Characterising and modeling the co-evolution of transportation networks and territories

The identification of structuring effects of transportation infrastructure on territorial dynamics remains an open research problem. This issue is one of the aspects of approaches on complexity of territorial dynamics, within which territories and networks would be co-evolving. The aim of this thesis is to challenge this view on interactions between networks and territories, both at the conceptual and empirical level, by integrating them in simulation models of territorial systems.Comment: Doctoral dissertation (2017), Universit\'e Paris 7 Denis Diderot. Translated from French. Several papers compose this PhD thesis; overlap with: arXiv:{1605.08888, 1608.00840, 1608.05266, 1612.08504, 1706.07467, 1706.09244, 1708.06743, 1709.08684, 1712.00805, 1803.11457, 1804.09416, 1804.09430, 1805.05195, 1808.07282, 1809.00861, 1811.04270, 1812.01473, 1812.06008, 1908.02034, 2012.13367, 2102.13501, 2106.11996

Homogeneity and heterogeneity in disciplinary discourse: tracking the management of intertextuality in undergraduate academic lectures

Using a corpus of twenty-four lectures drawn from The BASE corpus*, this study is an analysis and inter-disciplinary comparison of the management of Intertextuality in the genre of the undergraduate lecture. Theorising Intertextuality as central within the discursive (re-)construction of disciplinary knowledge, the investigation of Intertextuality is viewed as the investigation of the discursively-mediated interaction(s) of a current lecturer with original knowledge-constituting discourses, and with their agents too, of an academic community. As there is no holistic and comprehensive methodology for assessing the management of Intertextuality in academic discourse both qualitatively and quantitatively, this study uses two further lectures to devise such a methodology. This involves segregating lecture discourse into consistent independent units and then coding each unit according both to its function in the discourse and the participant voice(s) behind it. Applying this comprehensive scheme shows that independent units in lecture discourse are classifiable under three broad functional areas, Intertextuality (units realising propositional input), Intratextuality (units realising the mechanics of text and discursive interaction), and Metatextuality (units realising unit-length evaluation of emerging discourse). These functional areas and the functions within them are manageable via different participant voice(s), the manifestations and pragmatic effects of which in discourse vary, meaning the management of Intertextuality can be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively using the coherent, consistent and data-driven coding scheme derived from these analyses. This methodology, applied qualitatively and quantitatively to the corpus, reveals management similarities broadly between Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences lectures, typically a dialogic management, and management differences broadly between these two groupings and Physical Sciences lectures, typically a monophonic management. These management choices are understood as both constituted by and as reconstitutive of the social and epistemological landscapes behind lectures, meaning the management of Intertextuality is viewed as the dominant influence in shaping disciplinary discourse. * The BASE (British Academic Spoken English) corpus is a corpus of authentic academic speech events currently being developed at the universities of Warwick and Reading in The UK with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board

Open Access Journals in Humanities and Social Science: a British Academy research project

An investigation on behalf of the British Academy into the effects of Open Access publication requirements on humanities and social sciences research in the UK, with a focus on journal policies and half-life usage

Powering the Academic Web

Context: Locating resources on the Web has become increasingly difficult for users and poses a number of issues. The sheer size of the Web means that despite what appears to be an increase in the amount of quality material available, the effort involved in locating that material is also increasing; in effect, the higher quality material is being diluted by the lesser quality. One such group affected by this problem is post-graduate students. Having only a finite amount of time to devote to research, this reduces their overall quality study time. Aim: This research investigates how post-graduate students use the Web as a learning resource and identifies a number of areas of concern with its use. It considers the potential for improvement in this matter by using a number of concepts such as: collaboration; peer reviewing and document classification and comparison techniques. This research also investigates whether by combining several of the identified technologies and concepts, student research on the Web can be improved. Method: Using some of the identified concepts as components, this research proposes a model to address the highlighted areas of concern. The proposed model, named the Durham Browsing Assistant (DurBA) is defined, and a number of key concepts which show potential within it are uncovered. One of the key concepts is chosen, that of document comparison. Given a source document, can a computer system reliably identify other documents which most closely match it from other on the Web? A software tool was created which allowed the testing of document comparison techniques, this was called the Durham Textual Comparison system (DurTeC) and it had two key concepts. The first was that it would allow various algorithms to be applied to the comparison process. The second concept was that it could simulate collaboration by allowing data to be altered, added and removed as if by multiple users. A set of experiments were created to test these algorithms and identify those which gave the best results. Results: The results from the experiments identified a number of the most promising relationships between comparison and collaboration processes. It also highlighted those which had a negative effect on the process, and those which produced variable results. Amongst the results, it was found that: 1. By providing DurTeC with additional source documents to the original, as if through a recommendation process, it was able to increase its accuracy substantially. 2. By allowing DurTeC to use synonym lists to expand its vocabulary, in many cases, it was found to have reduced its accuracy. 3. By restricting those words which DurTeC considered in its comparison process, based upon their value in the source document, accuracy could be increased. This could be considered as a form of collaborative keyword selection. Conclusion: This research shows that improvements can be made in the accuracy of identifying similar resources by using a combination of comparison and collaboration processes. The proposed model, DurBA would be an ideal host for such a system

The Education of Gender. The Gender of Education. Sociological research in Italy

In questo volume si analizza il rapporto tra genere e educazione rispetto al contesto italiano. Lo scopo \ue8 creare uno spazio per un\u2019area progressivamente varia e densa di ricerca interdisciplinare su genere e istruzione. Poich\ue9 i nuovi campi degli studi di genere sono divenuti fondamentali in sociologia, pedagogia, antropologia, i diversi contributi presenti nel volume indagano in modo dinamico e intersezionale i principali dibattiti emergenti nel panorama italiano dell\u2019education, facendo leva su dati empirici e illuminando una serie di questioni cruciali: l\u2019influenza che la socializzazione familiare e l\u2019educazione prescolare hanno sia sulla formazione delle identit\ue0 di genere che sullo sviluppo dei percorsi educativi; l\u2019egemonia femminile nella demografia del corpo docente e le ripercussioni di questo predominio numerico per colleghi e studenti in termini di schemi e metodologie di insegnamento; la riproduzione delle scelte tradizionali di ragazze e ragazzi nei campi di studio delle scienze, delle tecnologie, dell\u2019ingegneria e della matematica; gli ostacoli che si frappongono ad una visione neutrale rispetto al genere nelle scelte di carriera universitaria; l\u2019influenza del livello di istruzione dei genitori, in particolare quello delle madri, sui risultati scolastici di studenti e studentesse; la crescente importanza dell\u2019apprendimento delle competenze informatiche e digitali per l\u2019occupabilit\ue0, soprattutto per le donne; l\u2019efficacia degli esperimenti di codifica, robotica e apprendimento computazionale nell\u2019ambito di programmi innovativi per gli alunni; i divari di genere nell\u2019alfabetizzazione finanziaria e le differenze di genere nelle competenze finanziarie pi\uf9 complesse; la costruzione sociale delle categorie di genere nelle valutazioni standardizzate delle competenze degli adolescenti. Nell\u2019adottare un approccio critico al genere e all\u2019istruzione come complesso intreccio di queste questioni cruciali, i contributi del volume riconoscono e promuovono l\u2019importanza di sondare il nesso genere-educazione oltre i tradizionali confini dei domini disciplinari.In this volume, we examine the relationship between gender and education with respect to the Italian context. The purpose is to forge a space for a progressively varied and dense area of interdisciplinary research on gender and education. As new gender studies fields are rapidly developing and becoming pivotal in the traditional social disciplines of sociology, educational studies, pedagogy, anthropology, we felt a greater need for a dynamic and intersectional examination that plots emerging definitions and debates while uncovering the critical complexities of gender and education in Italy. These include issues relating to: - the influence that family socialization and pre-school education have on both the formation of gender identities and the development of educational paths; - the female hegemony in the demography of the teaching staff and the repercussions of this numerical dominance for both male and female colleagues and students in terms of patterns and methodologies; - the reproduction of women and men\u2019s traditional choices in fields of study such as STEM in the tracks of the Italian secondary education and university system; - the barriers to a gender neutral vision of university career choices; the influence of parents\u2019 educational attainment \u2013 especially that of mothers \u2013 on the educational achievements of younger men and women over time; - the growing importance of learning IT and digital skills for employability - especially for women; - the efficacy of experiments in coding, robotics and computational learning as part of innovative programs for pupils; - gender gaps in financial literacy and gender divides in more complex financial skills; - the social construction of gender categories in standardized assessments of adolescents\u2019 competences. In adopting a critical approach to gender and education as the complex intertwining of these crucial issues, we recognize the importance of probing beyond the boundaries of specific domains in order to develop a more intersectional focus

Greater Than the Sum: Systems Thinking in Tobacco control

Tobacco control and public health have evolved into a complex set of interconnected and largely self-organizing systems. Their components include international, national, and local governmental agencies; individual advocacy groups; policy makers; health care professionals; nonprofit foundations; and the general population itself. The issues require the exploration of approaches and methodologies that speak to the evolving, dynamic nature of this systems environment. This monograph focuses on the first two years of the Initiative on the Study and Implementation of Systems (ISIS), which was funded by the National Cancer Institute to examine the potential for systems thinking in tobacco control and public health. ISIS explored the general idea of a systems thinking rubric encompassing a great variety of systems-oriented methodologies and approaches. Four approaches have particular promise for their applicability to tobacco control and public health and thus were chosen as areas for initial investigation: (1) organizing and managing as a system, (2) system dynamics and how to model those dynamics, (3) system networks and their analysis, and (4) systems knowledge and its management and translation. As a transdisciplinary effort that linked both tobacco control stakeholders and systems experts, ISIS combined a number of exploratory projects and case studies within these four approaches with a detailed examination of the potential for systems thinking in tobacco control. Its end product was a set of expert consensus guidelines for the future implementation of systems thinking and systems perspectives for tobacco control and public health.https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/tcrb/monographs/18/index.htm