This thesis describes the process of identifying key requirements for a map-based interface for a document management software. Existing software platforms suitable for implementation of such a system were identified, evaluated and tested. The purpose of this thesis was to provide Aconex, a document management company, a recommendation for the implementation of a map-based interface to its software for its customer Bechtel. Requirements gathering was done in stages: identifying stakeholders, understanding context, defining requirements and finally creating software specifications. Suitable platforms were identified by literature study and consultation. They were selectedbased on a few critical criteria. Selected platforms were used in implementation of a prototype showcasing the platforms’ abilities to satisfy the technical requirements. It turned out that Google Maps provided the best platform for Aconex's needs. OpenLayers was a great alternative and came with the ability of using unlimited numbers of KML-layers, but at the disadvantage of requiring more code. / Denna rapport beskriver processen att identifiera krav för ett kartbaserat gränsnitt till ett dokumenthanteringssystem. Tillgängliga mjukvaruplattformar som kan användas i detta syfte har identifierats, testats och utvärderats. Målet med detta arbete var att ge råd till Aconex, ett företag som arbetar med dokumenthantering, om hur de borde implementera ett kartbaserat gränsnitt till sitt dokumenthanteringssystem för deras kund Bechtel. Kravinsamling gjordes i olika steg: hitta intressenter, definiera systemkontext, samla in krav och utveckla programvaruspecifikationer utifrån kraven. Tillgängligamjukvarulösningar hittades genom en kombination av litteraturstudier och goda råd, och blev sedan prioriterade utifrån kritiska krav. Prototyper skapades i de mest lovande plattformarna, där varje prototyp visar hur plattformen uppfyller de krav som ställts. Resultatet blev att Google Maps var den platform som fungerade bäst för Aconex. OpenLayers var också ett bra alternativ då man där kan visa obegränsat antal KML-lager, men för att OpenLayers ska klara av lika mycket som Google Maps krävs betydligt mer kod.

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This dissertation examines a recent work for flute and piano, Here Everything Shines, by a living composer, Charlotte Bray, including a study, analysis and performance guide. The composition was largely inspired by the late Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora and her song Petit Pays. My research explores the influence of Évora's song on Here Everything Shines, including the melodic development, tonal center, style and freedom of her singing and the impact the song has on a performer's interpretation of Here Everything Shines. The study examines the text of the song, the emotions evoked and reflects on the compositional elements in Here Everything Shines. Originally written for flute and guitar and commissioned by Tom Kerstens for International Guitar Foundation, Here Everything Shines was published in 2015. Bray transcribed it for violin and piano at request of Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea and subsequently for flute and piano at my request. This dissertation compares the three versions for flute and guitar, violin and piano, and flute and piano and examines the variations between flute and violin as well as guitar and piano parts. The performance guide includes the composer's input on both interpretation and implementation of her ideas throughout the work.

American composer Christopher Theofanidis’s choral-orchestral work The Here and Now (2005) is a setting of Jalal ad-Din Rumi’s thirteenth-century poetry as translated by Coleman Barks. Theofanidis employs a cappella sonic contrasts, silence, rhythmic text setting, and a libretto based on fragments of Rumi’s poems to tell a story about the search for love, longing, joy, and gratitude. While rooted in traditional Western composition methods, this twenty-first-century work uses musical elements like color chords (bichords), cluster chords, changing meters, and modality, as well as imitative polyphony and unifying motifs within a new, tonal American aesthetic espoused by the Atlanta School of Composers, of which Theofanidis is a founding member. This DMA project presents warmups, rehearsal strategies, and teaching methods to guide the choir and conductor through the challenges of rhythmic text setting and dense harmonic language so that learning and performing The Here and Now is a rewarding endeavor.

The thesis claims that an experiential approach to design really does promise the possibility of scientific design of everyday life. The purpose of this thesis is to show the promise. René Descartes conceptualized the classical formulation of a mind-body dichotomy. Various resulting and unbalanced dichotomies, such as subjective-objective, internal-external, experiential-practical and so on, raise serious concerns surrounding the concept of design. The thesis raises a crucial issue about the imbalance between technological and human concerns in the context of human-computer interaction, an imbalance that has been caused partly by the mechanistic aspect of informatics and its impact on designing human computer interaction. The thesis first explores the origin of design as a distinct activity during the industrial revolution, and reviews the tide of design history from then until today. The brief review of design history indicates that design is not merely the skill of making things or presentations. This gives direction to how design can be positioned in our modern information society. Second, the author starts a critical discussion about ordinary design approaches that, it is suggested, may have hindered true human-centred design, and then introduces an alternative approach to design and research, which the author calls Human-Experiential Design. Third, the notion of Tangible Presence in Blended Reality Space is introduced. The conceptual grounding that illustrates the experiential approach to interaction design is discussed. Fourth, the thesis presents use cases and provides examples of Human-Experiential Design in specific practical contexts. The concrete examples suggest that the emphasis on ‘balance’ or appropriate blending is very important in the development of better interactive systems for health, capitalizing on seamless combinations of the virtual and the physical in Blended Reality Space. As exemplified in the thesis, the human-experiential approach, striving for optimal combinations of tangibility and evoked presence, offers a promising tool in designing for special needs groups such as elderly people with some cognitive weaknesses, and children undertaking physical rehabilitation programmes. It is suggested that such virtual-physical blends will release human beings from the strain that existing perceived dichotomies bring. Finally, the author concludes by offering a way forward, a way that is neither subjective nor objective but rather a meaningfully integrated blend of the dichotomies, which responds to the question of what it means to be human.

It is still recognized as a challenge task while blind and visually impaired people travel outdoor independently, even if there are a number of assistive mobility aids available. In addition to building universal facilities in urban and rural environments for them, it is essential to develop novel mobility assistive technologies and systems to satisfy their increasing demands for mobility. To investigate those demands, an international survey with 106 blind and visually impaired people from 13 countries is undertaken within this work, with regarding to outdoor mobility experiences, usages of mobile devices and collaborative approaches. From the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Accessibility, the dissertation focuses on enhancing blind people’s capabilities of acquisition of spatial environmental information from tactile displays. The spatial environmental information, in this study, is in terms of clusters of surrounding obstacles, geographic information on city maps, and information on environmental accessibility. In order to non-visual representation of the clusters of surroundings obstacles detected by a 3D Time-of-Flight (ToF) infrared camera, a portable pin-matrix display with a matrix of 30 x 32 pins is employed and a pre-designed set of tactile obstacle symbols is used to render the properties of obstacles (e.g., type, size). Additionally, aiming at helping blind people access geographic information, a desktop based pin-matrix display (an array of 60 x 120 pins) and a mobile pin-matrix display (an array of 30 x 32 pins) are used to represent a large-scale city map and a location-aware city map, respectively. A set of tactile map symbols rendered with the raised and lowered pins, has been designed for rendering various map features. To allow blind and visually impaired people to acquire information on environmental accessibility, besides a traditional web browser client and a popular smart phone client, an audio-haptic client on a tactile display with 7200 pins is developed. Users are able to create and share collaborative annotations on environmental accessibility across the 3 clients. The proposed approaches about non-visual representation of obstacles and map features by tactile symbols on pin-matrix displays, will contribute to the fields of accessible tactile graphic well, especially in the coming era of affordable pin-matrix displays. Meanwhile, the collaborative approach for improving environmental accessibility will encourage the society to raise the floor of accessibility for all. A number of further studies can be continued based on the current findings within this work, aiming at enhancing mobility aids for blind and visually impaired people gradually.

Framing tactics are used to structure a situation in an attempt to establish a “favorable climate” for influence. Framing can be used to influence the military or society to make decisions that are in your best interest (i.e. Jackie Robinson’s allowance into major league baseball and the desegregation of the Armed Services) by structuring the issues at hand. The military may be faced with several options; however, introducing social influence tactics will alter his/her idea of what they believe to be their set course of action. Successful framing tactics are evident in how the military desegregated itself breaking from its long tradition of racial separation of decades past. Framing will present the military an optional course of action. This course of action is not desirable for some, but most will benefit from it, due to the fact that homosexuals will not be subjugated, scrutinized, or discharged for their sexual orientation. The idea behind this framing tactic is to have the military choose option A on their own accord. This thesis will explore the relevance of the Jackie Robinson situation and how it relates to the current military actions towards “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and to determine how social influence tactics were employed to achieve the desired result. There are several examples ranging from desegregation of African-Americans into the military to the current acceptance of gays into the military.

La logique Here-and-there (HT) est une logique monotone à trois valeurs, intermédiaire entre les logiques intuitionniste et classique. La logique de l'équilibre est un formalisme non-monotone dont la sémantique est donnée par un critère de minimalisation sur les modèles de la logique HT. Ce formalisme est fortement lié à la programmation orientée ensemble réponse (ASP), un paradigme relativement nouveau de programmation déclarative. La logique de l'équilibre constitue la base logique de l'ASP: elle reproduit la sémantique par ensemble réponse des programmes logiques et étend la syntaxe de l'ASP à des théories propositionnelles plus générales, i.e., des ensembles finis de formules propositionnelles. Cette thèse traite aussi bien des logiques modales sous-jacentes à la logique de l'équilibre que de ses extensions modales. Ceci nous permet de produire un cadre complet pour l'ASP et d'examiner de nouveau la base logique de l'ASP. A cet égard, nous présentons d'abord une logique modale monotone appelée MEM et capable de caractériser aussi bien l'existence d'un modèle de la logique de l'équilibre que la relation de conséquence dans ces modèles. La logique MEM reproduit donc la propriété de minimalisation qui est essentielle dans la définition des modèles de la logique de l'équilibre. Nous définissons ensuite une extension dynamique de la logique de l'équilibre. Pour ce faire, nous étendons le langage de la logique HT par deux ensembles de programmes atomiques qui permettent de mettre à jour, si possible, les valeurs de vérité des variables propositionnelles. Ces programmes atomiques sont ensuite combinés au moyen des connecteurs habituels de la logique dynamique. Le formalisme résultant est appelé logique Here-and-there dynamique (D-HT) et permet la mise-à-jour des modèles de la logique de l'équilibre. Par ailleurs, nous établissons un lien entre la logique D-HT et la logique dynamique des affectations propositionnelles (DL-PA): les affectations propositionnelles mettent à vrai ou à faux les valeurs de vérité des variables propositionnelles et transforment le modèle courant comme en logique dynamique propositionnelle. En conséquence, DL-PA constitue également une logique modale sous-jacente à la logique de l'équilibre. Au début des années 1990, Gelfond avait défini les spécifications épistémiques (E-S) comme une extension de la programmation logique disjonctive par des notions épistémiques. L'idée de base des E-S est de raisonner correctement à propos d'une information incomplète au moyen de la notion de vue-monde dans des situations où la notion précédente d'ensemble réponse n'est pas assez précise pour traiter le raisonnement de sens commun et où il y a une multitude d'ensembles réponses. Nous ajoutons ici des opérateurs épistémiques au langage original de la logique HT et nous définissons une version épistémique de la logique de l'équilibre. Cette version épistémique constitue une nouvelle sémantique non seulement pour les spécifications épistémiques de Gelfond, mais aussi plus généralement pour les programmes logiques épistémiques étendus. Enfin, nous comparons notre approche avec les sémantiques existantes et nous proposons une équivalence forte pour les théories de l'E-HT. Ceci nous conduit naturellement des E-S aux ASP épistémiques et peut être considéré comme point de départ pour les nouvelles extensions du cadre ASP. / Here-and-there (HT) logic is a three-valued monotonic logic which is intermediate between classical logic and intuitionistic logic. Equilibrium logic is a nonmonotonic formalism whose semantics is given through a minimisation criterion over HT models. It is closely aligned with answer set programming (ASP), which is a relatively new paradigm for declarative programming. To spell it out, equilibrium logic provides a logical foundation for ASP: it captures the answer set semantics of logic programs and extends the syntax of answer set programs to more general propositional theories, i.e., finite sets of propositional formulas. This dissertation addresses modal logics underlying equilibrium logic as well as its modal extensions. It allows us to provide a comprehensive framework for ASP and to reexamine its logical foundations. In this respect, we first introduce a monotonic modal logic called MEM that is powerful enough to characterise the existence of an equilibrium model as well as the consequence relation in equilibrium models. The logic MEM thus captures the minimisation attitude that is central in the definition of equilibrium models. Then we introduce a dynamic extension of equilibrium logic. We first extend the language of HT logic by two kinds of atomic programs, allowing to update the truth value of a propositional variable here or there, if possible. These atomic programs are then combined by the usual dynamic logic connectives. The resulting formalism is called dynamic here-and-there logic (D-HT), and it allows for atomic change of equilibrium models. Moreover, we relate D-HT to dynamic logic of propositional assignments (DL-PA): propositional assignments set the truth values of propositional variables to either true or false and update the current model in the style of dynamic epistemic logics. Eventually, DL-PA constitutes an alternative monotonic modal logic underlying equilibrium logic. In the beginning of the 90s, Gelfond has introduced epistemic specifications (E-S) as an extension of disjunctive logic programming by epistemic notions. The underlying idea of E-S is to correctly reason about incomplete information, especially in situations when there are multiple answer sets. Related to this aim, he has proposed the world view semantics because the previous answer set semantics was not powerful enough to deal with commonsense reasoning. We here add epistemic operators to the original language of HT logic and define an epistemic version of equilibrium logic. This provides a new semantics not only for Gelfond's epistemic specifications, but also for more general nested epistemic logic programs. Finally, we compare our approach with the already existing semantics, and also provide a strong equivalence result for EHT theories. This paves the way from E-S to epistemic ASP, and can be regarded as a nice starting point for further frameworks of extensions of ASP.

Este trabalho é uma tentativa de aproximar o Aconselhamento Cristão às teorias da Gestalt, de maneira que se possa tirar proveito desse encontro e possibilitar uma amplidão da prática de ajuda no ambiente eclesiástico. No primeiro capítulo há uma apresentação do desenvolvimento histórico do aconselhamento e dos desafios que temos para restaurar seu potencial na igreja hodierna, aproveitando os recursos da psicologia, sem, no entanto, abrir mão de todo o elenco de recursos que a espiritualidade cristã nos coloca a disposição. No segundo capítulo são apresentados os principais conceitos de maneira resumida, procurando trazer a reflexão para aquilo que é essencial na teoria, pois o cabedal de conceitos da Gestalt é muito amplo e há um grande processo de revisões teóricas acontecendo. Por último, são apresentadas, de maneira prática, e com conteúdo pleno de conceitos da Gestalt, algumas formas de se utilizar essa teoria na prática do aconselhamento cristão, dando a quem aconselha uma base daquilo que poderá ser feito para alcançar um melhor resultado em seu trabalho, principalmente no sentido de ampliar os horizontes de quem está sendo aconselhado. / This work is an attempt to bring the Christian counseling to the theories of Gestalt, so that you can take advantage of this meeting and provide a breadth of practical help in the ecclesiastical environment. The first chapter there is a presentation of the historical development of counseling and the challenges we have to restore their potential in today's church, using the resources of psychology, without however giving up the whole set of resources that Christian spirituality to set us in disposition. In the second chapter is presented the main concepts of a brief way, trying to bring the reflection for that which is essential in the theory, because the stock of concepts of the Gestalt is very broad and there is a large theoretical review process going on. Finally, are presented in a practical way, and with full content of the Gestalt concepts, some ways to use this theory in the practice of Christian counseling, who advises giving a basis of what can be done to achieve a better result in his work, mainly to expand the horizons of those being counseled.