The Gordian Knot of Mobile TV Policy in Singapore

Mobile TV brings challenges to existing regulatory frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to analyze regulatory issues arising from TV services on mobile handsets, including 3G TV and mobile broadcasting TV. The research methods are document analysis and in-depth interviews with mobile TV policymakers and industrial players. Singapore’s case is used to illustrate how the advancement and convergence of mobile video technology affect mobile TV policymaking and complicates regulatory considerations. Since 2005, Singapore’s 3G TV services have been regulated under an Internet services’ Class License scheme. In 2007, the Media Development Authority proposed to regulate both 3G TV services and the emerging mobile broadcasting TV under the broadcasting act with stricter licensing and content regulation. This paper argues that the old media laws cannot address mobile TV’s unique characteristics and complex issues. Finally, it recommends the regulation of unicast and multicast mobile TV services separately under a light-touch, customized mobile TV policy

Test Automation and Continuous Integration

This final year project was carried out by commission of Nokia Devices Mobile TV unit. The aim of this project was to design and establish an automatic test environment for a continuous integration process. By automating the testing, it was striven to free resources which were tied to the testing process before. These resources are more valuable to be used for evaluating and developing the other test methods. At the beginning of this project, the Mobile TV has been described in general. The DVB-H radio network and the other broadcast technologies are introduced as well. Also the prerequisities of the automatic testing, the architecture of the automatic test system and the used test methods, especially on the Mobile TV environment, have been explained. The actual implementation was started by familiarizing with different testing tools and test environments. After that, the test tools for each testing needs were smoothed out and connected to the automatic test system. Finally, the test system was connected to the Continuous Integration process. In this project, the Qt based Mobile TV is also described. Qt is an application development framework, which is widely used in the development of graphical user interface applications.Työ tehtiin Nokia Devices Mobile TV -yksikölle. Työn tavoitteena oli suunnitella ja luoda automaattinen mobiili TV -testiympäristö Continuous Integration -prosessiin. Automatisoimalla testausta pyrittiin vapauttamaan testauksen sitomia resursseja, jotka voitaisiin käyttää muunlaiseen testaukseen ja testausvaiheiden kehittämiseen. Työssä kerrotaan aluksi mobiili TV:stä yleisesti. Siinä kerrotaan DVB-H -radioverkosta sekä muista lähetystekniikoista. Työssä käydään myös läpi automaattisen testauksen edellytykset erityisesti mobiili TV -ympäristössä sekä kuvataan automaattisen testausympäristön rakenne ja käytettävät testausmetodit. Työssä kerrotaan myös Qt:sta sekä siihen pohjautuvasta mobiili TV:n toiminnasta. Qt on graafinen käyttöliittymäkirjasto ja sillä voidaan kehittää monella eri käyttöjärjestelmällä toimivia ohjelmia tekemättä muutoksia ohjelman lähdekoodiin. Varsinainen toteutus alkoi tutustumalla erilaisiin automaattisen testauksen työkaluihin ja ympäristöihin. Tämän jälkeen selvitettiin erikseen työkalu kullekin testaustarpeelle ja liitettiin se automaattiseen testausjärjestelmään. Lopuksi testausjärjestelmä liitettiin onnistuneesti Continuous Integration -prosessiin

Analyse d’implantation d’initiatives d’amélioration continue de la qualité des soins aux personnes vivant avec le VIH en Haïti

Cette thèse vise à mieux comprendre le processus d’implantation des initiatives d’amélioration de la qualité des soins en Haïti. Un programme national d’amélioration continue de la qualité, HEALTHQUAL-Haïti, a été choisi pour la réalisation d’une analyse d’implantation. Pour être systématique dans cette recherche évaluative, le modèle logique du programme d’amélioration continue de la qualité (PACQ) HEALTHQUAL-Haïti a été réalisé. Ce modèle a permis par la suite de poser les bonnes questions pour déterminer le degré de mise en œuvre de HEALTHQUAL-Haïti. Puis les facteurs qui ont facilité ou entravé la mise en œuvre du PACQ ont été analysés. Il s’agit d’une thèse par article. Trois (3) articles constituent le cœur de cette thèse : le premier présente le processus d’élaboration du modèle logique de HEALTHQUAL-Haïti ; le second apprécie le degré de mise en œuvre du programme HEALTHQUAL-Haïti ; le troisième présente les facteurs qui influencent le degré de mise en œuvre de HEALTHQUAL-Haïti. Ce dernier montre un cadre conceptuel avec différentes perspectives théoriques pour expliquer la mise en œuvre du programme HEALTHQUAL-Haïti tenant compte de la réalité empirique. Des facteurs externes et des facteurs internes influencent la mise en œuvre du programme HEALTHQUAL : les facteurs externes, particulièrement les caractéristiques des réseaux, la capacité de négociation, la capacité de mobilisation de ressources, la capacité de vaincre les résistances au changement, l’héritage politique, les normes institutionnelles, la situation socio-politique du pays et des facteurs internes comme le leadership partagé, l’appropriation du processus par les acteurs, le jeu de pouvoir, l’apprentissage organisationnel, la structure organisationnelle, le degré de motivation des prestataires, la culture des prestataires et la disponibilité des ressources. Un résultat fondamental, c’est que les modèles du changement, pris de façon isolée, n’expliquent que partiellement la mise en œuvre. Par ailleurs, c’est une configuration de facteurs tant externes qu’internes qui déterminent le degré de mise en œuvre à un moment donné. Sept (7) modèles du changement ont été retenus : le modèle politique, néo-institutionnel, psychologique, de l’apprentissage organisationnel, du développement organisationnel, le modèle structurel et le modèle rationnel. La culture organisationnelle interagit avec les variables des différents modèles du changement soit pour faciliter ou entraver la mise en œuvre du programme HEALTHQUAL. Ces différentes combinaisons de facteurs forment des archétypes, qui, à un moment donné, déterminent le degré d’implantation du programme HEALTHQUAL.This thesis aims to better understand the process of implementing initiatives to improve the quality of care in Haiti. We have chosen a national continuous quality improvement program, HEALTHQUAL-Haïti, to conduct an implementation analysis using case studies. To be systematic in our evaluative research, we first produced the logic model of the Continuous Quality Improvement Program, HEALTHQUAL-Haiti. This model then allowed us to ask the right questions and select the right variables to analyze the degree of implementation of HEALTHQUAL-Haïti. We then looked at the factors that facilitated or hindered the implementation of the HEALTHQUAL-Haiti program. We have opted for a thesis by articles. Three (3) articles constitute this thesis: The first presents the process of developing the logical model of HEALTHQUAL-Haiti; the second assesses the degree of implementation of the HEALTHQUAL-Haiti program; the third presents the factors that influence the degree of implementation of HEALTHQUAL-Haiti. This last one describes a conceptual framework taking into account different theoretical perspectives to explain the implementation of the HEALTHQUAL-Haïti program. External and internal factors influence the implementation of the HEALTHQUAL program: external factors, particularly the characteristics of networks, negotiation capacity, capacity to mobilize resources, capacity to overcome resistance to change, political heritage, institutional norms, socio-political situation of the country, and internal factors such as shared leadership, ownership of the process by actors, power, organizational learning, organizational structure, level of motivation of providers, culture of providers, and availability of resources. What has been found is that models of change, taken in isolation, only partially explain implementation. Furthermore, we observed that it was a configuration of both external and internal factors that determined the degree of implementation at any given time. The different variables or concepts of seven models of change were considered: the political, neo-institutional, psychological, organizational learning, organizational development, structural and rational models. Organizational culture interacts with the variables of the different change models either to facilitate or hinder the implementation of the HEALTHQUAL program. These different combinations of factors form archetypes, which at any given time determine the implementation of the HEALTHQUAL program

The Iowa Homemaker vol.10, no.8

Swat That Moth! By C. H. Ricardson Batik Goes Modern By Elizabeth Flynn Hearts are Trumps By Mrs. Henry Ness Moderns Turn Sun Worshipers By R. D. Mille

The Catholic response to HIV and AIDS in South Africa with a special reference to KwaZulu-Natal (1984-2005) : a historical-critical perspective.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.The present study is a critical history of the Catholic Church‟s response to HIV and Aids in South Africa, with a special emphasis on KwaZulu-Natal. It attempts to document and reflect on what the church said and did in responding to HIV and Aids between 1984 and 2005. It relies upon both oral and literary sources which were collected between 2006 and 2009. These comprise of oral testimonies of Catholic clerics, lay leaders, and administrators as well as archival sources in the form of correspondence letters, plenary session minutes, magazine articles, and project reports. The study establishes that between 1984 and 1990 the Catholic Church saw Aids as a disease far removed from its sphere yet deserving certain visionary measures. To a larger extent, Aids was ignored. A moral perspective on the Aids disease prevailed throughout the period. However, isolated visionary leaders conducted awareness workshops. Between 1991 and 1999, however, Aids was seen as immediate, a problem closely related to the mission of the Catholic Church. Here Aids was confronted. The predominant theological response was „missiological,‟ expressed through the new pastoral plan, Community Serving Humanity. As a result, the main Aids related activity by the church was the care of PLWHA. Through home-based care and institutionalised care, Catholic local initiatives in responding to the disease mushroomed in the country with the Archdiocese of Durban taking a leading role. Between 2000 and 2005 Aids was seen as imminent in the church, a concept popularised as the „Church has Aids‟. As a result, the period witnessed a concerted effort by the Catholic Church to integrate Aids response into its mainstream activities. In this period, Aids was seen as a human rights issue. Consequently, the Catholic Church endeavoured to address rights to treatment, Aids related stigma, family violence and gender imbalances. „Responsibility in a Time of Aids‟ became a predominant theological concept. The Catholic Church became a pacesetter in care and treatment after securing oversees funding. However, prevention became the church‟s Achilles heel following an unrelenting condom controversy. The availability of large amounts of money and many financial donors led to the NGO-isation of the Catholic Church‟s Aids projects with regard to their identity, activities, and organization. By and large, HIV and Aids had a large impact on the Catholic Church at all levels, both theologically and organizationally. Therefore, the study argues that for the Catholic Church responding to the Aids epidemic was a complex organizational dilemma. On the one hand, the church‟s teachings compelled it to care for the sick with a compassionate love and uphold a naturalist ethical position on sexuality. On the other hand, the Aids disease was associated with what was perceived to be sinful behaviours such as prostitution, homosexuality and heterosexual acts outside marriage. The infected, therefore, were not only „sick‟ but „sinners‟ at the same time. Moreover, the means of HIV prevention advocated by the government and the better part of the society, the use of condoms, was in sharp contrast with the church‟s official teachings. The hierarchy set itself to defend the teachings while majority of the lay leaders and the medical practitioners called for its revision. Generally speaking, the Catholic Church‟s response to the HIV and Aids epidemic in South Africa was entangled by organizational controversies. In spite of warnings by visionary leaders such as Father Ted Rogers and the exemplary leadership of Archbishop Denis Hurley during the mid 1980s, the Catholic organizational focus on HIV and Aids was delayed until 1990. A concern to respond to HIV and Aids in the church increased considerably in the 1990s as attention shifted from the cry for freedom and democracy to the escalating Aids crisis. However, it was during the 2000s that conditions favoured the much needed integrated Aids response. The Aids crisis had become too obvious to ignore given the acute mortality rate. In conclusion the Catholic Church‟s response to HIV and Aids came relatively early with creative and visionary ideas but it was hindered by organizational and theological barriers. The Catholic Church‟s official HIV prevention policy was contradictory and ambiguous. The Catholic Church innovatively used two models, institutionalised care and home-based care, in the treatment and care of PLWHA and Aids orphans, home based care and Aids hospices. The Catholic Church demonstrated an outstanding ability to raise and disburse large amounts of funds, successfully channelling these to service delivery in its response to HIV and Aids. The Catholic Church Aids projects became NGO-ised following the influx of large foreign funds in the years of the 2000s

Converged digital TV services: the role of middleware and future directions of interactive television

The subject of the future of the interactive Television medium has become a topic of great interest to the academic and industrial communities particularly since in the recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the pace of innovation of convergence of digital TV systems and services. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of what we know as digital TV converged services, to present and categorise the digital Television middleware technologies that contributed to it, and to present possible future trends and directions. A new Television era of converged wireless and mobile content delivery, user-authored content, multimodal interaction, intelligent personalisation, smart space awareness, and 3D content sensations is foreseen, creating ambient and immersive experiences

Solutions for New Terrestrial Broadcasting Systems Offering Simultaneously Stationary and Mobile Services

221 p.[EN]Since the first broadcasted TV signal was transmitted in the early decades of the past century, the television broadcasting industry has experienced a series of dramatic changes. Most recently, following the evolution from analogue to digital systems, the digital dividend has become one of the main concerns of the broadcasting industry. In fact, there are many international spectrum authorities reclaiming part of the broadcasting spectrum to satisfy the growing demand of other services, such as broadband wireless services, arguing that the TV services are not very spectrum-efficient. Apart from that, it must be taken into account that, even if up to now the mobile broadcasting has not been considered a major requirement, this will probably change in the near future. In fact, it is expected that the global mobile data traffic will increase 11-fold between 2014 and 2018, and what is more, over two thirds of the data traffic will be video stream by the end of that period. Therefore, the capability to receive HD services anywhere with a mobile device is going to be a mandatory requirement for any new generation broadcasting system. The main objective of this work is to present several technical solutions that answer to these challenges. In particular, the main questions to be solved are the spectrum efficiency issue and the increasing user expectations of receiving high quality mobile services. In other words, the main objective is to provide technical solutions for an efficient and flexible usage of the terrestrial broadcasting spectrum for both stationary and mobile services. The first contributions of this scientific work are closely related to the study of the mobile broadcast reception. Firstly, a comprehensive mathematical analysis of the OFDM signal behaviour over time-varying channels is presented. In order to maximize the channel capacity in mobile environments, channel estimation and equalization are studied in depth. First, the most implemented equalization solutions in time-varying scenarios are analyzed, and then, based on these existing techniques, a new equalization algorithm is proposed for enhancing the receivers’ performance. An alternative solution for improving the efficiency under mobile channel conditions is treating the Inter Carrier Interference as another noise source. Specifically, after analyzing the ICI impact and the existing solutions for reducing the ICI penalty, a new approach based on the robustness of FEC codes is presented. This new approach employs one dimensional algorithms at the receiver and entrusts the ICI removing task to the robust forward error correction codes. Finally, another major contribution of this work is the presentation of the Layer Division Multiplexing (LDM) as a spectrum-efficient and flexible solution for offering stationary and mobile services simultaneously. The comprehensive theoretical study developed here verifies the improved spectrum efficiency, whereas the included practical validation confirms the feasibility of the system and presents it as a very promising multiplexing technique, which will surely be a strong candidate for the next generation broadcasting services.[ES]Desde el comienzo de la transmisión de las primeras señales de televisión a principios del siglo pasado, la radiodifusión digital ha evolucionado gracias a una serie de cambios relevantes. Recientemente, como consecuencia directa de la digitalización del servicio, el dividendo digital se ha convertido en uno de los caballos de batalla de la industria de la radiodifusión. De hecho, no son pocos los consorcios internacionales que abogan por asignar parte del espectro de radiodifusión a otros servicios como, por ejemplo, la telefonía móvil, argumentado la poca eficiencia espectral de la tecnología de radiodifusión actual. Asimismo, se debe tener en cuenta que a pesar de que los servicios móviles no se han considerado fundamentales en el pasado, esta tendencia probablemente variará en el futuro cercano. De hecho, se espera que el tráfico derivado de servicios móviles se multiplique por once entre los años 2014 y 2018; y lo que es más importante, se pronostica que dos tercios del tráfico móvil sea video streaming para finales de ese periodo. Por lo tanto, la posibilidad de ofrecer servicios de alta definición en dispositivos móviles es un requisito fundamental para los sistemas de radiodifusión de nueva generación. El principal objetivo de este trabajo es presentar soluciones técnicas que den respuesta a los retos planteados anteriormente. En particular, las principales cuestiones a resolver son la ineficiencia espectral y el incremento de usuarios que demandan mayor calidad en los contenidos para dispositivos móviles. En pocas palabras, el principal objetivo de este trabajo se basa en ofrecer una solución más eficiente y flexible para la transmisión simultánea de servicios fijos y móviles. La primera contribución relevante de este trabajo está relacionada con la recepción de la señal de televisión en movimiento. En primer lugar, se presenta un completo análisis matemático del comportamiento de la señal OFDM en canales variantes con el tiempo. A continuación, con la intención de maximizar la capacidad del canal, se estudian en profundidad los algoritmos de estimación y ecualización. Posteriormente, se analizan los algoritmos de ecualización más implementados, y por último, basándose en estas técnicas, se propone un nuevo algoritmo de ecualización para aumentar el rendimiento de los receptores en tales condiciones. Del mismo modo, se plantea un nuevo enfoque para mejorar la eficiencia de los servicios móviles basado en tratar la interferencia entre portadoras como una fuente de ruido. Concretamente, tras analizar el impacto del ICI en los receptores actuales, se sugiere delegar el trabajo de corrección de dichas distorsiones en códigos FEC muy robustos. Finalmente, la última contribución importante de este trabajo es la presentación de la tecnología LDM como una manera más eficiente y flexible para la transmisión simultánea de servicios fijos y móviles. El análisis teórico presentado confirma el incremento en la eficiencia espectral, mientras que el estudio práctico valida la posible implementación del sistema y presenta la tecnología LDM c