Image Tagging and Gearing Resources applied to students’ graphic materials: Learning techniques in pursuit of Inclusiveness for Urban and Landscape Design

Inclusiveness can be considered a requirement for contemporary statements in urban and landscape design referring to age, condition, gender or nature. But how is inclusiveness influenced by spatial design? Can this relation be measured or proven? And more precisely, which interactions are considered across different generations or between human and non-human agents? This paper describes student’s work evaluation procedures through a methodology consisting of selecting picture-based content from initial reference materials provided by teaching staff, as well as graphic material designed and produced by the students, to further analyze these through data visualization techniques and the production of info-graphics. In a latter step, a gearing game – which is a type of sociogram used to understand agents and matters of interest – is utilized to drive a discussion about design statements for further stages of development concerning students’ design projects. The first stages of the methodology are strongly influenced by how the students perceive elements from reference materials and represent these in their own design productions. A literature review further investigates the dichotomy between representation and perception, and the generation of subjective images. As a final consideration, this work aims to create combined methodologies by incorporating participatory observation methods (e.g. photovoice and flow charts) from the social sciences into urban and landscape design, as they are understood through an accurate design of the learning experience. Similarly, non-representational design and dataviz diagrams from urban and landscape design could potentially be implemented in the teaching of social sciences

Assembling a Blue Economy moment? Geographic engagement with globalizing biological-economic relations in multi-use marine environments

In the 2010s, the Blue Economy' has been widely advocated by a spectrum of interests as a strategy to save the world's oceans and water. This article explores what the Blue Economy moment is and how geographers can engage with it. It acknowledges recent efforts by geographers to understand Blue Economy but goes further by outlining the European Union's Blue Economy programmes and by discussing these in relation to recent agenda setting in marine science. We argue that in spite of apparent convergence on this goal, the Blue Economy imaginary disciplines disparate knowledge for economic projects, when the planetary reality is that every economic project is axiomatically a biological project, with some economic aspects. In this context, the article outlines how assemblage thinking could be relevant to a human geography engagement with Blue Economy and what this could like, and how a relational conception of Blue Economy helps advance understanding. Finally, we discuss the difficulties and potential for human geographers to be genuinely enactive given the disciplinary framings that have already been assumed or imposed through Blue Economy. This last is highlighted by discussing engagement in a particular New Zealand Blue Economy initiative. Rather than either promoting or critiquing Blue Economy, we encourage informed and critical engagement with Blue Economy by geographers

Conceptual graph-based knowledge representation for supporting reasoning in African traditional medicine

Although African patients use both conventional or modern and traditional healthcare simultaneously, it has been proven that 80% of people rely on African traditional medicine (ATM). ATM includes medical activities stemming from practices, customs and traditions which were integral to the distinctive African cultures. It is based mainly on the oral transfer of knowledge, with the risk of losing critical knowledge. Moreover, practices differ according to the regions and the availability of medicinal plants. Therefore, it is necessary to compile tacit, disseminated and complex knowledge from various Tradi-Practitioners (TP) in order to determine interesting patterns for treating a given disease. Knowledge engineering methods for traditional medicine are useful to model suitably complex information needs, formalize knowledge of domain experts and highlight the effective practices for their integration to conventional medicine. The work described in this paper presents an approach which addresses two issues. First it aims at proposing a formal representation model of ATM knowledge and practices to facilitate their sharing and reusing. Then, it aims at providing a visual reasoning mechanism for selecting best available procedures and medicinal plants to treat diseases. The approach is based on the use of the Delphi method for capturing knowledge from various experts which necessitate reaching a consensus. Conceptual graph formalism is used to model ATM knowledge with visual reasoning capabilities and processes. The nested conceptual graphs are used to visually express the semantic meaning of Computational Tree Logic (CTL) constructs that are useful for formal specification of temporal properties of ATM domain knowledge. Our approach presents the advantage of mitigating knowledge loss with conceptual development assistance to improve the quality of ATM care (medical diagnosis and therapeutics), but also patient safety (drug monitoring)

Analytical Coding: Performing Qualitative Data Analysis Based on Programming Principles

In this paper, we argue that qualitative data analysis software lacks a tool that can be used to fulfill an algorithmic evaluation of conceptualization carried out in qualitative studies. We propose the context-oriented models of coding that conjugate single codes, that is, brief denotations made in natural language, by unusual local relationships called context-fixed elucidation (CFE). CFE is a local relationship between miscellaneous aspects of a case under study. The set of separate CFEs, originated by the analyst during conceptualization and called thesaurus, represents the case as a whole. On the basis of CFE structure and using the thesaurus’ single codes as data, there is proposed an algorithm which calculates, without the involvement of the expert, whether there is or not global coherence of single codes used by analyst within the thesaurus. The tool thus obtained emulates for the codes originated in qualitative study the relationships known in the object-oriented programming, such as polymorphism, visibility, encapsulation, inheritance. A probe application of the new tool is demonstrated by the conceptualization of textual evidence. The application was performed with the help of a pilot computer package which architecture is based on the context-oriented models. Thanks to the models, QDAS can obtain special tools that would make researchers\u27 analytical work more intelligible and coherent. The models proposed can find applications outside of research discourse including computer technologies used in various social spheres where people communicate in natural language

Hyperimage Index

Image has gone hyper, can research catch up? This essay proposes collective indexing as an alternative to academic publishing for rendering research on fast-changing and larger-than-human subjects such as algorithmic images. Following the introduction of notions of network and scale in my research, the essay articulates the value of collective indexing while mapping out contemporary examples. Collective indexing produces new ways of knowledge making and community building, as well as new forms of research aesthetics apt for addressing the distributed nature of algorithmic image systems

Participant observation and research into football hooliganism: reflections on the problems of entree and everyday risks

This paper discusses the author's fieldwork experiences while initiating and undertaking substantive participant observation research with two rival groups of Scottish football hooligans ("football casuals"). Key problems examined are those that emerge from attempted entree into the hooligan subcultures and the everyday risks of comparative research with violent fans. The author provides regular illustrations to highlight how dangers such as the researcher's personal characteristics, lack of guiding sociological literature, and interaction with police officers can threaten the urban ethnographic project. The resultant ambivalence of some research subjects toward the author is interpreted as one reason for minimizing the prospect of his "going native.

Intelligent business processes composition based on mas, semantic and cloud integration (IPCASCI)

[EN]Component reuse is one of the techniques that most clearly contributes to the evolution of the software industry by providing efficient mechanisms to create quality software. Reuse increases both software reliability, due to the fact that it uses previously tested software components, and development productivity, and leads to a clear reduction in cost. Web services have become are an standard for application development on cloud computing environments and are essential in business process development. These services facilitate a software construction that is relatively fast and efficient, two aspects which can be improved by defining suitable models of reuse. This research work is intended to define a model which contains the construction requirements of new services from service composition. To this end, the composition is based on tested Web services and artificial intelligent tools at our disposal. It is believed that a multi-agent architecture based on virtual organizations is a suitable tool to facilitate the construction of cloud computing environments for business processes from other existing environments, and with help from ontological models as well as tools providing the standard BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). In the context of this proposal, we must generate a new business process from the available services in the platform, starting with the requirement specifications that the process should meet. These specifications will be composed of a semi-free description of requirements to describe the new service. The virtual organizations based on a multi-agent system will manage the tasks requiring intelligent behaviour. This system will analyse the input (textual description of the proposal) in order to deconstruct it into computable functionalities, which will be subsequently treated. Web services (or business processes) stored to be reused have been created from the perspective of SOA architectures and associated with an ontological component, which allows the multi-agent system (based on virtual organizations) to identify the services to complete the reuse process. The proposed model develops a service composition by applying a standard BPEL once the services that will compose the solution business process have been identified. This standard allows us to compose Web services in an easy way and provides the advantage of a direct mapping from Business Process Management Notation diagrams