social Development. The study focuses on the perceptions and experiences of employees about the nature of communication at the Department of Social Development in the North RandRegion. A qualitative research approach that was exploratory in nature was followed. The main aim of the study was to determine how the existing communication protocol and communication channels are utilised in the Department of Social Development. Asemi-structured interview schedule and questionnaire were used as research instruments. The methods of data collection were face-toface interviews with 10 participants and questionnaires consisting onlyof open-ended questions that were completed by eight individual respondents. The population for the study was employees of the Department of Social Development in the North Rand Region. The sample represented employees from top management, middle management, line management and junior staff who have been in the employment of the Department of Social Development for more than six months. The study revealed that there is a lack of understanding of relationship roles and that employees communicate without understanding and sometimes they do not seek clarity. All parties involved must be proactive, clear messages should be communicated to all employees, employees have first to seek understanding, allow questions and provide clarity and attempt to understand the relationship role between manager andsubordinate. However, misunderstanding and misinterpretation were identified as major contributing factors to effective communication.

Yuen Ka-nang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-135). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1. --- Background --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2. --- Objectives --- p.1 / Chapter 1.3. --- Overview of Thesis --- p.2 / Chapter 2. --- NETWORK ASPECT OF THE VOIP TECHNOLOGY --- p.3 / Chapter 2.1. --- VoIP Overview --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2. --- Elements in VoIP --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2.1. --- Call Setup --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2.2. --- Media Capture/Playback --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.3. --- Media Encoding/Decoding --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.4. --- Media Transportation --- p.5 / Chapter 2.3. --- Performance Factors Affecting VoIP --- p.6 / Chapter 2.3.1. --- Network Bandwidth --- p.6 / Chapter 2.3.2. --- Latency --- p.6 / Chapter 2.3.3. --- Packet Loss --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3.4. --- Voice Quality --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3.5. --- Quality of Service (QoS) --- p.7 / Chapter 2.4. --- Different Requirements of Intranet VoIP and Internet VoIP --- p.8 / Chapter 2.4.1. --- Packet Loss/Delay/Jitter --- p.8 / Chapter 2.4.2. --- Interoperability --- p.9 / Chapter 2.4.3. --- Available Bandwidth --- p.9 / Chapter 2.4.4. --- Security Requirement --- p.10 / Chapter 2.5. --- Some Feasibility Investigations --- p.10 / Chapter 2.5.1. --- Bandwidth Calculation --- p.10 / Chapter 2.5.2. --- Simulation --- p.12 / Chapter 2.5.3. --- Conclusion --- p.17 / Chapter 2.5.4. --- Simulation Restrictions --- p.17 / Chapter 3. --- SOFTWARE ASPECT OF THE VOIP TECHNOLOGY --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1. --- VoIP Client in JMF --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1.1. --- Architecture --- p.20 / Chapter 3.1.2. --- Incoming Voice Stream Handling --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1.3. --- Outgoing Voice Stream Handling --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1.4. --- Relation between Incoming/Outgoing Voice Stream Handling --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1.5. --- Areas for Further Improvement --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2. --- Capture/Playback Enhanced VoIP Client --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2.1. --- Architecture --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2.2. --- Native Voice Playback Mechanism --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2.3. --- Native Voice Capturing Mechanism --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3. --- Win32 C++ VoIP Client --- p.31 / Chapter 3.3.1. --- Objectives --- p.32 / Chapter 3.3.2. --- Architecture --- p.33 / Chapter 3.3.3. --- Problems and Solutions in Implementation --- p.37 / Chapter 3.4. --- Win32 DirectSound C++ VoIP Client --- p.38 / Chapter 3.4.1. --- Architecture --- p.39 / Chapter 3.4.2. --- DirectSound Voice Playback Mechanism --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4.3. --- DirectSound Voice Capturing Mechanism --- p.44 / Chapter 3.5. --- Testing VoIP Clients --- p.45 / Chapter 3.5.1. --- Setup of Experiment --- p.45 / Chapter 3.5.2. --- Experiment Results --- p.47 / Chapter 3.5.3. --- Experiment Conclusion --- p.48 / Chapter 3.6. --- Real-time Voice Stream Mixing Server --- p.48 / Chapter 3.6.1. --- Structure Overview --- p.48 / Chapter 3.6.2. --- Experiment --- p.53 / Chapter 3.6.3. --- Conclusion --- p.54 / Chapter 4. --- EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES --- p.55 / Chapter 4.1. --- Pure IP-side VoIP-based Call Center ´ؤ VoIP in Education --- p.55 / Chapter 4.1.1. --- Architecture --- p.55 / Chapter 4.1.2. --- Client Structure --- p.56 / Chapter 4.1.3. --- Client Applet User Interface --- p.58 / Chapter 4.1.4. --- Observations --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2. --- A Simple PBX Experiment --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.1. --- Structural Overview --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2.2. --- PSTN Gateway Server Program --- p.64 / Chapter 4.2.3. --- Problems and Solutions in Implementation --- p.66 / Chapter 4.2.4. --- Experiment 1 --- p.66 / Chapter 4.2.5. --- Experiment 2 --- p.68 / Chapter 5. --- A COMPREHENSIVE VOIP PROJECT 一 GRADUATE SECOND PHONE (GSP) --- p.72 / Chapter 5.1. --- Overview --- p.72 / Chapter 5.1.1. --- Background --- p.72 / Chapter 5.1.2. --- Architecture --- p.76 / Chapter 5.1.3. --- Technologies Used --- p.78 / Chapter 5.1.4. --- Major Functions --- p.80 / Chapter 5.2. --- Client --- p.84 / Chapter 5.2.1. --- Structure Overview --- p.85 / Chapter 5.2.2. --- Connection Procedure --- p.89 / Chapter 5.2.3. --- User Interface --- p.91 / Chapter 5.2.4. --- Observations --- p.92 / Chapter 5.3. --- Gateway --- p.94 / Chapter 5.3.1. --- Structure Overview --- p.94 / Chapter 5.3.2. --- Connection Procedure --- p.97 / Chapter 5.3.3. --- Caller ID Simulator --- p.97 / Chapter 5.3.4. --- Observations --- p.98 / Chapter 5.4. --- Server --- p.101 / Chapter 5.4.1. --- Structure Overview --- p.101 / Chapter 5.5. --- Details of Major Functions --- p.103 / Chapter 5.5.1. --- Secure Local Voice Message Box --- p.104 / Chapter 5.5.2. --- Call Distribution --- p.106 / Chapter 5.5.3. --- Call Forward --- p.112 / Chapter 5.5.4. --- Call Transfer --- p.115 / Chapter 5.6. --- Experiments --- p.116 / Chapter 5.6.1. --- Secure Local Voice Message Box --- p.117 / Chapter 5.6.2. --- Call Distribution --- p.118 / Chapter 5.6.3. --- Call Forward --- p.121 / Chapter 5.6.4. --- Call Transfer --- p.122 / Chapter 5.6.5. --- Dial Out --- p.124 / Chapter 5.7. --- Observations --- p.125 / Chapter 5.8. --- Outlook --- p.126 / Chapter 5.9. --- Alternatives --- p.127 / Chapter 5.9.1. --- Netmeeting --- p.127 / Chapter 5.9.2. --- OpenH323 --- p.128 / Chapter 6. --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.129 / Bibliography --- p.133

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009

Diabetes mellitus is a growing healthcare problem in the United States. Diabetes affects 1.4 million Americans yearly, impacting the lives of individuals of all ages. One of the most challenging aspects about diabetes is that many individuals are not aware of the impact of the disease on multiple organs until the progression of the disease has reached latter stages. Prevention and early detection of diabetes is a key component of lifesaving interventions including proper nutrition counseling, exercise regimens, management, and patient compliance with a treatment plan. The purpose of this doctoral project was to create a standardized diabetes management protocol for patients in an inpatient rehabilitation facility. Sources of evidence were obtained from the most current literature, including that published by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). Evidence shows that an interdisciplinary teams approach to diabetes management in the rehabilitation facility contributes to successful patient outcomes. The logic model served as as a framework for program design and was used as a visual representation for all aspects of the program. The quality improvement process was implemented using an interdisciplinary team approach, with each member of the rehabilitation team playing a special part in meeting the educational needs of the diabetic patient and family. Every diabetic patient requires individualized and specific instruction; therefore, staff members must work together in order to evaluate program effectiveness. This project will effect social change by establishing a protocol that equips patients with the knowledge and tools necessary to manage their diabetes when discharged into the community.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Up till now, architects collaborating with other colleagues did so mostly face-to-face (FTF). They had to be in the same space (co-located) at the same time. Communi-cation was ‘spontaneous’ and ideas were represented, whether verbal or non-verbal, by talking and using ‘traditional drawing tools’. If they were geographically displaced, the interaction was then space affected as well as the probability of being time affected. In this case communication was usually mediated through the tele-phone, and graphically represented ideas were sent by Fax or posted documents. Recently, some architectural firms started using modems and Internet connections to exchange information, by transferring CAD drawings as well as design informa-tion, through e-mail and file transfer protocol (FTP). Discussing ideas in architecture, as a more abstract notion, is different from discuss-ing other more concrete arguments using video conferencing. It is more important to ‘see’ what is being discussed at hand than ‘watch’ the other person(s) involved in the discussion. In other words the data being conveyed might be of more impor-tance than the mode of communication. Taking into consideration recent developments in computer and communication technologies this thesis investigates different communication channels utilised in architectural collaboration through Computer Mediated Collaborative Design (CMCD) sessions as opposed to FTF sessions. This thesis investigates the possi-ble effects these different channels have on collaborative design in general and col-laborative design communication in particular. We argue that successful CMCD does not necessarily mean emulating close prox-imity environments. Excluding certain communication channels in a CMCD envi-ronment might affect the flow and quantity of synchronous collaborative communica-tion, but not necessarily the quality and content of mutually communicated and rep-resented design ideas. Therefore different communication channels might affect the type of communication and not necessarily the content of the communication. We propose that audio and video are not essential communication channels in CMCD environments. We posit that architects will collaborate and communicate design representations effectively although with some differences, since those two chan-nels might cause interruptions and successful collaborative sessions can take place without them. For this purpose we conducted twenty-four one-hour experiments involving final year architecture students all working to the same design brief. The experiments were divided into three categories, FTF, full computer mediated collaborative design sessions (CMCD-a; audio-video conferencing plus whiteboard as a shared drawing space) and limited computer mediated collaborative design sessions (CMCD-b; with Lambda MOO used as a chat medium plus whiteboard as a shared drawing space). The experiments were video and audio taped, transcribed and coded into a custom developed coding scheme. The results of the analysed coded data and observations of the videotapes provided evidence that there were noticeable differences between the three categories. There was more design communication and less communication control in the CMCD-b category compared to the FTF and CMCD-a categories. Verbal communi-cation became shorter and straight to the point in CMCD-b as opposed to spontane-ous non-stop chat in the other two categories. Moreover in CMCD-b the subjects were observed to be more reflective as well as choosing and re-examining their words to explain ideas to their partners. At times they were seen scrolling back through the text of the conversation in order to re-analyse or interpret the design ideas at hand. This was impossible in FTF and CMCD-a sessions, since the sub-jects were more spontaneous and audio representations were lost as soon as they were uttered. Also the video channel in the CMCD-a category was ignored and hardly used except for the first few minutes of the experiments, for a brief exchange of light humour on the appearance of each subject. The results obtained from analysing the experiments helped us conclude that differ-ent communication channels produce different collaborative environments. The three categories of communication for architectural collaboration explored in our ex-periments are indicative of the alternatives available to architects now. What is not clear to architects is why they would choose one category over another. We pro-pose that each category has its own strengths and difficulties for architectural col-laboration, and therefore should be selected on the basis of the type of communica-tion considered to be most effective for the stage and tasks of the design project.

Web services are designed for composition and use by third parties through dynamic discovery. As such, the issue of interoperability between services is of great importance to ensure that the services can work together towards the overall application goals. In particular, the interaction protocols of a service need to be implemented and used properly so that the service composition can conduct itself in an orderly fashion. There have been significant research efforts in providing rich descriptions for Web services, which includes their behaviour properties. When describing the interaction process/protocols of a service, most of them adopt a procedural or programming style approach. We argue that this style of description for service interactions is not natural to publishing service behaviour properties from the viewpoint of facilitating third-party service composition and analysis. Especially when dealing with service with diverse behaviour, the limit of these procedural approaches become apparent. In this thesis, we introduce a lightweight, pattern/constraint-based declarative approach that better supports the specification and use of service interaction properties in the service description and composition process. This approach uses patterns to describe the interaction behaviour of a service as a set of constraints. As such, it supports the incremental description of a service's interaction behaviour from the service developer's perspective, and the easy understanding and analysis of the interaction properties from the service user's perspective. It has been incorporated into OWL-S for service developers to describe service interaction constraints. We also present a framework and the related tool support for monitoring and checking the conformance of the service's runtime interactions against its specified interaction properties, to test whether the service is used properly and whether the service fulfils its behavioural obligations. The tool involves interception of service interactions/messages, representation of interaction constraints using finite state automata and finite state machine, and conformance checking of service interactions against interaction constraints. As such, we provide a useful tool for validating the implementation and use of services regarding their interaction behaviour.

Recent advances in wireless sensor networks have led to an emergence of many routing protocols. Limited battery capacity of sensor nodes makes energy efficiency a major and challenge problem in wireless sensor networks. Thus, the routing protocols for wireless sensor networks must be energy efficient in order to maximise the network lifetime. In this thesis, we developed a centralised clustering, energy-efficient routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. Our protocol consists of a cluster head selection algorithm, a cluster formation scheme and a routing algorithm for the data transmission between cluster heads and the base station. The cluster head selection algorithm is performed by the base station using global information of the network. This algorithm aiming at choosing cluster heads that ensure both the intra-cluster data transmission and inter-cluster data transmission are energy-efficient. The cluster formation scheme is accomplished by exchanging messages between non-cluster-head nodes and the cluster head to ensure a balanced energy load among cluster heads. The routing algorithm is based on the optimal transmission range for the data transmission between cluster heads and the base station using multi-hop. The performance of our routing protocol is evaluated by comparing with three existing routing protocols on a simulation platform. The simulation results show that our protocol can achieve better performance in terms of energy efficiency and network lifetime. Because of the centralised algorithm and multi-hop routing, there is a small communication overhead and transmission delay when using our protocol. Since our protocol can save energy and prolong network lifetime, it is well suited for applications where energy and network lifetime are the primary considerations and small overhead and time delay can be tolerated. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1456494 / Thesis (M.Eng.Sc.) - University of Adelaide, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 2009

No description available.

Instant Messaging (IM) has grown rapidly among network users. It has even become a very important tool for the industry around the world. It is used in scheduling meetings, exchanging business information and clients information, and so on. Instant Messaging has been developed by private sectors or providers such as America Online Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN, and Yahoo; however, in 1998 a new protocol has seen the light as an open source Instant Messaging protocol and had the name of Jabber and thanks to Jeremie Miller the founder of the Jabber protocol. The project gathered wide public attention when it was discussed on the popular developer discussion website Slashdot in January 1999. In May 2000, the core Jabber protocols were released as open source reference server and it have not been changed to this day. Jabber uses client-server architecture, not a direct peer-to-peer architecture as some other messaging systems do. It is actually an Extensible Markup Language (XML) messaging protocol. It relies on XML document format in every aspect of the communication. [1] Jabber Protocol have gone a long way to be one of the most attractive protocol because of its open source and extensibility. Anyone can build or extend the jabber protocol functionality without actually modifying the core protocol and still maintain interoperability with other IM clients such as Yahoo and MSN. Moreover, as the usage of Jabber Instant Messaging technology increases, the need for information protection in the Jabber messaging medium also increases. This thesis will explore the Jabber protocol and the ability to secure a Jabber based communication over the network using third party cryptographic libraries. / Graduation date: 2003

Achieving high performance in high capacity data transfers over the Internet has long been a daunting challenge. The current standard of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), TCP Reno, does not scale efficiently to higher bandwidths. Various congestion controllers have been proposed to alleviate this problem. Most of these controllers primarily use marking/loss or/and delay as distinct feedback signals from the network, and employ separate data transfer control strategies that react to either marking/loss or delay. While these controllers have achieved better performance compared to existing TCP standard, they suffer from various shortcomings. Thus, in our previous work, we designed a congestion control scheme that jointly exploits both delay and marking; D+M (Delay Marking) TCP. We demonstrated that D+M TCP can adapt to highly dynamic network conditions and infrastructure using ns-2 simulations. Yet, an analytical explanation of D+M TCP was needed to explain why it works as observed. Furthermore, D+M TCP needed extensive simulations in order to assess its performance, especially in relation to other high-speed protocols. Therefore, we propose a model for D+M TCP based on distributed resource optimization theory. Based on this model, we argue that D+M TCP solves the network resource allocation problem in an optimal manner. Moreover, we analyze the fairness properties of D+M TCP, and its coexistence with different queue management algorithms. Resource optimization interpretation of D+M TCP allows us to derive equilibrium values of steady state of the controller, and we use ns-2 simulations to verify that the protocol indeed attains the analytical equilibria. Furthermore, dynamics of D+M TCP is also explained in a mathematical framework, and we show that D+M TCP achieves analytical predictions. Modeling the dynamics gives insights to the stability and convergence properties of D+M TCP, as we outline in the thesis. Moreover, we demonstrate that D+M TCP is able to achieve excellent performance in a variety of network conditions and infrastructure. D+M TCP achieved performance superior to most of the existing high-speed TCP versions in terms of link utilization, RTT fairness, goodput, and oscillatory behavior, as confirmed by comparative ns-2 simulations.