Software Interoperability and the Pods OpenHDS System

This work addressed challenges of software system interoperability faced by the Open Health and Demographics Surveillance System (OpenHDS). OpenHDS is a distributed application for demographic data collection which was used during a public health intervention in Equatorial Guinea. Specific challenges faced during this intervention included offline data collection and synchronization, changing data collection and software requirements, data size and system performance, and correction of software and data collection errors. This work produced in a new system, the PODS OpenHDS System, which applied four design themes in order to address these challenges: Polymorphism, developer Operations, Declarative style, and Self-description

Low levels of specularity support operational color constancy, particularly when surface and illumination geometry can be inferred

We tested whether surface specularity alone supports operational color constancy—the ability to discriminate changes in illumination or reflectance. Observers viewed short animations of illuminant or reflectance changes in rendered scenes containing a single spherical surface and were asked to classify the change. Performance improved with increasing specularity, as predicted from regularities in chromatic statistics. Peak performance was impaired by spatial rearrangements of image pixels that disrupted the perception of illuminated surfaces but was maintained with increased surface complexity. The characteristic chromatic transformations that are available with nonzero specularity are useful for operational color constancy, particularly if accompanied by appropriate perceptual organization

Towards an architecture for teaching virtues, values and ethics

In this thesis, I look towards a new architecture for teaching an eventual curriculum about virtues, values and ethics. I address three sources of research: the voices of teachers who are teaching thinking and thinking skills; the authors who address the various themes and sub-themes emerging from the thesis questions; and an auto-ethnographical retrospective, which marries my experiential learning, formal qualifications and classroom experience. The focus is on what has happened in education, what is best for teachers; what can be gleaned from the experts’ voices, what consequently is helpful in the curriculum, and what can be delivered by teachers to enrich students’ learning. Three leading twentieth -century theorists contribute to what counts as virtues, values and ethics. Research findings, personal experiential learning, formal qualifications and my own classroom instruments provide a foundation from which to reach incrementally towards the architecture for the teaching about virtues, values and ethics. My theory of edu-tensegrity is derived from the architectural concept of tensegrity, which uses tension and compression as a building strategy (e.g., London’s geodesic millennium dome; Melbourne’s soccer stadium); models inductive thinking rather than deductive thinking; and employs dialectic, trilectic and quadrilectic logics. Educationally, this applies to push-pull factors in decision-making and moral agentry – for both teachers and students. My conclusions show that such factors, labelled Categories of Influence, model trilectic logic, necessarily present in the detailed responses, response-abilities and responsibilities, that inform teachers’ planning, execution and facilitation of the teaching of applied thinking skills: to promote excellence and efficiency that builds architecture that will reach towards a virtues, values and ethics curriculum for the twenty-first century and beyond