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A nutrition education program for employed women on maintaining a healthy weight was developed and evaluated. Delivery of eight messages (two per week for four weeks) by electronic mail was tested for effectiveness. The subjects were 243 members of the Oregon State University Office and Personnel Association who were randomly assigned to three experimental groups. Group #1 received hard copies of the messages, group #2 received hard copies along with a weekly electronic tip on weight management, and group #3 received the messages by electronic mail (e-mail). An evaluation survey was developed to assess: 1) Participants' stage of change regarding fat in the diet, 2) Participants' social support network for weight maintenance, 3) Reactions to the program, 4) Impact of the program on positive behavior regarding weight control, and 5) Demographics. The survey was sent by campus mail about three weeks after the program. The evaluation was completed by 80.2% of participants. The nine male respondents and the two gender-unidentified respondents were not included in the data analysis to assure a total female population. A total of 181 surveys were analyzed (74.5%). The mean age of female respondents was 47.8 ± 13.3. Although it was hypothesized that electronic delivery of the program and/or supplementing the hard copy/print program with brief electronic tips would be associated with higher order stages of change (Transtheoretical Model), the results from this study did not support the hypotheses. There was no significant difference in stage of change among participants in the three modes of delivery. The messages appeared to have the greatest impact on women in the action and preparation stages. They tended to make more positive changes (i.e. reading food labels) than women in the maintenance, contemplation, and precontemplation stages. Mode of delivery did not appear to make a difference in whether the women looked forward to the messages, reactions to message length, how many were read, or the resulting knowledge or behavior change. Therefore, it may not be critical to program effectiveness. Women in the electronic group, however, were more certain that they received all eight messages and were more apt to ask questions of the researcher. The potential cost savings, convenience, and ease of quick communication make it a more attractive option. Access to the technology and participant preference are equally important factors. / Graduation date: 1997

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Although owners of Internet cafés extend the freedom to have Internet access to the community, they fail to tighten their computer security to safeguard the private information of their customers. This dissertation provides a conceptual framework for improving information security in the Internet Café, to help and ensure data privacy, data integrity, risk management and information security (IS) behaviour. The study investigated the information security issues that are faced by users of Internet cafés and explored the effects of these issues. The framework shows how users can improve their physical security to reach higher standards of information privacy over the Internet.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The project is a web e-mail application to provide a web page interface for all CSCI faculty, staff and students to handle their e-mails. The application is written by JSP, Java Servlets, JavaScript and custom JSP tag libraries. Regular e-mail capabilities have been enhanced by the feature of allowing users to store and manage messages by day (store to daily folders, view in daily folders, append notes for that day).

The motivation of this work is to understand E-shape analysis and how it can be applied to various classification tasks. It has a powerful feature to not only look at what information is contained, but rather how that information looks. This new technique gives E-shape analysis the ability to be language independent and to some extent size independent. In this thesis, I present a new mechanism to characterize an email without using content or context called E-shape analysis for email. I explore the applications of the email shape by carrying out a case study; botnet detection and two possible applications: spam filtering and social-context based finger printing. The second part of this thesis takes what I apply E-shape analysis to activity recognition of humans. Using the Android platform and a T-Mobile G1 phone I collect data from the triaxial accelerometer and use it to classify the motion behavior of a subject.

This study investigated the use and management of electronic mail (email) in Zimbabwe’s central government. Employing a mixed method research approach, the study used a pluralist ontological paradigm and a pragmatic epistemological paradigm within the convergent mixed methods research design. Quantitative responses from questionnaires were corroborated by qualitative findings from semi-structured interviews, personal observation and document reviews. The study was restricted to Zimbabwe’s central government, focusing on head offices of 22 government ministries situated in Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare. The population of the study was 670. The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown imposed in Zimbabwe as from 30 March 2020 negatively affected data collection as some targeted respondents could not be accessed as the researcher had initially planned, leading to an overall response rate of 37.3%. Nonetheless, 12 out of 22 government ministries participated in the study. Quantitative data were analysed using Microsoft Excel 2010® and descriptive statistics while qualitative data were analysed thematically using Atlas.ti®. The study conformed to ethical standards of research as espoused in the University of South Africa’s ethical review guidelines. The study revealed that due to the adoption of electronic government and the inherent relative advantages of email, among other factors, there was increase in use of email as an official record in Zimbabwe’s central government. Nonetheless, management of email was still in its nascent stages and was largely poorly articulated. Poor email classification, filing, appraisal, security, preservation and disposal were largely traceable to deficiencies in legal, policy and procedural frameworks as well as skills and information and communication technology infrastructural challenges. These in turn triggered email retrieval, access, preservation and authenticity challenges. This study was a first local research to address both the use and management of email in a single study and one which proposed a framework for the effective use and management of email where a call was made to match increase in use of email with increase in professional management of the same. The proposed framework may go a long way in influencing proper and professional use and management of email in Zimbabwe’s central government and similar organisations. / Information Science / D. Phil. (Information Science)

Même si le capital immatériel représente une part de plus en plus importante de la valeur de nos organisations, il n’est pas toujours possible de stocker, tracer ou capturer les connaissances et les expertises, par exemple dans des projets de taille moyenne. Le courrier électronique est encore largement utilisé dans les projets d’entreprise en particulier entre les équipes géographiquement dispersées. Dans cette étude, nous présentons une nouvelle approche pour détecter les zones à l'intérieur de courriels professionnels où des éléments de connaissances sont susceptibles de se trouver. Nous définissons un contexte étendu en tenant compte non seulement du contenu du courrier électronique et de ses métadonnées, mais également des compétences et des rôles des utilisateurs. Également l’analyse pragmatique linguistique est mêlée aux techniques usuelles du traitement de langage naturel. Après avoir décrit notre méthode KTR et notre modèle, nous l'appliquons à un corpus réel d’entreprise et évaluons les résultats en fonction des algorithmes d’apprentissage, de filtrage et de recherche / Even if intangible capital represents an increasingly important part of the value of our enterprises, it’s not always possible to store, trace or capture knowledge and expertise, for instance in middle sized projects. Email it still widely used in professional projects especially among geographically distributed teams. In this study we present a novel approach to detect zones inside business emails where elements of knowledge are likely to be found. We define an enhanced context taking into account not only the email content and metadata but also the competencies of the users and their roles. Also linguistic pragmatic analysis is added to usual natural language processing techniques. After describing our model and method KTR, we apply it to a real life corpus and evaluate the results based on machine learning, filtering and information retrieval algorithms

M. Tech. (Department of Process Control and Computer System, Faculty of Engineering and Technology), Vaal University of Technology. / Personal health record system (PHRS) is a tool that is used in maintaining the health and wellness of an individual as well as helping with illness of an individual. PHRS gives the individual access to a wide range of credible health information, data, and knowledge. Individuals can use that access to improve their health and manage their diseases. Patients with chronic illness can track and manage their health in conjunction with their health provider, this will promote early intervention when they encounter an abnormality or complications. Continuous monitoring and storing of health information has been a challenge for patients and health providers. Personal health data monitoring and retrieval system for health providers was designed and implemented. The main aim of this study was to develop an accurate, secure and flexible personal health data monitoring and retrieval system for health providers (PHRS). This was achieved. The research showed that when a patient health information (Electrocardiogram (ECG) and temperature) was monitored, the heartbeat (ECG) sensor output the value as an analog value to the signal processing (NodeMCU) which was then converted to a digital value. The temperature sensor used in this research is a digital sensor which lowers the amount of ADC conversion that was done. The digital values are displayed on LCD, its send to a personal health data storage system which was designed for health information storage purposes. It also sends the value to a retrieval system which is an android application that is connected to the data storage system to display health information to the health providers from a remote location. Personal health data storage and the retrieval system are secure due to the Message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol used in the application layer. The MQTT protocol is secure due to the secure socket layer (SSL) which is an encryption based on presentation layer embedded inside the MQTT protocol. After the comparison of the software simulation and the prototype test, the differences in the value for the heartbeat and temperature sensor indicate 0.04 BPM and 0.04 oC which shows the accuracy of the sensing circuit. Personal health data monitoring and retrieval system developed is applicable and useful to multiple entities in and around South Africa such as; Ministry of health, hospitals, sport and recreations.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / indefinitely