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Knowledge and power: changing the education of the next generation of development practitioners
Get PDFThis research explores barriers to the academic space in which development knowledge is codified, legitimised and taught. It also speaks to these questions more broadly. Focus group discussions with representatives of 32 civil society organisations in Sierra Leone, two follow-up workshops in Sierra Leone and 24 semi-structured interviews with senior academics in the UK and North America were conducted to explore: who determines what knowledge is deemed important for students and future development practitioners to know; and how to identify barriers that limit the contribution of a wider range of stakeholders.
Racism is identified as a key factor in how knowledge is valued. Additional factors in terms of time, logistics and the structuring of academic space are also significant. Drawing on the work of power analysis scholars, we propose a three-step framework for curriculum analysis which identifies (1) key stakeholders in knowledge production and curriculum design; (2) spaces of power (open/invited/claimed/created/closed) within the academy; and (3) the interplay of forms of power (visible/hidden/invisible) that facilitate or limit access to these spaces
The social contagion of challenge-seeking: behavioural and neural correlates
Get PDFDespite having little economic utility, people are often motivated to seek
challenges (i.e., proactively choosing to work on a more difficult task than an easier
task). Although previous studies revealed various factors associated with challenge-seeking behaviours, there has been little research examining the potential effects of
social cues. This thesis investigated whether observing other’s challenge-seeking
behaviours had a contagious effect. Participants’ willingness to seek challenges were
measured using a challenge-seeking task that differentiated challenge-seeking behaviours
from similar concepts (such as mental effort or uncertainty resolution). In this task,
participants’ difficult word problem selections, compared to easier alternatives, were
measured before and after experimental manipulations. This way, possible changes in
participants’ challenge preferences after observing challenge-seeker and challenge-avoider others were examined. Six behavioural experiments consistently showed that,
while participants generally avoided challenging word problems, observing a challenge-seeker other increased their likelihood of choosing more challenging word problems. The
observed shift in their challenge-seeking behaviour was not related to possible changes
in participants’ perceptions of word problem difficulty or self-confidence. Individual
differences in achievement goals and trait intrinsic motivation levels contributed to
participants’ susceptibility to the contagious effect of observing others’ challenge-seeking behaviours. However, environmental factors such as the agent likeability did not
seem to play an important role in the behavioural change. Exploratory fMRI analyses
revealed increased activations in the brain regions previously linked to social cognitive
processing (inferior parietal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus,
precuneus) and complex abstract (math-related) cognitive processing (angular gyrus).
These results may be interpreted as the need for greater social processing when
participants were seeking challenges whilst under the influence of challenge-seeker
others. Overall, the current thesis indicated how challenge-seeking behaviours could be
facilitated through social processes and discussed possible influences of individual and
environmental factors in the social contagion of challenge-seeking
Talent allocation in European football leagues: why competitive imbalance may be optimal?
Get PDFProfessional sports are part of the entertainment industry; as such, its business is developed based on the perceived interest in sporting events, which in turn depends on features like: the (i) degree of competitive balance that determines the uncertainty of the outcome; the (ii) concentration of gifted players in a team, whose interaction of talents on the field enhances the quality of the ‘product joint’ that is a sporting event; the (iii) joint aggregate quality of rival teams; the (iv) appeal of rivalries associated with fans’ feelings of empathy and loyalty; etc. This paper focusses on the first three points by modelling the success of team-sport competitions as the result of the overall quality, which encompasses more than the mere sum of individual talents. Sport economists and practitioners generally acknowledge that competitive balance must be fostered to protect uncertainty about the outcome and thus achieve greater interest in sport competitions by fans and the media. In this paper, we argue that certain degree of imbalance in allocation of talent between teams may be preferable – rather than a perfect competitive balance – to broaden the interest of fans on the sport events and, thus, maximise economic outcomes. The paper also examines the discrepancies across the main European football leagues in this regard
Race and the printed language: Roman and Gothic letterforms in the making of the ‘Aryan race’
No full textThis article examines the use of roman and gothic letterforms in Nazi propaganda to express racial-national distinctions between ‘Aryans’ and ‘non-Aryans’, and Jews in particular. The link between race and language was central in the theory of the ‘Aryan’ race, whose supposed primary characteristic was the possession of the body of the ancient Greek athlete. The article examines the birth and evolution of the roman and gothic typefaces, following Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century, and assesses how Nazi publications harked back to German and European typographic traditions to make the printed word a vehicle of German ‘Aryan’ identity and divide readers. Theoretically, the article builds on Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘print-language’ by making a distinction between ‘print-language’ and ‘printed language’. It draws attention to the materiality and form of the printed language, as bearers of meaning with their own power to divide or unite communities and create nations
A nonlinear approach in the quantification of numerical uncertainty by high-order methods for compressible turbulence with shocks
Get PDFThis is a comprehensive overview on our research work to link interdisciplinary modeling and simulation techniques to improve the predictability and reliability simulations (PARs) of compressible turbulence with shock waves for general audiences who are not familiar with our nonlinear approach. This focused nonlinear approach is to integrate our “nonlinear dynamical approach” with our “newly developed high order entropy-conserving, momentum-conserving and kinetic energy-preserving methods” in the quantification of numerical uncertainty in highly nonlinear flow simulations. The central issue is that the solution space of discrete genuinely nonlinear systems is much larger than that of the corresponding genuinely nonlinear continuous systems, thus obtaining numerical solutions that might not be solutions of the continuous systems. Traditional uncertainty quantification (UQ) approaches in numerical simulations commonly employ linearized analysis that might not provide the true behavior of genuinely nonlinear physical fluid flows. Due to the rapid development of high-performance computing, the last two decades have been an era when computation is ahead of analysis and when very large-scale practical computations are increasingly used in poorly understood multiscale data-limited complex nonlinear physical problems and non-traditional fields. This is compounded by the fact that the numerical schemes used in production computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computer codes often do not take into consideration the genuinely nonlinear behavior of numerical methods for more realistic modeling and simulations. Often, the numerical methods used might have been developed for weakly nonlinear flow or different flow types other than the flow being investigated. In addition, some of these methods are not discretely physics-preserving (structure-preserving); this includes but is not limited to entropy-conserving, momentum-conserving and kinetic energy-preserving methods. Employing theories of nonlinear dynamics to guide the construction of more appropriate, stable and accurate numerical methods could help, e.g., (a) delineate solutions of the discretized counterparts but not solutions of the governing equations; (b) prevent numerical chaos or numerical “turbulence” leading to FALSE predication of transition to turbulence; (c) provide more reliable numerical simulations of nonlinear fluid dynamical systems, especially by direct numerical simulations (DNS), large eddy simulations (LES) and implicit large eddy simulations (ILES) simulations; and (d) prevent incorrect computed shock speeds for problems containing stiff nonlinear source terms, if present. For computation intensive turbulent flows, the desirable methods should also be efficient and exhibit scalable parallelism for current high-performance computing. Selected numerical examples to illustrate the genuinely nonlinear behavior of numerical methods and our integrated approach to improve PARs are included
Time parametrized motion planning
Get PDFTime can be treated as a free parameter to isotropically stretch the tangent space. A trajectory, which matches the boundary conditions on its configuration, is adjusted so that velocity conditions are met. The modified trajectory is found by substitution, without the computational cost of re-integrating the velocity function. This concept is extended to stretch the tangent space anisotropically. This method of time parametrization especially applies to Geometric Control, where the Pontryagin Maximum Principle minimizes some cost function and matches the boundary configuration constraints but not the velocity constraints. The optimal trajectory is modified by the parametrization so that the cost function is minimized if the stretching is stopped at any time. This is a theoretical contribution, using a wheeled robot example to illustrate the modification of an optimal velocity under multiple parametrizations
Collections for individuals generating surpluses – presumed gift; resulting trust; or bona vacantia?
Get PDFThis article argues that where collections for individuals, to benefit them in a particular way (e.g. paying for surgery), leave a surplus, there is a presumption the surplus is theirs by way of gift. It examines the interaction between this presumption and the law of resulting trusts and bona vacantia
Exchange rates and sovereign risk: a nonlinear approach based on local Gaussian correlations
No full textWe empirically assess the interlinkages between sovereign risk, measured in terms of CDS spreads, and exchange rates for a sample of emerging markets. Our period of analysis includes periods of severe stress, such as the Global Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian War. Using the most recent developments in local Gaussian partial correlation analysis and the associated nonlinear Granger causality tests, we are able to uncover linkages between assets across different segments of their joint distributions. Disentangling the effect of global factors, we show that the information on sovereign risk of other emerging economies is more relevant for the sovereign risk-exchange rate relationship than the state of developed markets risk for all countries in our sample and for all segments of the assets distribution. The same considerations apply for the movements of the US dollar relative to other currencies, where knowledge on movements of emerging currencies is of particular interest. Nonlinear Granger causality tests show bi-directional causality for most countries, confirming the importance of multiple transmission channels. Taken together, our results are of interest for international investors and policymakers, showing all interlinkages between sovereign risk and exchange rates across their entire distribution
