The goal of the thesis is to extend the kernel methods to matrix factorization(MF) for collaborative ltering(CF). In current literature, MF methods usually assume that the correlated data is distributed on a linear hyperplane, which is not always the case. The best known member of kernel methods is support vector machine (SVM) on linearly non-separable data. In this thesis, we apply kernel methods on MF, embedding the data into a possibly higher dimensional space and conduct factorization in that space. To improve kernelized matrix factorization, we apply multi-kernel learning methods to select optimal kernel functions from the candidates and introduce L2-norm regularization on the weight learning process. In our empirical study, we conduct experiments on three real-world datasets. The results suggest that the proposed method can improve the accuracy of the prediction surpassing state-of-art CF methods.

Situational awareness is often understood as the perception of environmental elements and comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of future status. The advancements in cyberspace technology have fuelled new business and opportunities, but also brought an element of risk to valued assets. Today, the growing gap between different types of cyber-attacks threatens governments and organisations, from individuals to highly organized sponsored teams capable of breaching the most sophisticated systems and the inability to cope with these emerging threats. There is a strong case to be made for effective Collaborative Cyber-Security Situational Awareness (CCSA) that is designed to protect valuable assets, making them more resilient to cybersecurity threats. Cybersecurity experts today must rethink the nature of security, and shift from a conventional approach that stresses protecting vulnerable assets to a larger, more effective framework with the aim of strengthening cyber assets, making them more resilient and part of a cybersecurity process that delivers greater value against cyber threats. This study introduces a new approach to understanding situational awareness of information sharing and collaboration using knowledge from existing situational awareness models. However, current situational awareness models lack resilience in supporting information systems infrastructure, addressing various vulnerabilities, identifying high priority threats and selecting mitigation techniques for cyber threats. The use of exploratory and explanatory analysis techniques executed by Structure Equation Modelling (SEM) allowed the examination of CCSA, in this study. Data from 377 cyber security practitioners affiliated to cybersecurity expert groups including computer emergency response team (CERT) and computer security incident response team (CSIRT) was gathered in the form of an electronic survey and analysed to discover insights and understand the mental model of those cybersecurity experts. Also, a finding from the SEM was the CSSA model aligned perfectly with the second-order Cybernetics model to test the theory in practice, confirming the possibility of using the proposed model in a practical application for this research. Furthermore, the SEM informed the design of the CCSA Environment where an empirical study was employed to verify and validate the CCSA theory in practice. In addition, the SEM informed the design of a behavioural anchor rating scale to measure participant situational awareness performance. The experiment results proved that when using the CCSA model and replicating real-world cyber-attack scenarios that the outcome of situational awareness performance was 61% more than those who did not employ the use of the CCSA model and associated dashboard tool. Further, it was found that both timeliness and accuracy are important in influencing the outcome of information sharing and collaboration in enhancing cyber situational awareness and decision-making. This thesis for the first time presents a novel CCSA theory which has been confirmed in practice. Firstly, this research work improves the outcome of effectiveness in cyber SA by identifying important variables related with the CCSA model. Second, it provides a new technique to measure operators' cyber SA performance. Secondly, it provides the necessary steps to employ information sharing in order to improve cyber security incorporated in the CCSA model. Finally, cybersecurity experts should collaborate to identify and close the gap between cybersecurity threats and execution capacity. The novel CCSA model validated in this research can be considered an effective solution in fighting and preventing cyber-attacks. Attainment of cyber security is driven by how information is both secured and presented between members to encourage the use of information sharing and collaboration to resolve cyber security threats in a timely and accurate manner. This research helps researchers and practitioners alike gain an understanding of key aspects of information sharing and collaboration in CSSA which is informed by the CCSA theory and new capability that the implementation of this theory has shown to deliver in practice.

Learning and memory abilities decline with age; however collaborative learning with a familiar partner has been found to improve older adults’ performance on memory tasks and reduce these age-related differences. However it is unclear whether collaborating with a familiar partner is more beneficial to learning compared with collaborating with a stranger. Similarly, it is unclear whether older adults collaborate similarly with human and computer partners. The aim of this PhD thesis is to understand the role of collaborator identity on collaborative learning, and to investigate whether collaborative learning is as efficient and accurate with a range of learning partners. While collaborative learning is a socially-based memory task, the relationships between collaborative learning and social cognition have not yet been explored. The secondary aim of this thesis is to use experimental collaborative learning paradigms alongside standardised and experimental measures of social cognition to explore whether social cognition accounts for a significant amount of variance in collaborative learning performance with different partners. Two studies compare younger and older adults’ learning with familiar and unfamiliar partners on different collaborative learning paradigms. Two subsequent studies compare older adults’ learning on computerised versions of the collaborative learning tasks with partners they perceive to be humans or computers based on recordings of natural human or synthetic speech respectively. In all studies, measures of social cognition were used to assess whether social abilities affect learning outcomes with different partner types. When comparing older and younger adults’ results, familiarity had no effect on learning or immediate or delayed recall performance. Older adults initially took longer to complete the learning trials but performed with similar efficiency as younger adults by the final trials. Younger and older adults recalled collaboratively learned information with comparable accuracy after a delay of one hour, however after one week, older adults recalled the route less accurately than younger adults. Social cognition was not related to collaborative learning with familiar partners, but was related with unfamiliar partners, suggesting that those who are better able to take the perspective of another person may benefit during interactive learning. Social cognition was related to collaborative learning with perceived human partners but not perceived computer partners. This thesis offers a new perspective on the interplay between social and cognitive function in collaborative learning with different learning partners, and explores the differences between younger and older adults when learning collaboratively. The findings are discussed in relation to cognitive, social, and technological theories. On the whole, collaborative learning can result in older adults learning with similar speed and accuracy to younger adults; while familiarity does not improve learning outcomes, perceived human-ness does.

L'intérêt des recherches dans le domaine de la fusion de données multi-capteurs est en plein essor en raison de la diversité de ses secteurs d'applications. Plus particulièrement, dans le domaine de la robotique et de la localisation, l'exploitation des différentes informations fournies par les capteurs constitue une étape primordiale afin d'assurer une estimation fiable de la position. Dans ce contexte de fusion de données multi-capteurs, nous nous attachons à traiter le diagnostic, menant à l'identification de la cause d'une défaillance, et la tolérance de l'approche proposée aux défauts de capteurs, peu abordés dans la littérature.Nous avons fait le choix de développer une approche basée sur un formalisme purement informationnel : filtre informationnel d'une part, et outils de la théorie de l'information d'autre part. Des résidus basés sur la divergence de Kullback-Leibler sont développés. Via des méthodes optimisées de seuillage, ces résidus conduisent à la détection et à l'exclusion de ces défauts capteurs. La théorie proposée est éprouvée sur deux applications de localisation. La première application concerne la localisation collaborative, tolérante aux défauts d'un système multi-robots. La seconde application traite de la localisation en milieu ouvert utilisant un couplage serré GNSS/odométrie tolérant aux défauts. / The interest of research in the multi-sensor data fusion field is growing because of its various applications sectors. Particularly, in the field of robotics and localization, the use of different sensors informations is a vital step to ensure a reliable position estimation. In this context of multi-sensor data fusion, we consider the diagnosis, leading to the identification of the cause of a failure, and the sensors faults tolerance aspect, discussed in limited work in the literature. We chose to develop an approach based on a purely informational formalism: information filter on the one hand and tools of the information theory on the other. Residuals based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence are developed. These residuals allow to detect and to exclude the faulty sensors through optimized thresholding methods. This theory is tested in two applications. The first application is the fault tolerant collaborative localization of a multi-robot system. The second application is the localization in outdoor environments using a tightly coupled GNSS/odometer with a fault tolerant aspect.

It is acknowledged that the genre of animated documentary is particularly suited to depicting the subjective point of view (Wells, 1997, Honess Roe, 2013). It has also been suggested that animated documentary may have a tendency toward collaborative working methods (Ward, 2005: 94). This PhD work explores and expands these suggestions and presents the development of a methodology adapted from what has been termed collaborative ethnography (Lassiter, 2005) when using animation to document perceptual brain states. The claim to originality in this thesis lies in the methodological approach taken through the documenting of idiopathic perceptual brain states, previously unrepresented in animation. It involves a shifting of the roles of subject and director to collaborative consultant and facilitator respectively, and differentiates between the recording of an animated document and the creation of an animated documentary . It rejects the sound reliant template of the 'animated interview' (Strøm, 2005: 15) as the dominant model of creating animated documents, which assumes both that the indexical is crucial to documenting, and that this can only be achieved in animation through the use of indexical sound. It agrees with Tom Gunning s argument that Charles Sanders Pierce's original idea of the index as part of an interconnected triad of signs (index, symbol and icon) has been abstracted from its richer signifying context and extracted a simplified version of what Pierce intended it to mean (a trace or impression left by an object) to become a 'diminished concept' (2007:30-1), essentially a short hand coda in this instance for document . The practice in this work challenges this by presenting an alternative; using a collaborative cycle methodology.

The school to post-school transition has been identified as a time when young people with Additional Support Needs (ASN) need extra support. This thesis focuses on the school to post-school transition planning and preparation process for young people with ASN in Scotland. In particular, the author scrutinised the collaborative planning and preparation that takes place amongst professionals to support young people with ASN and their families during this transition. The author also examined the influence of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 upon the process. A mixed-methods research design was used to undertake three studies. Study 1 was a national on-line survey of professionals involved in post-school transition planning and preparation. Study 2 was a longitudinal study in which professionals involved in transition planning and preparations from one local authority were interviewed at 2 time periods (2004 before the implementation of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and 2010). Minutes of transition meetings from both periods were also examined. Study 3 was a case study of a further education college undertaken in the same local authority as Study 2, to understand the experiences of transition planning and preparation from the perspectives of the young people with ASN who had experienced post-school transition and their families, along with school and college professionals. Participants (young people, parents and professionals) were interviewed. Visual resources were developed by the author to support the interviews with the young people. Data in all the studies were analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Finally, the findings of the three studies are presented and discussed. These include the perception that transition planning and preparation has become more young person centred since the Act was introduced. Implications for policy makers, practitioners, and future research are also discussed.

O presente projeto se propõe a uma investigação da reescritura de uma obra de constituição dramática retirando-se dela os diálogos ditos pelas personagens e estabelecendo a comunicação por meio da ação física dos atores e atrizes na cena, mantendo-se, contudo, aquilo que a caracteriza como dramática: uma fábula constituída em progressão para que haja tensão, conflito, clímax e desenlace. A esse processo de extração dos diálogos deu-se o nome de \"Dramaturgia do Silêncio\". É importante ressaltar que a cena silenciosa se serve de outros elementos significativos como cenografia, iluminação, figurino, maquiagem etc, mas o recorte deste estudo centra-se no trabalho do texto corporal do ator e da atriz, a partir dele que se estabelece a dramaturgia. Tratase de um estudo teórico-prático realizado parcialmente em sala de ensaio com um grupo de criadores cênicos em câmbio de funções entre dramaturgos, atores e encenadores por meio de jogos e improvisações. O texto base para esse estudo é Phèdre, de Jean Racine, um dos três grandes representantes do classicismo francês. / Le projet que nous présentons ici se propose à une investigation de la réecriture d\'une oeuvre de constitution dramatique, en enlevant les dialogues proférés par les personnages et établissant la communication au moyen de l\'action physique des acteurs et des actrices, mais en maintenant, néanmoins, ce qui la caractérise comme dramatique : une fable constituée en progression pour qu\'il y ait de la tension, du conflit, un climax et un dénouement. A ce processus d\'extraction des dialogues nous avons donné le nom de \" Dramaturgie du Silence\". Il est important de souligner que la scène silencieuse se sert d\'autres éléments significatifs comme la scénographie, l\'éclairage, les costumes, le maquillage, etc. mais le découpage de cette étude se concentre sur le travail corporel des acteurs, à partir duquel s\'établit la dramaturgie. Il s\'agit d\'une étude théorique et pratique élaborée surtout en salle de répétitions avec un groupe de créateurs scéniques sur le mode d\'un échange de fonctions entre dramaturges, acteurs et metteurs en scène au moyen de jeux et d\'improvisations. Le texte de base pour cette étude est la pièce Phèdre de Racine, un des trois grands représentants du classicisme français.

Despite increasing philosophical knowledge of disaster planning and preparedness, disasters still remain a challenge in many communities. As a result, communities, environment and economies remain considerably vulnerable and at the risk of disaster destruction hence, sustainable development is undermined. The purpose of this study is to review and assess the state of community readiness in order to prevent and mitigate common hazards in the City of Johannesburg, especially in previously disadvantaged communities such as Protea-South. A survey and interviews was conducted with the local community members. Results show that, this community like many others, is at high risk, due to their living circumstances. e.g. the presence of densely built shacks on a flood plain; poor hygiene and sanitation, pollution, poverty etc. There is therefore a need for a paradigm shift by institutions from emergency response and the provision of hard infrastructure to disaster prevention, preparedness and soft infrastructure provision by means of an approach encompassing collaborative planning.

This development project originated in response to the enormous daily increase of information that becomes available on the internet as a result of social media activities. Twitter, a quintessential example of social media, can also be considered a framework for collaborative note-taking. The October 2010 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided an interesting example of distributed collaborative note-taking as thousands of Twitter users took notes on the conference addresses. The result was a collection of 26,479 tweets. The purpose of this project is to describe a novel information visualization algorithm that generates a centralized visual representation of the conference tweets to facilitate absorption of the ideas presented therein. This algorithm could feasibly be used in many other massively distributed collaborative note-taking activities. It is hoped that this algorithm, as well as the variant approaches that it may inspire, will assist larger groups to deal with the potential information overload that can arise in these collaborative note-taking activities.

Background: Tennessee Initiative for Perinatal Quality Care (TIPQC) is a statewide quality improvement collaborative that elected to design and develop a project to address Tennessee's low breastfeeding rates. Purpose: To improve the health of Tennessee infants and mothers by increasing initiation and duration of breastfeeding through systematic implementation of processes with high reliability (> 90%) that promote and support breastfeeding in the delivery setting. Methods: A toolkit was created using the evidence-based practices of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and the USBC Toolkit, “Implementing the Joint Commission Perinatal Care Core Measure on Exclusive Breast Milk Feeding.” Eleven hospitals across the state of Tennessee are currently participating in the project since the state-wide kick-off in July 2012. Participating hospitals established improvement teams of stakeholders, and began collecting exclusive breastfeeding rates at hospital discharge, according to the Joint Commission Perinatal Core Measure 5 guidelines. After baseline data collection, the centers are implementing one or more of the 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding by using rapid Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles. Reliability of implementation is monitored by process measure audits. Web-based data-entry through REDCap provides on-demand run-charts to each individual center. Monthly webinars facilitate sharing of best practices between geographically distant centers, as well as sharing of the state-wide data in aggregate. Each participating center creates a Leadership Report highlighting its recent data on exclusive breastfeeding as well as selected PDSA cycles. Centers also share lessons learned and query participating centers on specific challenges. Additionally centers are invited to attend a face-to-face annual state-wide meeting with nationally recognized experts, as well as two regional workshops per year to share challenges and successes, and to learn quality improvement strategies from the TIPQC Quality Improvement team. Results: Baseline exclusive breastfeeding at discharge according to the Joint Commission criteria was 35% in aggregate. Initial data demonstrate that centers have noted some success in implementing changes in all of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Skin-to-skin care has been markedly increased in several centers, with some centers specifically targeting skin-to-skin care after C-Sections. Centers have also seen increases in rooming-in, staff training, and adoption of a breastfeeding policy. Upstream opportunities have been identified for prenatal education with providers of prenatal care (Step 3). Downstream opportunities have been identified for community support at discharge from the center (Step 10). Baseline data in the first 5 months of the project from over 7000 maternal-infant dyads (approximately 25% of Tennessee births) highlight improvement opportunities on all of the Ten Steps. Conclusions: This project serves as a model for how quality improvement methodologies may be combined with use of distance-learning and web-based data entry and reporting to facilitate implementation of evidenced based practices to increase breastfeeding rates.