Social entrepreneurship has grown in popularity since Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the year 2006. Pollinate Energy is an Australian social business working to improve the lives of the urban poor in India. The purpose of this study is to investigate the portability of the organisation’s business model to other geographical locations, e.g what adjustments might be needed if transferring and implementing the concept in new cities and locations. A qualitative case study approach was conducted by gathering experiences from Bangalore through interviews and secondary sources and field observations from a field study conducted in Hyderabad, India. The results indicate that the local cultural context shapes the structure of the concept. It was found to be easier to establish relationships through products with immediate tangible benefits, which indicates that products are highly context dependent. Therefore, local trials of products are needed for the concept to be effective. Moreover, further investigations of the model would be required if the concept were to be transferred to other geographical locations. The model can generate spin-off effects contributing to development, and can thus be a catalyst for social change.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper provides an overview of software radio and its current state in the industry. Software radio is a technology in which all of the waveform processing, including the physical layer, of a wireless device moves into software. If designed properly, this approach leads to dramatically improved device flexibility, software portability, and reduced development costs. Of course, such a technology brings with it numerous challenges, from hardware components to power constraints to the regulatory environment.

Os objetos carregados pelas pessoas, que neste estudo chamamos de portáveis, se inserem em duas hipóteses, primeiramente, que estes objetos normalmente são condicionados morfologicamente pelas maneiras que são transportados, assim como se considera que em determinadas situações se configuram numa sorte de padrões, que podem ser tipificados e definidos, tendo como critério de análise a relação entre as coordenadas ortogonais do objeto. Dependendo da relação dimensional entre seus lados, são classificados em barras, placas ou blocos. Nesta análise, considera-se que eventualmente, estes objetos possam ter mais de uma configuração, dependendo de estarem no estado de uso ou de não uso, que chamamos de \"instâncias\", passíveis de mudar as configurações dos objetos pelo artifício da conversibilidade. O estudo da portabilidade identifica três modalidades de se portar objetos, primeiramente os que dizem respeito aos objetos que estão em contato direto com o corpo, que chamamos de Objetos de corpo; a dos objetos transportados nos contentores das vestimentas, ou seja, Objetos de bolso; e finalmente a dos objetos carregados com uma certa intermitência pelo usuário, chamados de Objetos de mão. A pesquisa mostra que as hipóteses se manifestam mais claramente nestas duas últimas particulares formas de portabilidade, portanto foram feitos estudos mais detalhados em aspectos históricos que incluem os eventos a partir do século passado até nossos dias, observação direta dos comportamentos dos usuários e seus objetos, assim como o aprofundamento em Estudos de caso, como forma de aferir mais detalhadamente as hipóteses. É nas Considerações finais que se reúnem as conclusões parciais dos três últimos capítulos, constatando o predomínio das configurações em placa e seu significado no contexto da pesquisa, que propõe caminhos de continuidade do trabalho, por meio de estudos das outras configurações que se mostraram menos recorrentes (barras e blocos), assim como sugere novos tópicos relacionados ao tema da pesquisa. / Objects that are carried by people, which we call portable, are part of two hypotheses: firstly, that these objects are normally morphologically conditioned by the way they are transported, as in considering that determined situations are configured in a sort of patterns that can be sorted and defined, having as an analysis\' criteria the relation between the orthogonal coordinates of the object. Depending on the dimensional relation between its sides, they\'re classified in bars, plates or blocks. In this analysis, it is considered that, eventually, these objects could acquire more than one configuration, depending on its state: in use or not. We call these \"instances\", subject to changing the objects\' configurations through convertibility. The study of portability identifies three ways of carrying objects: firstly the ones we find in direct contact with the body, which we call Body Objects; second, the objects we carry within the places in our clothes, called Pocket Objects; last of all, the objects carried with certain intervals by the one using it, called Hand Objects. The research accuses that the hypotheses are shown more clearly in the last two forms of portability, therefore more thorough studies are made in historical aspects that include the events from the last century until nowadays, the observation of users\' behaviors and their objects and the deepening in Case Studies, as a way of gauging the hypotheses thoroughly. It is in the Final Considerations that the partial conclusions of the three last chapters are gathered, stating the majority of plates\' configurations and their meaning in the context of the research that lead to proposing ways of continuing the work, through studies of other configurations that have shown themselves less frequently (bars and blocks), as well as suggesting new topics related to the research\'s theme.

Documento Confidencial. Não pode ser disponibilizado para consulta / Tese de mestrado. Engenharia Informática. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2007

With the transistor density on an integrated circuit doubling every 18 months, Moore’s law seems likely to hold for another decade at least. This exponential growth in digital circuits has led to its increased complexity, better performance and is quickly getting less manageable for design engineers. To combat this complexity, CAD tools have been introduced and are still being continuously developed, which prove to be of great help in the digital industry. One of the technologies, that is rapidly evolving as an industry standard, is the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language, (VHDL), language. The VHDL standard language along with logic synthesis tools are used to implement complex digital systems in a timely manner. The increase in the number of specialist design consultants, with specific tools accompanied by their own libraries written in VHDL, makes it important for a designer to have an in-depth knowledge about the available synthesis tools and technologies in order to design a system in the most efficient and reliable manner. This research dealt with writing VHDL code in terms of hardware modeling, based on coding styles, in order to get optimum results. Furthermore, it dealt with the interpretation of VHDL code into equivalent optimized hardware implementations, which satisfy the constraints of a set of specifications. In order to obtain a better understanding of the different VHDL tools and their usefulness in different situations, a comparative analysis between Altera’s QuartusII and Xilinx’s ISE Webpack tools, was performed. The analysis compared their Graphics User Interface, VHDL Code Portability and VHDL Synthesis constraints. The analysis was performed by designing and implementing a screensaver circuit on an FPGA and displaying it on the VGA Monitor.

Denna rapport har i syfte att öka förståelsen om hur man kan öka säkerheten på ett företag som använder sig av mobila klienter. Att arbeta på distans blir allt vanligare, och med de så ställs allt högre krav på tekniken som tillhandahåller möjligheterna för detta. När ny teknik utvecklas kommer ofta säkerheten i andra hand, det man fokuserar på är funktionaliteten. Frågorna man då ställer sig och vilket läsaren kommer skaffa sig mer kunskap om under rapprotens gång är: Hur skall en klient kunna hållas uppdaterad när den är utanför företagets väggar? Hur skall kommunikation kunna ske med företaget på ett enkelt sätt, samtidigt som det också ska vara säkert? Det kommer visa sig att administratören inte är den pusselbiten i säkerheten på ett företag. Företaget kan ha en mycket gedigen och bra säkerhetspolicy, men med en användare som handskas vårdslöst med sina användaruppgifter så spelar inte denna någon roll. / The aim of this paper is to give new information on how to increase the security at a company that uses mobile clients. Tele-work and E-work is becoming more common, therefore, the technology used must have the utmost reliability. In general, when technology is being developed, the primary focus is on the functionality of the product and less on the aspect of security. Key questions that will be raised and answered are: How should a mobile client be kept up to date with a company’s current software updates? How can this type of communication be achieved in a simple and secure way? Furthermore, the paper will illustrate that the success rate of all levels of security in a company does not depend solely on the administrator. Without the proper use of the security policy by the user, its reliability decreases.

Today's autonomous robots come in a variety of shapes and sizes from all terrain vehicles clambering over rubble, to robots the size of coffee cups zipping about a laboratory. The diversity of these robots is extraordinary; but so is the diversity of the software created to control them even when the basic tasks many robots undertake are practically the same (such as obstacle detection, tracking, or path planning). It would be beneficial if some reuse of these coded sub-tasks could be achieved. However, most of the present day robot software is monolithic, very specialised and not at all modular, which hinders the reuse and sharing of code between robot platforms. One difficulty is that the hardware details of a robot are usually tightly woven into the high-level controllers. When these details are not decoupled and explicitly encapsulated, the entire code set must be revised if the robot platform changes. An even bigger challenge is that a robot is a context-aware device. Hence, the possible interpretations of the state of the robot and its environment vary along with its context. For example, as the robots differ in size and shape, the meaning of concepts such as direction, speed, and distance can change { objects that are considered far from one robot, might seem near to a much larger robot. When designing reusable robot software, these variable interpretations of the environment must be considered. Similarly, so must variations in context dependent robot instructions { for example, `move fast' has different abstractions; a `virtual robot' layer to manage the robot's platform abstractions; and high-level abstraction components that are used to describe the state of the robot and its environment. The prototype is able to support binary code portability and dynamic code extensibility across a range of different robots (demonstrated on eight diverse robot platform configurations). These outcomes significantly ease the burden on robot software developers when deploying a new robot (or even reconfiguring old robots) since high-level binary controllers can be executed unchanged on different robots. Furthermore, since the control code is completely decoupled from the platform information, these concerns can be managed separately, thereby providing a flexible means for managing different configurations of robots. These systems and techniques all improve the robot software design, development, and deployment process. Different meanings depending on the robot's size, environmental context and task being undertaken. What is needed is a unifying cross-platform software engineering approach for robots that will encourage the development of code that is portable, modular and robust. Toward this end, this research presents a complete abstraction model and implementation prototype that contain a suite of techniques to form and manage the robot hardware, platform, and environment abstractions. The system includes the interfaces and software components required for hardware device and operating system abstractions; a `virtual robot' layer to manage the robot's platform abstractions; and high-level abstraction components that are used to describe the state of the robot and its environment. The prototype is able to support binary code portability and dynamic code extensibility across a range of different robots (demonstrated on eight diverse robot platform configurations). These outcomes significantly ease the burden on robot software developers when deploying a new robot (or even reconfiguring old robots) since high-level binary controllers can be executed unchanged on different robots. Furthermore, since the control code is completely decoupled from the platform information, these concerns can be managed separately, thereby providing a flexible means for managing different configurations of robots. These systems and techniques all improve the robot software design, development, and deployment process.

博士(経営) / 甲第596号 / 173 p. / Hitotsubashi University(一橋大学)

Three hypertext implementation strategies were evaluated against one another and against a control group to determine which best supported the language learner. Each version was also applied to four languages with diverse grammatical structures. These included Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Language students were tested to determine how useful each strategy was in facilitating rapid and accurate explanation of grammatical structures embedded in native speech examples. Speed and accuracy were also measured as respondents applied a targeted grammar structure to construction of their own unique sentences. With respect to the four different languages, results were also analyzed to judge whether the hypertext strategies were viable for each language. The strategy iteration that directed learners to a more detailed and specific explanation was deemed to be more successful than those with generalized explanations in assisting language learners. Moreover, the strategies seemed to provide the same relative benefit across the tested languages, suggesting they are portable and applicable even to non-researched languages. Variance in outcomes among languages within this study focus was also strongly correlated to the degree of difference in grammatical structure between a tested language and English – the learners' typical native language.

Nos últimos anos, as redes sociais na Web 2.0 vêm ganhando cada vez mais importância para trabalhar e compartilhar ideias. As redes sociais armazenam informações do usuário, como preferências, experiência profissional, dados pessoais e com quem o usuário interage. Essas informações são úteis para diversos fins, como oferecer produtos e serviços personalizados. Com a aparição de cada vez mais redes sociais, surgem problemas como a duplicação de perfis de usuários. Atualmente há algumas técnicas para interoperar as redes sociais, como serviços de autenticação única ou representação padrão para compartilhamento de dados. O objetivo deste trabalho foi realizar um estudo dessas técnicas e tecnologias disponíveis, implementá-las por meio de componentes do Groupware Workbench, e implantar e avaliar os componentes desenvolvidos na rede social Arquigrafia. A avaliação dos componentes foi realizada por meio dos aspectos e questões propostos pelo projeto DataPortability. A avaliação mostrou que as questões diretamente relacionadas com a interoperabilidade técnica e semântica foram respondidas. / In recent years, the importance of social networks for working and sharing ideas increased. Social networks store information such as user preferences, professional experience, personal data, and information about with whom the user interacts. This kind of information is useful for many purposes, such as offering personalized products and services. With the appearance of more social networks, problems as duplication of user profiles arise. Currently, there are some techniques for interoperating social networks, such as single authentication services and standard representation for data sharing. The objective of this work was to study techniques and technologies available, implement them as Groupware Workbench components, and deploy and evaluate the components in the social network Arquigrafia. The evaluation of the components was based on the DataPortability project. Issues related to technical and semantic interoperability have been successfully addressed.