Nesting and nighttime behaviours of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Abstract Studies of nesting behaviours of free-ranging apes typically focus on ecological variables such as preferred tree species and areas within the home range, heights of nests, and nest group sizes. However, nesting in captive apes is rarely studied, despite the ubiquity of this sleep-related behaviour. The paucity of field data is often attributed to the inherent difficulty in observing what is essentially a nighttime behaviour. Captive settings can provide researchers with an ideal opportunity to record nesting and sleep-related behaviours, yet such research on captive apes is also scant. Topics addressed include current practices in zoos regarding conditions for sleep in great apes, the potential effects of social and environmental factors on sleep site selection, the motor patterns involved in nest construction, preferred nesting structures and substrates, and nocturnal behaviours. This thesis documented and empirically tested hypotheses concerning nest-related activities in captive chimpanzees, with an aim to generate practical recommendations for enclosure design, sleeping areas, sleeping structures, and nesting substrates that have implications for the welfare of captive apes. As with the few reports that already exist, most chimpanzees in this research frequently constructed night nests. When building a nest, some techniques appeared to be universal across individuals and groups, where others were group-specific or occasionally characteristic of only certain individuals. An experiment showed that specific materials are preferred over others for nest building. Many chimpanzees appeared to express persistent preferences for particular sleeping sites, and for some this was to maintain proximity to kin or other closely bonded individuals. In one group, individual sleeping site preferences changed across seasons, although again this was subject to individual differences. Video analyses of nighttime behaviours demonstrated that, although nests/sleep sites are primarily used for rest subsequent to retirement, a number of social and non-social activities were performed throughout the night. In conjunction with analysis of postural and orientation shifts, these data are unique in describing the nocturnal behaviours of chimpanzees out with a laboratory setting. Several aspects of nest-related behaviours showed a high degree of inter-and intra-group variation. Although this cautions against generalising findings across captive populations, research of this type has applied implications for the management of captive ape species, and can add to our as-yet meagre understanding of their nest and sleep-related behaviours

Exploring the multimodal communication and agency of children in an autism classroom.

This study explores the communication and agency of five children between 6-8 years old attending a special school in England. The children have all received a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and demonstrate limited or no verbal speech. The study analyses how the children communicate with staff and peers in the classroom, how the diverse communicative contexts arising from the school day shape their communicative behaviours, and the nature of the relationship between their communication opportunities and the agency they exercise in the classroom. The study draws on a wide range of data including classroom video recordings, fieldnotes, the author’s reflexive research journal, interviews with classroom staff and with the children’s parents and the collection of photographs and documents. It adopts a hybridized methodological framework drawing upon ethnography of communication, Conversation Analysis and Multimodal Interaction Analysis. This framework is used to enable fine-grained analysis of communication and to subsequently locate such microanalysis within a broader ethnographic context. The children in this study communicate using a range of strategies including the use of Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS®) and Makaton® signing, embodied communication and Intensive Interaction. Some individual variation between children is noted in terms of their preferred modes, speech topics, functions and interactional partners. Communication mediated by Makaton and PECS is often associated with requesting objects or help from adults as well as social convention such as please and thank-you, and appears to be outstripped in range and complexity by the children’s embodied multimodal communication. Some forms of communication are found to be highly associated with certain classroom communicative contexts. Whilst all the children show at least some orientation towards peer interaction, the nature of a specialist setting with high staff to student ratios, small classes, an absence of non-disabled peers and AAC provision which orients towards object requesting together tend to mitigate against interactions with other children. Implications arising from the study include the need to think critically about facilitating peer interaction in specialist settings, to reflect on how and why some vocabulary and speech functions are provided with PECS and Makaton to the exclusion of others, and to consider the very complex relationships between classroom activities, vocabulary, mode, speech function and interactional partners. It is suggested that the concept of childhood ‘agency’ might support practitioners and policy makers in reflecting on how communication support for disabled children might enhance their lives both present and future

Exploring young children’s participation and motive orientation in the classroom and at forest school

This doctoral study uses an interpretive ethnographic approach to explore children’s motive-oriented activity in the reception year classroom and at Forest School. The research considers the experiences of a group of linguistically and culturally diverse 4- and 5-year-olds, in order to conceptualise the child’s situation of development through their participation in socio-material activity settings from the child’s perspective. The study’s objective was to use a ‘wholeness approach’ (Fleer, Hedegaard and Tudge, 2009; Hedegaard, 2018) to consider the child’s developing motive orientations and competencies in dialectical reciprocity with the values, expectations and demands of institutional practice. In doing so, it provides a means of considering how these may contribute to the child’s perception of self as a competent learner and valued participant in relation to the demands of early childhood settings. The study is situated within Welsh Government (WG) strategies for early childhood education, which aim to ensure ‘successful futures’ for all (WG, 2015b). The methodology draws upon Hedegaard and Fleer’s (2008) dialectical-interactive methodology for studying children, in order to make visible the perspectives of the researcher, adults/staff and the child. Fieldwork to collect data took place in the classroom at an urban primary school and a Forest School site over an eight-month period. Participants included children, their parents, teaching staff and Forest School staff. Data were gathered using observation, audio-visual recording, still photography, interviews, informal conversations during drawing and playing, and video-stimulated interviews. The data collection process was based upon ethical principles (BERA, 2011) to encourage informed involvement of participants. Using an environmental affordance perspective framework for analysis (Bang 2008, 2009), events chosen on the basis of conflict are explored to consider how the child negotiates, appropriates and challenges available affordances of things/artefacts, social others and self-experience as an individual within collective practices. The findings demonstrate how diverse children, including those whose behaviour is considered ‘challenging’, are negotiating often conflicting demands. The findings establish the importance of Forest School as an alternative, yet complementary, institution that provides pedagogical and physical space to support teachers in their observations and playful engagement with children. The thesis presents a contribution to theoretical considerations of how young children participate in and shape their interactive experiences in dialectical relationship with the socio-material affordances of institutional practices. The findings provide empirical material to consider how children are viewed in terms of competencies, how conflicts between policy and practice shape children’s participation, and how the concept of motive orientation is critical in order to support children’s sustained engagement in transition between and within educational practice

A Comprehensive Security Framework for Securing Sensors in Smart Devices and Applications

This doctoral dissertation introduces novel security frameworks to detect sensor-based threats on smart devices and applications in smart settings such as smart home, smart office, etc. First, we present a formal taxonomy and in-depth impact analysis of existing sensor-based threats to smart devices and applications based on attack characteristics, targeted components, and capabilities. Then, we design a novel context-aware intrusion detection system, 6thSense, to detect sensor-based threats in standalone smart devices (e.g., smartphone, smart watch, etc.). 6thSense considers user activity-sensor co-dependence in standalone smart devices to learn the ongoing user activity contexts and builds a context-aware model to distinguish malicious sensor activities from benign user behavior. Further, we develop a platform-independent context-aware security framework, Aegis, to detect the behavior of malicious sensors and devices in a connected smart environment (e.g., smart home, offices, etc.). Aegis observes the changing patterns of the states of smart sensors and devices for user activities in a smart environment and builds a contextual model to detect malicious activities considering sensor-device-user interactions and multi-platform correlation. Then, to limit unauthorized and malicious sensor and device access, we present, kratos, a multi-user multi-device-aware access control system for smart environment and devices. kratos introduces a formal policy language to understand diverse user demands in smart environment and implements a novel policy negotiation algorithm to automatically detect and resolve conflicting user demands and limit unauthorized access. For each contribution, this dissertation presents novel security mechanisms and techniques that can be implemented independently or collectively to secure sensors in real-life smart devices, systems, and applications. Moreover, each contribution is supported by several user and usability studies we performed to understand the needs of the users in terms of sensor security and access control in smart devices and improve the user experience in these real-time systems

Security and Privacy Threats on Mobile Devices through Side-Channels Analysis

In recent years, mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) have become essential tools in everyday life for billions of people all around the world. Users continuously carry such devices with them and use them for daily communication activities and social network interactions. Hence, such devices contain a huge amount of private and sensitive information. For this reason, mobile devices become popular targets of attacks. In most attack settings, the adversary aims to take local or remote control of a device to access user sensitive information. However, such violations are not easy to carry out since they need to leverage a vulnerability of the system or a careless user (i.e., install a malware app from an unreliable source). A different approach that does not have these shortcomings is the side-channels analysis. In fact, side-channels are physical phenomenon that can be measured from both inside or outside a device. They are mostly due to the user interaction with a mobile device, but also to the context in which the device is used, hence they can reveal sensitive user information such as identity and habits, environment, and operating system itself. Hence, this approach consists of inferring private information that is leaked by a mobile device through a side-channel. Besides, side-channel information is also extremely valuable to enforce security mechanisms such as user authentication, intrusion and information leaks detection. This dissertation investigates novel security and privacy challenges on the analysis of side-channels of mobile devices. This thesis is composed of three parts, each focused on a different side-channel: (i) the usage of network traffic analysis to infer user private information; (ii) the energy consumption of mobile devices during battery recharge as a way to identify a user and as a covert channel to exfiltrate data; and (iii) the possible security application of data collected from built-in sensors in mobile devices to authenticate the user and to evade sandbox detection by malware. In the first part of this dissertation, we consider an adversary who is able to eavesdrop the network traffic of the device on the network side (e.g., controlling a WiFi access point). The fact that the network traffic is often encrypted makes the attack even more challenging. Our work proves that it is possible to leverage machine learning techniques to identify user activity and apps installed on mobile devices analyzing the encrypted network traffic they produce. Such insights are becoming a very attractive data gathering technique for adversaries, network administrators, investigators and marketing agencies. In the second part of this thesis, we investigate the analysis of electric energy consumption. In this case, an adversary is able to measure with a power monitor the amount of energy supplied to a mobile device. In fact, we observed that the usage of mobile device resources (e.g., CPU, network capabilities) directly impacts the amount of energy retrieved from the supplier, i.e., USB port for smartphones, wall-socket for laptops. Leveraging energy traces, we are able to recognize a specific laptop user among a group and detect intruders (i.e., user not belonging to the group). Moreover, we show the feasibility of a covert channel to exfiltrate user data which relies on temporized energy consumption bursts. In the last part of this dissertation, we present a side-channel that can be measured within the mobile device itself. Such channel consists of data collected from the sensors a mobile device is equipped with (e.g., accelerometer, gyroscope). First, we present DELTA, a novel tool that collects data from such sensors, and logs user and operating system events. Then, we develop MIRAGE, a framework that relies on sensors data to enhance sandboxes against malware analysis evasion

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Construction and Constraint: The Animal Body and Constructions of Power in Motion Pictures.

This dissertation proceeds from the question “How does the camera capture animals, and how does the medium of that image structure the relationship between camera, animal and spectator?” by arguing that both the terms of the question and the answers themselves are culturally and historically contingent. The tension between the documented animal body as it is viewed on screen and the living animal captured in profilmic space demands a methodology attentive to both historical context and the power structures that shape the writing of history for non-speaking subjects. I examine cases such as the early Edison short Electrocution of an Elephant, the 1939 Hollywood production of Jesse James, BBC’s Planet Earth and cat videos on the internet through the moments of their filming and exhibition, I argue the relationships amongst animals, humans, landscape, and culture inform the representations of animals onscreen, and how animal images are seen and understood. My work privileges the conditions of production and exhibition because the power dynamics of the gaze at animals are not only implicated in the image textually, but also in the factors that produced the image. Drawing on institutional archives, public animal advocacy and legal discourse, I demonstrate that the power of the human to control not only the animal but the framing of that animal is elided in order to naturalize both the human-animal power dynamic and the relationship between camera, subject and viewer. Animals are often in the background, textually and historically, of American film history. By focusing on their performances, my work demonstrates how animals were understood through and ultimately regulated by a media industry that both profited from and dictated the terms of representation. The animal body has a unique status as familiar and distant, exotic and domesticated, unknowable and subject to human control. Media texts focused on animal bodies provide an ideal testing ground for examining how the relationship between human and animal is both reflected and created by media, and the power that fills each frame.PhDScreen Arts and CulturesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133428/1/kralko_1.pd