This thesis presents a series of design-led case studies concerned with the use of digital technology and the practice of interaction design for children within the context of UK special educational needs classrooms. It explores the use and development of accessible digital systems to support groups of students who have a range of special educational needs. Working with groups of mixed ability students has found to be the most typical situation for teaching in the participant schools and is a rich but underexplored area of concern for interaction design research. This thesis presents detailed accounts and grounded analysis of four embedded, design-led, case studies in two UK special needs schools. It makes three main contributions to the community of researchers, designers and educational practitioners who are concerned with the use of digital technology with children and more specifically working within the field of interaction design for children with special educational needs. These contributions are: A set of design guidelines developed through an analysis of the detailed and thorough accounts of four embedded design-led research projects in two special needs school in the UK. A discussion of the development of the research approach taken in this thesis. A set of design personas of teaching staff interaction designers are likely to encounter when working in a UK special needs school.

This research investigates the complexities of artistic authorship under the production conditions of the web. It is driven by a fascination with the possibilities of expanding the authorial sphere of the artwork to include the productive capacities of other subjectivities, entities and processes. I offer the neologism ‘extra-subjectivity’ to reflect on this emerging form of production, in which the ultimate manifestation of the artwork often exceeds the author’s intentions. As well as the written thesis, it comprises seven artworks that represent a distinctive approach characterized by playfulness, humour and the use of generative computational processes. Several early works explore my authorial agency in relation to algorithmically generated variations of texts, including William Blake’s poem The Fly and the song Puff the Magic Dragon. Later, algorithmic generation is combined with the appropriation of content shared on social media, as in Infinite Violets, which displays variations of a Shakespearean verse along with images from Flickr. I draw on digital sociological methods to create a hybrid approach in which the web is understood as an evolving medium made up of digital objects and devices that can be repurposed for art practice. This approach underpins 'Flickr Nude or Noodle Descending a Staircase', which uses images programmatically accessed through Flickr’s application programming interface to remake a Marcel Duchamp painting for the web. 'Selfie Portrait' displays Instagram photographs tagged with ‘Selfie’ alongside users’ biographical information, which drives the ‘Copyright Episode’, an extended account of the legal contexts surrounding web-based art practices. Here, I demonstrate how such practices are entangled socially, ethically and legally with the distinct production conditions of the web. I argue that authorship is a question of responsibility as well as ‘ownership’, which is why ethics are as important as the law.

Submitted by Elesbão Santiago Neto (neto10uepb@cche.uepb.edu.br) on 2016-05-02T18:57:43Z No. of bitstreams: 1 PDF - Paulo Henrique da Silva.pdf: 2185156 bytes, checksum: d09fe2d397c83e0604ace3d9ca84b698 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Elesbão Santiago Neto (neto10uepb@cche.uepb.edu.br) on 2016-05-03T17:16:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 PDF - Paulo Henrique da Silva.pdf: 2185156 bytes, checksum: d09fe2d397c83e0604ace3d9ca84b698 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-21T21:08:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 PDF - Paulo Henrique da Silva.pdf: 2185156 bytes, checksum: d09fe2d397c83e0604ace3d9ca84b698 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-04 / This dissertation has the general objective of evaluating the process of establishing the China-Brazil strategic partnership, with emphasis in the area of Science and Technology, covering the period from 1974 to 2013. Thus, the work is divided into two research axes: first debate the theoretical and conceptual construction of the term strategic partnership and analyzing the China-Brazil diplomatic relationship; the second axis reflects on the China-Brazil Program Resources Satellite (CBERS) and identifying new partnership opportunities in the area of Science and Technology. The methodology used secondary bibliographic data, emphasizing the qualitative and quantitative aspects. It is argued that the Sino- Brazilian relationship can be considered as a strategic partnership and cooperation in the area of Science and Technology is one of the dimensions of this partnership. He concludes that the Sino- Brazilian partnership in science and technology area has shown satisfactory results, enabling the creation of proprietary technologies, overcoming the external dependence and international influence. / Esta dissertação tem o objetivo geral de avaliar o processo de estabelecimento da parceria estratégica Brasil-China, com ênfase na área de Ciência e Tecnologia, abrangendo o período de 1974 a 2013. Para tanto, o trabalho está dividido em dois eixos de investigação: o primeiro eixo debate a construção teórica e conceitual do termo parceria estratégica e analisando o relacionamento diplomático sino-brasileiro; o segundo eixo reflete sobre o Programa Sino-Brasileiro de Satélites de Recursos Terrestres (CBERS) e identificando novas oportunidades de parceria na área de Ciência e Tecnologia. A metodologia adotada utilizou dados bibliográficos secundários, enfatizando os aspectos qualitativos e quantitativos. Argumenta-se que o relacionamento sino-brasileiro pode ser considerado como sendo uma parceria estratégica e que a cooperação na área de Ciência e Tecnologia representa uma das dimensões desta parceria. E conclui-se que, a parceria sino-brasileira na área de ciência e tecnologia tem apresentado resultados satisfatórios, possibilitando a criação de tecnologias próprias, superação da dependência externa e influência internacional.

Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo entender as diferentes dinâmicas estabelecidas entre contracultura, economia e ciência a partir da noção de matriz de entrelaçamento. A empresa Google Inc e o objeto que melhor permite analisar as zonas fronteiriças que entrelaçam esses três elementos, preservando seus referentes e suas fronteiras.Assim este e um trabalho que tenta explorar por meio de quais processos as praticas e valores da contracultura e da produção de conhecimento científico que, ao mesmo tempo em que não eram frontalmente anti-mercado, mas que inicialmente não estavam subordinadas à produção capitalista, acabam muitas vezes se impondo aos objetivos de mercado, à forma de produção de conhecimento do capitalismo flexível, por provarem sua eficiência tecnica e sucesso comercial. Irei me referir a esses três elementos dentro de uma perspectiva dos regimes, que estabelece que cada regime tem sua base histórica, possui sua própria divisão de trabalho, seus próprios modos de produção cognitiva e de artefatos e tem audiências específicas. / This research aims to understand the different dynamics between established counterculture, economics and science from the notion of entanglement matrix. The company Google Inc. is therefore the best subject for an analysis of edge cases that intertwine these three elements, preserving their referents and their boundaries. In this manner, this research attempts to explore which processes the practices and values of counterculture and the production of scientific knowledge that, while they were not outright anti-market, but initially were not subordinated to capitalist production, often end up imposing marketing objectives, influencing the production of knowledge in a flexible capitalism for proving its technical efficiency and \"commercial\" success. I will refer to these three elements within a perspective of the regimes, which states that each regime has its historical basis, has its own division of labor, their own modes of cognitive production and has specific audiences.

The purpose of this research is to empirically investigate flow front void formation rates and post-formation bubble mobility behavior for composites produced via resin transfer molding (RTM).For this study, in situ observation of bubble formation and migration was accomplished by photographing resin flow progression during infusion tests of carbon reinforcements. An analysis strategy for use in batch processing sequential image sets is presented. The use of MATLAB to process and analyze binary images of infusions for void content has garnered satisfactory results and has shown that analysis of progressive image sequences can greatly enrich the volume of in situ measurements for a given study without compromising the data quality.Semi-automated MATLAB software analysis employed the representative image area (RIA) method to evaluate v0. It was found that the shorter the RIA length, and the more it follows the true flow front shape, the more representative the measured v0 was of the void formation at the flow front.Experimental evidence of in situ bubble formation and mobility behavior is presented. Stitch architecture of NCF reinforcements is shown to influence bubble formation at the flow front. Bubble mobility mechanisms (such as escape and entrapment) are related to stitch orientation relative to the fluid flow direction. Different stitching orientations exhibited different effects on post-formation mobility.Void formation is presented as a function of flow front velocity. Despite differences in preform configurations (stitch orientation with respect to flow) and injection flowrates, bubbles seem to form in a similar fashion for the 3 infusions of carbon fiber NCF reinforcement analyzed in this study. It is observed that bubbles form at stitch lines, regardless of stitch orientation.Bubble migration is documented for infusion of NCF reinforcement with stitching at different orientations. Qualitative observations of bubble migration during infusions of a dense preform of STW, plain weave fabric are discussed. Recommendations are given for future studies involving image-based analysis of in situ bubble formation and migration.

Bobbin Friction Stir Welding (BFSW) is a new application of Friction Stir Welding (FSW) that can be used to join materials together with little to no axial forces. This eliminates the need of a backplate or anvil needed to apply counter pressure against the tool. The applications of BFSW are growing every day. This new technology is helping the automotive industry and many other industries join materials more effectively and efficiently. This technology can be used to join materials with high strength to weight ratios to make cars lighter to increase fuel efficiency. This will also greatly reduce the cost of current joining technologies.The purpose of this research is to prove the feasibility of augmenting a BFSW tool with cutters to join enclosed castings while simultaneously removing ribs and variations in thickness by (1) penetrating a BFSW tool into the material away from an edge; (2) removing any inconsistencies in the material thickness while maintaining a weld; and (3) removing a BFSW tool from the casting away from an edge leaving a clean exit hole without destroying either the casting or the tool.

With the rising trend of personal devices like laptops and smartphones being used in businesses and significant enterprises, the concern for preserving security arises. In addition to preserving security measures in outside devices, the network speed and performance capable by these devices need to be balanced with the security aspect to avoid slowing down virtual private network (VPN) activity. Performance tests have been done in the past to evaluate available software, hardware, and network security protocol options that will best benefit an entity according to its specific needs. With a variety of comparable frameworks available currently, it is a matter of pick and choose. This study is dedicated to developing a unique process-testing framework for personal devices by comparing the default security encryptions of different VPN architectures to the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) set of complying encryptions. VPN architectures include a vendor-supplied VPN, Palo Alto Networks, open-sourced OpenVPN application, and a Windows PPTP server to test security protocols and measure network speed through different operating platforms. The results achieved in this research reveal the differences between the default security configurations and the encryption settings enforced by FIPS, shown through the collected averaged bandwidth between multiple network tests under those settings. The results have been given additional analysis and confidence through t-tests and standard deviation. The configurations, including difficulty in establishing, between different VPNs also contribute to discovering OpenVPN under FIPS settings to be favorable over a Palo Alto firewall using FIPS-CC mode due to higher bandwidth rate despite following the same encryption standards.

Per job isolation of temporary file storage in High Performance Computing (HPC) environments provide benefits in security, efficiency, and administration. HPC system administrators can use the mount_isolation Slurm task plugin to improve security by isolating temporary files where no isolation previously existed. The mount_isolation plugin also increases efficiency by removing obsolete temporary files immediately after each job terminates. This frees valuable disk space in the HPC environment to be used by other jobs. These two improvements reduce the amount of work system administrators must expend to ensure temporary files are removed in a timely manner.Previous temporary file removal solutions were removal on reboot, manual removal, or removal through a Slurm epilog script. The epilog script was the most effective of these, allowing files to be removed in a timely manner. However, HPC users can have multiple supercomputing jobs running concurrently. Temporary files generated by these concurrent or overlapping jobs are only deleted by the epilog script when all jobs run by that user on the compute node have completed. Even though the user may have only one running job, the temporary directory may still contain temporary files from many previously executed jobs, taking up valuable temporary storage on the compute node. The mount_isolation plugin isolates these temporary files on a per job basis allowing prompt removal of obsolete files regardless of job overlap.

Effective strategies are needed to help parents become more involved in the education of their teenage children. Parent Reciprocal Teaching (PRT) is proposed as an effective strategy to increase parent involvement and help students increase academic performance. 120 students in a 10th-grade high school physics course participated in either the PRT homework assignments or traditional reciprocal teaching (TRT) assignments. The PRT homework assignments required students to teach their parents/guardians at home, while the TRT assignments required students to teach a peer during class time. Data was collected though test scores and surveys sent home to parents and students. Findings indicate that (1) PRT very comparable, and in some instances, better than TRT in its academic benefit, (2) resulted in parents feeling more involved in their child's education, (3) parents were more aware of what their child was learning and more mindful of how well their child understood the course content. It is suggested that more educators incorporate the practice of PRT so that students can benefit from the effect of increased parent involvement as found in other studies on parent involvement: stronger academic achievement, improved school attendance and behavior, more positive perceptions of school and self, and higher educational aspirations.

According to previous studies, a higher degree of processing fluency leads to higher liking; however, other studies indicate that a higher degree of processing fluency leads to lower recognition. This experiment examines the influence of processing fluency on both liking and recognition to determine if the same results occur when participants are asked to rate liking and remember images. Subjects rated a series of images by level of liking, then were given a recognition test. The stimuli were a combination of fluent and disfluent product images with varied fluency in each of four categories: Amount of Information, Figure-Ground Contrast, Clarity, and Symmetry. Results indicated that participants liked fluent images more than disfluent images. However, results also revealed a trend that recognition may have been higher for fluent images, and that the effects of fluency on recognition depended on which type was manipulated. Thus, the effects of varying processing fluency are different when participants are asked to both rate liking and remember items. This experiment aims to provide successful marketing tactics, suggesting that marketers make their products fluent in order to produce greater liking and memory.