1,677 research outputs found

    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

    How did Britain come to this? A century of systemic failures of governance

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    If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain? And how have they resulted in failures in housing, privatisation, outsourcing, education and healthcare? In How Did Britain Come to This? Gwyn Bevan examines a century of varieties of systemic failures in the British state. The book begins and ends by showing how systems of governance explain scandals in NHS hospitals, and the failures and successes of the UK and Germany in responding to Covid-19 before and after vaccines became available. The book compares geographical fault lines and inequalities in Britain with those that have developed in other European countries and argues that the causes of Britain’s entrenched inequalities are consequences of shifts in systems of governance over the past century. Clement Attlee’s postwar government aimed to remedy the failings of the prewar minimal state, while Margaret Thatcher’s governments in the 1980s in turn sought to remedy the failings of Attlee’s planned state by developing the marketised state, which morphed into the financialised state we see today. This analysis highlights the urgent need for a new political settlement of an enabling state that tackles current systemic weaknesses from market failures and over-centralisation. This book offers an accessible, analytic account of government failures of the past century, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to make an informed contribution to what an innovative, capable state might look like in a post-pandemic world

    The Digital Transformation Roadmap

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    Scanning Probe Microscopy Studies of Petroleum Chemistry: Substrate-Dependent Catalytic Properties of MoS2 and Automating Scanning Probe Microscopy with Machine Learning

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    With the growth of the population, society’s energy demands are mostly reliant on petroleum products that come from the refining of crude oil. Most of these refining reactions have been developed through averaging spectroscopic techniques, but scientists do not know exactly what is happening in these processes at the nano and atomic levels. This information is crucial when designing an efficient refining process that produces petroleum products that emit fewer harmful gases when combusting. Scanning probe microscopy techniques have become a powerful tool to look into the chemical structures found in petroleum products, to understand catalytic reactions in refining processes, and to find new non-combustible uses for these products. In this dissertation, I show how scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques, especially non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) can provide an atomic-level understanding of the chemical structures and active catalytic sites that play a role in these refining processes. First, I studied hydrodesulfurization reactions that use molybdenum disulfide as a main catalyst to explore the effect of layer thickness, strain, and underlying substrates on its electronic and catalytic properties. Here, I present the first NC-AFM experiments investigating the active catalytic sites of molybdenum disulfide on industrially relevant substrates. Through these experiments, I found how NC-AFM techniques on insulators need to be improved to achieve high-resolution images that are comparable to those collected on metal substrates. Second, I created Auto-HR-AFM, a machine-learning script that collects optimal high-resolution NC-AFM images. Auto-HR-AFM is a modular and open-source script that provides an initial framework for a fully automated SPM. Expanding on this framework will widen the use of scanning probe microscopy techniques to non-experts and the automation will increase the time the system is kept running to collect large optimal datasets. Ultimately, these studies will broaden the use of high-resolution SPM techniques and help create more efficient catalysts and refining processes to produce cleaner and more efficient petroleum products

    The behavioural determinants of corporate sustainability: Towards a comprehensive model of legitimate climate change communication

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    Today's world faces severe climate challenges, and there is a pressing need for genuine environmental advocacy within organizations and policymaking. This dissertation investigates the complex decision-making processes in the workforce and environmental communication and behaviour in organizations. The goal is to provide insights on stimulating environmental advocacy and enabling better-targeted behavioural change interventions. The thesis encompasses four independent but related papers that cover interdisciplinary research on environmental advocacy, examining the social backdrop of contemporary corporate sustainability, environmental communication, and strategies to encourage workplace environmentalism. The studies draw primarily from signalling and legitimacy theory while extending understanding of identity theory, power, and knowledge spillover. Overall, this dissertation contributes to a greater understanding of corporate sustainability by emphasizing the role of legitimacy in environmental leadership and sustainability communication. It fosters a more integrated, systematic, and comprehensive understanding of climate change communication in organisations, likely increasing the saliency of behavioural research in the mitigation debate and supporting evidence-based public policy

    2014 GREAT Day Program

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    SUNY Geneseo’s Eighth Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1008/thumbnail.jp

    Notes on Trumpspace

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    In the wake of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, considerable ink was spilled on the architecture and interior design of the buildings owned and inhabited by Donald J. Trump. In an effort to understand the inner workings of America’s first real-estate-mogul-in-chief, commentators remarked on everything from the president’s fastidious taste in window dressings to the exaggerated floor counts boasted by many Trump-branded towers. Notes on Trumpspace takes this discursive trend as a point of departure. It examines not only key examples of “Trumpitecture” but also works of film, fiction, and contemporary art that center on or otherwise illuminate the psychogeography of “super luxury” real estate. Engaging closely with current political debates, the book takes a critical approach to mainstream liberal reactions to the Trump presidency. It argues that the fascination and horror Trump has provoked is owing in part to the way he lays bare the obsession with status, self-branding, and achievement-at-any-cost that has been part and parcel of the broader neoliberal ethos. Finally, it analyzes the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol through the lens of spatio-political theorizations of settler colonial power and conceptions of home and homeland. A genre-defying work of political and aesthetic inquiry, Notes on Trumpspace is a sustained investigation into the relationship between the built environment, late capitalist fantasy, and national identity. It asks what it means for current and future understandings of home and dwelling that this era’s most notorious peddler of high-end real estate succeeded in peddling his way into the White House in 2016
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