6,982 research outputs found
Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools
In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings
Quantify resilience enhancement of UTS through exploiting connect community and internet of everything emerging technologies
This work aims at investigating and quantifying the Urban Transport System
(UTS) resilience enhancement enabled by the adoption of emerging technology
such as Internet of Everything (IoE) and the new trend of the Connected
Community (CC). A conceptual extension of Functional Resonance Analysis Method
(FRAM) and its formalization have been proposed and used to model UTS
complexity. The scope is to identify the system functions and their
interdependencies with a particular focus on those that have a relation and
impact on people and communities. Network analysis techniques have been applied
to the FRAM model to identify and estimate the most critical community-related
functions. The notion of Variability Rate (VR) has been defined as the amount
of output variability generated by an upstream function that can be
tolerated/absorbed by a downstream function, without significantly increasing
of its subsequent output variability. A fuzzy based quantification of the VR on
expert judgment has been developed when quantitative data are not available.
Our approach has been applied to a critical scenario (water bomb/flash
flooding) considering two cases: when UTS has CC and IoE implemented or not.
The results show a remarkable VR enhancement if CC and IoE are deploye
Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish
Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellÀ (in front of) and jÀljessÀ (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003).
When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellÀ (in front of) and jÀljessÀ (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected.
We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakersâ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers.
All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion.
We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion.
Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneuxâs question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo
Como as coligaçÔes ciclistas modificam a cultura da bicicleta: anĂĄlise da mudança na polĂtica de mobilidade em Lisboa 2009-2021
Cycling is currently recognised as a vital part of most developed sustainable
urban mobility systems, contributing to acknowledged gains in climate change
mitigation, health, social, economic, environmental, and travel speed issues,
explaining in part its recent resurgence in cities worldwide. Despite the benefits,
public policy on cycling has not developed smoothly. Many cities continue to
stall or ignore effective output implementation to promote cycling as a
legitimate mobility mode. Most research and policy focus on infrastructure
solutions to implement change. This research, by contrast, focuses on an
innovative approach to advance scholarship, namely how cyclistsâ advocacy
coalitions shape decision-making and place cycling on the political agenda
where it was previously ignored or side-lined. The dissertation applies the
concept of the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to analyse the mechanisms
which activate and sustain policy change. This thesis analyses the city of
Lisbon in Portugal as a case-study of conurbation to analyse how change has
been leveraged during the thirteen-year time frame between 2009 and 2021,
using both detailed comparative analysis and advancing scholarship on cycling
more generally. The qualitative analysis employs the scholarship, documents,
notes taken from personal professional experience in policy formulation and
implementation, and eleven anonymous interviews with policy actors involved
to different extents in the process during the study period. These quantitative
outcomes are gauged using available data from several surveys and counts to
substantiate the relation between the outputs produced and outcomes achieved
in combination with detailed data from cycle traffic moving counts I have carried
out since 2009. The research structure is designed to provide insights on how
the broad-based cyclistsâ coalition has shaped policy formulation and
implementation in a city where cycling had a low cultural status and low rates to
generate ânew knowledgeâ regarding the subsystem in Portugal and other
comparable contexts.A utilização da bicicleta é atualmente reconhecida como parte vital do sistema
de mobilidade urbana sustentĂĄvel das cidades mais desenvolvidas,
contribuindo para ganhos na mitigação das alteraçÔes climĂĄticas, benefĂcios de
saĂșde, sociais, econĂłmicos, ambientais, e na velocidade das deslocaçÔes,
explicando em parte o recente ressurgimento deste modo em cidades por todo
o mundo. Apesar destes benefĂcios, as polĂticas pĂșblicas nĂŁo se tĂȘm
desenvolvido facilmente nesta matéria. Muitas cidades continuam a atrasar ou
a excluir a implementação de medidas efetivas para promover a bicicleta como
modo de mobilidade legĂtimo. A maioria das investigaçÔes e polĂticas remetem
para soluçÔes infraestruturais para fomentar a transição. Esta investigação, por
outro lado, emprega uma abordagem inovadora para o avanço do
conhecimento, designadamente, como as coligaçÔes de utilizadores de
bicicleta transformam o processo de decisĂŁo e colocam a bicicleta na agenda
polĂtica onde antes este modo de mobilidade era ignorado ou marginalizado. A
dissertação adota a base teĂłrica do âadvocacy coalition frameworkâ (ACF) para
analisar os mecanismos que ativam e sustentam a mudança de polĂticas. Esta
tese analisa a cidade de Lisboa em Portugal como caso de estudo,
considerando a conurbação, para analisar como a mudança foi realizada
durante o perĂodo de treze anos entre 2009 e 2021, empregando anĂĄlises
comparativas detalhadas para avançar no conhecimento sobre a utilização da
bicicleta em geral. A anĂĄlise qualitativa analisou a literatura cientĂfica,
documentos, notas provenientes da experiĂȘncia pessoal e profissional na
formulação e implementação de polĂticas, e onze entrevistas anĂłnimas com
variados atores polĂticos, envolvidos no processo durante o perĂodo do estudo
de diferentes formas. Os resultados quantitativos são analisados através de
dados disponĂveis provenientes de diferentes pesquisas e contagens para
fundamentar a relação entre as medidas implementadas e os resultados
alcançados, complementados com dados pormenorizados de contagens de
tråfego ciclåvel realizados desde 2009. A estrutura desta investigação foi
projetada para aprofundar o conhecimento sobre a ampla coligação de
utilizadores de bicicleta e como esta transformou a formulação e
implementação de polĂticas, numa cidade onde o status cultural e as taxas de
utilização da bicicleta eram reduzidos, para gerar 'novo conhecimento' sobre o
subsistema em Portugal e outros contextos comparĂĄveis.Programa Doutoral em PolĂticas PĂșblica
Managing Epistemic Uncertainties in the Underlying Models of Safety Assessment for Safety-Critical Systems
When conducting safety assessment for safety-critical systems, epistemic uncertainty is an ever-present challenge when reasoning about the safety concerns and causal relationships related to hazards. Uncertainty around this causation thus needs to be managed well. Unfortunately, existing safety assessment tends to ignore unknown uncertainties, and stakeholders rarely track known uncertainties well through the system lifecycle.
In this thesis, an approach is described for managing epistemic uncertainties about the system and safety causal models that are applied in a safety assessment. First, the principles that define the requirements for the approach are introduced. Next, these principles are used to construct three distinct steps that constitute an approach to manage such uncertainties. These three steps involve identifying, documenting and tracking the uncertainties throughout the system lifecycle so as to enable intervention to address the uncertainties.
The approach is evaluated by integrating it with two existing safety assessment techniques, one using models from a system viewpoint and the other with models from a component viewpoint. This approach is also evaluated through peer reviews, semi-structured interviews with practitioners, and by review against requirements derived from the principles. Based on the evaluation results, it is plausible that our approach can provide a feasible and systematic way to manage epistemic uncertainties in safety assessment for safety-critical systems
Indeterminacy-aware prediction model for authentication in IoT.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has opened a new chapter in data access. It has brought obvious opportunities as well as major security and privacy challenges. Access control is one of the challenges in IoT. This holds true as the existing, conventional access control paradigms do not fit into IoT, thus access control requires more investigation and remains an open issue. IoT has a number of inherent characteristics, including scalability, heterogeneity and dynamism, which hinder access control. While most of the impact of these characteristics have been well studied in the literature, we highlighted âindeterminacyâ in authentication as a neglected research issue. This work stresses that an indeterminacy-resilient model for IoT authentication is missing from the literature. According to our findings, indeterminacy consists of at least two facets: âuncertaintyâ and âambiguityâ. As a result, various relevant theories were studied in this work. Our proposed framework is based on well-known machine learning models and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). To implement and evaluate our framework, we first generate datasets, in which the location of the users is a main dataset attribute, with the aim to analyse the role of user mobility in the performance of the prediction models. Next, multiple classification algorithms were used with our datasets in order to build our best-fit prediction models. Our results suggest that our prediction models are able to determine the class of the authentication requests while considering both the uncertainty and ambiguity in the IoT system
Epistemic geographies of climate change: the IPCC and the spaces, boundaries and politics of knowing
Science, like other realms of human activity, has its geographies. It proceeds in and through space, and participates in the construction of the political and cultural geographies by which human interactions with the nonhuman come to be known, understood and governed. The phenomenon of climate change stands at this juncture of science, politics, and the elemental materiality of the nonhuman. High-profile controversies about the physical reality, effects and management of the changing climate point to more deep-seated contestations about the place of science in modern democratic societies. This thesis engages with literatures on the historical and cultural geographies of science in order to open-up questions about the situatedness of climate change knowledges, the contested boundaries between the scientific and the political, and the spatial politics of relating epistemic claims to normative interventions in the world. The thesis proceeds through a series of linked case studies which traverse a range of emergent transnational spaces of knowledge production. It begins inside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and moves through the contested spaces of international climate diplomacy at the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks and through diverse cultures of knowledge authorisation in Indian climate politics. The thesis develops the notions of âboundary spacesâ and âepistemic geographiesâ to capture the emergence, conjuncture and contestation of different modes of knowing and governing climate change. By following the objects of climate change knowledges â like visualisations, numerical targets, simulation models and predictions â conceptual distinctions between the spaces of knowledge production and consumption break down. Instead, a picture emerges of travelling knowledges which emphasises mutability, interpretive flexibility, and the spatial and discursive co-production of the epistemic and the normative. It is argued that by moving from âgeographies of scienceâ to âepistemic geographiesâ, the hybridity of science and politics can be more effectively written-in to our accounts of contemporary knowledge politics
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