The primary purpose of the study is to explore the connections between residents' perception of safety and their crime experience, and the existence of gates and fences in multi-family housing communities in urban areas. For cultivating discussions regarding the connections between gated community territory, safety, and crime experience, this study classifies apartment communities according to the conditions of their gating and fencing: gated communities, perceived gated communities, and non-gated communities. It investigates residents' perceptions of safety and their opinions and managers' opinions on gated territory and safety. The major findings from the surveys are: Residents felt safer in gated communities than in non-gated communities. Residents' perceptions of safety in perceived gated communities were similar to those in gated communities. These results reflected the territoriality issue for improving residents' perceived safety in apartment communities. Residents' perceptions of safety in architectural spaces showed that residents' fear of crime in public and semi-public spaces must first be addressed in order to ease residents' fear of crime in an apartment territory. The reality of crime in apartment communities differed from residents' perceptions of safety. Gated community residents reported a higher crime rate than nongated community residents. In addition to gates and fences that define apartment territory, such elements as patrol services, bright lighting, direct emergency buttons, and visual access to the local police were indicated as the important factors for improving residents' perceived safety. Some architectural factors and demographic factors exhibited statistical correlations with residents' perceptions of safety. Those were types of communities, dwelling floor level, educational attainment, family size, and annual income. For predicting residents' perceptions of safety in their apartment territory, multiple regression models were obtained and residents' neighborhood attachment was also considered in the multiple regression models. The apartment community managers emphasized direct maintenance issues and residents' social contact with neighbors for improving residents' perceived safety. In conclusion, design and managerial suggestions for safer communities were proposed. For creating safer multi-family housing communities, territoriality and related architectural conditions and managerial considerations and residents' participations are emphasized. The concept of community programming for safer multi-family housing communities is suggested.

Chaque actionneur d'un système sécuritaire doit être contrôlé par un signal sûr en présence de défaillance (fail-safe), c'est-à-dire qu'en cas de défaillance son état est soit correct, soit sûr. Les systèmes intégrés auto-contrôlables en ligne (self-checking) fournissent des groupes de signaux codés en sortie. Ces groupes de signaux ne permettent pas d'assurer le contrôle direct des actionneurs, car chaque actionneur est contrôlé par un seul signal qui doit être individuellement sûr. A cause de cette exigence particulière, il n'était pas possible d'implémenter en VLSI toutes les parties : un système auto contrôlé (self-checking) ou tolérant aux pannes (qui utilise par exemple un code détecteur d'erreur, une technique de duplication, triplication ou un processeur codé), et une interface fail-safe utilisant des composants discrets. Cette interface transforme les sorties du système de traitement en signaux fail-safe. Outre l'inconvénient des interfaces à composants discrets d'être très encombrantes et coûteuses, la probabilité de défaillance est augmentée et la durée de vie (MTTF) du système est diminuée dans ce cas par rapport à l'implémentation VLSI, ce qui limite la disponibilité du système. Il est donc intéressant d'intégrer en VLSI les interfaces fail-sage, capables d'assurer le contrôle sécuritaire des actionneurs. Dans ce mémoire, nous présentons une interface sécurisée de puissance réalisée en technologie de puissance intelligente. Cette interface transforme les signaux de contrôles codés en fréquence en signaux de puissance pour le contôle sécuritaire des actionneurs dans les transports ferroviaires. Elle repose sur l'utilisation du concet de fail-safe, et d'autocontrôlable pour atteintre un haut niveau de sécurité.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-109). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Water has cultural and spiritual values to indigenous people. These beliefs expose them to unsafe water sources and make them vulnerable to waterborne diseases. This background is not taken into account when countries write their water legislations, therefor imposing a management of water not readily accepted by them. The Embera group is one of the indigenous groups from the Republic of Panama, who have strong water beliefs. They live along the shore of rivers in houses built on high stilts away from urban areas. The purpose of this cross-sectional community based study is to describe through a survey the relation between the water beliefs of Embera communities living inside the Chagres National Park and the health of women and children. A house to house visit was performed in two of the five Embera communities that reside inside the Chagres National Park to enroll them and complete the survey. Sixteen Embera households with 71 family members agreed to participate. Results showed that 18.5% were children under 5 years of age and 14.1% their corresponding mothers. One hundred percent of the households rely on rural aqueduct as their source of water, with no treatment performed to this water. Women that completed elementary school or had higher education level accounted for 53.4%. Analysis of frequency of more than three diarrheal episodes in children under 5 years of age with mother's education level and months of breastfeeding had no statistical significance (X2 of 1.935, p-value of >0.05; X2 of 0.258, p-value of >0.05). When the frequency of diarrheal episodes in women and their education level was analyzed a statistically significant association was found (X2 of 6.429, p-value of 0.011). Five (38.5%) out of 13 children under 5 years of age in these communities had complete immunization calendar for their ages, but 10 (76.9%) have completed immunization for Rotavirus. No deaths due to diarrhea were reported in any member of the household. Marginalization in this type of communities is frequent since they settle in vast areas far from access to safe roads, safe water, basic sanitation and health services. A similar study can be applied to the 5 communities living in the area to have a clear view of their water beliefs, diseases and needs in order to concentrate efforts to close any gaps.

This dissertation uses theoretical and empirical tools to answer applied questions of design with an emphasis on issues relating to safety and crime. The first essay incorporates safety in implementation theory and studies when and how safe mechanisms can be designed to obtain socially desirable outcomes. I provide general conditions under which a social choice rule can be implemented using safe mechanisms. The second essay is an empirical study of how criminals respond to changing profitability of crime, a question that informs the policy debate on the most effective crime fighting methods. I find that the price elasticity of theft is about 1 in the short term and increases to about 1.2 over a seven-month horizon, suggesting that policies that directly affect crime profitability, such as policies that shut down black markets or those that reduce demand for illegal goods, can be relatively effective. The third essay shows that any standard implementation problem can be formulated as a question about the existence of a graph that solves a graph coloring problem, establishing a connection between implementation theory and graph theory. More generally, an implementation problem can be viewed as a constraint satisfaction problem, and I propose an algorithm to design simple mechanisms to solve arbitrary implementation problems. / text

The purpose of this research study was to explore what public school principals know and understand about educator sexual misconduct. This project attempted to provide a clearer picture of how administrators perceived and performed their leadership role as moral keeper of the school. In examining the literature, the researcher determined that there is a paucity of information concerning educator sexual misconduct.To accomplish the goals of this research project, the investigator paid particular attention to the study, Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature, prepared by Shakeshaft in 2004 for the U.S. Department of Education. Insights afforded by Shakeshaft's study guided the construction of a field-based investigation focusing on four elementary school principals, three middle school principals, and three high school principals within a large county district located in the western region of Central Florida.The researcher sought to investigate the la nguage the school district and its principals use to define educator sexual misconduct and what administrators understand and know about the issue and their district policy, what they see as their legal responsibility, and what they would do should such an incidence occur at their site. In addition, the researcher explored state-level legislation that may affect district policy, while also investigating school-based programs for administrators, teachers, parents, and children regarding educator sexual misconduct.Throughout the interviews, principals indicated that it was their responsibility to create a safe and caring learning environment for all of their students as well as for the adults employed on their campus. School leaders reported that it was their job to be able to recognize inappropriate behavior and to understand that perceptions among students and educators may differ. All of the study's respondents followed their school district's anti-misconduct policy and although schoo l leaders are not involved in the development of such guidelines, they are responsible for enforcing and disseminating said policies. Administrators have been trained to contact their district office immediately if an incidence of sexual misconduct occurs and feel they are obligated to investigate an allegation while protecting the student in addition to the accused perpetrator.There is no training for parents on how to keep their children safe from offenders, and education for students is lacking as well. However, administrators, faculty, and staff are required to complete a Code of Ethics inservice offered through the county and sponsored by the state of Florida. Administrators suggested that it would be beneficial for the K-12 guidance arena to incorporate awareness, teaching students skills so that they do not become potential victims.

Assistive mobile robots, such as intelligent wheelchairs, that can navigate autonomously in response to high level commands from a user can greatly benefit people with cognitive and physical disabilities by increasing their mobility. In this work, we address the problem of safe, comfortable, and customizable motion planning of such assistive mobile robots. We recognize that for an assistive robot to be acceptable to human users, its motion should be safe and comfortable. Further, different users should be able to customize the motion according to their comfort. We formalize the notion of motion comfort as a discomfort measure that can be minimized to compute comfortable trajectories, and identify several properties that a trajectory must have for the motion to be comfortable. We develop a motion planning framework for planning safe, comfortable, and customizable trajectories in small-scale space. This framework removes the limitations of existing methods for planning motion of a wheeled mobile robot moving on a plane, none of which can compute trajectories with all the properties necessary for comfort. We formulate a discomfort cost functional as a weighted sum of total travel time, time integral of squared tangential jerk, and time integral of squared normal jerk. We then define the problem of safe and comfortable motion planning as that of minimizing this discomfort such that the trajectories satisfy boundary conditions on configuration and its higher derivatives, avoid obstacles, and satisfy constraints on curvature, speed, and acceleration. This description is transformed into a precise mathematical problem statement using a general nonlinear constrained optimization approach. The main idea is to formulate a well-posed infinite-dimensional optimization problem and use a conforming finite-element discretization to transform it into a finite-dimensional problem for a numerical solution. We also outline a method by which a user may customize the motion and present some guidelines for conducting human user studies to validate or refine the discomfort measure presented in this work. Results show that our framework is capable of reliably planning trajectories that have all the properties necessary for comfort. We believe that our work is an important first step in developing autonomous assistive robots that are acceptable to human users. / text

HIV prevalence remains a critical health concern particularly amongst the youth of South Africa. The demographic health survey suggests that open communication about sex is essential to delaying the onset of sexual activity, reducing teenage pregnancy and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Previous research has also indicated that parent-adolescent communication has positive influences on sexual behaviours. Further to that studies show that communication is the most effective way of helping teenagers understand their surroundings and make better decisions about sexually related issues. This study investigates the level of parent-adolescent communication about sexual related issues and identifies the main sources of sexuality information for adolescents. The study adopted a qualitative research approach using in-depth interviews with ten adolescents and their parents. This study reveals that both adolescents and parents view communication as important in the era of HIV/AIDS. More mothers than fathers communicate with adolescents about sexual related topics. Mothers viewed sexual communication as one of the ways they were fulfilling parental responsibility. Adolescents viewed growing up in an era of HIV/AIDS as a challenge due to the pressures they received from their peers. As a result adolescents trusted the information obtained from parents and teachers compared to the information from peers. The conclusion drawn from this study is that communication helps to create a bond between the parent and the adolescent. Adolescents felt important and cared for when parents were taking their time to talk to them about sexual related issues. Parent-adolescent communication was important in decreasing early sexual behaviour and preventing HIV/AIDS. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

In the last seven to eight years, Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) has received an increasing amount of attention internationally. It has come to be viewed as an important way of preventing new HIV infections and prolonging HIV-positive peoples' lives. In late 2003 the increased attention, amongst other factors, led the South African government to publish a comprehensive health care plan stating that all citizens in South Africa who need ART should receive it by year 2009. Patients' adherence and their sexual behavior are crucial to the success of ART. This thesis focuses on what factors influence patients' sexual behavior after commencing ART. It will especially look at ART patients' perception of their own infectiousness, as studies have suggested that lower viral loads caused by ART will increase their sexual risk behaviour. The research was conducted on patients attending Ithembalabantu Clinic in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Qualitative and quantitative data were used in the study. The quantitative data involved 271 face-to-face interviews based on a survey. The qualitative data involved conducting 20 semistructured interviews. The results indicated that consistent condom use was high among the sample population (72%), and only two females and seven males having multiple partners (7%). However, due to ART just recently having been introduced in South Africa, the average time spent on ART was 14 months. The findings reveal that a partner's attitude to HIV/AIDS and the levels of communication and openness in a relationship influenced consistent use of condoms. The use of condoms was significantly related to knowledge of partners' status. A high level of sexual assertiveness amongst the females in the sample might have made it easier for them to negotiate condom use. The stage at which members of the sample population entered the relationship was also a predictor of condom use. People who were unemployed and over 35 years in age were less likely to use condoms consistently. The study also examined the respondents' perception of their own infectiousness. The results indicate that respondents and participants felt that it was just as, or even more dangerous, to have sexual intercourse without a condom when they are on ART. Few of the participants in the study understood the concept of viral load. They used the same explanation for both viral load and CD4 count. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

There are two dominant approaches to counselling for sexual risk reduction In South Africa. The TASO model which is based on client centred principles, informs much of vCT counsellors' training. More recently, the (ARRM) AIDS Risk Reduction Model which includes a cognitive behavioural component to counselling for sexual risk reduction has been introduced. A sample of vCT counsellors who have been trained using the ARRM were interviewed to develop an understanding of their experiences of using this approach. These participants provide a vCT service to clients in the midlands of the province of KwaZulu-Natal. A central finding was that although counsellors experienced the cognitive behavioural approach as having good potential for effecting sexual behaviour change, numerous barriers were identified to applying the approach within the South African context. Counsellors were also critical of the TASO model as a model for counsell ing for sexual risk reduction. Elements of the cognitive behavioural approach they experienced as useful included its potential for changing cognitions (misconceptions and myths in communities), the collaborative nature of the approach, negotiating strategies for risk reduction, use of a problem solving approach, follow-up and monitoring of behaviour. Barriers identified included contextual constraints such as poverty, gender power differentials and cultural practices. Also identified as a barrier was the dominance of the biomedical approach within the health care system. Despite identifying barriers to the application of this approach, counsellors remained optimistic that cognitive behavioural approaches could be adapted to the life context of their clients and that this could be facilitated through further training and mentoring. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.