Le cloud computing a été considéré comme une option pour exécuter des applications de calcul haute performance. Bien que les plateformes traditionnelles de calcul haute performance telles que les grilles et les supercalculateurs offrent un environnement stable du point de vue des défaillances, des performances, et de la taille des ressources, le cloud computing offre des ressources à la demande, généralement avec des performances imprévisibles mais à des coûts financiers abordables. Pour surmonter les limites d’un cloud individuel, plusieurs clouds peuvent être combinés pour former une fédération de clouds, souvent avec des coûts supplémentaires légers pour les utilisateurs. Une fédération de clouds peut aider autant les fournisseurs que les utilisateurs à atteindre leurs objectifs tels la réduction du temps d’exécution, la minimisation des coûts, l’augmentation de la disponibilité, la réduction de la consommation d’énergie, pour ne citer que ceux-Là. Ainsi, la fédération de clouds peut être une solution élégante pour éviter le sur-Approvisionnement, réduisant ainsi les coûts d’exploitation en situation de charge moyenne, et en supprimant des ressources qui, autrement, resteraient inutilisées et gaspilleraient ainsi de énergie. Cependant, la fédération de clouds élargit la gamme des ressources disponibles. En conséquence, pour les utilisateurs, des compétences en cloud computing ou en administration système sont nécessaires, ainsi qu’un temps d’apprentissage considérable pour maîtrises les options disponibles. Dans ce contexte, certaines questions se posent: (a) Quelle ressource du cloud est appropriée pour une application donnée? (b) Comment les utilisateurs peuvent-Ils exécuter leurs applications HPC avec un rendement acceptable et des coûts financiers abordables, sans avoir à reconfigurer les applications pour répondre aux normes et contraintes du cloud ? (c) Comment les non-Spécialistes du cloud peuvent-Ils maximiser l’usage des caractéristiques du cloud, sans être liés au fournisseur du cloud ? et (d) Comment les fournisseurs de cloud peuvent-Ils exploiter la fédération pour réduire la consommation électrique, tout en étant en mesure de fournir un service garantissant les normes de qualité préétablies ? À partir de ces questions, la présente thèse propose une solution de consolidation d’applications pour la fédération de clouds qui garantit le respect des normes de qualité de service. On utilise un système multi-Agents pour négocier la migration des machines virtuelles entre les clouds. En nous basant sur la fédération de clouds, nous avons développé et évalué une approche pour exécuter une énorme application de bioinformatique à coût zéro. En outre, nous avons pu réduire le temps d’exécution de 22,55% par rapport à la meilleure exécution dans un cloud individuel. Cette thèse présente aussi une architecture de cloud baptisée « Excalibur » qui permet l’adaptation automatique des applications standards pour le cloud. Dans l’exécution d’une chaîne de traitements de la génomique, Excalibur a pu parfaitement mettre à l’échelle les applications sur jusqu’à 11 machines virtuelles, ce qui a réduit le temps d’exécution de 63% et le coût de 84% par rapport à la configuration de l’utilisateur. Enfin, cette thèse présente un processus d’ingénierie des lignes de produits (PLE) pour gérer la variabilité de l’infrastructure à la demande du cloud, et une architecture multi-Cloud autonome qui utilise ce processus pour configurer et faire face aux défaillances de manière indépendante. Le processus PLE utilise le modèle étendu de fonction avec des attributs pour décrire les ressources et les sélectionner en fonction des objectifs de l’utilisateur. Les expériences réalisées avec deux fournisseurs de cloud différents montrent qu’en utilisant le modèle proposé, les utilisateurs peuvent exécuter leurs applications dans un environnement de clouds fédérés, sans avoir besoin de connaître les variabilités et contraintes du cloud. / Cloud computing has been seen as an option to execute high performance computing (HPC) applications. While traditional HPC platforms such as grid and supercomputers offer a stable environment in terms of failures, performance, and number of resources, cloud computing offers on-Demand resources generally with unpredictable performance at low financial cost. Furthermore, in cloud environment, failures are part of its normal operation. To overcome the limits of a single cloud, clouds can be combined, forming a cloud federation often with minimal additional costs for the users. A cloud federation can help both cloud providers and cloud users to achieve their goals such as to reduce the execution time, to achieve minimum cost, to increase availability, to reduce power consumption, among others. Hence, cloud federation can be an elegant solution to avoid over provisioning, thus reducing the operational costs in an average load situation, and removing resources that would otherwise remain idle and wasting power consumption, for instance. However, cloud federation increases the range of resources available for the users. As a result, cloud or system administration skills may be demanded from the users, as well as a considerable time to learn about the available options. In this context, some questions arise such as: (a) which cloud resource is appropriate for a given application? (b) how can the users execute their HPC applications with acceptable performance and financial costs, without needing to re-Engineer the applications to fit clouds' constraints? (c) how can non-Cloud specialists maximize the features of the clouds, without being tied to a cloud provider? and (d) how can the cloud providers use the federation to reduce power consumption of the clouds, while still being able to give service-Level agreement (SLA) guarantees to the users? Motivated by these questions, this thesis presents a SLA-Aware application consolidation solution for cloud federation. Using a multi-Agent system (MAS) to negotiate virtual machine (VM) migrations between the clouds, simulation results show that our approach could reduce up to 46% of the power consumption, while trying to meet performance requirements. Using the federation, we developed and evaluated an approach to execute a huge bioinformatics application at zero-Cost. Moreover, we could decrease the execution time in 22.55% over the best single cloud execution. In addition, this thesis presents a cloud architecture called Excalibur to auto-Scale cloud-Unaware application. Executing a genomics workflow, Excalibur could seamlessly scale the applications up to 11 virtual machines, reducing the execution time by 63% and the cost by 84% when compared to a user's configuration. Finally, this thesis presents a product line engineering (PLE) process to handle the variabilities of infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS) clouds, and an autonomic multi-Cloud architecture that uses this process to configure and to deal with failures autonomously. The PLE process uses extended feature model (EFM) with attributes to describe the resources and to select them based on users' objectives. Experiments realized with two different cloud providers show that using the proposed model, the users could execute their application in a cloud federation environment, without needing to know the variabilities and constraints of the clouds.

Our understanding of the physical world has evolved drastically over the last century and the microstructure described by subatomic physics has been found to be far stranger than we could previously have envisaged. However, our corresponding model of experience and its structure has remained largely untouched. The orthodox view conceives of our experience as made up of a number of different simpler experiences that are largely independent of one another. This traditional atomistic picture is deeply entrenched. But I argue that it is wrong. Our experience is extraordinarily rich and complex. In just a few seconds we may see, hear and smell a variety of things, feel the position and movement of our body, experience a blend of emotions, and undergo a series of conscious thoughts. This very familiar fact generates three puzzling questions. The first question concerns the way in which all these different things are experienced together. What we see, for example, is experienced alongside what we hear. Our visual experience does not occur in isolation from our auditory experience, sealed off and separate. It is fused together in some sense. It is co-conscious. We may then ask the Unity Question: What does the unity of consciousness consist in? The second question is the Counting Question: How many experiences does a unified region of consciousness involve? Should we think of our experience at a time as consisting in just one very rich experience, in a handful of sense-specific experiences, or in many very simple experiences? How should we go about counting experiences? Is there any principled way to do so?The third and final question, the Dependency Question, concerns the degree of autonomy of the various different aspects of our unified experience. For example, would one's visual experience be the same if one's emotional experience differed? Is the apparent colour of a sunset affected by the emotional state that we are in at the time? I offer a new answer to the Unity Question and argue that it has striking implications for the way that we address the Counting Question and the Dependency Question. In particular, it supports the view that our experience at a time consists in just one very rich experience in which all of the different aspects are heavily interdependent.

This work deals with development of preschool children vocabulary. It focuses on speech self, on its development in relation to thinking and the development from the ontogenetic perspektive. Further, its maps the view on speech development in the past and present. The part dealing with RWCT follows. The thesis tries to outline the basic ideas of this programme and its application in kindergarten. It aims to familiarise readers with new approaches and methods of language and speech development, and to outline the basics of this programme. The thesis also compares this programme with the Start Together programme, which issues from RWCT. Another topic of the thesis is a comparison of the objectives of RWCT and the Framework Education Programme for Preschool Education, where the relationship between RWCT and Framework Education Programme for Preschool Edication objectives is shown. In the practical part of the thesis, statistical data from two kindergartens show whether using RWCT methods in kindergarten positively impacts development of select communication skills of preschool children. The thesis aims to prove that the RWCT methods positively support the overall communication skills and abilities of preschool children.

Many older adults desire to maintain their quality of life by living and aging independently in their own homes. However, it is difficult for older adults to notice and track the subtle changes in their own abilities because these abilities can change gradually over a long period of time. Technology in the form of ubiquitous sensors embedded in objects in the home can play a role in keeping track of the functional abilities of individuals unobtrusively, objectively, and continuously over a long period of time. This work introduces a sensing technique called “task-based embedded assessment” that monitors how well specific tasks important for independence are carried out using everyday objects found in the home with which individuals regularly interact. Following formative studies on the information needs of older adults and their caregivers, a sensing system called “dwellSense” that can monitor, assess, and provide feedback about how well individuals complete tasks, such as taking medications, using the phone, and making coffee, was designed, built, and evaluated. Multiple longterm (over 10 months) field deployments of dwellSense were used to investigate how the data collected from the system could support greater self-awareness of abilities and intentions to improve in task performance. Presenting and reflecting on data from ubiquitous sensing systems such as dwellSense is challenging because it is both highly dimensional as well as large in volume, particularly if it is collected over a long period of time. Thus, this work also investigates the time dimension of reflection and has identified that real-time feedback is particularly useful for supporting behavior change, and longer-term trended feedback is useful for greater awareness of abilities. Traditional forms of assessing the functional abilities of individuals tend to be either biased, lacking ecological validity, infrequent, or expensive to conduct. An automated sensor-based approach for assessment is compared to traditional performance testing by a trained clinician and found to match well with clinician-generated ratings that are objective, frequent, and ecologically valid. The contributions from this thesis not only advance the state of the art for maintaining quality of life and care for older adults, but also provide the foundations for designing personal sensing systems that aim to assess an individual’s abilities and support behaviors through the feedback of objective, timely sensed information.

Title: An active chain process of self-leadership: Dynamically practising self-leading strategies for sustainability. Keywords: Active and dynamic, Chain process of self-leadership, Self-leadership strategies Background: Sustainability is important and of current interest, requiring all organisations to be well-functioning, committed to sustainability and create strategic decisions for their long-term sustainability. Organisations thence benefit from training the employees into self-leaders, as it results in beneficial outcomes that lead to greatness within organisations, and hence society at large. Research question: Why do individuals succeed in maintaining and practising an active chain process of self-leadership? Purpose: This study aims to understand why individuals sustain maintaining an active chain process of self-leadership by dynamically practising self-leadership strategies, where they continue to be self-aware, manage and lead themselves, practice self-leadership strategies, attain self-efficacy and achieve beneficial outputs that in extension contribute to a more efficient and long-term sustainable society. To better understand what activates the chain process of self-leadership and creates the dynamic, the authors have developed a summarising model (see model 5.1 in chapter 5). Method: The study is of qualitative character with an abductive research approach, where the empirical data have been collected through semi-structured interviews and a collective case study design with ten informants who practise self-leadership, and then analysed by the Gioia method. Findings: The chain process of self-leadership is holistic and what maintains it active are feelings of well-being, competence, and efficacy, as well as succeeding, contributing to a greater good and seeing things in a greater context. Of significance is to be reminded and followed up regularly. Paper type: Master thesis

This study is an interpretive form of qualitative research that is founded in educational connoisseurship and criticism, which uses the author’s personal experiences as a holistic educator in a public school to connect theory and practice. Key research questions include: How do I, as a teacher, work with the Ontario curriculum to make it more holistic? What strategies have I developed in order to teach a more holistic curriculum? What kinds of difficulties interfere with my practice as I attempt to implement my holistic philosophy of education? This dissertation seeks to articulate a methodology for developing holistic curriculum that is in conformity with Ontario Ministry guidelines and is also responsive to the multifaceted needs of the whole student. The research findings will serve to inform teachers who wish to engage in holistic education in public schools and adopt a curriculum that is transformative while still being adaptable within mainstream education.

This study is an interpretive form of qualitative research that is founded in educational connoisseurship and criticism, which uses the author’s personal experiences as a holistic educator in a public school to connect theory and practice. Key research questions include: How do I, as a teacher, work with the Ontario curriculum to make it more holistic? What strategies have I developed in order to teach a more holistic curriculum? What kinds of difficulties interfere with my practice as I attempt to implement my holistic philosophy of education? This dissertation seeks to articulate a methodology for developing holistic curriculum that is in conformity with Ontario Ministry guidelines and is also responsive to the multifaceted needs of the whole student. The research findings will serve to inform teachers who wish to engage in holistic education in public schools and adopt a curriculum that is transformative while still being adaptable within mainstream education.