Place is not a static backdrop for social relationships; rather, it is a dynamic product of the interactions among the people, practices, objects, and representations contained within it. Often, street-involved people who use drugs are excluded from interactions that would otherwise allow them to participate in community dynamics. In Vancouver, British Columbia, peer-based outreach groups redress these barriers by providing low-threshold positions to individuals living with active or past addiction. The overall question of this thesis is: what is the role of place in the health of an individual and of a community? Objectives include: (1) applying existing models of social exclusion to outline barriers preventing Peer Members from engaging in placemaking; (2) mapping the ideological positionality of the Peer Members and the rest of the community with regard to citizenship; and (3) exploring how Peer Members utilize their biosocial role as outreach workers to establish social capital and situate themselves as participants in a healthy community. By providing a platform where various social identities can interact with one another, ties of familiarity are established between these groups, thus enabling the transfer of resources, knowledge, and shared norms of respect. The first half of the discussion focuses on how social and geographic displacement legitimizes the process of social abandonment. Consequently, this relegated the Peer Members and their peers into the role of anti-citizen, rationalized their marginalization, and reinforced the wider community’s stigma toward people who use drugs. The latter half of the discussion illustrates how the Peer Members utilize their biosocial role of outreach and support workers to navigate boundaries and establish social connections to circulate knowledge and information within and among different social fields. This enabled the expression of mutual reciprocity, thereby negotiating the place of people who use drugs and harm reduction among the wider community. Place is therefore a concept that shapes, and is shaped by, the social networks that determine social legitimacy or illegitimacy. Although marginality and oppression cannot be transformed immediately, creating a social environment where Peer Members can be supported and support one another helps mitigate the marginalization that characterizes their lives.

In collaboration with Sheriff C. T. Woody, the Deputies and other jail personnel, Kingdom Life Ministries (KLM) operates in the City of Richmond Jail. Aimed at serving individuals who suffer from alcoholism and other drug addictions, KLM’s programs offer peer-to-peer recovery support services; meaning people who are successful in their recovery deliver the recovery message. On any given day, rehabilitation and recovery services are provided to 120 men in what used to be the worst tier of the Richmond City Jail. A large portion of these men battle substance abuse disorders and have exhibited habitual criminal behavior over an extended period of time. Using a mixed methods approach, this study examined the effectiveness of KLM, during two stages — while the men are incarcerated and upon release. Beginning in February 2008, with the initial implementation of the KLM program, the examination spanned three and a half years, concluding in September 2011. The qualitative and quantitative findings of this study revealed the effectiveness of the KLM program. Secondary data examining other programs in and outside of Virginia was also reviewed to in order to develop best practices recommendations for substance abuse treatment organizations. Last, it was also discovered that private organizations provide more efficient services than public programs, and do in a much more cost effective manner.

<p>Keystroke logging records keyboard activity during writing. Time and position of all keystrokes are stored in a log file, which facilitates detailed analysis of all pauses, revisions and movements undertaken during writing. Keystroke logging further includes a replay function, which can be used as a tool for reflection and analysis of the writing process. During writing, writers continuously plan, transcribe, read, and revise in order to create a text that meets with their goals and intentions for the text. These activities both interact and trigger one another.</p><p>This thesis includes studies in which keystroke recordings are used as bases for visualisation of and reflection on the cognitive processes that underlie writing. The keystroke logging methodology is coupled with Geographical information systems (GIS) and stimulated recall in order to enhance the understanding of keystroke logged data as representations of interacting cognitive activities during writing. Particular attention is paid to writing revision and a taxonomy for analysis of on-line revision is proposed. In the taxonomy, revisions made at the point of inscription are introduced as ‘pre-contextual’ revisions, and highlighted as potential windows on cognitive processing during transcription. The function of pre-contextual revisions as revisions of form and concepts was ascertained in an empirical study, which also showed that 13-year-old writers revised more form and concepts at the point of inscription when they wrote in English as a foreign language (EFL) than in Swedish as a first language (L1).</p><p>In this thesis, a learning method, Peer-based intervention (PBI), is introduced and examined through case studies and statistical analysis. PBI is based on theories about cognitive capacity, noticing, individual-based learning and social interaction. In PBI, the keystroke-logging replay facility is used as a tool for reflection on and discussion of keystroke logged data, i.e. representations of cognitive processes active during writing. In the studies presented in this thesis, teen-aged and adult writers’ texts, written before and after PBI, were analysed according to text quality and revision. Descriptive and argumentative texts in both L1 and EFL were included in the studies. The results showed that PBI raised adult and teen-aged writers’ awareness of linguistic and extra-linguistic features, and that the effect varied across levels of learner ability, text type and language.</p>

Keystroke logging records keyboard activity during writing. Time and position of all keystrokes are stored in a log file, which facilitates detailed analysis of all pauses, revisions and movements undertaken during writing. Keystroke logging further includes a replay function, which can be used as a tool for reflection and analysis of the writing process. During writing, writers continuously plan, transcribe, read, and revise in order to create a text that meets with their goals and intentions for the text. These activities both interact and trigger one another. This thesis includes studies in which keystroke recordings are used as bases for visualisation of and reflection on the cognitive processes that underlie writing. The keystroke logging methodology is coupled with Geographical information systems (GIS) and stimulated recall in order to enhance the understanding of keystroke logged data as representations of interacting cognitive activities during writing. Particular attention is paid to writing revision and a taxonomy for analysis of on-line revision is proposed. In the taxonomy, revisions made at the point of inscription are introduced as ‘pre-contextual’ revisions, and highlighted as potential windows on cognitive processing during transcription. The function of pre-contextual revisions as revisions of form and concepts was ascertained in an empirical study, which also showed that 13-year-old writers revised more form and concepts at the point of inscription when they wrote in English as a foreign language (EFL) than in Swedish as a first language (L1). In this thesis, a learning method, Peer-based intervention (PBI), is introduced and examined through case studies and statistical analysis. PBI is based on theories about cognitive capacity, noticing, individual-based learning and social interaction. In PBI, the keystroke-logging replay facility is used as a tool for reflection on and discussion of keystroke logged data, i.e. representations of cognitive processes active during writing. In the studies presented in this thesis, teen-aged and adult writers’ texts, written before and after PBI, were analysed according to text quality and revision. Descriptive and argumentative texts in both L1 and EFL were included in the studies. The results showed that PBI raised adult and teen-aged writers’ awareness of linguistic and extra-linguistic features, and that the effect varied across levels of learner ability, text type and language.

One of the fundamental requirements of Grid computing is efficient and effective resource discovery mechanism. Resource discovery involves discovery of appropriate resources required by user applications. In this regard various resource discovery mechanisms have been proposed during the recent years. These mechanisms range from centralized to hierarchical information servers approach. Most of the techniques developed based on these approaches have scalability and fault tolerance limitations. To overcome these limitations Peer to Peer based discovery mechanisms are proposed. / shairbaz@gmail.com

Current research studies on the success of peer-based outreach programs for adolescent suicide prevention are inconclusive (Mann et al. 2005; Gould et al. 2003). Fewer still have measured the feelings and experiences of the peers who are responsible for reaching out to suicidal friends within such a program. This exploratory research study examines the experiences and perspectives of past participants of an adolescent peer-based outreach program, Hope4Utah. Findings from this mixed-method study of Hope4Utah support that peer-outreach suicide prevention programs have far-reaching benefits, on both the participants and their surrounding communities, which extend into adulthood. Themes that emerged from analysis of interviews are consistent with literature on school communities, adolescent alienation, stigma reduction, compassion fatigue, and formation of social roles and mental health beliefs through the social interactionist framework. Finally, this paper explores promising avenues for future research.

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Background: Policy initiatives to promote sustainable travel through the use of Internet based public information systems have increased during the last decade. Stockholm, in being one of the first cities in Europe to implement an Internet based service for facilitating sustainable travel is believed to be a good candidate for an analysis of key issues for developing sustainable travel planning services to the public. Aim: This thesis investigates the past development of two Stockholm based public information systems and their services in order to draw lessons on how to better provide for a public information service geared towards facilitating  environmentally sustainable travel planning through information and communications technology. The overall goal of the thesis is to contribute to an understanding on how to better design and manage current and future attempts at facilitating sustainable travel planning services based on historical case studies. Approach: The thesis draws ideas from the concept of organizational responsiveness – an organization’s ability to listen, understand and respond to demands put to it by its internal and external stakeholders – in order to depict how well or not the two public information systems and their owners have adapted to established norms and values of their surroundings. Results: Overall, the findings from the historical case studies suggest that organizations attempting to provide sustainable travel planning to the public need to design and manage their systems in such a way that it responds to shifting demands on how to provide for information. Implementing and embedding new technologies involves complex processes of change both at the micro level – for users and practitioners of the service – and at the meso level for the involved public service organizations themselves. This condition requires a contextualist framework to analyze and understand organizational, contextual and cultural issues involved in the adoption of new technologies and procedures. Conclusions: The thesis concludes with a discussion on how the findings from the historical case studies may provide lessons for both current and future attempts at providing public information systems geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning to the public. Historical examples and issues concerning collective intelligence and peer to peer based forms of designing, producing and supervising public information services identified throughout the study are looked upon and discussed in terms of their possible role in increasing the potential for public information services to facilitate sustainable urban transport. / <p>QC 20140319</p> / TRACS, Travel Planner for Sustainable Cities