Longing for Identity

<p><b>Historically, Catholic churches have been the backbone of many cities worldwide. However, as a young country, New Zealand Catholic churches have not had as much power and impact on the surrounding communities as those in Europe. The number of people who consider themselves religious is declining in the ‘new world’. Furthermore, New Zealand has suffered from urban sprawl. Consequently, people tend to use private vehicles to travel to their churches, so the demand for parking spaces is being prioritized. This is forcing people into a state of disconnection with the place, especially since the surrounding area is typically neglected. </b></p> <p>St. Anthony's Church community is not exempt from this trend. The neglected landscape around the church and its affiliated school functions merely as a display for cars. It appears as a dormant space in which the culturally diverse community is unable to express it-self. This presents multiple opportunities. First, an opportunity to address the future improvements of the church and school’s outdoor spaces; an opportunity to develop this research into real project, and lastly, an opportunity to strengthen the bond between the complex community of St. Anthony’s Church.</p> <p>This thesis aims to investigate around participatory design through an extraction of the applicable knowledge derive from the theoretical framework. Through this, the relevant methods for participatory design will be use as a tool for engaging with the community of St. Anthony’s Church. The final aim is to engage and design with the Catholic youth, allowing them to lead the design process for their built environment through three workshops. This work is based on the understanding that Catholic youth can reclaim the lost relationship between church communities and the common ground they live upon. </p> <p>In this way, the research purposes to give back to the Catholic church community by guiding them to rekindle a sense of connection with, and a sense of custodianship over, their immediate landscape. The thesis represents the first step in a burgeoning project between the researcher-facilitator and the community of St. Anthony's Church.</p>

Longing for Identity

<p><b>Historically, Catholic churches have been the backbone of many cities worldwide. However, as a young country, New Zealand Catholic churches have not had as much power and impact on the surrounding communities as those in Europe. The number of people who consider themselves religious is declining in the ‘new world’. Furthermore, New Zealand has suffered from urban sprawl. Consequently, people tend to use private vehicles to travel to their churches, so the demand for parking spaces is being prioritized. This is forcing people into a state of disconnection with the place, especially since the surrounding area is typically neglected. </b></p> <p>St. Anthony's Church community is not exempt from this trend. The neglected landscape around the church and its affiliated school functions merely as a display for cars. It appears as a dormant space in which the culturally diverse community is unable to express it-self. This presents multiple opportunities. First, an opportunity to address the future improvements of the church and school’s outdoor spaces; an opportunity to develop this research into real project, and lastly, an opportunity to strengthen the bond between the complex community of St. Anthony’s Church.</p> <p>This thesis aims to investigate around participatory design through an extraction of the applicable knowledge derive from the theoretical framework. Through this, the relevant methods for participatory design will be use as a tool for engaging with the community of St. Anthony’s Church. The final aim is to engage and design with the Catholic youth, allowing them to lead the design process for their built environment through three workshops. This work is based on the understanding that Catholic youth can reclaim the lost relationship between church communities and the common ground they live upon. </p> <p>In this way, the research purposes to give back to the Catholic church community by guiding them to rekindle a sense of connection with, and a sense of custodianship over, their immediate landscape. The thesis represents the first step in a burgeoning project between the researcher-facilitator and the community of St. Anthony's Church.</p>

The EU as multidisciplinary education podium: Fusing contextual and decisional policy analytics

The purpose of this article is to describe a multidisciplinary approach implemented in teaching public policy analysis at university level. The approach fuses (a) contextual policy analysis with (b) bivariate and multivariate analysis techniques and (c) data analytics skills to improve the learners’ competence to conduct “decisional” policy analysis. The teaching subject matter was based on European Union policies and Eurostat data and delivered over a period of 3 years in a semester course and summer school formats. The multidisciplinary fusion generated strong interest among learners and participants from various backgrounds and skill levels. At the end of the course, even those with little or no previous exposure in at least one of the teaching topics were able to quickly grasp the “big picture” and explore their newly acquired knowledge with their own analyses. As a whole, this is an educational design where the multidisciplinary fusion is instrumented in the scope of a single course, not as the combination of different courses in a curriculum. The outcome is a viable and contemporary way to sidestep the quantitative–qualitative analysis divide (where applicable) and help learners gain valuable insight into how seemingly different subjects eventually fuse into applicable knowledge. The multidisciplinary synergy that instigated the course design was mirrored in research effort by the authors leading to publishable work, suggesting that the approach can be adopted and adapted to foster or enhance multidisciplinary research efforts. Similar educational designs can be used in existing curricula to bridge seemingly “distant” subjects and improve the comprehension of how seemingly “distant” subjects relate to each other. As in the case described, in curricula where such subjects already exist, the “raw” expertise is already present and can be readily utilized.

Modern teaching methods in action in statistical classes

To act as a responsible member of a democratic society, everybody needs statistical literacy and practical knowledge on how to use statistical data, visualization, and methods. In the case of professions that use or produce statistical data the correct use of statistics and statistical thinking are also important. Practice and knowledge applicable in real life are also needed. To reach these requirements, using real-life problems, modern technologies (digital solutions, online tools) and up-to-date teaching methods tailored to the target audiences is crucial. Several papers show that the use of real problems, technology and modern teaching methods are more efficient than the traditional frontal teaching method. In this study, we describe some new teaching methods, for instance problem-based learning, project-based learning, thinking-based learning, flipped classroom, gamification, new technological devices. We also discuss the combination of different methods and modern technology in action in the field of Statistics. The paper shares our developments, experiences, and lessons we learnt from classes. One of our main results is the idea that the use of modern teaching approaches leads to more practical and applicable knowledge; however, their success also depends on both the educators’ and the students’ time expenditure and attitude.

Experimental Investigation of the Triple-Junction Effect on the Electric Discharge Characteristics and Modeling of the Maximum Discharge Current

The electrical discharge and breakdown characteristics of a triple junction (TJ) in high voltage (HV) electrical insulation are becoming an important issue in recent industrial applications. In this paper, a comparative study is conducted between three insulation materials used in HV: silicone, porcelain, and heat tempered glass, with electrode shape parameters such as inter-electrode distance (d), applied voltage (V), and geometry investigated for positive polarity, using an experimental approach. For optimum test organization to support our research and highlight the parameters and their interactions, we have established a mathematical regression model of the discharge current. It is polynomial, with good performance and a high level of precision. Besides, this yields one monovariable and another two-variable quadratic model. The latter can simulate the electric discharge simultaneously with two variables: V and d, and an adjusted determination coefficient () of nearly 0.99. Consequently, the two-variable quadratic model has been adapted to V and d ranges of 10 to 50 kV and 1.9 to 8 cm, respectively. Finally, this study provides us with new applicable knowledge about the TJ effect on electrical insulation with recommendations to optimize the design for higher performance.

Molecular gastronomy-an incentive for innovative research of various aspects related to the nutrition process

The growing competition in the market of food manufacturers in recent years makes more and more demands on the quality and consumer appeal of food products. The necessity of continuous improvement of the senso-ry properties of products determines high requirements for the professional knowledge of industrial technol-ogists. Today, there is no doubt that the food industry is experiencing a significant shortage of specialists who have systemic and commercially applicable knowledge of both the organoleptic analysis itself and the mechanisms of molecular transformations and processes that affect the formation of sensory properties of food. The modern scientific discipline "Molecular gastronomy" has significant potential for systematizing knowledge regarding mechanisms of chemical and physical changes that occur in a product during techno-logical processing, and their influence on the formation of organoleptic properties of products. We believe that the inclusion of this discipline in the educational process to study specialists of the directions "Food products of animal origin" and "Food products from vegetable raw materials" is highly-demanded and well-timed. In the fishing industry, the studying of technologists for this discipline can be implemented within the profiles ''Technology of products from aquatic biological resources'' and ''Food biotechnology of aquatic or-ganisms''. This discipline can be included both in the preparation of bachelors within these profiles, and in the educational program for the preparation of masters.

Exploring Action Research from a Social Field Perspective

In this piece we share our discovery process as action researchers in an online, global change initiative that emerged during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020. In the spirit of sharing our work "in the making" we aim to make visible our own reflection process and the questions that surface from it. In particular, we share and explore our realization that in order to fully serve the transformational intention of the initiative and the research itself, we needed to expand our research framework mid-process. The framework that best serves the emergent and transformative nature of the initiative is one that both supports awareness-based action and generates widely applicable knowledge; that integrates a variety of perspectives on social phenomena (first-, second-, and third-person); and that aims to bring systematic inquiry both to the observable phenomena and the deeper underlying dimensions. The approach requires us to make visible our assumptions and to integrate and validate different epistemologies, including relational, intuitive and aesthetic knowing. As such, the approach to research we suggest here can be thought of as an epistemological framework itself.

Balancing costs and benefits of pandemic control in an outbreak phase

After the first lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many countries faced difficulties in balancing infection control with economics. Due to limited prior knowledge, economists began researching this issue using cost-benefit analysis and found that infection control processes significantly affect economic efficiency. Rowthorn and Maciejowski [R. Rowthorn and J.A. Maciejowski, Oxford Rev. Econ. Policy 36, S38 (2020)] used economic parameters in the United Kingdom to numerically demonstrate that an optimal balance was found in the process, including keeping the infected population stationary. However, universally applicable knowledge, which is indispensable for the guiding principles of infection control, has not yet been developed because these analyses assume regional parameters and a specific disease. Here, we prove the universal result of economic irreversibility by applying the idea of thermodynamics to pandemic control. It means that delaying infection control measures is more expensive than implementing infection control measures early while keeping infected populations stationary. This implies that once the infected population increases, society cannot return to its previous state without extra expenditures. This universal result is analytically obtained by focusing on the infection-spreading phase of pandemics, which is applicable not only to COVID-19, and whether or not “herd immunity” exists. It also confirms the numerical observation of stationary infected populations in its optimally efficient process. Our findings suggest that economic irreversibility is a guiding principle for balancing infection control with economic effects.

A Systematic Methodology for Doing Qualitative Research

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science is in the enviable position of being a go-to journal for many readers seeking useable insights for solving practical problems in managing modern organizations. A perennial source of such knowledge has been case studies, but case studies have been treated as questionable sources of widely applicable knowledge because they have been assumed to be idiosyncratic and to lack adequate “scientific” rigor. In this brief article, I argue for using a methodological approach to studying single cases that addresses both these thorny problems.

Balancing costs and benefits of pandemic control in an outbreak phase

After the first lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many countries faced difficulties in balancing infection control with economics. Due to limited prior knowledge1), economists began researching this issue2, 3, 4, 5, 6) using cost-benefit analysis7, 8) and found that infection control processes significantly affect economic efficiency. Rowthorn and Maciejowski2, 4) used economic parameters in the United Kingdom to numerically demonstrate that an optimal balance was found in the process, including keeping the infected population stationary. However, universally applicable knowledge, which is indispensable for guiding principles of infection control, has not yet been developed because these analyses assume regional parameters and a specific disease. Here, we prove the universal result of economic irreversibility by applying the idea of thermodynamics to pandemic control. It means that delaying infection control measures is more expensive than implementing infection control measures early while keeping infected populations stationary. This means that once the infected population increases, society cannot return to its previous state without extra expenditures. This universal result is analytically obtained by focusing on the infection-spreading phase of pandemics, which is not only applicable to COVID-19 and whether or not ‘herd immunity’ exists11, 12). It also confirms the numerical observation of stationary infected populations in its optimally efficient process2, 4). Our findings suggest that economic irreversibility is a guiding principle for balancing infection control with economic effects.