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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
A Decision Support System for Economic Viability and Environmental Impact Assessment of Vertical Farms
Vertical farming (VF) is the practice of growing crops or animals using the vertical dimension via multi-tier racks or vertically inclined surfaces. In this thesis, I focus on the emerging industry of plant-specific VF. Vertical plant farming (VPF) is a promising and relatively novel practice that can be conducted in buildings with environmental control and artificial lighting. However, the nascent sector has experienced challenges in economic viability, standardisation, and environmental sustainability. Practitioners and academics call for a comprehensive financial analysis of VPF, but efforts are stifled by a lack of valid and available data.
A review of economic estimation and horticultural software identifies a need for a decision support system (DSS) that facilitates risk-empowered business planning for vertical farmers. This thesis proposes an open-source DSS framework to evaluate business sustainability through financial risk and environmental impact assessments. Data from the literature, alongside lessons learned from industry practitioners, would be centralised in the proposed DSS using imprecise data techniques. These techniques have been applied in engineering but are seldom used in financial forecasting. This could benefit complex sectors which only have scarce data to predict business viability.
To begin the execution of the DSS framework, VPF practitioners were interviewed using a mixed-methods approach. Learnings from over 19 shuttered and operational VPF projects provide insights into the barriers inhibiting scalability and identifying risks to form a risk taxonomy. Labour was the most commonly reported top challenge. Therefore, research was conducted to explore lean principles to improve productivity.
A probabilistic model representing a spectrum of variables and their associated uncertainty was built according to the DSS framework to evaluate the financial risk for VF projects. This enabled flexible computation without precise production or financial data to improve economic estimation accuracy. The model assessed two VPF cases (one in the UK and another in Japan), demonstrating the first risk and uncertainty quantification of VPF business models in the literature. The results highlighted measures to improve economic viability and the viability of the UK and Japan case.
The environmental impact assessment model was developed, allowing VPF operators to evaluate their carbon footprint compared to traditional agriculture using life-cycle assessment. I explore strategies for net-zero carbon production through sensitivity analysis. Renewable energies, especially solar, geothermal, and tidal power, show promise for reducing the carbon emissions of indoor VPF. Results show that renewably-powered VPF can reduce carbon emissions compared to field-based agriculture when considering the land-use change.
The drivers for DSS adoption have been researched, showing a pathway of compliance and design thinking to overcome the âproblem of implementationâ and enable commercialisation. Further work is suggested to standardise VF equipment, collect benchmarking data, and characterise risks. This work will reduce risk and uncertainty and accelerate the sectorâs emergence
Strategies for Early Learners
Welcome to learning about how to effectively plan curriculum for young children. This textbook will address: ⢠Developing curriculum through the planning cycle ⢠Theories that inform what we know about how children learn and the best ways for teachers to support learning ⢠The three components of developmentally appropriate practice ⢠Importance and value of play and intentional teaching ⢠Different models of curriculum ⢠Process of lesson planning (documenting planned experiences for children) ⢠Physical, temporal, and social environments that set the stage for childrenâs learning ⢠Appropriate guidance techniques to support childrenâs behaviors as the self-regulation abilities mature. ⢠Planning for preschool-aged children in specific domains including o Physical development o Language and literacy o Math o Science o Creative (the visual and performing arts) o Diversity (social science and history) o Health and safety ⢠Making childrenâs learning visible through documentation and assessmenthttps://scholar.utc.edu/open-textbooks/1001/thumbnail.jp
Translating erasure: Proposing auto-theory as a practice for artistic enquiry and analysis while comprehending personal grief
Erasure as an artistic technique has developed in my moving image work after my father's passing. I export videos into sequences of thousands of images and erase outlines of the targeted objects in each frame. The repetitive and low conscious labour is a way to ease the agony and to grieve my father. Hours compressed into thousands of frames, turning into a glimpse of illusion and leaving a ghostly emptiness on the images. Both its visual presentation and making reflect the life events and encounters I've experienced in the UK and Taiwan in the past years.
I consider an artwork embodies interconnected relationships between one's personal impulses and artistic training. As an art student, I have found it challenging to describe such a creative process with conventional academic writing. Within a construct that inclines to present thoughts as reasonable and rational arguments, my personal experiences and the intensity of feeling seem out of place. Within an academic framework, how can I make an argument out of how I have developed the erasure in my artwork to perform the grief, fading memories of a loved one, existential crisis and what's in-between?
Through auto-theoretical approaches to writing and making of moving image work, this research aims to build a structure that can express both the intimate and intellectual aspects of an art practice. This writing up process interweaves my personal stories that motivate my artistic expression into art theories. The memories about my late father, my relationship with languages, and my lives between the UK and Taiwan meet with different artists' uses of erasure.
As the conversations between the introspections and theoretical analysis accumulate, my writing and moving image work unravel an art journey that encompasses the nuances and struggles I've experienced as an international student. Within the search for an ideal model to illustrate an art practice, this research further generates profound understandings of memory, grief, loss, language, conflicted identities and cultural belonging
Conscience and Consciousness: British Theatre and Human Rights.
This research project investigates a paradigm of human rights theatre. Through the lens of performance and theatre-making, this thesis explores how we came to represent, speak about, discuss, and own human rights in Britain. My framework of âhuman rights theatreâ proposes three distinctive features: firstly, such works dramatise real-world issues and highlights the role of the state in endangering its citizens; secondly, ethical ruptures are encountered within and without the drama, and finally, these performances characteristically aspire to produce an activist effect on the collective behaviours of the audience.
This thesis interrogates the strategies theatre-makers use to articulate human rights concerns or to animate human rights intent. The selected case-studies for this investigation are ice&fireâs testimonial project, Actors for Human Rights; Badac Theatre; Jonathan Holmesâ work as director of Jericho House; Cardboard Citizensâ youth participation programme, ACT NOW; and Tony Cealyâs Black Menâs Consortium. Deliberately selecting companies and performance events that have received limited critical attention, my methodology constellates case-studies through original interviews, durational observation of creative working methods and proximate descriptions of practice.
The thesis is interested in the experience of coming to âconsciousnessâ through human rights theatre, an awakening to the impacts of rights infringements and rights claiming. I explore consciousness as a processual, procedural, and durational happening in these performance events. I explore the âĂŚffectâ of activist art and examine the ways in which makers of human rights theatre aim to amplify both affective and effective qualities in their work. My thesis also considers the articulation of activist purpose and the campaigning intent of the selected theatre-makers and explores how their activism is animated in their productions. Through the rich seam of discussion generated by the identification and exploration of the traits of a distinctive human rights theatre, I affirm the generative value of this typological enquiry
Freelance subtitlers in a subtitle production network in the OTT industry in Thailand: a longitudinal study
The present study sets out to investigate a subtitle production network in the over-the-top (OTT) industry in Thailand through the perspective of freelance subtitlers. A qualitative longitudinal research design was adopted to gain insights into (1) the way the work practices of freelance subtitlers are influenced by both human and non-human actors in the network, (2) the evolution of the network, and (3) how the freelance subtitlersâ perception of quality is influenced by changes occurring in the network. Eleven subtitlers were interviewed every six months over a period of two years, contributing to over 60 hours of interview data. The data analysis was informed by selected concepts from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Law 1992, 2009; Latour 1996, 2005; Mol 2010), and complemented by the three-dimensional quality model proposed by Abdallah (2016, 2017). Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2019a, 2020b) was used to generate themes and sub-themes which address the research questions and tell compelling stories about the actor-network. It was found that from July 2017 to September 2019, the subtitle production network, which was sustained by complex interrelationships between actors, underwent a number of changes. The changes affected the work practices of freelance subtitlers in a more negative than positive way, demonstrating their precarious position in an industry that has widely adopted the vendor model (Moorkens 2017). Moreover, as perceived by the research participants, under increasingly undesirable working conditions, it became more challenging to maintain a quality process and to produce quality subtitles. Finally, translation technology and tools, including machine translation, were found to be key non-human actors that catalyse the changes in the network under study
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 canât be proven right. Theologians have the answers that canât be proven wrong.
Todayâs designers of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games create realities for a living. They canât 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.
Thatâs todayâs designers. Tomorrowâs 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 âBecomebecome Theoryâ 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 âBecomebecome Practiceâ 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, âinformation about the observerâ 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
Optical coherence tomography methods using 2-D detector arrays
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive, non-contact optical technique that allows cross-section imaging of biological tissues with high spatial resolution, high sensitivity and high dynamic range. Standard OCT uses a focused beam to illuminate a point on the target and detects the signal using a single photodetector. To acquire transverse information, transversal scanning of the illumination point is required. Alternatively, multiple OCT channels can be operated in parallel simultaneously; parallel OCT signals are recorded by a two-dimensional (2D) detector array. This approach is known as Parallel-detection OCT. In this thesis, methods, experiments and results using three parallel OCT techniques, including full -field (time-domain) OCT (FF-OCT), full-field swept-source OCT (FF-SS-OCT) and line-field Fourier-domain OCT (LF-FD-OCT), are presented. Several 2D digital cameras of different formats have been used and evaluated in the experiments of different methods. With the LF-FD-OCT method, photography equipment, such as flashtubes and commercial DSLR cameras have been equipped and tested for OCT imaging. The techniques used in FF-OCT and FF-SS-OCT are employed in a novel wavefront sensing technique, which combines OCT methods with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SH-WFS). This combination technique is demonstrated capable of measuring depth-resolved wavefront aberrations, which has the potential to extend the applications of SH-WFS in wavefront-guided biomedical imaging techniques
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