title: Testing and calibration of smart pebble for river bed sediment transport monitoring

authors: Akeila, Ehad

subjects: Smart Pebble

abstract: The Smart Pebble (smart particle), SP, has been developed for the past two years to monitor sediment transport in riverbeds. The implementation is based on use of small size and low cost acceleration and angular motion sensors. In this stage, the project is focused on calibrating and testing the final version of the SP as well as its packaging in a 4-cm diameter spherical package. The calibration was done in two stages; individual sensor calibration and complete system calibration. The complete SP unit was tested under linear motions generated by a shake table, and 2D rotational motions using two manually controlled servomotors. Offline digital signal conditioning was done in MATLAB. The preliminary results show that the system has relatively large amplitude error due to low sampling frequency. Experiments conducted by sampling a 1-Hz sinusoidal signal at different rates show that to keep the amplitude error of the system under 5% the sampling rate has to be at least 10 times the maximum bandwidth of the signals acquired from sensors.

text: Testing and calibration of smart pebble for river bed sediment transport monitoring The Smart Pebble (smart particle), SP, has been developed for the past two years to monitor sediment transport in riverbeds. The implementation is based on use of small size and low cost acceleration and angular motion sensors. In this stage, the project is focused on calibrating and testing the final version of the SP as well as its packaging in a 4-cm diameter spherical package. The calibration was done in two stages; individual sensor calibration and complete system calibration. The complete SP unit was tested under linear motions generated by a shake table, and 2D rotational motions using two manually controlled servomotors. Offline digital signal conditioning was done in MATLAB. The preliminary results show that the system has relatively large amplitude error due to low sampling frequency. Experiments conducted by sampling a 1-Hz sinusoidal signal at different rates show that to keep the amplitude error of the system under 5% the sampling rate has to be at least 10 times the maximum bandwidth of the signals acquired from sensors.

year: 2007

title: Making Sense of the Census: Classifying and Counting Ethnicity in Oceania, 1965-2011

authors: Broman, Patrick David

subjects: Ethnicity

abstract: As the flagship government effort to count and classify its population, censuses are a key site for rendering and making visible group boundaries. Despite claims to objective rationality, however, census taking is a political and inherently subjective exercise. Censuses help shape the very categories they claim to capture: censuses do more than reflect social reality, they also participate in the social construction of this reality (Kertzer and Arel, 2002b, p. 2). While ethnicity – as a social construct – is imagined, its effects are far from imaginary, and census categorisations may have significant material consequences for the lives of citizens.

Although an increasing number of studies have examined how and why governments in particular times or places count their populations by ethnicity, studies that are both cross-national and longitudinal are rare. Attempting to in part bridge this gap, this thesis studies census questionnaires from 1965 to 2011 for 24 countries in Oceania. In doing so, it explores three general questions: 1) how ethnicity is conceptualised and categorised in Oceanic censuses over time; 2) the relationship between ethnic counting in territories to that of their metropoles; and 3) Oceanic approaches towards multiple ethnic identities. Spread over an area of thirty million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, Oceania provides an interesting context to study ethnic counting. The countries and territories which make up the region present an enormous diversity in physical geography and culture, languages and social organization, size and resource endowment. As the last region in the world to decolonise, Oceania includes a mix of dependencies and sovereign states.

The study finds that engagement with ethnic classification and counting is near-ubiquitous across the time period, with most countries having done so in all five cross-sectional census rounds. In general terms, in ethnic census questions ‘racial’ terminology of race and ancestry has been displaced over the focal period by ‘ethnic’ terminology of ethnicity and ethnic origin. Overall, the concept of ethnic origins predominates, although interestingly it is paired with race in the US territories, reflecting the ongoing social and political salience of race in the metropole. With respect to ethnic categories provided on census forms (and thus imbued with the legitimacy of explicit state recognition) the study finds a shift away from the imagined and flawed Melanesian/Micronesian/ Polynesian racial typology and other colonial impositions to more localised and self-identified Pacific identities. It is theorised that these shifts are emblematic of broader global changes in the impetuses for ethnic counting, from colonially-influenced ‘top down’ counting serving exclusionary ends to more inclusive, ‘bottom up’ approaches motivated by concerns for minority rights and inclusive policy-making.

text: Making Sense of the Census: Classifying and Counting Ethnicity in Oceania, 1965-2011 As the flagship government effort to count and classify its population, censuses are a key site for rendering and making visible group boundaries. Despite claims to objective rationality, however, census taking is a political and inherently subjective exercise. Censuses help shape the very categories they claim to capture: censuses do more than reflect social reality, they also participate in the social construction of this reality (Kertzer and Arel, 2002b, p. 2). While ethnicity – as a social construct – is imagined, its effects are far from imaginary, and census categorisations may have significant material consequences for the lives of citizens.

Although an increasing number of studies have examined how and why governments in particular times or places count their populations by ethnicity, studies that are both cross-national and longitudinal are rare. Attempting to in part bridge this gap, this thesis studies census questionnaires from 1965 to 2011 for 24 countries in Oceania. In doing so, it explores three general questions: 1) how ethnicity is conceptualised and categorised in Oceanic censuses over time; 2) the relationship between ethnic counting in territories to that of their metropoles; and 3) Oceanic approaches towards multiple ethnic identities. Spread over an area of thirty million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, Oceania provides an interesting context to study ethnic counting. The countries and territories which make up the region present an enormous diversity in physical geography and culture, languages and social organization, size and resource endowment. As the last region in the world to decolonise, Oceania includes a mix of dependencies and sovereign states.

The study finds that engagement with ethnic classification and counting is near-ubiquitous across the time period, with most countries having done so in all five cross-sectional census rounds. In general terms, in ethnic census questions ‘racial’ terminology of race and ancestry has been displaced over the focal period by ‘ethnic’ terminology of ethnicity and ethnic origin. Overall, the concept of ethnic origins predominates, although interestingly it is paired with race in the US territories, reflecting the ongoing social and political salience of race in the metropole. With respect to ethnic categories provided on census forms (and thus imbued with the legitimacy of explicit state recognition) the study finds a shift away from the imagined and flawed Melanesian/Micronesian/ Polynesian racial typology and other colonial impositions to more localised and self-identified Pacific identities. It is theorised that these shifts are emblematic of broader global changes in the impetuses for ethnic counting, from colonially-influenced ‘top down’ counting serving exclusionary ends to more inclusive, ‘bottom up’ approaches motivated by concerns for minority rights and inclusive policy-making.

year: 2013

title: Audiences, referees, and landscapes: Understanding the use of Māori and English in New Zealand dual language picturebooks through a sociolinguistic lens

authors: Daly, Nicola

abstract: When non-dominant perspectives are represented in children's literature, it is labelled multicultural, and this form of literature has much potential for altering existing power structures in society. Bishop (1990) first introduced the metaphor of multicultural children's literature offering the possibility of windows - an opportunity to see into others' worlds; mirrors - an opportunity to see your own world being reflected back; and glass sliding doors - an opportunity to step into a world through a book. However, to date, any exploration of the extent to which language diversity contributes to the representation of non-dominant perspectives in multicultural children's literature has been limited, and the use of sociolinguistic theories to frame and theorise such explorations almost non-existent.

text: Audiences, referees, and landscapes: Understanding the use of Māori and English in New Zealand dual language picturebooks through a sociolinguistic lens When non-dominant perspectives are represented in children's literature, it is labelled multicultural, and this form of literature has much potential for altering existing power structures in society. Bishop (1990) first introduced the metaphor of multicultural children's literature offering the possibility of windows - an opportunity to see into others' worlds; mirrors - an opportunity to see your own world being reflected back; and glass sliding doors - an opportunity to step into a world through a book. However, to date, any exploration of the extent to which language diversity contributes to the representation of non-dominant perspectives in multicultural children's literature has been limited, and the use of sociolinguistic theories to frame and theorise such explorations almost non-existent.

year: 2017