Sustaining the multi-stakeholder dialogue process for dams and development: final report of phase 2 of the Ghana Dams Forum, April 2007-March 2008

Dams / Development projects / National planning / Climate change / Policy / Social impact / Meetings / Group communication / Ghana / Volta Basin / Bui Dam

Spartan Daily, October 13, 1995

Volume 105, Issue 31https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8746/thumbnail.jp

Investigation of the Tribal Park Concept and Opportunities for the Blackfeet Nation

The Tribal Park model is an emerging tool being used by indigenous groups in the United States and Canada for the management of unique and sacred natural areas, in some cases setting aside existing indigenous owned land, and in others regaining control of land management decisions in traditional territory. Currently in North America there are several sites that have self-identified as Tribal Parks. There is a lack of research regarding Tribal Park development in North America, which creates challenges for indigenous groups interested in pursuing a conservation designation of this type. Using an analysis of five Tribal Park case studies this thesis identifies the key components of these Tribal Parks. Specifically focusing on the economic, cultural, and ecological aspects of each case study. This research then uses interviews with members of the Blackfeet Nation, to explore the potential interest in a Tribal Park on Blackfeet Nation lands. This study finds that though the Tribal Park concept varies across case studies based on the needs of the specific community, there are some important common aspects across cases. These aspects include: a bottom-up community driven planning process with programs in place to increase capacity of community members, exercising sovereignty over land-use decisions in traditional territory, and connectivity of landscapes and habitat protection. Some of the themes identified by Blackfeet Nation respondents were potential benefits from capturing visitor overflow from neighboring Glacier National Park, increased access to land by community members, and concerns regarding land-use conflicts between different user groups

Study of machine learning techniques for accelerating finite element simulations of Stokes flows

This project starts by studying the finite element method for the steady state Navier-Stokes equations, afterwards it is implemented in Matlab and optimized via Vectorization achieving up to 5000x speed-up in some calculations. Then a reduced order model is studied to decrease the computational time of performing different simulations with slight modifications to the input parameters. Finally, the results obtained are compared against an already tested FEM code, Kratos Multiphysics, and against literature, and the performance of the developed solver for the equations is analyzed. It has been observed that the results obtained with the present work’s solver are almost equal to those made by the reference alternatives

Grammatical Relations and Grammatical Categories in Malay; the Indonesian Prefix MeN- Revisited

The lexical roots of Malay are flexible with regard to their grammatical categories, which presents a problem in providing grammatical evidence for their category determination. This paper attempts to propose the use of affixes as one way to deal with the issue. Data from Indonesian and Ambon (Malay) language are among others given for clarification. The grammatical evidence from Indonesian active meN-, together with other affixes, are revisited as they can contribute to our understanding of the matter

Spartan Daily, October 13, 1997

Volume 109, Issue 31https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9178/thumbnail.jp

Developing living information systems through systems tailorability: Deferred systems design

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.An interpretivist investigation of computer-based business information systems was conducted in two commercial companies and two higher education institutes, by using both quantitative questionnaire survey and qualitative interview research methods. The investigation focused on the social and organisational context of information systems development and usage in these organisations. The utility of structured methodologies is now being questioned by some researchers who are calling for alternative approaches, and this investigation draws on that alternative strand of thinking. The collected data primarily reveals that the development and usage of information systems happens in changing organisations, which suggests that the design and usage of information systems must cater for such a changing or dynamic environment. Therefore the data is interpreted using a philosophical outlook encompassing the notion of "living" information systems and Critical Theory, and this philosophical stance regards information technology as liberating human endeavour in organisations. Five sub-concepts and the concept of deferred system's design are derived from the data, which have been formulated to account and cater for change in information systems environments. The concept of deferred system's design encourages the design of information systems which allow for organisational human behaviour, consisting of organisational change, uncertainty, and learning, to be mediated by information technology. A systems design principle called `deferred system's design decisions' is derived to enable designs of tailorable information systems, which may be regarded as one form of living information systems to facilitate such organisational behaviour. An intersubjective theoretical model called the spiral of change model of tailorable information systems is proposed to explain and understand better the changing organisational environment in which information systems must be developed and in which they must function. To inform practice a computer tool is proposed which enables conceptions of " tailorable information systems that employ the principle of deferred system's design decisions and enables modelling changing or dynamic information systems