Dispositivos eletrônicos com características de computadores pessoais, como um alto poder de processamento de dados e armazenamento, estão espalhando-se cada vez mais na vida das pessoas. Variando desde notebooks a PocketPCs e, mais recentemente, telefones celulares com funcionalidades extras, os chamados smart phones, estes dispositivos oferecem recursos antes disponíveis apenas em desktops em praticamente qualquer lugar. Essa tendência em difundir cada vez mais serviços computacionais de forma a integrálos na vida das pessoas deu origem à computação pervasiva. Este ramo da computação almeja integrar os serviços computacionais de forma transparente na vida das pessoas. Um uso interessante desta nova tecnologia ainda relativamente pouco explorado é o entretenimento, mais exatamente jogos pervasivos. A criação deste novo tipo de jogo exige que certos cuidados inerentes ao ambiente pervasivo sejam tomados para aumentar a qualidade dos produtos desenvolvidos e permitir que eles de fato resultem na experiência a que se propõe. Este trabalho contribui apresentando uma pesquisa realizada sobre quais são as características desejáveis em jogos pervasivos. Para embasar essas características foi realizado um estudo sobre o que autores clássicos classificam como sendo as características de jogos tradicionais, isto é, jogos que são encontrados no universo físico, sem o auxílio de computadores. Também foram analizados trabalhos que descrevem os elementos usualmente presentes em jogos de video game, que são jogos que utilizam extensivamente recursos computacionais. Utilizando essas duas análises, é possível identificar pontos em comum entre essas duas formas de jogos, e então derivar importantes características que deveriam estar presentes em jogos pervasivos. Um jogo pervasivo foi desenvolvido para verificar se a utilização dessas características aumentam as possibilidades de um jogo pervasivo ser mais fiel ao projeto de seu idealizador. O conceito desse jogo pervasivo é similar ao conceito de um jogo de video game já existente, porém levando em consideração as necessidades do ambiente pervasivo. O jogo foi projetado utilizando as ferramentas de modelagem da UML, respeitando sempre as características quando uma decisão deveria ser tomada. Um protótipo do jogo foi desenvolvido e testado com usuários, sempre procurando avaliar quando as características estavam de fato presentes. Este trabalho finaliza apresentando uma conclusão e algumas possibilidades de trabalhos futuros. / Electronic devices with characteristics of personal computers (such as high processing power and high data storage capacities) are becoming more common in everybody lives. These devices vary from laptops to PocketPCs and, recently, to cell phones with expanded functionality, the so called smart phones. All these equipments make available everywhere possibilities that have been available before only in desktops. This new paradigm of spreading computational services and integrating them into the lives of everybody created the concept of pervasive computing. This branch of computer science aims to integrate computational services transparently into the lives of everyone. An interesting use of this new technology that still has not been widely explored is for entertainment, specifically for pervasive games. The creation of this new type of game demands certain precautions relative to the pervasive environment. This is a necessity, such that the final product has higher quality and actually corresponds to the satisfying experience it proposes. This work contributes by presenting a research about desirable characteristics in pervasive games. A study about the elements of traditional games as classified by classic authors was performed. Traditional games are games that happen in the physical universe, without the use of computers. This work also includes an analysis of different works that describe the characteristics of video games. Video games are games that extensively use computational resources. This work uses both analysis to identify similarities between these two different forms of games, and then builds important characteristics that should be present in pervasive games. A pervasive game has been developed to verify if the use of these characteristics increase the possibilities of a pervasive game meet the design goals set by its designer. The idea behind this pervasive game is similar to the concept of an existing video game, but now considering the requirements of a pervasive environment. This game was designed using the UML tools, always respecting the characteristics when a decision should be made. A prototype of this game was coded and tests have been performed with different users, always trying to verify if the characteristics were indeed present in the game. In the end of this work there is a conclusion section, along with some possibilities for future work.

Deaf people in South Africa are no longer a minority group and their needs regarding communication and interaction must therefore be taken into consideration. This demographic does not communicate and interact in the same way as hearing people, which means that any existing usability or accessibility guidelines do not apply. As a result, Deaf people do not have access to information in the same way that a hearing person does. Providing proper access to Information and Communications Technology services, which meet their particular needs, will help the hearing impaired to better integrate into society. The importance of demolishing the communication barrier between the hearing and the hearing impaired is very important. Many people assume that sign language is somehow based on oral language. However, this is not the case. Sign languages are natural visual-spatial languages, and form a contrast with spoken languages which are auditory-vocal based. Acknowledging this fact in 2008, the South African Sign Language Policy Implementation Conference together with several governmental bodies suggested that South African Sign Language should become recognized as the 12th official language of South Africa. Due to the fact that cell phone technology continues to evolve, it will remain a tool of communication upon which Deaf people heavily rely on. The cell phone fulfils a basic need for everyone, but especially for the Deaf demographic as they rely on the short message system to communicate. Deaf people are currently faced with a lack of appropriate mobile phone applications, which would allow them to communicate with hearing as well as deaf people. The primary objective of this research was therefore to make mobile technology equally accessible meaning usable to members of the Deaf demographic. The focus of the research was to investigate the communication barrier and a range of variables that can influence the deaf user’s experience. Topics such as user interface design, usability and interaction were investigated. The outcome of this research was to propose a set of guidelines that, when applied to the design of a website or to phone application accessibility, would ensure communication and interaction from a deaf user. The proposed set of guidelines was then applied to the design of the high fidelity prototype of a mobile phone application. The specific application is a messaging phone application that allows deaf users to communicate with other deaf and hearing users via short message system. A mobile phone application that allows Deaf people to send and receive messages based on the sign language alphabet. The application was named Signchat. Purpose of this was to visibly display how the guidelines were implemented in Signchat. While Signchat’s main purpose is to accommodate the needs of Deaf people, it is also a learning tool and an application that bridges the gap by allowing deaf and hearing users to communicate.

Mobile phones are increasingly being equipped with a wide range of sensors which enable a variety of interaction techniques. Sensor-based interaction techniques are particularly promising for domains such as map-based applications, where the user is required to interact with a large information space on the small screen of a mobile phone. Traditional interaction techniques have several shortcomings for interacting with mobile map-based applications. Keypad interaction offers limited control over panning speed and direction. Touch-screen interaction is often a two-handed form of interaction and results in the display being occluded during interaction. Sensor-based interaction provides the potential to address many of these shortcomings, but currently suffers from several limitations. The aim of this research was to propose enhancements to address the shortcomings of sensor-based interaction, with a particular focus on tilt interaction. A comparative study between tilt and keypad interaction was conducted using a prototype mobile map-based application. This user study was conducted in order to identify shortcomings and opportunities for improving tilt interaction techniques in this domain. Several shortcomings, including controllability, mental demand and practicality concerns were highlighted. Several enhanced tilt interaction techniques were proposed to address these shortcomings. These techniques were the use of visual and vibrotactile feedback, attractors, gesture zooming, sensitivity adaptation and dwell-time selection. The results of a comparative user study showed that the proposed techniques achieved several improvements in terms of the problem areas identified earlier. The use of sensor fusion for tilt interaction was compared to an accelerometer-only approach which has been widely applied in existing research. This evaluation was motivated by advances in mobile sensor technology which have led to the widespread adoption of digital compass and gyroscope sensors. The results of a comparative user study between sensor fusion and accelerometer-only implementations of tilt interaction showed several advantages for the use of sensor fusion, particularly in a walking context of use. Modifications to sensitivity adaptation and the use of tilt to perform zooming were also investigated. These modifications were designed to address controllability shortcomings identified in earlier experimental work. The results of a comparison between tilt zooming and Summary gesture zooming indicated that tilt zooming offered better results, both in terms of performance and subjective user ratings. Modifications to the original sensitivity adaptation algorithm were only partly successful. Greater accuracy improvements were achieved for walking tasks, but the use of dynamic dampening factors was found to be confusing. The results of this research were used to propose a framework for mobile tilt interaction. This framework provides an overview of the tilt interaction process and highlights how the enhanced techniques proposed in this research can be integrated into the design of tilt interaction techniques. The framework also proposes an application architecture which was implemented as an Application Programming Interface (API). This API was successfully used in the development of two prototype mobile applications incorporating tilt interaction.

This thesis provides a bridge between analytical modeling and neural network modeling. Two different approaches have been explored. Both approaches rely on embedding radial basis function (RBF) modules in the approximate model of the plant so that they can be trained to compensate for modeling uncertainty. One approach has led to the development of a model-based recurrent neural network (MBRNN) for modeling nonlinear dynamic systems. The RBF modules take the form of activation functions in the MBRNN network, that is formu1ulated according to a linearized state-space model of the plant. This network is trained to represent the process nonlinearities through modifying the activation functions of its nodes, while keeping the original topology of the neural network intact. The performance of the MBRNN is demonstrated via several examples. The results indicate that it requires much shorter training than needed by ordinary recurrent networks. The utility of the MBRNN is tested in fault diagnosis of the IFAC Benchmark Problem and its performance is compared with ‘black box’ neural solutions. The results indicate that the MBRNN provides better results than ‘black box’ neural networks, and that with training it improves the results from other model-based residual generators. The second approach incorporates RBF modules in the nonlinear estimation model to enhance the performance of the extended Kalman filter (EKF) in coping with the uncertainty of this model. In this method, single-input single-output radial basis function (RBF) modules are embedded within the nonlinear estimation model to provide additional degrees of freedom for model adaptation. The weights of the embedded RBF modules are. adapted by the EKF concurrent with state estimation. This modeling compensation method is tested in application to an induction motor benchmark problem. Simulation results indicate that the RBF modules provide the means to model the uncertain components of the estimation model within their range of variation. The utility of the embedded RBF-based nonlinear adaptive observer was tested in fault diagnosis of a throttle sensor fault in an internal combustion engine. The test results show that this observer enhances the residuals obtained for fault diagnosis.

<p>Space habitats will involve a complex and tightly coupled combination of hardware, software, and humans, while operating in challenging environments that pose many risks, both known and unknown. It will not be possible to design habitats that are immune to failure, nor will it be possible to foresee all possible failures. Rather than aiming for designs where “failure is not an option”, habitats must be resilient to disruptions. We propose a control-theoretic approach to resilient design for space habitats based on the concept of safety controls from system safety engineering. We model disruptions using a state and trigger model, where the space habitat is in one of three distinct states at each time instance: nominal, hazardous, or accident. The habitat transitions from a nominal state to hazardous states via disruptions, and further to hazardous and accident states via triggers. We develop an approach for identifying safety controls that considers these disruptions, hazardous states, and identifies control principles and their possible control flaws. We use safety controls as ways of preventing a system from entering or remaining in a hazardous or accident state. We develop a safety control option space for the habitat, from which designers can select the set of safety controls that best meet resilience, performance, and other system goals. We show how our approach for identifying safety controls drives our control-theoretic approach for resilient design, and how that fits into the larger system safety engineering process. To identify and assess hazards, we use a database and create a network format that stores the relationships between different disruptions and hazardous states for an example space habitat. We use this database in combination with traditional hazard assessment techniques to prioritize control of possible disruptions and hazardous states. To mitigate hazards, we develop a safety control option space that contains safety controls that either prevent transition to hazardous states or return the habitat to a nominal state. We use generic safety controls, or the principle of control, to generate new safety controls as our set of disruptions and hazardous states grows, and store these in the database. Lastly, we evaluate our mitigation techniques using our control effectiveness metric, a metric intended to assess how well a safety control addresses the hazardous state or disruption that it is designed for. Our control-theoretic approach is one way in which we can complete the system safety engineering process for a space habitat system and can provide design guidance for the development of resilient space habitats.</p>

This paper concerns the development of the instructional program in Broward County, Florida, from 1941 to the present. The purposes of the paper are, briefly, as follows: (1) to give the reader a general knowledge of the manner in which the instructional program has developed, (2) to trace the history and functions of the supervisory program since its initiation in the county, (3) to give a statement of the philosophy underlying the instructional program, (4) to reveal county-wide practices as these affect the improvement of instruction, ( 5 ) partially, to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional program in the light of prevailing nation-wide practices, and (6) to make recommendations for next steps in the improvement. / Typescript. / "Aug., 1949." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts under Plan II." / Advisor: W. Edwards, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-51).

Against the backdrop of religious disaffiliation and social fragmentation in the United States, the future of both practices and venues for American religious education is uncertain. In this study of Tapestry, a church-run foster youth mentoring network, and St. Sebastian’s Summer Camp, a predominantly Latinx church-run community day camp, I develop and document one promising pairing in response to this quandary: an adapted form of Digital Storytelling (Lambert, 2012) as a communal spiritual practice appropriate to what I call faith-adjacent spaces. Such spaces are convened by modes of activity separate from formal institutional programs and rituals but still connected to religion in meaningful, visible ways. In this participatory multimodal ethnography, I draw on socio-spatial and narrative analytic frameworks to reveal and explore (1) organizational practices of belonging that already exist at Tapestry, (2) the function of new collaboratively designed Digital Storytelling practices at Tapestry and St. Sebastian’s, and (3) the role of my various researcher-facilitator identities in this work. I present these findings in the form of a four-part audio documentary that interweaves recordings from my ethnographic fieldwork, excerpts from the artifacts that participants and I co-created, audio engagements with academic and practitioner literature, and researcher narrative and analysis. The annotated production scripts for Becoming Tapestry comprise both the bulk of this manuscript and, together with the four podcast episodes themselves, the dissertation proper.

<div><div><div><p>As technology advances, so does the complexity of engineering projects. Systems en- gineering has evolved with these technological advances as a means of coping with this complexity. Traditionally, systems engineers use separate documents to track all project in- formation. This trend continues today, as projects are becoming more complex than before and the traditional document based approach is now seen as time consuming and error prone. Model based Systems engineering (MBSE) is a systems engineering approach that seeks to incorporate all project information into a single source of truth that can be thought of as a model. However, there are several challenges that face widespread MBSE adoption, includ- ing data transfer incompatibilities between MBSE and engineering discipline models. These incompatibilities are a major focus of this thesis. One goal of this thesis is to demonstrate the addition of a translation framework between MBSE and the Modeling Architectures and Parameterization for Spacecraft (MAPS) environment. The translation framework takes information read from System Modeling Language (SysML) diagrams and converts it into a representation suitable for the MAPS environment. Adding a translation framework en- ables more rapid analysis of different architectures and allows more users to interact with the MAPS environment. This thesis also seeks a method by which to evaluate MBSE and systems engineering tools. A qualitative framework is created based on rigor in systems en- gineering. The rigor evaluation framework specifically targets weaknesses commonly found in MBSE to enable users to find better directions for these tools. The effectiveness of the translation framework is shown via a demonstration case. Additionally, the rigor evalua- tion framework is applied to the translation framework. This application results in several recommendations for improvements and demonstrates the evaluation framework’s ability to find and address problem areas in MBSE tools.</p></div></div></div>

This study highlighted factors informing instructors’ instructional beliefs and practices and the activities that help students engage in and develop a deep understanding of mathematics. The study also described instructors’ instructional activities and curricular practices when teaching mathematics and an interdisciplinary curriculum that integrates mathematics with other subjects. Through a qualitative phenomenological approach, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and analyses of instructional activities using an adapted version of the Teaching for Robust Understanding in Mathematics (or TRU Math©) framework characterized the experiences of 13 instructors, from elementary through college years, who taught mathematics as a subject and within an interdisciplinary lesson. The study revealed several factors that informed instructors’ beliefs, practices, and activities (B, P, & A) about teaching mathematics and interdisciplinarity through descriptions and synthesis of meanings and TRU Math analyses of artifacts. Instructors felt strongly about helping students value learning, making mathematics meaningful and joyful, and saw their students as capable problem solvers. They utilized activities to illuminate thinking and understanding of mathematics and used assessments to communicate mathematics. T he study also revealed three significant ways that instructors engaged in interdisciplinarity as seen through the practices of the Constructors, Curators, and Connectors, and referred to accordingly as the 3C’s framework. These interdisciplinary characterizations reveal instructors’ practical ways of using various approaches to practice interdisciplinarity. It also showed how frameworks like TRU Math helped assess an interdisciplinary activity’s potential to foster a deep understanding of mathematics content. The conclusions offer implications for research and practice.

The health care industry can expect an expanding need to measure and report the quality of performance and related outcomes. This article presents a flexible application operationalizing the strategies of total quality management and continual and rapid improvement in the area of assessing patient satisfaction. Mountain States Health Alliance established seven strategic criteria for the Outcomes Assessment Strategy and Information System (OASIS) design based on its own strategic initiatives and quality improvement principals. These initiatives are supported by the software application referred to as ContAct. Substantial process improvements have resulted. As pressures from stakeholders continue to mount, it will become increasingly important that patient satisfaction information be used to improve processes. The system presented provides one piece of an overall approach that will result in a rise to world-class status for the health care industry.