The choice of policy design has crucial implications for a policy’s efficiency. Plastic as a material is an important issue because of its fossil origin and because it often ends up as litter and spreads microplastics. Consequently, policies regarding plastic are vital to examine to understand how we can reduce the environmental consequences of plastic. This study has examined the design of the plastic carrier bag policy and especially focused on the choice of policy instrument, the actors involved, and if the desired change in behaviour occurred. By utilising Schneider and Ingram’s policy design theory, and Howlett and Vedung’s works on policy design and policy instruments, the study built an analytical framework to examine the plastic carrier bag policy. The result showed that the design of a policy was largely dependent on who governed, reflecting the government’s political culture, aims, and goals. The outcome of the policy showed that tax as an economic instrument was efficient in changing the public’s behaviour in the use of plastic carrier bags.

Lagos State in Nigeria is faced with the massive problem of waste from plastic bags which causes the yearly flooding displacing thousands of residents and causes diseases like malaria. Plastic bags which became popular because of their versatility, affordability and durability have now become a major source of environmental degradation requiring the use of more environmentally friendly alternatives like Jute, woolen bags, and biodegradable types of plastic. The Nigerian legislature proposed a plastic bag prohibition bill to reduce the manufacture and use of plastic bags with fines and time behind bars which is Nigeria’s first attempt at managing the menace of single-use plastic bags. The goal of this study is to determine reasons for the continued use of plastic bags to contribute to better management of plastic bags waste. It further investigates the available alternatives and willingness of the residents of Lagos to embrace some alternatives to plastic bags. Anonymous online surveys were distributed across social media platforms and interviews involving shop owners described as “givers” who are off social media in this study was carried out. Responses from both quantitative and qualitative sources have been analyzed using the Nvivo software and connection circles have been developed to describe feedbacks within the system. Results showed that the lack of alternatives and convenience are the biggest reasons for the continued use of plastic bags in Lagos, Nigeria. The results further show that the proposed bill has not made provision of alternatives to plastic bags and incentives for manufacturers of plastic bags revealing poor public participation in policy-making of this nature. Overall, respondents have indicated a willingness to embrace alternatives to plastic bags and have mentioned that the situation is worsened by poor waste management in the state. Recommendations included more extensive research into the use of plastic bags with a bigger sample size with both online and offline platforms. This could encourage effective public participation in policy-making important for creating useful nudges in behavioural change in the shift from plastic bags.

Social media has become an integral part of the Internet. There have been users across the world sharing content like images, texts, videos, and so on. There is a huge amount of data being generated and it has become a challenge to the social media platforms to group the content for further usage like recommending a video. Especially, grouping videos based on similarity requires extracting features. This thesis investigates potential approaches to extract features that can help in determining the similarity between videos. Features of given videos are extracted using Object Detection and Action Recognition. Bag-of-features representation is used to build the vocabulary of all the features and transform data that can be useful in clustering videos. Probabilistic model-based clustering, Multinomial Mixture model is used to determine the underlying clusters within the data by maximizing the expected log-likelihood and estimating the parameters of data as well as probabilities of clusters. Analysis of clusters is done to understand the genre based on dominant actions and objects. Bayesian Information Criterion(BIC) and Akaike Information Criterion(AIC) are used to determine the optimal number of clusters within the given videos. AIC/BIC scores achieved minimum scores at 32 clusters which are chosen to be the optimal number of clusters. The data is labeled with the genres and Logistic regression is performed to check the cluster performance on test data and has achieved 96% accuracy

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19417号 / 情博第596号 / 新制||情||104(附属図書館) / 32442 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科知能情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 山本 章博, 教授 黒橋 禎夫, 教授 鹿島 久嗣, 准教授 Cuturi Marco / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

In 2017, Kenya's government banned plastic bags, to reduce plastic waste and protect the environment. Today Kenya has one of the strictest plastic bag bans in the world.  This study examines the perception of the plastic bag ban by different income classes in Nairobi, as well as what factors influence people's support for the plastic bag ban in Nairobi.  The result indicates that the majority of respondents expressed strong support for the plastic bag ban, citing environmental concerns and the need for sustainable practices. However, a small segment of the population remained skeptical about the effectiveness and feasibility of the ban. The opinions of respondents that the ban was not strict enough is an indicator that the government still needs to do more and work towards a better environment. Factors such as age and education level emerged as influential factors in shaping individuals' perceptions. However, the relationship was not enough to influence opinion on supporting the ban.  Consumer behaviors and awareness about environmental factors were mainly significant in influencing the opinions of residents in supporting the ban. This suggests that people that have reduced their plastic bag usage and are environmentally conscious, are more likely to support the plastic bag ban.  In conclusion, the findings from this study contribute to the public’s opinion on this strict plastic bag ban, in Kenya. The results emphasize the importance of promoting awareness and education to ensure the successful implementation and acceptance of the plastic bag ban. These findings can inform policymakers, environmental organizations, and other stakeholders in designing effective strategies to address plastic waste and promote sustainable practices.

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Grapes (Vitis spp.), globally cultivated for wine and other grape-based products, are susceptible to various diseases, pests, and disorders. These challenges are particularly pervasive in Virginia and viticultural regions in similar climates. Thus, growers routinely use insecticides and fungicides to protect their fruits. However, frequent or excessive use of these chemicals can pose environmental and human health risks and increase the chances of fungicide resistance. Many crop production systems use physical barriers to shield plant surfaces from biotic and abiotic environmental factors, particularly in Asian countries. This study evaluated the efficacy of paper bags, umbrella-style covers, and fruit-zone shelters in mitigating fungal diseases, insect infestations, and other factors that damage grape clusters. A series of field experiments were conducted at four commercial vineyards in Virginia and one research experiment station at Virginia Tech in five years with eight grape cultivars. Our results highlighted the importance of bag and fruit-zone shelter applications. Especially when these protection measures were applied around bloom, we observed reductions in the level of multiple diseases and insect- and bird-related damages. Fruit bagging resulted in significantly lower (P ≤ 0.05) mean severity and incidence of black rot, sour rot, sooty mold, and grape berry moth damage. Similarly, we found a significantly lower mean incidence of black rot, ripe rot, sour rot, and bird damage with the application of fruit-zone shelters. Thus, fruit bagging and fruit-zone shelter can be an effective cultural method for safeguarding grape clusters from different diseases, potentially reducing pesticide use and offering economic advantages to growers. / Master of Science / Grapes are produced for making wine and other grape-based products worldwide. However, grape production often faces challenges from diseases, pests, and environmental factors, especially in humid regions like Virginia. Grape growers use pesticides (insecticides and fungicides) to protect their crops. However, these chemicals can harm the environment and human health; moreover, these disease organisms and pests can become resistant to pesticides. In many parts of the world, especially in Asia, farmers use physical barriers like bags or covers to protect their crops from various harmful factors. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of paper bags, umbrella-style covers, and special shelters around the fruit area of grape plants against fungal diseases, insect problems, and other damages. We conducted a series of experiments over five years in four commercial vineyards and a research station in Virginia, using eight grape cultivars. Our findings showed that using bags and shelters around the grapes, especially during the blooming period, was effective. Bagging the fruit led to significantly fewer cases of diseases (black rot, sour rot, and sooty mold) and grape berry moth damage. Likewise, using shelters around the fruit area resulted in significantly lower diseases (black rot, ripe rot, and sour rot) and bird damage. Therefore, these protective methods could offer more options for grape growers to protect yield from factors damaging their high-value crops.

Detta examensarbete omfattar 15 hp och utfördes av Jelena Todorovic, student på Malmö Högskola, Produktdesignprogrammet.Syftet med arbetet var att utveckla en sportbag för personer som bor i närheten av ett gym och som efter träningen duschar hemma. Projektets bas var Användarcentrerad design, som innebär att utvecklingen av konceptet sker efter användarens behov, önskemål och preferenser. Användaren inkluderades i projektet i allt från skisser, intervjuer, observationer, utvärderingar och urval av koncept till slutkonceptet.Studenten såg ett behov av en annan väska än den traditionella sportbagen. Projektets förstudie resulterade i att studenten sammanställde en kravlista på målgruppens önskemål och behov. En sportbag där funktionaliteten var viktigast kom att bli projektets fokus. Studenten hade som krav att miljö och hållbarhet skulle genomsyra projektet och slutprodukten. Vi behöver tänka på vår planet och för en designer är det en utmaning att utveckla en produkt som är snäll mot miljön, som går att använda länge och fylla sin funktion på ett bra sätt. Slutligen resulterade projektet i en funktionsmodell på den nya mer behovsanpassade sportbagen. / This final thesis is written by Jelena Todorovic, studying Product Design at Malmö Högskola.The purpose with this project was to develop a sport bag for people living nearby a gym and who showers at home instead of the gym after training. The main focus of the project is User Centered Design, which means that the product development of the concept is based on the end users, or the customer’s preferences, needs and wishes. The user is included in every step of the project development, such as commenting and criticizing sketches and concepts, being interviewed and observed, and evaluating the different stages of the concept and product.The student saw a need of a different bag than the traditional sport bag. The pilot study resulted in a list of requirements based on the target group and their needs and preferences. A gym bag with focus on the functionality became the project. The student wanted the project and the final concept to be environmentally friendly, why a research in that field was necessary. We need to think about our planet, and for a Designer, it is a challenge to develop a product which is environmentally friendly and sustainable. It is also desirable for a product to fill its function and last for a long time. Finally, the project resulted in a functionality model of the new gym bag.

No / The problem of image annotation has gained increasing attention from many researchers in computer vision. Few works have addressed the use of bag of visual words for scene annotation at region level. The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between the distribution of local semantic concepts and local keypoints located in image regions labelled with these semantic concepts. Based on this study, we investigate whether bag of visual words model can be used to efficiently represent the content of natural scene image regions, so images can be annotated with local semantic concepts. Also, this paper presents local from global approach which study the influence of using visual vocabularies generated from general scene categories to build bag of visual words at region level. Extensive experiments are conducted over a natural scene dataset with six categories. The reported results have shown the plausibility of using the BOW model to represent the semantic information of image regions.