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Middlesex University | KilburnLab: Imagining the future of Kilburn rethinking disused community spaces
No full textFocusing on the disused Kingsgate Community centre, the projects on display at the Kilburn Library Centre, present ideas on the potential future use and inhabitation of the building. These projects, part of the KilburnLab initiative, are led by Ba Interior Architecture and Ma Interiors students and staff at Middlesex University. They aim to explore how communities are formed and how adaptive reuse can be approached as a social practice.
KilburnLab at Middlesex University is playing an active role in the One Kilburn initiative.
Exhibition open 1st - 30th June2023
Palestinian stand-up comedy: moments of collective resistance and joy
No full textThis paper explores the potential and limits of Palestinian stand-up comedy as autobiographical and collective storytelling, reflecting on an intercultural collaborative performance project in the region, May-August 2022. Six Palestinian performers and a UK academic/director worked together to devise a 90-minute comedy show – Balad (homeland; community; local) - which toured six cities and facilitated comedy workshops for Palestinians in local community spaces, women's centres and refugee camps.
The paper considers the potency of stand-up comedy in this context and its impacts on performers, audiences, and workshop participants. Working in translation and finding ways to creatively navigate language boundaries, the project blended ‘western’ stand-up approaches with traditional Palestinian storytelling techniques. This resulted in the evolution of a distinctively Palestinian, collective comic performance style which tests the boundaries of the stand-up form and explores the possibilities of comedy in the margins.
Given the limits on Palestinians’ freedom of movement under occupation, they are routinely separated from each other and the rest of the world by physical, political, and cultural borders. The project sought to bridge these gaps by touring throughout the region and enabling the comedians to share their stories with audiences who are often unfamiliar with each other’s situations and have little experience of live stand-up comedy.
A priority for the performers as they established their comic voices and devised material tackling sometimes challenging subjects as comedy, was a shared desire to dismantle limiting perceptions of Palestinians and prevalent myths – emerging from both within and outside the region – about their lives under occupation. This resulted in a combination of autobiographical stand-up and collaborative comedy performances, creating moments of collective resistance and joy, and exploring and testing the boundaries of comic licence for their own communities
Review of parameter tuning methods for nature-inspired algorithms
Get PDFAlmost all optimization algorithms have algorithm-dependent parameters, and the setting of such parameter values can largely influence the behaviour of the algorithm under consideration. Thus, proper parameter tuning should be carried out to ensure the algorithm used for optimization may perform well and can be sufficiently robust for solving different types of optimization problems. This chapter reviews some of the main methods for parameter tuning and then highlights the important issues concerning the latest development in parameter tuning. A few open problems are also discussed with some recommendations for future research
Experts and creativity in programming
Get PDFThis research aims to explore the intricate relationships between creativity and programming, encouraging programmers to embrace a more creative approach to their work. It is based on answering the question, “How do experts perceive creativity in programming”. There is not much research in the area of creativity and programming, and this work bridges the gap between academia and my community of practice. In order to have a better understanding of the role of creativity in programming, I conducted a qualitative cross-sectional study where I collected information from sixteen expert programmers using semi-structured interviews. The transcripts produced 163,806 words leading to the interpretation of participants’ experiences using Applied Thematic Analysis (ATA). Initially, I produced 164 codes organized into sub-themes, originating seven main themes analysed in their relationship with creativity in programming: creativity, programming code, expertise, innovation, learning and development and impact. This study identified the participants’ perception of creativity in programming code and inferred that creativity is one of the characteristics that software developers can have that becomes a competitive advantage for modern organizations. In general, this research aims to contribute to the development of creativity in the field of programming and offer practical insights and recommendations to promote creativity, innovation, and excellence in the practice of software development
Comparison of the effectiveness and performance of student workgroups in online wiki activities with and without AI
Get PDFCollaborative learning has been widely acknowledged as a successful teaching method within the education field, with research indicating its positive impact on student outcomes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when all courses transitioned online due to lockdown measures, many universities employed Learning Management Systems to facilitate continued group work among students. However, forming effective student groups remained challenging, particularly given the large number of enrolled students. To address this issue, the study proposes the application of Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning) solution to automatically group students based on their behaviours and interactions within an e-learning environment. This paper explores the potential of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms in assisting educators to create heterogeneous groups, considering various student attributes, such as behaviour and performance, to optimise collaborative learning outcomes. Students' performance within a module was compared using a Wiki activity that employed group work over the course of two academic years. In the first experiment, groups were formed randomly, while in the second experiment, students with similar behaviours were firstly identified using a clustering algorithm and then sorted by an additional algorithm into heterogeneous groups. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the Machine Learning solution compared to the random approach in assisting educators with group formation for a collaborative activity such as the wiki, confirmed by a comparative analysis showing an improvement in student performance and satisfaction. The research contributes to the advancement of online education through the creation of more effective group dynamics using Machine Learning algorithms, thereby improving overall student learning
Food advertising contents influencing organic food purchase intention and actual purchase behaviour and the moderating role of gender: the case of Thailand
Get PDFIn recent years, the consumption of organic food has increased, which has a direct impact on consumers' health as well as on the sustainable development. Thailand's organic food consumption is relatively low compared to European countries. This study aims to examine the impacts of the food advertising contents (emotional appeal, informativeness and advertising creativity), product knowledge (PK), attitude (Att), subjective norm (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC) on purchase intention and actual purchase behavior toward organic foods, based on the Theory of planned behavior (TPB). This research also investigates moderating effects of gender on the various relationships between the impacts of food advertising content and product knowledge. However, consumers' purchase intention and actual purchase behavior toward organic foods are impacted by food advertising contents, PK, Att, SN, PBC and gender. This study is needed due to the gap in both literature and understanding relating to the influence of food advertising contents, PK, Att, SN, PBC toward the organic foods purchase intention and actual purchase behavior. The study's results can strengthen the context (Thailand) because it will provide valuable consumer data. The study's findings will be used to obtain some recommendations both at policy level, such as measures to promote knowledge about organic foods, and at industry level, such as strategies to increase the market share of organic foods in Thailand. Research gaps are indicated in food advertising content, which has not been investigated based on consumer demographics (gender). There are few studies on the impact of product knowledge about TPB. This study had been performed to reduce these gaps by investigating the moderating effects of gender on the various relationships between the influence of food advertising content and product knowledge, quantitative method was used. This quantitative study aimed to explore the impacts of food advertising contents on PK; PK is related to Att, SN and PBC; the effects of Att, Sn, and PBC on purchase intention; the effect of the purchase intention on actual purchase behaviour; the moderating role of gender on the relationship between food advertising content and PK. Drawing from the literature review, the research model and hypotheses were developed to bridge the research gaps and answer the research questions/objectives. The research model was tested using structural equation modelling (AMOS). The data used to test it was collected from questionnaires sent to 900 Thai consumers who are living in Thailand. The sampling frame could not be available for the whole Thai population, and using probability sampling was impossible. The study needed to use a sample of Thai retail consumers using snowball sampling, a non-probability-based sampling technique. The data were also used to perform multivariate analysis of the data, that included exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, to ensure that the scales developed were accurate and reliable. The finding revealed that the The finding revealed that subjective norms strongly impacted Thai consumers' purchase intention and actual purchase behaviour toward organic foods. It also revealed that informativeness is the highest contributor to product knowledge toward the purchase intention and actual purchase behaviour of the consumer toward organic foods. The results showed that (1) the emotional appeals, informativeness and advertising creativity strengthened product knowledge; and (2) product knowledge is positively related to attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control; and (3) attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control have a positive impact on intention to purchase; and (4) intention to purchase has a positive impact on actual purchase behavior; and (5) gender did not moderate the relationship between emotional appeals, informativeness, advertising creativity and product knowledge. TPB was used as it is widely regarded as reliable and is used to investigate all kinds of human behavior. However, the TPB framework does not explain a sufficient proportion of the intention variance. This study expanded TPB related to purchase behaviours by adding more variables to improve TPB's predictive accuracy, such as the food advertising contents and product knowledge, to predict the consumer’s purchase intentions regarding organic foods. Previous studies have indicated that new relevant variables might theoretically impact intentions and behaviour to improve the explanatory power of the TPB. The study also considered gender moderates the relationship between food advertising content and product knowledge. Previous studies showed that females tend to buy more than males after exposure to organic products and advertising because they better know the benefits of organic foods. Previous studies found that Thailand is a high context society, meaning Thai people rely more on implicit communication than explicit messages. As a result, Thais read more into what is said than what the words themselves might mean. For most Thais, meaning matters more than what is said. The implications for academic theory relate to the need to take into these food advertising contents that create more greater intentions to buy organics. For practice, marketers need to create these food advertising contents that is a visual communication strategy to increase product knowledge and the intent of buying organic foods. The food advertising content on the organic food product label communicates product information, At the same time, the promotional elements appeal to the needs and values of the target audience and the unique attributes of organic foods
Decolonising quantitative methods teaching in UK sociology
No full textDrawing on the authors’ experiences of teaching quantitative methods to undergraduates, this chapter develops a theoretically-informed critique of how statistics are taught in the quantitative classrooms of UK Sociology courses. After an account of statistics’ roots in the eugenics movement and the subsequent development of quantitative methods as a branch of social research, the authors take insights from critical theories of race and feminism to outline the ongoing marginalisation of race and racism in the teaching of quantitative methods, and its reproduction of categorical thinking. This marginalisation is enacted through the supposedly neutral values of ‘objectivity’, ‘validity’ and ‘reliability’, and the imperative for ‘representative’ and ‘clean’ data, which has consequences for Sociology students’ understanding of and ability to deconstruct and interpret complex concepts such as race, ethnicity and gender when it comes to the design, collection and analysis of surveys and statistical social data. The racist and colonial underpinnings of quantitative methods teaching have implications beyond the academy. The last part of the chapter discusses the British government’s wilful misinterpretation of data on racial inequality, particularly in relation to ethnic minority deaths from COVID-19. Following an acknowledgement of the difficulties of engaging in transformative pedagogy within the neoliberal academy, the conclusion calls for a reflexive, transgressive and decolonial approach to teaching quantitative methods based on solidarity, social justice, and valuing our students as critical thinkers
Comparative analysis of various machine learning techniques for classification of speech disfluencies
Get PDFSpeech plays a vital role in communication, from expressing oneself, to utilizing speech-based platforms, speech is a necessity. Any disruption in speech is referred to as disfluency, and can impact one’s quality of life. This paper presents an experimental study on various techniques for the detection and classification of speech disfluencies. Six different types of disfluencies are examined in this paper, namely Interjection, Sound Repetition, Word Repetition, Phrase Repetition, Revision and Prolongation (6 classes). However, this paper also goes a step further by including the clean speech signals as an added class alongside the six disfluencies, thereby making this work more robust with 7 classes. Various machine learning approaches have been investigated on the University College London Archive of Stuttered Speech (UCLASS) dataset; a standard disfluency dataset generated by University College London (UCL). Five different feature extraction techniques viz. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficients (LPCC), Gammatone Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (GFCC), Mel-filterbank energy features, and Spectrograms have been used. Comparative analysis of various classifiers shows that MFCC, GFCC, and Spectrograms achieved greater than 90% accuracy on both 6 and 7 classes with the kNN classifier. As a future scope to this study, the authors aim to focus on tackling the challenges of detecting multiple disfluencies present simultaneously in a speech sample
At a snail’s pace: How EU bureaucracy undermines fundamental rights
Get PDFThe EU Commission has recently launched an infringement procedure against Bulgaria in view of its breaches of Directive 2016/343 on the presumption of innocence and on grounds I have been raising in formal complaints to EU institutions since 2018. My 5-year long disillusioning experience of raising concerns about Bulgaria's deliberate breaches of EU law before the EU Parliament and the EU Commission may serve as a case study providing some food for thought about the value of fundamental rights in the eyes of these EU institutions, as well as their handling of reasoned citizen complaints
Influence of box height on inter-limb asymmetry and box jump performance
Get PDFBox jumps are often included in training programs as an introductory exercise to novice athletes and untrained individuals and are an efficient option of lower-body explosiveness training. However, it is unclear whether the use of boxes of differing heights affect the inter-limb asymmetry during this exercise. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of box height in inter-limb asymmetry during box jumps. Recreationally active young males (n = 14) and females (n = 16) performed three jumps at boxes that corresponded to approximately 0, 20, 40, 60, and 80% of their individual countermovement jumps. The selected performance variables were peak force (PF), peak power (PP), rate of force development (RFD), and time to take-off (TToff). The intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.76 to 0.99, and the coefficient of variation ranged from 4.03 to 16.52%. A series of one-way repeated measures ANOVA tests were used to test for significant differences of the performance variables and inter-limb asymmetries. The females’ PF at 80% was significantly higher from 0% (p < 0.05). No significant differences were observed for inter-limb asymmetry across box heights (p ≥ 0.25). This study shows that the box height does not affect the overall intra-session inter-limb asymmetries in recreationally active individuals