4,253 research outputs found

    Radiotherapy dosimetry with ultrasound contrast agents

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    A Phenomenological Study Exploring the Factors That Contribute to Persistence in Online Doctoral Programs for Students With Learning Disabilities or ADHD

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    The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to discover the factors that contributed to persistence in online doctoral programs for students with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The theory guiding this study was Tinto’s theory of student persistence, as it suggested the more students were academically and socially integrated into their institution, the more likely they were to persist in their studies. The Central research question of this study is, “What are the factors that contribute to persistence in online doctoral programs for students with LD and ADHD?” Participants in this study consisted of seven individuals with learning disabilities or ADHD who had completed all of their required coursework in their current online doctoral program and had started the dissertation phase of their program, and four who had graduated from their online doctoral programs within the last two years. Candidates were selected using purposive sampling. Perspectives of students with LD and ADHD as they related to their academic persistence were shared. The lived experiences of online doctoral students with LD and ADHD were studied using online discussion board prompts, individual interviews, and focus groups. The data were collected and analyzed using Moustakas’ transcendental phenomenology approach and generated six themes and commonalities among the participants in this study. The themes were Overcoming Challenges and Barriers, Adaptation and Coping Strategies, Motivation, Self-Efficacy, Support Systems, and Personal Determination and Perseverance. The data analysis revealed empirical, practical, and theoretical implications along with recommendations for future research

    The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: African Imaginaries of Technoscientific Futures

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    Imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) have transcended geographies of the Global North and become increasingly entangled with narratives of economic growth, progress, and modernity in Africa. This raises several issues such as the entanglement of AI with global technoscientific capitalism and its impact on the dissemination of AI in Africa. The lack of African perspectives on the development of AI exacerbates concerns of raciality and inclusion in the scientific research, circulation, and adoption of AI. My argument in this dissertation is that innovation in AI, in both its sociotechnical imaginaries and political economies, excludes marginalized countries, nations and communities in ways that not only bar their participation in the reception of AI, but also as being part and parcel of its creation. Underpinned by decolonial thinking, and perspectives from science and technology studies and African studies, this dissertation looks at how AI is reconfiguring the debate about development and modernization in Africa and the implications for local sociotechnical practices of AI innovation and governance. I examined AI in international development and industry across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, by tracing Canada’s AI4D Africa program and following AI start-ups at AfriLabs. I used multi-sited case studies and discourse analysis to examine the data collected from interviews, participant observations, and documents. In the empirical chapters, I first examine how local actors understand the notion of decolonizing AI and show that it has become a sociotechnical imaginary. I then investigate the political economy of AI in Africa and argue that despite Western efforts to integrate the African AI ecosystem globally, the AI epistemic communities in the continent continue to be excluded from dominant AI innovation spaces. Finally, I examine the emergence of a Pan-African AI imaginary and argue that AI governance can be understood as a state-building experiment in post-colonial Africa. The main issue at stake is that the lack of African perspectives in AI leads to negative impacts on innovation and limits the fair distribution of the benefits of AI across nations, countries, and communities, while at the same time excludes globally marginalized epistemic communities from the imagination and creation of AI

    “Oh my god, how did I spend all that money?”: Lived experiences in two commodified fandom communities

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    This research explores the role of commodification in participation in celebrity-centric fandom communities, applying a leisure studies framework to understand the constraints fans face in their quest to participate and the negotiations they engage in to overcome these constraints. In fan studies scholarship, there is a propensity to focus on the ways fans oppose commodified industry structures; however, this ignores the many fans who happily participate within them. Using the fandoms for the pop star Taylor Swift and the television series Supernatural as case studies, this project uses a mixed-methodological approach to speak directly to fans via surveys and semistructured interviews to develop an understanding of fans’ lived experiences based on their own words. By focusing on celebrity-centric fandom communities rather than on the more frequently studied textual fandoms, this thesis turns to the role of the celebrity in fans’ ongoing desire to participate in commodified spaces. I argue that fans are motivated to continue spending money to participate within their chosen fandom when this form of participation is tied to the opportunity for engagement with the celebrity. While many fans seek community from their fandom participation, this research finds that for others, social ties are a secondary outcome of their overall desire for celebrity attention, which becomes a hobby in which they build a “leisure career” (Stebbins 2014). When fans successfully gain attention from their celebrity object of fandom, they gain status within their community, creating intra-fandom hierarchies based largely on financial resources and on freedom from structural constraints related to education, employment, and caring. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the broad neglect of celebrity fandom practices means we have overlooked the experiences of many fans, necessitating a much broader future scope for the field

    Contextualising Universities’ Third Mission:A Study of African Women’s Participation in Academic Engagement

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    The traditional mandate of universities has been to undertake research and teaching activities. However, in recent times, universities are pursuing a ‘third mission’ by collaborating with societal partners, including firms. Research suggests that such academic engagement (AE) activities are expedient for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Other studies have, however, drawn attention to the gender differences in men and women’s pursuit and practice of AE. In particular, scholars have shown that the masculine cultures and structures of universities and firms are averse to women researchers’ lived experiences and, thus, limit their participation in AE activities compared to their male colleagues. The emerging gender dynamics in AE has raised important, yet unanswered questions, regarding the potential of universities and firms to support the achievement of SDG5 (gender equality and women’s empowerment), especially in developing countries that are characterised by weak institutions. Given the importance of AE to the success of the SDGs, this thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap by first, providing an understanding of how the corporate sustainability practices of businesses are pragmatically contributing to the achievement of the SDGs related to gender, climate change, democracy, and poverty, within the contexts of Mexico, Ghana, Vietnam, and South Africa. Second, and focusing narrowly on the theme of gender and the sub-Saharan African context, the thesis sheds light on how and why gender differences exist in the opportunities for men and women researchers to participate in AE activities. Next, the study draws on Bourdieusian social theory and in-depth interviews with 36 women researchers from Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and Botswana, to explicate how women researchers within these contexts utilise their agency to overcome the structural and cultural constraints impeding their involvement in AE activities. Finally, the thesis deepens insights into how, and why, the efforts of African women researchers to overcome the systemic constraints impeding their participation in AE activities, come to reinforce the very structures that establish those barriers. A key finding from the study is that AE promotes competitiveness and performativity in academia, which in turn distorts the gender equality targets enshrined in SDG5. In particular, the findings demonstrate that AE is a gendered and neoliberal activity that urges women researchers to develop and implement career strategies that sustain male privileges and female disadvantages within universities. Emerging from the analysis is also the fact that, although businesses can make significant contributions to the SDGs, a failure to embed community participation in their corporate sustainability principles and agendas, can reverse much of the progress made on SDG5. This thesis makes several contributions. First, it extends and pushes forward existing scholarship and policy discussions on the SDGs by empirically investigating a significant, but understudied group of women, whose voices and experiences in academia have rarely been acknowledged. In addition, the study provides novel insights into the socio-cultural dimension of sustainable development by highlighting the utility of community participation approaches to corporate sustainability practices. Importantly, this study offers another way of viewing the gender gap in AE by drawing on Bourdieu’s (1977) social theory to show how the current single-level and de-contextualised explanations of this problem limit our understanding of the interesting ways in which micro-individual career opportunities are shaped by contextual influences at the macro-level and organisational processes and practices at the meso-level

    Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia

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    This book, Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia, makes a unique and needed contribution to the mentoring field as it focuses solely on mentoring in academia. This handbook is a collaborative institutional effort between Utah State University’s (USU) Empowering Teaching Open Access Book Series and the Mentoring Institute at the University of New Mexico (UNM). This book is available through (a) an e-book through Pressbooks, (b) a downloadable PDF version on USU’s Open Access Book Series website), and (c) a print version available for purchase on the USU Empower Teaching Open Access page, and on Amazon

    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

    Shaping Engineers, Making Gender Politics: Swedish Universities of Technology and the Creation of a Policy Field, 1976–1998

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    Despite a global reputation as a gender-equal nation, the labour market in Sweden is segregated. This particularly applies to engineering. Five decades of national gender equality policies and engineering recruitment campaigns have only partially transformed the situation. This thesis combines the study of two parallel and interlinked phenomena: the development of Swedish engineering education and profession, and the evolution of a national gender equality policy field. It examines how the Swedish engineering profession – represented by the universities of technology – from the mid-1970s, responded to demands from both national policies and from within the engineering communities. The push to act went in two directions; national policies pressured universities of technology to take measures, and representatives from the engineering communities often shaped gender equality policies. How engineering educators steered definitions of gender equality and the corresponding solutions in directions that suited their professional needs are at the heart of the analysis here. Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources and interviews and deploying a theoretical framework of professional boundary work (Thomas F. Gieryn), the dissertation argues that the Swedish male-dominated engineering profession, represented by their technical universities, conducted gender equality politics. The study adds to an emerging international research field on the history of gendered engineering (e.g. Amy Sue Bix, Nathan Ensmenger, Laura Ettinger, Mar Hicks, Alice Clifton-Morekis, Londa Schiebinger, Karin Zachmann) and the Swedish historiography of national gender equality politics. It presents Swedish historiography on the gendered culture in engineering and national gender equality policy to an international audience

    Old trees in young forests : Biodiversity management in planted conifer forests in southern Sweden

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    Sweden’s long history of intensive forest management has made conservation measures in the forest landscape necessary to counteract the loss of biodiversity. Retention forestry has been systematically practiced since 1993 and consists of the preservation of different structures and habitats to create and maintain suitable habitats for species that do not cope well with clear-cutting. Many of these stands are now entering thinning. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate how choices in forest management contribute to biodiversity with the example of tree retention in thinning or through the choice of rotation length. First, gap cutting around old oaks (Quercus robur) in a Norway spruce (Picea abies) forest was investigated as an example of retention management in southern Sweden (I + II). We found that oaks contributed to the diversity of the stand due to their specific associated species. The removal of Norway spruce next to the oaks at the time of thinning boosted oak vitality and increased the species richness and abundance of vascular plants and saproxylic beetles due to increased temperature and light exposure, especially oak-associated beetles. In another study, the effect of forest age was investigated on four taxa: birds, bryophytes, lichens, and vascular plants in Norway spruce and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) stands (III). The older stands, both of Norway spruce and Scots pine, had a distinct species community of understorey species and epiphytes. In Norway spruce stands, older stands typically had more deadwood, which could have favoured bryophytes and birds by providing specific habitats and resources. Older Scots pine stands had the highest lichen species richness, but the implementation of other understorey species was impaired by the dominance of a few competitive dominating species. Finally, we explored the potential of using a canopy height model (CHM) to find and map retention trees (IV). We concluded that this method is a cost-effective solution to map and characterise past retention efforts to facilitate forest management and ensure that old trees are kept throughout the present and subsequent rotations. Our results indicate that this method can discern retention areas to an accuracy of 66%. The findings in this thesis provide knowledge on how the management of retention trees and the choice of rotation length can support biodiversity and provide guidelines for forest management so that their positive effects on forest biodiversity can be maintained over time
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