Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Florida, 2005. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 91 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Computer Science and Information Systems / Master / Master of Philosophy

Application of sustainable design is growing rapidly as companies face increasing pressure to address the environmental impacts of their products. In response, a great deal of research has been directed at the development of sustainable design methods, as early design intervention has the potential to generate radical improvements. At present however, sustainability is often considered as an afterthought, only yielding incremental improvements. As such there is a clear need to redesign our design processes, and promote embedded consideration of sustainability throughout from the earliest stages. This thesis reports on research investigating how sustainability considerations could be systematically incorporated into product design processes through the definition of a framework and the development of a methodology for evaluating established design processes and identifying and prioritising stages for sustainability considerations to be embedded into design activity. The primary objective of this research is to develop an understanding of the challenges and opportunities for the implementation of sustainable design approaches in order to move towards a situation in the future where sustainability considerations are an inherent and embedded part of product design processes or Ubiquitous Sustainability in design.

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Recently, both Japan and South Korea put efforts on the concept of ¡§ubiquitous¡¨ & ¡§Intelligent Living Spaces¡¨; therefore, the ¡§Intelligent Living Spaces Industry¡¨ which takes various related or non-related industries¡¦ cooperation comes out. Among these cooperating industries, Taiwan possesses some advantages on IT Hardware Industry. Viewing on this, this study would like to benchmark the successful experiences in both Japan and South Korea to Taiwan, to make Intelligent Living Spaces Industry develop well in Taiwan, and further to make the associated industries¡¦ development flourish with Taiwan¡¦s advantages on IT Hardware Industry. Also, for no matter in Taiwan, Japan or South Korea, the government plays the most important role on the development of Intelligent Living Spaces Industry, this study then takes Diamond Model of Porter to analyze the development of Intelligent Living Spaces Industry in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, expecting to absorb the successful experiences from Japan and South Korea for the benchmarking. This study makes the analyses through the four scopes¡Xfactors conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, firm strategy and structure and rivalry, expecting to come out the developing strategy of Intelligent Living Spaces Industry through the aspect of the government and the industry. Finally, based on the Porter¡¦s Diamond Model, this study found that Taiwan still have some advantages on IT Hardware Industry, but needs to put more efforts on IT Software Industry and the professionals training, and even to reinforce the communication and cooperation among the associated industries, and then Intelligent Living Spaces Industry would flourish in Taiwan.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 2005. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 86 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2008. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Information and Mathematical Sciences, Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, 2008. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

No description available.

Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is a compelling vision for how people will interact with multiple computer systems in the course of their daily lives. To date, practitioners have created a variety of infrastructures, middleware and toolkits to provide the flexibility, ease of programming and the necessary coordination of distributed software and hardware components in physical spaces. However, to-date no one approach has been adopted as a default or de-facto standard. Consequently the field risks losing momentum as fragmentation occurs. In particular, the goal of ubiquitous deployments may stall as groups deploy and trial incompatible point solutions in specific locations. In their defense, researchers in the field argue that it is too early to standardize and that room is needed to explore specialized domain-specific solutions. In the absence of an agreed upon set of standards, we argue that the community must consider a methodology that allows systems to evolve and specialize, while at the same time allowing the development of portable applications and integrated deployments that work between between sites. To address this we studied the programming models of many commercial and research ubicomp systems. Through this survey we gained an understanding of the shared abstractions required in a core programming model suitable for both application portability and systems integration. Based on this study we designed an extensible core model called the Ubicomp Common Model (UCM) to describe a representative sample of ubiquitous systems to date. The UCM is instantiated in a flexible and extensible platform called the Ubicomp Integration Framework (UIF) to adapt ubicomp systems to this model. Through application development and integration experience with a composite campus environment, we provide strong evidence that this model is adequate for application development and that the complexity of developing adapters to several representative systems is not onerous. The performance overhead introduced by introducing the centralized UIF between applications and an integrated system is reasonable. Through careful analysis and the use of well understood approaches to integration, this thesis demonstrates the value of our methodology that directly leverages the significant contributions of past research in our quest for ubicomp application and systems interoperability.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of how ubiquitous computing would affect an elementary teacher's ability to more fully operationalize her existing constructivist teaching philosophy.Research on computing technologies in K-12 schools has documented that there are numerous important barriers to technology integration in the classroom, one of which is access to computer technologies. In addition, the research documents that new technologies can act as a catalyst toward teacher change of instructional practices over time when using such technologies for teaching and learning. The literature also suggests that a teacher's use of computing technologies may contribute to a shift toward more constructivist teaching practices. Ubiquitous computing technologies are becoming more and more prevalent in K-12 schools and are removing the barriers of sufficient access and related issues of infrastructure, making it increasingly feasible to study the impact of computer-saturated environments on teaching and learning.This qualitative single case study investigated the impact of full-time in school computer ubiquity via wireless laptops for every student and the teacher in a fifth grade classroom during the 2002-2003 school year. Qualitative methods were used in the gathering and analysis of multiple forms of data.Findings1.Key enabling conditions of ubiquitous technology-supported constructivist practices were (i) peer support and collaboration, (ii) ubiquitous access to information, curriculum, and tools, (iii) time to plan, implement, and assess inquiry-based instruction, (iv) technical support, technical knowledge, and reliable hardware, and (v) software to support student construction of knowledge and projects.2. This teacher's preexisting pedagogical beliefs positively impacted her ability to implement and sustain a shift toward more constructivist teaching practices.3.Computing ubiquity facilitated this teacher's (i) planning for inquiry-based learning activities, (ii) ability to remain flexible and spontaneous, (iii) desire and motivation to pursue her own professional inquiry, (iv) it reduced the amount of risk required to make and sustain changes of pedagogy coupled with high technology use, and (v) it accelerated the time required to assume ownership of a technological innovation.This study concludes with the suggestion for a new model of ubiquitouscomputing based upon the findings of this study. / Department of Elementary Education