461 research outputs found

    Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022

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    In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet

    The Diffusion of Dynamic Capability in Organizations in Digitalizing Operating Environments

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    Digitalisaation myötä erilaiset teknologiat yleistyvät muuttaen organisaatioita, toimialoja ja liiketoimintaympäristöjä. Organisaatioissa tarvitaan uusia kyvykkyyksiä ja osaamista, kun niin arvontuotto ja toimintamallit kuin yhteistyön tekeminen ja päivittäiset toiminnot muuttuvat. Usein dynaamiset kyvykkyydet nähdään ensi sijassa johdon kykynä havaita organisaatioon vaikuttavia mahdollisuuksia ja uhkia, tarttua niihin ja muuttaa organisaatiota tarvittavalla tavalla. Tarve monipuolisemmalle ymmärrykselle dynaamisista kyvykkyyksistä digitalisaation kontekstissa on tunnistettu huomioiden myös muun henkilöstön tärkeä rooli organisaation muutoskyvykkyyden luomisessa. Tämän väitöskirjan tavoitteena on tuottaa uutta tietämystä siitä, kuinka dynaaminen kyvykkyys kehittyy ja levittäytyy organisaatioissa yli erilaisten työroolien. Tutkimusongelmana on, kuinka dynaaminen kyvykkyys leviää organisaatioissa, jotka toimivat digitalisoituvissa toimintaympäristöissä. Tutkimusongelmaa tarkasteltiin tulkitsevan laadullisen monitapaustutkimuksen menetelmällä kolmen case-organisaation kanssa. Case-organisaatiot edustavat tutkimuskentästä teknologian käyttäjäorganisaation, teknologian kehittäjäorganisaation sekä teknologian ja prosessien integraattoriorganisaation näkökulmia. Pääasiallinen aineiston keruumenetelmä oli laadulliset teemahaastattelut. Yhteensä tutkimuksessa toteutettiin 59 yksilöhaastattelua 36 haastateltavan kanssa. Lisäksi tutkimuksen aikana toteutettiin useita keskusteluita organisaatioiden yhteyshenkilöiden kanssa. Aineisto kerättiin ja analysoitiin vuosina 2018–2022 induktiivisesti ja abduktiivisesti laadullisella sisällönanalyysilla tulkitsevan kenttätutkimuksen ja grounded theory -lähestymistavan oppeja hyödyntäen. Tutkimuksen luotettavuuden arviointiin käytettiin laadullisen, tulkitsevan ja tapaustutkimuksen kriteereitä. Tutkimuksen keskeisenä tuloksena tuotettiin malli siitä, kuinka nykypäivän digitalisoituvissa toimintaympäristöissä dynaaminen kyvykkyys näyttäytyy monitasoisena ilmiönä siten, että operatiivinen dynaaminen kyvykkyys ja johdon dynaaminen kyvykkyys ovat erillisiä toisistaan. Johdon tason ja operatiivisen tason dynaamiset kyvykkyydet ilmenevät eri tavoin eri työrooleissa vaikuttaen näin organisaation kehitykseen vastavuoroisten johdon ja henkilöstön toimien kautta. Väitöskirjassa tuotetaan seuraavat suositukset johdolle siitä, kuinka monitasoisen dynaamisen kyvykkyyden leviämistä organisaatioissa voitaisiin tukea: (1) jatkuva ja aito sidosryhmien osallistuminen, (2) muutoksen tavoitteiden, vaikutusten, saavuttamiskeinojen ja hyötyjen selkeyden varmistaminen, (3) henkilökohtaisen työssä kehittymisen resurssien turvaaminen, (4) taustalla vaikuttavien yhteistyötä haittaavien jännitteiden käsitteleminen ja (5) ihmistenvälistä dynaamista kyvykkyyttä tukevien käytäntöjen hyödyntäminen. Teorian näkökulmasta tulokset tarjoavat lisäymmärrystä dynaamisten kyvykkyyksien vuorovaikutteisesta luonteesta johdon ja muun henkilöstön välillä. Käytännön näkökulmasta tulokset auttavat johtoa organisaation ja sen kyvykkyyksien kehittämisessä. Kiihtyvän digitalisaation ja jatkuvan muutosvaatimuksen myötä vaikuttaa ratkaisevalta, että organisaatiot kykenevät täydellä potentiaalillaan hyödyntämään kykynsä havaita mahdollisuuksia ja uhkia, tarttua niihin sekä muuntautua tarvittavalla tavalla. Tässä väitöskirjassa esitetyt tulokset tukevat osaltaan näitä pyrkimyksiä. Jatkotutkimuksena suositellaan monimenetelmällisiä lähestymistapoja, operatiivisen dynaamisen kyvykkyyden olemukseen tarkempaa pureutumista, organisaatioiden kontekstuaalisten tekijöiden kattavampaa sisällyttämistä, pitkittäisiä johdon ja henkilöstön näkökulmia huomioivia tarkasteluita sekä tutkimusta siitä, kuinka esitettyjä johdon suosituksia voidaan hyödyntää organisaatioissa käytännössä.Digitalization introduces new technologies changing organizations, industries, and operating environments. New capabilities and expertise are required, as organizations need to rethink their value offerings, operating models, and ways of collaborating and conducting day-to-day tasks. While dynamic capabilities are often viewed as managerial capacities of sensing, seizing and transforming, recently the focus on employees in creating organizational capacity for change has increased. Likewise, the need for a more nuanced understanding of the development of dynamic capabilities in digitalization has been noted. The aim of this dissertation is to better understand, how dynamic capability develops and spreads in organizations across different work roles. The research problem is how dynamic capability diffuses in organizations in digitalizing operating environments. The research problem was studied by an interpretive qualitative multiple-case study with three case organizations representing the perspectives of a technology user, technology creator, and technology and process integrator. The main data collection method was semi-structured, theme-based interviews. In total 59 individual interviews with 36 informants were conducted, and additionally several discussions were held with company representatives. The data were collected and analysed over the period of 2018–2022 by inductive and abductive approaches, qualitative thematic analysis, and drawing from the guidelines of interpretive field research and grounded theory methodology. The reliability and validity were evaluated by utilizing the criteria of qualitative, interpretive, and case-study research. As findings, a model of how dynamic capability in today’s digitalizing operating environments appears as a multilevel phenomenon comprising of operative dynamic capability and managerial dynamic capability is presented. The managerial- and operative level dynamic capabilities manifest differently in different work roles and contribute to organizational development through reciprocal actions of the management and employees. Additionally, the following managerial propositions are given on how the diffusion of dynamic capability could be supported in organizations: (1) exercising continuous and genuine stakeholder participation, (2) ensuring clear goals, implications, way to, and benefits of change, (3) securing resources for individual development at work, (4) addressing underlying tensions hindering collaboration, and (5) deploying organizational practices enabling interpersonal dynamic capability. As theoretical contributions, the findings provide new understanding on dynamic capabilities as reciprocal phenomena between the management and employees. As practical implications, the findings help management in their organizational and capability development efforts. As digitalization accelerates pace invoking requirements of continuous adaptation, it seems vital for organizations to utilize their full potential of sensing, seizing, and renewing capacities. The findings presented in this dissertation aim to support these endeavours. As future research, mixed methods approaches, closer investigations on the essence of operative dynamic capability, more comprehensive considerations on organizational contextual factors, further longitudinal study incorporating both employee and managerial views, and examinations on utilizing the presented propositions in practice in organizations are suggested

    Harnessing Evolution in-Materio as an Unconventional Computing Resource

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    This thesis illustrates the use and development of physical conductive analogue systems for unconventional computing using the Evolution in-Materio (EiM) paradigm. EiM uses an Evolutionary Algorithm to configure and exploit a physical material (or medium) for computation. While EiM processors show promise, fundamental questions and scaling issues remain. Additionally, their development is hindered by slow manufacturing and physical experimentation. This work addressed these issues by implementing simulated models to speed up research efforts, followed by investigations of physically implemented novel in-materio devices. Initial work leveraged simulated conductive networks as single substrate ‘monolithic’ EiM processors, performing classification by formulating the system as an optimisation problem, solved using Differential Evolution. Different material properties and algorithm parameters were isolated and investigated; which explained the capabilities of configurable parameters and showed ideal nanomaterial choice depended upon problem complexity. Subsequently, drawing from concepts in the wider Machine Learning field, several enhancements to monolithic EiM processors were proposed and investigated. These ensured more efficient use of training data, better classification decision boundary placement, an independently optimised readout layer, and a smoother search space. Finally, scalability and performance issues were addressed by constructing in-Materio Neural Networks (iM-NNs), where several EiM processors were stacked in parallel and operated as physical realisations of Hidden Layer neurons. Greater flexibility in system implementation was achieved by re-using a single physical substrate recursively as several virtual neurons, but this sacrificed faster parallelised execution. These novel iM-NNs were first implemented using Simulated in-Materio neurons, and trained for classification as Extreme Learning Machines, which were found to outperform artificial networks of a similar size. Physical iM-NN were then implemented using a Raspberry Pi, custom Hardware Interface and Lambda Diode based Physical in-Materio neurons, which were trained successfully with neuroevolution. A more complex AutoEncoder structure was then proposed and implemented physically to perform dimensionality reduction on a handwritten digits dataset, outperforming both Principal Component Analysis and artificial AutoEncoders. This work presents an approach to exploit systems with interesting physical dynamics, and leverage them as a computational resource. Such systems could become low power, high speed, unconventional computing assets in the future

    In what ways are quality assurance professionals in England responding to the regulatory changes under the Higher Education and Research Act, 2017, and what are the implications for the quality assurance of higher education teaching and learning? A social practice approach.

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    In opening up higher education to the market and introducing the Office for Students, the Higher Education and Research Act (2017) (HERA) has created a quality assurance system in England which diverges from the rest of the UK and Europe. This qualitative study explores the enactment of policy change and its implications for the quality assurance of teaching and learning. It uses social practice theory (SPT) as the theoretical framework. Methodologically, 20 interviews were conducted with quality assurance professionals (QPs) from 20 higher education institutions and analysed thematically. The key findings related to the changing roles of QPs and the variations in their responses to the HERA. The majority claimed to occupy a third space between administration and academia, which shaped their professional identities and contributed to membership of a strong community of practice centred around the Quality Assurance Agency’s Quality Code (2013-2017) and the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Two principal issues emerged as a consequence of the HERA: the authoritarian approach of the Office for Students (OfS), and the replacement of cyclical peer review and enhancement with metricised accountability. Responses ranged from the acceptance and implementation of outcomes-based internal monitoring to the operation of a dual system, designed to meet the data requirements of the OfS while maintaining existing enhancement activity. Many were however reconstructing policy, bringing internal monitoring and data management together to enhance provision by changing institutional structures, systems, staff and skills. In most cases, policy was being enacted in a constructivist way, demonstrating that change needs time, support, and differentiated approaches to the socialisation of institutional microcultures. The capacity to effect change varied, indicating that quality practices may become increasingly diverse under the revised Quality Code (2018), with the potential to fragment the community and obfuscate the meaning of quality and the purpose of quality assurance. Rather than dismantling the structures underpinning sustainable change, the OfS should harness the expertise of the whole QP community to co-construct quality assurance practices in new and more creative ways which unite enhancement and accountability. The study has brought new knowledge to the mechanisms of policy enactment in quality assurance at the under-researched meso level of the institution, giving expression to a voice which remains under-represented in higher education. It has also extended the usefulness of SPT into another area of higher education research, offering a framework for policy enactment at a critical juncture in the development of higher education quality assurance

    Magnetic Material Modelling of Electrical Machines

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    The need for electromechanical energy conversion that takes place in electric motors, generators, and actuators is an important aspect associated with current development. The efficiency and effectiveness of the conversion process depends on both the design of the devices and the materials used in those devices. In this context, this book addresses important aspects of electrical machines, namely their materials, design, and optimization. It is essential for the design process of electrical machines to be carried out through extensive numerical field computations. Thus, the reprint also focuses on the accuracy of these computations, as well as the quality of the material models that are adopted. Another aspect of interest is the modeling of properties such as hysteresis, alternating and rotating losses and demagnetization. In addition, the characterization of materials and their dependence on mechanical quantities such as stresses and temperature are also considered. The reprint also addresses another aspect that needs to be considered for the development of the optimal global system in some applications, which is the case of drives that are associated with electrical machines

    Literacy for digital futures : Mind, body, text

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    The unprecedented rate of global, technological, and societal change calls for a radical, new understanding of literacy. This book offers a nuanced framework for making sense of literacy by addressing knowledge as contextualised, embodied, multimodal, and digitally mediated. In today’s world of technological breakthroughs, social shifts, and rapid changes to the educational landscape, literacy can no longer be understood through established curriculum and static text structures. To prepare teachers, scholars, and researchers for the digital future, the book is organised around three themes – Mind and Materiality; Body and Senses; and Texts and Digital Semiotics – to shape readers’ understanding of literacy. Opening up new interdisciplinary themes, Mills, Unsworth, and Scholes confront emerging issues for next-generation digital literacy practices. The volume helps new and established researchers rethink dynamic changes in the materiality of texts and their implications for the mind and body, and features recommendations for educational and professional practice

    In the Face of Adversity

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    In the Face of Adversity explores the dynamics of translating texts that articulate particular notions of adverse circumstances. The chapters illustrate how literary records of often painful experiences and dissenting voices are at risk of being stripped of their authenticity when not carefully handled by the translator; how cultural moments in which the translation of a text that would have otherwise fallen into oblivion instead gave rise to a translator who enabled its preservation while ultimately coming into their own as an author as a result; and how the difficulties the translator faces in intercultural or transnational constellations in which prejudice plays a role endangers projects meant to facilitate mutual understanding. The authors address translation as a project of making available and preserving a corpus of texts that would otherwise be in danger of becoming censored, misperceived or ignored. They look at translation and adaptation as a project of curating textual models of personal, communal or collective perseverance, and they offer insights into the dynamics of cultural inclusion and exclusion through a series of theoretical frameworks, as well as through a set of concrete case studies drawn from different cultural and historical contexts. The collection also explores some of the venues that artists have pursued by transferring artistic expressions from one medium into another in order to preserve and disseminate important experiences in different cultural settings, media and arts

    Quantitative Verification and Synthesis of Resilient Networks

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    Pressure, Threat, and Fear in the Classroom: Pupils' and Teachers' Perceptions of Soft Failure in an 11+ Context

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    This thesis concerns both pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions and reactions to soft failure. Whilst there is widespread agreement that errors and impasses in the classroom can be pedagogically useful, pupils do not always respond positively to soft failure, potentially limiting their learning. Teachers, whilst keen to support pupils experiencing temporary academic setbacks, can unintentionally cement perceptions that errors should be avoided, leading to a co-construction between teacher and pupil of a classroom climate that is unfriendly to error making. In taking a bio ecological and interdisciplinary approach, this thesis addresses a gap in error climate studies through examining the intersection of sociocultural and psychological factors that impact perceptions of, and reactions to, soft failure. This thesis argues that pupils’ reactions to soft failure are imprinted, not only with immediate classroom proximal processes, but also from processes within the home, wider values, and ideologies. Drawing upon the case study genre and bound by the entry and exit points of a selective education system, findings from observations and interviews with Y7 and Y5 pupils suggest the facilitation of classroom peer ecologies orientated towards performance and demonstrating success. Through conceptualising gender as heteroglossic, Y7 grammar school girls were seen to enact masculine, highly competitive performances which reinforced a pressured climate where negative evaluation and soft failure was feared. However, these findings are complicated by pupils’ divergent and fluctuating responses and reactions to soft failure, situated and contextualised by teachers’ error handling, classroom organisation and school processes. Therefore, to establish when soft failure matters for pupils, this thesis explores the interplay of competing values, goals, and interactions. In doing so, the antecedents of soft failure adaptivity are identified, with the perceived threat to pupils’ dignity – which I reason must be understood in an adolescent context — argued as the fulcrum on which soft failure appraisals are made

    Four years of multi-modal odometry and mapping on the rail vehicles

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    Precise, seamless, and efficient train localization as well as long-term railway environment monitoring is the essential property towards reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety (RAMS) engineering for railroad systems. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is right at the core of solving the two problems concurrently. In this end, we propose a high-performance and versatile multi-modal framework in this paper, targeted for the odometry and mapping task for various rail vehicles. Our system is built atop an inertial-centric state estimator that tightly couples light detection and ranging (LiDAR), visual, optionally satellite navigation and map-based localization information with the convenience and extendibility of loosely coupled methods. The inertial sensors IMU and wheel encoder are treated as the primary sensor, which achieves the observations from subsystems to constrain the accelerometer and gyroscope biases. Compared to point-only LiDAR-inertial methods, our approach leverages more geometry information by introducing both track plane and electric power pillars into state estimation. The Visual-inertial subsystem also utilizes the environmental structure information by employing both lines and points. Besides, the method is capable of handling sensor failures by automatic reconfiguration bypassing failure modules. Our proposed method has been extensively tested in the long-during railway environments over four years, including general-speed, high-speed and metro, both passenger and freight traffic are investigated. Further, we aim to share, in an open way, the experience, problems, and successes of our group with the robotics community so that those that work in such environments can avoid these errors. In this view, we open source some of the datasets to benefit the research community
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