Mustang Daily, September 26, 2005

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/7333/thumbnail.jp

Detection of Earthflow Using a GPS and LiDAR Integrated Survey: A Case Study from the Slumgullion Landslide, Lake City, Colorado

The Slumgullion landslide in the San Juan Mountains near Lake City, Colorado has been a natural laboratory for landslide and environmental studies since the early 1900s. The landslide site covers 4.6 square kilometers and consists of an active part which has been moving continuously for about 300 years over an older, much larger, inactive part. We conducted an integrated GPS and LiDAR survey at the landslide site in one-week period from July 3rd to July 10th, 2015, with the primary purpose of delineating short-term ground deformation associated with the earthflow using advanced GPS and LiDAR techniques. A GPS network with twelve semi-permanent stations was set up, including seven stations on the sliding mass and five stations outside the sliding mass. A RIEGL VZ-2000 terrestrial laser scanner was used to collect data in the field. Airborne laser scanning data were collected by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping. We compared different registration methods for datasets acquired by the terrestrial laser scanner. A rapid workflow for field surveying and data processing was developed to generate high-resolution digital terrain models. The movement of the Slumgullion landslide was derived from semi-permanent GPS observations, and two repeated terrestrial laser scanning surveys conducted during the one-week period. A 1.47 cm horizontal daily movement was detected from the GPS observations. We compared different change detection strategies for the LiDAR point clouds measurements. Lateral landslide movements were detected from cloud-to-cloud comparison using the data from terrestrial laser scanning; the accumulated motion ranged from 3 cm to 10 cm during the survey week. The movement measurements derived from GPS and the terrestrial laser scanner agreed well. Our study demonstrates a method of identifying slow earth mass movement using the integration of GPS, terrestrial, and airborne laser scanning datasets. We developed a workflow for terrestrial laser-scanning data processing. Our method could be applied to study landslides in other regions. It is expected that our results will promote the application of GPS and LiDAR techniques in the practice of landslide hazards mitigation.Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Department o

Creative Practice: How Communities were ‘made’ at Çatalhöyük

What role did creative practice play in social life at the Neolithic tell Çatalhöyük, and what evidence is there to suggest that making informed the maintenance of the ‘social bond’? Socio-creativity is an undeveloped but important area of research for archaeological approaches to the Neolithic, and offers a unique opportunity to consider both individual and community dynamics, tensions and changing social values from the residues of material interactions. Utilising the work of Bennett (2010a), Barad (2003, 2007, 2012), and Gell (1998) I formulate a critically-informed but practically embedded methodology that finds material “phenomena” (Barad 2003) at the settlement. Çatalhöyük offers a particularly unique example of social organisation as it is believed to have been an egalitarian settlement (Hodder 2014a,c). Furthermore, the material culture provides us with a rich dataset that contains the traces of highly creative and materially-engaged individuals who routinely made and re-made things, such as sunbaked clay figurines, basketry, and beads. I focus on Neolithic interactions with colourful or brilliant materials, substances, and spaces, and explore how these material interactions, as phenomena, reveal certain sensorial dynamics in-action at the Neolithic town. I outline how creative practices can create certain sensory dispositions - ways of seeing, feeling and doing - and I argue that the senses can be profiled during making events (cf. Howes and Classen 1991). The sensorial implications of making have wider connotations for the changing dynamics and tensions between ‘communities of practice’, and can yield important information about macro-scale changes in lifeways (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998, 2012; Wendrich 2012; Bartlett and McAnany 2000). I contend that creative practice was an important element of egalitarian community maintenance and argue that socio-creativity played an integral role in social organisation at Çatalhöyük

Megan\u27s Treadmill

Megan is a 21-year-old Special Olympian in the local San Luis Obispo area who loves to move. Due to a visual impairment, Megan is limited in the amount of time she can be active and she currently relies on the help of a partner when she exercises. For example, during the school year, Megan participates in the Friday Club in the local recreation center where she teams up with a kinesiology student to obtain physical activity. She also competes every year in the Special Olympics held at Cuesta College. Megan races in the 50- and 100-meter dash holding a baton attached to a rope as a guide. Her other source of training is on a treadmill; however, she is dependent on a guide to help her walk safely. While she enjoys this, Megan would like to be able to exercise safely without relying on assistance. Michael Lara, the Sports Manager for the San Luis Obispo County Special Olympics, has been sponsoring senior projects at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) for nine years. Mr. Lara wanted to help Megan increase her physical activity and find more independence, so he brought this project, known as “Megan’s Treadmill,” to the mechanical engineering senior project class. The goal of this project was to adapt a treadmill to provide a safe and accessible environment for Megan to exercise independently. Our team consists of three senior engineering students attending Cal Poly: Daniel Byrne (ME), Michael Peck (ME), and Eddie Ruano (CPE). The different knowledge bases of our team assisted in producing a versatile and robust design. This final design report documents the full design process for this project, from start to finish. In this report, our team will highlight the many steps we took to produce our final detailed design, as well as the process of turning this design into a fully functional product

Rethinking Sustainability Towards a Regenerative Economy

This open access book is based on work from the COST Action “RESTORE - REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy'', and highlights how sustainability in buildings, facilities and urban governance is crucial for a future that is socially just, ecologically restorative, and economically viable, for Europe and the whole planet. In light of the search for fair solutions to the climate crisis, the authors outline the urgency for the built environment sector to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies, as well as a just transition. As shown in the chapters, this can be done by applying a broader framework that enriches places, people, ecology, culture, and climate, at the core of the design task - with a particular emphasis on the benefits towards health and resilient business practices. This book is one step on the way to a paradigm shift towards restorative sustainability for new and existing buildings. The authors want to promote forward thinking and multidisciplinary knowledge, leading to solutions that celebrate the richness of design creativity. In this vision, cities of the future will enhance users’ experience, health and wellbeing inside and outside of buildings, while reconciling anthropic ecosystems and nature. A valuable resource for scientists and students in environmental sciences and architecture, as well as policy makers, practitioners and investors in urban and regional development

Social and positive sustainability performance measurement : theories, conceptual frameworks, and empirical insights

Over 30 years have passed since the World Commission on Environment and Development published its famous Brundtland report including its definition of sustainable development. Since then, sustainability performance measurement looking beyond traditional financial performance measurement is becoming increasingly important in academia, business practice, and regulation to assess and ultimately manage economic, ecological, and social benefits and damages of organizational behavior along corporate supply chains and product life cycles. However, two overarching critical shortcomings prevent sustainability performance measurement from becoming a truly holistic and relevant decision-supporting instrument. First, the field is characterized by differing levels of maturity in terms of measuring performance of the three triple bottom line sustainability dimensions. Unlike established approaches for measuring ecological performance (e.g., with environmental life cycle assessment; ELCA) and economic performance (e.g., with life cycle costing; LCC), measuring social performance (e.g., with social life cycle assessment; SLCA) is still at a developmental stage, because the field is understudied and fragmented, and lacks empirical experience. Thus, the field of sustainability performance measurement is imbalanced in terms of the integrated assessment of the three sustainability dimensions. Second, the field is characterized by a negative perspective and a focus on becoming less unsustainable instead of making positive progress to sustainable development. Current sustainability performance measurement approaches primarily assess negative burdens or footprints and their reduction during product life cycles and in supply chains (e.g., accidents and fatalities, carbon dioxide emissions, or total cost of ownership) and neglect capturing positive benefits occurring throughout product life cycles and corporate supply chains. A critical reason is that research lacks a fundamental understanding of the general construct of positive sustainability performance. Thus, the field of sustainability performance measurement is incomplete because it fails to characterize and assess the important positive perspective of sustainability-related value creation and positive contributions to sustainable development. Triggered by the overarching critical shortcomings, this dissertation aims at advancing the level of maturity of social performance measurement and at advancing the understanding of positive sustainability performance measurement to promote a more balanced and complete assessment of contributions to sustainable development. To achieve these overarching aims, this dissertation builds on a multitude of research methods (especially, systematic reviews of research and corporate practice, an extensive Delphi study, and qualitative interviews), a resulting richness of empirical data, and various theoretical reflections. This dissertation comprises five studies (i.e., two systematic literature reviews and three empirical papers based on multiple research methods and data sets). Together, the five studies highlight the trends, coherences, inconsistencies, and gaps in social and positive sustainability performance measurement. Furthermore, the studies establish and explain the interrelation between social and positive sustainability performance measurement, advance their conceptual and theoretical foundation, promote standardization by prioritizing relevant indicators, and suggest an approach to measure and evaluate positive contributions to sustainable development. The individual studies presented in this dissertation offer valuable findings for research and managerial practice in the field. Together, the five studies highlight the trends, coherences, inconsistencies, and gaps in social and positive sustainability performance measurement. Furthermore, the studies establish and explain the interrelation between social and positive sustainability performance measurement, advance their conceptual and theoretical foundation, promote standardization by prioritizing relevant indicators, and suggest an approach to measure and evaluate positive contributions to sustainable development. Overall, this dissertation provides an important step to measure and ultimately manage social and positive sustainability performance. Thus, it establishes a foundation for the development of sustainable business practices that go beyond merely counteracting negative business outcomes toward actually delivering positive sustainability benefits for business and society.Sowohl die kurz- als auch die langfristige Planung, Steuerung, Kontrolle und Anpassung unternehmerischer Nachhaltigkeitsaktivitäten erfordert die Versorgung mit adäquaten Informationen. Daher stellt die Entwicklung von Ansätzen zur Bewertung und Messung von ökonomischen, ökologischen und sozialen Aspekten eine Schlüsselkomponente unternehmerischer Nachhaltigkeitsaktivitäten dar. Im Gegensatz zu etablierten Ansätzen zur Bewertung von ökonomischen und ökologischen Kriterien (z.B. mittels Ökobilanzierung), gibt es derzeit noch kein allgemein anerkanntes Vorgehen zur unternehmensübergreifenden und produktübergreifenden Bewertung sozialer Aspekte. Ferner können Forschung und Praxis derzeit nur ein unvollständiges, einseitiges und insbesondere negatives Bild unternehmerischer und produktbezogener Nachhaltigkeit erfassen und bewerten, da es im Gegensatz zu bereits existierenden Ansätzen zur Bewertung belastungsorientierter (negativer) Fußabdruck-Konzepte derzeit weder eine allgemeine Charakterisierung positiver Nachhaltigkeit gibt, noch ein anerkanntes Vorgehen zur Bewertung positiver Nachhaltigkeitswirkungen existiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund, liegt das Hauptanliegen dieser Dissertation darin, das Verständnis einer umfassenden, sozialen und positiven Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung von Unternehmen und Produkten zu verbessern. Durch die Kombination aus theoretisch fundierten Einblicken, systematischen Analysen von Literatur und Praxisansätzen und empirischen Erkenntnissen aus umfassenden Delphi-Studien und interviewbasierten Fallstudien, schafft diese Dissertation ein grundlegendes konzeptionelles und theoretisches Verständnis sozialer und positiver Nachhaltigkeitswirkungen, treibt die Priorisierung und Standardisierung relevanter Indikatoren voran und bildet die Grundlage für zukünftige Entwicklung von umfassenden Bewertungsansätze. Somit liefert diese Dissertation einen entscheidenden Beitrag zur Bewertung und dem letztlichen Management sozialer und positiver Nachhaltigkeit von Unternehmen und Produkten

Educating for the ‘Anthropocene’: The Meaning of Politics in an Age of Slow Violence

This multi-sited ethnographic study examines the interface of education and environmental activism in spaces affected by the slow violence of environmental degradation, characteristic of the current high ‘Anthropocene’ era. By conducting research at government schools and in their surrounding communities in Pashulok, India, and South Durban, South Africa, this study investigates the impacts of schooling and environmental activist movements on young people’s ‘phenomenologies of meaning-making’ about the environment. Building on the work of Ricœur and Arendt, the theoretical framework illuminates the role of historical responsibility, intergenerational justice and political imagination in shaping young people’s understandings of and responses to the slow violence affecting their communities locally and the planet globally. This framework is operationalised through established ethnographic methods, including observation, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, focus groups, a fieldwork diary, and through an innovative intervention of observational filmmaking workshops conducted with young people in both sites. The findings point to the depoliticising and individualising effects that bureaucratised state-run education systems in both India and South Africa have on young people’s political and environmental imaginaries, specifically in relation to action and change. They suggest further that young people recognise this slow violence impacting on the environment and have ideas about the political transformation needed to achieve an environmentally sustainable future. These alternative imaginaries are in some cases shaped by the activist presence in the community, as well as educators who intentionally subvert the curriculum. Environmental activists in Pashulok and Wentworth strive to expand what Ricœur calls the ‘horizons of the possible’ and to foster pluralistic political action in the process of community deliberation. The study argues that educating in the Anthropocene calls for bridging schooling with elements of activism to develop what Arendt refers to as agonistic pluralism, which is necessary for finding answers to the slow violence of the Anthropocene

The Spinnaker Vol. 15 No. 8

Student newspaper for the UNF communit

Nothing Matters: Answering the Question ‘Where’s the Art?’ through Ma and Gen

This research explores the ontology of Gen, or the being of a ‘non-being’, through an examination into the Japanese concept of Ma. Ma is a Japanese word and concept whose English equivalent does not exist but is usually translated as the ‘conscious void/interval’, while Gen (variants: Jen/Zjen/Xen/Zen) describes the experience of becoming such an interval. Using conceptual art as the core method of investigation and cultural pluralism as its philosophical framework, the practice was documented as a series of essays on relevant ideas, beginning with the absolute, aestheticism, authenticity, authorship, and autonomy. The paper builds on the current research on the manifestation and function of Ma by introducing relevant and necessary terms into the discourse, including: Gen, Mu, Ba, Ta, Self/Culture, cognitive (dis)equilibrium, conceptual tipping-point, ontological comfort trap, and self-obliteration. As the concept of Ma has often been associated with ascetic reduction, manifested as simplicity and silence, the paper begins with a study into the use of nothingness and the void in minimalist artworks. It also builds on my MA research and Sachiyo Goda’s study into the intercultural understanding of Ma as an intersubjective phenomenon, by introducing a new concept, Gen, which leads to an enquiry into what it means to become a Ma, a nonbeing. In contrast to the minimalist approach, the study will show that such state of emptiness can be achieved through an alternate method of ‘production’ (as opposed to re-duction) by using an authentically embodied methodology of ‘becoming’ the observed, rather than through mere documentation or representation of the phenomena. The study yields insights of potential interest to artists, philosophers, social theorists, empirical researchers, and indeed any English reader. The paper forms practical and theoretical contributions to the debates on the nature of art by: - enhancing our knowledge of Ma and its function in contemporary art; - introducing such explicitly implicit ontology as Gen; - extending our knowledge of the complex nature of Ma through an investigation into Gen; - offering a new strategy i.e. self-obliteration, in discerning such notions as an alternate to the minimalistic ascetic reduction method; - developing the language of such notions, contextualizing and bridging the Western and Eastern understanding and use of such ontology; - offering a new understanding of research with its interdisciplinary mode of practice and through a multidisciplinary body of work presented in and beyond the exhibition space, shifting away from the cerebral mode of comprehension by drawing out a primarily experiential conception of the relationship between art and Gen