187 research outputs found

    Handbook Transdisciplinary Learning

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    What is transdisciplinarity - and what are its methods? How does a living lab work? What is the purpose of citizen science, student-organized teaching and cooperative education? This handbook unpacks key terms and concepts to describe the range of transdisciplinary learning in the context of academic education. Transdisciplinary learning turns out to be a comprehensive innovation process in response to the major global challenges such as climate change, urbanization or migration. A reference work for students, lecturers, scientists, and anyone wanting to understand the profound changes in higher education

    Strategies for Sustaining Leisure and Hospitality Small Businesses

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    Disruptive events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, impact leisure and hospitality businesses by disrupting customer patronage and business operations. Small business owners in the leisure and hospitality industry risk revenue loss and business failure when they cannot remain operational during disruptive events. Grounded in the blue ocean theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies leisure and hospitality small business owners used to sustain their businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants comprised five leisure and hospitality small business owners in the central region of Texas who had successful business operations before the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2019 and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and a review of peer-reviewed studies. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: resources, customer service, and communication. The recommendations are for business owners to reconfigure resources and reduce costs, ensure customer service and responsiveness, and convey information about business operations, products, and services. The implication for positive social change includes the potential for leisure and hospitality small business owners to sustain their businesses. With sustained businesses, the community may benefit through additional employment opportunities, improved economic growth, and increased tax revenues

    Sovereignty Through Security? Canada's Arctic Defence in the Surveillance Age

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    This project considers how materials, practices and semiotics align and structure the development and use of security technologies in the Canadian Arctic. The dissertation asks: does the development of new technologies geared towards surveillance of the Canadian Arctic represent a new approach to security in the North? It is argued that current technological developments are grounded in a particular sociotechnical imaginary that is at once predicated on historical state practices while drawing from a more comprehensive assemblage of modern state strategies that are refracted through a lens of futurity. Notably, how the Arctic is understood and rationalized as a space of social and political life is dependent on a uniquely securitized image of the future. Within this imaginary, the Canadian state's rhetorical claims to sovereignty are threatened by the potential for competing expressions of power enabled by climate change, technological diffusion, and other trends at the international scale. Consequently, technologies developed for surveillance, intelligence, and Arctic security more broadly are designed to support practices of pre-emption as techniques of state power. Canada is prioritizing technological innovation as a governance strategy designed to rationalize and consolidate its power over its Arctic territory. Broadly, this strategy is predicated on illuminating the Arctic using the visible and non-visible spectrums, which contributes to sovereignty as a rhetorical, material, and symbolic signifier of state power and control. In order to demonstrate the interplay between this imaginary and material expressions of state sovereignty, the concept of full-spectral dominance is deployed as a technique of power that captures the state's security ambitions through the joint practices of surveillance and intelligence (sensing). This concept is illustrated through an examination of current technological developments being pursued by the Canadian state through the All Domain Situational Awareness (ADSA) Program led by National Defence along with related programs and developments. In sum, these developments exhibit how increasingly imaginative views of the Arctic’s future contour state-led practices in the present

    Automated news in practice: changing the journalistic doxa during COVID-19, at the BBC and across media organisations

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    This PhD thesis explores the deployment of automated text generation for journalistic purposesȄalso known as automated news or automated journalismȄwithin newsrooms. To evaluate its perceived impacts on the work of media practitioners, I rely on Bourdieuǯs Field theoryǡ but also make use of Actor-network theory to detail its adoption at a more descriptive level. This study is based on various case studies and on a mixed-methods framework that is essentially made of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with media practitioners, technologists and executives working at 23 news organisations in Europe, North America and Australia; it also involves elements of a netnography as online material and screenshots were analysed as part of this process. My empirical work starts with a descriptive account that includes three case studies: one on the use of automated news to cover COVID-19, another one on BBCǯs experiments with the technology and a last one that shows a cross-national comparison between three media types (i.e., public service media, news agencies and newspapers). I then move on to a more interpretative part where I examine media practitionersǯ reactions to automated news, analysing the challenges of having to rely on external datasets, the importance of acquiring a computational thinking mindset and tensions within and outside the field of journalism for this. My research shows that the use of automated news implies structural changes to journalism practice and cannot be seen as a mere Dztool of the tradedzǤ For practitionersǡ the most challenging part lies with being able to master both the uniqueness of journalistic work and a type of abstract reasoning close to computer programming. However, this could leave some being unable to adapt to this new computational spirit, which seems to be gradually taking root within newsrooms. As for future development of automated news systems, it remains to be seen if media organisations or platforms will have the upper hand in remaining at the centre of it

    A review of commercialisation mechanisms for carbon dioxide removal

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    The deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) needs to be scaled up to achieve net zero emission pledges. In this paper we survey the policy mechanisms currently in place globally to incentivise CDR, together with an estimate of what different mechanisms are paying per tonne of CDR, and how those costs are currently distributed. Incentive structures are grouped into three structures, market-based, public procurement, and fiscal mechanisms. We find the majority of mechanisms currently in operation are underresourced and pay too little to enable a portfolio of CDR that could support achievement of net zero. The majority of mechanisms are concentrated in market-based and fiscal structures, specifically carbon markets and subsidies. While not primarily motivated by CDR, mechanisms tend to support established afforestation and soil carbon sequestration methods. Mechanisms for geological CDR remain largely underdeveloped relative to the requirements of modelled net zero scenarios. Commercialisation pathways for CDR require suitable policies and markets throughout the projects development cycle. Discussion and investment in CDR has tended to focus on technology development. Our findings suggest that an equal or greater emphasis on policy innovation may be required if future requirements for CDR are to be met. This study can further support research and policy on the identification of incentive gaps and realistic potential for CDR globally

    Strategies for Sustaining Leisure and Hospitality Small Businesses

    Get PDF
    Disruptive events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, impact leisure and hospitality businesses by disrupting customer patronage and business operations. Small business owners in the leisure and hospitality industry risk revenue loss and business failure when they cannot remain operational during disruptive events. Grounded in the blue ocean theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies leisure and hospitality small business owners used to sustain their businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants comprised five leisure and hospitality small business owners in the central region of Texas who had successful business operations before the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2019 and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and a review of peer-reviewed studies. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: resources, customer service, and communication. The recommendations are for business owners to reconfigure resources and reduce costs, ensure customer service and responsiveness, and convey information about business operations, products, and services. The implication for positive social change includes the potential for leisure and hospitality small business owners to sustain their businesses. With sustained businesses, the community may benefit through additional employment opportunities, improved economic growth, and increased tax revenues

    Building Blocks for IoT Analytics Internet-of-Things Analytics

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    Internet-of-Things (IoT) Analytics are an integral element of most IoT applications, as it provides the means to extract knowledge, drive actuation services and optimize decision making. IoT analytics will be a major contributor to IoT business value in the coming years, as it will enable organizations to process and fully leverage large amounts of IoT data, which are nowadays largely underutilized. The Building Blocks of IoT Analytics is devoted to the presentation the main technology building blocks that comprise advanced IoT analytics systems. It introduces IoT analytics as a special case of BigData analytics and accordingly presents leading edge technologies that can be deployed in order to successfully confront the main challenges of IoT analytics applications. Special emphasis is paid in the presentation of technologies for IoT streaming and semantic interoperability across diverse IoT streams. Furthermore, the role of cloud computing and BigData technologies in IoT analytics are presented, along with practical tools for implementing, deploying and operating non-trivial IoT applications. Along with the main building blocks of IoT analytics systems and applications, the book presents a series of practical applications, which illustrate the use of these technologies in the scope of pragmatic applications. Technical topics discussed in the book include: Cloud Computing and BigData for IoT analyticsSearching the Internet of ThingsDevelopment Tools for IoT Analytics ApplicationsIoT Analytics-as-a-ServiceSemantic Modelling and Reasoning for IoT AnalyticsIoT analytics for Smart BuildingsIoT analytics for Smart CitiesOperationalization of IoT analyticsEthical aspects of IoT analyticsThis book contains both research oriented and applied articles on IoT analytics, including several articles reflecting work undertaken in the scope of recent European Commission funded projects in the scope of the FP7 and H2020 programmes. These articles present results of these projects on IoT analytics platforms and applications. Even though several articles have been contributed by different authors, they are structured in a well thought order that facilitates the reader either to follow the evolution of the book or to focus on specific topics depending on his/her background and interest in IoT and IoT analytics technologies. The compilation of these articles in this edited volume has been largely motivated by the close collaboration of the co-authors in the scope of working groups and IoT events organized by the Internet-of-Things Research Cluster (IERC), which is currently a part of EU's Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI)

    Transforming our World through Universal Design for Human Development

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    An environment, or any building product or service in it, should ideally be designed to meet the needs of all those who wish to use it. Universal Design is the design and composition of environments, products, and services so that they can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. It creates products, services and environments that meet people’s needs. In short, Universal Design is good design. This book presents the proceedings of UD2022, the 6th International Conference on Universal Design, held from 7 - 9 September 2022 in Brescia, Italy.The conference is targeted at professionals and academics interested in the theme of universal design as related to the built environment and the wellbeing of users, but also covers mobility and urban environments, knowledge, and information transfer, bringing together research knowledge and best practice from all over the world. The book contains 72 papers from 13 countries, grouped into 8 sections and covering topics including the design of inclusive natural environments and urban spaces, communities, neighborhoods and cities; housing; healthcare; mobility and transport systems; and universally- designed learning environments, work places, cultural and recreational spaces. One section is devoted to universal design and cultural heritage, which had a particular focus at this edition of the conference. The book reflects the professional and disciplinary diversity represented in the UD movement, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves inclusive design
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