cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
title: The war mode of visual art production: a feminist geopolitical analysis of art producing masculinities in Kabul from 2014-2018
Creators: name: Natanzi, Seyedeh Paniz Musawi
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2019

description: Since 2004, “Afghan women” producing contemporary art became online in virtual, visual and print the driving agents of a national art under construction centred in Kabul. However, the ethnographical insights gathered between 2014 until 2018 show that feminised bodies are highly constrained in their mobility to produce art as an income generating labour: women art producers become rather known through online one-hit wonder “spectacles”. Meanwhile, masculinities are governing visual art producing spaces offline in local communities in Kabul. Based on the observation that “spectacles” about art producing feminised bodies in Anglophone knowledge exhibiting platforms censor the social economy of art production offline in Kabul, I suggest that the governing presence of masculinities invites to examine the trajectory of art producing masculinities in creating epistemological and vocational alliances sustaining economic empowerment of feminised art producers and themselves within Kabuli communities. A feminist geopolitical methodology provides in conversation with Feminist Marxisms, Islamic Feminisms and Critical Masculinities’ Studies epistemological and ethnographical tools to examine in art production fostering urban communities, the politics of embodied, social and economic experiences of artistic labourers scrutinising the mobility of art producers and artworks in and inbetween spaces dedicated to and/or transformed by visual arts. Visual art is read as visual knowledge and labour in this thesis, which is practiced, discussed, exhibited, interrupted and produced in a socially, politically and economically highly fractured urban space conditioned by competing political economies of war. First, the thesis dissects the war mode of art production through gendered mobility and access to art knowledge, practice and ideally income generation in the militarised public on the street level, in privatised public spaces such as the university, coffee shops, art studios in malls and residential areas and domestic spaces. Second, I analyse the spectrum of themes and mediums referred to in the artworks produced by masculinities prior to finally differentiating between urban, national, regional and inter-regional viewing and buying audiences of the artworks. Analysing the trajectory of art producing masculinities through the spectacularisation and embodied limitations of feminised bodies towards actual economic empowerment, the thesis contributes in general to the de-culturalisation of the study of political economies and urban art and knowledge production in Afghanistan, and in particular in the study of gender politics in war emphasising the spectrum of masculinities productive in urban war outside of state and non-state military formations.
title: A Sociolinguistic Documentation of Honorific Verbs in Southern Amami Ōshima
Creators: name: Tsutsui, Martha Satoko
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2021

description: This qualitative study describes the use and form of verbal honorifics in Southern Amami Ōshima, an endangered language spoken on the Amami Islands in the Ryukyuan archipelago in Japan. Due to historical and political factors, Amami honorific registers are currently only known by older speakers within the bilingual Setouchi community. As we know, speakers of endangered languages gradually shift until eventually no domains are left, though this stylistic shrinkage process is poorly understood in our field. This project examines the diminishing honorific registers and explores what honorific forms are remaining, and how speakers use them in unelicited daily communication during their day-to-day lives. Firstly, this project documents the remaining verbal honorific forms which are still used and known within the Setouchi community. Fieldwork methodology showed that addressee honorifics (including imperative mood) are more prominent in the Setouchi community than corresponding subject honorifics. Additionally, this thesis explored bilingual Amami speakers’ language choices for expressing politeness in light of limited Amami honorific forms by collecting data from speakers in a range of different communicative events where honorifics would be expected. This thesis found that standard language practices in the community today call for speakers to use Japanese in situations where honorific Amami would typically have been used. However, community members, including token speakers, still use Amami honorifics in day-to-day communication. Lastly, this thesis examined the functions and indexes of remaining Amami honorifics in the endangered language situation. Amami is no longer the unmarked code for politeness and deference. Rather, Amami speakers today draw on honorifics most commonly in the form of lexical touchstones, which they use as a wecode to index familiarity, intimacy, and localness.
The Galactic Center in Color: Measuring Extinction with High-Proper-Motion Stars
Creators: name: Haggard, Z.
name: Ghez, A. M.
name: Sakai, S.
name: Gautam, A. K.
name: Do, T.
name: Lu, J. R.
name: Hosek, M.
name: Morris, M. R.
name: Granados, S.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Milky Way's central parsec is a highly extinguished region with a population of high-proper-motion stars. We have tracked 145 stars for $\sim$10 years at wavelengths between 1 and 4 microns to analyze extinction effects in color-magnitude space. Approximately $30\%$ of this sample dims and reddens over the course of years, likely from the motion of sources relative to an inhomogeneous screen of dust. We correct previous measurements of the intrinsic variability fraction for differential extinction effects, resulting in a reduced stellar variability fraction of $34\%$. The extinction variability sub-sample shows that the extinguishing material has sub-arcsecond scales, much smaller variations than previously reported. The observed extinction events imply a typical cross-section of 500 AU and a density of around $3 \times 10^{4} \ \mathrm{atoms/cm^{3}}$ for the extinguishing material, which are consistent with measurements of filamentary dust and gas at the Galactic Center. Furthermore, given that the stars showing extinction variability tend to be more highly reddened than the rest of the sample, the extinction changes are likely due to material localized to the Galactic Center region. We estimate the relative extinction between 1 and 4 microns as, $\mathrm{A}_{\mathrm{H}}:\mathrm{A}_{\mathrm{K'}}:\mathrm{A}_{\mathrm{L'}} = 1.67 \pm 0.05:1:0.69 \pm 0.03$. Our measurement of extinction at longer wavelengths -- L' (3.8 $μ$m) -- is inconsistent with recent estimations of the integrated extinction towards the central parsec. One interpretation of this difference is that the dust variations this experiment is sensitive to -- which are local to the Galactic Center -- are dominated by grains of larger radius than the foreground.
description: 49 pages, 30 figures, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal
title: The mercantile experience of Ottoman Pera in the century after 1453
Creators: name: Gungor, Taylan
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2022

description: This thesis investigates the mercantile experience of Pera under Ottoman rule. Although there is evidence of some decline in Westerner trade after the conquest of Constantinople, the early Ottoman state is observed to be proactive in their approach to regional trade. The argument of the thesis is that the narrative of Ottoman inter-regional ambitions outlined in the “Ottoman Age of Exploration” must be pulled further back in time as the thesis identifies a conscious and active participation in inter-regional trading activity. The first chapter situates Pera as being an important trading centre taken over by the Ottomans after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Byzantine privileges are traced in a similar form under Ottoman rule, effectively continuing pre-established trading norms. In the second chapter, the Italian notary documents of Pera are used to characterise trade pre-and poste conquest. These provide a valuable insight into the daily life of the foreign merchants in their dealings not only with locals and traders, but also overseas participants in local and regional trading activity. The surveys of Istanbul after 1453 show changes in the demographics of the city are traced and its impact on trade and the nature of the early Ottoman Empire The third chapter situates the Ottomans in Mediterranean diplomacy, focusing on Venetian diplomatic sources. In these sources, the Ottoman relations with foreign states are portrayed as being beyond simply belligerents in the Mediterranean trade circle. The final chapter explores the role of the Ottomans in the politics and economy of the wider Mediterranean and Black Sea region. Rather than considering the Ottomans as an outsider disruptive force to the eastern Mediterranean, it instead can be seen that the new homogenous Ottoman dominions created trading circles that not only changed the cityscape of Pera but also changed regional and inter-regional trade dynamics.
title: Social Change through Power of Imagination in Arabic Theatre: How the Raḥbānī Brothers’ Works Empowered their Audiences
Creators: name: Albiti, Hebah
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2019

description: The Raḥbānī Brothers are known as pioneers of musical theatre in the 20th century in Lebanon and the wider Arab region: they introduced a theatrical form integrating theatre, music, singing, dancing, acting, performing arts and poetry. This fusion caused many of the studies on their works to be preoccupied with classification, instead of highlighting their distinctiveness. In my view, the social function of the theatrical works of the Raḥbānī Brothers has yet to be investigated. I argue that their theatrical works function as motivation for social change, as they empower people to initiate action. However, the Brothers seem to propose a new version of social change that urges people to rebel against their realities, and restores their faith in their power of imagination and ability to initiate action without necessarily advocating any specific action. I argue the social change motivated by the Brothers’ works takes the form of ‘social nonmovements’ suggested by Asef Bayat’s theory of social change. The Raḥbānīs achieve the social change function through their special utilisation of the power of imagination. They build on ‘imaginary premises’ to make their audiences embrace their ‘poetic logic’ which might seem ‘illogical’ and ‘impossible’ according to the laws of reality. The Raḥbānīs succeed in using those ‘imaginary premises’ to involve their audiences in a game, where the thin line between ‘imagination’ and ‘reality’ seems to shatter and even overlap. Imagination in their works becomes a new proposal of their reality; they in a way reinvent reality through imaginary propositions. Their proposal of an alternative reality is embodied in the implantation of the ‘Raḥbānī possible’ (al-mumkin al- Raḥbānī) in the imagination of their audiences, sometimes disguised in the form of ‘lies’ and other times in the form of ‘visions’. The Brothers conspired with their audiences to imagine an alternative, to let the power of their imagination overtake their logical calculations and hope for a miracle, for ‘al-mumkin al-jamīl’ (the ‘beautiful possible’) enhanced by Fayrūz’s voice. I also argue that the Raḥbānī works empower the marginalised by changing the view and perception of their audiences who come in touch with these groups.
MultiHateClip: A Multilingual Benchmark Dataset for Hateful Video Detection on YouTube and Bilibili
Creators: name: Wang, Han
name: Yang, Tan Rui
name: Naseem, Usman
name: Lee, Roy Ka-Wei
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Multimedia (cs.MM)
subject: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: I.2.0

description: Hate speech is a pressing issue in modern society, with significant effects both online and offline. Recent research in hate speech detection has primarily centered on text-based media, largely overlooking multimodal content such as videos. Existing studies on hateful video datasets have predominantly focused on English content within a Western context and have been limited to binary labels (hateful or non-hateful), lacking detailed contextual information. This study presents MultiHateClip1 , an novel multilingual dataset created through hate lexicons and human annotation. It aims to enhance the detection of hateful videos on platforms such as YouTube and Bilibili, including content in both English and Chinese languages. Comprising 2,000 videos annotated for hatefulness, offensiveness, and normalcy, this dataset provides a cross-cultural perspective on gender-based hate speech. Through a detailed examination of human annotation results, we discuss the differences between Chinese and English hateful videos and underscore the importance of different modalities in hateful and offensive video analysis. Evaluations of state-of-the-art video classification models, such as VLM, GPT-4V and Qwen-VL, on MultiHateClip highlight the existing challenges in accurately distinguishing between hateful and offensive content and the urgent need for models that are both multimodally and culturally nuanced. MultiHateClip represents a foundational advance in enhancing hateful video detection by underscoring the necessity of a multimodal and culturally sensitive approach in combating online hate speech.
description: 10 pages, 3 figures, ACM Multimedia 2024
title: The Political Economy of Social Policy in Africa: The Case of Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria
Creators: name: Chukwuma, Julia Ngozi
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2021

description: This PhD study seeks to generate novel insights into how social policy, here in the context of health, has taken form in Nigeria. At the global level, healthcare has been an area of social policy which has received much attention, with African Governments and national and international organisations promoting Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as an important social policy goal. Nigeria offers an interesting case study as it is in the midst of translating its 2014 National Health Act into practice. The Act provides the legal basis for efforts aimed at enabling all Nigerians to access healthcare without financial hardship. Part and parcel of the new law was the establishment of a novel health financing mechanism, the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, put into place to provide sustainable, predominantly public resources for the fast-tracking of UHC. Adopting Fine’s “Systems of Provision” (SoP) approach with its emphasis on assessing country- and system-specific structures, I highlight the complexity of health policymaking and implementation in the Nigerian context. I illustrate how a broad range of various agents – which include Federal, State and Local Governments, health professionals, communities, the civil society, the private sector and international organisations – have impacted the final text of the NHAct (to different degrees) and influence the on-going operationalisation of the BHCPF. My research underscores how the combination of Nigeria’s federal structure, the dominance of the private sector, the widespread disenchantment with the Government in Nigeria as well as competing views and priorities of international organisations continue to influence Nigeria’s perspective in terms of attaining UHC. It also demonstrates how the trajectory of neoliberalism shapes the notion of what universal and integrated social policy is and should entail. In order to generate such insights, material gathered during fieldwork has been triangulated with information gained from various types of documents, including the academic literature as well as strategic, legal and policy documents, action plans, advocacy material of civil society organisations and budget and household survey data.
Solution bias in ant colony optimisation: Lessons for selecting pheromone models
Creators: name: Montgomery, James
name: Randall, Marcus
name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Ant colony optimisation is a constructive metaheuristic in which solutions are built probabilistically influenced by the parameters of a pheromone model—an analogue of the trail pheromones used by real ants when foraging for food. Recent studies have uncovered the presence of biases in the solution construction process, the existence and nature of which depend on the characteristics of the problem being solved. The presence of these solution construction biases induces biases in the pheromone model used, so selecting an appropriate model is highly important. The first part of this paper presents new findings bridging biases due to construction with biases in pheromone models. Novel approaches to the prediction of this bias are developed and used with the knapsack and generalised assignment problems. The second part of the paper deals with the selection of appropriate pheromone models when detailed knowledge of their biases is not available. Pheromone models may be derived either from characteristics of the way solutions are represented by the algorithm or characteristics of the solutions represented, which are often quite different. Recently it has been suggested that the latter is more appropriate. The relative performance of a number of alternative pheromone models for six well-known combinatorial optimisation problems is examined to test this hypothesis. Results suggest that, in general, modelling characteristics of solutions (rather than their representations) does lead to the best performance in ACO algorithms. Consequently, this principle may be used to guide the selection of appropriate pheromone models in problems to which ACO has not yet been applied.
Particle swarm optimisation and high dimensional problem spaces
Creators: name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) has been very successful in finding, if not the optimum, at least very good positions in many diverse and complex problem spaces. However, as the number of dimensions of this problem space increases, the performance can fall away. This paper considers the role that the separable nature of the traditional PSO equations may have in this and introduces the ideal of a dynamic momentum value for each dimension as one way of making the PSO equations non-separable. Results obtained using high dimensional versions of a number of traditional functions are presented and clearly show that both the quality of, and the time taken to find, the optimum obtained using variable momentum are better than when using fixed momentum.
An evolutionary reincarnation algorithm
Creators: name: Prime, Ben
name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: As there is little or no experimental experience of reincarnation in the natural world, attempts to add a reincarnation metaphor to an evolutionary algorithm must of necessity proceed cautiously. In previous work the authors have established that the reintroduction of previously stored gene values into the population can have a noticeable effect on the progress of evolution, this paper now considers a range of options for deciding which gene values to store, which to return and which individuals in the current population should receive the returned gene values. Consistent experimental results on three well known functions allow a suggestion to be made of, if not the best choices, at least a good choice selection to use on initial experiments on other problems.
Time is Not Enough: Time-Frequency based Explanation for Time-Series Black-Box Models
Creators: name: Chung, Hyunseung
name: Jo, Sumin
name: Kwon, Yeonsu
name: Choi, Edward
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: Signal Processing (eess.SP)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

description: Despite the massive attention given to time-series explanations due to their extensive applications, a notable limitation in existing approaches is their primary reliance on the time-domain. This overlooks the inherent characteristic of time-series data containing both time and frequency features. In this work, we present Spectral eXplanation (SpectralX), an XAI framework that provides time-frequency explanations for time-series black-box classifiers. This easily adaptable framework enables users to "plug-in" various perturbation-based XAI methods for any pre-trained time-series classification models to assess their impact on the explanation quality without having to modify the framework architecture. Additionally, we introduce Feature Importance Approximations (FIA), a new perturbation-based XAI method. These methods consist of feature insertion, deletion, and combination techniques to enhance computational efficiency and class-specific explanations in time-series classification tasks. We conduct extensive experiments in the generated synthetic dataset and various UCR Time-Series datasets to first compare the explanation performance of FIA and other existing perturbation-based XAI methods in both time-domain and time-frequency domain, and then show the superiority of our FIA in the time-frequency domain with the SpectralX framework. Finally, we conduct a user study to confirm the practicality of our FIA in SpectralX framework for class-specific time-frequency based time-series explanations. The source code is available in https://github.com/gustmd0121/Time_is_not_Enough
description: Accepted to CIKM 2024 (10 pages, 9 figures, 9 tables)
Input data analysis by neural network
Creators: name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The back propagation training algorithm, used to train non-linear feed forward multi-layer artificial neural networks, is capable of estimating the error present in the data presented to a network. While of no use during the training of a network, such information can be useful after training to permit the input data to be itself adjusted to better fit the internal model of a trained neural network. After this has been done, the difference between the modified and original data can be useful. This paper discusses how such data adjusting may be done, demonstrates the results for two simple data sets and suggests some uses that may be made of such differences.
title: On the use of human remains in Tibetan ritual objects
Creators: name: Fuentes, Ayesha
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2021

description: This dissertation explores material knowledge and cultural histories of the use of human remains in Tibetan ritual objects by means of the combined methodologies of conservation, technical art history, iconographic analysis, cultural anthropology and material culture studies. This research describes historical narratives for the formalization of Buddhist tantra through the incorporation of practices and materials for ritualized charnel asceticism as well as the diverse refinements, applications and representations of these objects in Tibetan visual and material culture. Specifically, this work explores evidence for the use of skulls and charnel (viz. bone) ornaments in sources for Buddhist mahāyoga and yoginī _tantra; the rkang gling or thighbone trumpet in the material culture of gcod; and the cultivation of Tibetan iconographies which utilize these instruments in representations of siddhas or other accomplished ritual practitioners as well as the characterization of wrathful deities (e.g. Heruka) and yoginī/ḍākinī _intermediaries. Furthermore, this dissertation presents a technical study of skulls, bone ornaments, rkang gling and the skull ḍamaru by means of objects accessible in museum collections and a campaign of fieldwork in which a variety of practitioners, fabricators and observers were engaged directly in order to document the sourcing, preparation, construction, and circulation of these materials and a diversity of present social values, handling strategies and ritual functions. By positioning current practices in relation to the historical narratives and sources which have conditioned the use and valorization of these objects in Tibetan material religion, this research suggests an interpretive rubric and technical vocabulary for understanding the ritual instrumentalization of human remains as a dynamic and continuously innovative cultural process.
title: Visions of the Gulf: The Discourse of Arab-Iranian Rivalry and the Geopolitical Imaginations of Ba’thist Iraq and Pahlavi Iran
Creators: name: Beyad, Mohammed Mehdi
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2022

description: This thesis aims to explore the ways in which the Iranian and Iraqi states articulated and represented Gulf regional politics from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. In recognising the limited amount of work looking at the role of discourses and ideas in the international relations of the Persian Gulf, this study hopes to add to our understanding of the geopolitics of the region at a moment of great transformation. The late-1960s-to-mid-1970s period saw Gulf politics become localised due to a number of major shifts which empowered local states with greater regional roles and responsibilities. With the departure of the British, the decision of the US not to directly replace them and the decline of the Egypt-Syria axis in the aftermath of the 1967 War, the hub of West Asian power moved to the Gulf. Amidst this opening, Iran and Iraq, as two key states with strong claims to regional leadership, represented the Gulf’s geopolitics with reference to notions of Arab-Iranian difference and rivalry. In conceptualising geopolitics as a discursive practice and not merely a material geographical matter, this thesis shows that the discursive and ideational regimes constructed by Ba’thist Iraq and Pahlavi Iran at this time were mutually-anathematising and mutually-marginalising, hierarchising, othering and inferiorising along “Arab-Iranian” lines. The thesis makes use of discourse analysis, read alongside the geopolitical and foreign policy practices of the two states at the time, with reference to primary material in the form of interviews, speeches, private conversations, and diplomatic correspondence. The thesis shows that bound up with the geopolitical imaginaries of the two states were notions of belonging, legitimacy, security, ownership and leadership, strongly tied up with domestic politics and considerations. Indeed, this is one instance where the domestic/international divide becomes markedly blurred, and geopolitics and nation- and state-making intimately related.
Data policies in journals under scrutiny:  their strength, scope and impact
Creators: name: Gorraiz, Juan
name: Balhous, Benedikt
name: Gumpenberger, Christian
name: Lehner, Oliver
name: Ulrych, Ursula
Publisher: name: Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg
Year: 2016

description: Journal data policies are a potentially strong incentive for researchers to make research data available. Therefore, information about these policies is desirable. This article presents an analysis of 346 journal data policies based on a 534 cross-disciplinary journal sample with a focus on how journal publishers expect authors to make research data available. Furthermore, it includes an analysis of features such as thematic scope, user costs and hosting organisations of 171 repositories with an entry in the Thomson Reuters Data Citation Index.
description: Bibliometrie - Praxis und Forschung, Bd. 5 (2016)
title: An Archaeology of Screenwriting in Indian Cinema, 1930s-1950s
Creators: name: Sengupta, Rakesh
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2021

description: The Euro-American scholarship on screenwriting has produced elaborate histories of the development of the screenplay form with reference to extensive archival collections of film scenarios and scripts. On the other hand, the archival absence of early Indian film scripts has largely invisibilised practices of screenwriting and retroactively contributed to stereotypical descriptions of Indian film industries as unorganised. As a process of imagination and marker of industrialisation, screenwriting is often privileged as the most cerebral, analytical and rational process of film production. The stark absence of screenwriting histories in film cultures of the Global South makes it the absent technique of non-Western cinemas. In the thesis, I critically engage with the archival absence as a heuristic to rethink South Asian screenwriting practices beyond the prescriptive model of manuals as well as Euro-American notions of screenwriting. It is an archaeological as well as a media archaeological project. As an archaeological investigation in the Foucauldian mould, it studies the contradictions of screenwriting practice and discourse in order to understand how perceptions of archival lack and technical backwardness vis- -vis screenwriting in India gained the currency of truth. As a media archaeological project, it collates a disparate and discontinuous cross-section of screenwriting artefacts, discourses and practices in the archival absence of a formally evolving pre-cinematic text. Despite its reliance on archival and ethnographic sources, my research does not attempt to construct a comprehensive, chronological history of screenwriting practices in Bengali and Bombay cinema. Instead, this critical history epistemically delinks screenwriting from universalist discourses, introduces regional specificities and cultural subjectivities, and presents an alternative non-linear model of film historiography beyond questions of archival absence and technical backwardness.
title: Locating Politics in the Global: (Dis)Entangling Diaspora Governance Practices
Creators: name: Craven, Catherine Ruth
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2022

description: Critical IR scholarship has argued that diaspora are governed in line with global political dynamics that class them as post/neocolonial, or neoliberal economic subjects. Fewer scholarly works have gone into exploring exactly how such structural dynamics are entangled with political struggles at the micro level, or into how global and local political dynamics relate to each other in diaspora governance. This thesis adopts a practice-centric approach to diaspora governance to illuminate these global-local entanglements of power. Through a multi-method exploration of various spaces where the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora organises and interacts with governance actors, this thesis argues that even under conditions of globalization diasporas are governed in localized ways, depending on where such governance is embedded. This is because in different contexts they are understood to present a different kind of governance challenge. While in spaces dominated by development governance actors, diasporas are primarily considered ‘partners’, in spaces where Transitional Justice is the primary governance concern diasporas are treated with much more ambiguity, sometimes as victims or perpetrators of human rights abuses, sometimes as legal experts, and sometimes as members of a global civil society. Meanwhile, in security governance spaces, diasporas are considered a ‘threat’, sometimes to the liberal state system, sometimes to ‘social cohesion’ or national security in the host state. Thus, the political struggles that drive diaspora governance are much more specific to the spaces in which they play out. This disrupts the understanding that diasporas are governed by a single overarching structural logic. Grounded in relational thinking, and with an emphasis not just on the discursive but also the networked, bureaucratic and spatial politics that make up diaspora governance, this thesis draws on 2 years of multi-method fieldwork amongst the Tamil diaspora population in Toronto, Geneva and London, including participant observation at events and in spaces of diaspora political mobilization, like the 34th UNHRC session, as well as semi-structured interviews with diaspora members and state and non-state governance actors and review of policy documents and secondary sources. It demonstrates how the global politics of diaspora governance become both de- and reterritorialised.
Solving dynamic single-runway aircraft landing problems with extremal optimisation
Creators: name: Moser, Irene
name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: A dynamic implementation of the single-runway aircraft landing problem was chosen for experiments designed to investigate the adaptive capabilities of Extremal Optimisation. As part of the problem space is unimodal, we developed a deterministic algorithm which optimises the time lines of the permutations found by the EO solver. To assess our results, we experimented on known problem instances for which benchmark solutions exist. The nature and difficulty of the instances used were assessed to discuss the quality of results obtained by the solver. Compared to the benchmark results available, our approach was highly competitive.
title: The Impact of Informal and Rural Labour Markets on Poverty Reduction: A Mixed Methods Study of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM) in Northwest Tanzania
Creators: name: Goetz, Julian Manuel
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2022

description: This thesis explores labour markets, their importance to rural non-farming income-generating activities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the ways in which they affect poverty outcomes of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). It engages critically with both the literature portraying ASGM as a sector with the potential for poverty reduction and the scholarship claiming that rural labour markets are dominated by self-employment. By contrast, this thesis’s main argument is that the type of ASGM job and employment status translates into heterogeneous poverty outcomes and that this has been underexplored to date. Adopting a comparative case study format, it answers the question for whom ASGM works, and for whom it does not, by presenting and analysing qualitative and quantitative primary data collected during five months of fieldwork in Tanzania, drawing on political economy analysis. Survey and interview data show that ASGM households do not fare better than their non-mining counterparts, and that poverty rates in 2019 are as high as reported by a previous study in the same area in 2004. Distinct ASGM jobs and employment statuses translate into heterogeneous poverty outcomes. Waged and processing activities feature much lower incomes than the higher average incomes reported by previous contributions. Both findings are important, because two-thirds of the sampled ASGM labour force engage in waged labour and one-third in processing tasks. Questioning the picture of a homogeneous sector, the thesis calls for a more nuanced view of ASGM’s ability to reduce poverty. In so doing, it emphasises the need to examine labour markets, and their political economy, in a more inclusive fashion. By reporting substantial levels of waged ASGM activities, this thesis speaks to empirical literature challenging the orthodox assumption of self-employment as the main and only informal employment status. Lastly, this thesis aims to contribute to the broader debate on formalisation by highlighting that incorporating organisational practices as well as understanding labour structures and dynamics is of paramount importance.
Compact [OIII] emission-line regions ("Green Seeds") in $\mathrm{Hα}$ emitters at Cosmic Noon from JWST Observations
Creators: name: Chen, Nuo
name: Motohara, Kentaro
name: Spitler, Lee
name: Malkan, Matthew A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present a rest-frame optical, spatially resolved analysis of more than 100 $\mathrm{Hα}$ emitters (HAEs) at $z\sim2.2$ in the ZFOURGE-CDFS field using NIRCam imaging from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). The ultra-deep, high-resolution data gives us maps of the resolved emission line regions of HAEs with stellar mass ranging from $10^{8}\,M_{\odot}$ to $10^{10}\,M_{\odot}$. An [OIII] emission-line map of each HAE is created from the flux excess in the F150W filter, leading to the discovery of a population of kiloparsec-scale compact emission line regions (``Green Seeds") with high equivalent widths ($\mathrm{EW}$). We obtain a sample of 128 Green Seeds from 68 HAEs with rest-frame $\mathrm{EW_{[OIII]}}>200Å$. Moreover, 17 of them have extremely large $\mathrm{EW_{[OIII]}}>1000Å$, suggesting the possible Lyman continuum (LyC) leakage from these emission line regions. Embedded within the host galaxy, many Green Seeds correspond to UV star-forming clumps and H{\sc ii} regions, indicating elevated starburst activity in them, with specific star formation rates (sSFR) several times higher than that of the host galaxy. Based on theoretical frameworks, Green Seeds are expected to be formed through gravitational disk instability and/or galaxy mergers. Considering the stellar masses of Green Seeds, we speculate that high-mass Green Seeds may migrate toward the galactic center to build the central bulge, while low-mass Green Seeds are easily disrupted and short-lived. Besides, we propose that some Green Seeds could be the progenitors of globular clusters or ultracompact dwarf galaxies observed in the local universe.
description: 29 pages, 18 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ
EXACFS -- A CIL Method to mitigate Catastrophic Forgetting
Creators: name: Balasubramanian, S
name: Subramaniam, M Sai
name: Talasu, Sai Sriram
name: P, Yedu Krishna
name: Sai, Manepalli Pranav Phanindra
name: Mukkamala, Ravi
name: Gera, Darshan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
subject: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences

description: Deep neural networks (DNNS) excel at learning from static datasets but struggle with continual learning, where data arrives sequentially. Catastrophic forgetting, the phenomenon of forgetting previously learned knowledge, is a primary challenge. This paper introduces EXponentially Averaged Class-wise Feature Significance (EXACFS) to mitigate this issue in the class incremental learning (CIL) setting. By estimating the significance of model features for each learned class using loss gradients, gradually aging the significance through the incremental tasks and preserving the significant features through a distillation loss, EXACFS effectively balances remembering old knowledge (stability) and learning new knowledge (plasticity). Extensive experiments on CIFAR-100 and ImageNet-100 demonstrate EXACFS's superior performance in preserving stability while acquiring plasticity.
sj-pdf-1-ajr-10.1177_1945892420930967 - Supplemental material for Patient-Reported Outcomes in Sinonasal and Skull Base Malignancy: An Assessment of Study Quality and Clinical Relevance
Creators: name: Bolk, Kody G.
name: Roth, Kelly A.
name: Sharma, Arun
name: Crosby, Dana L.
Publisher: name: SAGE Journals
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 110315 Otorhinolaryngology
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine

description: Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ajr-10.1177_1945892420930967 for Patient-Reported Outcomes in Sinonasal and Skull Base Malignancy: An Assessment of Study Quality and Clinical Relevance by Kody G. Bolk MD Kelly A. Roth BS Arun Sharma MD, MS Dana L. Crosby MD, MPH: on behalf of the Acupuncture Trialists Collaboration in American Journal of Rhinology & Allergy
Fitness estimation and the particle swarm optimisation algorithm
Creators: name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The time taken performing fitness calculations can dominate the total computational time when applying Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) to complex real life problems. This paper describes a method of estimating fitness, and the reliability of that estimation, that can be used as an alternative to performing some true fitness calculations. The fitness estimation is always made, but, should the reliability of this fitness estimation drop below a user specified threshold, the estimate is discarded and a true fitness evaluation performed. Results are presented for three problems that show that the number of true fitness evaluations can be significantly reduced by this method without degrading the performance of PSO. Further the value used for the threshold, the only new parameter introduced, is shown not to be sensitive, at least on these test problems. Provided that the time to perform a true fitness evaluation is far longer than the time for the fitness and reliability calculations, a substantial amount of computing time can be saved while still achieving the same end result.
title: An Examination of the Enhancement of Technological Capabilities in Global Value Chains: A Comparative Study of the Tuna Industries of Ghana and Thailand
Creators: name: Baimbill-Johnson, Roland
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2022

description: This thesis is set against the narrative that African economies can advance their structural transformation agenda through the transfer of knowledge from foreign firms that is assumed to occur by participating in global value chains (GVCs). To investigate this proposition, I first conduct a critical literature review to construct an analytical framework that combines the technological capability, sectoral innovation system and GVC frameworks. I then discuss: 1) whether the knowledge transfer from multinational firms assumed to transpire in GVCs is sufficient to enhance the technological capabilities of their suppliers; and 2) whether and to what extent such capabilities are propagated and enhanced through linkage development. To investigate these questions empirically, a comparative case study of the tuna industries of Ghana and Thailand is undertaken based on the materials gathered during fieldwork in Ghana and secondary sources available for Thailand. This thesis consists of ten chapters. Chapter 1 introduces a background debate, the research questions and the thesis structure. Chapters 2 and 3 present a review of the theoretical and empirical literatures respectively. An overview of the global tuna industry is presented in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 outlines the methodology followed in my case study. Chapter 6 examines the tuna industries of Ghana and Thailand, providing a background for my subsequent empirical analysis. Chapter 7 evaluates how Ghanaian and Thai tuna firms acquire technological capabilities to undergo upgrading whilst Chapter 8 assesses the extent of linkage development in the two countries. Chapter 9 broadens the analyses from the micro study of the tuna industry to meso and macro levels, followed by discussions on constraints facing Ghana in advancing its structural transformation agenda. In Chapter 10, I conclude my study by discussing my main arguments as well as some policy issues and areas requiring further study.
Dynamic ant colony optimisation
Creators: name: Angus, Daniel
name: Hendtlass, Tim
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Ant colony optimisation has proved suitable to solve static optimisation problems, that is problems that do not change with time. However in the real world changing circumstances may mean that a previously optimum solution becomes suboptimal. This paper explores the ability of the ant colony optimisation algorithm to adapt from the optimum solution for one set of circumstances to the optimal solution for another set of circumstances. Results are given for a preliminary investigation based on the classical travelling salesman problem. It is concluded that, for this problem at least, the time taken for the solution adaption process is far shorter than the time taken to find the second optimum solution if the whole process is started over from scratch.
DS_10.1177_0363546520927015 – Supplemental material for A Combination Treatment of Raloxifene and Vitamin D Enhances Bone-to-Tendon Healing of the Rotator Cuff in a Rat Model
Creators: name: Kim, Dong Min
name: Shim, In Kyoung
name: Shin, Myung Jin
name: Choi, Jae Hee
name: Lee, Yu Na
name: Jeon, In-Ho
name: Hyojune Kim
name: Dongjun Park
name: Kholinne, Erica
name: Kyoung-Hwan Koh
Publisher: name: SAGE Journals
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 110314 Orthopaedics
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: 110604 Sports Medicine
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: 110323 Surgery

description: Supplemental material, DS_10.1177_0363546520927015 for A Combination Treatment of Raloxifene and Vitamin D Enhances Bone-to-Tendon Healing of the Rotator Cuff in a Rat Model by Dong Min Kim, In Kyoung Shim, Myung Jin Shin, Jae Hee Choi, Yu Na Lee, In-Ho Jeon, Hyojune Kim, Dongjun Park, Erica Kholinne and Kyoung-Hwan Koh in The American Journal of Sports Medicine
Supplementary_material_7 – Supplemental material for Study of CO2 adsorption and separation using modified porous carbon
Creators: name: Jonnalagadda, Madhavi
name: Rumana Anjum
name: Harshitha Burri
name: Mutyala, Suresh
Publisher: name: SAGE Journals
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 91299 Materials Engineering not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Materials engineering

description: Supplemental material, Supplementary_material_7 for Study of CO2 adsorption and separation using modified porous carbon by Madhavi Jonnalagadda, Rumana Anjum, Harshitha Burri and Suresh Mutyala in Journal of Chemical Research
title: The Political Economy of the Kenyan Agricultural Sector in an Era of Decentralisation
Creators: name: Kariuki, Keni
Publisher: name: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Year: 2020

description: This dissertation examines Kenya’s decentralisation process and the agricultural sector over the period 1963-2018. The agricultural sector’s primacy to macroeconomic outcomes and political stability is the focus of analysis, due its key role in maintaining the holding power of ruling elites. Decentralisation theory is supplemented by political settlement theory to assist in providing insights into understanding how the expected theoretical benefits of decentralisation are formally and/or informally modified by groups as a reflection of actual power in society. The research determined that the early 2000s presented an opportunity for critical institutional change. The 2003-2013 decade altered the framework of power at national and within the new subnational units. A new constitutional dispensation in 2010, created a thoroughgoing decentralisation process, which created new rents, rent-seeking outcomes, and patronage. The effect of decentralisation in agricultural service delivery was analysed to understand the extent decentralisation would affect theoretical expected outcomes.
Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ahp-10.1177_0890117120937909 - Overdose Awareness and Reversal Trainings at Philadelphia Public Libraries
Creators: name: Lowenstein, Margaret
name: Feuerstein-Simon, Rachel
name: Dupuis, Roxanne
name: Herens, Allison
name: Hom, Jeffrey
name: Sharma, Meghana
name: Risha Sheni
name: Lonard Encarnacion
name: Flaherty, Carina
name: Cueller, Maria
name: Cannuscio, Carolyn
Publisher: name: SAGE Journals
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 111799 Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ahp-10.1177_0890117120937909 for Overdose Awareness and Reversal Trainings at Philadelphia Public Libraries by Margaret Lowenstein, Rachel Feuerstein-Simon, Roxanne Dupuis, Allison Herens, Jeffrey Hom, Meghana Sharma, Risha Sheni, Lonard Encarnacion, Carina Flaherty, Maria Cueller and Carolyn Cannuscio in American Journal of Health Promotion