11,424 research outputs found
Coloniality and the Courtroom: Understanding Pre-trial Judicial Decision Making in Brazil
This thesis focuses on judicial decision making during custody hearings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The impetus for the study is that while national and international protocols mandate the use of pre-trial detention only as a last resort, judges continue to detain people pre-trial in large numbers. Custody hearings were introduced in 2015, but the initiative has not produced the reduction in pre-trial detention that was hoped. This study aims to understand what informs judicial decision making at this stage. The research is approached through a decolonial lens to foreground legacies of colonialism, overlooked in mainstream criminological scholarship. This is an interview-based study, where key court actors (judges, prosecutors, and public defenders) and subject matter specialists were asked about influences on judicial decision making. Interview data is complemented by non-participatory observation of custody hearings. The research responds directly to Aliverti et al.'s (2021) call to ‘decolonize the criminal question’ by exposing and explaining how colonialism informs criminal justice practices. Answering the call in relation to judicial decision making, findings provide evidence that colonial-era assumptions, dynamics, and hierarchies were evident in the practice of custody hearings and continue to inform judges’ decisions, thus demonstrating the coloniality of justice. This study is significant for the new empirical data presented and theoretical innovation is also offered via the introduction of the ‘anticitizen’. The concept builds on Souza’s (2007) ‘subcitizen’ to account for the active pursuit of dangerous Others by judges casting themselves as crime fighters in a modern moral crusade. The findings point to the limited utility of human rights discourse – the normative approach to influencing judicial decision making around pre-trial detention – as a plurality of conceptualisations compete for dominance. This study has important implications for all actors aiming to reduce pre-trial detention in Brazil because unless underpinning colonial logics are addressed, every innovation risks becoming the next lei para inglês ver (law [just] for the English to see)
Non-Print Information Resources and The Preservation Approaches Recommendation in Tanzanian Academic Libraries
Background: Non-print information resources are increasingly becoming more important as vital learning materials in higher learning institutions. Academic libraries therefore, have to acquire, process, organize and preserve them for current and future use. Purpose: This paper aims to assess the factors affecting the non-print information resources and their recommended preservation approaches in academic libraries. Method: The study adopted a convergent parallel mixed approach which collects and analyses data to produce integrated findings by using both qualitative and quantitative techniques in a single study. Data was collected by means of questionnaire and in-depth interview. Result: The study revealed that dust, loss of data on disc and hard disc, loss of data due to server failure, high heat, and excessive light, fading of disc surface, high humidity, fungus on disc surface, atmospheric pollutants and virus attack were factors affecting non-print information resources. It was also revealed that highly recommended preservation approaches were good cleanliness of library where information resources are kept, educating library users on how to handle and use information resources, migrating information resources from obsolete storage media to modern storage media, technology preservation and refreshing. Conclusion: The study concludes that library staff need to adopt recommended preservation approaches to safeguard the important information in academic libraries but also system librarians in academic libraries need to be employed to assist in trouble shooting issues.
Keywords: Non-Print Information Resources; Information Resources; Information Resources Preservation; Preservation Approaches; Academic Library
Abstrak
Latar Belakang: Sumber informasi non-cetak sekarang ini menjadi semakin penting sebagai bahan pembelajaran vital di perguruan tinggi. Oleh karena itu, perpustakaan akademik harus memperoleh, memproses, mengatur, dan melestarikannya untuk penggunaan saat ini dan masa depan. Tujuan: Makalah ini bertujuan untuk menilai faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi sumber informasi non-cetak dan pendekatan pelestarian yang direkomendasikan di perpustakaan akademik. Metode: Studi ini mengadopsi pendekatan campuran paralel konvergen yang mengumpulkan dan menganalisis data untuk menghasilkan temuan yang terintegrasi dengan menggunakan teknik kualitatif dan kuantitatif dalam satu studi. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan kuesioner dan wawancara mendalam. Temuan: Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa debu, hilangnya data pada disk/hard disk, hilangnya data karena kegagalan server, panas yang tinggi, dan cahaya yang berlebihan, memudarnya permukaan disk, kelembaban tinggi, jamur pada permukaan disk, polutan atmosfer dan serangan virus adalah faktor yang mempengaruhi sumber informasi non-cetak. Diungkapkan juga bahwa pendekatan pelestarian yang sangat direkomendasikan adalah kebersihan perpustakaan tempat sumber informasi disimpan, mendidik pengguna perpustakaan tentang cara menangani dan menggunakan sumber informasi, migrasi sumber informasi dari media penyimpanan usang ke media penyimpanan modern, pelestarian teknologi dan penyegaran koleksi. Kesimpulan: Studi ini menyimpulkan bahwa staf perpustakaan perlu mengadopsi pendekatan pelestarian yang direkomendasikan untuk melindungi informasi penting di perpustakaan akademik, tetapi juga pustakawan di perpustakaan akademik perlu dioptimalkan untuk membantu memecahkan masalah yang ada.
Kata kunci: Sumber Informasi Non-Cetak; Sumber Daya Informasi; Pelestarian Sumber Daya Informasi; Pendekatan Pelestarian; Perpustakaan Akademik 
How to Be a God
When it comes to questions concerning the nature of Reality, Philosophers and Theologians have the answers.
Philosophers have the answers that can’t be proven right. Theologians have the answers that can’t be proven wrong.
Today’s designers of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games create realities for a living. They can’t spend centuries mulling over the issues: they have to face them head-on. Their practical experiences can indicate which theoretical proposals actually work in practice.
That’s today’s designers. Tomorrow’s will have a whole new set of questions to answer.
The designers of virtual worlds are the literal gods of those realities. Suppose Artificial Intelligence comes through and allows us to create non-player characters as smart as us. What are our responsibilities as gods? How should we, as gods, conduct ourselves?
How should we be gods
BECOMEBECOME - A TRANSDISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGY BASED ON INFORMATION ABOUT THE OBSERVER
ABSTRACT
Andrea T. R. Traldi
BECOMEBECOME
A Transdisciplinary Methodology Based on Information about the Observer
The present research dissertation has been developed with the intention to provide practical strategies and discover new intellectual operations which can be used to generate Transdisciplinary insight. For this reason, this thesis creates access to new knowledge at different scales.
Firstly, as it pertains to the scale of new knowledge generated by those who attend Becomebecome events. The open-source nature of the Becomebecome methodology makes it possible for participants in Becomebecome workshops, training programmes and residencies to generate new insight about the specific project they are working on, which then reinforce and expand the foundational principles of the theoretical background.
Secondly, as it pertains to the scale of the Becomebecome framework, which remains independent of location and moment in time. The method proposed to access Transdisciplinary knowledge constitutes new knowledge in itself because the sequence of activities, described as physical and mental procedures and listed as essential criteria, have never been found organised
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in such a specific order before. It is indeed the order in time, i.e. the sequence of the ideas and activities proposed, which allows one to transform Disciplinary knowledge via a new Transdisciplinary frame of reference.
Lastly, new knowledge about Transdisciplinarity as a field of study is created as a consequence of the heretofore listed two processes.
The first part of the thesis is designated ‘Becomebecome Theory’ and focuses on the theoretical background and the intellectual operations necessary to support the creation of new Transdisciplinary knowledge. The second part of the thesis is designated ‘Becomebecome Practice’ and provides practical examples of the application of such operations. Crucially, the theoretical model described as the foundation for the Becomebecome methodology (Becomebecome Theory) is process-based and constantly checked against the insight generated through Becomebecome Practice.
To this effect, ‘information about the observer’ is proposed as a key notion which binds together Transdisciplinary resources from several studies in the hard sciences and humanities. It is a concept that enables understanding about why and how information that is generated through Becomebecome Practice is considered of paramount importance for establishing the reference parameters necessary to access Transdisciplinary insight which is meaningful to a specific project, a specific person, or a specific moment in time
A Cornish palimpsest : Peter Lanyon and the construction of a new landscape, 1938-1964
The thesis examines the emergence of Peter Lanyon as one of the few truly innovative British landscape painters this century. In the Introduction I discuss the problematic nature of landscape art and consider the significance of Lanyon's discovery that direct description and linear perspective can be replaced with allusive representational elements by fusing the emotional and imaginative life of the artist with the physical activity of painting. Chapter One concentrates on the period 1936-8 when Lanyon was taught by Borlase Smart, a key figure in the St Ives art colony between the wars. Chapter Two examines the influence of Adrian Stokes and the links between Lanyon's painting and the theories developed in books such as Colour and Form and The Quattro Cento. Chapter Three analyses the period 1940-45 when Lanyon was directly influenced by the constructivism of Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. I look closely at their approaches to abstraction and assess Lanyon's relative position to them. The importance of Neo-Romanticism and the status of St Ives as a perceived avant-garde community is also addressed. In Chapter Four I discuss how Lanyon resolved to achieve a new orientation in his art on his return from wartime service with the RAF by synthesising constructivism, and traditional landscape. The Generation and Surfacing Series demonstrate his preoccupation with a sense of place, a fascination with the relationships between the human body and landscape and his struggle to find a technique and style that was entirely his own. His sense of existential insideness is discussed in Chapter Five through an examination of the work derived from Portreath, St. Just and Porthleven - key places in Lanyon's psychological attachment to the landscape of West Penwith. In Chapter Six I examine Lanyon's attachment to myths and archetypal forms, tracing the influence of Bergson's vitalist philosophy as well as his use of Celtic and classical motifs. Chapter Seven is a discussion of the malaise evident in Lanyon's work by 1955 and the impact of American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate Gallery a year later. In the summer of 1959 Lanyon joined the Cornish Gliding Club and Chapter Eight looks at how this necessitated a dynamic, expanded conception of the landscape and a re-thinking of relations within the picture field. The ability to dissolve boundaries encouraged him to break down distinctions between painting and construction so that abstract sculptural elements were now assembled into independent works of art. Finally, Chapter Nine assesses Lanyon's overall position in relation to his early influences and to St Ives art as a whole, his response to new directions in art coming out of London and NewYork in the early 1960s and the importance of travel as a stimulus for further realignment in his artistic and topographical horizons. His pictorial inventiveness and vitality remained unabated at the time of his death and would undoubtedly have continued to be enriched by travel abroad and contact with new movements in modem art on both sides of the Atlanti
How can digital technology be used to maximise the social value delivered through major infrastructure projects?
The primary aim of this working paper is to inform readers as to what opportunities exist to use digital technology to maximise social value through major infrastructure projects. This research looks through the lenses of social value, infrastructure, and digital business, and addresses the gap around the intersection between social value, digital technology, and the infrastructure sector.
This research methodology is a literature research, followed by the collection of qualitative data from 12 interviews, with participants in 12 organisations, during August 2020. The research findings reported in this working paper are structured around 2 questions:
1. What are the opportunities for the use of digital technology in maximising social value?
2. What are the risks and barriers to the use of digital technology to maximise social value?
This research makes 12 actionable and practical recommendations as a contribution to the discussion and implementation of policy in the UK
Combined vehicle to building (V2B) and vehicle to home (V2H) strategy to increase electric vehicle market share
.Buildings are one of the most important energy consumers in modern economy countries. The massive use of electrical vehicles could help decarbonizing the economy by using electricity produced using renewable energy. Combined use of Vehicle to Grid (V2G), Vehicle to Home (V2H) and Vehicle to Building (V2B) is one of the strategies to increase the number of electrical vehicles, ensure a better coupling between energy generation and consumption, reducing peak demand and increasing global energy efficiency. This research presents a novel approach of combined use of V2H and V2B that can be applied in different scenarios such as when the building workers own EVs, company shared car fleets or leasing, among others. Recharged energy at workers homes during night hours is delivered in the building during daily working hours lowering peak demand, reducing carbon intensity and energy cost savings. The results show that the methodology is feasible and can be extended to other cases and greatly contribute to better energy efficiency, reduces peak demand in buildings and increase electric vehicles penetration in transport to workplaces.S
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A Systematic Review of Data Management Platforms
This paper systematically reviews a set of well-established data management platforms and compares their functionality. We de- rived an initial criteria catalogue from existing research work and ex- tended it based on the input gathered through several expert interviews. Finally, we applied this criteria catalogue to a set of data management platforms. The contribution of this work is (i) an up-to-date criteria catalogue to systematically assess the feature-richness of data management platforms, generalizable to related use-cases (e.g. data markets), and (ii) the systematic review of a selected set of data management platforms along with these criteria. This work lays the foundation for future research in this area, being subject to periodic re-evaluation to also include developments and improvements of the platforms
Context-aware software
With the advent of PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), smart phones, and other forms of mobile and ubiquitous computers, our computing resources are increasingly moving off of our desktops and into our everyday lives. However, the software and user interfaces for these devices are generally very similar to that of their desktop counterparts, despite the radically different and dynamic environments that they face. We propose that to better assist their users, such devices should be able to sense, react to, and utilise, the user's current environment or context. That is, they should become context-aware. In this thesis we investigate context-awareness at three levels: user interfaces, applications, and supporting architectures/frameworks. To promote the use of context-awareness, and to aid its deployment in software, we have developed two supporting frameworks. The first is an application-oriented framework called stick-e notes. Based on an electronic version of the common Post-It Note, stick-e notes enable the attachment of any electronic resource (e.g. a text file, movie, Java program, etc.) to any type of context (e.g. location, temperature, time, etc.). The second framework we devised seeks to provide a more universal support for the capture, manipulation, and representation of context information. We call it the Context Information Service (CIS). It fills a similar role in context-aware software development as GUI libraries do in user interface development. Our applications research explored how context-awareness can be exploited in real environments with real users. In particular, we developed a suite of PDA-based context-aware tools for fieldworkers. These were used extensively by a group of ecologists in Africa to record observations of giraffe and rhinos in a remote Kenyan game reserve. These tools also provided the foundations for our HCI work, in which we developed the concept of the Minimal Attention User Interface (MAUI). The aim of the MAUI is to reduce the attention required by the user in operating a device by carefully selecting input/output modes that are harmonious to their tasks and environment. To evaluate our ideas and applications a field study was conducted in which over forty volunteers used our system for data collection activities over the course of a summer season at the Kenyan game reserve. The PDA-based tools were unanimously preferred to the paper-based alternatives, and the context-aware features were cited as particular reasons for preferring them. In summary, this thesis presents two frameworks to support context-aware software, a set of applications demonstrating how context-awareness can be utilised in the ''real world'', and a set of HCI guidelines and principles that help in creating user interfaces that fit to their context of use
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