Born Again Digital: Exploring Evangelical Video Game Worlds

Evangelical Christians have been creating video games for over thirty years, outpacing the efforts of all other religions. By the count that guides the present study, 773 games were made for religious audiences through 2010, of which 474 identify their affiliation as only "Christian," or "biblical." Like other artifacts of digital religion, these games allow us to see the entanglement of people's theological and technological universes. However, unlike many other aspects of digital religion, religious video gaming's novel artistic forms, cultural critiques, and theological possibilities largely blossomed beneath notice. Evangelical video game culture, thus, presents the creative production of a historically significant avant garde whose critical perspective has been neglected outside its own community. In particular, Evangelical video gaming transforms the concerns that connect it to other digital cultures - "violence," for instance, or "immersion" - by attending to the moral status of the player-in-play. This study combines the methods of Religious Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Cultural Studies to show how the popular artifacts of digital religion can shed light upon their cultural context. My initial frame orients Evangelical video games through broad theoretical concerns and a series of cultural histories then focus our attention upon specific telling instances. My introduction applies a relational ontology to establish a vocabulary for examining religious video games in terms of the digital, religion, and play. Chapter two considers how groups learn to live with computers and details the specific stakes of digital religion for Evangelical Christians in the context of "spiritual warfare." Chapter three situates my catalog of religious games within a detailed history of digital religion. Chapter four focuses on the place of Evangelicals in the debates around video game "violence." Chapter five then considers how those debates are visible in seven Evangelical First-Person Shooter games. Chapter six provides a theoretical orientation to the future of Evangelical gaming by considering the notion of "immersion" in games. Chapter seven concludes by summarizing findings and offering suggestions for further research. Finally, an appendix presents a catalog of religious games as a resource for ongoing research.Doctor of Philosoph

Global mammal conservation: past trends, current challenges and optimal strategies for intervention

The conservation of the world's mammals has been one of the main goals for international agencies and NGOs in the past decades, as well as a core challenge for conservation scientists. Nonetheless, several mammal species went extinct in the past century and many others declined seriously in recent decades (a total of 76 species disappeared after 1500). Today 25% of mammal species are threatened with extinction, and the necessity of a globally coordinated conservation strategy has been proclaimed. At a global scale, factors such as habitat loss and direct kill, are the key drivers of mammal species decline and extinction. The current biodiversity crisis, and in particular the current decline of mammals, needs operational tools to be tackled. Such tools include both on-the-ground implementation of conservation actions and a well framed conservation decision making process. Yet, a poor integration of macroecological studies and conservation planning studies has characterised past strategies for global species conservation. The scope of this PhD thesis is to advance the knowledge on global mammal conservation, by integrating existing data and by combining multi-disciplinary methodologies to provide innovative approaches to conservation decision making. The objectives of this thesis are: (i) to characterise global patterns in the distribution of suitable habitat for mammals; (ii) to describe patterns and processes characterising the recent decline of mammal species; (iii) to provide insights into the characterisation of internal sources of mammal species extinction risk and to use them in conservation planning; (iv) to address the methodological challenges that affect the quantification of threats to biodiversity. (i) A key aspect determining the effectiveness of mammal species conservation is the knowledge of species distribution. However, large-scale and fine-resolution information on mammal distribution has often been lacking. We filled this gap by developing habitat suitability models for over 90% of existing terrestrial mammal species, based on their habitat preferences with a 300m pixel base. Based on the developed models, we conducted a global, fine-resolution analysis of patterns of species richness. We found that the richness of mammal species estimated by the overlap of their suitable habitat is on average one-third less than the one estimated by the overlap of their geographic ranges. Differences in the proportion of suitable habitat within mammal geographic ranges were correlated to species IUCN Red List category, with threatened species having smaller values than non-threatened ones. Assessing temporal changes in species' extinction risks is necessary for measuring conservation success or failure at large spatial and taxonomical scales. Yet such a knowledge is limited even in well-studied group, such as mammals. We addressed this gap by consulting past literature sources, and assigning retrospective Red List categories to the world’s carnivores and ungulates (n=550) for the past 40 years. We found that 23% of species moved one or more categories closer to extinction, with Southeast Asia showing the steepest declines (where the figure is 45%). We described a declining trend in mammal conservation status that was already underway 40 years ago, and has now accelerated, uncovering alarming future scenarios of global species losses. This declining trend is the ultimate result of geopolitical events, international regulations, shifting cultural values and natural resource exploitation. Studying trends in global species decline can help conservationists to recognize which conservation policies and strategies are (or are not) contributing to biodiversity protection. (iii) With one fourth of the world's mammals threatened with extinction and limited budget to save them, adopting an efficient conservation strategy is crucial. Previous approaches to setting global conservation priorities have assumed all species to have equal conservation value, or have focused on species with high extinction risk, species that may be hard to save. We propose a novel approach and focus on threatened species having the greatest recovery opportunity, using a new conservation benefit metric. We discover that 65-87% of all threatened and potentially recoverable mammal species are overlooked by existing prioritization approaches. Our innovative metric has the potential to integrate with every strategy that aims to maximize the likelihood of conservation success. (iv) Anthropogenic threats drive species to extinction and are the focus of extinction risk analysis and conservation planning. However, the effects that multiple threats quantification methods have on threat measurement remain untested. We addressed this gap by quantifying the magnitude of human footprint for 901 Southeast Asian mammals according to several methods. We demonstrate that adopting different threat quantification techniques causes significant disagreement in threat measurements. We found that biases were non-linear and dependent on distal factors, such as the proportion of suitable habitat within species' range and species' habitat specialism. Threatened species were best predicted when measuring their proportion of range exposed to high levels of human footprint (a proxy of threat extent). Improving techniques to quantify biodiversity threats will enhance the effectiveness of extinction risk analyses and conservation decisions. Based on the outcomes of the presented PhD research, we propose that three main factors influence the global extinction risk of mammal species: human threats, species biology and conservation actions. The role of these factors in determining species decline or recovery, has been explored both theoretically and analytically. However, our understanding of how they interact to determine a species' final condition of endangerment is still limited. A key research challenge in the next future would be the exploration of such an interaction. In this thesis, we set a basis for the realization of such an analysis and the next step will be the investigation of the combinatory effects of all the mentioned factors. The urgency to properly address the current biodiversity crisis calls for a more coordinative effort in defining shared global strategies for intervention. Having a global coordination of conservation plan has a great potential to be more cost-effective than having several scattered plans, without contrasting the need for local scale practical interventions. We believe that increasing the biological inputs in conservation planning, through the consideration of species' biological characteristics, represents a promising field of future research expansion where expertise from multiple backgrounds can be integrated to define innovative strategies to address global scale extinction risk. The research findings presented in this thesis will contribute to improve future mammal conservation by: guiding the definition of more biologically-informed conservation strategies, improving our ability to analyze evidence of conservation success, providing general guidelines to address methodological uncertainty in conservation

Incremental algorithm for Decision Rule generation in data stream contexts

Actualmente, la ciencia de datos está ganando mucha atención en diferentes sectores. Concretamente en la industria, muchas aplicaciones pueden ser consideradas. Utilizar técnicas de ciencia de datos en el proceso de toma de decisiones es una de esas aplicaciones que pueden aportar valor a la industria. El incremento de la disponibilidad de los datos y de la aparición de flujos continuos en forma de data streams hace emerger nuevos retos a la hora de trabajar con datos cambiantes. Este trabajo presenta una propuesta innovadora, Incremental Decision Rules Algorithm (IDRA), un algoritmo que, de manera incremental, genera y modifica reglas de decisión para entornos de data stream para incorporar cambios que puedan aparecer a lo largo del tiempo. Este método busca proponer una nueva estructura de reglas que busca mejorar el proceso de toma de decisiones, planteando una base de conocimiento descriptiva y transparente que pueda ser integrada en una herramienta decisional. Esta tesis describe la lógica existente bajo la propuesta de IDRA, en todas sus versiones, y propone una variedad de experimentos para compararlas con un método clásico (CREA) y un método adaptativo (VFDR). Conjuntos de datos reales, juntamente con algunos escenarios simulados con diferentes tipos y ratios de error, se utilizan para comparar estos algoritmos. El estudio prueba que IDRA, específicamente la versión reactiva de IDRA (RIDRA), mejora la precisión de VFDR y CREA en todos los escenarios, tanto reales como simulados, a cambio de un incremento en el tiempo.Nowadays, data science is earning a lot of attention in many different sectors. Specifically in the industry, many applications might be considered. Using data science techniques in the decision-making process is a valuable approach among the mentioned applications. Along with this, the growth of data availability and the appearance of continuous data flows in the form of data stream arise other challenges when dealing with changing data. This work presents a novel proposal of an algorithm, Incremental Decision Rules Algorithm (IDRA), that incrementally generates and modify decision rules for data stream contexts to incorporate the changes that could appear over time. This method aims to propose new rule structures that improve the decision-making process by providing a descriptive and transparent base of knowledge that could be integrated in a decision tool. This work describes the logic underneath IDRA, in all its versions, and proposes a variety of experiments to compare them with a classical method (CREA) and an adaptive method (VFDR). Some real datasets, together with some simulated scenarios with different error types and rates are used to compare these algorithms. The study proved that IDRA, specifically the reactive version of IDRA (RIDRA), improves the accuracies of VFDR and CREA in all the studied scenarios, both real and simulated, in exchange of more time

Space Settlements: A Design Study

Nineteen professors of engineering, physical science, social science, and architecture, three volunteers, six students, a technical director, and two co-directors worked for ten weeks to construct a convincing picture of how people might permanently sustain life in space on a large scale, and to design a system for the colonization of space. Because the idea of colonizing space has awakened strong public interest, the document presented is written to be understood by the educated public and specialists in other fields. It also includes considerable background material. A table of units and conversion factors is included to aid the reader in interpreting the units of the metric system used in the report

Development of educational methods for teaching the structural engineering content of the architectural curriculum

This thesis is concerned with some educational methods for teaching structural engineering to architectural students. After citing evidence for and against, the thesis argued that structural knowledge is essential as one of the generators in architectural design. A review of literature indicated that there is little unanimity about the content of the structural curriculum and a discussion followed on the structural knowledge and skills necessary from the architect for fruitful collaboration with the structural consultant. This part concluded with a list of general objectives for teaching structures to architects.As architectural design is closely concerned with creativity, this was examined in terms of architectural creativity and of teaching methods for structures. Modes of thinking as logic, association and bisociation of ideas and gestalt, in addition to the pyschological approach were discussed for relevancy in this context. A brief schema of the architects' process of creativity was produced. From that examination there emerges those qualities which are required for selecting and developing architectural /structural systems or relevant elements. A distinction was made between the serviceable product and the communication of feelings, perception and knowledge and the teaching methods reflect the difference found in the classification.Some teaching methods specific to structures were discussed, tested and developed for the efficiency in promoting those qualities found necessary for architectural /structural creativity. Programmed Learning was then tested and dicussed in terms of acquiring and transferring knowledge, attitude of the student, and the role of the teacher. Possible formats were suggested and tested including a comparison between using mathematics and not using mathematics to explain statically indeterminate systems

Evaluation of the potential modal shift induced by the use of a real time multimodal navigator: psycho-social study of travel behaviour and attitude.

Our modern world, and its relative stability, is facing two major threats. The first one is the depletion of fossil fuels resources that feed millions of trucks and boat worldwide, carrying goods from one side of the planet to another. The second one is climate change which, if not limited, will provoke drastically changes to our known environment. One way, that may be the most efficient, to mitigate both threats is to pull people out of their cars, and, to this end, The European White Paper (2011) on transport highlights the essential role of ITS. Today, many cities have deployed multimodal real-time information systems, but few have assessed the impacts of those systems on traveller behaviour. This global context guided the investigation made in the present thesis: in order to analyse potential modal shift induced by the introduction of multimodal navigators, we had to understand psychological factors of decision making. Chapter 1 proposed an extensive review of the current knowledge and state of the art of social psychology as applied in pro-environmental behaviours. We understood some concepts, highlighted some theoretical and methodological flaws that led us to use, though restrictively, some old-fashioned concept of attitude together with some – insufficiently recognised – powerful methodological tools that constitutes the IRT. The objective of this thesis was twofold: 1) assessing the validity of a general attitude measures, in the sense of Campbell and understanding if the generally adopted measure of attitude is compelling within traditional frameworks derived from social psychology theories; 2) make use of psychological determinants influencing modal choice to highlight which segment of the population is more likely to perform a modal shift from cars to public transport or soft modes. To this end, the research was divided in three methodological step: 1) fitting a Rasch model on the General Ecological Behaviour in order to obtain a valid measure of the attitude toward the environment; 2) psycho-social correlational model comparison using Structural Equation Modelling in order to extract the most determining factors behind decision making; 3) a psycho-social based segmentation of ATIS potential users, that would help in identifying the potentiality of ATIS in inducing a modal shift. This research contributed, firstly, in gathering evidence that a wider use of IRT for psychological measurement may be a benefit for the scientific community. Secondly, some newly developed psychological constructs, based on specific values, have been shown to have a significant influence on travel behaviour. We hope that this contribution will allow some other use of specific values and innovative factors research. Finally, we suggest that up to 10% of our sample population may be induced toward a greener urban mobility. As the Opticities research project - within which this thesis has been conducted - is still ongoing, further investigation will be made in the near future. The analysis of in-itinere and ex-post dataset will allow us to understand whether or not people have modified their mobility patterns using the multimodal navigator TUeTO

Non-spurious correlations between genetic and linguistic diversities in the context of human evolution

This thesis concerns human diversity, arguing that it represents not just some form of noise, which must be filtered out in order to reach a deeper explanatory level, but the engine of human and language evolution, metaphorically put, the best gift Nature has made to us. This diversity must be understood in the context of (and must shape) human evolution, of which the Recent Out-of-Africa with Replacement model (ROA) is currently regarded, especially outside palaeoanthropology, as a true theory. It is argued, using data from palaeoanthropology, human population genetics, ancient DNA studies and primatology, that this model must be, at least, amended, and most probably, rejected, and its alternatives must be based on the concept of reticulation. The relationships between the genetic and linguistic diversities is complex, including interindividual genetic and behavioural differences (behaviour genetics) and inter-population differences due to common demographic, geographic and historic factors (spurious correlations), used to study (pre)historical processes. It is proposed that there also exist nonspurious correlations between genetic and linguistic diversities, due to genetic variants which can bias the process of language change, so that the probabilities of alternative linguistic states are altered. The particular hypothesis (formulated with Prof. D. R. Ladd) of a causal relationship between two human genes and one linguistic typological feature is supported by the statistical analysis of a vast database of 983 genetic variants and 26 linguistic features in 49 Old World populations, controlling for geography and known linguistic history. The general theory of non-spurious correlations between genetic and linguistic diversities is developed and its consequences and predictions analyzed. It will very probably profoundly impact our understanding of human diversity and will offer a firm footing for theories of language evolution and change. More specifically, through such a mechanism, gradual, accretionary models of language evolution are a natural consequence of post-ROA human evolutionary models. The unravellings of causal effects of inter-population genetic differences on linguistic states, mediated by complex processes of cultural evolution (biased iterated learning), will represent a major advance in our understanding of the relationship between cultural and genetic diversities, and will allow a better appreciation of this most fundamental and supremely valuable characteristic of humanity - its intrinsic diversity