Smart building's benefits range from improving comfort of occupant, increased productivity, reduction in energy consumption and operating costs, lower CO2 emission, to improved life cycle of utilities, efficient operation of building systems, etc. [65]. Hence, modern building owners are turning towards smart buildings. However, the current smart buildings mostly are not capable of achieving the objectives they are designed for and they can improve a lot better [22]. Therefore, a new technology called, Internet of Things, or IoT, is combined with the smart buildings to improve their performance [23]. IoT is the inter-networking of things embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity to collect and exchange data, and things in this definition is anything and everything around us and even ourselves. Using this technology, e.g. a door can be a thing and can sense how many people have passed it's sensor to enter a space and let the lighting system know to prepare appropriate amount of light, or the HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning) system to provide desirable temperature. IoT will provide a lot of useful information that before that accessibility to it was impossible, e.g., condition of water pipes in winter, which helps avoiding damages like frozen or broken pipes. However, despite all the benefits, IoT suffers from being vulnerable to cyber attacks. Examples have been provided later in Chapter 1. In this project among building systems, HVAC system is chosen to be automated with a new control method called MPC (Model Predictive Control). This method is fast, very energy efficient and has a lower than 0.001 rate of error for regulating the space temperature to any temperature that the occupants desire according to the results of this project. Furthermore, a PID (Proportional–Integral–Derivative) controller has been designed for the HVAC system that in the exact same cases MPC shows a much better performance. To design controllers for HVAC system and set the temperature to the desired value a method to automate balancing the heat flow should be found, therefore a thermal model of building should be available that using this model, the amount of heat, flowing in and out of a space in the building disregarding the external weather would be known to estimate. To automate the HVAC system using the programming languages like MATLAB, there is a need to convert the thermal model of the building to a mathematical model. This mathematical model is unique for each building depending on how many floors it has, how wide it is, and what materials have been used to construct the building. This process is needs a lot of effort and time even for buildings with 2 floors and 2 rooms on each floor and at the end the engineer might have done it with error. In this project you will see a software that will do the conversion of thermal model of buildings in any size to their mathematical model automatically, which helps improving the HVAC controllers to set temperature to the value occupants desire and avoid errors and time loss which is put both into calculations and troubleshooting. In addition, a test environment has been designed and constructed as a cyber physical system that allows us to test the IoT- enabled control systems before implementing them on real buildings, observe the performance, and decide if the system is satisfying or not. Also, all cyber threats can be explored and the solutions to those attacks can be evaluated. Even for the systems that are already out there, there is an opportunity to be assessed on this testbed and if there is any vulnerability in case of cyber security, solutions would be evaluated and help the existing systems improve. / Master of Science / Buildings function as shelters more than any thing else, and this has allowed humans to use it as a space to store important things like private and important information. Therefore, this space should be safe and secure from any vulnerabilities for occupants and their information. Smart buildings, have made a great difference in increasing the comfort level of occupants, but they haven’t been greatly successful achieving their objectives [50]. Therefore, a new technology called, Internet of Things, or IoT, is combined with the smart buildings to improve their performance [23]. IoT is the inter-networking of things embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity to collect and exchange data, and things in this definition is anything and everything around us and even ourselves. Internet of Things (IoT) has helped improving the smart buildings and getting a considerable amount of energy efficiency [27]. But adding Internet of Things has added a network of things connected to internet, which gives the cyber hackers an opportunity to hack the buildings, and get access to the information stored inside the building or put even occupants lives in danger. Therefore, in this thesis the following items have been contributed: • Designing and programming a novel control system for HVAC system of the buildings (Model Predictive Control): This is a new method to control HVAC system of buildings and in comparison with the methods available in the market, it is the most energy efficient, it is faster, and it has a lower error rate in following the desired temperature of the occupants. • Design and construction of IoT- enabled smart building testbed: Since cyber attacks make buildings vulnerable, the author believes it is better to build a test environment to simulate the buildings and the control methods that are used inside the buildings, and try to evaluate performance of the control methods before implementing them on real buildings. Also, by installing IoT sensors inside the test environment, the engineers can perform some cyber attack tests, and also evaluate the solutions for each attack on the testbed. • Design and program a software to convert thermal model of buildings to mathematical model : In designing a new control method for HVAC system of buildings, the first required information is the thermal model of the buildings. Eventually, there is a need to program. Thus, the thermal model should be converted to a mathematical model. However, there is a heavy manual calculation behind it that is really overwhelming, tiring, with a high possibility of error, and time-consuming even for a very small sized building. Therefore, automating this process in terms of a software that takes the information of thermal model of buildings as an input and giving the output of the mathematical model of building is a considerable achievement.

The focus of this dissertation is a group of individuals applying for psychotherapy. They have attended an office that offers psychodynamic psychotherapy, based on a Christian outlook on mankind. My research questions dealt with why they did apply for psychotherapy and what their goals were. I had planned the study and selected my data collection methods considering three domains of hypothetical reasons for their decisions to apply for psychotherapy. These grounds were their object relations, existential/religious orientations, and psychological problems and goals for the treatment. The first part of the dissertation is a survey of concepts, theories and former studies in the mentioned domains. Concerning the object-relations I make use of psychoanalytical thinking on the importance of early experiences in relation to parents and other persons but also its application to a “religious relation”, namely to the relation of the individual to her/his socalled God-representation. Concerning the existential/religious orientations I make use of existential-analytical thinking on satisfaction and meaning of life and death as an existential problem. I also make use of research from the psychology of religion on different dimensions of religiosity and its correlations to mental health. In the second part of the dissertation there is an account of my development of methods to be used in data collection. In this part of the book one can also find data from a reference group of people not applying for psychotherapy. The main part of the dissertation is the third part, describing the data of eight persons applying for psychotherapy. The information, from interviews, projective methods and scales, from each of the study subjects is put together, analysed and interpreted as intensive case studies. Questions in the interview covered religious and existential matters, relations to important persons during childhood and later, the persons’ descriptions of themselves, and the reasons for applying for psychotherapy and their goals for the treatment. Their answers were analysed using a hermeneutic method. The projective methods covered a picture and unfinished sentences. The psychological scales covered religious beliefs and satisfaction and meaning of life and a semantic differential the symbolic meaning of the words Mother, Father and GOD. According to the results the influence of the object-relations on the decision to apply for psychotherapy was sometimes direct. But on the whole the most obvious reason was the persons’ experiences and descriptions of themselves as filled with conflicting feelings and lack of or difficulties in controlling them. The influence of existential themes was not so obvious and the effects of the religious orientations were sometimes direct and sometimes only indirect. Peoples’ mental problems and goals of the psychotherapy influenced directly their decisions to apply. Most individuals had been in therapy before. There was some difference in the description of goals between those individuals who finished recently and those applying for the first time or long time after an earlier therapy. The latter having more well-defined goals. Theoretically it is possible to classify goals into treatment and life goals, but in real life they often stick together. One important conclusion was that, when the persons experience themselves as filled with contradictory feelings or conflicting strivings and having lack of feelings or difficulties in controlling them, they also experience themselves as responsible to this and as a consequence they also apply for psychotherapy.

abstract: A myriad of social media services are emerging in recent years that allow people to communicate and express themselves conveniently and easily. The pervasive use of social media generates massive data at an unprecedented rate. It becomes increasingly difficult for online users to find relevant information or, in other words, exacerbates the information overload problem. Meanwhile, users in social media can be both passive content consumers and active content producers, causing the quality of user-generated content can vary dramatically from excellence to abuse or spam, which results in a problem of information credibility. Trust, providing evidence about with whom users can trust to share information and from whom users can accept information without additional verification, plays a crucial role in helping online users collect relevant and reliable information. It has been proven to be an effective way to mitigate information overload and credibility problems and has attracted increasing attention. As the conceptual counterpart of trust, distrust could be as important as trust and its value has been widely recognized by social sciences in the physical world. However, little attention is paid on distrust in social media. Social media differs from the physical world - (1) its data is passively observed, large-scale, incomplete, noisy and embedded with rich heterogeneous sources; and (2) distrust is generally unavailable in social media. These unique properties of social media present novel challenges for computing distrust in social media: (1) passively observed social media data does not provide necessary information social scientists use to understand distrust, how can I understand distrust in social media? (2) distrust is usually invisible in social media, how can I make invisible distrust visible by leveraging unique properties of social media data? and (3) little is known about distrust and its role in social media applications, how can distrust help make difference in social media applications? The chief objective of this dissertation is to figure out solutions to these challenges via innovative research and novel methods. In particular, computational tasks are designed to {\it understand distrust}, a innovative task, i.e., {\it predicting distrust} is proposed with novel frameworks to make invisible distrust visible, and principled approaches are develop to {\it apply distrust} in social media applications. Since distrust is a special type of negative links, I demonstrate the generalization of properties and algorithms of distrust to negative links, i.e., {\it generalizing findings of distrust}, which greatly expands the boundaries of research of distrust and largely broadens its applications in social media. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2015

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:20:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3263843 bytes, checksum: a888fd9ba69b5112e25764e534a8dede (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This research is a result of an applied research that aims to investigate the conceptual theoretical presuppositions necessary to create a conceptual model enough to produce hypermedia didactic material to be used to the distance teaching. To produce an interactive prototype based on press and audiovisual media it was used an experimental methodology designed by an interdisciplinary developer s team from the science, communication and education areas. For that reason, it was created a conceptual model based on Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligence Theory (TIM). To the interactive tests it was used an authorial tool named Marker, that was developed to create interactive applying to the Interactive Digital TV TVDI in addition to some video marker techniques. As a result, two didactic materials were produced: a didactic book and an interactive video lesson, that serve as a model to produce managers course. Some tests could proof the conceptual model has a good applicability, showing the interactive applications making possible managers access their multiple intelligence, with different ways to their learning. The validation of this model allows verify the interactivity promoted by this material giving to the learner the possibility to develop his/her potentialities to activate the most valuable minds in the future. / Este estudo é resultado de uma pesquisa aplicada que teve como objetivo investigar pressupostos teóricos conceituais para a criação de um modelo conceitual para a produção de material didático hipermídia para Educação a distância. Nesse sentido, foi utilizada a metodologia experimental na produção do protótipo interativo em mídia impressa e audiovisual por meio de uma equipe interdisciplinar de desenvolvedores da área de ciência da computação, comunicação e de educação. Para isso, foi criado um modelo conceitual baseado na Teoria das Inteligências Múltiplas (TIM) de Howard Gardner. Para os testes de interatividade, foi utilizada uma ferramenta de autoria denominada Marker, desenvolvida visando gerar aplicações interativas para a Televisão Digital Interativa TVDI com técnicas de marcação em vídeo. Como resultado, foram produzidos dois materiais didáticos: um caderno didático e uma videoaula interativa, que servirão de parâmetros para a produção de cursos para gestores. Os testes comprovaram que o modelo conceitual possui boa aplicabilidade, demonstrando que as aplicações interativas produzidas podem possibilitar aos gestores acionar suas múltiplas inteligências e buscar diferentes caminhos para a aprendizagem. A validação do modelo permitiu verificar que a interatividade proporcionada pelo material pode conduzir o aprendente a desenvolver potencialidades para acionar as mentes mais valorizadas no futuro.

This research analysis is an investigative effort at applying a methodological theory of Islamic extremism to Britain's far-right. Using four assigned categories-the defined 'puzzle pieces' of Hafez and Mullins theory-the research presented will draw heavily from recent history and contemporary societal examples to demonstrate how far-right radicalisation takes place. By looking at grievances, ideology, networks and enabling environment the aim of such an exercise is to demonstrate the intricate processes involved in radicalising someone to support far-right parties and ideologies. One of the most important themes of this analysis is the increasing politicisation of 'culture' by both the government and the far-right. Consequently, there will be discussion on Britain's Prevent programme and the far-right's adaptability in using culture to promote a 'new racism' that presents itself as different from traditional, fascist styles of Othering.

For over two decades the 40 CFR Part 503 has been the regulatory framework guiding land application of biosolids in the US. During this period public perception about the practice has worsened as evidenced by increases in partial and full biosolids land application bans across the US. In this work, the Multimedia, Multipathway and Multi-receptor Risk Assessment (3MRA) model was applied to four biosolids land application sites across the US (two sites in WA, one site each in VA and GA) to evaluate human health risk concerns from regulated (As and Cd) and non-regulated (B(a)P and DEHP) chemical constituents present in biosolids. The excess cancer risk from ingesting soil contaminated with As and Cd was higher than 1x10-6 when accounting for the background concentration. However, after separating the risk to reflect just the land application practice, the excess cancer risk estimates for the soil ingestion pathway were well below the acceptable risk criteria (several orders of magnitude lower). The non-cancer risk, for both As and Cd, was below 1. As and Cd remained mostly in the zone of biosolids incorporation. The combined As and Cd mass lost to all pathways for a 20-year consecutive application scenario was less than 15%. The classes of organic environmental toxins evaluated also did not cause concern. Both B(a)P and DEHP aerobically degraded and less than 3% remained in the zone of biosolids incorporation after a 100-year consecutive biosolids application based on model predictions. Scenarios considering biosolids application at typical agricultural rates did not result in groundwater impairment for the sites evaluated; however, scenarios with biosolids applications that are similar to a surface disposal practice resulted in groundwater impairment. In addition to this work, sites across the US (in WA, VA and GA) were evaluated for groundwater impairment scenarios. The results from this effort clearly point towards no additional excess cancer (>1x10-6) or non-cancer (HQ>1) health risks associated specifically with the practice of land application of biosolids for agricultural production for the sites and chemical contaminants evaluated.

The beneficial effects obtained from the application of farmyard manure to the soil have long been known in Utah, but now the point has apparently been reached where it becomes evident that the supply of manure is hardly adequate in some sections where intensive cropping is predicted. The use of commercial fertilizers to increase crop yields is a new practice in Utah agriculture as is shown in Table 1 from an estimate made from data kindly furnished by the Columbia Steel Company, and Porter Walden Company.

This thesis project will provide an in depth examination into the musical theater role of Paul, the male Puerto Rican dancer in A Chorus Line, as performed by Marco Antonio Santiago. The performance will take place at Cohoes Musical Theater in Albany, New York. This examination will reveal how the application of Stanislavski's methods on acting and his views in preparing a character can be used on musical theatre roles to achieve well rounded, fully developed and completely believable characters. The thesis will contain a structural analysis of the script, scene and role analysis, a performance journal to log the growth/challenges of each role, and other vital information charting the application of Stanislavski's methods on acting. In addition to Stanislavski's methods other well known acting teachers and their methods such as Richard Boleslavski and Sanford Meisner, will be viewed and applied throughout the process. Furthermore, a performance critique/analysis will be provided by Lani Harris, Tan Huaixiang, and Nicholas Wuehrmann, who serve as the acting committee members for this thesis project. The role of Paul helps propel the action of the play forward allowing the audience to truly realize the themes provided by the playwright, lyricist, and composer. This thesis project will reveal that an actor's training can be applied in almost any venue of theatre in some form or fashion and successfully make a well-rounded character.

Thesis (MSc)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We construct and study a simple model for an active gel of exible polymer filaments crosslinked by a molecular motor cluster that perform reversible work while translating along the filaments. The filament end points are crosslinked to an elastic background. In this sense we employ a simplified model for motor clusters that act as slipping links that exert force while moving along the strands. Using the framework of replica theory, quenched averages are taken over the disorder which originates from permanent random crosslinking of network end points to the background. We investigate how a small motor force contributes to the elastic properties of the network. We learn that in addition to the normal elastic response for the network there is an extra contribution to the network elasticity from the motor activity. This depends on the ratio of the entropic spring constant for the linked bio-polymerchain to the spring constant of the tether of the motor. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ons konstrueer en bestudeer 'n eenvoudige model vir 'n aktiewe netwerk van eksieble polimeerfilamente wat deur grosse van molekulere motors aan mekaar verbind word wat omkeerbare werk doen terwyl dit langs die filamente transleer. Die eindpunte van die filamente is aan 'n elastiese agtergrond verbind. In hierdie sin benut ons 'n eenvoudige model vir motorclusters wat as verskuifbare verbindings krag op die filamente tydens beweging kan uitoefen. Nie-termiese wanorde gemiddeldes word geneem oor die wanorde wat deur die lukrake permanente verbindings van netwerk eindpunte aan die agtergrond veroorsaak word. Ons ondersoek hoe 'n klein motorkrag tot die elastiese eienskappe van die netwerk bydra. Ons leer dat daar bo en behalwe die gewone elastiese respons vir die netwerk 'n elastiese bydrae as gevolg van die motors se aktiwiteit voorkom. Dit hang af van die verhouding van die entropiese veerkonstante van die biopolimerketting tot die veerkonstante van die anker van die motor.

Changing and development characterize all areas of life in contemporary world, also businesses have begun to move from traditional marketing approaches to relationship marketing which is a customer based approach. New marketing strategies and application have developed for reaching more customers and keeping existing customers. Marketing communication tools are one of these marketing strategies. However, the application of these strategies like marketing communication tools is based on enterprises ́ budget. In this context,small enterprises are more influencedthan large organizations as relating to high costs. This study examines a fundamental issue using marketing communication tools by small businesses, i.e., the functions such toolsto build new customers or keep existing customers. I argue that small firms face some challenges applyingmarketing communication tools such as, financial limitations and lack of marketing experience. In addition, the fact that small firms struggle with theselimitations has been studied through this study. A qualitative research strategy has been applied with the semi-structured interviews to collect the data for this study. In order to collect data for this study appropriate sampling strategy was used and this study includes primary data about three micro and small restaurants that are available and accessible in the environment that is in northern Sweden, Umeå. The interviews have been structured based on the previous theories identified in marketing communication tools. To summarize, basing on analyzingfindings the most used marketing communication tools advertising, Internet and sales promotion by three small restaurants and financial limitations have been most important barriers to applymarketing communication tools by small restaurant businesses. Because of this reason, small sized restaurants have not used marketing communication tools according to their needs. The results of this study also show that although the importance of marketing communication tools is known by small firms, but these businesses cannot encourage for improving their marketing activities because of challenging limitations. For improving the known potential efficiency of marketing communication tools for small firms, marketing communication tools should be used as professionally by small firms and small firms should separate budget to use these tools.