This paper presents DSM64: a lazy release consistent software distributed shared memory (SDSM) system built entirely in user-space. The DSM64 system is capable of executing threaded applications implemented with pthreads on a cluster of networked machines without any modifications to the target application. The DSM64 system features a centralized memory manager [1] built atop Hoard [2, 3]: a fast, scalable, and memory-efficient allocator for shared-memory multiprocessors. In my presentation, I present a SDSM system written in C++ for Linux operating systems. I discuss a straight-forward approach to implement SDSM systems in a Linux environment using system-provided tools and concepts avail- able entirely in user-space. I show that the SDSM system presented in this paper is capable of resolving page faults over a local area network in as little as 2 milliseconds. In my analysis, I present the following. I compare the performance characteristics of a matrix multiplication benchmark using various memory coherency models. I demonstrate that matrix multiplication benchmark using a LRC model performs orders of magnitude quicker than the same application using a stricter coherency model. I show the effect of coherency model on memory access patterns and memory contention. I compare the effects of different locking strategies on execution speed and memory access patterns. Lastly, I provide a comparison of the DSM64 system to a non-networked version using a system-provided allocator.

Using a mail survey, I questioned 490 representatives of local government (i.e., elected officials, administrative officials, animal control officers, and county Cooperative Extension agents) about their understanding of human-wildlife conflicts in their communities, and their receptivity to participating in co-management partnerships with regulatory agencies. Response rates for the mail survey of these four populations ranged from 25.2% to 75.9%. Knowledge of and perceptions about human-wildlife conflicts varied among leader subpopulations, as did their assessment of risks associated with and prioritization of human-wildlife conflicts. Animal control and Extension personnel displayed greater knowledge about wildlife, expressed greater concern about potential risks, and assigned higher priority to human-wildlife conflicts in their community. Respondents indicated that wildlife complaints are being received from constituents in their community, but questions exist over who is responsible for managing these conflicts. Most respondents indicated a willingness to become involved in conflict resolution, but indicated less willingness for local government to take on a leadership role. Respondents could identify potential partners valuable to resolving human-wildlife conflicts, but they demonstrated uncertainty about the specific roles and responsibilities of these outside agencies (e.g., Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries). Respondents identified important potential impediments (i.e., financial and personnel resources, the need to provide additional training or equipment) that could preclude or reduce their ability to become involved in conflict resolution. Most respondents viewed community-based co-management approaches as realistic (74%) and attractive (63%) options for local governments to exercise in managing human-wildlife conflicts. Most respondents (74%) believed that co-management offered local governments a direct way to be involved in managing their own conflicts. Respondents believed that staffing and budget shortages would be significant impediments that would limit local government's participation in co-management agreements. This study clearly illustrates that human-wildlife conflicts are occurring in Virginia, but overall local governments are not at a point when they are willing or able to consider a proactive approach to managing these conflicts. Until some threshold is met or exceeded, leaders in these communities may not be willing to devote the time or resources necessary to enact proactive approaches. Before that threshold is met, the development and utilization of informational and educational resources can increase local government's capacity to develop and implement a comprehensive wildlife management plan for Virginia communities in the future. / Master of Science

<p dir="ltr">Empathic design involves two social practices – one is collaboration with users to elicit and make a meaning of user experiences, and another is intrateam collaboration to develop a mutually understood, agreed-upon interpretation of user experiences among team members. This study is focused on the latter phenomenon, conceptualizing this social practice as team learning for shared empathic understandings. Through this conceptualization, this study aimed to characterize a social mechanism underlying intrateam collaboration in empathic design in terms of how professionals interact with each other to develop and apply shared empathic understandings to design ideas within a team over a design process. For this objective, I conducted a conversation analysis to examine one professional design team’s conversations over a design journey from need-finding to initial ideation to prototyping and testing, exploring team members’ conversational behaviors revealed in conversational exchanges. More specifically, I investigated their conversational behaviors at both the team and individual levels: team learning behaviors (i.e., construction, co-construction, and constructive conflict) for team-level collective behaviors and interpersonal reactions (e.g., move, question, block, etc.) and empathy perspectives (i.e., the first, second, and third-person perspectives) for individual-level behaviors. Through this investigation, I found that a team’s design journey can be characterized by their travel among the team learning behaviors during design conversations and that each type of team learning behavior can be featured by frequently used interpersonal reactions and empathy perspective transitions at the individual level. Through this behavior-oriented, holistic view of team learning for shared empathic understandings, this study provides fresh insights into what conversational behaviors can be more used at the team and individual levels and how these behaviors can facilitate a team to arrive at team-level empathic understandings and design ideas. I discuss the research and educational implications of this study and future research ideas based on this study.</p>

Shared autonomous vehicles present a significant opportunity to change the way that urban mobility is viewed by society. By providing a shared mobility platform at a cost lower than has previously been obtainable there are significant possibilites to enable a new era of mobility for consumers. This opportunity, however, comes with significant risks in the form of emissions and increased road usage. Understanding how the risks and benefits of shared autonomous vehicles can be balanced is crucial to be able to adequately prepare for their introduction. One of the primary ways to understand the interplay between the risks and benefits of autonomous vehicles is through the use of computer simulations. However, typically simulations must be defined for a specific area and provide results that are not applicable to a wide range of areas and situations. This work presents the development of a framework that can be used to simulate SAV behaviour at any given region of interest. This framework automates the process of generating a directed non-planar graph using data gathered from the OpenStreetMap project. It further provides tools to generate activity based trips that are statistically similar in time and density to provided data that reflects the trips in the simulation area. In the absence of this data, this work has identified the 2009 National Household Travel Survey as an acceptable surrogate for data specific to a region. The framework then provides methods by which the trip origins and destinations are mapped into the directed non-planar graph representation of the area of interest. This mapping is performed using real-world data including business locations and census data. Finally the framework is capable of simulating the activity of SAV in response to the defined trips given a variety of starting conditions and relocation strategies. In addition to the simulation framework this work presents a novel relocation strategy for unoccupied SAV based on the potential field methods that have been used in robotic navigation. This method provides a continously differentiable function that describes the unmet demand in the service area for a network of shared autonomous vehicles. The tunable parameters of the method are explored by using a design of experiments, and optimal values reflecting different scenarios are identified.The method is also evaluated in the context of both and over- and under-supply of vehicles for the given demand. As a result this method has been shown to provide substantial reductions in the wait time for a vehicle to service a trip with a minimal increase in the total distance that is traveled by all vehicles in the network.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(社会健康医学) / 甲第24290号 / 社医博第126号 / 新制||社医||12(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科社会健康医学系専攻 / (主査)教授 今中 雄一, 教授 西浦 博, 教授 寺田 智祐 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Public Health / Kyoto University / DFAM

People with serious mental illnesses (SMIs) (e.g., schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder) receive inadequate medical care, which is associated with high rates of avoidable morbidity and premature mortality. Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is an evidence-based service delivery model that provides intensive mental and social health support to clients with SMI. It has been suggested that ACT should provide primary care services to address client physical health, however, initiatives towards this and their implications are not well understood. I used a case study approach and semi-structured interviews to explore five ACT teams in the Ottawa region to discover team members’ mental models of primary care, relationships with external primary care providers, and the perceived impact COVID-19 has had on these mental models. I used Shared Mental Model (SMM) theory to frame data collection and a thematic analysis. The results showed that ACT team members similarly perceived primary care as important for the holistic health of their clients. They described ACT’s psychosocial scope and how they support clients’ access to external primary care services and their work to mitigate barriers. Teams did not share mental models about the basic primary care services they provided or which roles delivered them, due to differences in context and team members’ comfort. Team members also did not share beliefs about the future of ACT and primary care integration. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic changed and challenged primary care delivery, with beliefs becoming more negative overall. This thesis provides insight into how primary care could be delivered to ACT clients and where challenges and improvements can be addressed.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted many Swedish businesses to reconsider their survival techniques and the support they offer to societies in which they operate. The purpose of this study is to examine the COVID -19 responses practiced by four Swedish Companies (Essity, Volvo Group, ICA Gruppen, and Autoliv) to see what entrepreneurs can learn in the event of another pandemic. Furthermore, the study explores the different ways in which CSV and competitive advantage may be attained using the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative study based on secondary data analyzing information from company homepages, and annual and sustainability reports for the years 2020 and 2021 are the only ones used to provide systematic and comprehensive insights. The theoretical framework includes Archie Carroll’s pyramid which includes the legal, ethical, economic, and philanthropic responsibilities of the organization towards society, the stakeholder theory as well as the concept of creating Value Creation. The results show that Essity, Volvo Group, ICA Gruppen, and Autoliv responded differently to COVID-19 through philanthropic activities, commitment to ethical goals, upholding legal requirements, and maintaining business operations. And the ways in which they can contribute to value creation through these responses include enhanced employee relations, customer relations, innovation, collaborations, and government regulatory compliance. The study revealed that solving societal challenges is integral to guaranteeing that the organization can obtain an economic benefit for a long-term sustainability. When dealing with society in times of uncertainty, entrepreneurial innovations can be a source of future competitive advantage.

In this doctoral study I conceptualise shared values in order to explore a management problem from my work place environment. I observe that business-to-business (B2B) relationships between project managers and self-employed consulting engineers terminate; project managers switching to other vendors and self-employed consulting engineers losing their contract. The findings from the doctoral study show major influence of the shared values in managing project based professional relationships. Specifically, the elements of B2B professional relationships “commitment” and “trust” embedded in relationship performance show managerial implications. Furthermore, the literature review revealed a lack of qualitative knowledge in the research domain of B2B relationships. Hence, the findings from the doctoral study fill this gap and contribute to the academic knowledge by providing practise based qualitative evidence.This doctoral study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, building on previous research articles, six elements of B2B professional relationships were refined and tested through qualitative interviews in order to explore their relevance in the B2B professional relationship between the project managers and self-employed consulting engineers. As a result from the first phase, a conceptual model of shared values was developed. In the second phase, the conceptual model of the shared values developed from the first phase was explored and validated through the experience of the project managers and self-employed consulting engineers.

This dissertation presents a body of research consisting of 5 scientific papers with an overarching objective to develop and test interventions that can enhance the dissemination, access and use of current best evidence at the point of care. Questions constantly arise from clinicians’ interactions with their patients, but more than 60% remain unanswered. The first 4 papers therefore focused on evidence dissemination to clinicians and trainees looking for answers and trying to stay alert to new evidence. We used as our “laboratory” an online tool developed at McMaster University’s Health Information Research Unit, the MacPLUS Federated Search (MacPLUS FS), which allows busy clinicians to search multiple top high quality resources simultaneously and display a 1-page output with the most clinically useful results at the top. Guided by effective models for the teaching of clinical skills at the point of care, we designed 3 web-based interventions addressing logistical and educational barriers to increase the quantity and quality of searching for current best evidence. These interventions were: (A) a web-based Clinical Questions Recorder and Reminder; (B) an Evidence Retrieval Coach composed of 8 short videos embedded in MacPLUS; (C) and a Gamified Audit & Feedback based on the allocation of “badges” and “reputation scores” for evidence searching. We tested these interventions in 4 factorial randomized-controlled trials among 1,868 heath care professionals and students currently registered in MacPLUS FS, namely: 477 medical faculty members, 431 postgraduate medical trainees, 725 nursing students and 235 medical students. Results showed that these target populations substantially differed both in their baseline frequency of search and access to alerts, as in their responsiveness to the 3 web-based interventions on evidence utilization. Evidence summaries have traditionally been tailored to meet the educational needs of clinicians, but are seldom provided in a format that supports shared decision-making. Our fifth paper explored a potential solution, which constitutes another route for evidence dissemination and use. In a project called SHARE-IT, we developed a new framework and online prototype for the generic production of decision aids, which allow physicians and patients to discuss the evidence together in the clinical encounter. We present the framework, design methods and early testing of this generic approach, which showed promising results for the translation of evidence summaries into useful tools for shared decision-making. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The Sharing Economy is an innovative social, economic and technological paradigm which is shaping worldwide production and consumption patterns of many industries. Its strength relies on factors of competitiveness such as the use of idle capacity, temporary access to resources without transfer of ownership, the flexibility and adaptability of its models, and the participation of a growing number of players allowed by peer-to-peer digital platforms. From the management perspective, the conditions for lasting competitiveness lies on sustainability, the paradigm integrating the supply, demand, and technological dimensions in a holistic, or ecosystem, perspective. Tourism is among the industries making extensive use of sharing digital platforms and experiencing changes that foster the sustainability debate. The PhD Thesis aims to investigate the relationships between competitiveness and sustainability in the tourism and hospitality accommodation industry in the Sharing Economy Era. Its investigation is multifaced and is addressed through three studies adopting a post-modernist perspective that builds on qualitative approaches and strategies for data collection and analysis. The Part I of the Thesis explores the Sharing Economy concept’s evolution and the sustainability issues through an in-depth review of the literature. Results reveal the leading economic-technological evolution of the paradigm over the social one, and its dual links with sustainability in relation to the extensive use of peer-to-peer digital platforms. Therefore, the evolution of the Sharing Economy activities have shown that today competitiveness is built on the interactions of an ever-increasing number of actors and factors, both off-line and on-line, within a complex ecosystem for the creation of – shared – value. The tourism industry strongly challenges this relationship between extended competition and sustainability. The Part II evaluates the competitiveness model and its evolution during the Sharing eTourism Era in the tourism and hospitality accommodation sector introducing an ecosystem perspective for the creation and distribution of shared value. Specifically, it investigates how the non-traditional and informal tourist services have affected the structure of the industry and have altered the competition among the actors, through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Results show that competitiveness is given by the balance among the complex interactions of internal and external ecosystem’s actors and factors. On a micro level this imply that businesses must adopts an ecosystem vision compensating for negative externalities which translate into the adoption of Business Models promoting sustainability for the creation of sustainable shared value. Therefore, the Part III investigates through the use of an illustrative case study how peer-to-peer digital platforms in the tourist accommodation service can boost profitability while strengthening economic, social and environmental sustainability by applying the innovative Business Model for Sustainability. The research sheds light on the complex Sharing Economy literature and lays the theoretical foundations for the implementation of managerial strategies aimed at promoting extended sustainable competition-cooperation.