Barriers to Access in the Norwegian Criminal Justice System

This chapter presents and discusses barriers that Deaf people who have Norwegian Sign Language as their first language face in encounters with the Norwegian criminal justice system. Since this system is based exclusively on spoken language, and mainly depends on the individual law professional’s ability to establish critical, self-reflective practices in each case, Deaf people’s legal safety, as demanded by the rule of law, cannot be taken for granted. Establishing a public, independent, professionalized sign language interpreter service in Norway, however, has helped to reduce risks for Deaf people. Independent interpreters can demand changes in the criminal justice system’s practices, thus making these practices more accessible to Deaf people. Empirical examples illustrating the interaction between Deaf people, law professionals, and interpreters are presented and analyzed. This interaction is less characterized by conflict and more by cooperation and mutual recognition, where both Deaf people and law professionals state their confidence and trust in their interpreters. The chapter concludes that structural change and organization, such as the establishment of an independent public interpreter service in Norway, trump general and well-meant inclusive intentions in organizations such as the Norwegian criminal justice system when it comes to secure Deaf peoples’ rights and the prevention of miscarriage of justice.

The Ideal and the Real: interior linings in 1930s New Zealand homes

The choices made by New Zealanders in terms of how they line the floors, walls and ceilings of their homes, both today and in the past, is driven by various influencing factors. These include economic factors such as supply and demand, changes in technology, societal norms, as well as the agency of people themselves, ranging from the manufacturer and supplier to the designer and homeowner. In 1930s' New Zealand, architectural and building publications aimed to influence consumer behavior in terms of the products and methods used to design, construct and decorate buildings. These magazines also played a pivotal role in both reflecting and shaping current societal ideals and the associated ideal homes, which are almost always the homes of the middle and upper classes. This paper takes a case study approach by looking at the first eleven issues of the Home & Building magazine between October/November 1936 and November 1939, extracting from these the construct of the ideal home interior and the types of interior linings that were advertised and used for this purpose in the homes that are presented. To investigate the extent to which these trends are reflected in the homes of real New Zealanders, a sample of Wellington building consents and historical interior photographs available through DigitalNZ are used.

An Empirical Investigation on the Transition Process toward a Green Economy

The study investigates the transition process and core principles of a green economy. At a global level, green growth represents the essence of a green economy. In this context, the process of restructuring the market economy and transitioning toward a green economy implies continuous efforts and interdependence since it cannot be achieved in isolation. The model of restructuring economic activities to the specificity of a green economy addresses the interdependent pillars of sustainable development: environmental concerns; renewable energy; low carbon levels. Nevertheless, the green economy model that is applied to advanced economies cannot be implemented to low-income economies because of development gaps. Moreover, emerging economies also have other goals and priorities that demand changes into the green economy model of advanced economies.

Flexible Hotel Design: Rethinking Hotel Design to Address Short-Term Demand Fluctuations

<p><b>A hotel consists of two major components, the business operations and the physical property. These two components although distinctively different, are very much interdependent and affect the hotel’s ability to succeed. An understanding of this important duality is evident in the increasingly market driven nature of hotel design. More diverse and innovative new hotel concepts are constantly being developed based on the identification of gaps in hotel markets, or the creation of new market segments. However, the common perception of the hotel property as being a static and permanent entity remains the same. Despite the volatile and ever‐changing nature of hotel markets, shortterm demand fluctuations have always been one of the biggest concerns and topics of discussion for hotel management and marketing.</b></p> <p>While there has been plenty of research into the problems and implications that short‐term demand fluctuations have on hotel performance and profitability, common approaches to dealing with demand changes are very much restricted by the physical hotel design, and limited to strategic management and marketing tactics that are often inadequate to deal with the problem.</p> <p>This thesis identifies a gap in the knowledge between hotel design and short‐term demand fluctuations. Through research and design, it aims to bridge the gap by directing a design response targeted specifically at the nature of shortterm demand fluctuations. The outcome of this thesis is the design of a new hotel proposed for Wellington, New Zealand. The design demonstrates how particular flexible design interventions can allow the hotel property to be more responsive to short‐term demand fluctuations, and its potential to improve business performance and operating efficiency.</p>

Flexible Hotel Design: Rethinking Hotel Design to Address Short-Term Demand Fluctuations

<p><b>A hotel consists of two major components, the business operations and the physical property. These two components although distinctively different, are very much interdependent and affect the hotel’s ability to succeed. An understanding of this important duality is evident in the increasingly market driven nature of hotel design. More diverse and innovative new hotel concepts are constantly being developed based on the identification of gaps in hotel markets, or the creation of new market segments. However, the common perception of the hotel property as being a static and permanent entity remains the same. Despite the volatile and ever‐changing nature of hotel markets, shortterm demand fluctuations have always been one of the biggest concerns and topics of discussion for hotel management and marketing.</b></p> <p>While there has been plenty of research into the problems and implications that short‐term demand fluctuations have on hotel performance and profitability, common approaches to dealing with demand changes are very much restricted by the physical hotel design, and limited to strategic management and marketing tactics that are often inadequate to deal with the problem.</p> <p>This thesis identifies a gap in the knowledge between hotel design and short‐term demand fluctuations. Through research and design, it aims to bridge the gap by directing a design response targeted specifically at the nature of shortterm demand fluctuations. The outcome of this thesis is the design of a new hotel proposed for Wellington, New Zealand. The design demonstrates how particular flexible design interventions can allow the hotel property to be more responsive to short‐term demand fluctuations, and its potential to improve business performance and operating efficiency.</p>

Robust Tactical Crew Scheduling Under Uncertain Demand

We analyze a tactical freight railway crew scheduling problem, when train drivers must be informed several weeks before operations about the start and end times and locations of their duties. Between informing the train drivers and start of operations, trip demand changes due to cancellations, new bookings, and reroutings of trains, which might result in mismatches between train driver capacity at a location and demand. We analyze an approach that incorporates uncertain trip demand as scenarios, such that the start and end times and locations of the duties of a crew schedule are recoverable robust against deviations in trip demand. We develop a column generation solution method that dynamically aggregates trips to duties and decomposes the subproblems into smaller, computationally tractable instances. Our model determines duty frames that cover duties in many scenarios, creating recoverable robust crew schedules. We test our model on three real data sets of a major European freight railway operator. Our results show that our schedules are considerably more recoverable robust than those of the nominal solution, resulting in smaller mismatches between train driver capacity and demand.

Analysis of Demand Changes in a University Counseling Center Telehealth System

The Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC) offers various types of mental health appointments for students at the University of Florida. The CWC is implementing a new walk-in system for student appointments to increase the timeliness and accessibility of first appointments. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CWC shifted to offer telehealth appointments, primarily through Zoom. The research objective is to conduct a data analysis of historical appointment data before the shift to telehealth and after the shift to telehealth to understand how appointment demand changed during the pandemic. The data analysis breaks down the data by appointment type, weekday, and time of day. This project collaborates with staff at the Counseling and Wellness Center and has the goal of helping the CWC better understand demand patterns, so they can better anticipate appointment demand and serve the UF student population in a timely manner.

Total power deficiency estimation of isolated power system network using full-state observer method

<span>An isolated electrical network with an independent local distributed generator is very sensitive towards the contingencies between load demand and supply. Although the network system has less complexity in term of structure, its stability condition is crucial due to its stand-alone operating condition. The total power deficit in the network gives the important information related to the dynamical frequency responses which may directly affect the system’s stability level. In this paper, the approach to estimate the total power deficiency for the isolated electrical network was presented by utilized the Luenberger observer method. Although the power deficit is not the state variable in the network mathematical model, the solution of estimation problem was feasible by introducing the new variable using additional dummy system. The simulation was carried out by using MATLAB/Simulink environment and the designed estimator was verified using multifarious load demand changes. The results show that the estimated signal was successfully tracked the expected actual signal with minimum error.</span>