In response to the striking health and social inequalities existing across communities within a large Southern Ontario City the McMaster University School of Nursing has partnered with the local family health team, municipal government, and other community partners to evaluate a pilot program designed to enhance health and social outcomes within a specific priority neighbourhood. The innovative pilot program is a nursing-based system navigation role, grounded concurrently in the community and a local Primary Care Practice. The role is uniquely designed as the nurse provides navigation for individuals and families while functioning as a networker to facilitate improved service integration at a systems level. This study serves as a narrative person-centered evaluation of the program, emphasizing the impact on the lives of community members. This study employed the Three-Dimensional Narrative Inquiry Space method as described by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) to explore the experience of nine community residents utilizing navigation services through the Community Nurse Navigator/Networker (CNN). Programs tell a story; therefore, the collection and analysis of participants’ life stories, in conjunction with field notes, observations, and documents, created a common narrative of the experience of navigation in a community setting. A thematic analysis of participants’ life stories was conducted to present a common narrative of community members’ experience of navigation. The major finding of this study was the positive experience residents shared interacting with the CNN. Participants valued the development of a therapeutic relationship through social interactions, the significance of place on the impact of the CNN role, and the effect of the navigation role to address health disparities over time. Study findings have implications for continued development of the CNN role and other community-based nurse navigation roles in priority neighbourhoods to address health inequities. / Thesis / Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

The Community Nurse Networker (CNN) pilot project represents an innovative collaboration between primary care, public health and municipal stakeholders, including a local neighbourhood resident planning team in a priority neighbourhood in Hamilton, Ontario. This pilot linked primary care to ongoing community development work. The goal of the CNN pilot was to address issues beyond physical health, and to consider issues related to the social determinants of health, or where people, live, work, and play. This developmental evaluation study used a qualitative descriptive approach (Sandelowski, 2000, 2010). Multiple perspectives and sources were used to describe the implementation of the CNN pilot, the following were collected and analyzed: Interviews (N=5), a focus group (participants = 11), documents (N=90), and a survey (N=1). The implementation of the pilot was described by the following foci: (a) conceptualization of the CNN’s roles and activities, (b) perceived barriers and enablers in implementing the CNN pilot, (c) perceived impacts of the intervention, and (d) perceptions surrounding the value of a nurse in the CNN position. The CNN pilot is a unique intervention, demonstrating how primary care can be a leader within the community, engaging with health and social services organizations and hard to reach populations. The findings of this study supported the ongoing development of the CNN position. It provided an example of a nurse-led intervention, with an integrative approach to primary care, community development, social, and health services. This study illustrates the potential for strengthened partnerships between primary care and the community within priority neighbourhoods. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Parents of children with autism shoulder substantial responsibility for navigating intervention to address autism-related concerns, and face conditions of high uncertainty and stress to do so. There is a lack of holistic research explaining how parents cope and respond to the complexity and obstacles that characterize their situation as they navigate multiple forms of intervention across multiple systems of care. The purpose of this qualitative study was to develop a social psychological explanation in the form of a substantive theory of how Ontario parents of children with autism navigate intervention under complex informational conditions. I used grounded theory methods, a constructivist approach and symbolic interactionist analytic framework for this research. The findings are primarily based on 45 in-depth (90-minute) interviews with 32 mothers from different urban and rural Ontario regions (fathers participated in 3 cases), and 9 professionals with expertise supporting parents. Documents were also analyzed. The central process of navigating intervention, labeled making your own way, consists of adjusting to the need to navigate intervention, in which parents construct the meanings that prepare and motivate them for taking action to navigate intervention. Adjusting consists of 4 interdependent sub-processes that together explain parents’ action: defining concerns, informing the self, seeing what is involved, and emotionally adapting. I portray the central process according to three overlapping heuristic stages: beginning the autism journey, handling transitions, and easing off. Many parents develop a strong sense of urgency to which they can respond by going into high gear, expending substantial personal resources sometimes at unsustainable rates in the pursuit of intervention. The findings have implications for supporting parents to improve outcomes including parent stress. The central process of making your own way is generically transferrable to other healthcare consumer populations. Other conceptual elements have theoretical relevance for consumer-centered areas of health research. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Parents of children with autism shoulder significant responsibility for navigating many varying services and treatments (intervention) to address autism-related concerns, and experience great uncertainty and stress as they do so. There is a lack of research explaining how these parents respond to the complexity and obstacles they encounter as they navigate intervention. Using qualitative research methods, I interviewed 32 urban and rural Ontario parents (mostly mothers) and 9 professionals with expertise supporting parents to understand in detail how parents respond to their situation by making their own way to intervention. The resulting analytic findings have implications for improving support for parents of children with autism to reduce stress in their lives and improve other outcomes. The theory developed is also relevant for understanding how other healthcare consumer populations navigate intervention, and contributes to general knowledge in different consumer-centered areas of health research.

The modern attention economy incentivizes the use of persuasive designs in software development. Scrolling is an interaction technique commonly associated with persuasive designs because of its lack of natural stopping cues and potential for habit promotion. A scroll-like interaction is used in gesture navigation, which is a method of navigating mobile operating systems. This paper investigates gesture navigation in mobile operating systems in the context of persuasive designs. The aim of this paper is to answer whether gesture navigation affects mobile usage and if there is a systematic preference for gesture navigation over traditional button navigation. In order to answer these questions a pre-post study was conducted. The participants were instructed to change system navigation controls for ten days; whereafter data regarding their mobile usage was collected. The collected data was analyzed in order to determine if there was a difference in mobile usage after changing system navigation controls and whether there was a systematic preference for gesture navigation. The results did not suggest that gesture navigation has an effect on mobile usage. The results did however point towards a systematic preference for gesture navigation over button navigation. The idéa of a systematic preference for gesture navigation motivates further research about the mechanisms behind it. / Den moderna uppmärksamhets-ekonomin motiverar implementering av persuasive design-tekniker inom mjukvaruutveckling. Scrolling är en interaktionsteknik som ofta förknippas med persuasive design på grund av dess brist på naturliga stoppsignaler och förmåga att forma användarvanor. En scrolling-liknande interaktion används i gestnavigering, vilket är en navigeringsmetod i mobila operativsystem. Denna uppsats undersöker gestnavigering i mobila operativsystem i anknytning till persuasive design. Syftet med uppsatsen är att besvara om gestnavigering påverkar mobilanvändning och om det finns en systematisk preferens för gestnavigering framför traditionell knappnavigering. För att besvara dessa frågor genomfördes en inventionsstudie. Deltagarna instruerades att ändra systemnavigering i tio dagar; varefter data om deras mobilanvändning samlades in. De insamlade uppgifterna analyserades för att avgöra om det förekom någon skillnad på mobilanvändandet efter bytet av systemnavigering och om det fanns en systematisk preferens för gestnavigering. Resultaten tydde inte på att gestnavigering påverkar mobilanvändning. Resultaten pekade däremot på en systematisk preferens för gestnavigering framför knappnavigering. Idén om en systematisk preferens för gestnavigering motiverar vidare forskning om preferensens bakomliggande mekanismer.

Software is the crux of many commercial, industrial and military systems. The software systems need to be very reliable especially in case of safety critical systems. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and manned aircraft are safety critical systems and hence failures related to software or software-hardware interaction leads to huge problems. The software systems need to be certified before they are deployed. Even after being certified several accidents and incidents have occurred and are occurring. The software errors can occur during any phase of software development. The reliability of the software is enhanced using the verification process. Runtime monitoring has various advantages over testing and model checking. Hence this thesis work explores runtime monitoring of UAV. The runtime monitoring shall verify the run of the current system state. The runtime monitoring shall monitor the health of the UAV and shall report to the operator about its status. The software faults and errors if not prevented shall lead to software failure. UAV lacks the situational awareness due to absence of pilot onboard. This motivated to use runtime monitor to enhance the situation awareness. The runtime monitor shall detect the software errors and avoid failures. This monitor shall also enhance the situational awareness of the remote operator. The runtime monitor that enhance situation awareness shall not only be applicable to specific UAV but this shall be applicable to all the UAV’s. Hence this work provides an independent Generic Runtime Monitor (GRM) to enhance the situation awareness. The runtime monitor has various methods but using formal specifications in specific using Linear Temporal Logic(LTL) to generate monitor is considered in this work. Runtime monitoring makes UAV more safe and at the same time reduces the costs as it verifies only the current run of the system state by providing a detection of critical errors. The situation awareness includes functional and environmental states that remote pilot shall not be aware of. The architecture plays vital role for the system design. GRM architecture is one such architecture which chalks out the overall independent system design for the runtime monitoring of the UAV system. This architecture is an extensible one. The generic requirements were elicited from different sources such as Aircraft Incidents and Accidents, Boeing Aero Magazine, Autonomous Rotorcraft Testbed for Intelligent Systems (ARTIS) requirements, generic Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems (ALFURS) framework etc. The situation awareness can be categorized into three levels namely perception, comprehension and projection. The requirements were elicited for all the three levels of situation awareness. These requirements further formalized using temporal logics. The formalized requirements further translated into state automaton automatically.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the diverse experiences of accessing health and social services when living with a neurological condition in Manitoba. Using a qualitative research design, I conducted 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with adults living with a neurological condition in Manitoba. Findings demonstrated how characteristics of patients, and their service providers/systems, either predisposed them to a lack of service coordination or enabled them to successfully navigate health and social services. In the event that those factors contributed to a need or desire for coordination, participants employed strategies to improve their experience accessing services by i. pursuing knowledge to improve access, ii. actively engaging in behaviours to improve services, or iii. mentally coping with inadequate services. To conclude, practical recommendations on possible initiatives to improve the daily experiences of individuals living with neurological conditions are also provided. / October 2015

This paper deals with study of inertial navigation, global navigation satellite system, and their fusion into the one navigation solution. The first part of the work is to calculate the trajectory from accelerometers and gyroscopes measurements. Navigation equations calculate rotation with quaternions and remove gravity sensed by accelerometers. The equation’s output is in earth centred fixed navigation frame. Then, inertial navigation errors are discussed and focused to the bias correction. Theory about INS/GNSS inte- gration compares different integration architecture. The Kalman filter is used to obtain navigation solution for attitude, velocity and position with advantages of both systems.