Shifting to low-carbon transport in ASEAN:policy development in a rapidly motorising region

This thesis analyses how transport policy at different levels of governance is responding to sustainability challenges and how such policies can be strengthened, particularly for climate change mitigation in the ASEAN region. Its academic contribution comprises the application of transition studies and policy studies to low-carbon transport and sustainable development. The main conclusions are: 1) The Avoid – Shift – Improve approach needs to be expanded with Access, Lifestyle and Transition considerations in order to be an effective framework that does justice to the distributional, systemic and behavioural aspects of low-carbon transport policy; 2) The newer international climate instruments, such as NAMAs, NDCs and the GCF, show more potential than the Kyoto Protocol instruments to promote sustainable, low-carbon transport, as they are better aligned to national circumstances and better suited to address the barriers that developing country policymakers face; 3) ASEAN instruments around transport focus on policy cooperation and reflect ‘networked regionalism’. Sustainable transport has played a relatively small role in ASEAN cooperation but this role is growing, and a range of ‘soft’ measures can be used to further promote low-carbon transport in its member countries; 4) At the national level, transport policy objectives support international sustainable development and climate goals, however the instruments, mechanisms and calibrations need to be strengthened to reach those objectives. Climate change has, in a few cases, led to policy windows for modifying transport policy; 5) At the local level, Southeast Asian cities such as Bangkok and Manila increasingly recognise the potential and benefits of cycling, yet much remains to be done in policy and planning to move cycling beyond a niche activity. _______________________________________

Design for peripheral interaction

In everyday life we perform several activities in our periphery of attention. For example, we are aware of what the weather is like and we can wash our hands without actively thinking about it. Though computing technology is becoming increasingly present in our everyday routines, interactions with these technologies usually require focused attention. Inspired by our interactions in the physical world, this thesis explores the concept of peripheral interaction: interaction with technology that takes place outside the focus of attention. We believe that this direction may support interactive devices to better blend into our everyday routines. We explore peripheral interaction by observing how everyday activities take place in the periphery and by developing and deploying a number of physical peripheral interaction designs. We conclude with a set of considerations for facilitating peripheral interaction. With this work, we hope to contribute to interaction design research and practice by providing insights in how human attention abilities can be leveraged in interaction design

Exposing piaget's scheme: Empirical evidence for the ontogenesis of coordination in learning a mathematical concept

The combination of two methodological resources-natural-user interfaces (NUI) and multimodal learning analytics (MMLA)-is creating opportunities for educational researchers to empirically evaluate seminal models for the hypothetical emergence of concepts from situated sensorimotor activity. 76 participants (9-14 yo) solved tablet-based non-symbolic manipulation tasks designed to foster grounded meanings for the mathematical concept of proportional equivalence. Data gathered in task-based semi-structured clinical interviews included action logging, eye-gaze tracking, and videography. Successful task performance coincided with spontaneous appearance of stable dynamical gaze-path patterns soon followed by multimodal articulation of strategy. Significantly, gaze patterns included uncued non-salient screen locations. We present cumulative results to argue that these 'attentional anchors' mediated participants' problem solving. We interpret the findings as enabling us to revisit, support, refine, and elaborate on central claims of Piaget's theory of genetic epistemology and in particular his insistence on the role of situated motor-action coordination in the process of reflective abstraction

Плантаційні лісові насадження як об’єкти невичерпного виробництва енергетичної біомаси

Висвітлені питання доцільності створення плантаційних насаджень як «енергетичних плантацій» для отримання значних обсягів деревної сировини. Розроблені принципи створення таких насаджень шляхом запровадження зміни порід. Наведені приклади високопродуктивних насаджень ялини, модрини, псевдотсуги як об’єктів плантаційного вирощування. Розраховано обсяги створення «енергетичних плантацій» в Західному Лісостепу України.Освещены вопросы целесообразности создания плантационных насаждений как "энергетических плантаций" для получения значительных объемов древесного сырья. Разработаны принципы создания таких насаждений путем периодической смены пород. Приведены примеры высокопродуктивных насаждений ели, лиственницы, псевдотсуги как объектов плантационного выращивания. Рассчитаны объемы создания "энергетических плантаций" в Западной Лесостепи Украины.Issues of expedience of plantation stands creation as "power plantations" for the receipt of considerable volumes of wood raw material are considered. Principles of such stands creation have been developed by tree species change. Some examples of highly productive stands of spruce, larch, hemlock as objects of the plantation growing are presented. Capacity of "power plantations" creation are evaluated for Western Forest-steppe of Ukraine

May I have your attention, please? An eye tracking study on emotional social media comments

Emotions are essential in today's complex information environments, as they catch readers' attention and impact the depth of information processing. In online interactions - such as user comments on social media platforms - emotions are increasingly present. We performed a preregistered eye-tracking study to understand the effects of emotional user comments on attention. Participants (N = 155) in our study read a series of user comments with different emotional tones. We measured the effects of emotions on information processing and visual attention by comparing the dwell times of participants of two experimental groups: a heuristic processing group and a systematic processing group. Our results revealed differences in visual attention towards comments with a negative versus positive valence and between the discrete emotions of anger and fear. These findings led to a discussion about emotions' role in information processing when individuals read user comments on social media

Eye-tracking the emergence of attentional anchors in a mathematics learning tablet activity

Little is known about micro-processes by which sensorimotor interaction gives rise to conceptual development. Per embodiment theory, these micro-processes are mediated by dynamical attentional structures. Accordingly this study investigated eye-gaze behaviors during engagement in solving tablet-based bimanual manipulation tasks designed to foster proportional reasoning. Seventy-six elementary- and vocational-school students (9-15 yo) participated in individual task-based clinical interviews. Data gathered included action-logging, eye-tracking, and videography. Analyses revealed the emergence of stable eye-path gaze patterns contemporaneous with first enactments of effective manipulation and prior to verbal articulations of manipulation strategies. Characteristic gaze patterns included consistent or recurring attention to screen locations that bore non-salient stimuli or no stimuli at all yet bore invariant geometric relations to dynamical salient features. Arguably, this research validates empirically hypothetical constructs from constructivism, particularly reflective abstraction

Spectral geometry as a probe of quantum spacetime

Employing standard results from spectral geometry, we provide strong evidence that in the classical limit the ground state of three-dimensional causal dynamical triangulations is de Sitter spacetime. This result is obtained by measuring the expectation value of the spectral dimension on the ensemble of geometries defined by these models, and comparing its large scale behaviour to that of a sphere (Euclidean de Sitter). From the same measurement we are also able to confirm the phenomenon of dynamical dimensional reduction observed in this and other approaches to quantum gravity -- the first time this has been done for three-dimensional causal dynamical triangulations. In this case, the value for the short-scale limit of the spectral dimension that we find is approximately 2. We comment on the relevance of these results for the comparison to asymptotic safety and Horava-Lifshitz gravity, among other approaches to quantum gravity.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures. Version 2: references to figures added, acknowledgment added

Evidence for a Role of Early Oestrogens in the Central Processing of Sexually Relevant Olfactory Cues in Female Mice

We previously found that female aromatase knockout (ArKO) mice showed less investigation of socially relevant odours as well as reduced sexual behaviour. We now ask whether these behavioural deficits might be due to an inadequate processing of odours in female ArKO mice. Therefore, we exposed female ArKO mice to same- and opposite-sex urinary odours and determined the expression of the immediate early gene c-Fos along the main and accessory olfactory projection pathways. We included ArKO males in the present study as we previously observed that they show female-typical detection thresholds of urinary odours, suggesting a role for perinatal oestrogens in these behavioural responses. No sex or genotype differences were observed in the olfactory bulb after urine exposure. By contrast, sex differences in c-Fos responses were observed in wild-type (WT) mice following exposure to male urine in the more central regions of the olfactory pathway; only WT females showed a significant Fos induction in the amygdala, central medial pre-optic area and ventromedial hypothalamus. However, ArKO females did not show a c-Fos response to male odours in the ventromedial hypothalamus, suggesting that the processing of male odours is affected in ArKO females and thus that oestrogens may be necessary for the development of neural responses to sexually relevant odours in female mice. By contrast, c-Fos responses to either male or oestrous female urine were very similar between ArKO and WT males, pointing to a central role of androgen vs. oestrogen signalling in the male circuits that control olfactory investigation and preferences