Exploring Problem Decomposition in Conceptual Design

Design embraces several disciplines dedicated to the production of artifacts and services. These disciplines are quite independent and only recently has psychological interest focused on them. Nowadays, the psychological theories of design, also called design cognition literature, describe the design process from the information processing viewpoint. These models co-exist with the normative standards of how designs should be crafted. In many places there are concrete discrepancies between these two in a way that resembles the differences between the actual and ideal decision-making. This study aimed to explore the possible difference related to problem decomposition. Decomposition is a standard component of human problem-solving models and is also included in the normative models of design. The idea of decomposition is to focus on a single aspect of the problem at a time. Despite its significance, the nature of decomposition in conceptual design is poorly understood and has only been preliminary investigated. This study addressed the status of decomposition in conceptual design of products using protocol analysis. Previous empirical investigations have argued that there are implicit and explicit decomposition, but have not provided a theoretical basis for these two. Therefore, the current research began by reviewing the problem solving and design literature and then composing a cognitive model of the solution search of conceptual design. The result is a synthetic view which describes recognition and decomposition as the basic schemata for conceptual design. A psychological experiment was conducted to explore decomposition. In the test, sixteen (N=16) senior students of mechanical engineering created concepts for two alternative tasks. The concurrent think-aloud method and protocol analysis were used to study decomposition. The results showed that despite the emphasis on decomposition in the formal education, only few designers (N=3) used decomposition explicitly and spontaneously in the presented tasks, although the designers in general applied a top-down control strategy. Instead, inferring from the use of structured strategies, the designers always relied on implicit decomposition. These results confirm the initial observations found in the literature, but they also suggest that decomposition should be investigated further. In the future, the benefits and possibilities of explicit decomposition should be considered along with the cognitive mechanisms behind decomposition. After that, the current results could be reinterpreted.

Unpredictability, invisibility and vulnerability: Unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors’ journeys to Australia

This qualitative study investigated the refugee journey of 17 males who arrived in Australia as unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors between 2009 and 2013, and were granted protection visas. The paper focuses on the four conceptual challenges of refugee journeys, as identified recently by BenEzer and Zetter: temporal characteristics; drivers and destinations; the process/content of the journey; and the characteristics of the wayfarers. The findings indicate that their mental journey has not yet ended and transcends the physical departure-arrival voyage. Although the primary drivers for the refugee journey were protection reasons, their desire to find a “better life” free from violence and exclusion also played an important role. The irregular character of the journey made it highly unpredictable, exposed these minors to extreme levels of vulnerability and the need to remain invisible, prompted short lived friendships with other asylum seekers, and created a pervasive feeling of mistrust towards smugglers and other people they met along the way. The study has highlighted the need for interventions to protect unaccompanied minors during their refugee journey.

Improved optical character recognition by matched filtering

The effectiveness of linear matched filters for improved character discrimination in presence of random noise and poorly defined characters has been investigated. We have found that although the performance of the filter in presence of random noise is reasonably good (16 dB gain in signal-to-noise-ratio) its performance is poor when the unknown character is distorted (linear shift and rotation).

Consumers and the conceptual and practical appropriation of functional foods

Taking the appropriation of objects as a theoretical starting point, this study makes a distinction between a conceptual and practical level of adopting new objects and products in everyday life. The study applies the concept of appropriation in social food research and examines consumers appropriation of functional foods, i.e., foods developed to improve health and well-being or reduce the risk of disease beyond the usual nutritional effects of foods. The study uses the concept of appropriation to understand the adoption and the process of making functional foods our own . First, the study focuses on the conceptual appropriation by analysing consumers interpretations and opinions on functional foods. Second, it analyses the use of functional foods and examines the role of sociodemographic and food- and health-related background factors in the use of functional foods. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used in the study. Altogether 1210 Finns representative of the population took part in a survey carried out in 2002 as computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI). The survey examined the acceptability and use of functional foods in Finland. In 2004, eight focus group discussions were organised for 45 users and non-users of cholesterol-lowering spreads. The qualitative study focused on consumers interpretative perspectives on healthy eating and functional foods. The findings are reported in four original articles and a summary article. The results show that the appropriation of functional foods is a multifaceted phenomenon. The conceptual appropriation is related to consumers interpretations of functional foods in the context of healthy foods and healthy eating; their trust in the products, their manufacturers, research and control; and the relationship of functional foods and the ideal of natural foods. The analysis of the practical appropriation of four different types of foods marketed as functional showed that there are sociodemographic differences between users and non-users of the products, but more importantly, the differences are related to consumers food- and health-related views and practices. Consumers ways of appropriating functional foods in the conceptual and practical sense take shape in a complex web of ideas and everyday practices concerning food, health and eating as a whole. The results also indicate that the conceptual and practical appropriation are not necessarily uniform or coherent processes. Consumers interpret healthy eating and functional foods from a variety of perspectives and there is a multiplicity of rationales of using functional foods. Appropriation embraces many opposing dimensions simultaneously: good experiences and doubts, approval and criticism, expectations and things taken for granted.

Improved optical character recognition by matched filtering

The effectiveness of linear matched filters for improved character discrimination in presence of random noise and poorly defined characters has been investigated. We have found that although the performance of the filter in presence of random noise is reasonably good (16 dB gain in signal-to-noise-ratio) its performance is poor when the unknown character is distorted (linear shift and rotation).

Insights into students' conceptual understanding using textual analysis: A case study in signal processing

Concept inventory tests are one method to evaluate conceptual understanding and identify possible misconceptions. The multiple-choice question format, offering a choice between a correct selection and common misconceptions, can provide an assessment of students' conceptual understanding in various dimensions. Misconceptions of some engineering concepts exist due to a lack of mental frameworks, or schemas, for these types of concepts or conceptual areas. This study incorporated an open textual response component in a multiple-choice concept inventory test to capture written explanations of students' selections. The study's goal was to identify, through text analysis of student responses, the types and categorizations of concepts in these explanations that had not been uncovered by the distractor selections. The analysis of the textual explanations of a subset of the discrete-time signals and systems concept inventory questions revealed that students have difficulty conceptually explaining several dimensions of signal processing. This contributed to their inability to provide a clear explanation of the underlying concepts, such as mathematical concepts. The methods used in this study evaluate students' understanding of signals and systems concepts through their ability to express understanding in written text. This may present a bias for students with strong written communication skills. This study presents a framework for extracting and identifying the types of concepts students use to express their reasoning when answering conceptual questions.

Inculcating character education through EFL teaching in Indonesian state schools

This paper describes how English as foreign language (EFL) teachers in Indonesia have implemented the recent character education policy within an era of school-based curriculum reform. The character education policy required all teachers, EFL teachers included, to instill certain values in every lesson whilst the school-based curriculum reform permitted teachers to develop locally responsive curriculum content. The design behind the reform seeks to sharpen education’s role as a site of moral inculcation in the face of growing social diversity that threatens social cohesion and the prolonged social problem of massive corruption. Drawing on Durkheim’s (1925) distinction between secular and religious morality, this paper considers how the Indonesian curriculum promoted rational or secular moral education and how the EFL teachers enacted religious moral education given religiosity is salient in both the community and schools of Indonesia. Bernstein’s concepts of pedagogic discourse, instructional and regulative discourses were adopted to analyse how EFL teachers have re-contextualized both curricular reforms in their micro pedagogic settings. The conclusion suggests that teachers’ implementation of moral education in their classes was dominated by their school communities’ and the teachers’ own preferred value of religiosity. Such values played out in their classes through both the regulative discourse and the instructional discourse.

Towards a Critique of the Concept of the Right to Self-Determination in Africa : A Conceptual Examination and the Cases of Western Sahara, Southern Sudan and Eritrea

This thesis examines the right to self-determination which is a norm used for numerous purposes by multiple actors in the field of international relations, with relatively little clarity or agreement on the actual and potential meaning of the right. In international practice, however, the main focus in applying the right has been in the context of decolonization as set by the United Nations in its early decades. Thus, in Africa the right to self-determination has traditionally implied that the colonial territories, and particularly the populations within these territories, were to constitute the people who were entitled to the right. That is, self-determination by decolonization provided a framework for the construction of independent nation-states in Africa whilst other dimensions of the right remained largely or totally neglected. With the objective of assessing the scope, content, developments and interpretations of the right to self-determination in Africa, particularly with regard to the relevance of the right today, the thesis proceeds on two fundamental hypotheses. The first is that Mervyn Frost s theory of settled norms, among which he lists the right to self-determination, assumes too much. Even if the right to self-determination is a human right belonging to all peoples stipulated, inter alia, in the first Article of the 1966 International Human Rights Covenants, it is a highly politicized and context-bound right instead of being settled and observed in a way that its denial would need special justification. Still, the suggested inconsistency or non-compliance with the norm of self-determination is not intended to prove the uselessness or inappropriateness of the norm, but, on the contrary, to invite and encourage debate on the potential use and coverage of the right to self-determination. The second hypothesis is that within the concept of self-determination there are two normative dimensions. One is to do with the idea and practice of statehood, the nation and collectivity that may decide to conduct itself as an independent state. The other one is to do with self-determination as a human right, as a normative condition, to be enjoyed by people and peoples within states that supersedes state authority. These external and internal dimensions need to be seen as complementary and co-terminous, not as mutually exclusive alternatives. The thesis proceeds on the assumption that the internal dimension of the right, with human rights and democracy at its core, has not been considered as important as the external. In turn, this unbalanced and selective interpretation has managed to put the true normative purpose of the right making the world better and bringing more just polity models into a somewhat peculiar light. The right to self-determination in the African context is assessed through case studies of Western Sahara, Southern Sudan and Eritrea. The study asks what these cases say about the right to self-determination in Africa and what their lessons learnt could contribute to the understanding and relevance of the right in today s Africa. The study demonstrates that even in the context of decolonization, the application of the right to self-determination has been far from the consistent approach supposedly followed by the international community: in many respects similar colonial histories have easily led to rather different destinies. While Eritrea secured internationally recognized right to self-determination in the form of retroactive independence in 1993, international recognition of distinct Western Sahara and Southern Sudan entities is contingent on complex and problematic conditions being satisfied. Overall, it is a considerable challenge for international legality to meet empirical political reality in a meaningful way, so that the universal values attached to the norm of self-determination are not overlooked or compromised but rather reinforced in the process of implementing the right. Consequently, this thesis seeks a more comprehensive understanding of the right to self-determination with particular reference to post-colonial Africa and with an emphasis on the internal, human rights and democracy dimensions of the norm. It is considered that the right to self-determination cannot be perceived only as an inter-state issue as it is also very much an intra-state issue, including the possibility of different sub-state arrangements exercised under the right, for example, in the form of autonomy. At the same time, the option of independent statehood achieved through secession remains a mode of exercising and part of the right to self-determination. But in whatever form or way applied, the right to self-determination, as a normative instrument, should constitute and work as a norm that comprehensively brings more added value in terms of the objectives of human rights and democracy. From a normative perspective, a peoples right should not be allowed to transform and convert itself into a right of states. Finally, in light of the case studies of Western Sahara, Southern Sudan and Eritrea, the thesis suggests that our understanding of the right to self-determination should now reach beyond the post-colonial context in Africa. It appears that both the questions and answers to the most pertinent issues of self-determination in the cases studied must be increasingly sought within the postcolonial African state rather than solely in colonial history. In this vein, the right to self-determination can be seen not only as a tool for creating states but also as a way to transform the state itself from within. Any such genuinely post-colonial approach may imply a judicious reconsideration, adaptation or up-dating of the right and our understanding of it in order to render it meaningful in Africa today.

Understanding the effectiveness of ICT professional learning through the TPACK Conceptual Framework: A case study

With a significant investment in digital technologies in Australian schools, the effective integration of such technology into teaching and learning is paramount. A growing body of evidence indicates that ICT professional learning is integral to the transformation of pedagogy that will improve student learning outcomes. The question arises as to how professional learning is planned and delivered within schools to ensure that all needs are being met. The purpose of this paper is to report on the research findings of a study into professional learning and ICT integration. The TPACK conceptual framework underpins the analyses of the data and brings forth the importance of technological and pedagogical knowledge. Six key categories will be discussed and the implication for practice will be considered.

Democratic Legitimacy and the Politics of Rights : A comparative analysis of the conceptual relationship between democracy and rights in contemporary political theories

Democratic Legitimacy and the Politics of Rights is a research in normative political theory, based on comparative analysis of contemporary democratic theories, classified roughly as conventional liberal, deliberative democratic and radical democratic. Its focus is on the conceptual relationship between alternative sources of democratic legitimacy: democratic inclusion and liberal rights. The relationship between rights and democracy is studied through the following questions: are rights to be seen as external constraints to democracy or as objects of democratic decision making processes? Are individual rights threatened by public participation in politics; do constitutionally protected rights limit the inclusiveness of democratic processes? Are liberal values such as individuality, autonomy and liberty; and democratic values such as equality, inclusion and popular sovereignty mutually conflictual or supportive? Analyzing feminist critique of liberal discourse, the dissertation also raises the question about Enlightenment ideals in current political debates: are the universal norms of liberal democracy inherently dependent on the rationalist grand narratives of modernity and incompatible with the ideal of diversity? Part I of the thesis introduces the sources of democratic legitimacy as presented in the alternative democratic models. Part II analyses how the relationship between rights and democracy is theorized in them. Part III contains arguments by feminists and radical democrats against the tenets of universalist liberal democratic models and responds to that critique by partly endorsing, partly rejecting it. The central argument promoted in the thesis is that while the deconstruction of modern rationalism indicates that rights are political constructions as opposed to externally given moral constraints to politics, this insight does not delegitimize the politics of universal rights as an inherent part of democratic institutions. The research indicates that democracy and universal individual rights are mutually interdependent rather than oppositional; and that democracy is more dependent on an unconditional protection of universal individual rights when it is conceived as inclusive, participatory and plural; as opposed to robust majoritarian rule. The central concepts are: liberalism, democracy, legitimacy, deliberation, inclusion, equality, diversity, conflict, public sphere, rights, individualism, universalism and contextuality. The authors discussed are e.g. John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Iris Young, Chantal Mouffe and Stephen Holmes. The research focuses on contemporary political theory, but the more classical work of John S. Mill, Benjamin Constant, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt is also included.

Essays in Philosophical Moral Psychology

The dissertation consists of four essays and a comprehensive introduction that discusses the topics, methods, and most prominent theories of philosophical moral psychology. I distinguish three main questions: What are the essential features of moral thinking? What are the psychological conditions of moral responsibility? And finally, what are the consequences of empirical facts about human nature to normative ethics? Each of the three last articles focuses on one of these issues. The first essay and part of the introduction are dedicated to methodological questions, in particular the relationship between empirical (social) psychology and philosophy. I reject recent attempts to understand the nature of morality on the basis of empirical research. One characteristic feature of moral thinking is its practical clout: if we regard an action as morally wrong, we either refrain from doing it even against our desires and interests, or else feel shame or guilt. Moral views seem to have a conceptual connection to motivation and emotions – roughly speaking, we can’t conceive of someone genuinely disapproving an action, but nonetheless doing it without any inner motivational conflict or regret. This conceptual thesis in moral psychology is called (judgment) internalism. It implies, among other things, that psychopaths cannot make moral judgments to the extent that they are incapable of corresponding motivation and emotion, even if they might say largely the words we would expect. Is internalism true? Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in so-called experimental philosophy, which is a methodological view according to which claims about conceptual truths that appeal to our intuitions should be tested by way of surveys presented to ordinary language users. One experimental result is that the majority of people are willing to grant that psychopaths make moral judgments, which challenges internalism. In the first article, ‘The Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy’, I argue that these results pose no real threat to internalism, since experimental philosophy is based on a too simple conception of the relationship between language use and concepts. Only the reactions of competent users in pragmatically neutral and otherwise conducive circumstances yield evidence about conceptual truths, and such robust intuitions remain inaccessible to surveys for reasons of principle. The epistemology of folk concepts must still be based on Socratic dialogue and critical reflection, whose character and authority I discuss at the end of the paper. The internal connection between moral judgment and motivation led many metaethicists in the past century to believe along Humean lines that judgment itself consists in a pro-attitude rather than a belief. This expressivist view, as it is called these days, has far-reaching consequences in metaethics. In the second essay I argue that perhaps the most sophisticated form of contemporary expressivism, Allan Gibbard’s norm-expressivism, according to which moral judgments are decisions or contingency plans, is implausible from the perspective of the theory of action. In certain circumstances it is possible to think that something is morally required of one without deciding to do so. Morality is not a matter of the will. Instead, I sketch on the basis of Robert Brandom’s inferentialist semantics a weak form of judgment internalism, according to which the content of moral judgment is determined by a commitment to a particular kind of practical reasoning. The last two essays in the dissertation emphasize the role of mutual recognition in the development and maintenance of responsible and autonomous moral agency. I defend a compatibilist view of autonomy, according to which agents who are unable to recognize right and wrong or act accordingly are not responsible for their actions – it is not fair to praise or blame them, since they lacked the relevant capacity to do otherwise. Conversely, autonomy demands an ability to recognize reasons and act on them. But as a long tradition in German moral philosophy whose best-known contemporary representative is Axel Honneth has it, both being aware of reasons and acting on them requires also the right sort of higher-order attitudes toward the self. Without self-respect and self-confidence we remain at the mercy of external pressures, even if we have the necessary normative competence. These attitudes toward the self, in turn, are formed through mutual recognition – we value ourselves when those who we value value us. Thus, standing in the right sort of relations of recognition is indirectly necessary for autonomy and moral responsibility. Recognition and valuing are concretely manifest in actions and institutions, whose practices make possible participation on an equal footing. Seeing this opens the way for a kind of normative social criticism that is grounded in the value of freedom and automomy, but is not limited to defending negative rights. It thus offers a new way to bridge the gap between liberalism and communitarianism.

Conceptual and statistical modelling of environmental effects in population dynamics

Population dynamics are generally viewed as the result of intrinsic (purely density dependent) and extrinsic (environmental) processes. Both components, and potential interactions between those two, have to be modelled in order to understand and predict dynamics of natural populations; a topic that is of great importance in population management and conservation. This thesis focuses on modelling environmental effects in population dynamics and how effects of potentially relevant environmental variables can be statistically identified and quantified from time series data. Chapter I presents some useful models of multiplicative environmental effects for unstructured density dependent populations. The presented models can be written as standard multiple regression models that are easy to fit to data. Chapters II IV constitute empirical studies that statistically model environmental effects on population dynamics of several migratory bird species with different life history characteristics and migration strategies. In Chapter II, spruce cone crops are found to have a strong positive effect on the population growth of the great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), while cone crops of pine another important food resource for the species do not effectively explain population growth. The study compares rate- and ratio-dependent effects of cone availability, using state-space models that distinguish between process and observation error in the time series data. Chapter III shows how drought, in combination with settling behaviour during migration, produces asymmetric spatially synchronous patterns of population dynamics in North American ducks (genus Anas). Chapter IV investigates the dynamics of a Finnish population of skylark (Alauda arvensis), and point out effects of rainfall and habitat quality on population growth. Because the skylark time series and some of the environmental variables included show strong positive autocorrelation, the statistical significances are calculated using a Monte Carlo method, where random autocorrelated time series are generated. Chapter V is a simulation-based study, showing that ignoring observation error in analyses of population time series data can bias the estimated effects and measures of uncertainty, if the environmental variables are autocorrelated. It is concluded that the use of state-space models is an effective way to reach more accurate results. In summary, there are several biological assumptions and methodological issues that can affect the inferential outcome when estimating environmental effects from time series data, and that therefore need special attention. The functional form of the environmental effects and potential interactions between environment and population density are important to deal with. Other issues that should be considered are assumptions about density dependent regulation, modelling potential observation error, and when needed, accounting for spatial and/or temporal autocorrelation.

Running men: The precarious, paranoid body in screen culture

This paper discusses my video installation Running Men as an example of how an artist’s appropriative engagements with screen images of the perilous body can reflect the technological zeitgeist of the last hundred years but also create a space of meditative and mediated reflection in Slavoj Žižek’s “endlessness” of the present-future. In this artwork, iconic male characters from Hollywood films are recontextualised to create infinitely looping scenes of running; trapping the characters in a kind of Nietchzen eternal recurrence that suspends them between impending violence and uncertain futures. Stemming primarily from my investigation into anxiety as a shared social experience, one perhaps primed by the increasing intensity of visual culture in the 21st century, these digitally reconfigured bodies become avatars or surrogates for myself, and for the viewer. Through selective editing, these emblematic figures are caught in a space of relentless confusion and paranoia – they run with, and from anxiety. They are never caught by any unseen pursuers, but are equally unable to catch up to any unseen goal. These figures map an historical trajectory of violence and masculinity as it has been projected through various iterations of screen culture Simultaneously, as celebrities, they are also fictions of the media sphere, both real and ethereal, they are impossible to grasp but paradoxically are objects of identification and emulation. In this duality, the work also references cinema’s tangled conflation of character and celebrity identity. This discussion will address the two distinct but connected sites and activities of body/image engagement. Firstly, the artistic process and conceptual ramifications of this activity, and secondly in the artwork’s potential as an installation to provide an opportunity for the viewer (like the artist) to reflect on the constructed-ness and complicated power structures at play in the representation of a gendered body.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC) conceptual model to promote mental health for adolescents with ASD

Despite an increased risk of mental health problems in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), there is limited research on effective prevention approaches for this population. Funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism, a theoretically and empirically supported school-based preventative model has been developed to alter the negative trajectory and promote wellbeing and positive mental health in adolescents with ASD. This conceptual paper provides the rationale, theoretical, empirical and methodological framework of a multilayered intervention targeting the school, parents, and adolescents on the spectrum. Two important interrelated protective factors have been identified in community adolescent samples, namely the sense of belonging (connectedness) to school, and the capacity for self and affect regulation in the face of stress (i.e., resilience). We describe how a confluence of theories from social psychology, developmental psychology and family systems theory, along with empirical evidence (including emerging neurobiological evidence) supports the interrelationships between these protective factors and many indices of wellbeing. However, the characteristics of ASD (including social and communication difficulties, and frequently difficulties with changes and transitions, and diminished optimism and self-esteem) impair access to these vital protective factors. The paper describes how evidenced-based interventions at the school level for promoting inclusive schools (using the Index for Inclusion), and interventions for adolescents and parents to promote resilience and belonging (using the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP)), are adapted and integrated for adolescents with ASD. This multisite proof of concept study will confirm whether this multilevel school-based intervention is promising, feasible and sustainable.

The role of polar and facial amphipathic character in determining lipopolysaccharide-binding properties in synthetic cationic peptides

Two series of peptides, designated K and NK were synthesized and tested for lipid A binding and neutralizing properties. K-2, which has an 11-residue amphiphilic core, and a branched N-terminus bearing two branched lysinyl residues does not bind lipid A, while NK2, also with an 11-residue amphiphilic core comprised entirely of non-ionizable residues, and a similarly branched, cationic N-terminus, binds lipid A very weakly. Both peptides do not inhibit lipopolysaccharide (LPS) activity in the Limulus assay, nor do they inhibit LPS-induced TNF-alpha and NO production in 5774 cells. These results are entirely unlike a homologous peptide with an exclusively hydrophobic core whose LPS-binding and neutralizing properties are very similar to that of polymyxin B [David SA, Awasthi SK, Wiese A et al. Characterization of the interactions of a polycationic, amphiphilic, terminally branched oligopeptide with lipid A and lipopolysaccharide from the deep rough mutant of Salmonella minnesota. J Endotoxin Res 1996; 3: 369-379]. These data suggest that a clear segregation of charged and apolar domains is crucial in molecules designed for purposes of LPS sequestration and that head-tail (polar) orientation of the cationic/hydrophobic regions is preferable to molecules with mixed or facial cationic/amphipathic character.