4101 research outputs found
Sort by
Sustainable waste management strategy for plastic bag mitigation and reducing carbon footprint in the Emirate of Ajman - UAE
No full textThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations anticipated a circular economy to reach zero net waste. This paper presents a case study on reducing the carbon footprint resulting from plastic bags in Ajman, UAE, and recommends mitigation approaches. The main contribution of this paper is the comprehensive analysis of circular waste management practices and the development of recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint caused by plastic bags in Ajman, UAE. The study emphasizes the role of consumers in shaping plastic demand and consumption patterns, highlighting the need for their active involvement in sustainable waste management practices. The important results obtained from the survey and data analyses indicate that implementing an efficient circular industry economy framework, supported by strong public and private partnerships, can significantly reduce plastic pollution. The study proposes two key recommendations that aim to decrease the use of plastic bags per capita by 30% within three years, leading to a substantial reduction of 8,918 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Furthermore, the study presents a third recommendation advocating a complete ban on plastic bags. Through sustainable implementation, the research demonstrates that zero emissions related to plastic bags can be accomplished within a year. These findings highlight the potential impact of implementing the proposed recommendations in Ajman and as a blueprint for other regions striving to address plastic pollution and advance their circular waste management efforts. In addition to shedding light on the challenges and opportunities associated with circular waste management, this study provides practical recommendations with quantifiable environmental benefits to assist in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and creating a more sustainable future
The smart estate collaborative working with digital information management
No full textBuilding information modeling, or BIM, is a catch-all term for a wide array of tools and processes for creating digital representations of buildings or building components. These tools have been widely embraced for use in the construction phase of projects, but their potential has only begun to be realized in facility management and maintenance, even though these account for 85% of costs in the life cycle of a building. Organizations controlling diverse estates with multiple buildings of varying ages stand to benefit enormously from a BIM-informed approach to estate management.The Smart Estate outlines such an approach and its potential to improve facility and estate management. Emphasizing practical applications, it moves beyond the project delivery stage to focus on the much longer — and costlier — period of building operation and maintenance. The result is a thorough and accessible guide to generating collaborative, BIM-informed methods.The Smart Estate readers will also find:Case studies and real-world scenarios illustrating best practicesDetailed discussion particularly suited to the needs of large-scale or public-sector organizationsDetailed step-by-step guide to developing a BIM-informed approach to a given asset portfolioThe Smart Estate is ideal for professionals in construction management and facilities management, as well as for advanced students and professionals in all construction related disciplines
Abstracts and awards from the DARTP Conference 2022
No full textObjectives: Positive mental health in school predicts positive mentalhealth throughout the lifetime. Positive Psychology interventions (PPIs) insecondary schools have been shown to improve mental health outcomes forstudents. The Hummingbird Project, a brief, multi-component PPI, educatessecondary school students in a variety of Positive Psychology concepts, inthe hope of improving mental health outcomes in this cohort.Design: Over a 4-year period (pilot, N = 90; full study year 1, N =1,054; year 2, N = 876; year 3, N = 907), this intervention educatedsecondary school students on the concepts of happiness, gratitude, kindness,mindfulness, character strengths, hope, and growth mindsets.Outcomes: The intervention led to improvements in; student well-being,as measured by the World Health Organisation Well-Being Index (WHO-5);resilience, as measured by the Bolton Uni-Stride Scale (BUSS); hope, asmeasured by the Children’s Hope Scale (CHS); symptoms of mental distress, asmeasured by the Young Person’s Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation(YP-CORE).Conclusions: These results show that a brief, multicomponent, PPI,delivered by non-specialist staff, can improve mental health outcomes insecondary school settings. This masterclass will show some of the methodsemployed in the delivery of the Hummingbird Project, discuss some of thevarious pitfalls one might encounter when attempting to deliver suchpsychological interventions in a school setting, and give participants anopportunity to try some of the activities involved in sessions. Participantswill leave with a clearer understanding of some quick, simple exercises thatcan be performed with their students to improve mental health outcomes andacademic attainment.Objectives: Degree awarding gaps on the basis of ethnicity arepersistent across the sector, whereby Black students are approximately 20–30per cent less likely to be awarded a first class or upper second classdegree than white students. One way to address these gaps is to work withour students to co-create and recreate curricula to increase studentrepresentation and be anti-racist. The teaching practice that was developedwas a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic student advisory and discussiongroup, who refer to themselves as The Global Majority Collective. They havea paid student leader and approximately 20 students meet regularly online.They are supported by a member of staff to whom the student leader feedsback issues to the programme team.Design: In order to empower these students and increase theirself-determination, we created an initial discussion group centred aroundthe themes in psychological needs theory: autonomy, competence, andrelatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Students discussed the extent to whichthey felt that they could be themselves (autonomy), felt capable ofachieving their full potential (competence), and felt a sense of communityand belonging (relatedness) - seewww.brookes.ac.uk/siipInclusion Project. Subsequently,students set their own topics for discussion.Outcomes: The group had a truly transformative impact on both staff andstudent experience, from course content, to recruitment and admissionsstrategies, to student satisfaction and performance. The former leader said:‘As a Black student, I’ve seen an implementation of many issues we reported,and I feel more represented’.Conclusions: Teachers could consider setting up a similar platform intheir courses as one way to address inequitable degree awardinggaps.This interactive masterclass will present results and recommendationsfrom a mixed-methods research project about the experiences of Black Asianand Minority Ethnic (BAME) students studying psychology and an onlinedecolonising psychology curriculum pedagogies toolkit. Delegates will beable to have smaller directed group discussions about their experiences andapproaches to decolonising the psychology curriculum and pedagogies. Thismasterclass will be a chance to discuss how we can share practices to betterembed Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion into the Psychology curriculum. Wewill briefly report findings from the mixed-method project and invitediscussion about the project. The project used participatory action researchprinciples to co-design a quantitative survey. The survey was completed by195 students, of which 105 were from Black Asian and Minority Ethnicbackgrounds and 89 students were from non-BAME backgrounds. All studentswere studying UG and PG courses at two HEI in the West Midlands, the U.K. Wewill present data that compared BAME and non-BAME students’ experiences andviews about their psychology curriculum, delivery of teaching, personaltutoring support, course resources, peer relationships, representation,course community, approaches to study and their engagement. We also askedstudents from BAME backgrounds specific questions (both qualitative andquantitative), and these students reported challenges in belonging, culture,representation, terminology, and racism. Delegates will have the opportunityto discuss these findings. Delegates will have the opportunity to use theonline decolonising psychology curriculum pedagogies toolkit and itsdevelopment. We will discuss how it may help psychology staff/departmentsdecolonise their curriculum and pedagogies.Group-work assessment is increasingly common in higher education anddevelops essential graduate skills in collaboration, communication andproblem solving. However, the group work process can be challenging forstudents (Wilson et al., 2018), and staff faced the challenge of supportinggroups remotely in the pivot to online and blended learning (Wildman, 2021).Our initial objective was to work in partnership with students to evaluatecurrent group work practices and resources and co-create recommendations onhow best to support the process and assessment of group work in online andblended environments. Building on these recommendations, we co-developed theStaying Connected Toolkit with students. The toolkit focuses on practicalactivities to support group work, such as allocating group roles, improvingcommunication and encouraging group reflection. In this masterclassdelegates will apply the toolkit to their own teaching contexts and identifystrategies their students can use to improve collaborative working.Qualitative and quantitative feedback from students and staff suggests thatthe resources were helpful to students in initiating group organization andallocating tasks, and useful to staff in signposting support within theircourse. User analytics report higher student engagement with activities thatsupported initial group organization than activities designed to addressissues in group work. The staying connected toolkit has over 300 users andhas been adopted by a range of subject disciplines to scaffold grouporganisation and encourage reflective practice. Future work will focus onhow to increase accessibility of the tookit throughout the groupworkprocess. Staying Connected Toolkit can be accessed at:https://glasgowonline.gla.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=142Enrolmentkey:groupworkBackground: Many imposter phenomenon studies report anomalously highprevalence rates. The most common measure of imposter phenomenon is theClance Imposter Phenomenon Scale (CIPS), however this has received littlecritique beyond validation studies. Additionally, the CIPS has been used tomeasure imposter phenomenon in university students, but there is littleresearch on the appropriateness of this scale for a studentpopulation.Objectives: To investigate how students interpret the CIPS and toexplore the student discourse surrounding imposter phenomenon.Design: Participants (N=12) were undergraduates at the University ofLeeds from any discipline excluding psychology. Student-led focus groupswere conducted online where participants were asked to identify what thescale was measuring (having first received de-identified copies) and howthey interpreted the wording and structure of the scale. Recordings weretranscribed, then analysed using an inductive and reflexive approach tothematic analysis.Results: Participants most frequently suggested the scale was measuringself-doubt, self-esteem, and confidence. They also found many issues withthe scale, namely that it was tailored to current students, graduates, andhigh-fliers and that it was culturally exclusive. They did not feel theLikert scale could accurately represent their experiences and found thephrasing confusing and hard to interpret.Conclusion: Two factors may explain the rise in the prevalence ofimposter phenomenon: (1) students conceptualise imposter phenomenon morebroadly than the scientific community and/or (2) the CIPS is a weakdiagnostic tool.Online, open education has transformative potential for students withdiverse learning needs who would otherwise not be able, or would prefer not,to attend on-campus higher education. While open education programmes haveenhanced students’ ability to access HE institutions, an ableist academicculture and various resulting barriers in teaching and learningapproaches/use of educational technology can negatively impact the level ofaccessibility and inclusion within programmes. This presentation reports ona project that is reviewing and redeveloping aspects of the online learningdesign in a fully online undergraduate psychology programme in order toimprove levels of accessibility and inclusion. The project employs an actionresearch methodology to track and report on its progress. Data was gatheredthrough written feedback, interviews, and focus groups with students andstaff involved in the programme, as well as with ‘critical friends’ withexpertise and experience in accessibility and inclusion in higher education.An aim of the study was to treat stakeholders as co-designers of onlinelearning. All project activity, observations, and materials wer
Digital transformations in medical applications using audio and virtual reality procedures
No full textNumerous members of society struggle with health care issues, and despite the use of sensing technology, diseases in the body are still unable to be detected. The main cause of this identification process failure is the absence of any recognized virtual technology on the market.The majority of health care solicitations seek to create a specific application that simply delivers data on sensing values and ignores the virtual representation of those values. So, in order to detect the existence of viruses inside the body, this article offers an integration platform that links sensing devices with Virtual/Audio Reality (VR/AR) approaches. Additionally, a specific form of swarm intelligence algorithm known as Fruit Fly (FF) is used in the recognition process with a modified fitness function. The FF technique offers a lot of low layer awareness, which improves the output for efficient operation. The proposed AR/VR technique is used with biological sensors to analyze the real-time situations, and five different case studies are divided.It is logical to conclude from the experimental results that all validated case studies offer excellent productivity and are adaptable to all environmental circumstances
Lung histopathological detection using image classification
No full textEarly detection of lung histopathology has become crucial and essential for humans. Rapid recognition gives many patients the greatest chance of recovery. Histopathological graphics of biopsy samples tissue from possibly infected areas of the lungs are used by doctors to best solution. The multiple type of lung disease is frequently misdiagnosed and prolonged to detect. The characteristics used to detect Lung Histopathology are extracted from Computed Tomography (CT scan) images. Deep Learning (CL) is a novel method that enables us to improve result’s precision. In this paper, we create DL model to determine the type of lung cancers from Computed Tomography images. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) which recognize and categorize lung-cancer type within improved efficiency and less amount of time, that is crucial to deciding on the best treatment approach for patents and their risk of mortality. This paper proposes a tri-category classification which applies to images of lung cancer. Benign, adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma is performed by utilizing VL, VGG-16, and Le-Net to process an image of lung tissue and obtain functionalities effective for diagnostic techniques. Further, the paper analyzes how handcrafted characteristics can be extracted from raw pictures after various processing steps, and finally, the Python framework (Django) is used to deploy the model. The purpose of using this technique is to obtain some characteristics primarily relevant to lung histopathology forecasting
Entrepreneurial Leadership: A Study of Black Minority Ethnic SMEs in the UK
No full textLeadership is a field of study in management, but it remains elusive (Harrison, 2018). This justifies the need for further research in the area. Entrepreneurial leadership has been identified as the form of leadership style for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because it is suited to address the situational environment of SMEs. Scholars have researched entrepreneurial leadership; however, it has not been examined in Black Minority Ethnic (BME) SMEs in the UK. This study would examine leadership and small and medium enterprises independently and further explore the entrepreneurial leadership phenomenon. In this paper, entrepreneurial leadership is assessed from the small and medium enterprises context, and the most effective entrepreneurial competencies suitable for SMEs. The researcher aims to develop this study addressing entrepreneurial leadership from BME SME perspectives in the UK
MDROGWL: modified deep reinforcement oppositional wolf learning for group key management in IoT environment
No full textSecuring confidential data against unauthorized users leads to access control policies with the rapid progression of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Because of high mobility subscribers, the dynamic IoT environment is subjected to high signaling overhead which remains a challenging issue to guarantee data dissemination to legitimate users. The group's key management schemes are the central mechanism to deal with dynamic environments. But they are centralized concepts that cause scalability issues and suffer in handling large numbers of subscribers. Therefore, this paper proposes a modified deep reinforcement oppositional wolf learning-based group key management (MDROWL-GKM) system to monitor the data obtained in IoT properly. It does not maximize the network traffic as well as computational overhead when a group member leaves or joins. With the inclusion of an opposition-based learning gray wolf optimization algorithm, the overload issue of the modified deep reinforcement method is eliminated and the performance is enhanced. The efficacy of the proposed MDROWL-GKM system is investigated using different measures namely storage overhead, computation overhead, access response time, space complexity, re-evaluation time, policy adjustment accuracy, and communication overhead. The experimental analysis proves that the proposed MDROWL-GKM system is superior to other state-of-the-art techniques, particularly with high policy adjustment accuracy (96%), less communication overhead (8 μs) and area under curve (AUC) rate (0.982
Juror decision-making within domestic sex trafficking cases: do pre-trial attitudes, gender, culture, and right-wing authoritarianism predict believability assessments?
No full textThe present study examined whether country of residence, sex trafficking attitudes, complainant gender, juror gender, and right-wing authoritarianism influenced juror decision-making within a sex trafficking case.Jury-eligible participants from the United States and United Kingdom participated in an online juror experiment in which an independent groups design was used to manipulate the complainant’s gender. Participants completed the Juror Decision Scale, the Sex Trafficking Attitudes Scale, and the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale.Sex trafficking attitudes predicted believability of both the defendant and complainant. Greater negative beliefs about victims predicted greater defendant believability and lower complainant believability. U.S. jurors reported greater believability of both the complainant and defendant, and right-wing authoritarianism was associated with greater defendant believability. However, none of the other factors, including complainant and juror gender, predicted participants’ verdicts. The findings suggest juror verdicts in sex trafficking cases may be less influenced by extra-legal factors, although further research is needed, especially with a more ambiguous case.This is one of few cross-cultural comparison studies in the area of jury decision-making, and specifically regarding sex trafficking cases. The findings indicated that U.S. participants held more problematic attitudes about sex trafficking than their U.K. counterparts, although all participants held problematic attitudes about sex trafficking. However, those attitudes did not affect verdict formation about either a male or female complainant. Participants who were more knowledgeable about sex trafficking reported greater complainant believability, suggesting that educational interventions may provide greater support toward victims in court
Critical Commentary. The psychology of laughter prescription: contributions to the research literature on laughter and humour
No full textA growing body of evidence, highlighting multiple benefits of laughter for health and wellbeing, has resulted in physician calls for laughter prescription. As a pragmatist, I was inspired to explore how these foundations could be converted into action. Here I present and critique my six-year laughter and humour research journey. My purpose is to substantiate the potential of laughter prescription with evidence-based, theoretical, and practical insight.Central to my research is the one-minute Laughie (Laugh Intentionally Everyday) laughter prescription. Here I introduce this original contribution, contextualise laughter prescription, and present my first- and second-wave research. The latter, inspired by my critical literature review (Chapter 3), includes the Laugh-Health and Laugh-Thrive models. My critical commentary covers theoretical and applied research, reviews, commentaries, case studies, and citizen science research, motivated by the independent use of the Laughie in the “Laughie Challenge Australia”. My third-wave research, currently underway, includes the book ‘The Positive Psychology of Laughter and Humour.’ Pragmatic autoethnography, an approach I conceived, allows me to convey findings, experiences, and recommendations in accordance with my research paradigm. My five research contributions, include the development of a feasible laughter prescription modality; the demonstration that laughter and humour differ in nature, impact, and outcome and thus merit treatment as co-equals; pioneering research in solitary laughter; prototypal citizen science research; and a range of original ancillary methodologies.I am the first to have engaged deeply with theoretical and applied laughter prescription. My contributions raise the profile of laughter prescription and demonstrate why we should consider to “laugh for a reason”. They also highlight the need to address conflational, measurement, mindset, and modality challenges within laughter prescription research, and value the hitherto dismissed topic of solitary laughter. Overall, I hope my research will encourage insight into laughter prescription, and its exploration, expert usage and practic