In this thesis, I attempt to provide a linguistic solution to the problem of failure of substitutivity in intensional contexts, with specific emphasis on sentences containing verbs of propositional attitude, for example, "believe", "say", "think", "realize", etc. Many solutions to this problem have been proposed in the philosophical literature (the major ones will be reviewed in this thesis) and most of the linguistic analyses to date have been based upon the logical concepts invoked in the former. Using the pragmatic notion of "point of view" as defined by Reinhart (1975), I provide an alternate solution that takes into account the intuitions of speakers of natural language. My solution is based on the fact that different points of view can result in different referents for an expression, and that this difference is essential to the semantic interpretation and truth value of intensional sentences. I also discuss so-called identity statements of the form 'a = b' (where 'a' and 'b' stand for coreferential expressions), arguing that there is both semantic and syntactic evidence for the claim that natural language utterances of this form do not express identity.

In recent years, technical advances in the field of Augmented Reality (AR), coupled with the acceleration in computer and graphics processing power, have brought robust and affordable AR within the reach of the wider research community. While the technical issues of AR remain heavily researched, there is also a growing amount of work on user interface development and evaluation, heralding the convergence of traditional Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and AR. Magic Lenses are 2D interface components that provide alternative representations of objects seen through them. In this way, they can be used to provide Focus and Context in the interface, especially when visualising layered information. There are very few, if any, formal evaluations to guide the development of lens-based interfaces. This thesis describes the development and evaluation of Magic Lenses as a tool for AR interfaces. The work starts with a comprehensive survey of many Focus and Context techniques, which are classified based on the way they present views to the users { for example, a Magic Lens is a spatially separated multiple view technique. A formal evaluation of 2D Magic Lenses in a GIS scenario found that users strongly preferred the lens-based interaction technique to others, largely because it reduced the effort of interaction. Accuracy was high with the lenses, but a simple "global view" interface allowed significantly faster performance. This positive result motivated further work on Magic Lenses within AR, where the lens metaphor can reinforce the tangible interaction methods that link virtual and real content. To support rapid exploration of interaction alternatives with AR Magic Lenses, I describe the design and architecture of osgART, an AR development toolkit that is available to the research community as open-source software. Object selection and manipulation is a fundamental interaction requirement for all AR interfaces, and I establish an empirical foundation of performance in this task with a variety of AR interaction techniques, including Magic Lenses. Results show that performance with all techniques is successfully modelled by Fitt's Law, and that Magic Lenses outperformed other techniques. Finally, I examine new interaction techniques based on Magic Lenses, particularly a Flexible Sheet Lens, which allows concurrent bimanual specification of multiple parameters within the visualisation.

This thesis explores the nature of communication in television documentary, based on an investigation of production, reception and their interrelationship. It assumes that social context is fundamental to an understanding of mass communication. Doise's (1986) levels of analysis (intrapersonal; interpersonal/situational; positional; cultural/ideological) provide the framework for conceptualizing social context. Audience reception research, which appreciates viewers' active role in reception and influence on production, inspires the qualitative approach. Whilst these premises challenge a traditional transmission approach to mass communication, the thesis argues against simultaneously rejecting the concept of information transmission. The thesis is located within a ritual approach to communication (Carey, 1989), exploring the potential for information transmission by extending this approach to situational and positional levels. As a distinctive information genre, the television documentary is perfect for investigating transmission. In this endeavour, the thesis explores the assumptions of both broadcasters and audiences concerning the function, structure and content of documentary communication. The methodological structure comprises three qualitative studies - production context, reception context and a case study. The production study involves twenty one interviews with television documentary broadcasters and establishes two intersecting dimensions embracing their perspectives. The reception study includes eight focus group discussions, and finds documentary expectations differing by socio-economic status and gender. These studies provide the context for analysing the nature of communication in one documentary programme, "Parental Choice", comparing a producer interview with four audience focus group discussions. The results highlight a lack of awareness amongst broadcasters of the varying genre-specific criteria used by documentary audiences in programme interpretation. Information transmission is possible if viewers accept a documentary's credibility. However, perceptions of credibility vary at the situational and positional levels, thus transmission is limited and ritually-based. The emerging nature of documentary communication contributes to academic debate on mass communication, audience research and the television documentary genre.

As ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technologies reach maturity, smart phones and context-based services are gaining mainstream popularity. A smart phone accompanies its user throughout (nearly) all aspects of his life, becoming an indispensable assistant the busy user relies on to help navigate his life, using map applications to navigate the physical world, email and instant messaging applications to keep in touch, media player applications to be entertained, etc. As a smart phone is capable of sensing the physical and virtual context of the user with an array of “hard” sensors (e.g., GPS, accelerometer) and “soft” sensors (e.g., email, social network, calendar),it is well-equipped to tailor the assistance it provides to the user. Over the life of a smart phone, it is entrusted with an enormous amount of personal information, everything from context-information sensed by the phone to contact lists to call-logs to passwords. Based on this rich set of information it is possible to model the behavior of the user, and use the models to detect anomalies (i.e., significant variations) in the user’s behavior. Anomaly detection capabilities enable a variety of application domains such as device theft detection, improved authentication mechanisms, impersonation, prevention, physical emergency detection, remote elder-care monitoring, and other proactive services. There has been extensive prior research on anomaly detection in various application domain areas (e.g., fraud detection, intrusion detection). Yet these approaches cannot be used in ubicomp environments as 1) they are very application-specific and not versatile enough to learn complex day to day behavior of users, 2) they work with a very small number of information sources with a relatively uniform stream of information (unlike sensor data from mobile devices), and 3) most approaches require labeled or semi-labeled data about anomalies (in ubicomp environments, it is very costly to create labeled datasets). Existing work in the field of anomaly detection in ubicomp environments is quite sparse. Most of the existing work focuses on using a single sensor information stream (GPS in most cases) to detect anomalies in the user’s behavior. However there exists a somewhat richer vein of prior work in modeling user behavior with the goal of behavior prediction; this is again limited mostly to a single sensor stream or single type of prediction (mostly location). This dissertation presents the notion of modeling mobile user behavior as a collection of models each capturing an aspect of the user’s behavior such as indoor mobility, typing patterns, calling patterns. A novel mechanism is developed for combining these models (i.e.,CobLE), which operate on asynchronous information sources from the mobile device, taking into consider how well each model is estimated to perform in the current context. These ideas are concretely implemented in an extensible framework, McFAD. Evaluations carried out using real-world datasets on this framework in contrast to prior work show that the framework for detecting anomalous behavior, 1) vastly reduces the training data requirement, 2) increases coverage, and 3) dramatically increases performance.

This thesis examines techniques that can be used to evaluate systems that solve the complex task of suggesting points of interest to users. A traveller visiting an unfamiliar, foreign city might be looking for a place to have fun in the last few hours before returning home. Our traveller might browse various search engines and travel websites to find something that he is interested in doing, however this process is time consuming and the visitor may want to find some suggestion quickly. We will consider the type of system that is able to handle this complex request in such a way that the user is satisfied. Because the type of suggestion one person wants will differ from the type of suggestion another person wants we will consider systems that incorporate some level of personalization. In this work we will develop user profiles that are based on real users and set up experiments that many research groups can participate in, competing to develop the best techniques for implementing this kind of system. These systems will make suggestion of attractions to visit in various different US cities to many users. This thesis is divided into two stages. During the first stage we will look at what information will go into our user profiles and what information we need to know about the users in order to decide whether they would visit an attraction. The second stage will be deciding how to evaluate the suggestions that various systems make in order to determine which system is able to make the best suggestions.

This study diagnoses performance in a mature manufacturing company based on an inquiry into contextual ambidexterity. Previous research has shown that creating a high performance context is founded upon the constructs of performance management and social support; however, this research has been conducted in fast evolving, relatively young companies such as software design firms. To date, no research has shown if a well established manufacturing firm can create a context with high levels of performance management and social support establishing a high performance environment and therefore be contextually ambidextrous. The presented contextual ambidexterity inquiry considers social support based upon four specific types of support, namely emotional, appraisal, informational, and instrumental support. Within social support, the concepts of trust and burnout are also vital in establishing the proper culture to achieve high performance. Further, performance management is founded upon human capital management established in a suitable corporate culture. In this study, this approach to a contextual ambidexterity inquiry is applied within the context of a U.S. based division of a global manufacturing company based on a survey, participant observation, and individual interviews. The research contributes to both the academic and practitioner environments with a greater understanding of the antecedents of high performance in an environment outside that of a young, fast evolving software firms. Further, it is shown that a high performance context may exist within organizations that are vastly different from those previously studied. In addition, this study offers an approach to a contextual ambidexterity inquiry with refined definitions and measures based on established constructs as well as new constructs. The implications of these additions to our understanding of contextual ambidexterity to both academia and practice are discussed and several avenues of future research are proposed.

To support the professional knowledge development of all teachers, schools in North America have implemented teacher-leader roles (Angelle & DeHart, 2011; Fullan, 2003; Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008). The effectiveness of developing professional knowledge depends upon numerous variables such as school culture, collaborative environments, resources, and organizational paradigms. It follows, then, that understanding what influences teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership can determine best practices of implementing teacher-leader roles within schools and across school divisions. The literature reviewed in this study falls into four main categories: School culture, Distributed Leadership as Teacher-Leadership, Teacher-Leader Roles, and Teachers’ Perceptions of Teacher-Leadership. Furthermore, the purpose of this study was to investigate high school teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership. Research, using a quantitative instrument, focused on conducting an inquiry into teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership and what influences teachers’ perceptions. The study investigated the differences in perceptions according to these specific considerations: attained education level, teaching experience, formal teacher-leader roles, and gender. The primary objective of this research was to investigate the differences in high-school teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership within the context of one Saskatchewan urban school division according to educators’ attained education level, teaching experience, formal teacher-leader roles, and gender. To that end, the study investigated teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership based on four factors of teacher-leadership: supra-practitioner, sharing expertise, sharing leadership, and principal selection (Angelle & DeHart, 2011). Moreover, the following research questions previously referred to helped sharpen the focus of the study: 1. What are the differences in teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership according to different degree levels attained? 2. What are the differences in teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership according to varying teaching experience? 3. What are the differences in teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership according to teachers who occupy formal teacher-leader roles compared to those who do not occupy formal teacher-leader roles? 4. What are the differences in teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership according to gender? This study used a quantitative methodology to examine high school teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership through Angelle and DeHart’s (2012) Teacher Leadership Inventory resulting in empirical evidence collected via one-way between-groups ANOVA- the results of which provided both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics indicated the spread of scores through variance, standard deviation, and range while describing independent and dependent variables (Creswell, 2012). Inferential statistics helped to “compare groups or related two or more variables” (p. 187). Independent variable of the study included; degree level attainment, years of teaching experience, occupying a position of formal teacher-leadership, and gender. Furthermore, the dependent variables included Sharing Expertise, Sharing Leadership, Supra-Practitioner and Principal Selection. The findings of the data showed statistical difference in the dependent variables Sharing Expertise and Sharing Leadership. As a result of this study, implications for theory include whether the TLI needs to consider a Canadian context. In addition, implications of practice revealed in this study supported the use of the Teacher Leadership Inventory (Angelle and DeHart, 2012) as a possible screening instrument for teachers’ perceptions of teacher-leadership. Finally, implications for further research; this is the second study to use the Teacher Leadership Inventory, as such, it will be beneficial to use the TLI in more applications to collect additional data and to identify norms for the instrument.

GoCity is designed to provide city visitors with up-to-date and context-aware information while they are exploring a city using Android mobile phones. This thesis not only introduces the design and analysis of GoCity, but also discusses four problems in leveraging three concepts—context-awareness, self-adaptation, and usability—in current mobile application design. First, few contexts other than location and time have been used in actual mobile applications. Second, there is no clear classification of context information for mobile application design. Third, mobile application designers lack systematic mechanisms to address sensing and monitoring requirements under changing context situations. This is crucial for effective self-adaptation. Fourth, most mobile applications have low usability due to poor user interface (UI) design. The model proposed in this thesis addresses these issues by (i) supporting diverse context dimensions, (ii) monitoring context changes continuously and tailoring the application behavior according to these changes, and (iii) improving UI design using selected usability methods. In addition, this thesis proposes two classifications of context information for mobile applications: source-based classification—personal context, mobile device context, and environmental context; and property-based classification—static context and dynamic context. The combination of these two classifications helps determine the observed context and its polling rate—the rate at which the context is collected—effectively. A distinctive feature of GoCity is that it supports two interaction modes—static mode and dynamic mode. In static mode, the application generates results only after the user sends the request to it. In other words, it does not actively generate results for users. In contrast, in the dynamic mode, the application continuously updates results even if the user does not send any request to it. The notion of an autonomic element (AE) is used for the dynamic mode to make GoCity self-adaptive. The polling rates on different contexts are also handled differently in the dynamic mode because of the differences among context properties. In addition, GoCity is composed of, but not limited to, four sub-applications. Each sub-application employs a variety of context information and can be implemented as an independent mobile application. Regarding usability, GoCity focuses on providing a simple and clear user interface as well as supporting user expectations for personalization. An experiment which involves a person visiting the city of Victoria was conducted to evaluate GoCity. In this evaluation, three determining factors of usability were employed to qualitatively and quantitatively assess GoCity. In addition, the static mode and dynamic mode were evaluated separately. / Graduate

This thesis presents the design and implementation of I-Shop, a context-aware, shopping smartphone application designed to provide shoppers with relevant advertisements for product and services available in close proximity. We argue that current context-aware mobile applications exhibit significant limitations in the following domains: (1) use of context, (2) invasion of privacy, (3) spam management, and (4) platform dependency. The proposed context model attempts to tackle these shortcomings by exploiting available contextual information from social media networks such as Facebook. Our goal is to use a user’s personal information, such as their native language and personal interests, to direct the most relevant advertisements to them. To alleviate any privacy issues, a user’s personal information is never sent out to any back-end services and only apply the filters locally. In addition, unlike most other predictive approaches that track the user’s location history, we follow a reactive approach which triggers only when the user is close to a shopping area. When a user arrives to a particular shopping area, the application asks whether she wishes to view any advertisements of local products and services. Upon approval, the application retrieves deals on products including services sorted by domain from databases, such as Groupon and our custom extended deals database. Finally, the application filters the retrieved data according to personal interests and then displays the results. As a proof of concept, we designed and implemented the I-Shop prototype application. We built I-Shop as a hybrid application using IBM’s state-of-the-art Worklight infrastructure. This approach lets developers optimize their time and effort; enabling a “write once, deploy everywhere” development model that not only reduces development costs but also increases application performance by providing a combination of native and web capabilities. In addition, I-Shop also leverages several features offered by the IBM Worklight infrastructure including cross-platform support, direct update, internalization, and integration of third-party libraries and toolkits. / Graduate

The objective of this study is to describe and understand the organizational culture and context in Home Health Nursing (HHNsg) practice. Participants consisted of a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), three Registered Nurses (RNs) and three Registered Nurse leaders. Using the methodology of ethnography, data collection methods included participant-observation, documenting fieldnotes, writing reflective memos, conducting individual interviews and examining organizational priorities. Home Health Nurses (HHNs) were observed and subsequently interviewed to illustrate routine practices and discourses that influence everyday HHNsg practice. Nurse leaders shared their perspectives of everyday contexts underpinning HHNsg practice, particularly professional claims of culturally-competent care. Geertz’s theoretical concepts of “thick descriptions and “texts” were applied to the analysis. My concluding discussion demonstrates how participants enacted cost-effective and efficient philosophies of organizing care despite claiming the importance of culturally-competent care with South Asian clients (India, Punjab). / Graduate