8,128 research outputs found
A narrative study of how shame features in the lives of women living with HIV
Once classed as a devastating virus that resulted in a guaranteed premature death, HIV can be treated successfully with lifelong medication and importantly its transmissibility is eliminated for individuals on effective medication. However, the psychosocial burden of HIV remains for many and despite this advancement in biomedical treatment, HIV remains a highly stigmatised virus and condition.
This study explores how shame features in the experiences of women living with HIV in Ireland. There is an absence of women’s narratives in the overall discourse on HIV in Ireland, therefore little is known about their lives. Research on shame tells us that prolonged unacknowledged shame can impact on mental well-being if unaddressed.
The study’s sample comprised twelve women living with HIV who were based in Ireland. Their narratives based on semi-structured interviews have been analysed using Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional narrative inquiry tool, which explores from the interactional, chronological and situational elements of a story. A cross-case analysis was adopted to explore dominant themes across the twelve narratives.
Findings from this study portray how shame stemmed from an absence of a woman centred HIV narrative and the ongoing presence of stigmatising HIV discourse. Shame featured as three dimensions of the exposed self: anticipated exposure, exposure avoidance and felt exposure. Finally, many of the participants managed to grow through their HIV-related shame and move past it by discovering a shared experience with other women, to reduce emotional isolation.
This study concludes that HIV-related shame can have negative implications for women’s health and general well-being, thus compromising women’s ability to live well with HIV. HIV-related shame must be addressed with the appropriate intervention. The study contributes to the development of a women-centred HIV discourse. This can help increase visibility of WLHIV and enable potential mitigation of the onset of HIV-related shame, which is crucial in this era of HIV normalisation
The Adirondack Chronology
The Adirondack Chronology is intended to be a useful resource for researchers and others interested in the Adirondacks and Adirondack history.https://digitalworks.union.edu/arlpublications/1000/thumbnail.jp
The interpretation of Islam and nationalism by the elite through the English language media in Pakistan.
The media is constructed and interpreted through what people 'know'. That knowledge is, forthe most part, created through day to day experiences. In Pakistan, Islam and nationalism aretwo components of this social knowledge which are intrinsically tied to the experiences of thePakistani people. Censorship and selection are means through which this knowledge isarticulated and interpreted.General conceptions of partially shared large scale bodies of knowledge and ideas reinforce,and are reinforced by, general medium of mass communication: the print and electronic media.Focusing on the govermnent, media institutions and Pakistani elites, I describe and analyse thedifferent, sometimes conflicting, interpretations of Islam and Pakistani nationalism manifest inand through media productions presented in Pakistan.The media means many things, not least of which is power. It is the media as a source ofpower that is so frequently controlled, directed and manipulated. The terminology may beslightly different according to the context within which one is talking - propaganda, selection,etc. - but ultimately it comes down to the same thing - censorship. Each of the three groups:government, media institutions and Pakistani elites - have the power to interpret and censormedia content and consideration must be taken of each of the other power holders consequentlyrestricting the power of each group in relation to the other two. The processes of thismanipulation and their consequences form the major themes of this thesis
Conscience and Consciousness: British Theatre and Human Rights.
This research project investigates a paradigm of human rights theatre. Through the lens of performance and theatre-making, this thesis explores how we came to represent, speak about, discuss, and own human rights in Britain. My framework of ‘human rights theatre’ proposes three distinctive features: firstly, such works dramatise real-world issues and highlights the role of the state in endangering its citizens; secondly, ethical ruptures are encountered within and without the drama, and finally, these performances characteristically aspire to produce an activist effect on the collective behaviours of the audience.
This thesis interrogates the strategies theatre-makers use to articulate human rights concerns or to animate human rights intent. The selected case-studies for this investigation are ice&fire’s testimonial project, Actors for Human Rights; Badac Theatre; Jonathan Holmes’ work as director of Jericho House; Cardboard Citizens’ youth participation programme, ACT NOW; and Tony Cealy’s Black Men’s Consortium. Deliberately selecting companies and performance events that have received limited critical attention, my methodology constellates case-studies through original interviews, durational observation of creative working methods and proximate descriptions of practice.
The thesis is interested in the experience of coming to ‘consciousness’ through human rights theatre, an awakening to the impacts of rights infringements and rights claiming. I explore consciousness as a processual, procedural, and durational happening in these performance events. I explore the ‘æffect’ of activist art and examine the ways in which makers of human rights theatre aim to amplify both affective and effective qualities in their work. My thesis also considers the articulation of activist purpose and the campaigning intent of the selected theatre-makers and explores how their activism is animated in their productions. Through the rich seam of discussion generated by the identification and exploration of the traits of a distinctive human rights theatre, I affirm the generative value of this typological enquiry
Managing global virtual teams in the London FinTech industry
Today, the number of organisations that are adopting virtual working arrangements has exploded, and the London FinTech industry is no exception. During recent years, FinTech companies have increasingly developed virtual teams as a means of connecting and engaging geographically dispersed workers, lowering costs, and enabling greater speed and adaptability.
As the first study in the United Kingdom regarding global virtual team management in the FinTech industry, this DBA research seeks answers to the question, “What makes for the successful management of a global virtual team in the London FinTech industry?”. Straussian grounded-theory method was chosen as this qualitative approach lets participants have their own voice and offers some flexibility. It also allows the researcher to have preconceived ideas about the research undertaking.
The research work makes the case for appreciating the voice of people with lived experiences. Ten London-based FinTech Managers with considerable experience running virtual teams agreed to take part in this study. These Managers had spent time working at large, household-name firms with significant global reach, and one had recently become founder and CEO of his own firm, taking on clients and hiring contract staff from around the world. At least eight of the other participants were senior ‘Heads’ of various technology teams and one was a Managing Director working at a ‘Big Four’ consultancy. They had all (and many still did) spent years running geographically distributed teams with members as far away as Pacific Asia and they were all keen to discuss that breadth of experience and the challenges they faced.
Results from these in-depth interviews suggested that there are myriad reasons for a global virtual team, from providing 24 hour, follow-the-sun service to locating the most cost-effective resources with the highest skills. It also confirmed that there are unique challenges to virtual management and new techniques are required to help navigate virtual managers through them.
Managing a global virtual team requires much more than the traditional management competencies. Based on discussion with the respondents, a set of practical recommendations for global virtual team management was developed and covered a wide range of issues related to recruitment and selection, team building, developing standard operating procedures, communication, motivation, performance management, and building trust
Optimización del rendimiento y la eficiencia energética en sistemas masivamente paralelos
RESUMEN Los sistemas heterogéneos son cada vez más relevantes, debido a sus capacidades de rendimiento y eficiencia energética, estando presentes en todo tipo de plataformas de cómputo, desde dispositivos embebidos y servidores, hasta nodos HPC de grandes centros de datos. Su complejidad hace que sean habitualmente usados bajo el paradigma de tareas y el modelo de programación host-device. Esto penaliza fuertemente el aprovechamiento de los aceleradores y el consumo energético del sistema, además de dificultar la adaptación de las aplicaciones.
La co-ejecución permite que todos los dispositivos cooperen para computar el mismo problema, consumiendo menos tiempo y energía. No obstante, los programadores deben encargarse de toda la gestión de los dispositivos, la distribución de la carga y la portabilidad del código entre sistemas, complicando notablemente su programación.
Esta tesis ofrece contribuciones para mejorar el rendimiento y la eficiencia energética en estos sistemas masivamente paralelos. Se realizan propuestas que abordan objetivos generalmente contrapuestos: se mejora la usabilidad y la programabilidad, a la vez que se garantiza una mayor abstracción y extensibilidad del sistema, y al mismo tiempo se aumenta el rendimiento, la escalabilidad y la eficiencia energética. Para ello, se proponen dos motores de ejecución con enfoques completamente distintos.
EngineCL, centrado en OpenCL y con una API de alto nivel, favorece la máxima compatibilidad entre todo tipo de dispositivos y proporciona un sistema modular extensible. Su versatilidad permite adaptarlo a entornos para los que no fue concebido, como aplicaciones con ejecuciones restringidas por tiempo o simuladores HPC de dinámica molecular, como el utilizado en un centro de investigación internacional.
Considerando las tendencias industriales y enfatizando la aplicabilidad profesional, CoexecutorRuntime proporciona un sistema flexible centrado en C++/SYCL que dota de soporte a la co-ejecución a la tecnología oneAPI. Este runtime acerca a los programadores al dominio del problema, posibilitando la explotación de estrategias dinámicas adaptativas que mejoran la eficiencia en todo tipo de aplicaciones.ABSTRACT Heterogeneous systems are becoming increasingly relevant, due to their performance and energy efficiency capabilities, being present in all types of computing platforms, from embedded devices and servers to HPC nodes in large data centers. Their complexity implies that they are usually used under the task paradigm and the host-device programming model. This strongly penalizes accelerator utilization and system energy consumption, as well as making it difficult to adapt applications.
Co-execution allows all devices to simultaneously compute the same problem, cooperating to consume less time and energy. However, programmers must handle all device management, workload distribution and code portability between systems, significantly complicating their programming.
This thesis offers contributions to improve performance and energy efficiency in these massively parallel systems. The proposals address the following generally conflicting objectives: usability and programmability are improved, while ensuring enhanced system abstraction and extensibility, and at the same time performance, scalability and energy efficiency are increased. To achieve this, two runtime systems with completely different approaches are proposed.
EngineCL, focused on OpenCL and with a high-level API, provides an extensible modular system and favors maximum compatibility between all types of devices. Its versatility allows it to be adapted to environments for which it was not originally designed, including applications with time-constrained executions or molecular dynamics HPC simulators, such as the one used in an international research center.
Considering industrial trends and emphasizing professional applicability, CoexecutorRuntime provides a flexible C++/SYCL-based system that provides co-execution support for oneAPI technology. This runtime brings programmers closer to the problem domain, enabling the exploitation of dynamic adaptive strategies that improve efficiency in all types of applications.Funding: This PhD has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU16/03299 grant),
the Spanish Science and Technology Commission under contracts TIN2016-76635-C2-2-R
and PID2019-105660RB-C22.
This work has also been partially supported by the Mont-Blanc 3: European Scalable and
Power Efficient HPC Platform based on Low-Power Embedded Technology project (G.A. No.
671697) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
(H2020 Programme). Some activities have also been funded by the Spanish Science and Technology
Commission under contract TIN2016-81840-REDT (CAPAP-H6 network).
The Integration II: Hybrid programming models of Chapter 4 has been partially performed
under the Project HPC-EUROPA3 (INFRAIA-2016-1-730897), with the support of the EC
Research Innovation Action under the H2020 Programme. In particular, the author gratefully
acknowledges the support of the SPMT Department of the High Performance Computing
Center Stuttgart (HLRS)
The Digital Continent:Placing Africa in Planetary Networks of Work
Only ten years ago, there were more internet users in countries like France or Germany than in all of Africa put together. But much has changed in a decade. The year 2018 marks the first year in human history in which a majority of the world’s population are now connected to the internet. This mass connectivity means that we have an internet that no longer connects only the world’s wealthy. Workers from Lagos to Johannesburg to Nairobi and everywhere in between can now apply for and carry out jobs coming from clients who themselves can be located anywhere in the world. Digital outsourcing firms can now also set up operations in the most unlikely of places in order to tap into hitherto disconnected labour forces. With CEOs in the Global North proclaiming that ‘location is a thing of the past’ (Upwork, 2018), and governments and civil society in Africa promising to create millions of jobs on the continent, the book asks what this ‘new world of digital work’ means to the lives of African workers. It draws from a year-long fieldwork in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda, with over 200 interviews with participants including gig workers, call and contact centre workers, self-employed freelancers, small-business owners, government officials, labour union officials, and industry experts. Focusing on both platform-based remote work and call and contact centre work, the book examines the job quality implications of digital work for the lives and livelihoods of African workers
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