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Spaces and scales of African student activism: Senegalese and Zimbabwean university students at the intersection of campus, nation and globe
African university students have long engaged in political activism, responding to changing political, social and economic circumstances through protest that has at times exerted considerable influence on the national stage. Student activism employs highly spatialised strategies yet has received minimal attention from geographers. Drawing on case studies from Senegal and Zimbabwe, we identify four phases of activism in which students have mobilised distinctive relational spatialities in responding to changes in the spatial expression of dominant political power. In so doing, we highlight the inadequacies of approaches to resistance that give excessive emphasis to a power/resistance dualism or to questions of scale
Making Law More Accessible: Designing Collaborative Learning Environments for Physically Remote Generation Y Students
In addition to an understanding of substantive law, the undergraduate law degree at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) aims to develop students’ lifelong skills. In the unit ‘Principles of Equity’ the skill developed includes teamwork, in the context of legal letter writing. Given the increased technological mobility of Generation Y students, the presenters have developed and trialled a model that enables these skills to be learnt and practiced online. The result is a more flexible environment that not only ensures congruent learning experiences between internal and external (or physically remote) students, but provides a connected or engaged educational program to supplement existing teaching method. This paper outlines the above project, the pedagogy that influenced it, and its impact on student learning experiences. Some issues for the development of such learning innovations in the future are also addresse
A Robust Zero-Calibration RF-based Localization System for Realistic Environments
Due to the noisy indoor radio propagation channel, Radio Frequency (RF)-based
location determination systems usually require a tedious calibration phase to
construct an RF fingerprint of the area of interest. This fingerprint varies
with the used mobile device, changes of the transmit power of smart access
points (APs), and dynamic changes in the environment; requiring re-calibration
of the area of interest; which reduces the technology ease of use. In this
paper, we present IncVoronoi: a novel system that can provide zero-calibration
accurate RF-based indoor localization that works in realistic environments. The
basic idea is that the relative relation between the received signal strength
from two APs at a certain location reflects the relative distance from this
location to the respective APs. Building on this, IncVoronoi incrementally
reduces the user ambiguity region based on refining the Voronoi tessellation of
the area of interest. IncVoronoi also includes a number of modules to
efficiently run in realtime as well as to handle practical deployment issues
including the noisy wireless environment, obstacles in the environment,
heterogeneous devices hardware, and smart APs. We have deployed IncVoronoi on
different Android phones using the iBeacons technology in a university campus.
Evaluation of IncVoronoi with a side-by-side comparison with traditional
fingerprinting techniques shows that it can achieve a consistent median
accuracy of 2.8m under different scenarios with a low beacon density of one
beacon every 44m2. Compared to fingerprinting techniques, whose accuracy
degrades by at least 156%, this accuracy comes with no training overhead and is
robust to the different user devices, different transmit powers, and over
temporal changes in the environment. This highlights the promise of IncVoronoi
as a next generation indoor localization system.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, published in SECON 201
Carbon Free Boston: Energy Technical Report
Part of a series of reports that includes:
Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Technical Summary;
Carbon Free Boston: Buildings Technical Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Transportation Technical Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Waste Technical Report;
Carbon Free Boston: Offsets Technical Report;
Available at http://sites.bu.edu/cfb/INTRODUCTION:
The adoption of clean energy in Boston’s buildings and transportation systems will produce sweeping
changes in the quantity and composition of the city’s demand for fuel and electricity. The demand for
electricity is expected to increase by 2050, while the demand for petroleum-based liquid fuels and
natural gas within the city is projected to decline significantly. The city must meet future energy demand
with clean energy sources in order to meet its carbon mitigation targets. That clean energy must be
procured in a way that supports the City’s goals for economic development, social equity, environmental
sustainability, and overall quality of life. This chapter examines the strategies to accomplish these goals.
Improved energy efficiency, district energy, and in-boundary generation of clean energy (rooftop PV)
will reduce net electric power and natural gas demand substantially, but these measures will not
eliminate the need for electricity and gas (or its replacement fuel) delivered into Boston. Broadly
speaking, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the city must therefore (1) reduce its use of fossil fuels
to heat and cool buildings through cost-effective energy efficiency measures and electrification of
building thermal services where feasible; and (2) over time, increase the amount of carbon-free
electricity delivered to the city. Reducing energy demand though cost effective energy conservation
measures will be necessary to reduce the challenges associated with expanding the electricity delivery
system and sustainably sourcing renewable fuels.Published versio
Open Educational Content for Digital Public Libraries
If the production of digital content for teaching -- particularly free content -- is to expand substantially, there must be mechanisms to establish a link to fame and fortune that was not perceived in a pre-digital world. How that might be done is the central question this report addresses, in the context of examining the movement for open educational content. Understanding that movement requires delving into the history of what may seem, on first pass, a totally unrelated field of endeavor. The reader's patience is requested....
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