This dissertation studies the context-aware application with its proposed algorithms at client side. The required context-aware infrastructure is discussed in depth to illustrate that such an infrastructure collects the mobile user’s context information, registers service providers, derives mobile user’s current context, distributes user context among context-aware applications, and provides tailored services. The approach proposed tries to strike a balance between the context server and mobile devices. The context acquisition is centralized at the server to ensure the usability of context information among mobile devices, while context reasoning remains at the application level. Hence, a centralized context acquisition and distributed context reasoning are viewed as a better solution overall. The context-aware search application is designed and implemented at the server side. A new algorithm is proposed to take into consideration the user context profiles. By promoting feedback on the dynamics of the system, any prior user selection is now saved for further analysis such that it may contribute to help the results of a subsequent search. On the basis of these developments at the server side, various solutions are consequently provided at the client side. A proxy software-based component is set up for the purpose of data collection. This research endorses the belief that the proxy at the client side should contain the context reasoning component. Implementation of such a component provides credence to this belief in that the context applications are able to derive the user context profiles. Furthermore, a context cache scheme is implemented to manage the cache on the client device in order to minimize processing requirements and other resources (bandwidth, CPU cycle, power). Java and MySQL platforms are used to implement the proposed architecture and to test scenarios derived from user’s daily activities. To meet the practical demands required of a testing environment without the impositions of a heavy cost for establishing such a comprehensive infrastructure, a software simulation using a free Yahoo search API is provided as a means to evaluate the effectiveness of the design approach in a most realistic way. The integration of Yahoo search engine into the context-aware architecture design proves how context aware application can meet user demands for tailored services and products in and around the user’s environment. The test results show that the overall design is highly effective,providing new features and enriching the mobile user’s experience through a broad scope of potential applications.

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between socioeconomic status and mental health-related quality of life in a micropolitan community in Iowa and to determine the effect of neighborhood social cohesion, neighborhood violence, and unfair treatment on this relationship. I hypothesized that socioeconomic status would be correlated with mental health quality of life, such that those of low or middle socioeconomic status would have greater odds of reporting poor mental health quality of life than those of high socioeconomic status. Furthermore, I hypothesized that lower perceived neighborhood social cohesion, having reported neighborhood violence in the past six months, and having reported an experience of unfair treatment in the past six months would be associated with being of low socioeconomic status. I then explored which of these factors are the best predictors of poor mental health quality of life when considered together. The study is a secondary data analysis of health information gathered from a large, random-digit dial telephone survey of residents of Ottumwa, Iowa. To address the research questions, responses from a total of 1079 surveys were analyzed. Participants were clustered into three socioeconomic status groupings based on the following factors: annual household income, highest level of education completed, current work status, whether the respondent owned or rented their home, and whether the respondent's household fell at or below 125 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Mental health quality of life was measured using questions from the CDC's Healthy Days Measure that specifically ask about mental health. Bivariate relationships between variables were calculated utilizing chi-square tests of independence. A series of logistic regression models were then conducted to further explore these relationships. Results showed that those belonging to the low socioeconomic status group had about four times the odds of reporting poor mental health quality of life than those in the high socioeconomic status group. The relationship did not hold true for those in the middle socioeconomic status group, as they had similar odds of reporting poor mental health quality of life than those in the high socioeconomic status group. Results also showed that neighborhood violence, low neighborhood social cohesion, and experiencing unfair treatment were also independently associated with reporting poor mental health quality of life as well as being of low socioeconomic status. Results of the logistic regression model containing the social and neighborhood factors showed that neighborhood social cohesion and perceived unfair treatment were significantly associated with greater odds of reporting poor mental health quality of life. These relationships remained after including demographic co-variates in the model. Low socioeconomic status, lower neighborhood social cohesion, and reporting experience of unfair treatment significantly predicted greater odds of reporting poor mental health quality of life. These results should be interpreted with caution, as data was cross-sectional and inferences about causality cannot be made. Further research investigating the possible causal pathway underlying this relationship is needed.

Dans cette thèse, j’étudie les avantages des Murs d’Écran Interactif à Haute Résolution(UHRIWD - Ultra High Resolution Interactive Wall Displays) pour la collaboration. Je me concentre sur uncontexte de collaboration bien précis: la surveillance des systèmes critiques dans les salles de contrôle. Desvisites de ces salles et ainsi que des interviews avec des opérateurs montrent qu’une collaborationplus ou moins étroite est nécessaire en fonction de la situation. C’est lorsqu’une collaboration étroiteest nécessaire que je pense qu’un UHRIWD peut être bénéfique pour celle ci. Je montre d’abordqu’un mur d’écran encourage la collaboration étroite comparée à l’utilisation de plusieurs postes detravail individuels. Puis je montre comment une technique d’interaction peut avoir une influence sur letype de collaboration. Par exemple, une technique avec une large empreinte visuelle va encouragerune collaboration plus étroite. J’applique cela dans la conception de techniques pour afficher desprédictions de trafic parallèlement au trafic en temps réel dans une salle de contrôle de trafic routier.Pour finir, je propose des techniques pour faciliter les transitions entre les différents écrans d’unesalle de contrôle. / In this thesis, I study the benefits of collaboration in front of Ultra-High ResolutionInteractive Wall Displays (UHRWD). I focus on the specific collaborative context of control rooms.Visits of control rooms and interviews with operators show that different degrees of collaboration arerequired in function of the situation. I believe that a UHRIWD could be beneficial in situations whenclose collaboration is needed. I first show that wall display encourages close collaboration comparedto multiple separate displays. Then I show that the interaction techniques can also influence thedegree of collaboration, for instance, a technique with a large visual footprint also encourages a closecollaboration. I apply this in the design of technique to visualize road traffic forecast on a wall displayfor road traffic control centres. Finally, I propose techniques to help the transition between thedifferent setups of a control room: the workstations and the wall display.

This study compared results of two experiments that tested transfer of function in stimulus equivalence classes in a task dissimilar to (in Experiment I) and similar to (in Experiment II) the task that trained functional responding. Eleven students from UNT participated in return for monetary compensation. Phase 1 and 2 were identical in the two experiments, in which they established stimulus equivalence classes and functional responding, respectively. Each experiment then used different tasks in the third phase to test differential responding. Only participants in Experiment II demonstrated consistent transfer of function. Results are discussed in terms of how task similarity may function as a type of contextual control when there is limited experience with the task.

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Current works of bike demand prediction mainly focus on cluster level and perform poorly on predicting demands of a single station. In the first task, we introduce a contextual based bike demand prediction model, which predicts bike demands for per station by combining spatio-temporal network and environment contexts synergistically. Furthermore, since people's movement information is an important factor, which influences the bike demands of each station. To have a better understanding of people's movements, we need to analyze the relationship between different places. In the second task, we propose an origin-destination model to learn place representations by using large scale movement data. Then based on the people's movement information, we incorporate the place embedding into our bike demand prediction model, which is built by using multi-source large scale datasets: New York Citi bike data, New York taxi trip records, and New York POI data. Finally, as deep learning methods have been successfully applied to many fields such as image recognition and natural language processing, it inspires us to incorporate the complex deep learning method into the bike demand prediction problem. So in this task, we propose a deep spatial-temporal (DST) model, which contains three major components: spatial dependencies, temporal dependencies, and external influence. Experiments on the NYC Citi Bike system show the effectiveness and efficiency of our model when compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

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ICT policies instituted over a number of years by the South African Government have clearly failed to establish Information Communication for Development (ICT4D) initiatives amongst rural communities in South Africa. The author of this thesis argues that, for rural South African communities to reap the benefits of ICT4D initiatives, it would be necessary for the communities to empower themselves and to take ownership of initiatives to participate in the planned South African Information Society. Furthermore, the author argues that the success of the ICT4D initiatives depends very strongly on an understanding of the interaction of such initiatives with the social context at local community level. Some of the significant aspects of the social context at community level include an understanding of the roles of leadership, technology, economy, governance, social welfare, and stakeholders in these communities. Through a grounded methodology approach a theory of context was developed for the rural community in the Dr J.S. Moroka Municipality in Mpumalanga, South Africa. The elements of the framework that emerged were Leadership, Stakeholders, Governance, Social welfare, Economics and Technology (LSGSET). The resulting framework is proposed as a tool that can be used by the community members to interact with the role players who intend to implement ICT4D projects or policies that have an impact on the community. It should also assist policymakers while they develop contextualized policies and improve project managers’ understanding of the developmental impact of the implementation of ICT4D projects on communities. One of the contributions made by this thesis is to “bridge” this divide between policymakers and communities by explicitly framing the developmental discourses of the community as a framework for ICT4D engagement by policymakers and communities at local level. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Informatics / PhD / Unrestricted

The study explored teacher educators’ utilization of constructivist education practices to develop ESL in a teacher training institution and student teachers’ engagement in the instructional practices. In light of Chomsky’s proposition in his Universal Grammar (UG) (Cook & Newson 2007) all humanity, under normal conditions, is wired with a language acquisition device (LAD), which is activated in any real-life context when individuals experience exposure to any language. In the formal learning context; teacher education in particular, student teachers experience academic language which presents challenges, resulting in poor academic performance. Cummins (2009) proposes context embedded communication to afford acquisition of academic language. This learning environment is supported for pedagogy in constructivist learning settings, thus constructivist theories of learning provided the study’s theoretical framework. This was a qualitative case study utilising lesson observations of a class of 150 first year student teachers and 4 of their teacher educators. The 4 educators and 5 of the student teachers also attended to open-ended survey questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, including reflective journals for the latter. Data were analysed through a discourse analysis approach to determine educators’ education practices and student teachers’ meta-learning actions. Findings indicated that student teachers could identify their ESL incompetence but rated it incorrectly. An overarching ESL challenge was with the writing mode. Teacher educators utilised student teachers’ real-life experiences but partially immersed them in independent exploration of tasks to foster meta-learning actions and acquire disciplinary discourses, thus the students relied heavily on their educators’ assistance than independent learning. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Humanities Education / PhD / Unrestricted