With the rapid development of technology for context awareness, pervasive computing is releasing people from their traditional desktops. Since mobile devices feature portability and are (nearly) always connected, people tend to carry them wherever they go. Hence, devices such as cellular phones and Pocket PCs are the most suitable platforms for developing context aware applications which users will utilize in their daily life. For these context aware systems, using this context information not only improves the user experience of ubiquitous computing, but also lets the system know who you are or what you have. More importantly, the device can know where you are and predict what you might like to do, thus simplifying many of the user’s interactions with devices and other people around them. This thesis project involves the design, implementation and evaluation of a context aware application, based upon a Pocket PC, that can remind the user of tasks when the user approaches the relevant location for this task. The application interacts with a context aware infrastructure by using the SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE) protocol, receives context information for the user described using XML. A number of new tags, based upon a new XML schema, have been introduced for this task. This context aware mechanism enables the user to receive any form of information updated by the context server. In this thesis, updates to this information are driven by changes in the user’s location. Additionally, by using the existing calendar application on the Pocket PC, the user can experience location based reminders without learning how to use a new user interface. / Med den snabba utvecklingen av kontextmedvetna teknologier befriar den genomträngande datoriseringen människor från deras traditionella datorer. Eftersom mobila apparater medför bärbarhet och är (nästan) alltid uppkopplade, tenderar människor att bära dem överallt. Följaktligen blir apparater som mobiltelefoner och Pocket-PC de mest passande plattformarna för utvecklandet avkontextmedvetna applikationer för daglig användning. För dessa kontextmedvetna system kommer inte bara användandet av kontexinformation förbättra användarens upplevelse av överallt förekommande datorisering, utan låter även systemet veta vem du är eller vad du har. ännu viktigare är att apparaten kan veta var du befinner dig samt förutsäga vad du skulle kunna vilja göra, och därigenom förenkla mycket av användarens interaktion med andra apparater och människor i omgivningen. Detta examensarbetsprojekt involverar designen, implementationen och evalueringen av en kontextmedvetet applikation, baserad på en Pocket-PC, som kan påminna användaren om uppgifter när användaren närmar sig det relevanta området för dessa uppgifter. Applikationen interagerar med en kontextmedveten infrastruktur genom användandet av protokollet “SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE)”, mottas kontextinformation för användaren beskriven i XML-format. Ett antal nya taggar, baserade på en ny XML-schema, har introducerats för denna uppgift. Denna kontextmedvetna mekanism gör det möjligt för användaren att ta emot alla typer av uppdaterad information från kontextservern. I denna avhandling uppdateras denna information genom att användaren förflyttar sig. Dessutom kan användaren, genom att använda den befintliga kalenderapplikationen i Pocket-PC:n, få lägesbaserade påminnelser skickade till sig utan att behöva lära sig använda ännu ett interface.

Utilizing context information and in networks, enabling network services to act upon context information, and exchanging context information with applications, constitutes an important new approach to designing communication systems and central to the research project named Ambient Networks. The Ambient Networks project is a part of the 6th Framework Project cofunded by the European Commission and carried out by industry and academia. A system is said to be context-aware when it reacts to changes in context i.e., information which describes an entity’s current situation. This new approach enables developments of systems that are more adaptive to user needs and behavior. As a result systems can provide a homogenous appearance which is important as more and more different network access technologies arise. This thesis investigates, models, implements, and evaluates a distributed context-aware architecture for Ambient Networks, the Distributed Context eXchange Protocol (DCXP). The solution is a proof-of-concept that shows how a context-aware ambient network can benefit from a distributed approach. The current design is based on a peer-to-peer architecture that forms an overlay to distribute context information among the participating units. This distributed approach was chosen in order to balance the load and also enable a device to easily locate and fetch desired context information. The evaluation of the proposed context-aware architecture addresses the issues of how such a system ties in with the ideas of Ambient Networks. The main result of this report is a prototype enabling nodes in an ambient network to exchange context information. Moreover, the results show that the prototype needs to be refined in order to work in larger scale networks. / Användning av miljö-beskrivande information, så kallad context information, i olika nätverk är en ny infallsvinkel i designen av kommunikationssystem och är av stor vikt i forskningsprojektet Ambient Networks. Målet är att context information ska kunna utnyttjas i nätverken av olika tjänster samt även dela informationen med applikationer. Ambient Networks projektet är en del av det sjätte EU finansierade ramprogrammet där industrin och den akademiska världen deltar. Ett nätverk eller system klassificeras som context medvetet, context-aware, när det tar hänsyn till förändringar i sk. context information. Context information eller miljö-beskrivande information beskriver en enhets nuvarande situation. Detta möjliggör utveckling av system som ”lyssnar” på användaren och anpassar sig efter dess behov och beteende. Ett praktiskt exempel skulle kunna vara att användare upplever det som ett homogent system trots att det finns flera underliggande access teknologier. Den här uppsatsen undersöker, designar, implementerar och utvärderar en distribuerad context-aware arkitektur för Ambient Networks, Distributed Context eXchange Protocol (DCXP). Lösningen visar hur ett ambient network kan nyttja en distribuerad lösning för att hantera context information. Designen bygger på att de deltagande noderna skapar ett virtuellt nät, overlay, för att mellan sig dela på context informationen. Den här lösningen valdes för att balansera belastningen jämt mellan de deltagande noderna samt att på ett enkelt sätt för varje enskild node kunna lokalisera och hämta önskad context information. Utvärdering av den föreslagna lösningen visar på hur den kan integreras med den övriga utvecklingen som skett inom Ambient Networks projektet. Det huvudsakliga resultatet av arbetet är en prototyp som möjliggör för noder i ett ambient nätverk att utbyta context information. Vidare visar även resultatet att prototypen bör vidareutvecklas för att fungera i större sammanhang.

Though research has shown that social context influences behavior, research on product placement is yet to incorporate such effects. This is a very significant research gap since product placements are often consumed as part of a shared viewing experience. To address this gap, this dissertation examines social contextual influences on consumer behavior associated with the coviewing of product placements. Two aspects of social context were examined in a 2 (group composition: friends versus strangers) x 2 (coviewing context: interactive versus passive) experimental design. Data were collected during a laboratory experiment in which participants in dyads first viewed a 22-minute Seinfeld sitcom episode and then completed an online survey, designed to collect data on the variables in this study. Since the data were hierarchical in nature, i.e., individuals nested in groups, multilevel modeling was used to analyze the data. Results showed that friends recalled significantly more placed brands than did strangers. Friends also held significantly stronger, more positive attitudes toward the audiovisual, very prominently placed brand, Gore-Tex. However, there was no significant difference between interactive and passive coviewers on recall of and attitudes toward placed brands. Results suggest that the impact of individual-level variables on brand recall and on attitude toward placed brands did not significantly depend on social context. The exceptions were for the effects of: (1) brand familiarity on attitude toward Gore-Tex, which was stronger for strangers than friends, and (2) parasocial attachment on attitude toward the visual only, very subtly placed brand, Coca-Cola, which was stronger for interactive than passive coviewers. The results hold implications for marketing theory, methodology, and practice. Results suggest that to the extent marketers can create, encourage, and maintain social contexts that favor friendship effects, they stand to benefit with desired outcomes. Results also suggest that interaction during coviewing may not cause a significant enhancement in or decrement to recall of and attitude toward placed brands. This study is the stepping stone for research on social contextual influences in product placement research. There is still much to be done on research in this area, particularly since social contextual influences are expected to play a major role in the future of marketing.

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Our built environment has the power to influence where we live and work, how we transport ourselves, how and what we consume and many other behaviors in our everyday lives, in other words, it has a significant impact on our global environment and economy. Given the notable need for more sustainable development of both the global environment and economy, sustainability has become a critical factor also in the area of urban development. With this as a backdrop, the construction industry and its many actors, such as clients, contractors and suppliers, that collectively drive urban development, play a significant role in creating sustainable development. Innovation is a cornerstone to achieve development, so also in the construction industry. However, with its many interrelated organizations, projects and actors, innovation inevitably becomes inter-organizational. From an urban development perspective, inter-organizational innovation will happen in a multi-project context where several construction projects, led and executed by different actors from different organizations, become interdependent and are therefore required to collaborate. In any construction project, the client holds a key position and has been identified as a critical supporter for successful innovation and collaboration. On the back of these dynamics, the purpose of this licentiate thesis is to explore clients’ role in a multi-project context where inter-organizational innovation is initiated to drive sustainable urban development. From a contingency perspective, the purpose of this study has been explored through a multiple-case study where coordinated construction logistics, during the study, has been identified as inter-organizational innovation. The study has shown that coordinated construction logistics, developed for a multi-project context, must be developed and implemented differently than in a single project or organization. In other words, coordinated construction logistics can take the form of different types of construction innovation. The construction clients, in this thesis the building developers, are identified as being important to support innovation and collaboration within and between parallel and sequential projects. The study has also shown that different clients behave differently when inter-organizational innovation is present; whilst some are proactive to achieve development, others are hesitant and less supportive for change. The findings suggest that long-term committed clients take a more proactive stand for innovation, for example, by including innovation in their procurement strategies and reflecting on how to best implement it in their projects. Additionally, in a multi-project context, the collaboration between clients is found to be important in order to successfully implement innovation, for example to align procurement strategies with the next-door neighbors and to create opportunities to communicate with each other. A theoretical contribution from this thesis is that coordinated construction logistics, which is often seen from a supply-chain management perspective, could be considered as inter-organizational innovation. This conclusion expands the understanding of the empirical phenomenon and its context. Furthermore, adding to the on-going discussion on clients as innovation supporters, their role as a potential innovation supporter is established in a multi-project perspective, but where differences between different types of clients must be taken into account. The multi-project context also implies an increased need for client collaboration, which is often informal, why the clients themselves need to handle all the aspects of collaboration. Tentative findings indicate that in this context time, spatiality, innovation and requirements will affect this collaboration. From a practical side, the findings show that initiating and implementing inter-organizational innovation requires understanding of the context, such as project objectives and the system. For clients and governments active in urban development, the thesis can guide the understanding of the importance of collaboration and choosing procurement strategy for inter-organizational innovation. / <p>QC 20180508</p>

This work has two objectives: a) to predict people's future locations, and b) to predict when they will be at given locations. Current location-based applications react to the user's current location. The progression from location-awareness to location-prediction can enable the next generation of proactive, context-predicting applications. Existing location-prediction algorithms predict someone's next location. In contrast, this dissertation predicts someone's future locations. Existing algorithms use a sequence of locations and predict the next location in the sequence. This dissertation incorporates temporal information as timestamps in order to predict someone's location at any time in the future. Sequence predictors based on Markov models have been shown to be effective predictors of someone's next location. This dissertation applies a Markov model to two-dimensional, timestamped location information to predict future locations. This dissertation also predicts when someone will be at a given location. These predictions can support presence or understanding co-workers’ routines. Predicting the times that someone is going to be at a given location is a very different and more difficult problem than predicting where someone will be at a given time. A location-prediction application may predict one or two key locations for a given time, while there could be hundreds of correct predictions for times of the day that someone will be in a given location. The approach used in this dissertation, a heuristic model loosely based on Market Basket Analysis, is the first to predict when someone will arrive at any given location. The models are applied to sparse, WiFi mobility data collected on PDAs given to 275 college freshmen. The location-prediction model predicts future locations with 78-91% accuracy. The temporal-prediction model achieves 33-39% accuracy. If a tolerance of plus/minus twenty minutes is allowed, the prediction rates rise to 77%-91%. This dissertation shows the characteristics of the timestamped, location data which lead to the highest number of correct predictions. The best data cover large portions of the day, with less than three locations for any given timestamp. / Ph. D.

A distinctive feature of run-time reconfigurable systems is the ability to change the configuration of programmable resources during execution. This opens a number of possibilities such as virtualisation of computational resources, simplified routing and in certain applications lower power. Seamless run-time reconfiguration requires rapid configuration. Commodity programmable devices have relatively long configuration time, which makes them poor candidates for run-time reconfigurable systems. Reducing this reconfiguration time to the order of nano seconds will enable rapid run-time reconfiguration. Having multiple configuration planes and switching between them while processing data is one approach towards achieving rapid reconfiguration. An experimental context switching programmable device, called the Context Switching Reconfigurable Computer (CSRC), has been created by BAE Systems, which provided opportunities to explore context-switching strategies for run-time reconfigurable systems. The work presented here studies this approach for run-time reconfiguration, by applying the concepts to develop applications on a context switching reconfigurable system. The work also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach and ways of leveraging the concept for efficient computing. / Master of Science

Yes / To date, open science, and particularly open data, in Psychology, has focused on quantitative research. This paper aims to explore ethical and practical issues encountered by UK-based psychologists utilising open qualitative datasets. Semi-structured telephone interviews with eight qualitative psychologists were explored using a framework analysis. From the findings, we offer a context-consent meta-framework as a resource to help in the design of studies sharing their data and/or studies using open data. We recommend ‘secondary’ studies conduct archaeologies of context and consent to examine if the data available is suitable for their research questions. This research is the first we know of in the study of ‘doing’ (or not doing) open science, which could be repeated to develop a longitudinal picture or complemented with additional approaches, such as observational studies of how context and consent are negotiated in pre-registered studies and open data. / The author's manuscript has a slightly different title from the published article: A meta-framework for designing open data studies in psychology: ethical and practical issues of open qualitative data sets