11,206 research outputs found

    The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions

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    The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed, including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture. Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions, and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users, scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution

    Visualisation of Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS): An Iterative Process Using an Overarm Throw

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    Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) are precursor gross motor skills to more complex or specialised skills and are recognised as important indicators of physical competence, a key component of physical literacy. FMS are predominantly assessed using pre-defined manual methodologies, most commonly the various iterations of the Test of Gross Motor Development. However, such assessments are time-consuming and often require a minimum basic level of training to conduct. Therefore, the overall aim of this thesis was to utilise accelerometry to develop a visualisation concept as part of a feasibility study to support the learning and assessment of FMS, by reducing subjectivity and the overall time taken to conduct a gross motor skill assessment. The overarm throw, an important fundamental movement skill, was specifically selected for the visualisation development as it is an acyclic movement with a distinct initiation and conclusion. Thirteen children (14.8 ± 0.3 years; 9 boys) wore an ActiGraph GT9X Link Inertial Measurement Unit device on the dominant wrist whilst performing a series of overarm throws. This thesis illustrates how the visualisation concept was developed using raw accelerometer data, which was processed and manipulated using MATLAB 2019b software to obtain and depict key throw performance data, including the trajectory and velocity of the wrist during the throw. Overall, this thesis found that the developed visualisation concept can provide strong indicators of throw competency based on the shape of the throw trajectory. Future research should seek to utilise a larger, more diverse, population, and incorporate machine learning. Finally, further work is required to translate this concept to other gross motor skills

    Supernatural crossing in Republican Chinese fiction, 1920s–1940s

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    This dissertation studies supernatural narratives in Chinese fiction from the mid-1920s to the 1940s. The literary works present phenomena or elements that are or appear to be supernatural, many of which remain marginal or overlooked in Sinophone and Anglophone academia. These sources are situated in the May Fourth/New Culture ideological context, where supernatural narratives had to make way for the progressive intellectuals’ literary realism and their allegorical application of supernatural motifs. In the face of realism, supernatural narratives paled, dismissed as impractical fantasies that distract one from facing and tackling real life. Nevertheless, I argue that the supernatural narratives do not probe into another mystical dimension that might co-exist alongside the empirical world. Rather, they imagine various cases of the characters’ crossing to voice their discontent with contemporary society or to reflect on the notion of reality. “Crossing” relates to characters’ acts or processes of trespassing the boundary that separates the supernatural from the conventional natural world, thus entailing encounters and interaction between the natural and the supernatural. The dissertation examines how crossing, as a narrative device, disturbs accustomed and mundane situations, releases hidden tensions, and discloses repressed truths in Republican fiction. There are five types of crossing in the supernatural narratives. Type 1 is the crossing into “haunted” houses. This includes (intangible) human agency crossing into domestic spaces and revealing secrets and truths concealed by the scary, feigned ‘haunting’, thus exposing the hidden evil and the other house occupiers’ silenced, suffocated state. Type 2 is men crossing into female ghosts’ apparitional residences. The female ghosts allude to heart-breaking, traumatic experiences in socio-historical reality, evoking sympathetic concern for suffering individuals who are caught in social upheavals. Type 3 is the crossing from reality into the characters’ delusional/hallucinatory realities. While they physically remain in the empirical world, the characters’ abnormal perceptions lead them to exclusive, delirious, and quasi-supernatural experiences of reality. Their crossings blur the concrete boundaries between the real and the unreal on the mental level: their abnormal perceptions construct a significant, meaningful reality for them, which may be as real as the commonly regarded objective reality. Type 4 is the crossing into the netherworld modelled on the real world in the authors’ observation and bears a spectrum of satirised objects of the Republican society. The last type is immortal visitors crossing into the human world. This type satirises humanity’s vices and destructive potential. The primary sources demonstrate their writers’ witty passion to play with super--natural notions and imagery (such as ghosts, demons, and immortals) and stitch them into vivid, engaging scenes using techniques such as the gothic, the grotesque, and the satirical, in order to evoke sentiments such as terror, horror, disgust, dis--orientation, or awe, all in service of their insights into realist issues. The works also creatively tailor traditional Chinese modes and motifs, which exemplifies the revival of Republican interest in traditional cultural heritage. The supernatural narratives may amaze or disturb the reader at first, but what is more shocking, unpleasantly nudging, or thought-provoking is the problematic society and people’s lives that the supernatural (misunderstandings) eventually reveals. They present a more compre--hensive treatment of reality than Republican literature with its revolutionary consciousness surrounding class struggle. The critical perspectives of the supernatural narratives include domestic space, unacknowledged history and marginal individuals, abnormal mentality, and pervasive weaknesses in humanity. The crossing and supernatural narratives function as a means of better understanding the lived reality. This study gathers diverse primary sources written by Republican writers from various educational and political backgrounds and interprets them from a rare perspective, thus filling a research gap. It promotes a fuller view of supernatural narratives in twentieth-century Chinese literature. In terms of reflecting the social and personal reality of the Republican era, the supernatural narratives supplement the realist fiction of the time

    A Comparative Study on Students’ Learning Expectations of Entrepreneurship Education in the UK and China

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    Entrepreneurship education has become a critical subject in academic research and educational policy design, occupying a central role in contemporary education globally. However, a review of the literature indicates that research on entrepreneurship education is still in a relatively early stage. Little is known about how entrepreneurship education learning is affected by the environmental context to date. Therefore, combining the institutional context and focusing on students’ learning expectations as a novel perspective, the main aim of the thesis is to address the knowledge gap by developing an original conceptual framework to advance understanding of the dynamic learning process of entrepreneurship education through the lens of self-determination theory, thereby providing a basis for advancing understanding of entrepreneurship education. The author adopted an epistemological positivism philosophy and a deductive approach. This study gathered 247 valid questionnaires from the UK (84) and China (163). It requested students to recall their learning expectations before attending their entrepreneurship courses and to assess their perceptions of learning outcomes after taking the entrepreneurship courses. It was found that entrepreneurship education policy is an antecedent that influences students' learning expectations, which is represented in the difference in student autonomy. British students in active learning under a voluntary education policy have higher autonomy than Chinese students in passive learning under a compulsory education policy, thus having higher learning expectations, leading to higher satisfaction. The positive relationship between autonomy and learning expectations is established, which adds a new dimension to self-determination theory. Furthermore, it is also revealed that the change in students’ entrepreneurial intentions before and after their entrepreneurship courses is explained by understanding the process of a business start-up (positive), hands-on business start-up opportunities (positive), students’ actual input (positive) and tutors’ academic qualification (negative). The thesis makes contributions to both theory and practice. The findings have far reaching implications for different parties, including policymakers, educators, practitioners and researchers. Understanding and shaping students' learning expectations is a critical first step in optimising entrepreneurship education teaching and learning. On the one hand, understanding students' learning expectations of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education can help the government with educational interventions and policy reform, as well as improving the quality and delivery of university-based entrepreneurship education. On the other hand, entrepreneurship education can assist students in establishing correct and realistic learning expectations and entrepreneurial conceptions, which will benefit their future entrepreneurial activities and/or employment. An important implication is that this study connects multiple stakeholders by bridging the national-level institutional context, organisational-level university entrepreneurship education, and individual level entrepreneurial learning to promote student autonomy based on an understanding of students' learning expectations. This can help develop graduates with their ability for autonomous learning and autonomous entrepreneurial behaviour. The results of this study help to remind students that it is them, the learners, their expectations and input that can make the difference between the success or failure of their study. This would not only apply to entrepreneurship education but also to other fields of study. One key message from this study is that education can be encouraged and supported but cannot be “forced”. Mandatory entrepreneurship education is not a quick fix for the lack of university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship. More resources must be invested in enhancing the enterprise culture, thus making entrepreneurship education desirable for students

    'Exarcheia doesn't exist': Authenticity, Resistance and Archival Politics in Athens

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    My thesis investigates the ways people, materialities and urban spaces interact to form affective ecologies and produce historicity. It focuses on the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athens’ contested political topography par excellence, known for its production of radical politics of discontent and resistance to state oppression and eoliberal capitalism. Embracing Exarcheia’s controversial status within Greek vernacular, media and state discourses, this thesis aims to unpick the neighbourhoods’ socio-spatial assemblage imbued with affect and formed through the numerous (mis)understandings and (mis)interpretations rooted in its turbulent political history. Drawing on theory on urban spaces, affect, hauntology and archival politics, I argue for Exarcheia as an unwavering archival space composed of affective chronotopes – (in)tangible loci that defy space and temporality. I posit that the interwoven narratives and materialities emerging in my fieldwork are persistently – and perhaps obsessively – reiterating themselves and remaining imprinted on the neighbourhood’s landscape as an incessant reminder of violent histories that the state often seeks to erase and forget. Through this analysis, I contribute to understandings of place as a primary ethnographic ‘object’ and the ways in which place forms complex interactions and relationships with social actors, shapes their subjectivities, retains and bestows their memories and senses of historicity

    A Case Study Examining Japanese University Students' Digital Literacy and Perceptions of Digital Tools for Academic English learning

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    Current Japanese youth are constantly connected to the Internet and using digital devices, but predominantly for social media and entertainment. According to literature on the Japanese digital native, tertiary students do not—and cannot—use technology with any reasonable fluency, but the likely reasons are rarely addressed. To fill the gap in the literature, this study, by employing a case study methodology, explores students’ experience with technology for English learning through the introduction of digital tools. First-year Japanese university students in an Academic English Program (AEP) were introduced to a variety of easily available digital tools. The instruction was administered online, and each tool was accompanied by a task directly related to classwork. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected in the form of a pre-course Computer Literacy Survey, a post-course open-ended Reflection Activity survey, and interviews. The qualitative data was reviewed drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its educational variants as an analytical framework. Educational, social, and cultural factors were also examined to help identify underlying factors that would influence students’ perceptions. The results suggest that the subjects’ lack of awareness of, and experience with, the use of technology for learning are the fundamental causes of their perceptions of initial difficulty. Based on these findings, this study proposes a possible technology integration model that enhances digital literacy for more effective language learning in the context of Japanese education

    Conscience and Consciousness: British Theatre and Human Rights.

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    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 ‘éffect’ 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

    Walking with the Earth: Intercultural Perspectives on Ethics of Ecological Caring

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    It is commonly believed that considering nature different from us, human beings (qua rational, cultural, religious and social actors), is detrimental to our engagement for the preservation of nature. An obvious example is animal rights, a deep concern for all living beings, including non-human living creatures, which is understandable only if we approach nature, without fearing it, as something which should remain outside of our true home. “Walking with the earth” aims at questioning any similar preconceptions in the wide sense, including allegoric-poetic contributions. We invited 14 authors from 4 continents to express all sorts of ways of saying why caring is so important, why togetherness, being-with each others, as a spiritual but also embodied ethics is important in a divided world

    AIUCD 2022 - Proceedings

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    L’undicesima edizione del Convegno Nazionale dell’AIUCD-Associazione di Informatica Umanistica ha per titolo Culture digitali. Intersezioni: filosofia, arti, media. Nel titolo ù presente, in maniera esplicita, la richiesta di una riflessione, metodologica e teorica, sull’interrelazione tra tecnologie digitali, scienze dell’informazione, discipline filosofiche, mondo delle arti e cultural studies

    Chinese Benteng Women’s Participation in Local Development Affairs in Indonesia: Appropriate means for struggle and a pathway to claim citizen’ right?

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    It had been more than two decades passing by aftermath the devastating Asia’s Financial Crisis in 1997, subsequently followed by Suharto’s step down from his presidential throne which he occupied for more than three decades. The financial turmoil turned to a political disaster furthermore has led to massive looting that severely impacted Indonesians of Chinese descendant, including unresolved mystery of the most atrocious sexual violation against women and covert killings of students and democracy activists in this country. Since then, precisely aftermath May 1998, which publicly known as “Reformasi”1, Indonesia underwent political reform that eventually corresponded positively to its macroeconomic growth. Twenty years later, in 2018, Indonesia captured worldwide attention because it has successfully hosted two internationally renowned events, namely the Asian Games 2018 – the most prestigious sport events in Asia – conducted in Jakarta and Palembang; and the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting 2018 in Bali. Particularly in the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting, this event has significantly elevated Indonesia’s credibility and international prestige in the global economic powerplay as one of the nations with promising growth and openness. However, the narrative about poverty and inequality, including increasing racial tension, religious conservatism, and sexual violation against women are superseded by friendly climate for foreign investment and eventually excessive glorification of the nation’s economic growth. By portraying the image of promising new economic power, as rhetorically promised by President Joko Widodo during his presidential terms, Indonesia has swept the growing inequality in this highly stratified society that historically compounded with religious and racial tension under the carpet of digital economy.Arte y Humanidade
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