Thesis (doctoral)--Hochschule St. Gallen für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 1994.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Köln, 2000.

Tübingen, University, Diss., 2009 (Nur beschränkt für den Austausch).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-195).

The water and land located in Tehuacán, Puebla, México, and its surrounding villages including San Francisco, Altepexi has provided individuals with food, jobs, and agricultural products. Currently, the descendants of these indigenous communities find their cultural, social and economical practices related to the daily use of water under threat of disappearance. A primary focus in this thesis is the pollution of water by the maquiladora industry, and pork and chicken processing. Community cooperative associations such as La Guadalupana work by administering the use of water in the villages. Scarcity and water pollution undermine one of their main sources of income to support their families. Furthermore, the health of members of the community, the peasant work activities related to water management, and the prevention of the population on their right to access to clean water are some of the social aspects that are targeted here. As a result, this thesis will explain the extent to which the autonomous Sociedad de Aguas La Guadalupana is playing a role in addressing the problem of water pollution, through a campesino way of organizing. / text

This study investigated the utility of using the constructs of transactive memory system and heedful interrelating to explain the causal mechanisms of resulting learning and attitudinal outcomes emerging from the promotive interaction which occurs under conditions of positive social interdependence. An experimental study with clarifying qualitative analyses was conducted with college students as participants. Two aspects were addressed: (a) to define the promotive interaction in quantitative and qualitative terms using heedful interrelating and transactive memory system and (b) to assess the role of the promotive interaction, defined by heedful interrelating and transactive memory system, in the relationship between social interdependence and both proximal learning-related attitudinal outcomes including task value and situational interest, as well as more distal behavioral learning-related outcomes including group and individual task performance and individual perceptions of group performance. There was no direct effect of social interdependence on any outcome of interest nor were the mediational roles of heedful interrelating and transactive memory system in the relationship between positive social interdependence and outcomes of interest (individual and group performance, situational interest, task value, and perceptions of performance) supported, further exploratory analyses revealed these constructs did have significant direct effects on various outcomes of interest. Heedful interrelating was positively predictive of participants' situational interest, task value, individual perceptions of group performance, and individual and group performance. Transactive memory system was also positively predictive of individual situational interest and task value and group performance while an unexpected negative direct effect was found for individual performance. Qualitative analyses focusing on selected groups were used to explore this unexpected impact of transactive memory system on individual learning. Ways in which future studies may build on quantitative and qualitative findings are discussed.

Context. Video games are a big entertainment industry. Many video games let players play against or together. Some video games also make it possible for players to play against or together with computer controlled players, called bots. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to create bots. Objectives. This thesis aims to implement cooperative behaviors between two bots and determine if the behaviors lead to an increase in win ratio. This means that the bots should be able to cooperate in certain situations, such as when they are attacked or when they are attacking. Methods. The bots win ratio will be tested with a series of quantitative experiments where in each experiment two teaming bots with cooperative behavior will play against two teaming bots without any cooperative behavior. The data will be analyzed with a t-test to determine if the data are statistical significant. Results and Conclusions. The results show that cooperative behavior can increase performance of two teaming Real Time Strategy bots against a non-cooperative team with two bots. However, the performance could either be increased or decreased depending on the situation. In three cases there were an increase in performance and in one the performance was decreased. In three cases there was no difference in performance. This suggests that more research is needed for these cases.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Arizona Cooperative Extension strives to address community issues and needs through a research based educational process. The specific foci of the Extension agent gradually changed over time. Today's Arizona Extension agents should have good communication skills as they work to identify community resources, form community partnerships, and develop educational materials, among other things. The study sought to describe how Arizona Extension agents utilize nine communication technologies: cell phones, Smartphones, tablet computers, wikis, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Greater than half of the participants utilized each mobile device included in the study (cell phones, Smartphones, and tablet computers). Facebook was a widely used social media tool. The researcher suggests that funding and professional development may play key roles in Arizona Extension agent technology adoption. Communication technology use should be considered within Cooperative Extension work in order to help agents better serve the clientele.

This thesis considers the design of distributed state and output feedback control algorithms for linear multi-agent systems with performance guarantees in the presence of delays. The multi-agent systems considered are assumed to exchange relative information over an information network. As a first contribution, a novel distributed state feedback control design method with a sub-optimal LQR performance is developed for a network of multiple agents. For the control design process, it is assumed that the exchange of relative information is instantaneous. A stability analysis of the proposed control law is performed by incorporating delays in relative information to ascertain the maximum possible delay that can be accommodated by the communication network. Subsequently, the assumption of the exchange of instantaneous relative information in the control design process is relaxed and the relative information is assumed to be delayed. The system is then represented as a time-delay system. Distributed state feedback control synthesis methods are then developed for the system with a certain level of LQR performance. In the above contributions, the time delay analysis and the development of delay based control methods, it is implicitly assumed that delays are detrimental to achieving cooperative tasks for a multi-agent system. Subsequently, positive effects of delays in communication of relative information are explored. For this a network of vehicles described by double integrator dynamics, which cannot be stabilized by static output feedback without delays, is considered. A novel control design method to achieve exponential stabilization of such a multi-agent system by static output feedback using delayed relative information is developed. Conclusions are drawn from the results of the research presented in this thesis and a few directions for future work are identified.