Theses and Dissertations Collection
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Item Examining a technology acceptance model of internet usage by academics within Thai Business Schools(Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, 2007) Kripanont, NapapornInformation Technology has been a significant research area for some time, but its nature has changed considerably since the Internet became prominent just over a decade ago. Many researchers have studied and proposed theories and models of technology acceptance in order to predict and explain user behaviour with technology to account for rapid change in both technologies and their environments. Each theory or model has been proposed with different sets of determinants and moderators and most of them have been developed in the U.S. It is therefore questioned whether the theories and models of technology acceptance that have been developed, modified, and extended in the U.S. can be used in other countries, especially in Thailand. It is also questioned whether there might be other determinants and moderators that also play important roles in this specific environment. This thesis (1) reviewed literature in respect of nine prominent theories and models, (2) reviewed previous literature about IT acceptance and usage within four contexts of study, (3) investigated the extent to which academics use and intend to use the Internet in their work, (4) investigated how to motivate academics to make full use of the Internet in their work, (5) investigated to what extent using the Internet helps in improving academics’ professional practice, professional development and quality of working life, (6) formulated a research model of technology acceptance regarding Internet usage by Thai academics, and (7) generated and validated the research model that best describes Thai academics’ Internet usage behaviour and behaviour intention. These last two objectives represent the main focus of the thesis. Questionnaire survey method was used to collect primary data from 927 academics within Business Schools in 20 Public Universities in Thailand. The survey yielded 455 usable questionnaires, with a response rate of 49%. Statistical analysis methods and Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS version 6.0 were used to analyse data. The research model was formulated with five core determinants of usage and up to nine moderators of key relationships. It was then tested and modified, the final modified model evidenced by goodness of fit of the model to the data, explained 31.6% (Square Multiple Correlation) of the variance in usage behaviour in teaching, 42.6% in usage behaviour in other tasks, 55.7% in behaviour intention in teaching and 59.8% in behaviour intention in other tasks. From the Findings, three core determinants: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and self-efficacy significantly determined usage behaviour in teaching. Two core determinants: perceived usefulness and self-efficacy significantly determined usage behaviour in other tasks. Finally, usage behaviour significantly influenced behaviour intention. In addition three moderators: age, e-university plan and level of reading and writing, impacted the influence of key determinants toward usage behaviour. Only two moderators: age and research university plan, impacted the influence of usage behaviour toward behaviour intention. The rest including gender, education level, academic position, experience and Thai language usage did not impact the influence of the key determinants toward usage behaviour and did not impact the influence of usage behaviour toward behaviour intention. Consequently, the final modified research model which is called the “Internet Acceptance Model” or “1AM” has the power to explain and predict user behaviour in a Thai Business Schools environment. A thorough understanding of the model may help practitioners to analyse the reasons for resistance toward the technology and also help them to take efficient measures to improve user acceptance and usage of the technology.Item Role of food securty groups network in poverty reduction:A case study of Chamwino district, Dodoma region(Sokoine University of Agriculture., 2007) Madaha, RaselThis study focused on the role of food security groups’ networks in poverty reduction in Chamwino district, Dodoma region Tanzania. The objectives of the study were to a) describe FGNs in terms of membership, activities and sustainability; b) identify the roles and extent to which Food Security Groups Networks have contributed towards poverty reduction: c) identify factors of success or failure and best practices in Food Security Groups Networks; d) identify and describe strategics for strengthening FSGNs. The study population consisted of all members of FSGNs who had participated in FSGNs for a minimum of three years. Data for this study were obtained using a case study research design whereby purposive sampling was used to select three villages out of 13 villages. The criteria for selecting the three villages were existence of FSGN in each of the villages, presence of a complete Community Cereal Bank building in a particular village and accessibility. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used to collect data for this study, 'fools such as personal interviews, in depth interviews. documentary review, observations and focused group discussion were used to collect data. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis whereby quantitative data mainly from structured questionnaires were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The main findings of this study in relation to poverty reduction arc summarized as follows; the FSGNs have played different roles including increasing the capacity of members to access the extension services and empowering FSGN members in the areas of knowledge, decision making, finance and entrepreneurialItem Role of food security groups’ networks in poverty reduction: a case study of Chamwino district, Dodoma region(Sokoine University of Agriculture., 2007) Madaiha, RaselThis study focused on the role of food security groups’ networks in poverty reduction in Chamwino district, Dodoma region Tanzania. The objectives of the study were to a) describe FGNs in terms of membership, activities and sustainability; b) identify the roles and extent to which Food Security Groups Networks have contributed towards poverty reduction: c) identify factors of success or failure and best practices in Food Security Groups Networks; d) identify and describe strategics for strengthening FSGNs. The study population consisted of all members of FSGNs who had participated in FSGNs for a minimum of three years. Data for this study were obtained using a case study research design whereby purposive sampling was used to select three villages out of 13 villages. The criteria for selecting the three villages were existence of FSGN in each of the villages, presence of a complete Community Cereal Bank building in a particular village and accessibility. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was used to collect data for this study, 'fools such as personal interviews, in depth interviews. documentary review, observations and focused group discussion were used to collect data. Qualitative data were analysed using content analysis whereby quantitative data mainly from structured questionnaires were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The main findings of this study in relation to poverty reduction arc summarized as follows; the FSGNs have played different roles including increasing the capacity of members to access the extension services and empowering FSGN members in the areas of knowledge, decision making, finance and entrepreneurialItem Effectiveness of hiv/aids campaigns on sexual behaviour among the youths in Bunda district, Tanzania(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2011) Lukuba, Zilipa ZabronDespite campaigns against HIV/AIDS, youths continue to be affected disproportionally by the pandemic. Therefore, there is a need of measuring the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS campaigns among the youths since there is no cure of HIV/AIDS infection. The general objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS campaigns on sexual behaviour among the youths in Bunda District, Tanzania. The specific objectives were documentation of main messages of campaigns on sexual behaviour among the youths; determination of the attitude of youths towards campaigns against IIIV/AIDS, assessment of the level of awareness about HIV/AIDS; assessment of their sexual behaviour; and determination of the correlation among the altitude towards campaigns against HIV/AIDS, knowledge about HIV/AIDS. The study adopted a cross-sectional design and a sample of 142 respondents was used. Data were collected through questionnaire - based interviews. 8 Focus Group Discussions and key informant interviews. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 12 was used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics, likert scales and correlation of variables were used to gauge levels of risky sexual behaviour, misconceptions about means of HIV/AIDS transmission, level of awareness about IIIV/AIDS, attitude of youths towards campaigns against HIV/AIDS, and attitude towards use of condoms. The major findings indicate that the main messages for HIV/AIDS campaigns were about HIV/AIDS transmission, VCT, and HIV infection prevention. The overall attitude towards HIV/AIDS was positive (30,5 out of 50.0); the overall awareness was high (39.2 out of 50.0); and the overall attitude towards condom use was 38.7 out of 50.0. The correlation between attitude towards campaigns against HIV/AIDS and sexual behaviour was not significant (p = 0.712). In view of the conclusion it is recommended that HIV/AIDS control programmes should measure the effectiveness of their campaigns against HIV/AID so as to enable them to come up with interventions for HIV/AIDS prevention.Item QoE-Centric control and management of multimedia services in software defined and virtualized networks(University of Plymouth, 2020) Barakabitze, Alcardo AlexMultimedia services consumption has increased tremendously since the deploy ment of 4G/LTE networks. Mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices are expected to continue to grow with the emergence and evolution of future networks such as 5G. The end user's demand for services with better quality from service providers has triggered a trend towards Quality of Experience (QoE) - centric network management through efficient utilization of network resources. However, existing network technologies are either unable to adapt to diverse changing network conditions, or limited in available resources. This has posed challenges to service providers for provisioning of QoE-centric multimedia services. New networking solutions such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can provide better solutions in terms of QoE control and management of multimedia services in emerging and future networks. The features of SDN, such as adaptability, programmability and cost effectiveness make it suitable for bandwidth intensive multimedia applications such as live video streaming, 3D/HD video and video gaming. However, the delivery of multimedia services over SDN/NFV networks to achieve optimized QoE, and the overall QoE-centric network resource management remain an open question especially in the advent development of future softwarized networks. The work in this thesis intends to investigate, design and develop novel ap proaches for QoE-centric control and management of multimedia services (with a focus on video streaming services) over software defined and virtualized networks. First, a video quality management scheme based on the traffic intensity under Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP (DASH) using SDN is developed. The proposed scheme can mitigate virtual port queue congestion which may cause buffering or stalling events during video streaming, thus, reducing the video quality. A QoE-driven resource allocation mechanism is designed and developed for improving the end user's QoE for video streaming services. The aim of this approach is to find the best combination of network node functions that can provide an optimized QoE level to end-users through network node cooperation. Furthermore, a novel QoE-centric management scheme is proposed and developed, which utilizes Multipath TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) to enhance QoE for video streaming services over SDN/NFV-based networks. The goal of this strategy is to enable service providers to route network traffic through multiple disjointed bandwidth-satisfying paths and meet specific service QoE guarantees to the end-users. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed schemes in this work improve the video quality significantly compared with the state-of- the-art approaches. The thesis further proposes the path protections and link failure free MPTCP/SR-based architecture that increases Survivability, resilience, availability and robustness of future networks. The proposed path protection and dynamic link recovery scheme achieves a minimum time to recover from a failed link and avoids link congestion in softwarized networks.Item Computational modelling and entropy generation analysis of nanofluids in a channel(Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, 2016) Mkwizu, Michael H.Nanofluid is a fluid containing nanometre- sized particles, called nanoparticles. These fluids are engineered colloidal suspension nanoparticles in a based fluid. The commonly used fluids are water, ethylene, oil and lubricant. Entropy is an extensive thermodynamic property that is the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. That is it destroys the available energy in any flow process and thermal system. This study consists of six chapters. Chapter one is an introduction, in this chapter useful terms have been defined, objectives of the study, statement of the problem, significance of the study ware stated. The method used for analysis in all chapters is a semi discretization finite difference method together with Runge-Kutta Fehlberg integration scheme. The nanoparticles used was Copper (Cu) and Alumina (AI2O3). In chapter two, the analysis of the entropy generation in a variable viscosity channel flow of nanofluids with convective cooling was numerically investigated. The results revelled that Entropy generation rate generally increases with time /, Eckert number Ec, viscosity variation parameter /?, pressure gradient A, thermophoresis parameter Nt. Increase in Biot Bi increase entropy generation at the walls but decreases entropy generation within the channel. The paper was prepared and published in Comptes Rendus Mecanique. In chapter three, the combined effect of buoyancy force and convective cooling on the unsteady flow, heat transfer and entropy generation rate in water based nanofluids was investigated. A^Oj-water nanofluid observed to produces higher entropy than Cu-water nanofluid. Fluid friction irreversibility dominants the channel centreline region while the effects of heat transfer irreversibility near the walls increases with Grashof number Gr, Ec, A, but decreases with nanoparticles volume fraction