5,564 research outputs found

    Developing A Road Freight Transport Performance Measurement System To Drive Sustainability:An Empirical Study Of Egyptian Road Freight Transport Companies

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    While several road freight performance measurement systems have been developed, only a limited number of quantified performance measurement frameworks encompassing diverse sets of performance metrics from multiple sustainable perspectives are available on a technological platform. These sets of metrics could be integrated as crucial performance indicators for assessing the operational performance of various road freight transport companies. These indicators include fuel efficiency, trip duration, vehicle loading, and cargo capacity. The objective of this research is to construct a conceptual road freight performance measurement framework that comprehensively incorporates performance elements from sustainable viewpoints (economic, environmental, and social), leveraging technology to measure the performance of road freight transport companies. This proposed framework aims to aid these companies in gauging their performance using technology, thus enhancing their operations towards sustainability.Within the road freight transport sector, several challenges exist, with congestion, road infrastructure maintenance, and driver training and qualifications being particularly pressing issues. The developed performance measurement framework offers the means for companies to evaluate the effects of technology integration on vehicles and overall performance. This allows companies to measure their performance from an operational standpoint rather than solely a strategic one, thereby identifying areas requiring improvement. Egypt was chosen as the empirical study location due to its relatively low level of technological integration within its road freight sector.This thesis employs an explanatory mixed methods approach, encompassing four distinct phases. The first phase entails a review to formulate the proposed theoretical performance measurement framework. Subsequently, the second phase involves conducting semi-structured interviews using a Delphi method to both develop a conceptual performance measurement framework and explore the present state of Egypt's road freight transport sector. Following this, the third phase encompasses surveys based on the results derived from Delphi analysis, involving diverse participants from the road freight transport industry. The aim is to validate the developed performance measurement framework through an empirical study conducted in Egypt. Lastly, the fourth phase centres around organizing focus groups involving stakeholders within road freight transport companies. The goal here is to propose a roadmap for implementing the developed road freight transport performance measurement framework within the Egyptian context.The primary theoretical contribution of this research is the development of a road freight transport performance measurement framework that integrates the three sustainability dimensions with technology. Additionally, this study offers practical guidance for the application of the developed framework in various countries and contexts. From a practical standpoint, this research aids road freight transport managers in evaluating their operational performance, thereby identifying challenges, devising action plans, and making informed decisions to mitigate these issues and enhance sustainability-oriented performance. Ultimately, the developed road freight transport performance measurement framework is poised to promote performance measurement aligned with technology, fostering progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030

    Mapping Disaster: Indicators for a Resilient Food System in North Minneapolis

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    This research examines the complexities within the interdependent global issues of racism and food insecurity and argues for the need to build empirical systems of analysis around the reliability of food systems to advance targeted efforts of disaster planning and response. To explore the barriers to food security that BIPOC communities face in North Minneapolis, Minnesota, I take a local case study approach and direct my focus to community-based organizations that are addressing issues around food security. Through the exploration of structural barriers that exist within the food systems serving marginalized communities, this project will exemplify a localized case study of a global dynamic and determine the extent that community development approaches to food security are designed to respond effectively, efficiently, and sustainably to crises. Furthermore, this project will seek to understand the ways community-based organizations can provide enhanced community support around the reliability of food systems

    Effective player guidance in logic puzzles

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    Pen & paper puzzle games are an extremely popular pastime, often enjoyed by demographics normally not considered to be ‘gamers’. They are increasingly used as ‘serious games’ and there has been extensive research into computationally generating and efficiently solving them. However, there have been few academic studies that have focused on the players themselves. Presenting an appropriate level of challenge to a player is essential for both player enjoyment and engagement. Providing appropriate assistance is an essential mechanic for making a game accessible to a variety of players. In this thesis, we investigate how players solve Progressive Pen & Paper Puzzle Games (PPPPs) and how to provide meaningful assistance that allows players to recover from being stuck, while not reducing the challenge to trivial levels. This thesis begins with a qualitative in-person study of Sudoku solving. This study demonstrates that, in contrast to all existing assumptions used to model players, players were unsystematic, idiosyncratic and error-prone. We then designed an entirely new approach to providing assistance in PPPPs, which guides players towards easier deductions rather than, as current systems do, completing the next cell for them. We implemented a novel hint system using our design, with the assessment of the challenge being done using Minimal Unsatisfiable Sets (MUSs). We conducted four studies, using two different PPPPs, that evaluated the efficacy of the novel hint system compared to the current hint approach. The studies demonstrated that our novel hint system was as helpful as the existing system while also improving the player experience and feeling less like cheating. Players also chose to use our novel hint system significantly more often. We have provided a new approach to providing assistance to PPPP players and demonstrated that players prefer it over existing approaches

    The Perception of K-12 Instrumental Directors in Low-Income Areas on Virtual Learning with Skill Development and Retention

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    Due to the extreme measures taken to protect students from COVID-19 during the pandemic, schools closed their doors, and educators struggled to continue teaching through virtual learning platforms. Performance-based classrooms were encouraged to discover new methods and strategies to motivate students to thrive even though face-to-face rehearsals were restricted. This study examined the experiences secondary music education instrumentalists faced while attempting to utilize synchronous and asynchronous instruction in a 100 percent virtual performance-based environment. This study aimed to understand the negative and positive effects placed on secondary instrumentalists’ performance abilities, fundamental development, and participation/retention since the introduction of virtual learning in low-income areas. The focus of this study also examined the possible benefits of enhancing pedagogical skills through the addition of technological advances to push instrumental instruction and performances on the secondary level. This study followed a qualitative hermeneutic phenomenology design. Music educators in low-income DeKalb County communities were interviewed for this study. Participants were requested to share their perspectives and experiences of performance-based virtual learning and results. The study raised the need for future discussions to create and implement a state and national virtual music education guideline that would assist music educators in turning a devastating situation into a blessing for all art programs and their stakeholders

    Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

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    This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings

    A Taxonomy of Freehand Grasping Patterns in Virtual Reality

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    Grasping is the most natural and primary interaction paradigm people perform every day, which allows us to pick up and manipulate objects around us such as drinking a cup of coffee or writing with a pen. Grasping has been highly explored in real environments, to understand and structure the way people grasp and interact with objects by presenting categories, models and theories for grasping approach. Due to the complexity of the human hand, classifying grasping knowledge to provide meaningful insights is a challenging task, which led to researchers developing grasp taxonomies to provide guidelines for emerging grasping work (such as in anthropology, robotics and hand surgery) in a systematic way. While this body of work exists for real grasping, the nuances of grasping transfer in virtual environments is unexplored. The emerging development of robust hand tracking sensors for virtual devices now allow the development of grasp models that enable VR to simulate real grasping interactions. However, present work has not yet explored the differences and nuances that are present in virtual grasping compared to real object grasping, which means that virtual systems that create grasping models based on real grasping knowledge, might make assumptions which are yet to be proven true or untrue around the way users intuitively grasp and interact with virtual objects. To address this, this thesis presents the first user elicitation studies to explore grasping patterns directly in VR. The first study presents main similarities and differences between real and virtual object grasping, the second study furthers this by exploring how virtual object shape influences grasping patterns, the third study focuses on visual thermal cues and how this influences grasp metrics, and the fourth study focuses on understanding other object characteristics such as stability and complexity and how they influence grasps in VR. To provide structured insights on grasping interactions in VR, the results are synthesized in the first VR Taxonomy of Grasp Types, developed following current methods for developing grasping and HCI taxonomies and re-iterated to present an updated and more complete taxonomy. Results show that users appear to mimic real grasping behaviour in VR, however they also illustrate that users present issues around object size estimation and generally a lower variability in grasp types is used. The taxonomy shows that only five grasps account for the majority of grasp data in VR, which can be used for computer systems aiming to achieve natural and intuitive interactions at lower computational cost. Further, findings show that virtual object characteristics such as shape, stability and complexity as well as visual cues for temperature influence grasp metrics such as aperture, category, type, location and dimension. These changes in grasping patterns together with virtual object categorisation methods can be used to inform design decisions when developing intuitive interactions and virtual objects and environments and therefore taking a step forward in achieving natural grasping interaction in VR

    AI Transparency in the Age of LLMs: A Human-Centered Research Roadmap

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    The rise of powerful large language models (LLMs) brings about tremendous opportunities for innovation but also looming risks for individuals and society at large. We have reached a pivotal moment for ensuring that LLMs and LLM-infused applications are developed and deployed responsibly. However, a central pillar of responsible AI -- transparency -- is largely missing from the current discourse around LLMs. It is paramount to pursue new approaches to provide transparency for LLMs, and years of research at the intersection of AI and human-computer interaction (HCI) highlight that we must do so with a human-centered perspective: Transparency is fundamentally about supporting appropriate human understanding, and this understanding is sought by different stakeholders with different goals in different contexts. In this new era of LLMs, we must develop and design approaches to transparency by considering the needs of stakeholders in the emerging LLM ecosystem, the novel types of LLM-infused applications being built, and the new usage patterns and challenges around LLMs, all while building on lessons learned about how people process, interact with, and make use of information. We reflect on the unique challenges that arise in providing transparency for LLMs, along with lessons learned from HCI and responsible AI research that has taken a human-centered perspective on AI transparency. We then lay out four common approaches that the community has taken to achieve transparency -- model reporting, publishing evaluation results, providing explanations, and communicating uncertainty -- and call out open questions around how these approaches may or may not be applied to LLMs. We hope this provides a starting point for discussion and a useful roadmap for future research

    “It’s not a vacation, it’s your life”. Privileged identities, ageing experiences, and migration projects of British retirees on the coasts of Spain

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    [eng] This doctoral thesis investigates identity, ageing, and migration through an intersectional approach to retirement and later life migration from the UK to Spain. Through an in-depth exploration of the experiences of British expatriate retirees in Costa del Sol, Andalusia, and Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain, the thesis analyzes the generation of experiences between privilege, vulnerability, and precarity, and its contingent effects on the construction of these identity processes. The trend of British retirees moving to Spain has a long-standing history and has been studied in Anthropology, Gerontology, migration studies, and more. Yet, in the period between 2019 and 2020, when this research took place, the confluence of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated the field of study. Said geopolitical and sociosanitary shifts put the experiences and identities of British expatriate retirees in question; altering the material foundations upon which their privileged migration life projects were constructed. Like this, creating a unique context where privilege and uncertainty meet in the crux of intersecting experiences of migration and ageing. Through the latter, the thesis contributes to anthropological debates on the contextualized construction of identities between the self and society; on Global North ageing discourses and its’ effects on later life identity projects; and questions the use of migration categories on the ground. Since identity, ageing and migration are polysemic concepts that have mutated over time with their subsequent analytical repercussions, this thesis adopts an intersectional lens that recognizes and develops the debates these terms are involved in, as well as captures the everyday connections between micro experiences and macro structures that evidence relationships of power and the perpetuation of inequalities. This involves the study of labels and their adjacent prejudices and stigmas, exposing how these travel from one sociocultural context to another, while also exploring how feelings of belonging are built abroad. By examining through the seemingly privileged retirement migration experiences of informants, this doctoral thesis exposes the intricacies between privilege, vulnerability, dependence, and precarity through the minutiae of the quotidian, contributing to wider empirical and conceptual debates regarding identity, ageing, and migration.[spa] Esta tesis doctoral investiga la identidad, el envejecimiento y la migración a través de un enfoque interseccional de la gerontomigración y la migración en etapas vitales tardías des del Reino Unido a España. Al explorar en profundidad las experiencias de jubilados expatriados británicos en la Costa del Sol y la Costa Brava, España, esta tesis analiza la generación de experiencias entre el privilegio, la vulnerabilidad, y la precariedad, y sus efectos contingentes sobre la construcción de estos procesos identitarios. El fenómeno de jubilados británicos que migran a España tiene una larga historia y se ha estudiado en antropología, gerontología, estudios de migración y más. No obstante, en el período entre 2019 y 2020 cuando se llevó a cabo esta investigación, la confluencia del Brexit y la pandemia de COVID-19 revitalizó el campo de estudio. Dichos cambios geopolíticos y sociosanitarios cuestionan las experiencias e identidades de los jubilados expatriados británicos; alterando los cimientos materiales sobre los que se construyeron sus privilegiados proyectos de vida migratoria. Así, creando un contexto único donde el privilegio y la incertidumbre se encuentran en la intersección de experiencias migratorias y de envejecimiento. A través de esto último, la tesis contribuye a debates antropológicos sobre la construcción contextualizada de identidades entre el yo y la sociedad; sobre los discursos acerca del envejecimiento del Norte Global y sus efectos en los proyectos identitarios en la vejez; y cuestiona los usos de las categorías migratorias tradicionales sobre el terreno. Dado que la identidad, el envejecimiento y la migración son conceptos polisémicos que han mutado a lo largo del tiempo, con sus subsecuentes repercusiones analíticas, esta investigación adopta una aproximación interseccional que reconoce y desarrolla los debates en los que están involucrados estos términos, y, asimismo, también capturando las conexiones entre las micro experiencias y las macroestructuras que evidencian las relaciones de poder y la perpetuación de desigualdades. Esto implica el estudio de etiquetas y sus prejuicios y estigmas adyacentes, apuntando cómo éstos transitan de un contexto sociocultural a otro, además de explorar cómo se construyen los sentimientos de pertenencia en el extranjero. Al examinar las experiencias migratorias de jubilación aparentemente privilegiadas de los informantes, esta tesis doctoral expone las complejidades entre el privilegio, la vulnerabilidad, la dependencia y la precariedad a través de las minucias de lo cotidiano. Así contribuyendo a debates empíricos y conceptuales más amplios en torno a la identidad, el envejecimiento y la migración
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