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The theme of isolation in some degree is drawn through every character in every novel by Carson McCullers. This thesis examines the works of McCullers and the ideas of loneliness and isolation in her works and in her life.

The present study was on the isolation of a bacterium capable of producing filtrable forms which passed through the 0.45µ filter membrane and regenerated the parental form; the testing of the true filtrability of the isolate; the relationship between growth of the isolate and appearance of filtrability; partial characterization of the isolate and visualization of the elements that passed through the membrane filter with electron microscopy and shadow casting technique.

As the ageing population continues to grow, health and social care services face increasing demands. Technology based interventions such as telecare offer a potential solution to meet this increase in a cost effective manner. However, there is a concern that such technologies may lead to increased social isolation. Traditional approaches towards resolving social isolation typically involve the provision of activities designed to provide social interaction. In this thesis, we investigate a novel persuasion based approach to address social isolation. To this end, we conducted a modelling study to discover effective persuasive strategies for encouraging social interaction and how to apply them. From the results of this study, we identified, defined and categorised effective persuasive strategies, grounded in theories of persuasion and behavioural change and developed a strategy selection heuristic for applying them. We investigated the perceived effectiveness of both the strategies and strategy selection heuristic and discovered conceptual differences between selecting the most suitable strategy for older adults and a wider audience. Finally, we investigated the actual effectiveness of the strategies with an observational study involving formal carers and older adults. Our results can be combined to create a persuasive virtual agent aimed to tackling social isolation amongst older adults.

Qi Chang. / "March 2002." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-192). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Dans cette thèse nous proposons un nouveau concept de noyau adapté à la preuve que nous avons appelé « proto-noyau ». Il s’agit d’un noyau de système d’exploitation minimal où la minimisation de sa taille est principalement motivée par la réduction du coût de la preuve mais aussi de la surface d’attaque. Ceci nous amène à définir une nouvelle stratégie de « co-design » du noyau et de sa preuve. Elle est fondée principalement sur les feedbacks entre les différentes phases de développement du noyau, allant de la définition des besoins jusqu’à la vérification formelle de ses propriétés. Ainsi, dans ce contexte nous avons conçu et implémenté le proto-noyau Pip. L’ensemble de ses appels système a été choisi minutieusement pendant la phase de conception pour assurer à la fois la faisabilité de la preuve et l’utilisabilité du système. Le code de Pip est écrit en Gallina (le langage de spécification de l’assistant de preuve Coq) puis traduit automatiquement vers le langage C. La propriété principale étudiée dans ces travaux est une propriété de sécurité, exprimée en termes d’isolation mémoire. Cette propriété a été largement étudiée dans la littérature de par son importance. Ainsi, nos travaux consistent plus particulièrement à orienter le développement des concepts de base de ce noyau minimaliste par la vérification formelle de cette propriété. La stratégie de vérification a été expérimentée, dans un premier temps, sur un modèle générique de micro-noyau que nous avons également écrit en Gallina. Par ce modèle simplifié de micro-noyau nous avons pu valider notre approche de vérification avant de l’appliquer sur l’implémentation concrète du proto-noyau Pip. / In this thesis we propose a new kernel concept adapted to verification that we have called protokernel. It is a minimal operating system kernel where the minimization of its size is motivated by the reduction of the cost of proof and of the attack surface. This leads us to define a new strategy of codesign of the kernel and its proof. It is based mainly on the feedbacks between the various steps of development of the kernel, ranging from the definition of its specification to the formal verification of its properties. Thus, in this context we have designed and implemented the Pip protokernel. All of its system calls were carefully identified during the design step to ensure both the feasibility of proof and the usability of the system. The code of Pip is written in Gallina (the specification language of the Coq proof assistant) and then automatically translated into C code. The main property studied in this work is a security property, expressed in terms of memory isolation. This property has been largely discussed in the literature due to its importance. Thus, our work consists more particularly in guiding the developer to define the fundamental concepts of this minimalistic kernel through the formal verification of its isolation property. The verification strategy was first experimented with a generic microkernel model that we also wrote in Gallina. With this simplified microkernel model we were able to validate our verification approach before applying it to the concrete implementation of the Pip protokernel.