16168 research outputs found
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Utilizing supply-demand bundles in Nature-based Recreation offers insights into specific strategies for sustainable tourism management
No full textBalancing supply and demand in Nature-based Recreation (NbR) has the potential to yield co-benefits across multiple Ecosystem Services (ES), helping to make tourism activities more sustainable. However, a comprehensive understanding of supply-demand mismatches in NbR is challenging due to the complex interaction among various social, economic and ecological factors. This paper investigates mismatches in NbR supply and demand to provide insights for informing spatial and regional planning to achieve sustainable tourism. To this end, the paper uses a wide range of indicators such as biophysical attributes, accessibility and social indicators to map and assess NbR supply and demand, followed by the application of spatial statistics to analyse supply-demand mismatches. Cluster analysis was performed based on the supply-demand relationship to identify a typology of NbR ES across the study area in the north of Iran. The paper proposes an innovative application of recreation ES bundles with potential implications for sustainable tourism in a region marked as a hot spot for tourism. The analysis generated a typology of five bundles of NbR ES with differing recreational opportunities. Bundles 1 and 2, characterized by a supply surplus and substantial ecological value, are suitable for NbR activities such as camping, hiking, climbing, and birdwatching. In contrast, bundle 4 and 5 associated with urban centres, experience a supply deficit, making them less suitable for NbR. Bundle 3, characterized by a mixture of natural and productive lands, plays an important role in maintaining a balanced supply-demand state. This region holds potential for diverse forms of tourism, including rural and agricultural recreation such as farm tours and farm life experiences. Based on findings, the paper provides valuable insights for spatial and regional planning by proposing targeted strategies to sustainably manage tourism activities
Sustaining e-commerce profitability: A hybrid quantitative investigation into critical success factors (CSFs)
No full textIn the contemporary digital landscape, e-commerce has rapidly evolved, reshaping consumer behaviour and the retail industry. This study explores the dynamic factors affecting customer satisfaction and profitability in e-commerce. Utilising a comprehensive methodological framework that includes fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy BWM, C-means clustering, and fuzzy COPRAS methods, the research identifies and prioritises critical success factors influencing online consumer behaviour. An analysis of 602 customer records classifies purchasing behaviours and demographic characteristics into distinct clusters. Key findings underscore the significance of customer reviews, recommendation systems, shopping satisfaction, and personalised shopping experiences in driving e-commerce success. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the effectiveness of advanced analytical techniques in managing uncertainty and complexity in e-commerce data. Despite its contributions, the research acknowledges limitations, including the cross-sectional nature of the data, sample size constraints, and the need for broader generalisability. Future research directions include integrating emerging technologies, conducting longitudinal studies, and developing cross-channel strategies to enhance customer engagement and profitability
Fibrillation - Improving the fibre/matrix adhesion of lyocell fibres for use in short fibre-reinforced and 3D printed composites
No full textThis study investigates the influence of fibrillation of lyocell fibres on the mechanical properties of
compression moulded polylactide (PLA), polypropylene (PP) composites, and 3D printed PLA
composites. Fibrillation was shown to reduce the strength and elongation at break of the fibres without
affecting the Young's modulus compared to untreated fibres. Nevertheless, fibrillation in composites
resulted in a 1.15 higher strength for PP composites and 1.62 for PLA composites. Young’s modulus
and impact strength were increased by factors of 1.41 and 1.38 for PP composites and 1.2 and 1.23 for
PLA composites. Applying the fibrillated fibres in 3D printed PLA shows a significant increase in the
mechanical properties. For example, with a fibre mass fraction of 30%, the tensile strength of the
composites with fibrillated fibres was increased by a factor of 1.18 compared to composites with
untreated fibres. The use of maleic anhydride in the PLA matrix in combination with composite heat
treatment further increased the strength by a factor of 1.46. With a strength of 85 MPa, a Young's
modulus of 7.2 GPa and an elongation at break of 3.2%, these are some of the highest values reported
for this kind of 3D printed materials
Editorial to the special issue on JCDL 2022
No full textThis special issue features the selected works of authors who have presented papers at the 2022 iteration of the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) in Cologne, Germany. The motto of the conference was “Bridging Worlds” and was run as a fully hybrid event. Ten papers covering all aspects of Digital Libraries, namely Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, User Behavior, Scholarly Communication, Classification, Information Extraction are included in this issue
Community resilience: A multidisciplinary exploration for inclusive strategies and scalable solutions
No full textThis paper evaluates literature across multiple disciplines and stakeholder types to identify commonalities and contradictions in definitions for community resilience. It aims to support cross-disciplinary discourse to build an interdisciplinary understanding of community resilience. This work identifies the differences between mono-, multi-, inter-, and cross-disciplinary approaches to inform community resilience strategies in academic and practice-based contexts. Four themes for community resilience were identified through a review of cross-disciplinary literature. These include (1) diverse yet convergent definitions of community resilience and the evolution from equilibrium to adaptation to transformation; (2) equitable and inclusive strategies for the development of community resilience initiatives; (3) when and at what scale strategies should be implemented; and (4) community resilience as a process or an outcome. This work is valuable to those seeking to familiarise themselves with the concept of community resilience, including educators who deliver courses on community resilience and policy-makers. It is novel in that it presents an interdisciplinary framework for navigating the community resilience discourse beyond individual professional boundaries
Diversity inquiry: Retuning queer pedagogy in secondary schools through posthuman philosophical inquiry and humour
No full textPoststructural theory has informed my professional practice in secondary schools for over 25 years. Poststructuralism called me to notice that humanism produces a normal-abnormal binary. This constructs a diversity-difference dualism that operates through the New Zealand Curriculum to define diversity only in relation to cultural difference. While such a framing of diversity presents cultural difference positively, as something to be valued, celebrated, and normalised, the emphasis on cultural difference potentially marginalises disability and LGBT+ difference, positioning them as abnormal. My concern that the intelligibility of diversity in secondary schools is being constrained by the dominance of humanism in Western-anglophone pedagogies provides the impetus for my research project since this construction has implications for how secondary schools prepare young people for a diverse world. In my role as a teacher/counsellor, I noticed that disabled and LGBT+ identities are considered more vulnerable and at-risk of harm. Professional practice in schools focusses on meeting learning needs and reducing risk of harm. Curriculum content currently emphasises self-responsibility and social justice discourses that present difference as a serious, moral-ethical concern to develop empathy.
Queer-posthuman pedagogies underpinned by poststructural theory offer an alternative epistemological orientation to difference/diversity that secondary school education in Aotearoa/New Zealand has yet to access in teaching practice. Over two decades, I experimented with forms of facilitation to access posthuman knowledge. This culminated in a collaboration with Philip Patston, a queer-disabled comedian and diversity consultant, to develop a philosophical inquiry process aimed at senior students, called Diversity Inquiry (DIVINQ). The process aims to explore diversity beyond dualisms by employing encounters with difference through humour in a Community of Inquiry format. To date, DIVINQ has run in two large Auckland secondary schools.
Through this doctoral study, I set out to investigate how DIVINQ might work as queer-posthuman inquiry. A key focus is how humour-laughter is recruited through a form of trickster co-facilitation to trouble humanist fields of thought. The research project employs a Foucauldian and Deleuzoguattarian conceptual framework that draws on cymatics as a metaphor and metaphors from The Matrix film .
The project utilised a practitioner-based autoethnographic approach. Data collection involved interviews with co-facilitators and nine past participants of DIVINQ. Analysis took up posthuman-new-materialist practices of reading data through Foucauldian cues such as discourses and problematisations, and Deleuzoguattarian cues such as assemblages and affects.
Findings show that institutional dividing practices are obscured and limit young peoples’ exposure to forms of functional difference/disabilities. Health education draws on bio-medical knowledge that circulates developmental and hygiene discourses. Young people learn to manage risk and take responsibility for their wellbeing. Teaching assemblages employ strategies to negotiate moral taboos of sex-sexuality and construct a safer space to ask questions. These assemblages reinforce ignorance as lack of knowledge and reify normative ideas of sex, gender, and sexuality. In traditional classroom teaching, disciplinary power monitors student behaviour. Humour and laughter, when plugged into such assemblages, function to release tension but also to police social norms.
DIVINQ’s rearrangement of objects, use of The Matrix film, and playful performances, disturb institutional hierarchies to construct a trickster facilitation position. Philip’s lifelong experimentation to resist deficit ideas has developed his posthuman knowledge of difference. His stand-up comedy fine-tuned his trickster approach to facilitation. Philip’s rebellious and ironic humour retuned participant encounters with material disability by troubling problematisations of difference. The affective forces of laughter generated by his humour produced an intimate, playfully relaxed environment. In this new space, participants were more comfortable to ask questions and to take risks with ideas. Co-trickster facilitation disturbed rational-reason inquiry skills by initiating thought through affective shocks. The absence of meritocratic measures of success accelerated participants’ desire to engage in DIVINQ. As opposed to producing shame, not knowing and confusion were experienced as pleasurable enlivenment.
After finishing school, participants were more open to a broader concept of normal and, subsequently, the notion of difference-as-other resonated with less intensity. Participants developed a greater sensitivity to the positioning effects of language and noticed when their thinking was recaptured by normative, binary ideas. As a result of DIVINQ, participants sought further opportunities to learning through encounters with difference.
This project makes a case for DIVINQ to be regarded as a form of queering-posthuman assemblage. It presents humour as a disturber of discourses and laughter as a material-affective force, both of which construct a space to defamiliarise humanist habits of thought. The thesis discusses aspects of trickster facilitation that manages to retune Communities of Inquiry practices to produce a pedagogical practice of epistemic vulnerability. It examines the lasting effects of DIVINQ, which are discussed in terms of a potential emergent posthuman subjectivity oscillating between human-posthumanist fields, and it considers the ethical implications of these effects.
This project contributes to the field of poststructural informed pedagogical practice in secondary schools. The research offers DIVINQ as an example of a queer-posthuman form of philosophical inquiry by articulating how trickster facilitation can ethically recruit humour to trouble humanism. In the emergent area of future-oriented education, the project offers a reconceptualisation of what it means to work in new partnerships and with a diversity of knowledge
Flora + Fauna
No full textVisual poetry featured in 'To feel the earth as one's skin: An anthology of Indigenous visual poetry' published by Poem Atlas, London, UK. This poem depicts a koru or an unfurling native fern formed from the words ngāi tipu, referring to plant life (flora), and a tuna or native eel formed from the words ngāi kīrehe, referring to animal life (fauna). Hand-stenciled lettering. Black ink on paper
The influence of river plume discharge and winds on sediment transport into a coastal mangrove environment
No full textWe investigate how the physical forcing factors of river discharge and winds affect sediment delivery to, and retention within, mangrove-lined coastal regions. We use an idealized numerical model, broadly similar to the Firth of Thames deltaic system in New Zealand, to isolate and explore the underlying processes without some of the complexities of the real system. Total sediment transport and the relative contributions of riverine and bed-sourced sediment into the forest are assessed using a transect along the edge of the forest region. The model results demonstrate that both river discharge and winds alter the distribution of sediment transport, and that the spatial patterns relate to different regions of the river plume. At the river mouth (the near-field region), irrespective of the discharge employed, sediment fluxes are directed into the mangrove forest, indicating an accretionary environment consistent with satellite observations. Here, contributions from the riverine and bed-sourced sediments are similar. For small to medium discharge scenarios (up to ∼ 280 m3 s-1, flow speeds ∼ 0.6 m s-1), mass loads increase with river discharge. However, in the case of large discharge events, the high momentum in the near-field region allows the river plume to effectively transport sediment through the full width of forested region and out of the forest front. In the mid- and far-field regions of the plume, tidal influences also play a stronger role. Suspended sediment is primarily composed of bed-sourced material and transported out of the forest. Weaker winds are found to affect the far- and mid-field regions of the river plume. Stronger winds are able to reshape the entire plume structure, also including the near-field, such that sediment deposition is enhanced when winds are directed towards the forest
Adaptive digital twins for energy-intensive industries and their local communities
No full textDigital Twins (DTs) are high-fidelity virtual models that behave-like, look-like and connect-to a physical system. In this work, the physical systems are operations and processes from energy-intensive industrial plants and their local communities. The creation of DTs demands expertise not just in engineering, but also in computer science, data science, and artificial intelligence. Here, we introduce the Adaptive Digital Twins (ADT) concept, anchored in five attributes inspired by the self-adaptive systems field from software engineering. These attributes are self-learning, self-optimizing, self-evolving, self-monitoring, and self-protection. This new approach merges cutting-edge computing with pragmatic engineering needs. ADTs can enhance decision-making in both the design phase and real-time operation of industrial facilities and allow for versatile 'what-if' scenario simulations. Seven applications within the energy-intensive industries are described where ADTs could be transformative
Automating test scripts for Android UI testing
No full textThe Espresso capture/replay testing tool for Android applications creates tests that are prone to test fragility, in that when small changes occur to the user interface, tests break and are unable to be re-run. To reduce the fragility and its impact inherent in Espresso tests, we take a modeldriven development approach to test generation. Using interaction sequence models as the basis for generation, we are able to create test scripts that can be run in Android Studio identically to manually recorded tests. This process simplifies scripts when compared with those generated by recording and reduces the time required by developers to create and maintain the test suite, resulting in higher quality testing and validation of Android user interfaces