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Path Diversification in the Regional Transition of a Dual-core Heavy Industrial City: Tangshan, China
No full textIn recent years, Tangshan, as a dual-core heavy industrial city in northern China, has been facing significant challenges, including an unreasonable industrial structure, severe environmental pollution, a heavy burden of urban debt, and a declining birth rate, putting immense pressure on its economy, society, environment, and resource. To address these issues, Tangshan government has been exploring suitable methods for regional transition to achieve sustainable development in the past decade. This thesis draws on the theories of evolutionary economic geography (EEG), regional innovation system (RIS), sustainable transition theory (STT), and the theory of rescaling, to conduct a comparative study between city central districts and Caofeidian District of Tangshan. It explores a new path for the regional transition of Tangshan. By analyzing the policy history of Tangshan's regional transition and development over the past forty years through rescaling, it is found that the rescaling, namely the change of power and capital between different scales, have occurred, but upscaling has a greater potential to promote regional transition and development. However, major development events, such as post-earthquake reconstruction and the development of Caofeidian, require a multi-level rescaling. Through a coupling coordination degree analysis of Tangshan's regional innovation capacity and regional transition capacity from 2012 to 2020, it is observed that although there has been some improvement in the coupling and coordination of the two capacities, the regional transition capacity has entered an almost stagnant phase since 2019. Analyzing the influencing factors of the two capacities using the geographic detector, it is found that factors such as tax reductions and exemption for high-tech enterprises, the added value of strategic emerging industries, and the number of invention patents have significant impacts on the regional innovation capacity, the regional transition capacity, and the regional innovation on economic development of Tangshan, respectively. Using the entropy weight method to compare the innovation capacity of city central districts and Caofeidian District from 2012 to 2020, it is revealed that the innovation capacity of city central districts is still superior to that of Caofeidian District, with the Tangshan High-tech Zone having the strongest innovation capacity among the four districts. Through Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) analysis of the specific innovation performance of city central districts and Caofeidian District, it is found that the former has better innovation resources, while the latter has the highest innovation input. Both areas need to improve their innovation milieu. Last but not the least, by applying the obstacle factor analysis model to analyze the factors hindering innovation in city central districts and Caofeidian District, it is identified that financial intermediation is the most critical obstacle factor for the former, while international trade in goods is the most important obstacle factor for the latter.
Therefore, this research concludes that promoting Tangshan's regional transition requires more than just enhancing regional innovation system. It is essential to establish a regional transition system and employ a systematic approach to comprehensively and multi-dimensionally improve regional transition in Tangshan. Ultimately, through the regional transition system, Tangshan will be more effectively and efficiently transformed from a heavy industrial city into a sustainable development city in China. The research not only enriches the existing literature on Tangshan's transition but also provides new solutions for its sustainable development in the future. Furthermore, it offers some insights for other resource-based cities, old industrial cities, and independent industrial and mining areas in China and around the world undergoing transition.</p
Collaged Clothes
No full textBackgroundAdam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas argue that fashion practices that ‘place criticality at the epicentre of (their) concerns,’ can ‘destabilize ideologies, and encourage ways of rethinking self and identity,’ through clothes (What is Critical Fashion Practice? 2020). As such, this research adopted the critical visual art practice of collage – which Gioia Chilton and Victoria Scotti observe can be used to ‘jar us into new insights ... and rework old patterns of thought.’ (Snipping, Gluing, Writing, 2014) – to rethink relationships between wearers and fashion images. Similar critical applications of collage to fashion-based representations are evident in Elisa van Joolen’s 11”x 17” (2014) and Jane Morley’s Precarious Bodies (2018). ContributionCollaged Clothes applied critical and expanded fashion practices to investigate whether the way in which wearers integrate commercial fashion images into their wardrobes can be understood as a creative image making processes akin to collage. This proposition was explored by inviting wearers to produce a wearable fashion image using an innovative combination of collage and wearing. During the event participants were offered a range of iron-on fashion photographs and t-shirts with which to create a wearable fashion image, and to reflect upon this image by wearing it and composing a swing tag describing its representational effect. By facilitating wearers to engage actively with fashion images as makers, rather than passively as consumers, Collage Clothes critiques commercial fashion media practices and proposes an agential alternative. SignificanceCollaged Clothes was presented as part of the Dialogical Bodies, Artistic Research Exchange at the Swedish School of Textiles: University of Borås. This event brought together esteemed practice-based researchers from Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia including Tanveer Ahmed, Ida Falck Øien, Ruby Hoette and Elisa van Joolen. The program for this event was curated by double-blind peer review by a panel of leading artistic researchers from the Swedish School of Textiles, ArtEZ: University of the Arts and RMIT University. Collaged Clothes was funded in part by RMIT F&T’s Professional Development Fund and is the subject of an article in APRIA Journal, vol.8 (2025).All photographs by Andrés Rehbein, rights owned by Remie Cibis. Featuring wearable fashion images created by Melanie Bower, Ingvild Rømo Grand, Anna Lidström, Santiago Útima Loaiza, Chinouk de Miranda, Collette Paterson and an anonymous participant.</p
Diasporic Belonging in Religious Spaces: Insights from Within the Sri Lankan Diaspora
No full textThe changing social, cultural and physical characteristics and uses of public spaces by migrants are of longstanding interest to social scientists. Often embedded in uses of public spaces are splinters, resonances and connections to home and migration. This paper examines the religious spaces that Sri Lankan migrants engage with in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. To untangle the complexities associated with these spaces, we integrate a framework of belonging that encompasses rituals, relationships and restrictions. A multilayered dataset, which includes interviews with the Sri Lankan diaspora, (auto)ethnography, field observations and photography, revealed that within the Sri Lankan diaspora, individuals often used religious spaces to maintain rituals and identities. The data uncovered that some participants in the diaspora used religious spaces to gather and socialise with other diaspora members while others had dynamic relationships with these spaces – that is, the meanings attributed to religious spaces were at times fraught with tensions and hostilities towards religious practice and feelings of welcome. In this paper, we offer a snapshot of a growing diaspora in Australia and their negotiations to belong (or not).</p
Collaborations for Remake: Participation in Practice
No full textTextile waste is a problem for businesses that aim for more sustainable practices, particularly when they do not want to resell or donate these unwanted materials in their current form. One option is to turn them into new products via remake, a term used to encompass processes such as remanufacturing and upcycling. Despite fashion having a long history of material reuse among service providers and in domestic settings, brands that utilise remake to create products have only appeared in the last few decades. Research into these businesses is still emerging, and it has primarily focused on general sourcing and production.
While collaboration is often acknowledged within discussions of remaking, it has seldom been closely examined. This thesis argues that existing research does not provide sufficient understanding of how remake collaborations operate within the fashion industry.
Consequently, this study asks: What can we learn from the inner workings of remake collaborations occurring within the fashion and textile industry, and how can this knowledge enable more participation by potential actors?
Using methods such as mapping, object analysis, and interviews, this research examines remake collaborations occurring among Australian businesses. A total of 38 cases of remake collaborations are studied throughout the research, with each involving an actor who provides the material, the Material Provider, and an actor who remakes the material, the Remaker. Nine of these collaborations were explored in more detail through six semi-structured interviews with Remakers, with these interviews being edited and disseminated as a podcast during the research project.
The research findings reveal that the collaboration process is comprised of five phases, starting with Building Awareness of each other and materials, before Instigating Collaboration, then Remaking Materials, with the resulting products moving through Retailing & Marketing, and the collaboration potentially then looping back through the phase of Managing Remnants which may in turn spark more collaborations. Actor involvement across these phases showed different patterns, resulting in the proposal of three models to capture how a Material Provider might choose to participate: as the Giver of materials, the Sponsor of the collaboration, or the Client of the Remaker. By participating in these models, Material Providers were suggested as primarily engaging the Remaker in services for either transferring materials, or transformation of materials via remake.
Recognising that the ways in which materials were transferred and transformed through the collaboration was key, the study then examined how Remakers approached material selection, design development and remaking methods. Extending existing categorisations of remaking, eight remaking methods were identified as being tied to the ways Remakers contribute their skills, ability to use equipment, and willingness for remaking. These methods encompass more diverse practices and skills than have previously been identified, inviting participation in remaking from a wider range actors beyond just traditional fashion production. Grouping the different remaking methods into how they may transform the unwanted materials and products, offered links between the problems with materials and the potential methods actors may use. Further analysis showed that collaborations are influenced by how actors shape their remaking repertoire, as they applied specific tactics to direct their acceptance of materials and design development processes. Assessing how actors employ these tactics led to the proposal of four different strategies for approaching remake collaborations: Limited Edition Product Collaboration, Remake Brand Collaboration, Long-term Collaborative Partnership, and Remaking Design Collaborator. These strategies are discussed as offering different dynamics and future potential for how remake collaborations might be established within the fashion system. The approaches Remakers take in these tactics and strategies capture relationships with materials and design, and these may have application beyond just fashion. For example, they might be applied to other design fields who seek to develop remake outcomes, such as product design, jewellery and other creative areas, as these strategies speak to the ways that actors approach sourcing unwanted waste materials and developing products.
To conclude, a blueprint is developed to connect the various research findings and offer a useful tool for navigating remake collaborations. This blueprint outlines how actors might choose to participate in remake collaboration practices, including strategies and tactics they might use for developing remake products, as well as methods and associated transformations that they may employ when remaking materials. In drawing together these findings, a range of key implications are provided for both practitioners, researchers, industry and government, to support remaking practices and collaborations moving forward. These include recommendations for businesses identify their own waste streams and take initiative in instigating collaborations, calls for active consideration of Remaker criteria when investigating future textile sorting systems, emphasis on the need for government to establish clearer boundaries around material ownership and recognition of the potential of diverse remaking methods to be developed into various specialised remaking practices. Through this study, a deeper understanding of remake collaborations is established, providing clearer pathways to enable more actors to strategically participate.</p
Experimenting with arts-based methods and affective provocations to understand complex lived experience of a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder
No full textThis article draws on arts-based psycho-social research to explore embodied and visceral knowing and feeling in the context of people living with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). It presents a discussion of creative artworks solicited through a nation-wide online survey conducted in Australia in 2021 that generated intimate and affective understanding about living with a diagnosis of BPD. To investigate what lived experiences of distress associated with a BPD diagnosis communicate through sensation, emotion, image and affective capacity, the authors put to work Blackman's (2015) concept of "productive possibilities of negative states of being" and the broader theoretical framework of new materialism. This approach allows a more transformative feeling-with that exceeds the normative affective repertoires and scripts associated with a diagnosis of BPD. The authors recognise the often unspoken and invisible affects of complex mental distress and trauma, and purposefully open the space for affective and symbolic aspects of creative artworks to communicate what is less known or has less presence in dominant biomedical frameworks about living with a BPD diagnosis. The article foregrounds the lived and living experience of participants to generate experiential rather than clinical understandings of the diagnosis.</p
Real-time haptic characterisation of Hunt-Crossley model based on radial basis function neural network for contact environment
No full textDynamic soft tissue characterisation is an important element in robotic minimally invasive surgery. This paper presents a novel method by combining neural network with recursive least square (RLS) estimation for dynamic soft tissue characterisation based on the nonlinear Hunt-Crossley (HC) model. It develops a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) to compensate for the error caused by natural logarithmic factorisation (NLF) of the HC model for dynamic RLS estimation of soft tissue properties. The RBFNN weights are estimated according to the maximum likelihood principle to evaluate the probability distribution of the neural network modelling residual. Further, by using the linearisation error modelled by RBFNN to compensate for the linearised HC model, an RBFNN-based RLS algorithm is developed for dynamic soft tissue characterisation. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively model the natural logarithmic linearisation error, leading to improved accuracy for RLS estimation of the HC model parameters.</p
Developing A Strategic Framework to Build Future Last Mile Delivery Scenarios: A Scenario Thinking Approach
No full textLast mile delivery (LMD) logistics research has drawn attention due to increased urban compactness and environmental concerns arising from freight traffic congestion. This has affected the cost-effectiveness and on-time delivery of urban freight. This study aims to develop a strategic framework to formulate future LMD scenarios based on transport and urban planning constraints using a scenario thinking approach. A scenario thinking stakeholder workshop was conducted to collect data on last mile delivery constraints in Metropolitan Melbourne. The research develops five abridge scenario thinking stages that researchers can adopt in scenario thinking methodology. Using brainstorming and storytelling of scenario thinking approach, participants identified 34 transportation and planning constraints clustered into six urban built-environment dimensions that formed the basis of the development of LMD future scenarios. The six clustered dimensions include Freight Infrastructure, Infrastructure Supply, Land use Intensity, Infrastructure Sharing, Intersection Controls and Human Behaviour. Infrastructure Supply and Land use Intensity were found to represent higher uncertainty and higher impact on city logistics provisions. The proposed regulatory-informed and efficiency-responsive strategies are the key to manage LMD. These strategies will help city logistics providers and planners in development of operational plans in making investment decision on LMD challenges.</p
Molecular Characterization of Glycans Involved in Helicobacter pylori Interactions With Gastric Cells
No full textHelicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is one of the few bacterial pathogens known to infect the human stomach, commonly causing gastritis, peptic ulcer, and gastric cancer (1-2% of cases). Current H. pylori treatment involves the use of triple antibiotic therapy or quadruple therapy including proton pump inhibitors and there is currently no commercially available vaccine. Furthermore, antibiotic resistance is on the rise and H. pylori strains have reported resistance to all currently used antibiotics. H. pylori is associated with the carbohydrate (glycan) Lewis histo-blood group antigens, displaying these glycans on the surface and adhering to Lewis glycans on human gastric cells and in the mucosa. The overall goal of this thesis was to explore the role of glycans such as the Lewis antigens in the adhesion of H. pylori to gastric cells and to develop potential new antiadhesives to assist in the treatment of H. pylori infection. Chapter 2 describes methodology involved in profiling the carbohydrate expression of H. pylori utilising traditional immunoassays as well as atomic force microscopy (AFM). In Chapter 3 these methods are used to profile the glycan expression of two H. pylori laboratory strains. Furthermore, a Lewis y (Ley) binding monoclonal antibody was demonstrated to successfully block the adhesion of H. pylori to a human gastric cell line. Chapter 4 explores the H. pylori blood group binding adhesin (BabA), known to interact with Lewis b (Leb) and the H1 (O blood group) antigen. A virtual screening pipeline was employed to successful identify three potential small molecule inhibitors of BabA. The hit compounds interacted with BabA and could inhibit binding of BabA to human gastric cancer cells. Furthermore, the interactions of these compounds with BabA were explored using computational methods to predict important binding residues, some of which were key residues for BabA recognition of the Leb glycan. Chapter 5 uses computational approaches to explore glycosylation of BabA with the aim of modeling how the structure and stability of BabA is affected by glycosylation. This study was motivated by the finding that the recombinant non-glycosylated BabA protein was thermally unstable at temperatures close to human body temperature. The O- and N-linked glycosylation sites on BabA extracellular region were predicted, and the impact of glycans on the shielding of the protein were predicted. Finally, molecular dynamics simulations indicated that addition of N-glycans to BabA is likely to increase the stability of the protein. These findings support the idea that future work should express BabA in eukaryotic host cells to study the impact of glycans on its specificity, structure, and stability. In summary, the findings of this thesis provide new methods of exploring the glycosylation and effect of glycosylation on bacteria and bacterial proteins. Additionally, it provides new avenues for the development of antiadhesive treatment for H. pylori, successfully blocking adhesion of bacteria using Ley binding monoclonal antibodies, which supports investigation of antibody-based treatments. The identification of small molecules that block a key glycan-binding protein could potentially accelerate the development of antiadhesive drugs to complement or replace current combination treatments for H. pylori infection. Finally, the importance of glycosylation of BabA was assessed using computational approaches. This work supported the need to consider glycosylation of outer membrane proteins to fully explore the complex structure-function relationships of H. pylori interactions with the human stomach and to accelerate development of new antiadhesives.</p
IoT Enabled Structures with Smart Devices to Mitigate Dynamic Loading
No full textDamages and collapse of buildings due to “soft-story” effects are most often observed during devastating natural disasters such as earthquakes. Soft-story buildings are the structures with open ground floors typically used for parking or commercial purposes are particularly vulnerable during earthquakes due to a sudden reduction in lateral stiffness at the lower stories. This structural weakness often leads to catastrophic collapses, posing significant risks to life and property. Traditional retrofitting methods, such as infill walls and energy-dissipating braces, compromise the functional requirements of these open spaces, limiting their practical application in modern architecture.This research presents an innovative approach to seismic risk mitigation through the development of IoT-enabled smart deployable systems that are automatically activated by Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems. Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) is rapidly evolving technology used in detection of the earthquake underway, and prediction of expected earthquake in seconds so that the warning can be broadcasted to those who are at risk. Currently such systems are implemented in Mexico and Japan and are being tested at the other parts of the world.Two conceptual devices are proposed and experimentally validated: (1) the Smart Deployable Scissor-Lift System and (2) the Smart Deployable Brace System. These systems are designed to remain retracted during regular building use, thereby preserving the open floor functionality, and deploy instantly upon receiving EEW signals, enhancing structural integrity during seismic events.Laboratory-scale experiments simulating four historical earthquakes were conducted using a Quanser Shake Table II. Structural responses and story drifts were measured using accelerometers and distance sensors, with data processed via MATLAB software. The results indicate that both systems significantly increase building stiffness during seismic excitation, thereby reducing deformation and enhancing stability. Although automatic retraction post-earthquake is beyond the scope of this study, manual retraction is feasible and ensures minimal disruption to building use after deployment.This research demonstrates a viable alternative to conventional retrofitting, offering a dynamic and functional solution to the seismic vulnerability of soft-story buildings. If appropriately scaled and optimized, these smart systems have strong potential for real-world application in earthquake-prone regions.</p
Refocusing the Lens: Spotlighting the Hidden Role of Back-of-House
No full textThis PhD explores my practice as a European architect in Asia, highlighting the difficulties architects from the West and East face in understanding each other. My research focuses on workflows, non-uniform design processes, communication, knowledge, tools, and how different cultural expectations play out. This study reflects on my experience and the dynamics of projects designed in one country and executed in another, involving different cultures.
In both cultures, the “Front of House” (FOH) is seen as the most valuable part of a project. The “Back of House” (BOH) is often neglected, viewed as unspectacular, and handed off to local architects. This research shifts the focus to BOH as part of a comprehensive design approach. The main emphasis is on BOH and technical design solutions, where seemingly insignificant details and standard approaches can affect the entire project. Through several case studies, I identify patterns in recurring non-linear design approaches, highlighting differences and systemic gaps rather than project-specific issues.
I untangle the in-between part of the design process—between vision and execution—to address previously unexamined issues related to communication. In my opinion architects often underestimate the importance of communication in collaboration with other architects of a different culture, and I will show how this affects the outcome of their projects. Through the lens of other disciplines, new ways of thinking emerge as core areas of influence.</p