4,505,241 research outputs found
English Studies as a Site for Healing: A Conversation about Place-Based and Indigenous Pedagogies in the English Classroom
This article summarizes a roundtable discussion from the 2016 Alaska Native Studies Conference among professors and students from two English Studies courses at the University of Alaska Anchorage: History of the English Language and History of Rhetoric. Jennifer and Heather discuss how the courses are traditionally taught and how they redesigned the courses to incorporate place-based and indigenous pedagogies. Then, Tayler, Samantha, Hailey, and Arlo--students from a range of backgrounds who took one or both of the classes--describe how the courses encouraged them to develop critical perspectives, build new knowledge through undergraduate research, and experience personal and professional transformations that led to advocacy. The dialogue provides a range of pedagogical perspectives and considers English Studies as a potential site for cultural and historical healing.Ye
Commonwealth place-based service delivery initiatives: key learnings project
Overview: Place-based initiatives are programs designed and delivered with the intention of targeting a specific geographical location and particular population group in order to respond to complex social problems. Typically, they focus on areas and communities with entrenched disadvantage or deprivation.
This report investigates the key factors and characteristics associated with successful outcomes with such programs, drawing on the international literature and evaluation studies of Australian government and overseas programs.
Key messages:
Many Commonwealth place-based initiatives reviewed had features that accord with those of international place-based initiatives, including common program elements such as design, delivery, implementation and evaluation.
Evaluation of all these common elements is rarely done by either international or Commonwealth place-based initiatives.
In particular, evaluations of Commonwealth place-based initiatives lacked sufficient evidence to establish the causal effects of initiatives, their cost-effectiveness and an understanding of how these initiatives work to achieve their goals. This was more pronounced among the evaluation of Commonwealth initiatives than in international evaluations
Learning Deep NBNN Representations for Robust Place Categorization
This paper presents an approach for semantic place categorization using data
obtained from RGB cameras. Previous studies on visual place recognition and
classification have shown that, by considering features derived from
pre-trained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in combination with part-based
classification models, high recognition accuracy can be achieved, even in
presence of occlusions and severe viewpoint changes. Inspired by these works,
we propose to exploit local deep representations, representing images as set of
regions applying a Na\"{i}ve Bayes Nearest Neighbor (NBNN) model for image
classification. As opposed to previous methods where CNNs are merely used as
feature extractors, our approach seamlessly integrates the NBNN model into a
fully-convolutional neural network. Experimental results show that the proposed
algorithm outperforms previous methods based on pre-trained CNN models and
that, when employed in challenging robot place recognition tasks, it is robust
to occlusions, environmental and sensor changes
Population-based neuropathological studies of dementia: design, methods and areas of investigation – a systematic review
Background
Prospective population-based neuropathological studies have a special place in dementia research which is under emphasised.
Methods
A systematic review of the methods of population-based neuropathological studies of dementia was carried out. These studies were assessed in relation to their representativeness of underlying populations and the clinical, neuropsychological and neuropathological approaches adopted.
Results
Six studies were found to be true population-based neuropathological studies of dementia in the older people: the Hisayama study (Japan); Vantaa 85+ study (Finland); CC75C study (Cambridge, UK); CFAS (multicentre, UK); Cache County study (Utah, USA); HAAS (Hawaï, USA). These differ in the core characteristics of their populations. The studies used standardised neuropathological methods which facilitate analyses on: clinicopathological associations and confirmation of diagnosis, assessing the validity of hierarchical models of neuropathological lesion burden; investigating the associations between neuropathological burden and risk factors including genetic factors. Examples of findings are given although there is too little overlap in the areas investigated amongst these studies to form the basis of a systematic review of the results.
Conclusion
Clinicopathological studies based on true population samples can provide unique insights in dementia. Individually they are limited in power and scope; together they represent a powerful source to translate findings from laboratory to populations
Fractal Systems of Central Places Based on Intermittency of Space-filling
The central place models are fundamentally important in theoretical geography
and city planning theory. The texture and structure of central place networks
have been demonstrated to be self-similar in both theoretical and empirical
studies. However, the underlying rationale of central place fractals in the
real world has not yet been revealed so far. This paper is devoted to
illustrating the mechanisms by which the fractal patterns can be generated from
central place systems. The structural dimension of the traditional central
place models is d=2 indicating no intermittency in the spatial distribution of
human settlements. This dimension value is inconsistent with empirical
observations. Substituting the complete space filling with the incomplete space
filling, we can obtain central place models with fractional dimension D<d=2
indicative of spatial intermittency. Thus the conventional central place models
are converted into fractal central place models. If we further integrate the
chance factors into the improved central place fractals, the theory will be
able to well explain the real patterns of urban places. As empirical analyses,
the US cities and towns are employed to verify the fractal-based models of
central places.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, 5 table
What interventions increase commuter cycling? A systematic review.
OBJECTIVE: To identify interventions that will increase commuter cycling. SETTING: All settings where commuter cycling might take place. PARTICIPANTS: Adults (aged 18+) in any country. INTERVENTIONS: Individual, group or environmental interventions including policies and infrastructure. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: A wide range of 'changes in commuter cycling' indicators, including frequency of cycling, change in workforce commuting mode, change in commuting population transport mode, use of infrastructure by defined populations and population modal shift. RESULTS: 12 studies from 6 countries (6 from the UK, 2 from Australia, 1 each from Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand and the USA) met the inclusion criteria. Of those, 2 studies were randomised control trials and the remainder preintervention and postintervention studies. The majority of studies (n=7) evaluated individual-based or group-based interventions and the rest environmental interventions. Individual-based or group-based interventions in 6/7 studies were found to increase commuter cycling of which the effect was significant in only 3/6 studies. Environmental interventions, however, had small but positive effects in much larger but more difficult to define populations. Almost all studies had substantial loss to follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Despite commuter cycling prevalence varying widely between countries, robust evidence of what interventions will increase commuter cycling in low cycling prevalence nations is sparse. Wider environmental interventions that make cycling conducive appear to reach out to hard to define but larger populations. This could mean that environmental interventions, despite their small positive effects, have greater public health significance than individual-based or group-based measures because those interventions encourage a larger number of people to integrate physical activity into their everyday lives
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Take Me Out: Space and Place in Library Interactions
Information interactions are strongly affected by the place where they occur. Specific locations are ofen associated with searches on particular topics, and individual users perform different tasks in habituated places. A classic example of habituated space is the commuter who regularly reads the news on the train. This paper investigates these associations through four user studies that examine different uses of place in information interaction. Through this, we reveal the ways in which the location of information interactions makes them effective or ineffective. This extends our interpretation of the role of place in information interaction beyond established foci such as location-based search
Comparative analysis of the productivity levels achieved through the use of panelised prefabrication technology with those of traditional building system : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Construction, School of Engineering & Advanced Technology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
Several studies have documented benefits of prefabricated building system compared to the
traditional approach. Despite the acknowledged benefits of prefabrication, its application is
generally low in the New Zealand construction industry. This low uptake is largely attributed
to the fact that the documented benefits of prefabrication technology are anecdotal, or based on
investigations of isolated case studies. This study aims to contribute to filling this knowledge
gap by analysing cost savings, time savings, and productivity improvement achievable by the
use of panelised prefabrication in place of the traditional building system. A two-phased
mixed method of research was adopted for the study. The first phase involved the use of case
study-based archival research to obtain qualitative data from records of 151 completed
building projects in three cities of New Zealand – Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington. The
second phase involved the use of questionnaire survey to obtain feedback from industry
stakeholders. Results showed that the use of panelised prefabrication in place of traditional
building system contributed to 21 percent cost saving, 47 percent time saving and 10 percent
average improvement in the productivity outcomes in the building projects. Results further
showed that 17 factors could significantly influence the levels of benefits achievable with the
use of prefabrication technology. ‘Building type’ and ‘location’ were the factors having the
most significant influence on the benefits achievable by the use of panelised prefabrication in
place of the traditional building systems. Other factors that influence the benefits of
prefabrication included (in diminishing order of influence): logistics, type of prefabrication,
scale/repeatability, standardisation, contractor’s level of innovation, environmental impact,
project leadership, type of procurement, whole of life quality, site conditions, site layout and
client’s nature
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