2,704 research outputs found

    Converging organoids and extracellular matrix::New insights into liver cancer biology

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    Cycling Through the Pandemic : Tactical Urbanism and the Implementation of Pop-Up Bike Lanes in the Time of COVID-19

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    Provides an international overview on how tactical urbanism was implemented to give more space to cycling Demonstrates the conceptual framework surrounding tactical urbanism and how it plays out theoretically Proposes new methodological insights to understand the effects of tactical urbanism intervention

    Geoarchaeological Approaches to Pictish Settlement Sites: Assessing Heritage at Risk

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    Due to the poor preservation of Pictish period buildings and the occupation deposits within them, very little is known of daily life in early medieval Scotland. In lowland and coastal areas, Pictish buildings are generally truncated by deep ploughing, coastal erosion, or urban development, while those uncovered in upland areas seem to have no preserved floor deposits for reasons that remain poorly understood. Geoarchaeological techniques are particularly effective in clarifying site formation processes and understanding post-depositional transformations. They are also a powerful research tool for identifying floor deposits, distinguishing their composition, and linking this to daily activities. However, archaeologists are often reluctant to apply geoarchaeological methods if they suspect preservation is poor or stratigraphy is not visible in the field. This study therefore employs an innovative suite of geoarchaeological techniques to evaluate the preservation of Pictish period buildings and the potential that fragmentary buildings have to reconstruct daily life in early medieval Scotland. Alongside literature analysis and a desk-based comparison with national soil datasets, over 400 sediment samples from three key settlement sites were subjected to integrated soil micromorphology, x-ray fluorescence, magnetic susceptibility, loss-on-ignition, pH, electrical conductivity and microrefuse analysis. The combined data were successful in generating new information about the depositional and post-depositional history of the sites, preservation conditions of the occupation deposits, and activity areas within domestic dwellings. Most significantly, the integrated approach demonstrated that ephemeral and fragmented occupation surfaces retain surviving characteristics of the use of space, even if floors are not preserved well enough to be clearly defined in the field or in thin-section. A partnership with Historic Environment Scotland has channelled this work into research-led guidelines aimed at communicating geoarchaeological methods and principles to a wider audience

    Weather or not? The role of international sanctions and climate on food prices in Iran

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    IntroductionThe scarcity of resources have affected food production, which has challenged the ability of Iran to provide adequate food for the population. Iterative and mounting sanctions on Iran by the international community have seriously eroded Iran's access to agricultural technology and resources to support a growing population. Limited moisture availability also affects Iran's agricultural production. The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of inflation, international sanctions, weather disturbances, and domestic crop production on the price of rice, wheat and lentils from 2010 to 2021 in Iran.MethodData were obtained from the statistical yearbooks of the Ministry of Agriculture in Iran, Statistical Center of Iran, and the Central Bank of Iran. We analyzed econometric measures of food prices, including CPI, food inflation, subsidy reform plan and sanctions to estimate economic relationships. After deflating the food prices through CPI and detrending the time series to resolve the non-linear issue, we used monthly Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) precipitation data to analyze the influence of weather disturbances on food prices.Results and discussionThe price of goods not only provides an important indicator of the balance between agricultural production and market demand, but also has strong impacts on food affordability and food security. This novel study used a combination of economic and climate factors to analyze the food prices in Iran. Our statistical modeling framework found that the monthly precipitation on domestic food prices, and ultimately food access, in the country is much less important than the international sanctions, lowering Iran's productive capability and negatively impacting its food security

    Design Fiction and Participation:from Social Dreaming to Speculative Heterotopia

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    Over the last decade design fiction, the speculative design method, has been cultivated within the design community. It has been increasingly adopted, or at least experimented with, in various areas of government, industry and academia, as new methods to engage with potential futures are sought out. Orienting design practice as an overtly fictive act, design fictions are a form of worldbuilding used variously in the service of rhetoric, innovation and research. The method has been the preserve of designers, researchers and artists working in industry and academia, with a particular nexus between design and HCI. The design fiction works that they create often focus on the normative. Though non-normative perspectives are generally elided in the development of the method, Participatory Design --an approach to design that involves stakeholders as co-creators in design processes-- has, until recently, demonstrated minimal interest in adopting speculative practices. Working from an egalitarian impulse, the thesis explores design fiction as a participatory practice. Taking Research through Design as a methodology, the study offers reflections in, and on, the facilitation and prototyping processes undertaken by the author and others as part of two design projects which worked with older people on government policy in the UK; ProtoPolicy and What If?. Two methods bricolage and black an adapted annotated portfolio were used. The use of bricolage as a method allowed me to develop artefacts as part of an iterative conversation between practice and theory. This process explored and diagrammatically visualised the concept of heterotopia and other relevant theories as a potential theoretical framework supportive of a participatory approach to design fiction. The portfolio gathered together products of the external participatory design fiction projects in a thematic exploration of participation, design fiction and heterotopia. The thesis offers two contributions to knowledge. The first is speculative heterotopia, a theoretical framework to underpin a participatory approach to the design fiction method. The second is a scaffold to guide design facilitators in supporting participants through the possibilities within a design fiction project. The thesis concludes by highlighting issues for facilitators and participant groups created by adopting a participatory approach to design fiction making use of speculative heterotopia

    Real-world listening effort in adult cochlear implant users

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    Cochlear implants (CI) are a treatment to provide a sense of hearing to individuals with severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss. Even when optimal levels of intelligibility are achieved after cochlear implantation, many CI users complain about the effort required to understand speech in everyday life contexts. This sustained mental exertion, commonly known as “listening effort”, could negatively affect their lives, especially regarding communication, participation, and long-term cognitive health. This thesis aimed to evaluate the listening effort experienced by CI recipients in real-world sound scenarios. The research focused on social listening situations that are particularly common in everyday life such as having conversations in a busy café or communicating through video call. Additionally, some situations that prevailed during the COVID-19 pandemic were also examined (e.g., listening to someone who is wearing a facemask). Multimodal measures of listening effort were employed throughout the research project to obtain a comprehensive assessment. Nonetheless, the primary focus was on measures that quantify objectively the cognitive demands of listening through a CI. To that end, we used a combination of physiological measures, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain imaging and simultaneous pupillometry, both of which are compatible with CIs and capable of providing insights into the neural underpinnings of effortful listening. We also proposed a novel approach to quantify “listening efficiency”, an integrated behavioural measure that reflects both intelligibility and listening effort. We successfully applied these assessments to 168 CI users and 75 age-matched normally hearing (NH) controls who were recruited throughout the project. We found that CI users experienced high levels of listening effort, even when their intelligibility was optimal under highly favourable listening conditions. Objective measures revealed that CI listeners exhibited significantly inferior listening efficiency than NH controls when listening to speech under moderate levels of cafeteria background noise and when attending online video calls. Physiologically, they showed elevated levels of arousal as revealed by larger and prolonged pupil dilations to baseline compared with NH controls, suggesting high cognitive load and increased need for recovery. The importance of visual cues was evident; the presence of video and captions benefited CI recipients by improving considerably their listening efficiency during online communication. These results were consistent with their subjective ratings of effort, both in the experiments and in daily life. These findings provide objective evidence of the cognitive burden endured by CI listeners in everyday life. In addition, the objective assessments proposed were proved feasible to quantify the performance and cognitive demands of listening through a CI. In particular, listening efficiency showed sensitivity to differences in task demands and between groups, even when intelligibility remained near perfect. We argue that listening efficiency holds potential to become a CI outcome measure

    Digital engagement with medieval collections: designing and evaluating the Tears of Our Lady prototype for the Burrell Collection

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    Medieval Christian artefacts were inherently interactive, engaging both the body and the mind. The prevalent practice of museums, however, to present medieval artefacts as decontextualised works of art engenders an often-irreconcilable distance between viewer and viewed not just physically, through glass vitrines, ropes, and demarcated pathways, but above all, intellectually and emotionally. By bringing together the latest research into the materiality of late medieval art and devotion (c.1250-1550), museology, and digital cultural heritage studies, this thesis investigates how digital technologies may be used to bridge that distance, and foster, instead, enhanced public engagement with medieval devotional artefacts beyond the formal, aesthetic qualities that normative curatorial practices tend to stress. In so doing, this interdisciplinary research investigates the following three research questions: • How are digital technologies currently used in the interpretation of late medieval Christian collections in public display settings? • How can the original reception and use of late medieval Christian objects inform their digital interpretation today? • What is the impact of digital interpretation of late medieval Christian objects on visitors’ experience and engagement? To answer these questions, this thesis adopted qualitative research methods with a practice-based approach. Carried out as an Applied Research Collaborative Studentship (ARCS, 2017-22) in collaboration with The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, this practice-based project saw the design, development, and evaluation of the Tears of Our Lady prototype, a digital interpretation devised specially for this project. Based on a digitally augmented replica of The Lamentation of Jesus Christ (ID Number 1.24), a fifteenth-century alabaster relief panel from the Burrell, the Tears of Our Lady prototype was used to explore how the interactive (intellectual, somatic, emotive, and imaginative) engagements medieval devotional objects would have engendered in the past may be used to support digital engagement with them in the present

    Networks of Experience: Interactive Digital Art in the 21st Century

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    Networks of Experience: Interactive Digital Art in the 21st Century considers interactivity in digital art practices. Emerging technologies advance so quickly that artworks using such technologies are not fully understood. Digital artworks are susceptible to unprecedented threats, including technology obsolescence, file incompatibility, and software updates that might considerably alter the artwork in a matter of months. However, immaterial characteristics such as interactivity are often overlooked in the panic of preserving physical technologies. Software and hardware do not always indicate how interactive a work should be, if it involves one or many participants at once, or how exhibition space should facilitate interaction. In this dissertation, I establish a framework to quantify and prioritize the many ways in which participants interact with artworks that make use of digital technologies. I propose a three-part typology – individual interactive experience, collective interactive experience, and distributed interactive experience – as illustrated with case studies including the VR artwork The Chalkroom (2017) by Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang, the immersive digital exhibition Continuity (2021-2022) by the Japanese “ultratechnologist” collective teamLab, and the social media performance Excellences & Perfections (2013) by Amalia Ulman. The project offers clarity to the nature of interactivity, with an eye to long-term preservation when digital artworks are on display, on loan, or acquired in museum collections

    Efficient Semantic Segmentation for Resource-Constrained Applications with Lightweight Neural Networks

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    This thesis focuses on developing lightweight semantic segmentation models tailored for resource-constrained applications, effectively balancing accuracy and computational efficiency. It introduces several novel concepts, including knowledge sharing, dense bottleneck, and feature re-usability, which enhance the feature hierarchy by capturing fine-grained details, long-range dependencies, and diverse geometrical objects within the scene. To achieve precise object localization and improved semantic representations in real-time environments, the thesis introduces multi-stage feature aggregation, feature scaling, and hybrid-path attention methods
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