La thèse part d’un premier constat : le manque de réflexion sur les questions d’identité, d’altérité et d’intégration dans des sociétés occidentales pourtant de plus en plus hétérogènes. Le traitement médiatique québécois des accommodements raisonnables au milieu des années 2000 a ainsi rappelé la difficulté d'habiter plusieurs univers culturels à la fois. Comme si revendiquer une appartenance, c'était renoncer à toutes les autres. Comme si appartenir à une communauté religieuse, c'était y être enfermé. Notre thèse défend l’idée que les divergences identitaires et culturelles sont inhérentes à toute démocratie. Elles ne lui font donc pas obstacle, sauf quand des situations comme le traitement médiatique québécois des accommodements raisonnables tendent à accentuer ces divergences au point de rendre impossible toute communication entre cadres référentiels. Pour observer ce traitement médiatique, nous nous sommes limitée à une altérité en particulier, celle des minorités arabes et/ou musulmanes. L’observation privilégiée était par ailleurs très succincte #trois articles traductifs, trois articles non-traductifs et trois articles intraductifs tirés du journal Le Devoir#. Nous avons mobilisé une théorie de la traduction inter-référentielle pour mieux saisir les mécanismes discursifs qui ont pour vocation de montrer comment la représentation de l’Autre trahit en même temps la représentation de soi, celle de son cadre de référence ainsi que le contexte social dans lequel s’inscrivent ces représentations respectives. Nous avons également eu recours au concept de traduction citoyenne #Basalamah# qui part du principe qu’un cadre référentiel ne doit jamais être considéré comme autosuffisant. Le traducteur citoyen invite en ce sens le lecteur à une éventuelle remise en question, au repositionnement de soi vis-à-vis de l’Autre ainsi qu’au rapprochement mutuel. Or, que nous montre l’analyse des neuf articles tirés du journal Le Devoir? Elle nous montre d’abord que se situer dans une posture non traductive, c’est oublier sa dette envers l’Autre. Elle nous montre ensuite que se situer dans une posture intraductive, c’est courir derrière de vaines illusions #l’illusion d’être objectif, l’illusion d’être non-engagé ou parfois encore l’illusion de ne pas reproduire de vieilles hiérarchies#. Enfin, elle nous montre que même la posture traductive peut décourager le dialogue quand elle s’engage dans une voie trop moralisante.

The present review focuses on understanding the explanatory mechanisms behind the use of violence within intimate relationships, highlighting the consequences of adolescents’ exposure to Inter-parental violence and gauging the role of their (adolescents) appraisal and coping strategies. The theories reviewed stress the significant impact of close figures’ behaviors on the developing child and adolescent trough observational and imitational processes, secure and insecure attachment patterns and related internal working models as well as trough building own understanding of the world and human interrelations. The review revealed also that adolescents’ exposure to Inter-parental violence constituted an unequivocal risk factor leading to a range of consequences categorized as internalizing and externalizing problems. It however indicates that the outcome behaviors are not a result of a linear process because there is range of mediating factors that explain the association between adolescents’ exposure to Inter-parental violence and outcome behaviors. Finally, appraisal of Inter-parental violence was identified as a central mechanism that impacts both the magnitude of the consequences of exposure and the adolescents’ conception and execution of coping strategies.

E-government initiatives have large potentials in developing better services for citizens and a potential to transform government structures. However e-government initiatives face a number of challenges of complexity and risk - it is not an easy matter to realize its potentials. A key research issue for the e-government field, as well as the information systems field in general, is to understand why some projects progress to success while others end in failure. The main objective in this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the progress and the success vs. failure in e-government development based on case studies of two inter-organizational e-service projects. The analysis in the paper is made from a) an e-government systems development life cycle perspective and b) a challenge and success factors perspective. The main result in this paper is that crucial success factors of an inter-organizational e-government project include project manager skills and position in the agency organization as well as when and how systems maintenance issues are introduced in the project. Criticism is presented concerning the life cycle model used in the analysis regarding this last matter.

An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is a link between the analog and digital domains and plays a vital role in modern mixed signal processing systems. There are several architectures, for example flash ADCs, pipeline ADCs, sigma delta ADCs,successive approximation (SAR) ADCs and time interleaved ADCs. Among the various architectures, the pipeline ADC offers a favorable trade-off between speed,power consumption, resolution, and design effort. The commonly used applications of pipeline ADCs include high quality video systems, radio base stations,Ethernet, cable modems and high performance digital communication systems.Unfortunately, static errors like comparators offset errors, capacitors mismatch errors and gain errors degrade the performance of the pipeline ADC. Hence, there is need for accuracy enhancement techniques. The conventional way to overcome these mentioned errors is to calibrate the pipeline ADC after fabrication, the so-called post fabrication calibration techniques. But environmental changes like temperature and device aging necessitates the recalibration after regular intervals of time, resulting in a loss of time and money. A lot of effort can be saved if the digital outputs of the pipeline ADC can be used for the estimation and correctionof these errors, further classified as foreground and background techniques. In this thesis work, an algorithm is proposed that can estimate 10% inter stage gain errors in pipeline ADC without any need for a special calibration signal. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is investigated on an 8-bit pipeline ADC architecture.The first seven stages are implemented using the 1.5-bit/stage architecture whilethe last stage is a one-bit flash ADC. The ADC and error correction algorithms simulated in Matlab and the signal to noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) is calculated to evaluate its efficiency.

The intention of this study was to create an understanding of how multi-professional interaction could convert into inter-professional collaboration, which takes advantage of and acknowledges the individual professional identity. The intention was to understand the meaning of collaboration through the study of meetings between professionals who use different symbol systems. In particular, we wanted to study inter-professional interaction from a symbolic interactional perspective with a focus on Self, Identity, Symbols, Meaning and Professional community. The employed method was semi-structured interviews with ten questions. A convenience sample was used to identify working groups composed of different professions, such as teachers, social workers and therapy assistants. The results suggest that the working group believed that personality precedes the profession one is impending, and that participants preferred stability before communication and reflection. Our study also revealed that inter-professional collaboration cannot be pursued without cultivating awareness, active reflection and communication between the professionals involved. Keywords: Self ∙ Multi-professional ∙ Inter-professional ∙ Identity ∙ Collaboration ∙ Symbols ∙ Qualitative rapport.

Uppsatsen syftar till att ge ett generellt kunskapsbidrag om vilka faktorer som kan sägas bidra till förekomsten av interkommunal samverkan om och med IT samt vilka effekter som kommuner kan uppnå genom sådan samverkan. Genom en exemplifierande studie avser vi även beskriva hur en inter-kommunal samverkan om och med IT kan se ut. Därutöver även att se om det utifrån ovanstående går att peka ut eller identifiera några särskilda framgångsfaktorer eller omständigheter som är av betydelse för huruvida samverkan kan resultera i ett positivt resultat eller inte. De resultat som vi kommit fram till pekar på att det finns flera faktorer som kan sägas bidra till att inter-kommunal samverkan om och med IT uppkommer. De bidragande faktorer som framkommit är omgivningen i form av staten och EU som vi funnit vara en stor bidragande faktor. Dessutom den obalans som uppstår mellan de resurser en kommun har och de uppdrag den har på sig. Ytterliggare så är ekonomin en faktor som bidrar till att inter-kommunal samverkan om och med IT uppkommer och att den kan ses som den gemensamma nämnaren. Vad gäller effekter så har vi sett att det finns många möjligheter likväl som det kan uppstå många problem vid samverkan om och med IT. Dessutom finns det olika förutsättningar som bör beaktas. En del av de effekter som inter-kommunal ITsamverkan kan ge är skalfördelar, organisations- och verksamhetsutveckling, effektivare organisation och ekonomisk effektivisering samt kunskapsutbyte och resursdelning mellan kommunerna. Vilka möjligheter, problem och förutsättningar som kan uppnås, uppstå eller behöva beaktas är dock beroende av hur och i vilken grad samverkan sker och avgör också vilka effekterna blir. När det gäller framgångsfaktorer är de i mångt och mycket sammanknippade med omgivningen i form av staten. En framgångsfaktor för just inter- kommunal samverkan om och med IT är ett statligt underlättande av lagar och förordningar som kan förhindra och försvåra samverkan mellan kommuner. Även statligt framtagna standarder är en framgångsfaktor. Därutöver kan formalisering i form av avtal eller dylikt vara en framgångsfaktor i inter-kommunal samverkan om och med IT då en sådan samverkan behöver vara långsiktig och inte brytas av att förändringar i maktbalansen sker.

Community identity is a concept involving a web of relationships whereby a committed group of people emotionally identify with a shared set of values, norms, meanings and history. When municipalities co-operate, concerns among stakeholders can arise that potentially lead to a sense that interdependence among municipal partners can threaten a community’s independence and correspondingly community identity. The main goal of this study was to understand how the development of an inter-municipal partnership associated with the provision of a centralized multi-use recreation facility affected community identity among partnering communities. This goal was accomplished by exploring the case of Pictou County. Municipal leaders, members of the public, and local persons of influence were interviewed to gather their impression of the implications of an inter-municipal partnership for community identity. An interpretivist viewpoint guided this case study. One-on-one interviews were transcribed, analyzed, and broken down into different themes to capture the impact this case had on community identity. Findings were organized into three sections: (1) concerns about the partnership, (2) anticipated benefits, and (3) the overall implications for community identity. The findings of this case study revealed a shift in identity within the region in which the partnership took place. Although residents in each neighbouring municipality had a strong sense of community identity, the case illustrated a general shift toward a regional identity that was beginning to emerge. Study participants understood why some members of their communities were threatened by the inter-municipal partnership under investigation, but explained how the partnership created benefits that outweighed the negative impacts of co-operation. In particular, stakeholders believed the economic benefits of the partnership overshadowed any concerns about transparency or public input. This has allowed a shift in the tradition ways recreation services have traditional been offered in the county. Now instead of each municipality working as independent services providers they are now starting to work more interdependently to provide services for the municipalities. This case helps add to the body of literature involving inter-municipal partnerships and provide the opportunity for future research to be conducted on topics such as geographic identity and interscetionality. As well, the case provides insight to future practitioners when they are conducting research to understand that citizen participation is important in a project like this but it may be less significant than if the primary interest, such as economic interests, of the community members if initially managed. Addressing these interests should help lessen the chance of resistance forming later in the project.

Radio resource management (RRM) is an important component of a mobile wireless network that efficiently utilizes the limited radio resources such as spectrum, transmission power, and network infrastructure. Unfortunately, current RRM schemes do not support cooperative multiple point (CoMP), a promising technology that extends coverage, increases capacity, and improves the spectral efficiency of the next generation broadband network, i.e., 4G network. Specifically, to coordinate with CoMP, a RRM scheme should be aware of three main properties of CoMP - cooperative transmitting information, coordinated scheduling transmission, and single interference noise ratio (SINR) improvement. However, few of the existing RRM schemes consider these properties, since they were designed based on the conventional mobile data networks without CoMP technology. In this dissertation, I present a series of new CoMP aware RRM schemes for ensuring users' throughput and maximizing network capacity in an integrated PON-OFDM network, which is a norm of the 4G network and can best implement the CoMP technology. I call the PON-OFDM network with CoMP a CoMP Network (CoMPNet). I provide two classes of RRM schemes for two practical CoMP technologies, cooperative transmission (CT) and coordinated scheduling (CoS), respectively. In the first class, I propose two groups of RRM schemes using the CT technology. In the first group, three OFDM-TDMA based RRM schemes are designed for three different users' moving speeds. The objective of these schemes is to minimize time slot consumption. The RRM schemes in the third group are contrived for an OFDM-FDMA based CoMPNet. I provide four linear programming (LP) based optimal schemes, one for minimizing bandwidth usage, one for minimizing transmission power consumption, and two for balancing resource costs. An optimized resource allocation solution can be obtained by flexibly choosing one of the schemes according to network load. In the second class, I present a sub-optimal RRM scheme for an OFDM-FDMA based CoMPNet. The CoS technology is applied for ICI mitigation. I formulate the system optimal task into constrained optimization problems for maximizing network capacity. To improve the computation efficiency, fast yet effective heuristic schemes are introduced for divide-and-conquer. The proposed heuristic schemes are featured by CoS based timeslots/subcarriers assignment mechanisms, which are further incorporated with intelligent power control schemes. Through simulations, I study the proposed RRM schemes performances and discuss the effect of the CoMP technology. The performance benefits of CoMP on bandwidth saving and capacity increasing are shown by comparing the new schemes with the conventional schemes without CoMP.

In this Thesis, we propose a Cluster-based TDMA (CBT) scheme for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET). In the CBT, the collision problems can be solved when packets are transmitted at the same time. In the Intra-cluster communications, the VANET Coordinator (VC) is determined by randomly choosing a number of zero or one. Other VANET Nodes (VNs) then randomly select different time slots to transmit their Bandwidth Requests (BRs). If more than two VNs choose the same slots for BRs, collision will occur. The failed VNs will continue to issue BRs in the next TDMA frames. After the time slots are scheduled by VC, all VNs can use the designated time slots to send data. In the Inter-cluster communications, when two clusters are approaching to each other, two VCs must exchange Slot Allocation MAP (SAM) using the random zero-or-one scheme. The VCs successfully receive SAM must reschedule the time slots. For the purpose of performance evaluation, we calculate the average time slots of selecting VC and the average time slots required for successful BRs. We also compute the average time slots required for successfully transmitting SAM and the average time slots required for broadcasting SAM to all VNs. Finally, we calculate the average time slots required for waiting before data transmission. To validate the mathematical results, we perform a simulation written in C++. When comparing the mathematical results to the simulation results, we observe that in the average time slots required for BR, the former is larger than the latter. This is because in the mathematical equations it is difficult to specify which time slots are used by VNs to transmit BRs. However, the rest of performance comparisons, the two results are very close.

IntelliDrive systems, including inter-vehicle communication and vehicle infrastructure integration, aim to improve safety, mobility, and efficiency of transportation. They build on the wireless ad hoc network technologies, enabling vehicles to communicate with roadside infrastructure and with each other. The process of information propagation in a multi-hop network underlies the system design and efficiency. As of now, the research has been restricted to a single road of traffic. This work expands the study of information propagation to two parallel roads, a step further towards the discrete network case. This thesis presents two methodologies to model the process of information propagation. By identifying an approximate Bernoulli process, we are able to derive the expectation and variance of propagation distance. A road separation distance of square root of 3 over 2 times the transmission range distinguishes two cases for approximating the success probability in the Bernoulli process. In addition, our results take the single road as a special case. The numerical test shows that the developed approximation works well. This work further identities a Markov property for instantaneous information propagation along two parallel roads based on two types of transmission regions. Communication capable vehicles are assumed to follow two homogeneous Poisson processes on both roads. The Markov property enables us to derive exact expectation and variance of the propagation distance and further, obtain a recursive formula for the probability distribution of successful propagation distance. The developed formulas enable numerical calculation of the characteristics of propagation process. We hope this research will shed light on studies of vehicular ad hoc networks on more general discrete roadway networks.