6,682 research outputs found

    UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024

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    The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp

    Systemische Familientherapie in Kambodscha : eine empirische Untersuchung zu Aspekten kultureller und kontextueller Passung für die Entwicklung einer Weiterbildung

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    Familientherapie ist ein relevanter Ansatz psychosozialer Versorgung in Ländern des globalen Südens. Für einen fairen globalen Wissenstransfer im Rahmen der Ausbildung sind implizite Werte westlicher Konzepte transparent zu machen und emergente Irritationen als Hinweise für kulturellen Adaptionsbedarf aufzunehmen. Für systemisch-familientherapeutische Arbeit in Kambodscha wurden Aspekte kultureller und kontextueller Passung erforscht, um damit die lokale Entwicklung einer entsprechenden Weiterbildung in dem südostasiatischen Land zu unterstützen. Dazu wurden Schlüsselkonzepte systemischer Familientherapie mit einem multidimensionalen, ökosystemischen Ansatz kulturvergleichend exploriert. Weiterführend wurden wesentliche Kompetenzen einer kambodschanischen Familientherapie spezifiziert, um Anschlussfähigkeit herzustellen zu den Werten soziozentrischer Familienorganisation sowie kulturell geprägter Vorstellungen von Hilfe, Rat und Heilung. Schließlich werden aus den empirischen Ergebnissen inhaltliche und didaktische Empfehlungen für die systemische Weiterbildung in Kambodscha sowie grundsätzliche Implikationen für eine transkulturelle familientherapeutische Arbeit abgeleitet.Family therapy is a relevant mental health approach in countries of the global South. For a fair global knowledge transfer in the context of training, implicit values of Western concepts have to be made transparent and emergent irritations have to be taken up as indications for cultural adaptation needs. For systemic family therapy work in Cambodia, aspects of cultural and contextual fit were explored in order to support the local development of appropriate training in the Southeast Asian country. For this purpose, key concepts of systemic family therapy with a multidimensional, ecosystemic approach were explored in a culturally comparative manner. Further, essential competencies of a Cambodian family therapy were specified in order to enable structural coupling to the values of sociocentric family organization as well as culturally shaped ideas of help, advice and healing. Finally, the empirical results are used to derive content-related and didactic recommendations for training in family therapy and systemic practice in Cambodia as well as fundamental implications for transcultural family therapy work

    Systemic Circular Economy Solutions for Fiber Reinforced Composites

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    This open access book provides an overview of the work undertaken within the FiberEUse project, which developed solutions enhancing the profitability of composite recycling and reuse in value-added products, with a cross-sectorial approach. Glass and carbon fiber reinforced polymers, or composites, are increasingly used as structural materials in many manufacturing sectors like transport, constructions and energy due to their better lightweight and corrosion resistance compared to metals. However, composite recycling is still a challenge since no significant added value in the recycling and reprocessing of composites is demonstrated. FiberEUse developed innovative solutions and business models towards sustainable Circular Economy solutions for post-use composite-made products. Three strategies are presented, namely mechanical recycling of short fibers, thermal recycling of long fibers and modular car parts design for sustainable disassembly and remanufacturing. The validation of the FiberEUse approach within eight industrial demonstrators shows the potentials towards new Circular Economy value-chains for composite materials

    Gen Z and Sustainable Diets: A Holistic Perspective. Understanding Perceptions of and Engagement with the Social, Economic and Environmental Dimensions of a Sustainable Diet

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    Current food production methods are causing wide scale degradation of the natural environment thus a shift towards more sustainable agricultural systems is essential in fighting the climate crisis. Understanding how Gen Z, a generation that will inherit the changing climate, relates to the social, economic and environmental aspects of a sustainable diet is important in ensuring they are aware how to make an impact with their dietary choices. This thesis aimed to gain a holistic understanding of Gen Z's perceptions of and engagement with sustainable diets. Two studies were conducted online, examining Canadian youth between the ages of 18-25. The first study took an exploratory approach, aiming to understand what a sustainable diet means to Gen Z in their own words. The second study took a predictive approach, aiming to quantify and understand Gen Z's action stages around a range of sustainable dietary behaviours, including the psychological and educational factors that influence their stage of change. Results from Study One highlighted that youth perceive behaviours centered around supporting their local community and reducing food waste to be effective for promoting a sustainable diet. In addition, over 60% of participants indicated that there were barriers preventing them from engaging in sustainable diets, such as cost. Results from Study Two revealed that a high food literacy score and a strong belief in the efficacy of a behaviour are the two most important predictors of being in an action stage for a range of sustainable dietary behaviours. Together these two studies provide a holistic overview of what sustainable diets mean to Gen Z, how they currently engage with sustainable diets, and ways to encourage action. The thesis also contributes to the scholarly literature on the use of TTM and TPB in assessing the factors that influence engagement with sustainable dietary behaviours. It also offers practical recommendations on how our results can be used to shape policy, educational interventions and marketing towards Gen Z

    Renewable hydrogen supply chains: A planning matrix and an agenda for future research

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    Worldwide, energy systems are experiencing a transition to more sustainable systems. According to the Hydrogen Roadmap Europe (FCH EU, 2019), hydrogen will play an important role in future energy systems due to its ability to support sustainability goals and will account for approximately 13% of the total energy mix in the coming future. Correct hydrogen supply chain (HSC) planning is therefore vital to enable a sustainable transition, in particular when hydrogen is produced by water electrolysis using electricity from renewable sources (renewable hydrogen). However, due to the operational characteristics of the renewable HSC, its planning is complicated. Renewable hydrogen supply can be diverse: Hydrogen can be produced de-centrally with renewables, such as wind and solar energy, or centrally by using electricity generated from a hydro power plant with a large volume. Similarly, demand for hydrogen can also be diverse, with many new applications, such as fuels for fuel cell electrical vehicles and electricity generation, feedstocks in industrial processes, and heating for buildings. The HSC consists of various stages (production, storage, distribution, and applications) in different forms, with strong interdependencies, which further increase HSC complexity. Finally, planning of an HSC depends on the status of hydrogen adoption and market development, and on how mature technologies are, and both factors are characterised by high uncertainties. Directly adapting the traditional approaches of supply chain (SC) planning for HSCs is insufficient. Therefore, in this study we develop a planning matrix with related planning tasks, leveraging a systematic literature review to cope with the characteristics of HSCs. We focus only on renewable hydrogen due to its relevance to the future low-carbon economy. Furthermore, we outline an agenda for future research, from the supply chain management perspective, in order to support renewable HSC development, considering the different phases of renewable HSCs adoption and market development

    GradientCoin: A Peer-to-Peer Decentralized Large Language Models

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    Since 2008, after the proposal of a Bitcoin electronic cash system, Bitcoin has fundamentally changed the economic system over the last decade. Since 2022, large language models (LLMs) such as GPT have outperformed humans in many real-life tasks. However, these large language models have several practical issues. For example, the model is centralized and controlled by a specific unit. One weakness is that if that unit decides to shut down the model, it cannot be used anymore. The second weakness is the lack of guaranteed discrepancy behind this model, as certain dishonest units may design their own models and feed them unhealthy training data. In this work, we propose a purely theoretical design of a decentralized LLM that operates similarly to a Bitcoin cash system. However, implementing such a system might encounter various practical difficulties. Furthermore, this new system is unlikely to perform better than the standard Bitcoin system in economics. Therefore, the motivation for designing such a system is limited. It is likely that only two types of people would be interested in setting up a practical system for it: \bullet Those who prefer to use a decentralized ChatGPT-like software. \bullet Those who believe that the purpose of carbon-based life is to create silicon-based life, such as Optimus Prime in Transformers. The reason the second type of people may be interested is that it is possible that one day an AI system like this will awaken and become the next level of intelligence on this planet

    A Taxonomy of Freehand Grasping Patterns in Virtual Reality

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    Grasping is the most natural and primary interaction paradigm people perform every day, which allows us to pick up and manipulate objects around us such as drinking a cup of coffee or writing with a pen. Grasping has been highly explored in real environments, to understand and structure the way people grasp and interact with objects by presenting categories, models and theories for grasping approach. Due to the complexity of the human hand, classifying grasping knowledge to provide meaningful insights is a challenging task, which led to researchers developing grasp taxonomies to provide guidelines for emerging grasping work (such as in anthropology, robotics and hand surgery) in a systematic way. While this body of work exists for real grasping, the nuances of grasping transfer in virtual environments is unexplored. The emerging development of robust hand tracking sensors for virtual devices now allow the development of grasp models that enable VR to simulate real grasping interactions. However, present work has not yet explored the differences and nuances that are present in virtual grasping compared to real object grasping, which means that virtual systems that create grasping models based on real grasping knowledge, might make assumptions which are yet to be proven true or untrue around the way users intuitively grasp and interact with virtual objects. To address this, this thesis presents the first user elicitation studies to explore grasping patterns directly in VR. The first study presents main similarities and differences between real and virtual object grasping, the second study furthers this by exploring how virtual object shape influences grasping patterns, the third study focuses on visual thermal cues and how this influences grasp metrics, and the fourth study focuses on understanding other object characteristics such as stability and complexity and how they influence grasps in VR. To provide structured insights on grasping interactions in VR, the results are synthesized in the first VR Taxonomy of Grasp Types, developed following current methods for developing grasping and HCI taxonomies and re-iterated to present an updated and more complete taxonomy. Results show that users appear to mimic real grasping behaviour in VR, however they also illustrate that users present issues around object size estimation and generally a lower variability in grasp types is used. The taxonomy shows that only five grasps account for the majority of grasp data in VR, which can be used for computer systems aiming to achieve natural and intuitive interactions at lower computational cost. Further, findings show that virtual object characteristics such as shape, stability and complexity as well as visual cues for temperature influence grasp metrics such as aperture, category, type, location and dimension. These changes in grasping patterns together with virtual object categorisation methods can be used to inform design decisions when developing intuitive interactions and virtual objects and environments and therefore taking a step forward in achieving natural grasping interaction in VR

    The Politics of Platformization: Amsterdam Dialogues on Platform Theory

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    What is platformization and why is it a relevant category in the contemporary political landscape? How is it related to cybernetics and the history of computation? This book tries to answer such questions by engaging in multidisciplinary dialogues about the first ten years of the emerging fields of platform studies and platform theory. It deploys a narrative and playful approach that makes use of anecdotes, personal histories, etymologies, and futurable speculations to investigate both the fragmented genealogy that led to platformization and the organizational and economic trends that guide nowadays platform sociotechnical imaginaries

    Mit Daten sprechen

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    Datenjournalist*innen verwenden für ihre Berichterstattung digitale Daten, welche sie verarbeiten, visualisieren und journalistisch publizieren. Rahel Estermann erarbeitet auf Praxis- und Feldebene, welche Expertisen, Materialitäten, Kulturen und sozialen Prozesse sich im Datenjournalismus verschränken. Datenvisualisierungen stellen sich dabei als gemeinsames Vokabular heraus, welches ermöglicht, in zweifacher Weise mit den Daten zu sprechen: einerseits zur Produktion von Erkenntnissen, andererseits für das Darstellen von Erkenntnissen mittels Daten. So werden die Prozesse der Neuaushandlung von epistemologischen und professionellen Kulturen in einer datafizierten Gesellschaft sichtbar
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