Throughout the 1980s, there was a trend in Australia towards increased participation rates in post-compulsory education. This study examines factors that influence Year 12 retention rates in four Government secondary schools within the Wollongong Sub-Region. Factors that were thought to influence students to continue to Year 12 and sit for the New South Wales Higher School Certificate Examination included those related to Gender, Socio-economic (relating to occupation of parents, government financial assistance, and language background), Educational and Career. The study involved surveying over 400 Year 10 students in four schools by questionnaires. These schools were chosen for their geographical location and to include two schools with a history of high retention rates and two schools with low retention rates. The questions in the survey were incorporated with a larger survey conducted in 1989 by the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong under the coordination of Dr. Noeline Kyle ("Everyone expects you to know; A report on careers advice and industry attitudes towards female students in non-traditional study and work in the Illawarra", 1990). The questionnaire was piloted in 1988 and after seeking recommendations from students, teachers and the NSW Department of School Education Research Group, the survey was administered in 1989. The study used descriptive research methodology, and Chi-square analysis was used to establish significance levels in the data. With regard to gender, the data clearly demonstrated that female students were more inclined than male students to stay on to Year 12, and have positive reasons for their decision. Concerning Socio-Economic factors, the results of this study showed that students whose parents have a professional background are more likely to stay on to Year 12. In addition, the achievement of the Higher School Certificate as a preIV requisite for further study was a strong motivating factor for students staying on to Year 12. However, students in receipt of Austudy did not appear to relate in a statistically significant manner with any of the factors that influence the student to stay on to Year 12. As well, no statistical inference could be drawn from intention to sit for the HSC and the language most used at home by parents. With regard to educational factors, the responses from each of the four schools surveyed showed a high percentage (82 to 85%) of students intending to stay on to Year 12 and sit for the HSC examination. None of these schools had an appreciably higher proportion of students intending to sit the HSC exam. However, it was found that students from one particular school were more likely to undertake further study and students from this school had a high percentage of both parents with a professional occupation than any other school. The findings relating to career factors showed that students who have a professional career in mind are more likely to proceed to Year 12. It was also found that students who had school work experience in a professional occupation were more likely to proceed to Year 12. The study relates the survey findings to the research literature in Australia, and also includes a discussion of the limitations of the survey.

As a teacher of the New South Wales Higher School Certificate Geography Syllabus in the 1970s, I became aware of problems of interpretation and implementation of syllabus documents dealing with models and theories of human aggregate behaviour. A positivistic underpinning allowed explanation in human geography to employ deductive - nomological methodology. This field study investigates a defined literature of academic geography including journals, and both secondary and tertiary documents to identify the extent and quality of nomothetic and idiographic traditions from the late 19th century to the mid 1970s. The literature prior to the late 1950s revealed a dominant regional tradition and idiographic methodology with an emphasis on description of uniqueness of areal phenomena. But underlying currents of a nomothetic nature, running parallel to this regionalidiographic tradition,exerted a noticeable challenge to gain acceptance in geographic circles. This kind of nomothetism was in the form of environmental determinism which held that physical laws operating in nature were also at work to shape and direct human societies. Environmental determinism contained generalised assertions, enjoyed some appeal, but lacked rigorous justification. Even within regional frameworks, authors used environmentally induced determinants to explain the unique character of regions. Not until the 1930s did environmental determinism lose its appeal, after which time the regional - idiographic tradition strengthened as an explanatory mode of human behaviour. Nomothetism emerged in the late 1950s in Australia in the application of models and theories explaining human behaviour. Normative theory was supported by an increased use of quantification and by the growing preference for systematic studies in geography. Neither mode of explanation exists at the total exclusion of the other; so that while nomothetism enjoyed widespread appeal in academic geography from the late 1950s, significant challenges were mounted against it because of its inadequacies as a mode of explaining human aggregate behaviour. Nomothetic explanation in human geography can be seen at the research level and in education circles. Many normative models and theories found their way into senior geography courses to the extent they promoted a systems approach. Teachers would have been aware of normative theory in geography from their university studies and teacher training courses during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. The tension between associated explanatory modes in systematic and regional geography becomes apparent in the analysis of the N.S.W. H.S.C. Geography Syllabus in which confusing statements raise problems for teachers interpreting and implementing this prescriptive document. Given these tensions and problems of explanation in human geography, the adoption of a critical rationalist viewpoint as propounded by Karl Popper is suggested as a possible solution for geography teachers when interpreting a syllabus such as that of the N.S.W. H.S.C. Falsification rather than verification should be the node of inquiry towards explanation of human aggregate behaviour.

Thesis (M.Ed. Mgt.)--Unitec New Zealand, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-132).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

<p>In today’s fast-paced world, there is a constant demand for better and more efficient ways of doing business. Motorola in Linköping are using the agile development framework, Scrum in their software development. A certain level of quality must also be assured of the delivered goods and services. Is it possible to use Scrum and still meet the quality requirements?</p><p>This Master Thesis is performed to investigate if it is possible to achieve a quality certificate from TL 9000, the telecom industry extension of ISO 9000, when using the agile development framework Scrum. The investigation consists of interviews and observations at Motorola, Linköping, along with literature studies about quality systems and agile development.</p><p>The conclusion is that it is possible to meet the TL 9000 requirements when using Scrum, under the condition that some additional processes are performed and that other parts of the organization also fulfills the remaining requirements. This is needed since there are requirements that are out of scope for the Scrum framework. Examples of the suggested additions are to follow the Scrum framework more strictly and to adopt a more specific definition of done.</p>

<p>Business and organizations use computer network in a greater extension than ever before, especially for business-critical use. That increase the demand of security for all systems, both against internal and external threats. The demand on the authentication method used today increases. Today they normally uses password or some kind of smart card. </p><p>I will performa literature study that will investigate the possibility to increase the security in authentication of users without the use of extra hardware. The method uses a server that stores all cryptographic keys for the user centrally to achieve stronger security. This report is based on a previous report which tested to implement this solution, in this report I will question the security of this system. I will then give an architecture proposal where this method is used to authenticate and allow cryptographic recourses for the user. </p><p>The conclusions you can get from this report is that the possibilities with comparable ease increase the security without investing in new hardware. But the solution will not be comparable by a ``smart card solution''in security levels. That means that the method described in this thesis is suitable for organizations that either do not need that strong security as smart card give or want a good solution without being forced to use some external hardware.</p>

Technology progress in both user devices and networks allows communications anytime and anywhere. New communication environments offer a wide range of possibilities to users, but also generate new threats. For this reason, it is necessary to establish measures to find out who is establishing a communication and what actions is authorized to do. Currently proposed solutions in the literature are not completely adapted to the new features such as user mobility, network disconnections and constraints of devices and networks. Many of the existing proposals have focused in providing specific solutions to particular scenarios, but they do not consider a global heterogeneous scenario. Therefore, it is necessary to design security mechanisms able to adapt themselves to new scenarios. In this sense, digital certificates are a standardized and widely used solution. Digital certificates enable performing user authentication and authorization in a distributed way. The problem is that ubiquitous environments complicate the process of digital certificates validation. This complexity could result in a service being not accessible. The goal of this thesis is to contribute in making ubiquitous scenarios more secure. More specifically, the work proposes solutions for reducing the credential validation cost and for improving the availability of authentication and authorization services. In first place, we propose a solution for credential validation that works properly in environments with connection to on-line servers and also in environments where the connection to servers is sometimes not possible. In second place, we propose a cascade revocation system where the delegation is partially centralized. Delegation provides high flexibility to authorization systems, but adds complexity to the system. Our proposal reduces the burden on the verifier-side. In third place, we propose a revocation system for delegation chains based on prefix codes. This proposal deals with the problem of centralization of the previous proposal. In particular, the decentralized solution presented keeps the load reduction achieved in the partially centralized proposal, and also enables dynamic delegation and distribution of revocation data. While the user is connected, revocation data distribution can be done with a certificate revocation list. However, in scenarios where the connection can be lost temporally, this might not be possible. To address this issue, we have proposed a system in which users can perform the functions of revocation servers without being trusted entities. This will allow increasing the availability of validation service, and reduce resource consumption. Each proposal has been analyzed and compared with existing solutions to verify the improvements achieved. / El avance tecnológico tanto de los dispositivos de usuario como de las redes permite que se puedan establecer comunicaciones en cualquier momento y en cualquier lugar. Si bien estos entornos ofrecen un gran abanico de posibilidades a los usuarios, también es cierto que generan nuevas amenazas. Por este motivo, son necesarias medidas que permitan saber con quién se está estableciendo la comunicación y qué acciones se pueden autorizar. Las soluciones propuestas en la literatura no se adaptan completamente a las nuevas características de movilidad, desconexión y limitaciones tanto de los dispositivos como de las redes. De hecho, muchas de las propuestas existentes se han centrado en ofrecer soluciones concretas a escenarios particulares, sin tener en cuenta que el usuario puede entrar a formar parte de entornos heterogéneos. Por lo tanto, se hace necesario diseñar mecanismos de seguridad que conviviendo con los estándares vigentes, se adapten a los nuevos escenarios. En este sentido, los certificados digitales son una solución estandarizada y ampliamente extendida. Los certificados digitales permiten llevar a cabo tanto la autenticación como la autorización de un usuario de forma distribuida. Sin embargo, las características de los entornos ubicuos complican el proceso de validación de certificados. Esta complejidad podría llevar a que no se puediera acceder a los servicios. El objetivo de esta tesis es contribuir a aumentar la seguridad en entornos ubicuos. Más concretamente, se proporcionan soluciones para reducir la carga en la validación de credenciales y aumentar la disponibilidad de los servicios de autenticación y autorización. En primer lugar se propone un sistema de verificación de credenciales que se adapta para funcionar tanto en entornos con conexión a servidores on-line, como en sistemas off-line. Por otra parte, el proceso de delegación en sistemas de autorización, aporta una gran flexibilidad a estos entornos, pero a su vez añade complejidad al sistema. Para reducir esta carga sobre el verificador se propone un sistema de revocación en cascada con delegación centralizada. Sin embargo, esta centralización del servicio limita la escalabilidad y flexibilidad de la solución. Para dar solución a ese inconveniente, se ha propuesto un sistema de revocación en cadenas de delegación basado en códigos prefijo. Esta solución permite mantener la reducción de la carga en la validación lograda en la propuesta centralizada, y además, hace posible la delegación dinámica y la distribución de la información de revocación. Esta distribución puede realizarse a través de listas de revocación de credenciales. En redes con desconexión temporal esta información podría no estar accesible. Para solventarlo, se ha propuesto un sistema en el que los usuarios pueden realizar las funciones de servidores de revocación sin ser entidades de confianza. De esta forma se permite aumentar la disponibilidad del servicio de validación, y reducir el consumo de los recursos. Cada una de las propuestas realizadas se ha analizado para verificar las mejoras proporcionadas frente a las soluciones existentes. Para ello, se han evaluado de forma analítica, por simulación y/o implementación en función de cada caso. Los resultados del análisis verifican el funcionamiento esperado y muestran las mejoras de las propuestas frente a las soluciones existentes.

In several countries that have been early in the development of wind farms, there is today a second hand market for the used wind turbines. The European Union (EU) has established a waste hierarchy in order to minimize throwaway mentality. The second hand market is a part of this as the steps are to minimize, reuse, recycle, extract energy and landfill. In order to promote the development of renewable energy, there are energy certificates for the producers that provide it, wind power being one type of renewable energy. After 15 years the energy certificates for a specific wind turbine are no longer paid, and after that there are several different scenarios for the wind turbine. The scenarios investigated in this bachelor’s thesis are export of the wind turbine to countries that are not as far along as Sweden in their development towards renewable energy, selling in Sweden to individuals, and recycling of the wind turbine, as it mostly consists of metals and therefore is recyclable. In these three scenarios it is assumed that the sites for wind turbines are being reused for new larger wind turbines that produce more energy. Two additional scenarios are to reduce the number of wind turbines in a wind farm by half, in this way gaining access to free spare parts for the remaining wind turbines and continued operation, i.e. operate them for as long time as possible. To assure the decommissioning of the wind turbines and restoration of the site, there are several economical choices for the operator of the wind turbine. No matter what choice is made, the total amount should be 500 000 SEK according to the permission for the wind turbine. A Swedish authority, Miljöprövningsdelegationen, decides whether the operators choice in reassuring and make a decision based on that. To see which scenario is most profitable the economical part is crucial in this bachelor’s thesis. As a wind turbine is a large investment, the investment calculation is sensitive even to small changes. Inflation, interest rate, electricity price and energy certificate price can all vary a good deal but as it is almost impossible to predict the development of these factors, the inflation, interest rate and energy certificate price are all on a fixed level in this report. The electricity price is assumed to be dependent of the inflation solely. By using these assumptions and Microsoft Excel it has been clear that selling the wind turbine and reuse the site for a new larger wind turbine is the most profitable. Sweden has the goal to have 30 TWh, equivalent to 20 %, electricity from wind until year 2020. Today the part is 6.5 TWh, equivalent to 4 %. To make this goal reality it is necessary to make the permitting process easier and faster than the case is today. If Sweden compares to Denmark they already have 28 % electricity from wind and they aim for 50 %. / I flera länder som har legat i framkant med att uppföra vindkraftsparker finns idag en andrahandsmarknad för verken. Inom Europeiska Unionen (EU) har en avfallshierarki upprättats för att minska slit- och slängmentaliteten. Andrahandsmarknaden är en del i detta då stegen är minimera, återanvända, återvinna, energiutvinna och deponera. För att främja utvecklingen av förnyelsebar el finns elcertifikat till de producenter som tillhandahåller detta, däribland vindkraft. Efter 15 år slutar elcertifikatet att utbetalas för ett specifikt vindkraftverk, och då finns olika scenarier för vindkraftverket. De scenarier som undersöks i detta examensarbete är export av verket till länder som inte kommit lika långt som Sverige med förnyelsebar energi, försäljning inom Sverige till privatpersoner och återvinning av verket, som främst består av metaller och därmed är återvinningsbart. I dessa tre scenarier avses det att samma plats återanvänds för nya större verk som producerar mer. Ytterligare två scenarier är att halvera antalet verk i en park och på så vis få tillgång till gratis reservdelar till de återstående verken samt fortsatt drift av verket, det vill säga köra dem så länge det går. För att säkerställa nedmontering av vindkraftverk och återställning av platsen finns olika ekonomiska alternativ för verksamhetsutövaren. Oavsett vilket alternativ som väljs ska summan resultera i 500 000 kronor per vindkraftverk enligt tillståndet till verket. Miljöprövningsdelegationen (MPD) avgör om verksamhetsutövarens valda alternativ är betryggande och beslutar utifrån det. För att se vad som är det mest lönsamma scenariot spelar den ekonomiska delen en stor roll för arbetet. Eftersom vindkraft är en stor investering blir investeringskalkylen känslig även för små förändringar. Inflationen, räntan, elpriset och elcertifikatpriset är poster som kan variera mycket men eftersom det är i princip omöjligt att förutspå hur utvecklingen kommer se ut är inflationen, räntan och elcertifikatpriset satt på en fast nivå. Elpriset är sedan beroende av inflationen. Med hjälp av dessa antaganden och Microsoft Excel har det mest lönsamma scenariot tagits fram vilket är att sälja verket och sätta upp ett nytt större på platsen. Sverige har som mål att fram till år 2020 ha 30 TWh, motsvarande 20 %, el från vindkraft i elnätet. Idag är andelen 6,5 TWh, motsvarande 4 %. För att detta ska bli verklighet måste tillståndsprocessen förenklas och gå snabbare än vad fallet är idag. Jämförs Sverige med Danmark har de redan 28 % vindkraftsel och siktar på 50 %.

In a multi-receiver encryption environment, a sender can randomly choose a set of authorized receivers while distributing messages to them efficiently and securely. Recently, more and more researchers concern the privacy of receivers. They mentioned that an authorized receiver does not want other entities, except the service provider, to be able to derive her/his identity in many applications such as pay-TV. However, most of these protocols either provide no formal security proofs or are inefficient owing to high computation cost. In this thesis, we construct two provably secure and efficient anonymous multi-receiver certificated-based encryption schemes, PMCE and SCMCE, which avoid the key escrow problem while preserving the implicit certification of identity-based setting. The proposed PMCE and SCMCE get rid of pairing computation to encrypt a message and only need one and two pairing computations to decrypt the ciphertext, respectively. Finally, we define the security models and offer formal proofs to all properties including receiver anonymity.

<p>In the environment of the 3:rd generation Internet based on peer-to-peer architecture, well-trusted methods must exist to establish a secure environment. One main issue is the possibility to verify that a node actually is who it claims to be (authentication). Establishment of authentication between nodes in a peer-to-peer environment where nodes are exchanging information directly with each other requires more planning than in a typical client-server environment where the authentication methods are server-based. The peer-to-peer applications described in this report use authentication methods based on central authorities as well as solutions without central authorities. </p><p>Lack of standards in the way peer-to-peer systems should communicate and apply security lead to a variety of “local” communication and security solutions. These local solutions make different applications incompatible with each other, meaning that a peer using one application will not be able to communicate and exchange information with other peers using some other application.</p>