bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Myth and Reality in Irregular Migration from Myanmar
Authors:   , Si Thu Ko Ko 
Published: November 2021

<p>Migration studies is an interdisciplinary study within a broader field of development studies due to its association with debates about development and underdevelopment. Irregular migration is one of the most significant topics in migration studies and its complex nature has attracted many scholars from around the world. Most literature on irregular migration has focused on its illegality and the situation of irregular migrants in the destination country and therefore, much of the previous literature on irregular migration only presents the process as a dangerous and abusive phenomenon for irregular migrants, and depicts brokers and agents as evil and exploitative. Public perception and policy discussions are dominated by myths, rather than facts, about debts and danger. These established myths often overshadow the reality about the impacts of irregular migration as experienced by actual migrants and their local communities. These confused interpretations of irregular migration highlight a need for further research. This thesis examines a case of cross-border irregular migration from Myanmar to Thailand in order to explore the impacts of irregular migration in a wider field. Its main purpose is to investigate the processes and impacts of irregular migration on families left behind in sending areas. This is achieved by employing a qualitative case study approach to gain deeper understanding of the topic in the local context, using two data collection methods: participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The study hypothesizes that irregular migration in the Myanmar context conforms less to the “evil” image, than to the patterns of conventional labour migration described by the “New Economics of Labour Migration” theory. The main research questions posed to achieve these aims were: What are the processes of irregular migration? What are its impacts on families left behind? How are these impacts different from the impacts resulting from legal migration? The study draws two main conclusions. First, human smuggling operations in this study’s context are based on the personal contacts, and therefore irregular migration is often accomplished with the help of friends, relatives or siblings of the migrants themselves and not by hostile, exploitative smugglers. Secondly, departing from the traditional notion that irregular migration is harmful, the findings from this study suggest that the social and economic impacts resulting from irregular migration are surprisingly similar to the impacts of conventional international migration in many respects.</p>
The Effect of Meditation on Visual and Auditory Sustained Attention
Authors:   , Badart Paige 
Published: November 2021

<p>Failures of attention can be hazardous, especially within the workplace where sustaining attention has become an increasingly important skill. This has produced a necessity for the development of methods to improve attention. One such method is the practice of meditation. Previous research has shown that meditation can produce beneficial changes to attention and associated brain regions. In particular, sustained attention has shown to be significantly improved by meditation. While this effect has shown to occur in the visual modality, there is less research on the effects of meditation and auditory sustained attention. Furthermore, there is currently no research which examines meditation on crossmodal sustained attention. This is relevant not only because visual and auditory are perceived simultaneously in reality, but also as it may assist in the debate as to whether sustained attention is managed by modality-specific systems or a single overarching supramodal system. The current research was conducted to examine the effects of meditation on visual, auditory and audiovisual crossmodal sustained attention by using variants of the Sustained Attention to Response Task. In these tasks subjects were presented with either visual, auditory, or a combination of visual and auditory stimuli, and were required to respond to infrequent targets over an extended period of time. It was found that for all of the tasks, meditators significantly differed in accuracy compared to non-meditating control groups. The meditators made less errors without sacrificing response speed, with the exception of the Auditory-target crossmodal task. This demonstrates the benefit of meditation for improving sustained attention across sensory modalities and also lends support to the argument that sustained attention is governed by a supramodal system rather than modality-specific systems.</p>
Mitigating Visual Discomfort on Head Mounted Displays using Estimated Gaze Dependent Depth of Field
Authors:   , Carnegie Kieran 
Published: November 2021

<p>Virtual Reality (VR) applications on Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) are now more common and accessible for personal viewing than before with the introduction of consumer-level devices like the Oculus Rift. However, exposure to VR applications on HMDs results in significant discomfort for the majority of people, the severity of which can both increase or decrease after repeated exposures. This is disadvantageous for the development and adoption of VR, as a long adaptation period cannot be relied on for making Virtual Environments palatable. Symptoms of discomfort caused by the viewing of content on VR devices including HMDs are historically described as “Simulator Sickness” and include eye fatigue, headaches, nausea and sweating; symptoms very similar to those experienced by sufferers of motion sickness. We refer to the specific subset of Simulator Sickness Symptoms caused by visual stimuli as symptoms of “Visual Discomfort”. A conflict between accommodation and vergence depth cues on stereoscopic displays is known to be a significant cause of visual discomfort. This report describes a psychophysical evaluation used for judging the effectiveness of dynamic Depth of Field (DoF) blurring on reducing visual discomfort caused by initial exposure to stereoscopic content on HMDs. Our DoF implementation adjusts the focal region of stereoscopic content based on an estimation of users’ view vectors in real time and is realised in a commercial game engine. Participants report a significant reduction of visual discomfort using a simulator sickness questionnaire when DoF blurring is enabled. On average, a 34% reduction in our sickness measure is observed, indicating that dynamic DoF blurring is an effective rendering technique for reducing visual discomfort.</p>
Renewing Materials: 3D Printing and Distributed Recycling Disrupting Samoa's Plastic Waste Stream
Authors:   , Taito-Taaalii Matamua Lionel 
Published: November 2021

<p>This research addresses the serious issue of plastic waste in the Pacific. Using Samoa as a case study, we hypothesise that distributed recycling combined with 3D printing offers an opportunity to re-purpose and add new value to this difficult waste stream. It is also an opportunity to engage diverse local communities in Samoa by combining notions of participatory design, maker-spaces and ‘wikis’ of parts with traditional Samoan social concepts such as ‘Fa’a Samoa’, or ‘the Samoan way’ and sense of community. The project seeks to explore creative and innovative solutions to re-purposing plastic waste via a range of design research methods. Field work in Samoa has established the scope of the issue through interviews with different stakeholders such as Government, waste management businesses, the arts and crafts community and education. The field work has also helped identify potential product areas and collaborative partners. The different types of plastic in the waste stream have been identified and material experiments such as plastic shredding and filament extrusion are underway using low cost open source processing equipment to transform plastic waste into usable 3D printing filament. From this filament, potential 3D printed end products are explored through a hands-on researching by making process. The experiments inform the design of workable, economically viable, socially empowering and sustainable scenarios for re-purposing and up-cycling plastic waste; printed in the form of useful and culturally meaningful 3D printed objects, artifacts and products.Applications range from creating greater awareness of the issue by way of tourism and the Samoan notion of ‘mea alofa’ or ‘gifting’, through to functional utensils and parts. It is an opportunity to expand Samoa’s traditional forms of craft into new self-sustaining communities, maker-spaces and small scale local industries. The outputs of the initial project are intended to provoke discussion and invite participation in the implementation of these different scenarios of production.</p>
Export performance of Ghanaian firms in the agricultural, handicraft and manufacturing industries
Authors:   , Sraha Gloria 
Published: November 2021

<p>Studies involving the export performance of firms in emerging economies, particularly in Sub-Saharan African countries, are underrepresented in the existing literature which takes a typically developed country perspective. The objective of this study is to investigate how the interplay between certain internal resources and capabilities and their interaction with the external environment contribute to export performance of internationalising firms in the agricultural, handicraft and manufacturing industries in Ghana. The study contributes specifically to the export performance literature that has featured in international business, international entrepreneurship and international marketing. This research employed the resource-based view as the underpinning theory to examine the internal and external characteristics of the firm to identify what determines export success for firms in these industries. The study applied a mixed method approach using quantitative and qualitative techniques. The data for this study consists of 116 questionnaire survey and 18 semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants in the three industries in Ghana. Quantitative data analysis applied PLS-SEM and content analysis was undertaken to develop interview themes for the qualitative study. The study found that product and place (distribution) were the most adapted export marketing mix strategies (out of the 4Ps that are a fundamental aspect of the marketing literature) for the firms, with promotion and price highlighted as the least adapted strategies. The relationship between international experience, export commitment, export marketing mix strategy (4Ps), and export performance were supported across the models. Export commitment, place, product and foreign market attractiveness emerged as strong antecedents of export performance in the study. Drawing from resource based view of the firm, the study makes three key contribution to the export performance literature. First, it explains how exports market mix strategy transforms the impact of international experience, export commitment and export promotion programs on export performance. Secondly, it establishes moderating effects of foreign market attractiveness on the association between export marketing mix strategy and export performance. Lastly, the study provides enhanced understanding of key determinants of export performance for exporting firms in Ghana. This research responds to the call for advancing theory in Africa. The study further provides recommendations for public policy makers and managers to improve their export development programmes in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Authors:   , Bell Jordan Hester 
Published: November 2021

<p>Studies concerning eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women musicians abound within recent musicological scholarship, but the focus on singers and keyboard players – whose musical activities are understood to have “affirmed” their femininity – has had the effect of obscuring players of less typical instruments. Violin-playing, frequently cast as a man’s activity and imbued with indecent associations, was a case in point. Yet despite the connotations of the instrument, a small but significant group of women did play the violin: it is these violinists that this thesis takes as its central focus. Looking first at the complex reasons behind objections to women’s violin performance, a number of factors that restricted women’s access to the violin – including the influence of the male gaze and limits placed on women’s physical movement – are revealed. Particular conditions nevertheless enabled certain women to play the violin, namely the personal, educational, and economic support available from diverse sources such as family members, patrons, and institutions like convents and the Venetian ospedali. In addition to placing women violinists in their historical context, this thesis centres on an analysis of a violin concerto by one of the most well-known female violinists of the era, the Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi. The analysis of Strinasacchi’s Violin Concerto in B flat major is strongly performance based and focuses on the issue of gender and physical movement (performance gesture), topics which were of much interest to eighteenth-century commentators who witnessed women violinists performing. As such the analysis engages with concepts from “embodied” musicology. In exploring Strinasacchi’s concerto we see that female violinists could experiment with a variety of gendered roles through violin performance, embodying both masculinity and femininity through their transgressive gestures. By taking a closer look at women’s violin performance and experiences, this thesis aims to show that these violinists were not as peripheral to the workings of the wider musical community as is sometimes implied. Furthermore, it aims to put women violinists more firmly at the centre of their own stories, challenging the tendency to treat female violinists as novel anomalies.</p>
Women who inject drugs: barriers to their access of Needle Exchange services, and gendered experiences
Authors:   , Gibson Kirsten Mary 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis examines the gendered experiences of women who inject drugs, and barriers they face when accessing needle exchange services. Globally, studies suggest women access needle exchange services less than men. In New Zealand, the evidence suggests a similar situation. From the little that is known about women’s experiences in this context, studies are often quantitative, medically-based, or lack the voices of women who inject. This thesis aims to understand the gendered factors affecting the experiences of women who inject drugs. This study is a feminist, qualitative study, and employed semi-structured interviews as the data collection method. Five key participants who had injected drugs and four key informants who work with people who inject drugs were interviewed. The data from the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. This study found that stigma presented as an overwhelming, pervasive barrier to the participants, not only in their access to needle exchange services, but also as a harm in other facets of their lives. Additionally, other barriers such as location also affected their access. The data confirms the significance of gender in their experiences and how, within a drugs context, gendered issues mirror wider society. The findings provide a platform for further research in this field and contribute to the academic understanding of a marginalised and stereotyped population. They also support the implementation of women-sensitive initiatives within needle exchange services.</p>
The role of Islam in Indonesia's contemporary foreign policy
Authors:   , Al Anshori Mohamad Zakaria 
Published: November 2021

<p>This study aims to investigate the extent to which Islam influences Indonesian foreign policy in the post-Suharto era. Specifically, this research intends to examine under what circumstances the influence of Islam on Indonesian foreign policy will be substantial and under what conditions it will have less of an effect. Focusing on the era of the administration of President Yudhoyono, the issues covered in this study embrace Indonesia’s policies towards Iran’s nuclear programme, Kosovo’s independence and Palestinian statehood. This study puts emphasis on the interplay between Muslim groups and the government in relation to the conduct of the country’s foreign policy. As interest groups, Muslim groups in Indonesia have had significant concerns about Muslim issues in both Indonesia’s domestic affairs and in its foreign policy. In general, this study argues that there has been an increased role for Islam in Indonesia’s post-Suharto foreign policy. Islamic elements and Muslim groups’ aspirations have been increasingly included and accommodated in the country’s foreign policy. These accommodations are made to the extent that the aspirations these views reflect do not contradict fundamentally with Pancasila as state philosophy, the 1945 constitution and the country’s vital national interests, mainly those related to territorial integrity. Specifically, the case of the Iranian nuclear programme has showed that the government ‘bowed’ to the Muslim groups’ pressures which were backed by the parliament. The government changed its position from supporting UNSC resolution 1747 on sanctions against Iran to abstaining on the similar resolution no. 1803. In this regard, the influence of Muslim groups on the country’s foreign policy was important and substantial as Muslim groups’ interests and members of parliament’s interests did converge against the government’s policy on that matter. The Kosovo case has demonstrated an opposite effect. The government apparently firmed up its non-recognition of Kosovo’s independence and disregarded Muslim groups’ aspirations. Muslim groups’ aspiration to recognise Kosovo’s independence is perceived to contradict the most vital of the country’s national interest, namely national integrity. Finally, the case of Palestinian statehood has showed that the Indonesian government’s policy and Muslim groups’ aspirations have been aligned (unlike their differences over Iran) with a similar voice being presented.</p>
Generative Meditations: Exploring Generative Art From the Perspective of Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy
Authors:   , Jack Benjamin 
Published: November 2021

<p>the purpose of this thesis is to document and explore the subjective struggles I have encountered in my own practise as a generative artist rather than to provide an objective overview of computational generative art. Hopefully this process will give some context from the ground up (from an artist’s perspective) to some of the larger questions that I and others in the field are asking about generative art. From the preliminary questions arising from these struggles I begin to explore and develop a generative art practise that primarily focuses on the topics of human experience and ideas directly related to human experience. This is opposed to using generative processes to explore ideas fundamentally based on computation (a-life, emergence, computational creativity, and data etc..). The foundation of, and reasons behind, such a focus are based on the non-realist and non-materialist philosophical tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, in particular the philosophy of the Madhyamika-Prasangika school of thought. The purpose of developing a generative practise based on the philosophy and symbolism of Tibetan Buddhism is to find a method to create personally relevant artwork with a firm foundation in a well established culture of art and philosophy. I might add however, that this isn’t merely a self-reflective exercise but rather it should be of interest to others in the field of (and study of) Generative art to see how this artistic method might be approached from a vastly different philosophical stance to the materialist view that receives the majority of attention in the field.</p>
An affordance lens on the influence of incubators on firms’ strategy development
Authors:   , Douché Jenny Patricia 
Published: November 2021

<p>Business incubators provide resources to help create successful new ventures (Hackett & Dilts, 2004b). However little is known about how the strategies of the incubated firms develop and the specific role of incubators in this process. While incubators have received increased attention in academic literature in recent years, most of this research has focused on the economic benefits of incubators, the firms’ survival rates, and on the incubators’ provisions to firms. There has been minimal attention on how incubators influence what firms actually do and about strategy development in new entrepreneurial firms. This thesis explores how incubators influence firms’ strategy developments. The theory of affordances (TOA) recognises that objects allow for varying opportunities for action (Gibson, 1977) and provides the theoretical lens for this study. This lens was chosen due to its inherent acknowledgement of the complexity of relationships between objects, actors and the environment. First the TOA, incubator, and strategy development literature are examined. This examination concludes with the development of a conceptual model to operationalise incubators’ provisions and firms’ strategy developments. The conceptual model highlights that the relationship between incubators’ provisions and firms’ strategy developments may not simply be one of cause and effect; it takes into account how the affordances of the provisions are perceived and realised, and how this is related to the incubators’ influence on the firms’ strategy development. The conceptual model also identifies contextual factors that could impact this process. A mixed methodology approach was employed which involved in-depth interviews and a survey. The participants were from all six incubators that were in the New Zealand Government’s incubator support programme and included both the incubators and their firms, enabling a triangulated analysis of this primarily qualitative data. The application of the TOA aided the contribution to incubator knowledge. It was found that firms’ judged the value of provisions differently depending on use, and the affordances arising from the provisions varied in scope and changed over time. The firm’s product type, governance structure, duration-factors and the breadth of focus of the incubators, may be associated with how the firms perceived and realised affordances from the incubators’ provisions and, in turn, how their strategies were influenced. In the process of applying the TOA in organisational studies three underlying themes emerged regarding its application; the specificity of affordances, the substitutability of objects and path dependency. Based on these three themes, contributions to the TOA are also proposed. Knowledge gained from this study could inspire further use of the TOA to gain a greater understanding of its application, particularly in organisational settings. From a practice standpoint, knowledge gained should lead to enhancements and greater efficiencies in the incubation sector.</p>