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Building with earth: implementation strategies, evaluation model, and mitigation of climate change
No full textArchitecture in its vernacular form arose first from the need for security and then for climate control, playing with spatial design and materials. Spatial design and materials have been relegated to a purely aesthetic movement since the arrival of fossil-fuel based air conditioning machines marked the advent of modern architecture. Awareness of the finiteness of resources and the climate crisis has led designers and builders to work towards a paradigm shift in construction, reintegrating vernacular architecture into a more virtuous way of building. In this context, earth building is of interest, with a heritage rooted in all continents and a polymorphism of techniques that can be adapted to many contexts. This research work therefore presents a proposed answer to the question `How can the environmental relevance of the use of earthen materials be assessed using a contemporary approach in a European context?' A dual approach to the question is adopted: firstly, from the perspective of earth building professionals - architects, engineers, builders, researchers or clients; and secondly, through the engineering of a structural, energy and environmental assessment model based on the tools of designers.
Earth building professionals have highlighted the importance of knowing the local regulatory framework to set appropriate performance targets and develop a project strategy involving all stakeholders, including designers, builders and certifiers. Coordination between these actors is a prerequisite for the integration of earthen materials in a construction project. Secondly, they emphasised the importance of design adapted to the specific characteristics of the material to ensure the durability of the earth components during the construction and operation of the building. In the case of a load-bearing earth structure, a number of precautionary principles must be observed, such as working in compression and load distribution. Small-scale load-bearing projects are carried out without engineers, respecting the rules of minimum slenderness, while large-scale projects are carried out with advanced modelling and strict quality control. Once regulatory and good practice conditions are met, earthen materials are used in bioclimatic or passive design strategies, or as replacements for environmentally intensive components. However, the thermal regulation, the complexity of the thermal dynamic assessment and the complexity of the environmental data make it difficult to demonstrate the environmental performance of earth construction.
The parametric assessment model was developed in response to the need identified in the interviews to assess the environmental performance of earth construction. This model, adapted to load-bearing earth construction, first assesses a sound earth structure that complies with current building codes. Once the structure has been defined, an energy assessment, calibrated on a monitored earth building, is carried out and finally integrated into a whole life cycle environmental assessment. A sensitivity analysis of the model, consisting of architectural, mechanical, structural or contextual input parameters, highlights the influencing parameters. Aspects to be considered in structural design include design strength or shear loads; in energy use, thermal mass and insulation coupling with natural ventilation; in environmental assessment, the choice of heating/cooling system or the transport of earthen materials.
The relevance of using straw-insulated earth construction in future climates was then assessed against conventional construction systems: a heavy concrete/mineral insulation system and a light wood frame filled with cellulose. While the wood/cellulose and earth/straw systems meet the short-term (2030) environmental targets, the concrete/mineral system does not. However, it is necessary to consider the carbon sequestration of bio-based materials in the wood and earth systems to achieve the 2050 net zero carbon target. Finally, by considering thermal comfort, it was possible to assess the superior performance of the earth system in mitigating thermal stress in future climates compared to the lightweight wood frame system
The evolution of entrepreneurial learning and networks: Thai entrepreneurs in the food and agricultural industries
Get PDFLearning is a crucial element of the entrepreneurial process. While previous studies have concentrated on how entrepreneurs learn from their own experiences, it is important to note that entrepreneurs also engage with others in a social context. They create entrepreneurial networks to carry out their activities, and within these networks, entrepreneurial learning takes place. Furthermore, entrepreneurial learning and networks are dynamic, evolving throughout the entrepreneurial development process. There is currently a lack of understanding of the entrepreneurial learning process within networks and interactions (Grippa et al., 2009; Scarmozzino et al., 2017), and relatively little literature has examined the changes in networks as entrepreneurial learning takes place (Lefebvre et al., 2015; Secundo et al., 2015).
The current research adopts Politis’s (2005) framework on entrepreneurial learning, which examines entrepreneurial learning across three components: context, content and processes. This research focuses on the commercialisation process as a temporal frame to capture the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial learning. It follows a qualitative approach and uses multi-stakeholder semi-structured retrospective interviews with 26 Thai entrepreneurs in the food and agricultural industries and ten officers from three regional Science Parks in Thailand. Data from the interviews are complemented with evidence from the review of Science Park reports and online data. Data analysis is performed in two stages. First, thematic analysis reveals the main themes regarding the learning context, contents, processes and commercialisation process. Second, network diagrams capture the changes in entrepreneurial networks between two learning periods.
The findings show that entrepreneurs are involved in four stages of the commercialisation process: idea emergence, product development, business development, and product launch. They passed through these stages in different orders and were involved in entrepreneurial learning differently, depending on their knowledge requirements, existing knowledge base, and products they had developed. Entrepreneurs had different expected outcomes in particular stages, which led them to acquire different knowledge types, including scientific and technological (S&T) knowledge, business knowledge, and market knowledge. The academic-driven product development process was shown to be the most popular S&T knowledge learning process, while training and coaching were used to learn business knowledge. Online discussions with customers were the most used process to acquire market knowledge, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Entrepreneurs chose different learning processes because of their own knowledge base, established relationships, and knowledge gaps. Entrepreneurs built and expanded their networks by involving potential knowledge sources in the first learning period. They made changes to their networks between the first and second learning periods, using condensing and expanding network strategies when nonessential relationships were removed and new essential relationship were created, respectively. The evolution of entrepreneurial learning and networks was fostered by changes in entrepreneurial knowledge needs and the existing knowledge base.
This research makes significant contributions to entrepreneurial learning research by emphasising the diverse learning processes used by entrepreneurs within a social context. It underscores the complexity of knowledge needed and the involvement of key network partners. Additionally, it explores the evolution of entrepreneurial learning, unveiling the changes in knowledge learned, learning processes, and network partners over time during the commercialisation process. The findings have noteworthy implications for Science Parks in Thailand, emphasising the importance of understanding diverse entrepreneurs’ knowledge needs and the complexity of learning processes. This highlights the need to redesign current support systems in order to enhance the efficacy of the learning processes
(Mis)representing the figure of the woman in corporate social responsibility (CSR): an analysis of gendered circumstances in Malaysian organisations
Get PDFInfluential accounts of women’s empowerment and gender equality, originally developed in the Global North, increasingly regulate women’s behaviour in the Global South. Drawing specifically – but not exclusively – upon discussions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), this dissertation demonstrates how the figure of the Malaysian woman must often internalise an account of oneself as both highly productive and intensely monitored. It is claimed that CSR normalises a narrow yet hegemonising idea of neoliberal feminism which assimilates the local context through a misrepresentation of the figure of the woman. I contend that Malaysian women must often negotiate impositions from the Global North while also navigating local cultural and political influences. Their failure to conform to either – often contradictory – set of demands leads to a silencing of their voices, a dismissal of their anxieties and an intensification of their responsibilities. Management thereby absolves itself of accountability. I develop my arguments by examining the case of a transnational corporate women's advocacy group, the 30% Club Malaysia, and through interviews with women working in the Malaysian corporate sector. The dissertation develops and applies a postcolonial feminist methodology of reading the power structures affecting women’s circumstances both up and otherwise. Specifically, the feminist solidarity model of Chandra Talpade Mohanty and the transnational literacy approach of Gayatri Spivak enable a complication of the normative discourse of neoliberal feminism. The dissertation indicates the extent to which the empowerment of women in Malaysia, and the achievement of gender equality within Malaysian organisations, often masks a pernicious agenda. I explicate how contemporary Malaysian organisations privilege a certain figuration of woman while deviants become excluded. This research suggests that organisational initiatives aimed at achieving gender equality and empowerment of women require taking into serious consideration the effect of Global North ideologies and power structures that are imposed onto transnational contexts
Strengthening Proactive Adaptation, and Early Action Systems to Enhance Food Security and Resilience to Multiple Hazards among Pastoralists in the Borana Zone, Ethiopia
Get PDF‘Lightning talk’ presented by Jannie Nielsen (ADRA Denmark) at the Jameel Observatory Community of Practice meeting, Addis Ababa, 13-14 May 202
Research agenda of DRIVE Program financial services component
Get PDF‘Lightning talk’ presented by Hyuk ‘Harry’ Son (Utrecht University) at the Jameel Observatory Community of Practice meeting, Addis Ababa, 13-14 May 202
Curvature statistics of turbulence
Get PDFTurbulence is present in many different flow types across natural phenomena and industrial applications but still raises open questions due to its complexity and multi-scale nature which defers most direct analytical approaches. However, a statistical approach has proven itself as a powerful tool to help with the understanding and modelling of turbulence, overcoming some limitations of analytical approaches.
Within this thesis, I analyse datasets of four different flow types, three of experimental nature and one of numerical nature to study the statistics of geometric quantities such as curvature and torsion, in particular concerning the effect of anisotropy. For the experimental datasets, the focus is on Lagrangian trajectories and for the numerical datasets on stream lines and, in case of a conducting fluid, magnetic field lines. These curves can be described as three-dimensional space curves and therefore curvature and torsion can give a full description of these. Curvature and torsion are particularly interesting measures of turbulence as a salient feature of turbulence is the presence of different spatial and temporal scales, which is captured by the different derivatives involved. The curvature vector is introduced as a new measure of the effect of anisotropies, originating from different mechanisms like a temperature gradient, mean flow or magnetic background field, on the geometry of Lagrangian trajectories and either stream lines or, in case of a conducting fluid, magnetic field lines.
The first study includes Lagrangian experimental datasets of a turbulent von Kármán flow, Rayleigh-Bénard convection at two different Rayleigh numbers and the logarithmic layer of a turbulent zero-pressure-gradient boundary layer over a flat plate. The curvature and torsion statistics of von Kármán flow and Rayleigh-Bénard convection agree well with previously reported experimental and numerical results for the curvature and with numerical simulations of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence for the torsion.
For the logarithmic region of the boundary layer, the form of the torsion probability density function (PDF) also agrees with these results.
The curvature PDF retains the same heavy tail as curvature PDFs measured for the aforementioned flow types for small curvature events, however, high curvature events are suppressed by the mean flow. Studying the curvature vector and connecting it with velocity fluctuations shows the effect of anisotropy and allows a geometric interpretation of large-scale motion in terms of the structure of trajectories.
In the second study, another type of anisotropy is introduced by a magnetic background field for a flow with electrically conducting fluid in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.
Utilising high resolution data obtained by direct numerical simulation of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence across a range of Reynolds numbers, the curvature PDFs of stream lines and magnetic field lines compare well with the PDFs derived based on Gaussian statistics for the Lagrangian trajectories.
For the PDFs of the curvature vector components, the magnetic field lines tend to be less curved in the direction of the magnetic background field, which can be connected to the suppression of magnetic field fluctuations parallel to the magnetic background field and the partial two-dimensionalisation of the flow.
The curvature vector PDFs of stream lines show that the effect of a magnetic background field on the geometry of stream lines is less profound compared to the effect on the magnetic field lines.
The models mentioned above are based on Gaussian statistics. However, turbulence is more complex and intermittency plays a crucial role. As an improvement of these models, a model for the curvature PDF for von Kármán flow and Rayleigh-Bénard convection is derived, which takes spatio-temporal intermittency into account. Using a decomposition into Gaussian sub-ensembles, where within each the curvature PDF is known exactly, an exact model expression and a closed-form approximation for the curvature PDF can be derived.
These PDFs agree qualitatively and quantitatively with the measured curvature PDFs of turbulent von Kármán flow and Rayleigh-Bénard convection
Catholicity in action: the Oxford Movement and social engagement, 1833-1910
No full textThe original contribution to scholarship of this thesis is to make plain the ecclesiological root of the social thought and action of the Oxford Movement during the period 1833 to 1910. This thesis contributes to recent work that has drawn attention to social themes in the Oxford Movement, a facet of the Movement that has been frequently overlooked. This thesis argues that not only did the Oxford Movement entail a dimension of serious social thought from its beginning in 1833, but that Tractarian social thought had its basis in, and emanated from, the Tractarians’ ecclesiology, precisely their understanding of what it meant to be the ‘Catholic’ Church. I argue that this doctrine of Catholicity was understood by the Tractarians and later Anglo-Catholics as having profound practical implications for society. I begin in my first chapter by an examination of Tractarian ecclesiology followed by an examination of how Tractarians explored the social implications of Catholicity in my second chapter. In my third chapter I have taken certain Tractarian-led social projects as case studies and demonstrated how Tractarians attempted to put the implications of Catholicity into action within specific contexts: St. Saviour’s, Leeds, Park Village West, London, and Wantage, Berkshire.
Moreover, I argue that recognising the ecclesiological roots of Tractarian social thought allows us to recognise overlooked continuities with later Anglo-Catholicism. As such, my thesis also contributes to debates over the scope and periodisation of the Oxford Movement, arguing that it should be understood as continuing beyond the 1840s and developing through the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
I acknowledge that there were developments and innovations in both Anglo-Catholic thought and praxis: the rise of Ritualism, intersection with Evangelicalism, disillusionment with the establishment of the Church of England, and a general leftwards political shift. Nonetheless I argue that despite these developments there remained an essential continuity with the earlier Oxford Movement through a continued acceptance of the doctrine of Catholicity as a foundational doctrine. In my fourth chapter I examine how the Movement and its social thought developed in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that Anglo-Catholic social thought during this period remained rooted in the doctrine of Catholicity and the sounding of its practical implications. In my fifth chapter, I examine two further case studies belonging to this later phase: the Society of the Divine Compassion, Plaistow and St. Agatha’s Mission, Portsmouth. By examining these case studies, I have demonstrated how this latter phase of the Movement realized its developed understanding of Catholicity’s implications in action.
Finally, I suggest that the findings of this thesis have continuing relevance, particularly to Eastern Orthodox Christians in the contemporary West due to a shared understanding of the doctrine of Catholicity with Anglo-Catholicism. The example of the Oxford Movement’s social thought and action can thus serve as a helpful object lesson in how the practical implications of Catholicity can be appreciated and applied
Identity-based quotas in professional disciplines: evaluating policy efficacy and student decision-making with evidence from India
No full textThis thesis interrogates the efficacy of India’s caste-based quota policy in higher education and its influence on student decision-making within competitive professional disciplines. It examines the intersection of social identity, educational opportunity, and policy design, with particular focus on undergraduate degree programmes in law and engineering. Drawing on a critical realist framework, the research combines statistical analysis, policy review, and qualitative inquiry to evaluate both structural patterns and individual experiences of educational access.
The study is situated within the broader discourse on affirmative action and widening participation, offering a comparative perspective that contextualises India’s caste-based system alongside analogous policies in other countries. A three-stage methodology underpins the research: analysis of nationally representative survey data to estimate disparities in access and segregation across disciplines; systematic review of policy literature to explore the political and judicial framing of quota policies; and in-depth interviews with students to capture the lived experience of identity, aspiration, and career decision-making.
A key finding is that social identity exerts a causal influence on students’ higher education choices. Degree selection is not merely a rational economic decision informed by labour market signals, but a cultural process shaped by caste-based expectations, moral orientations, and inherited notions of merit. While quota policies have improved access for marginalised groups at an aggregate level, they have had limited impact on enabling equitable entry into high-value disciplines. The persistence of discipline-wise segregation reveals that deeper sociocultural structures continue to shape patterns of participation in higher education.
The thesis contributes theoretically by advancing the careership model with insights from the Indian context, particularly the role of ‘horizons for action’ and ‘turning points’ mediated by caste and institutional culture. Policy implications are equally significant: to be effective, affirmative action must move beyond numerical representation and engage with the cultural dimensions of educational inequality. This research offers critical evidence for designing more nuanced and responsive policy interventions that address not just who get in, but who gets what – and how – in the stratified higher education system
Inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and barriers and facilitators of appropriate antibiotic prescribing in dentistry
No full textINTRODUCTION:
Dentists prescribe 10% of all human antibiotics globally, with a significant proportion reported as inappropriate. Some studies indicate up to 80% of antibiotic prescriptions in the USA and UK are inappropriate. This misuse contributes to adverse effects and drives antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Despite the implementation of programs like the Global Action Plan (GAP), AWaRe, antibiotic stewardship initiatives, and prescribing guidelines, inappropriate use persists. Antibiotic prescribing is a complex process influenced by 31 modifiable factors. The WHO’s GAP highlights the importance of antibiotic use data in informing policy and practice. This thesis aims to estimate the magnitude of reported inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in dentistry and explore the factors influencing appropriate antibiotic prescribing among dentists and dental specialists.
METHODS:
To meet the aims of this thesis, two systematic literature reviews were conducted.
Reported Inappropriate Antibiotic Prescribing in Dentistry: The protocol was registered in PROSPERO. After screening 12,352 records from five databases, 21 studies were selected for inclusion. No relevant grey literature was identified. Three reviewers (NCG, KAS, VN) conducted a two-stage selection process using pre-defined eligibility criteria, resolving conflicts through discussion. The MMAT tool assessed study quality, revealing studies of high to medium quality. Due to high heterogeneity, a narrative synthesis was performed, supported by the I² statistic.
Barriers and Facilitators to Appropriate Antibiotic Prescribing Among Dental Professionals: A protocol was developed and guided the review. Seven qualitative studies were included after screening 14,498 records from five databases. No grey literature was found. A single reviewer (NCG) conducted the selection using pre-defined eligibility criteria. Study quality was assessed using the CASP tool, and thematic synthesis was employed to identify key themes and sub-themes.
RESULTS:
The first systematic review reported a high prevalence of reported inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions (IAP), with a mean of 64.03% and a median of 77.66% (IQR: 51.69% to 86.90%). Middle-income countries experienced the highest burden, with a mean of 85.67% and a median of 87.51% (IQR: 57.35% to 95.69%). This was followed by High-income countries, which had a mean of 53.25%, a median of 63.52%, and an IQR of 22.72% to 80.06%. No studies were identified from Low-income countries.
The second systematic review identified five themes and seventeen sub-themes, with each sub-theme comprising factors that act as barriers and facilitators to appropriate antibiotic prescribing. Barriers included time constraints, limited access to dental care, fear of medico-legal consequences, patient requests, and external pressures. Facilitators involved access to patient information, effective communication, education, awareness of AMR, and guideline utilisation.
CONCLUSION:
AMR and antibiotic prescribing are complex issues requiring a multifaceted approach to address them effectively. Addressing systemic barriers through integrated policies, tailored guidelines, and ongoing education is essential. Strengthening antibiotic stewardship programs and promoting interprofessional collaboration will support responsible prescribing. Future research needs to be prioritised in LMICs to understand context-specific challenges and develop effective, tailored interventions
Neural compilation and decompilation with conditional language models
Get PDFCompilers routinely translate programming languages into lower-level languages, enabling optimization and execution across hardware architectures. However, manually
crafting these translators requires decades of engineering effort. Moreover, while compilers excel at lowering code, rule-based systems face challenges in translating in the
opposite direction, limiting applications in cybersecurity and software migration.
This thesis identifies compilation as both an opportunity for automation and a source
of data for this automation by means of conditional language models that explicitly
learn low-level languages in the context of compilers. First, it proposes a new machine
learning task, neural compilation, to study models that learn to emulate a compiler.
Then, it develops a large-scale dataset of compilable and executable functions. Next,
it uses this new dataset to build a state-of-the-art neural decompiler that can produce
readable and accurate C from optimized assembly. Finally, it trains a neural lifter to
translate legacy assembly into compact compiler representations that can be reoptimized
and recompiled to new architectures.
This thesis shows that explicitly learning from compilation data with conditional
language models is a promising alternative to both traditional rule-based approaches
and general-purpose language models with less exposure to low-level languages
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