47 research outputs found
The eyes cannot hear nor feel? A contrastive view on perception verbs in Ancient Egyptian and Kirundi
Senses connect all human bodies and minds to the surrounding environment, but the languages of the world differ in how they segment and categorise the different types of perception. Taking as a point of departure identified universal (and macro-areal) patterns of semantic structure in the field of perception and cognition (Georgakopoulos et al. in press), the goal of this lecture is to contrast the polysemy patterns of perception verbs in Ancient Egyptian (Afroasiatic) and Kirundi (Bantu), and to situate the results in a typological perspective (resorting to CLICS3, https://clics.clld.org). Although perception has attracted much attention in linguistics and cognitive sciences (e.g., Aikhenvald & Storch 2013; Evans and Wilkins 2000; Howes 2003; Levinson & Majid 2014, Majid & Burenhult 2014, Maslova 2004, San Roque et al. Sweetser, 1990, Vanhove 2008, Viberg 1983, and Wälchli 2016), there are only a few studies available for Egyptian (Steinbach 2015, Steinbach-Eicke 2017) and virtually none for Kirundi. These two languages however display both diachronic and synchronic patterns of co-expression that shed new light on long-standing questions, such as the prevalence of vision over audition, the relationship between perception and cognition, and the types of polysemy patterns that are possible in this semantic field – in Kirundi, for instance, a corpus-study reveals that the same root kwumva ‘to hear’ (and morphologically derived forms) can be used to express all types of perception except for the visual one.Le Diasem
HIV-exposed uninfected children. A systematic review on psychological well-being and association with school performances in Africa
There is a growing number of children affected by HIV in Africa. Research on HIV-exposed uninfected children (HEU) is also growing. This systematic review focuses on the psychological well-being of HEU and its association with school intervention, outcomes, and enrollment in the African context, which is where the rate of HIV reaches its highest levels. Research on public databases was conducted according to PRISMA standards. Only studies on HEU primary school children in Africa, both quantitative and qualitative, were included. Out of 1510 papers retrieved, 50 met the inclusion criteria. These studies demonstrate that HEU children are more likely to perform worse in school compared to their counterparts who were not exposed to HIV and to show poorer concentration in the classroom. Children with parents suffering from AIDS are worried for them and have to take household responsibility, resulting in school dropouts, juvenile work, and risky behaviors. Few interventions have been conducted in the school environment with some of them being successful; therefore, future research should involve schools to create an inclusive environment where HEU children could enhance their potential and improve their psychological health
A Secure Web Based Records Management System for Prisons: A Case of Kisoro Prison in Uganda
Most Prisons in the developing countries are still using the traditional system – pen and papers, to keep track of their records. This system takes long to finish a single transaction; this has led to loss of information of some cases (crimes files), insecurity and data redundancy. Similarly, some cases have been reported where some prison staff connives with clients (victims) to change and hide some information or files hence leading to compromising the evidence of the matter. This has consequently resulted in time wastage to handle cases, increased corruption and insecurity of important files hence making the whole process costly. Also when reports are needed especially about prisoners, it takes a long time and therefore makes it hard for Prison Management to take urgent decisions. This has created a lot of loopholes in the system because there is no tracking and/or monitoring of the information available in the different Departments and there are no security measures in place to safe guard the available information. This necessitated automating the system to make it more efficient and effective. There was close study of the existing manual file based system that was in use, it was compared to the proposed system. A prototype of a proposed system was developed to ease data access, security and retrieval for instant report production by the prison management. The prototype was developed using MySql database, PHP, CSS, JavaScript and HTML
Understanding the psychological and social environmental determinants driving infant and young child feeding practices among Rwandan households: a salutogenic approach
Although adequate nutrition and good health are children’s rights, they are often violated, especially in developing countries where undernutrition is one of the leading causes of mortality among children under the age of five. The problem is more pertinent in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), that still suffers from the highest under-five mortality rates in the world. Rwanda does not escape from this sad trend because despite continuous policy efforts, chronic malnutrition (stunting) among under-five remains a key public health concern. The 2014/15 Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey (RDHS) shows that 38% of under-five years old children were stunted in 2015. Hence, the Government of Rwanda has implemented numerous strategies to tackle the problem of chronic malnutrition. However, to date, much of our understanding on child chronic (mal) nutrition has been primarily based on research conducted on the nutritional physiological determinants of stunting such as the timing, composition and frequency of infant and young child feeding (IYCF). This view, however, has lacked a holistic orientation, ignoring the contextual and social determinants of IYCF practices. Moreover, the approach to tackle child undernutrition has been predominantly disease and risk-oriented, looking at the factors underlying stunting (pathogenic orientation). From this perspective, IYCF practices have been researched in relation to their contribution to stunting and the determinants of inadequate IYCF practices. Very little is known on factors contributing to good nutritional status, with a particular focus on factors facilitating mothers’ appropriate IYCF in the context of their everyday lives. The overall aim of this thesis is to identify factors that enable healthy IYCF practices in Rwandan households in order to contribute to the development of solution-oriented strategies for reducing child malnutrition. This dissertation is guided by the the salutogenic model of health that, in contrary to pathogenesis (that searches for causes of diseases), focuses on the search for the origins of health.The study was carried out in the catchment areas of Rutobwe and Buramba health centres located in a rural part of the district of Muhanga, in the southern province of Rwanda. The study adopted both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Four qualitative studies have been carried out. The first study was conducted among key informants ( mothers and fathers of infant aged 0–23 months, grandmothers and community health workers, n=144), focussed on a general understanding of IYCF practices, the challenges and the responses towards appropriate IYCF practices in the context in which mothers must live their lives (Chapter 2). Next, an in-depth study has been carried out on factors that impede or facilitate appropriate IYCF practices from the perspective of mothers themselves (n=39), specifically during the first 6 months of a child’s life (Chapter 3). The third study focused on coping strategies and facilitating factors among mothers who managed to follow the recommended IYCF practices during the first year of a child’s life (n=17; Chapter 4). Finally, the fourth study focused on unravelling how those mothers managed to do well by exploring the life course learning experiences that play a role in shaping healthy IYCF practices during the first year of a child’s life (n=14; Chapter 5).Based on the studies carried out, this thesis concludes that appropriate IYCF practices reflect not only food related practices to support the physical health but also the social and emotional needs of the mother and the child. In everyday life, mothers face challenges when they try to pursue the recommended IYCF practices. The results from this thesis reveal that mothers experienced an interplay of barriers and facilitators for appropriate IYCF practices, ranging from individual to group and societal levels. The perceived challenges consisted mainly of poverty, food insecurity, heavy workload and the influence of significant others. The results of this thesis also show that in a sea of those challenges, mothers’ sense of agency which refers to the feeling of being in control of one’s own actions play an important role in combatting and overcoming food and non-food related IYCF challenges. This sense of agency results from the combination of intrapersonal factors and the capacity of mothers to develop diverse coping strategies. Intrapersonal factors that facilitated coping with IYCF challenges included mothers’ confidence in the ability to breastfeed, self-efficacy, a sense of responsibility over their children’s health, and religious belief. Coping strategies consisted of balancing work and child feeding, prioritizing childcare, preparing child’s food in advance, active uptake of the recommendations and persistence in overcoming barriers. Furthermore, the findings indicate that appropriate IYCF practices result from the interaction of mothers with their social environment (interpersonal factors) exposed to not only during motherhood but also during earlier life course stages, for instance during childhood. In view of these findings, policy makers and health professionals that aim to improve IYCF practices and thus reducing child malnutrition have to create optimal preconditions for appropriate IYCFpractices in which mothers’ sense of agency and capacities as well as optimal social conditions are highlighted, enabled and supported
Processus de résilience chez les jeunes burundais à double appartenance ethnique ayant été victimes des violences interethniques et des conflits de mémoires
Les violences interethniques suivies de la dichotomisation ethnique de la société burundaise ont profondément affectés les jeunes burundais à double appartenance ethnique. Ils ont été contraints à la dislocation familiale, à des exodes répétitifs et à l’exposition de manière récurrente au réel de la mort. La trajectoire de vie de ces derniers a été caractérisée par le manque de reconnaissance qui s’exprimait par de l’ostracisme social, du rejet, de l’humiliation, de la stigmatisation, de la déshumanisation. Ces réactions négatives généraient chez les sujets des sentiments de honte, de culpabilité, d’étrangeté, d’abandon, de trahison et d’insécurité permanente.Se déraciner en rompant les ponts avec leurs régions d’origine a été une stratégie de survie utilisée par les familles mixtes et de leurs enfants pour faire face aux réactions négatives de leur environnement familial et social.Une analyse approfondie à l’aide des catégories conceptualisantes de la trajectoire de vie des jeunes burundais à double appartenance ethnique nous amène à dégager quelques propositions de théorisation ancrée :Les mouvements psychiques de survie induits par les expériences traumatiques extrêmes dont l’endurcissement, la dissociation, le clivage et l’introjection ne permettent pas de sortir des traumatismes. Les jeunes burundais à double appartenance ethnique sont en quête de reconnaissance et utilisent notamment à cette fin les processus psychiques dont l’évitement de la mentalisation, la dépendance affective, la sublimation, le retournement projectif, le retournement-exhibition, l’altruisme, l’humour, l’affiliation et l’oxymoron. Dans cette quête de reconnaissance, l’enclenchement d’un processus de résilience est conditionné par un travail psychique qui se réalise par le fait de s’affilier dans des groupes contenants et de rencontrer des tuteurs de résilience qui sont capables de reconnaître et comprendre leurs souffrances endurées et qui acceptent de leur apporter un réel soutien afin de les surmonter.Ethnic violence followed by ethnic dichotomy of Burundian society has deeply affected the young Burundian with dual ethnicity. They were forced to family dislocation, repetitive exodus and repeatedly exposed to the reality of death. The life trajectory of those children has been characterized by the lack of recognition and this was expressed by social ostracism, rejection, humiliation, stigmatization, dehumanization. These negative reactions generated in subjects feelings of shame, guilt, strangeness, abandonment, betrayal and continued insecurity. Uproot breaking ties with their regions of origin was a survival strategy used by mixed families and their children to deal with negative reactions from their family and social environment.Further analysis using conceptualisant categories of the life trajectory of young Burundian with dual ethnicity leads us to identify some proposals of grounded theory: The psychic survival movements induced by extreme traumatic experiences such as the hardness, dissociation, cleavage and introjection do not help trauma exit.Burundian youth with dual ethnicity are seeking recognition and for this purpose use especially psychic processes including mentalizing avoidance, emotional dependency, sublimation, the projective flipping, flipping-exhibition, altruism, humor, affiliation and oxymoron.In this quest for recognition, the engagement of a resilient process is conditioned by a psychic work that is realized by the affiliation in containers groups and meeting resilience tutors who are able to recognize and understand their pain and suffering and who agree to provide them with real support to overcome their trauma.Doctorat en Sciences psychologiques et de l'éducationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe
Efficient techniques and tools for software testing based on traces and coverage analysis
To ensure ultra-high dependability and ultra-low defect rates, certification standards such as DO-178C requires safety-critical software with the highest safety level (Level A) in avionics systems to conform to the modified condition decision coverage (MC/DC) criterion. MC/DC is a strong coverage criterion that subsumes existing coverage criteria and it requires a small number of test inputs compared to the combinatorially exhaustive multiple condition coverage (MCC). MC/DC has also proven to reveal many program defects. However, both MC/DC measurement and generating test cases satisfying MC/DC remain a challenging task. In addition, related properties such data races detection can be monitored using some methods used to check MC/DC, as good concurrency coverage increases a likelihood of catching concurrent-related bugs. To address the above challenges, existing strategies rely on intrusive instrumentation which is not recommended for safety critical software since it consumes valuable resources and can alter the behaviour of the system under test (SUT) if it remains in the released code.
To overcome the above challenges, this thesis introduces novel paradigms and tools for software testing based on traces and coverage analysis. Our aim is to analyse the MC/DC without instrumentation and to monitor data races with a lightweight instrumentation. In addition, we explore the applicability of MC/DC criterion on the design level models. Furthermore, we investigate new techniques for test cases generation satisfying MC/DC with the aim to increase the coverage.
The scientific contribution of this thesis is fourfold:
First, we propose an approach for measuring MC/DC without instrumentation. This has resulted in a tooling for MC/DC measurement and analysis based on the trace of an executing program. A static analysis is used to find conditional jumps in object code that correspond to conditions in the source code. With that information the assignments of the conditions during the execution of the code can be reconstructed by analyzing the trace. MC/DC is then evaluated and the covered/uncovered conditionals in the program can be identified. This approach is evaluated on C programs.
Secondly, we provide a non-intrusive tooling for data races detection using the continuous observation of embedded multicore systems (COEMS) technology through continuous online monitoring with lightweight instrumentation on a novel FPGA-based external platform for embedded multicore systems. It is used in combination with formal specifications in the high-level temporal stream-based specification language (TeSSLa), in which we encode a lockset-based algorithm to indicate potential race conditions. We show how to instantiate a TeSSLa template that is based on the Eraser algorithm, and present a corresponding light-weight instrumentation mechanism that emits the required observations to the FPGA with low overhead.
Thirdly, we investigated the applicability of MC/DC criterion on design level models, where specifically, we conducted a coverage analysis to Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs) models. We implement a library for CPN Tools and a post-processing tool for MC/DC coverage analysis of net inscriptions on a set of model executions and evaluate our approach on eleven larger publicly available CPN models.
In the fourth contribution, we propose a new and alternative strategy for test case generation satisfying MC/DC.We have implemented an algorithm for MC/DC test cases based on binary decision diagrams (BDDs) and evaluated on Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS II) benchmarks. A performance evaluation with respect to the state-of-the art in the form of related work has been conducted
Neighbor discovery and resource allocation for device-to-device communication
Masteroppgave i Informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi IKT590 Universitetet i Agder 2014Device-to-Device (D2D) communication has attracted lots of attention as one of the most advanced wirelesscommunication technologies which allows access to services offered by nearby devices bypassing the BaseStation (BS). The potential advantages of this direct communication paradigm include high data rate, networkoffloading and range extension, as well as commercial proximity services and social networking. From the UserEquipments (UEs) and BS perspective, additional protocol overhead and discovery resource are required forD2D links. In such a context, neighbor discovery and resource allocation approaches need to be studied. For anefficient D2D communication, the main problem is how the UEs in proximity detect each other and establish aD2D link in a timely and efficient manner. In this thesis we investigate D2D-enabled cellular network and westudy neighbor discovery and resource allocation in such network. We split the cell into two parts: the inner partin which UEs communicate via BS and the outer part where UEs use D2D links as a means of communication.The blocking probability for these two parts is calculated based on Poisson and Engset distributions. Wepropose two protocols for neighbor discovery, namely, reactive (on-demand) discovery and proactive (multicast)discovery and both of them are infrastructure-coordinated protocols. The control overhead is calculated andnumerical results are provided based on three cases of D2D pair requests in different timeslots in order tocompare these two protocols. The performance evaluation and results show that the reactive protocolperforms better when the D2D communication traffic load is low whereas proactive protocol is preferable ifD2D communication demand is high. If the overflowed UEs in proximity are allowed to discover each otherusing our protocols together with dedicated resource from the BS and communicate via D2D links; results showthat the cellular network blocking probability is reduced.Keywords: Device-to-Device communication, ProSe discovery, protocol design, control overhead, performancecomparison
Phraseology in EGP Learning Materials: The Case of Textbooks in Burundi Secondary Schools
Cette étude portait sur six manuels scolaires utilisés pour enseigner l'anglais dans les écoles secondaires au Burundi. Elle consistait à déterminer dans quelle mesure la phraséologie fait partie du syllabus enseigné. La recherche visait également à identifier le type d'activités que ce dernier présente aux apprenants pour le renforcement des unités phraséologiques auxquelles ils ont été exposés. Ces unités ont été identifiées manuellement, vérifiées dans les dictionnaires ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ et ‘Online Oxford Collocation Dictionary’, enregistrées et classées en trois principales catégories de phrasèmes (Granger et Paquot, 2008: 42, section 2.4.2.1). Le logiciel AntConc a été ensuite utilisé pour vérifier l'exactitude de la fréquence de ces unités de phrases dans le corpus des manuels faisant partie de l’étude (BEGPTC). Les résultats de l'analyse montrent que les manuels scolaires présentent un nombre relativement faible de phrasèmes. Les collocations lexicales et grammaticales sont les plus fréquentes, tandis que d'autres catégories reçoivent moins d'attention. Un bon nombre d’activités présentées après lecture des textes ne visent pas à pratiquer les phrasèmes. Cela étant, les apprenants burundais ont besoin des matériels didactiques qui favorisent l'apprentissage de la phraséologieMaster [120] en linguistique, Université catholique de Louvain, 2017La diffusion de ce mémoire n'est pas autorisée par l'institutio