Research paper / The use of Mobile technologies in organisation including institution of higher education has increased significantly in recent years. In institution of higher education, the focuses have been on its use for teaching and learning. Due to the flexibility and easy accessibility, learners and educators are increasingly depending mobile technologies for their academic activities. The development of mobile technology has resulted in shifting the academic environment from traditional to mobile learning settings. This paper focused on the possible implications of mobile devices on teaching and learning. The qualitative case study approach was employed in the study. Based on the finding from the analysis of the empirical data, a Framework was developed. The Framework could be employed to address the implications in the drive to enhance the services of academic library. Mobile learning has a lot of potential for quick and wide reaching out to the geographically wide spread of learners. The paper helps to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of mobile technology in providing services in the library of academic institutions.

The pharmaceutical industry is spending more and more on Research and Development (R&D) every year. In addition, these R&D costs are increasing at a faster rate than sales. In order to resolve this dilemma a significant increase in R&D productivity is required. One of the main contributions to these R&D costs is the acquisition of data during clinical trials. The most important objective of a clinical trial is the collection of high quality data. No matter how well a clinical trial is conducted, if the data quality is poor, a meaningful analysis is not possible. The data acquisition method therefore plays a significant role in the overall outcome of a clinical trial. In this study a Mobile Clinical Data Acquisition System (MCDAS) was developed for the electronic collection of high-quality Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) data. The system consisted of a cellular phone based electronic Diary (eDiary) for capturing data, and a website for administering the collected data. The system was designed so that it could be implemented on any clinical trials, no matter what data was collected. The MCDAS was successfully implemented on two clinical trials. The study shows that electronically capturing clinical data improves the quality of data obtained, thereby reducing the time and costs associated with clinical trials. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Electrical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The pharmaceutical industry is spending more and more on Research and Development (R&D) every year. In addition, these R&D costs are increasing at a faster rate than sales. In order to resolve this dilemma a significant increase in R&D productivity is required. One of the main contributions to these R&D costs is the acquisition of data during clinical trials. The most important objective of a clinical trial is the collection of high quality data. No matter how well a clinical trial is conducted, if the data quality is poor, a meaningful analysis is not possible. The data acquisition method therefore plays a significant role in the overall outcome of a clinical trial. In this study a Mobile Clinical Data Acquisition System (MCDAS) was developed for the electronic collection of high-quality Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) data. The system consisted of a cellular phone based electronic Diary (eDiary) for capturing data, and a website for administering the collected data. The system was designed so that it could be implemented on any clinical trials, no matter what data was collected. The MCDAS was successfully implemented on two clinical trials. The study shows that electronically capturing clinical data improves the quality of data obtained, thereby reducing the time and costs associated with clinical trials. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Electrical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The theoretical part introduces the most important theories of cultural dimensions. Namely Schwartz's, Hofstede's and Trompenaars's cultural dimensions. Significant for this work is the GLOBE study, which became the basis for the subsequent analysis of secondary data. The goal is to determine the differences in the use of mobile technology between cultural clusters according GLOBE study and also (not) reject the hypothesis of conformity use of mobile technology for selected purposes. Among the selected purposes belongs micro-blogging, social networking, online dating services, maintaining or publishing on your own site /blog and post comments, reviews or ratings.

In South Africa, access to safe drinking water is a human right that is explicitly stated in the constitution. Most metro municipalities are meeting the drinking water quality targets, but the smaller rural environments are failing to provide water of acceptable drinking water quality. Reasons contributing to the high incidence of unacceptable water quality are the rural municipalities' inadequate institutional capacity and lack of management and monitoring of drinking water services. This study investigates the possibilities of supporting rural water service institutions to manage their remote water supply schemes better by addressing the challenge of distance monitoring. Through the creation of real-time information flow between the water service authorities and the water supply caretakers in remote villages, it is to be tested if better information can be received and the status of the rural water supply quality can be monitored. The improvement of information flow is based on introducing a mobile phone application. The hypothesis is that through improving the information flow, decisions on water supply management will be improved. Case study research was conducted in rural municipalities situated in the Northern Cape Province and Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Four different municipalities were chosen to reveal the diverse municipal set-up and different challenges facing rural municipalities. Data was gathered through interviews conducted with the municipal mangers over a seven month period, as well as through field investigations. The findings reveal that the mobile reporting system has improved information flow from water supply caretakers to government service providers. The mobile application allowed for distance monitoring of rural water supply schemes. It has helped address the municipalities' institutional capacity problems by improving access to information relevant to decision making. Through the data records displayed on the mobile application, municipal mangers were able to track the supply caretakers' performance and subsequently hold them accountable. Through an increase in data availability, water quality failures were easily identified, resulting in improved confidence in the quality of rural water supply. The access to real-time information has improved the monitoring and communication of rural water quality. Early intervention and the management of non-compliance improved. The mobile technology provided the municipal managers with a tool to monitor their rural water supply schemes more regularly, but it also became apparent that the management of such schemes only improved if relevant action was taken based on the information received. Greater improvement was seen in municipalities where the tool was used consistently, where time was set aside to follow up on data warnings and protocols existed to follow up on non-compliance issues. Management of the resources did not improve in areas where management staff was severely overstretched and response strategies to problems were non-existent before the implementation of the tool.

MCom (Business Management) / Department of Business Management / Consumer mobile phone adoption is on the rise exponentially, and offers marketers with many new opportunities to reach and serve customers. The South African mobile phone market has increased rapidly and a significant proportion of mobile services usage in South Africa is the youth. South African youths are following international trends as well as becoming the fastest-growing group in terms of technology adoption in the country. The prevalence of mobile technology as well as its capability to enable laser precision marketing on an individual basis has directed marketers to consider the adoption of mobile marketing. However, the question remains whether consumers are ready for uptake of mobile phone marketing. The purpose of this study was to bring light and create an understanding of the factors affecting university students’ willingness to participate in mobile phone marketing in South Africa. This study used a positivist paradigm that ensures that there is a gap between the researcher’s subjective bias and the objective reality being studied. The study was descriptive in nature with survey method being used to complete the study. The quantitative research technique was applied with data being collected from respondents by a self-administered questionnaire targeted at youth students from selected South African Universities. The questionnaire was pre-tested in a pilot study involving the research participants to identify errors in the research questionnaire and to ensure that the data collected would be relevant and as precise as possible. Findings from this study revealed how consumers want to participate in mobile marketing as well as the contributory factors influencing the acceptance of mobile marketing. Furthermore, this study supplements to the increasing body of evidence on mobile marketing acceptance. The study can also assist managers to utilise the potential of this marketing medium amongst university students in South Africa. More essentially, this study also provided information that can be used to monitor decision making towards mobile advertisements and marketing planning.

Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / South Africa has one of the largest HIV and AIDS burdens in the world, with an estimated7.52 million people living with HIV in 2018. The antiretroviral therapy (ART) programme is the biggest and most costly programme in the country, with 3.7 million people enrolled as of 2017. The success of antiretroviral therapy is dependent on adherence to medication and long-term retention in care. It has been reported that support groups can improve the treatment adherence of patients and their retention in care. However, enrolment in adherence support groups is voluntary, and the abovementioned success thereof is dependent on the commitment of the patient to active participation in the group. It is estimated that about 80% of adults and young people own at least one mobile phone, which makes this technology suitable to improve communication and enhance interaction amongst support group members.

Once a luxury, mobile devices are now utilized by most members of society, including those in even the poorest communities. Unfortunately, little research has examined the effects of mobile media use in young children, and even less on young children from low-SES communities. Past research on television, and preliminary research on mobile technology, suggests that mobile media may affect school readiness, and that the direction and strength of this relation could depend on the content and context of the use. The current study examined the relation between mobile media use and a composite school readiness measure that included preliteracy, emergent math, and executive functioning, in a sample of low SES preschoolers. We found that weekly mobile media time significantly predicted poorer school readiness skills, which was predicted given the scarcity of high-quality apps for preschoolers. This relation was especially clear in regard to preschoolers’ executive functioning, which had not been previously examined. While the effects of content and context of the usage were examined, few relationships emerged, perhaps due to measurement issues. The main results are concerning because children in this sample already have poorer school readiness than the general U.S. population, and their parents report considerable screen use. The results support efforts to limit screen time of preschoolers and are a step towards understanding the complicated relation between achievement and mobile technology use in preschoolers.

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Par la révolution du Cloud Computing et des Smartphones, une quantité énorme de données devrait traverser le réseau chaque seconde où la plupart de ces données sont fournies par des mobiles utilisant des services Internet. La croissance rapide de la bande passante et des demandes de QoS rend les réseaux mobiles du 4ème G insuffisants. Le système de prochaine génération doit avoir un taux de sommation de 100Mbps à 1Gbps par terminal utilisateur (UT), avec une densité de connexion supérieure à 1M connexion / Km2, la mobilité des véhicules à grande vitesse jusqu'à 500 km / h et une fin à la fin (E2E) retardent moins de 10 ms. Un candidat prometteur qui peut répondre à ces demandes est le système sans fil à multiples sorties multiples (MIMO) Multi-Cell Multi-Cell. Cependant, la capacité Massive MIMO est délimitée par l'Inter-cell Interference (ICI) en raison de la réutilisation du pilote et, par conséquent, de la contamination du pilote. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions la contamination du pilote de liaison montante dans le système de formation à la division temporelle (TDD) des réseaux sans fil MIMO massifs. En supposant un canal de décoloration, l'intervalle de cohérence sera temporairement limité, où l'estimation du canal, la réception des symboles et le précodage des symboles doivent être effectués dans le même intervalle. Cela dit, la longueur du pilote de formation est limitée. De même, le nombre de terminaux de l'utilisateur (UT) par zone d'interférence est également limité. Inspiré par la variation de la taille de l'intervalle de cohérence parmi les UT, cette recherche présente deux nouvelles contributions indépendantes pour faire face à la contamination pilote de liaison montante dans le MIMO massif. La première contribution répertorie la région de couverture de la cellule de base (BS) dans une carte d'information d'état de chaîne (CSI). Cette carte est créée et mise à jour à l'aide d'un algorithme spécial d'apprentissage machine, et elle est exploitée pour prédire UT CSI au lieu d'estimer ses canaux. Compte tenu de cela, la formation des pilotes aériens et de liaison montante est considérablement réduite. La deuxième contribution classe les UT en fonction de la taille de leur intervalle de cohérence de canal. En outre, nous appliquons une technique de changement de pilote pour déplacer des pilotes similaires vers différentes positions temporelles (qui sont considérées comme vides en raison de trames TDD pilotes vides). Les résultats de la simulation montrent une augmentation à l'échelle de la performance du MIMO massif, en particulier dans la performance de l'efficacité énergétique et spectrale, UT par cellule et taux d'addition. En particulier, la troisième contribution évolue le MIMO massif multi-cellulaire à une performance de cellule unique et même surmonté un simple énorme conventionnel dans l'efficacité énergétique et UT par cellule. / By the revolution of Cloud Computing and Smartphones, an enormous amount of data should traverse the network every second where most of this data are delivered by mobiles using internet services. The fast growth in bandwidth and QoS demands makes the 4th G mobile networks insufficient. The next generation system must afford a sum rate from 100Mbps up to 1Gbps per User Terminal (UT), with a connection density that exceeds 1M connection/Km2, the mobility of high-speed vehicles up to 500 km/hr and an End to End (E2E) delay less than 10ms. A promising candidate that can offer those demands is the Multi-User Multi-Cell Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless system. However, Massive MIMO capacity is upper bounded by the Inter-cell Interference (ICI) due to pilot reuse and thus, pilot contamination. In this thesis, we investigate the uplink pilot contamination in Time Division Duplexing (TDD) training scheme of massive MIMO wireless networks. Assuming block-fading channel, the coherence interval will lag for a limited duration, where channel estimation, symbol reception, and symbol precoding must be done within the same interval. Having said that, the training pilot length is limited. Likewise, the number of User Terminal’s (UT’s) per interference region is also limited. Inspired by the variation of coherence interval size among UT’s, this research introduces two independent novel contributions to deal with uplink pilot contamination in massive MIMO. The first contribution maps the Base Station (BS) cell coverage region into a Channel State Information (CSI) Map. This map is created and updated using a special machine-learning algorithm, and it is exploited to predict UT CSI instead of estimating their channels. In view of this, training overhead and uplink pilots are reduced significantly. The second contribution classifies UT’s based on the size of their channel coherence interval. Furthermore, we apply a pilot shifting technique to shift similar pilots to different time position (that considered empty due to empty pilot TDD frames). Simulation results show a scaled increase in the performance of massive MIMO especially in the performance of energy and spectral efficiency, UT per cell and sum-rate. In particular, the third contribution evolves multi-cell massive MIMO to a single cell performance and even overcome single conventional huge in the energy efficiency and UT per cell.