Smart Passive Localization Using Time Difference of Arrival

A smart passive localization system using time difference of arrival (TDoA) measurements is designed and analyzed with the goal of providing the position information for the construction of frequency allocation maps

Childhood and play ‘in-between’: Young Iraqi and Syrian child refugees’ play following armed conflict and forced displacement to the northern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon

Armed conflict and displacement have immeasurably harmful effects on children and their families. They constrain children’s opportunities to play, to learn through play, and for their unique potential to flourish. Nonetheless, there is a lack of in-depth research conducted into how conflict and displacement affect young refugee children’s play and experiences of childhood in different host environments. Through ethnographic case studies of four young Iraqi and Syrian child refugees in a northern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, this thesis presents unique insights into the children’s family lives, their play and the violations of their rights in Lebanon. Underpinned by Froebelian principles of the integrity of childhood in its own right, the thesis theorises how the concept of ‘childhood’ is being constructed in Lebanon during the global refugee crisis. It identifies possible ways to improve play opportunities for refugee children who are living ‘temporarily’ in the northern suburbs of Beirut, arguing that they are in a state of ‘in between-ness’. The study follows a ‘day in the life’ methodology with four Iraqi and Syrian case study refugee children (4-8 years old) and their families, supplemented by questionnaire data from Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese adults (n=100), semi-structured interviews with professionals working with refugee children in Lebanon, and an observation in a school for refugee children in Beirut’s Northern suburbs. Findings point to continuing children’s rights infringements in Lebanon, including poverty, limited access to physical, emotional and mental healthcare, poor living conditions, child labour, poor quality education and/or no school attendance, family separation and the destruction of communities. With lifelines falling short of ensuring children’s basic rights, contradictions between child and refugee policies, tensions between diverse organisations and the Lebanese government, and with limited access to play resources, growing fears and increased parental surveillance, particularly with regard to girls, children’s play and embodied experiences are being restricted. However, despite many hardships, play endures, providing children with a means to escape from their current liminal state through media, transformation and imagination

Negotiating power dynamics through co-reflexivity in research with young children in disadvantaged communities

This paper addresses how unequal power dynamics in research with young children in disadvantaged communities can be negotiated through co-reflexivity. It explores this through two different projects, the “London Study” and the “Beirut Study”, which researched the play of young children from families living with disadvantage in two distinct cultures. First, we highlight similarities between both studies' methodological and ethical approaches that were designed to ‘listen’ to the children, ensure ‘ongoing consent’ and co-create knowledge through co-reflexivity. We then draw on data from each study to demonstrate how, in their unique contexts, co-reflexivity was crucial to address researcher–child power dynamics

Boundedly Rational Agents Playing the Social Actors Game - How to reach cooperation

International audienceIn any organizational setting, each of the participating actors adopts a quite steady behavior with respect to others. This behavior is not always in line with what might be expected given the role of the actor, although it is quite cooperative and most often contributes significantly to the proper operation of the organization. Within the framework of the SocLab approach for the modeling and analysis of organizations, we propose a model of the bounded rationality that social actors could implement in the process yielding the joint adaptation of their behaviors

Approche comportementale pour la validation et le test système des systèmes embarqués : Application aux dispositifs médicaux embarqués

A Biomedical research seeks good reasoning for solving medical problems, based on intensive work and great debate. It often deals with beliefs or theories that can be proven, disproven or often refined after observations or experiments. The problem is how to make tests without risks for patients, including variability and uncertainty on a number of parameters (patients, evolution of disease, treatments …). Nowadays, medical treatment uses more and more embedded devices such as sensors, actuators, and controllers. Treatment depends on the availability and well-functioning of complex electronic systems, comprising thousands of lines of codes. A mathematical representation of patient or device is presented by a number of variables which are defined to represent the inputs, the outputs and a set of equations describing the interaction of these variables. The objective of this research is to develop tools and methodologies for the development of embedded systems for medical fields. The goal is to be able to model and jointly simulate the medical device as well the human body, at least the part of the body involved in the medical device, to analyze the performance and quality of service (QoS) of the interaction of the device with the human body. To achieve this goal our study focused on several points described below. After starting by defining a prototype of a new global and flexible architecture of mathematical model of human body, which is able to contain required data, we begin by proposing a new global methodology for modeling and simulation human body and medical systems, in order to better understand the best way to model and simulate these systems and for detecting performance and the quality of services of all system components. We use two techniques that help to evaluate the calculated QoS value. The first one calculates an index of severity which indicates the severity of the case studied. The second one using a normalization function that represents the simulation as a point in order to construct a new error grid and use it to evaluate the accuracy of value measured by patients. Using Keil development tools designed for ARM processors, we have declared a new framework in the objective to create a new tester model for the glucose-insulin system, and to define the basic rules for the tester which has the ability to satisfy well-established medical decision criteria. The framework begins by simulating a mathematical model of the human body, and this model was developed to operate in the closed loop of the glucose insulin. Then, the model of artificial pancreas has been implemented to control the mathematical model of human body. Finally a new tester model was created in order to analyze the performance of all the components of the glucose-insulin system.. We have used the suitability of partially observable Markov decision processes to formalize the planning of clinical management.Les progrès des technologies de l'information et de la communication, des MEMS, des capteurs, actionneurs, etc. ont permis l’émergence de différents dispositifs biomédicaux. Ces nouveaux dispositifs, souvent embarqués, contribuent considérablement à l'amélioration du diagnostic et du traitement de certaines maladies, comme le diabète par exemple. Des dispositifs embarqués encore plus complexes sont en cours d’élaboration, leur mise en œuvre nécessite des années de recherche et beaucoup d’expérimentation. Le cœur artificiel, encore en phase de réalisation, est un exemple concret de ces systèmes complexes. La question de la fiabilité, du test de fonctionnement et de sureté de ces dispositifs reste problématique et difficile à résoudre. Plusieurs paramètres (patient, évolution de la maladie, alimentation, activité, traitement, etc.) sont en effet à prendre en compte et la conséquence d’une erreur de fonctionnement peut être catastrophique pour le patient. L'objectif de cette thèse est de développer des outils et des approches méthodologiques permettant la validation et le test au niveau système de ce type de dispositifs. Il s’agit précisément d’étudier la possibilité de modéliser et simuler d’une manière conjointe un dispositif médical ainsi que son interaction avec le corps humain, du moins la partie du corps humain concernée par le dispositif médical, afin de mesurer les performances et la qualité de services (QoS) du dispositif considéré. Pour atteindre cet objectif notre étude a porté sur plusieurs points. Nous avons d’abord mis en évidence une architecture simplifiée d’un modèle de corps humain permettant de représenter et de mieux comprendre les différents mécanismes du corps humain. Nous avons ensuite exploré un ensemble de métriques et une approche méthodologique générique permettant de qualifier la qualité de service d’un dispositif médical donné en interaction avec le corps humain. Afin de valider notre approche, nous l’avons appliquée à un dispositif destiné à la régulation du taux de sucre pour des patients atteints du diabète. La partie du corps humain concernée par cette pathologie à savoir le pancréas a été simulé par un modèle simplifié que nous avons implémenté sur un microcontrôleur. Le dispositif de régulation de l’insuline quant à lui a été simulé par un modèle informatique écrit en C. Afin de rendre les mesures de performances observées indépendantes d’un patient donné, nous avons étudiés différentes stratégies de tests sur différentes catégories de patients. Nous avons pour cette partie mis en œuvre un générateur de modèles capable de reproduire différents états physiologiques de patients diabétiques. L’analyse et l’exploitation des résultats observés peut aider les médecins à considérablement limités les essais cliniques sur des vrai patients et les focaliser uniquement sur les cas les plus pertinent

Modèles de la rationalité des acteurs sociaux

The work presented in this paper is part of the project SocLab, which proposes a formalization of the sociology of organized action (Crozier et Friedberg). This formalization is based on a meta-model of the structure of social organizations, which provides means to describe the structure of a particular organization, to develop an analytical study of its properties and mainly, to calculate by simulation the behaviors that the actors of the organization are likely to adopt one to each other. Under this approach, an organization is viewed as a system that, depending on the behavior of the actors to each other, gives every of them a certain capacity of action to achieve its objectives, without distinguishing those related to his role within the organization and those that are its own. These behaviors are relatively stable. This is an essential condition for the coordination of the actors so that they can coordinate in performing, at least partially, what constitutes the raison d'être of the organization. These behaviors appear also to be generally cooperative facilitating the achievement of personal objectives of each one as well as those of the collective as a whole. This thesis focuses on the modeling of the rationality which leads a social actor to adopt such behavior in the " social game " constituted by a context of organizational interactions. According to the sociology of organized action, this rationality is strategic, guided by the research of own interest, and it is exercised within the framework of a (very) limited rationality. The proposed model seeks to be plausible, from the social and the psycho-cognitive points of view, and it fits into the paradigm of reinforcement learning. Insofar as the structure of the organization allows it, the simulations converge towards configurations that can be described as Pareto optima. We also study variants of this algorithm corresponding to rationalities that drive an organization to regulate toward other configurations that are elitist, protective or egalitarian, or Nash equilibria.Le travail présenté dans ce mémoire s'inscrit dans le cadre du projet SocLab, qui propose une formalisation de la sociologie de l'action organisée de Crozier et Friedberg. Cette formalisation repose sur un méta-modèle de la structure des organisations sociales, à partir duquel il est possible de décrire la structure d'une organisation particulière, de développer une étude analytique de ses propriétés et surtout de calculer, par simulation, les comportements que les acteurs de cette organisation sont susceptibles d'adopter les uns vis-à-vis des autres. Selon cette approche, une organisation est vue comme un système qui, en fonction du comportement des acteurs les uns envers les autres, procure à chacun d'eux une certaine capacité d'action pour atteindre ses objectifs, sans distinguer ceux qui relèvent de son rôle et ceux qui lui sont propres. Ces comportements sont relativement stabilisés, condition indispensable à la coordination des acteurs dans l'accomplissement, au moins partiel, de ce qui constitue la raison d'être de l'organisation, et donc indispensable à l'existence même de cette organisation. Ces comportements s'avèrent de plus être globalement coopératifs, facilitant ainsi la réalisation des objectifs, aussi bien ceux propres à chacun que ceux du collectif dans son ensemble. Cette thèse porte sur la modélisation de la rationalité qui conduit un acteur social à adopter un tel comportement dans le " jeu social " que constitue un contexte d'interaction organisationnel. Selon la sociologie de l'action organisée, cette rationalité est stratégique, guidée par la recherche de son intérêt, et elle s'exerce dans le cadre d'une rationalité (très) limitée. Le modèle proposé cherche à être vraisemblable, du point de vue social et du point de vue psycho-cognitif, et il s'inscrit dans le paradigme de l'apprentissage par renforcement. Dans la mesure où la structure de l'organisation le permet, les simulations convergent donc vers des configurations que l'on peut qualifier d'optima Pareto-équitables. On étudie aussi diverses variantes de cet algorithme correspondant à des rationalités qui conduisent une organisation à se réguler vers des configurations élitistes, protectrices ou égalitaristes, ou encore vers un équilibre de Nash

Guidelines on Energy Consumption Surveys in the Transport Sector Experiences in Selected Arab Countries

Introduction: Data collection for the 2015 Energy Consumption Survey in Transport Sector (ECSTS) will be conducted between March and May 2015, collecting data for reference year 2014. The goal of the ECSTS is to provide statistical information about energy consumption, expenditures, and energy efficiency in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, in all modes of transportations, namely: road, railway, maritime, and air. In addition, the goal is to link the resulted statistics to national policies on energy production and consumption based on collected statistics.The authors would like to thank the Islamic Development Bank and the Department for International Development of the UK for providing funds for the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) to implement the project “Strengthening Statistical Capacity of Arab Countries in Producing Energy Statistics and Energy Consumption Surveys” in the three Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. We thank the Director of the national statistical offices of Egypt (CAPMAS), of Jordan (DOS) and of Palestine (PCBS) who supported the survey at high level offices and the survey departments and the energy statistics units staff who worked intensively to conduct the survey in a short time and coordinated with the line ministries. The Director of the Statistics Division at ESCWA Juraj Riecan provided support and guidance

Play and childhoods: how are the relationships between researching play and children changing?

This chapter reviews how recent scholarship examining the nature of childhood can enable insight into different aspects of play. Our approach develops from the new sociology of childhood’s conceptualisation of childhood as constructed and its advocacy of children being experts in their own lives. The chapter analyses how play features in three different research projects. In the first project, a ‘day in the life’ approach is used to generate and share data with children who are ‘temporarily displaced’ in Lebanon as a result of armed conflict in their birth countries. The second project involves a researcher working alongside two young children, developing a ‘child-conferencing’ approach over time to enable each child to work as a co-researcher of their experiences and perceptions of play. The third project involves adult researchers training and mentoring young children as researchers, drawing on play as a data collection method in their research design

The childhood and play of young Iraqi and Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon

This paper presents unique insights into the childhoods and play of young refugee children living in Beirut’s northern suburbs. The study adopts a ‘Day in The Life’ approach to data collection with four 4-7-year-old Iraqi and Syrian child refugees, supplemented by questionnaires from a wider population (n=100), interviews with professionals and a school observation. Findings point to a maelstrom of continuing rights infringements for refugee children in Lebanon, including low social status, poverty, child labour, poor-quality education and/or no school attendance. Although some ‘lifelines’ are available for refugee families, these fall short of ensuring children’s rights, who are victim to contradictory national and international policies that result in them having limited opportunities and resources to play. Despite many hardships, play endures through media and imagination, offering the refugee children fleeting moments of escape from the trials of their lives