The aim of this two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum Studies is to analyse how Swedish cultural history museums work to include LGBTQ-heritage (LGBT is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer) in their collections. This work is articulated around three research questions. These interrogate museum practice about collecting and collection management, what it looks like in the already gathered collections as well as the implications such work implies on a broader level. The theoretical framework throughout the paper is gender and LGBT studies as well as queer theory. The analytical tools that have been used are bias-theory (Carruthers 1987), stereotyping (Pickering 2003) and classification theory (Bowker & Leigh Star 2000). Seven interviews form the main empirical material that is analysed in order to grasp museums collecting practice and collection management. Today’s museums practice is influenced by the new trends in democratic representation and seeks therefore to include new narratives that include the LGBTQ community. Museums are either collecting new material with connection to the LGBTQ community or look inwards in order to reinterpret older collections and maybe find a link to it. Both strategies rouse questions that are discussed in this paper. How to classify and document that material as well as selection processes and the traditional museums relation to the alternative collecting practice as the grassroots organizations stand for are discussed in the thesis.

Recent archaeological discoveries at Fox Island County Park (Cochran 1978, 1979, and 1980a) have provided the impetus for the formulation of a cultural resources management plan for its archaeological resources. Several of the sites discovered have undergone intensive assessment and they, along National Register as an archaeological district. If they are to be properly protected, studied, and explained a management plan is essential. Therefore, within this thesis such a plan for the cultural resources of Fox Island County Park is proposed.The goals of the management plan shall be to provide for the preservation and protection of the resources using a conservation approach to archaeology and to interpret to the public their value and significance. Among the steps or objectives in achieving these goals are to: (1) seek the services of a professional archaeologist or establish develop 2 an archaeological oversight committee, (2) develop a preliminary research design, including the establishment of study units to facilitate the broadening of the data base, (3) encourage and organize volunteers, (4) increase the data base through comprehensive reconnaissance, (5) revised, long-term research design, (6) create an archaeological preserve, (7) monitor adverse impacts to the resources and develop appropriate preservation or conservation strategies, (8) gain public interest and provide information on the cultural heritage of Fox Island and vicinity, (9) identify sources in the community for monetary support, and (10) implement the long-term research design, revising it periodically as necessary.

Special operations as a military mean have become more important in today’s conflicts. During the last decade, the importance of reliable intelligence has increased. A principle task for special opera-tion forces is Special Reconnaissance and Surveillance, but there is not much open research regarding these kinds of Special Reconnaissance operations and related guiding principles and theories are missing. A theory would be valuable to improve the institution of special operation forces by creating the ability to explain what institutional features help or hinder the uses of special operations.Admiral McRaven’s principles and approach is widely accepted as a theory, but was done with McRaven’s own definition of special operation described as Direct Action. The Swedish Military Op-erational Doctrine, regarding special operations, has a foundation drawn from McRaven’s theory.To reach a better understanding and widen the knowledge for the Swedish Armed Forces there is a need for further explanations on what is unique to the special operation forces and special opera-tions. Deficiencies in knowledge and understanding can lead to the wrong use of these forces, when complex intelligence collection mission is to be conducted.The purpose of this case study is to compare McRaven’s principles regarding special operations and their application in conducting a Special Reconnaissance and Surveillance mission. As a result this paper shows that there are emerging guiding Special Reconnaissance principles of importance to be found. McRaven’s principles can be used to some extent, but should be done with caution, since they are not optimized for Special Reconnaissance missions.

A wireless sensor network is a collection of numerous sensors distributed on an area of interest to collect and process data from the environment. One particular threat in wireless sensor networks is node compromise attacks, that is, attacks where the adversary gets physical access to a node and to the programs and keying material stored on it. Only authorized queries should be allowed in the network and the integrity and confidentiality of the data that is being collected should be protected. We propose a layered key distribution scheme together with two protocols for query authentication and confidential data aggregation. The layered key distribution is more robust to node and communication failures than a predefined tree structure. The protocols are secure under the assumption that less than n sensor nodes are compromised. n is a design parameter that allows us to trade off security for overhead. When more than n sensor nodes are compromised, our simulations show that the attacker can only introduce unauthorized queries into a limited part of the network and can only get access to a small part of the data that is aggregated in the network. Considering the data collection protocol we also contribute with strategies to reduce the energy consumption of an integrity preserving in-network aggregation scheme to a level below the energy consumption of a non-aggregation scheme. Our improvements reduce node congestion by a factor of three and the total communication load by 30%. Location privacy of the users carrying mobile devices is another aspect considered in this thesis. Considering a mobile sink that collects data from the network, we propose a strategy for data collection that requires no information about the location and movement pattern of the sink. We show that it is possible to provide data collection services, while protecting the location privacy of the sink. When mobile phones with built-in sensors are used as sensor nodes, location information about where the data has been sensed can be used to trace users and infer other personal information about them, like state of health or personal preferences. Therefore, location privacy preserving mechanisms have been proposed to provide location privacy to the users. We investigate how a location privacy preserving mechanism influences the quality of the collected data and consider strategies to reconstruct the data distribution without compromising location privacy. / WISENET

The Meshingomesia Reserve was in existence for a little over thirty years, from 1840-1873. During that time it served as a buffer between the Miami in Indiana and the encroaching white settlers. The survey of the reserve was undertaken to establish what remained in the archaeological evidence of this historic area. From the results of the survey and the background research into the history and archaeological site surveys and excavations previously conducted within the reserve’s boundaries, an assessment of the archaeological resources and a management plan were developed. / Department of Anthropology

This thesis examines the possibilities of the tattoo as a collectible. Specifically, three different modes of collecting and displaying tattoos; as a living museum on the body of the tattooed subject, as a skin specimen separated from the body and displayed in a variety of museum settings and, finally, as an image abstracted from the body in the form of photographs of tattooed sitters. Implicit in this journey from body art to artifact is a consideration of the changing meaning and significance of tattoos in the evolving discourse of visual culture. Once regarded as markers of social deviance - as symbols of exclusion or marginalization - tattoos have become a much more popular and widely accepted form of body art - signs of community, affinity and inclusion. The growing popularity of tattoos has also led to a reconsideration of their status as an art form, an elevation of what was once considered a 'low art' process to the realm of high art. This shift has only recently led to an increase in scholarship about tattoos within the discourses of both art history and visual culture. In this thesis I examine this new scholarship about tattoos in visual culture, and then go one step further by considering tattoos as visual objects within the culture of collecting. Specifically, I examine tattoos as collectible 'souvenirs', as specimens and, when reproduced as photographs, as socially resonant signs of identity and meaning. These case studies examine tattoo art from various perspectives. Primarily, as art collected on the body, but also as imagery existing separate from a physical form, just like the majority of collected artwork.

Several content-based interfaces for music collection exploration rely on Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) to produce 2D or 3D visualizations of music spaces. In these visualizations, perceptually similar songs are clustered together. The positions of clusters containing similar songs, however, cannot be determined in advance due to particularities of the traditional SOM algorithm. In this thesis, I propose a variation on the traditional algorithm named anchoredSOM. This variation avoids changes in the positions of the aforementioned clusters. Moreover, anchoredSOM allows users to personalize the music space by choosing the locations of clusters containing per- ceptually similar tracks. This thesis introduces SoundAnchoring, an interface for music collection exploration featuring anchoredSOM. SoundAnchoring is evaluated by means of a user study. Results show that SoundAnchoring offers engaging ways to explore music collections and build playlists. / Graduate / 0984 / 0413 / leandro.collares@gmail.com

Despite the significant advances that have been made in traffic sensor technologies, there are only a few systems that provide measurements at the trip level and fewer yet that can do so for all travel modes. On the other hand, traditional methods of collecting individual travel behavior (i.e. manual or web-based travel diaries) are resource intensive and prone to a wide range of errors. Moreover, although dedicated GPS loggers provide the ability to collect detailed travel behavior data with less effort, their use still faces several challenges including the need to distribute and retrieve the logger; the potential need to have the survey participants upload data from the logger to a server; and the need for survey participants to carry another device with them on all their trips. The widespread adoption of smart phones provides an opportunity to acquire travel behavior data from individuals without the need for participants to record trips in a travel diary or to carry dedicated recording devices with them on their travels. The collected travel data can then be used by municipalities and regions for forecasting the travel demand or for analyzing the travel behavior of individuals. In the current research, a smart phone based travel behavior surveying system is designed, developed, and pilot tested. The custom software written for this study is capable of recording the travel characteristics of individuals over the course of any period of time (e.g. days or weeks) and across all travel modes. In this system, a custom application on the smart phone records the GPS data (using the onboard GPS unit) at a prescribed frequency and then automatically transmits the data to a dedicated server. In the server, the data are stored in a dedicated database to be then processed using trip characteristics inference algorithms. The main challenge with the implemented system is the need to reduce the amount of energy consumed by the device to calculate and transmit the GPS fixes. In order to reduce the power consumption from the travel behavior data acquisition software, several techniques are proposed in the current study. Finally, in order to evaluate the performance of the developed system, first the accuracy of the position information obtained from the data acquisition software is analyzed, and then the impact of the proposed methods for reducing the battery consumption is examined. As a conclusion, the results of implemented system shows that collecting individual travel behavior data through the use of GPS enabled smart phones is technically feasible and would address most of the limitations associated with other survey techniques. According to the results, the accuracy of the GPS positions and speed collected through the implemented system is comparable to GPS loggers. Moreover, proposed battery reduction techniques are able to reduce the battery consumption rate from 13.3% per hour to 5.75% per hour (i.e. 57% reduction) when the trip maker is non-stationary and from 5.75% per hour to 1.41% per hour (i.e. 75.5% reduction) when the trip maker is stationary.

I had taken many classes at NCCU and learned a lot of knowledge, skills and insights from professors and classmates. I truly appreciate with their lectures, discussions, helps and behavior. The knowledge and skill that I gained from this program, indeed help a lot in my present job. I worked in a telecommunication company for more than 15 years. My present role in the company is to run the Software Service Operation department. Part of the job function is to ensure smooth operation of customer helpdesk service to maintain and enhance customer satisfaction on our company post sales technical support service. The thesis begins with the brief summary of the company background. Analysis of its current customer case handling organization and customer case handling performance in relation to its major competitor ABC and pin point bottlenecks on its present setup. Via the finding of bottlenecks, the thesis then elaborate various proposal of action plan to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the company’s customer case handling organization to shorten the customer case handling run time, in order to catch up with the industry benchmark and further improve customer satisfaction with our service. This thesis ended with the Case Run Time Reduction Program time line, management of its program risk and the forecast of the outcome of those proposed action plans.

Behavioral research involves the study of the behaviors of one or more agents (often animals) in order to better understand the agents' thoughts and actions. Identifying subject movements and behaviors based upon those movements is a critical, time-consuming step in behavioral research. To successfully perform behavior analysis, three goals must be met. First, the agents of interest are observed, and their movements recorded. Second, each individual must be uniquely identified. Finally, behaviors must be identified and recognized. I explore a system that can uniquely identify and track agents, then use these tracks to automatically build behavioral models and recognize similar behaviors in the future. I address the tracking and identification problems using a combination of laser range finders, active RFID sensors, and probabilistic models for real-time tracking. The laser range component adds environmental flexibility over vision based systems, while the RFID tags help disambiguate individual agents. The probabilistic models are important to target identification during the complex interactions with other agents of similar appearance. In addition to tracking, I present work on automatic methods for generating behavioral models based on supervised learning techniques using the agents' tracked data. These models can be used to classify new tracked data and identify the behavior exhibited by the agent, which can then be used to help automate behavior analysis.