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Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly important with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. This thesis investigates systems support for web browsing in a multimodal interface. Specifically, we outline the design and implementation of a software framework that integrates hyperlink and voice interaction. This enables the user to engage in out-of-turn interactions to personalize access at an information site. For the developer, the framework enables the creation of sites that adapt to the needs of users, yet permits fine-grained control over what interactions to support. Design methodology, implementation details, and two case studies are presented. / Master of Science

Syftet med studien var att skapa förståelse för hur förskollärare möjliggör för dialogisk läsning i högläsningssituationer. Studien utgår från ett dialogistiskt perspektiv och använder en kvalitativ ansats genom observationer och semistrukturerade intervjuer med förskollärare kring högläsningssituationer. Datainsamlingen skedde genom anteckningar i strukturerad loggbok och ljudinspelning som sedan transkriberades. Det empiriska materialet kodades genom en teoridriven tematisk analys. Resultatet visade på att samtliga förskollärare i intervjuerna uttrycker att högläsningens syfte var språkutvecklande, detta kunde ske genom till exempel ordförråd och kontrollerande av kunskap. Resultatet från observationerna visade att förskollärarna använder sig av olika frågetyper vid de olika dialogerna eller monologerna som var framträdande. Genom observationerna blev det möjligt att analysera om högläsningen som praktik genererade en presenterande eller socialt interaktiv undervisning. Autentiska frågor förekom främst i de spontana högläsningssituationerna, men både spontan och planerad högläsning utgjordes till stor del av icke-autentiska frågor. Slutsatsen som studien kommit fram till var att det inte är planeringen inför högläsning som är det viktigaste för att främja dialog vid högläsning i förskolan. Det är snarare förskollärarens kunskap och förhållningssätt för att skapa och upprätthålla dialoger som kan gynna barns reflekterande och i sin tur även verka språkutvecklande som ligger till grund för vilken sorts praktik varje enskild förskola skapar och upprätthåller.

This thesis focuses on the concept of interreligious dialogue from the perspective of Husite theology, maps the contemporary texts of the theologians of the Czechoslovak Church on the topic of non- Christian religions and the practical involvement of this church and its theological faculty in dialogical structures. Represents associations and movements engaged in interreligious dialogue in the Czech Republic. The probe into the theory and practice of interreligious dialogue worldwide and the review of authors dealing with, captures the expert reflection of the subject. The reflection of Husite theology emphasizes the key non-substantial concept of human personality and Christian dogma for the interreligious dialogue. The results of this reflection are formulated in five principles that may help overcome the contradiction between indifferent religious pluralism and apriori claim to the truth by revealing the existential nature of interreligious dialogue as opposed to substantive dogmatics, giving an occasion for discussion of the elementary nature of religion.

Thesis (docteur ès lettres)--Faculté de lettres et sciences humaines de l'Université de Neuchâtel. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-321).

Thesis (docteur ès lettres)--Faculté de lettres et sciences humaines de l'Université de Neuchâtel. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-321).

This study is based on a case study of Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen, a project whose ambition is tofind ways to secure nature conservation in a local context. This is promoted at governmentlevel, which says that a local connection is needed to achieve sustainable regionaldevelopment. The study, based on a theoretical background of the concept of governance,intends to evaluate whether Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen can contribute to a sustainable regionaldevelopment.This study is based on meeting documentations, semi-structured interviews with variousstakeholders in the project, field studies and participant observation at an informativemeeting. The region of interest, north Dalarna, was visited twice to obtain the specificconditions that Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen have. The interviews revealed positive attitude to theincreased dialogue and cooperation that Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen has meant for theparticipants. Some questions were raised among respondents about the concept of localmanagement and its definition as well as for the representativeness of the parish unions.The conclusions, based on the conceptual framework, is that the Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen hasmany attributes to succeed with a local connection, however, with the exception that therepresentativeness should be reviewed and elaborated further. To stimulate sustainabledevelopment the social dimension needs to be further integrated into the discussions. Theconcept of local management can´t be defined at this point. To make the process moveforward and to prevent speculation among stakeholders local management needs to be definedin a near future.

Research endeavors on spoken dialogue systems in the 1990s and 2000s have led to the deployment of commercial spoken dialogue systems (SDS) in microdomains such as customer service automation, reservation/booking and question answering systems. Recent research in SDS has been focused on the development of applications in different domains (e.g. virtual counseling, personal coaches, social companions) which requires more sophistication than the previous generation of commercial SDS. The focus of this research project is the delivery of behavior change interventions based on the brief intervention counseling style via spoken dialogue systems. Brief interventions (BI) are evidence-based, short, well structured, one-on-one counseling sessions. Many challenges are involved in delivering BIs to people in need, such as finding the time to administer them in busy doctors' offices, obtaining the extra training that helps staff become comfortable providing these interventions, and managing the cost of delivering the interventions. Fortunately, recent developments in spoken dialogue systems make the development of systems that can deliver brief interventions possible. The overall objective of this research is to develop a data-driven, adaptable dialogue system for brief interventions for problematic drinking behavior, based on reinforcement learning methods. The implications of this research project includes, but are not limited to, assessing the feasibility of delivering structured brief health interventions with a data-driven spoken dialogue system. Furthermore, while the experimental system focuses on harmful alcohol drinking as a target behavior in this project, the produced knowledge and experience may also lead to implementation of similarly structured health interventions and assessments other than the alcohol domain (e.g. obesity, drug use, lack of exercise), using statistical machine learning approaches. In addition to designing a dialog system, the semantic and emotional meanings of user utterances have high impact on interaction. To perform domain specific reasoning and recognize concepts in user utterances, a named-entity recognizer and an ontology are designed and evaluated. To understand affective information conveyed through text, lexicons and sentiment analysis module are developed and tested.

The aim of this work is to describe the quality of social dialogue in local government in the area of Czech Republic, to find out if there is, in the presence of trade union in the local government institutions, a positive influence on civil servants working for local authorities and if the impacts on austerity measures realized are reduced. For this purpose, it is important to give a detailed description of a position and function that the local government in the public sector in the Czech Republic has and to clarify a position of civil servants working for local authorities. In this work, there is also described the system of social dialog and there are analyzed the social dialog institutions with the aim of the local government. In order to find out the trade union influence over the public servants working for local authorities satisfaction, it is carried out a survey at all levels of local government. It is found a little influence on the satisfaction that the trade unions have, resulting from a relatively poor labor union organized character. This situation is, in connection with austerity measures, one cause of the social dialog in the public sector ineffectiveness.