The Conflict Between the Two Main Belgian Nationalities. Its Correlation With the Case of a Partnership Between University, Public and Private Iniatives, and Its Result in the New City of Louvain-La-Neuve.

This paper deals with contemporary planning projects that are correlated with community-university partnerships. It studies the ways in which the socio-spatial and national conflict in Belgium in the ’60 led to an innovative resolution which is correlated with planning projects (the transformation of rural space) and a new form of contemporary ‘new cities’. The main subject of work is the new city named Louvain-la-neuve that was created in order to accomodate the French-speaking university of Leuven after the linguistic conflict of 1968 and the social problem of the difficulties of the coexistence of two different nationalities. Through this project of the city in question, which was mobilized by the administration of the university (UniversitéCatholique de Louvain), the French-speaking Belgian government also aimed in the creation of a new pole of development in the French-speaking region (Wallonie) which would force the development of the whole region and would restore the French-speaking community in the limelight (as it was in an earlier time). More specifically, the research surveys the characteristics of the project according to some parameters: b) the role of the university in the planning processes c) the way that education consists the motivating force of a city and creates agglomeration economies d) and the planning theory in practice and the knowledge of university in planning matters, e)the results of the project in the national and regional economy in the local society and in the sustainability of the city. The local research including living in the area for several months took place in the year 2001 and the main research was made between September 2003 and August 2004 and the analysis of the data followed. The research was based on the local research as well as in two structured interviews with two off the main staff of both the French and Dutch-speaking administration committee of the university of Leuven, visual and photographical survey and group discussions with the local population permanent and temporary, and collection of all possible planning and policy documents as well as surveys concerning the project and the city. The outcome of the research shows the way in which the well-known Belgian national problem resulted in a partnership between the community and the university and in the creation of a new contemporary city that in our days tries to survive and ameliorate its environment through the knowledge-theory and the resources that the university can continuously ensure for the city’s development. The research has shown a new innovative approach of the Belgian planning processes that is deeply correlated to a socio-political problem.

Human behaviour modelling in complex socio-technical systems : an agent based approach

For many years we have been striving to understand human behaviour and our interactions with our socio-technological environment. By advancing our knowledge in this area, we have helped the design of new or improved work processes and technologies. Historically, much of the work in analysing social interactions has been conducted within the social sciences. However, computer simulation has brought an extra tool in trying to understand and model human behaviours. Using an agent based approach this presentation describes my work in constructing computational models of human behaviour for informing design through simulation. With examples from projects in two main application areas of crisis and emergency management, and energy management I describe how my work addresses some main issues in agent based social simulation. The first concerns the process by which we develop these models. The second lies in the nature of socio-technical systems. Human societies are a perfect example of a complex system exhibiting characteristics of self-organisation, adaptability and showing emergent phenomena such as cooperation and robustness. I describe how complex systems theory may be applied to improve our understanding of socio-technical systems, and how our micro level interactions lead to emergent mutual awareness for problem-solving. From agent based simulation systems I show how context awareness may be modelled. Looking forward to the future, I discuss how the increasing prevalence of artificial agents in our society will cause us to re-examine the new types of interactions and cooperative behaviours that will emerge.Depuis de nombreuses années, nous nous sommes efforcés de comprendre le comportement humain et nos interactions avec l'environnement sociotechnique. Grâce à l'avancée de nos connaissances dans ce domaine, nous avons contribué à la conception de technologies et de processus de travail nouveaux ou améliorés. Historiquement, une part importante du travail d'analyse des interactions sociales fut entreprise au sein des sciences sociales. Cependant, la simulation informatique a apporté un nouvel outil pour tenter de comprendre et de modéliser les comportements humains. En utilisant une approche à base d'agents, cette présentation décrit mon travail sur la construction de modèles informatiques du comportement humain pour guider la conception par la simulation. A l'aide d'exemples issus de projets des deux domaines d'application que sont la gestion des crises et de l'urgence et la gestion de l'énergie, je décris comment mon travail aborde certains problèmes centraux à la simulation sociale à base d'agents. Le premier concerne le processus par lequel nous développons ces modèles. Le second problème provient de la nature des systèmes sociotechniques. Les sociétés humaines constituent un exemple parfait de système complexe possédant des caractéristiques d'auto-organisation et d'adaptabilité, et affichant des phénomènes émergents tels que la coopération et la robustesse. Je décris comment la théorie des systèmes complexes peut être appliquée pour améliorer notre compréhension des systèmes sociotechniques, et comment nos interactions au niveau microscopique mènent à l'émergence d'une conscience mutuelle pour la résolution de problèmes. A partir de systèmes de simulation à base d'agents, je montre comment la conscience du contexte peut être modélisée. En terme de perspectives, j'expliquerai comment la hausse de la prévalence des agents artificiels dans notre société nous forcera à considérer de nouveaux types d'interactions et de comportements coopératifs

Ill Fare the Humanities

The starting point of our considerations is the two books published in 2010: “Ill Fares the Land” by the late Tony Judt and “Not for Profit” by Martha Nussbaum. The authors of both books share the conviction that neoliberal changes in the world of global capitalism radically impoverish culture and their consequences may be dramatic and irreversible. In our paper we would like to emphasize the dangers to solidarity and social cohesion posed by neoliberal postulates. We also claim that promoting the neoliberal ideology in the context of higher education and institutions of civic society endangers the very democracy understood as reasonable pluralism (in John Rawls’ terminology), consisting in rationality, plurality of opinions, lifestyles and conceptions of good, as well as consensus as the aim of social and political practices

Legal linked data ecosystems and the rule of law

This chapter introduces the notions of meta-rule of law and socio-legal ecosystems to both foster and regulate linked democracy. It explores the way of stimulating innovative regulations and building a regulatory quadrant for the rule of law. The chapter summarises briefly (i) the notions of responsive, better and smart regulation; (ii) requirements for legal interchange languages (legal interoperability); (iii) and cognitive ecology approaches. It shows how the protections of the substantive rule of law can be embedded into the semantic languages of the web of data and reflects on the conditions that make possible their enactment and implementation as a socio-legal ecosystem. The chapter suggests in the end a reusable multi-levelled meta-model and four notions of legal validity: positive, composite, formal, and ecological

Learning during COVID-19 in higher education around the globe:systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract. This Master’s thesis explores the significance of learning from the perspectives of both teachers and students in higher education institutions worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a systematic literature review, this study examines the experiences of teachers and students in the light of both mixed-methods and quantitative peer-reviewed studies (n=32). As a meta-analysis, this thesis aims to provide a synthesis in seeking stronger evidence for the conclusions drawn from the claims of individual studies. At the same time, the aim of this thesis is to highlight any contradictions that may arise from the results of different studies. The theoretical framework covers different definitions and perspectives of learning. The main learning theories that are discussed include the behaviorist, cognitive, and situated learning theories. In addition to these, brain-based learning will be considered as a more recent perspective that provides unique insights on learning experiences gained from the pandemic. Using thematic analysis for the data, five main themes were formed and analyzed. The themes are: (1) attitudes toward adoption and support provided, (2) resilience in adapting and coping with the transition, (3) emotional intelligence and the role of compassion, (4) pedagogy and online education itself, and finally (5) performance and motivational factors.Oppiminen koronapandemian aikana korkeakouluissa ympäri maailmaa : systemaattinen kirjallisuuskataus ja meta-analyysi. Tiivistelmä. Tässä pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastellaan oppimisen merkitystä korkeakouluissa sekä opettajien että opiskelijoiden näkökulmasta maailmanlaajuisesti koronapandemian aikana. Systemaattisena kirjallisuuskatsauksena tämä tutkimus tarkastelee opettajien ja opiskelijoiden kokemuksia sekä monimenetelmätutkimuksena että määrällisten vertaisarvioitujen tutkimusten (n=32) valossa. Meta-analyysina tässä tutkielmassa on tarkoitus saada aikaan synteesi, jonka avulla haetaan vahvempaa näyttöä yksittäisten tutkimusten väittämiin johtopäätöksiin. Samalla tutkielman tarkoitus on tuoda esille ne ristiriidat, jotka esiintyvät eri tutkimusten tuloksissa. Tutkielman teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä tarkastellaan oppimisen eri määritelmiä ja näkökulmia. Keskeisimmät oppimiseen liittyvät teoriat, joita käsitellään ovat behavioristinen, kognitiivinen ja tilannesidonnainen oppimisteoria. Näiden lisäksi aivojen toimintoja huomioiva oppiminen (engl. brain-based learning) otetaan tarkkailuun uudempana näkökulmana pandemian tuottamien oppimiskokemusten valossa. Teema-analyysin avulla tutkielmassa muodostettiin viisi pääteemaa, joita ovat: (1) muutokseen liittyvät asenteet ja tarjolla oleva tuki, (2) resilienssi ja selviytyminen muutosvaiheen alla, (3) tunneälyn ja myötätunnon merkitys, (4) pedagogiikka ja verkkokoulutus sekä (5) suorituskykyyn ja motivaatioon liittyvät tekijät

Strategies in Underwriting the Costs of Catastrophic Disease

In this thesis we address the problem of integrated software pipelining for clustered VLIW architectures. The phases that are integrated and solved as one combined problem are: cluster assignment, instruction selection, scheduling, register allocation and spilling. As a first step we describe two methods for integrated code generation of basic blocks. The first method is optimal and based on integer linear programming. The second method is a heuristic based on genetic algorithms. We then extend the integer linear programming model to modulo scheduling. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time anybody has optimally solved the modulo scheduling problem for clustered architectures with instruction selection and cluster assignment integrated. We also show that optimal spilling is closely related to optimal register allocation when the register files are clustered. In fact, optimal spilling is as simple as adding an additional virtual register file representing the memory and have transfer instructions to and from this register file corresponding to stores and loads. Our algorithm for modulo scheduling iteratively considers schedules with increasing number of schedule slots. A problem with such an iterative method is that if the initiation interval is not equal to the lower bound there is no way to determine whether the found solution is optimal or not. We have proven that for a class of architectures that we call transfer free, we can set an upper bound on the schedule length. I.e., we can prove when a found modulo schedule with initiation interval larger than the lower bound is optimal. Experiments have been conducted to show the usefulness and limitations of our optimal methods. For the basic block case we compare the optimal method to the heuristic based on genetic algorithms. This work has been supported by The Swedish national graduate school in computer science (CUGS) and Vetenskapsrådet (VR)