How do speakers of different languages think about time? Studies showed that people who speak different languages behave differently on spatial-temporal ordering tasks. However, these differences...Show moreHow do speakers of different languages think about time? Studies showed that people who speak different languages behave differently on spatial-temporal ordering tasks. However, these differences usually correlated with that languages writing direction. This study looks at whether it is language that causes different results or writing direction by recreating such a spatial-temporal ordering experiment with preliterate children from two different languages. Interestingly, the results in this experiment did not seems to point to either one of the possibilities. The children did not perform either uniform within a language group or completely random in both language groups. One thing that can be said is that the preliterate children did perform differently from adults is similar experiments, so the possible influence from a language’s writing system cannot be rules out, however, there might be more factors at play.Show less
The Artemis Accords are an international agreement first drafted by NASA and the US government that aim towards establishing a framework for civil space activities by civil space agencies regarding...Show moreThe Artemis Accords are an international agreement first drafted by NASA and the US government that aim towards establishing a framework for civil space activities by civil space agencies regarding the Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets. The Accords have been signed by multiple states, in particular those that are willing to play a role in the US-led Artemis Program for renewed human spaceflight to the Moon. The Accords have been controversial among experts in the field of space governance. Experts have claimed that the Artemis Accords do not respect space as a commons and that the Accords have important shortcomings that hamper its ability to facilitate sustainable space governance. Others have primarily criticized the Artemis Accords for the tensions it has increased between the US and states like Russia or the People's Republic of China, as some believe the US are actively trying to influence the governance of space in their favour. Some fear that this can lead to attempts to overtly weaponize space. This research aims to look at both of these criticisms, by first assessing to what extent the Artemis Accords comply with or violate the principles associated with sustainable governance of a commons and looking at the Accords and its contents in detail. Then, the effects this has on the weaponization of space will be considered and discussed in order to better understand how the Artemis Accords are influencing the weaponization of space.Show less
Operations in space are anything but restful for astronauts, as there are both physical and psychological stressors. One known stressor is the lack of sufficient sleep in space which can...Show moreOperations in space are anything but restful for astronauts, as there are both physical and psychological stressors. One known stressor is the lack of sufficient sleep in space which can drastically impact astronauts’ performance. Successful docking is highly important during space missions since small mistakes can lead to disastrous consequences. The docking process can be trained with the 6df task, a simulation in which six degrees of freedom must be controlled. This experimental study aimed to investigate the effect of susceptibility to sleep deprivation (SSD) on 6df docking performance impairment due to sleep deprivation (SD). A total of 62 participants (28 female; 18-39 years, Mage = 24.84; SDage = 4.69) completed a balanced-repeated-measures-cross-over-total-SD design. Test variables were calculated by subjects’ performance differences between “well-rested-“ and “SD measurements”. The dependent variable docking performance impairment due to SD was operationalised by 6df outcomes(“top-level achieved” and “mean docking accuracy”). SSD was defined as 1/reaction time (RT) from the Psychomotor Vigilance Test. A background analysis showed that participants’ RT slows significantly when SD (p < .001). Multinomial regressions (“top-level achieved”) showed no significant relations between SSD and docking performance impairment, whereas multiple regressions (“mean docking accuracy”) showed significant relations (p < .001). Post-hoc analysis showed that testing order is noteworthy because participants assessed in the order “well-rested-“ followed by “SD measurements” have lower docking performance impairment due to SD than the group with reversed order. Further, a posthoc analysis showed when participants split in “least SSD” and “most SSD”, the effect of SSD on 6df docking performance impairment due to SD was affected by testing order. The importance of testing order suggests the presence of a learning effect, meaning that docking performance impairment due to SD could be reduced by exhaustive training in well-rested conditions. In conclusion, this study can help construct guidelines for determining whether an individual can still perform the operationally relevant task safely under SD. This could also be interesting for other professions such as submarines, pilots, and surgeons, in which six degrees of freedom have to be controlled under SD.Show less
This thesis has investigated the role of the American private space industry in the ongoing securitization of outer space within the United States context. Whereas scholars have thoroughly examined...Show moreThis thesis has investigated the role of the American private space industry in the ongoing securitization of outer space within the United States context. Whereas scholars have thoroughly examined the role of the state in the securitization of outer space, it has thus far predominantly overlooked possible securitizing moves performed by the private space industry, as well as the role of the novel NewSpace industry within that process. Therefore, this investigation aims to examine the private space companies SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) building upon securitization theory. Specifically, it will provide a discourse analysis on those companies’ webpages, uncovering four discourses possessing either or both securitizing speech acts and performative securitization. This thesis finds that the private space industry took on a facilitating role regarding the securitization of outer space by proliferating and enhancing space launching capabilities and engaging with the U.S. military and national security services. Furthermore, it might have contributed to the securitization of outer space by performing speech acts, but this investigation refrains from drawing that conclusion, as it has not investigated the audience involved and thus cannot estimate whether the speech acts were performed successfully. Nevertheless, these findings combined with the academic literature on PMSCs, suggest that private space companies sometimes can look and act like PMSCs, explaining why private space companies might be incentivized to contribute to outer space securitization.Show less
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis investigates different notions of space and the role they played in processes of colonization and religious conversion in Eastern Indonesia at the beginning of the 19th century....Show moreThis thesis investigates different notions of space and the role they played in processes of colonization and religious conversion in Eastern Indonesia at the beginning of the 19th century. Specifically, it focusses on the 1824 trip of the Dourga which re-instated political and religious ties between the Dutch administration in Ambon and the various island societies in the region. It proposes to treat space as medium of cultural exchange.Show less
For decades an objective within Linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic...Show moreFor decades an objective within Linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic differences of intrusion of the spatial domain within the temporal domain by comparing Native English speakers to Mandarin-English bilinguals. With deviation in linguistic construction of space = time metaphors between the two languages, the main question subject to this study is whether linguistic differences bear influence on the conceptualization of the abstract domain of time. Furthermore, an insight is given in the manner abstract concepts are concreted by the human mind with an emphasis on bilingual processing. As the processing within the bilingual mind has been subjected to much debate over recent year, an attempt to reconcile various views has been laid bare. The present study exists of two replicated tasks which yielded different conclusions in their original state. While the results of the present study remain inconclusive, one task hints at a global difference between Mandarin-English bilinguals' conception of time and English native speakers' conception of time. The other task has not revealed any implication on linguistic processing due to crosslinguistic differences.Show less
For decades an objective for linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence and/or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic...Show moreFor decades an objective for linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence and/or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic differences in observed intrusion of the spatial domain on the temporal domain by comparing English monolinguals toMan darin-English bilinguals. The main question in this study is whether the observed linguistic differences in the temporal domain between Mandarin and English bear influence on the conceptualization of this domain by the human mind. The present study comprises of two replicated experiments. When the two presently replicated experiments were conducted originally they drew deviating conclusions from one another regarding a similar question. While the results of the present study remain inconclusive, results hint at a global difference between Mandarin-English bilinguals’ conception of time and English native speakers’ conception of time based on language. This hint implicates that there might be an underlying effect of language on the mental representation of time. The second experiment has not revealed any implication on linguistic processing due to observed crosslinguistic differences.Show less
Space and its military uses are increasingly attracting the attention of the world's chancelleries. Last year Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a new French space command, while Trump's...Show moreSpace and its military uses are increasingly attracting the attention of the world's chancelleries. Last year Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a new French space command, while Trump's Space Force recently became the sixth branch of the US armed forces. This research aims to shed light on the evolution of the European Space Policy and its impact on the operations carried out under the umbrella of the Common Security and Defence Policy. The military applications of the European flagship programmes Galileo and Coperniucs offer an interesting case study to understand the supranational intertwining of the space and defence domains, which culminated with the setup of the DG Defence Industry and Space. The thesis makes use of the neofunctionalist theory and its most useful theoretical concepts to delve into the relevant events concerning European space governance.Show less
In recent years, in the field of contemporary literature, greater attention has been put on literary productions dealing with environmental pollution or destruction, prompting the surge of...Show moreIn recent years, in the field of contemporary literature, greater attention has been put on literary productions dealing with environmental pollution or destruction, prompting the surge of environmental criticism – ecocriticism – to a well developed and independent discipline within the environmental humanities. Nevertheless, the field, as Karen Thornber correctly noted, has been mainly focused on issues raised by western literary works. Environmental fictions – or ecofictions – produced in East Asia, despite their preoccupations with pollution and environmental disaster, are usually excluded from the analyses of ecocritics. In Japan in particular, after the Fukushima disaster of March 3, 2011, varied literary works – from short stories to novels and poems – have addressed topics of nuclear pollution and environmental disaster. Therefore, it becomes paramount to focus on this gap in ecocriticism and start to develop more comprehensive studies of ecofictions expanding beyond literary production in English or western languages. This thesis, presenting as a case study the novel Somersault (1999) – by the Japanese author O̅e Kenzaburō, tries to address this gap by focusing on the narrativization of nuclear disaster in relation to the representations of time and space. After the introduction of an analytical tool comprehensive of various theoretical concepts, this study endeavors to demonstrate the importance of accounting for those elements revealing deeper environmental concerns that are often overlooked by critics in literary productions. My study of narrrativizations of time and space, as they take shape in this Japanese case study, shall prove productive also for the analysis of other ecofictions produced in different languages and arising from varied cultural traditions. Furthermore, an analytical tool linking together temporality and space could enable comparative studies between East Asian and Western ecofictions. This study could thus contribute to the field of ecocriticism by allowing for a diversification in the understanding of perceptions of time and space in literary works from different literary and cultural traditions dealing with the threat, or in the aftermath, of an environmental disaster.Show less
Brazil’s heterodominant cultural climate subjects trans individuals to turbulent social realities emerging from their deferred styles of embodiment. Such realities are depicted by Pep Bonet in his...Show moreBrazil’s heterodominant cultural climate subjects trans individuals to turbulent social realities emerging from their deferred styles of embodiment. Such realities are depicted by Pep Bonet in his photodocumentary series All Imperfect Things. Through systematic visual analysis, paying particular attention to the different "ways of seeing" provided by Bonet, this research has as its objective the exploration of the effect to which the trans body is captured and displayed throughout the documentary. Through considerations of the body in conjunction with tendencies of documentary genre, space, and a sense of community, research has shown how Bonet subverts the reinforcement of Brazilian trans' powerlessness. What materialises is a humanizing way of representing which is both empowering and true to itself and the community depicted.Show less
This thesis investigated the spatial organisation and functional patterning of the rooms of the Oppian pavilion of the Domus Aurea, which was built by Emperor Nero in AD 60-68. The study uses a...Show moreThis thesis investigated the spatial organisation and functional patterning of the rooms of the Oppian pavilion of the Domus Aurea, which was built by Emperor Nero in AD 60-68. The study uses a combination of an analysis of the decorative programme of the Domus as published by Meyboom and Moormann in ‘Le Decorazioni Dipinte e Marmoree Della Domus Aurea di Nerone a Roma’ (2013), and an analysis of the spatial organisation of the building using Space Syntax techniques. The Oppian pavilion has never been subject to a formal spatial analysis prior to this thesis. The new perspective the analyses offer on the pavilion allows to shed new light on an area until now hardly explored. The results achieved by this thesis suggest that the Oppian pavilion was very unlikely to have had residential functions. Concluding from the Visibility Graph Analyses performed, most of the rooms were visually highly integrated, presuming rather a public function. At least two big dining rooms were present: rooms 40 and 128. The spatial and decorative characteristics of these rooms complement and amplify each other. The two rooms, moreover, were included in a pattern of visibility lines, called an ‘enfilade’. The enfilade pattern emerged from room 45a and continued on to the eastern end of corridor 92, from there it continued its way to room 132, and from room 132 it went through the Pentagonal Courtyard garden (no. 80a) and the porticoed gallery (no. 21), to end in room 9. A noticeable fact is that the enfilade pattern is cut off where the ‘Second Pentagonal Court’ is thought to have started. Hence it is very likely that th e ‘Second Court’ had a function that was entirely different from that of the rest of the Oppian pavilion. The spatial analysis in this thesis was applied from the perspective of the entrances of the pavilion only. Future investigations of the Domus which focus on all individual rooms as the root nodes for convex spatial studies could well contribute to gaining even more new insights into the spatial organisation of the pavilion.Show less
Over the past decades there have been new theories and methods applied to research in archaeology. This research is an attempt to apply some of these new ideas to the archaeological site, Lepcis...Show moreOver the past decades there have been new theories and methods applied to research in archaeology. This research is an attempt to apply some of these new ideas to the archaeological site, Lepcis Magna. The theory of Space Syntax will be applied to create new data that can be analyzed and interpreted. Recently, there have been multiple studies on identity that have been examined and researched more extensively in relation to the field of archaeology. A combination of space syntax theory and identity studies will be applied in order to have a deeper understanding of past cultural identity of the people of Lepcis Magna between the late first century BC to the Severan period. It has been documented that the inhabitants of Lepcis Magna had a strong Punic background during their incorporation into the Roman Empire. In previous publications on the city, the people are often described as rejecting the Romanization process. New approaches to identity studies on the provincial cities throughout the Roman Empire have attempted to step back from Romanization theory and reexamine the culture and identity of the people. A conscious effort will be made to try and examine the material from an unbiased Romanization point of view. There will also be an evaluation of the space syntax methods to see if it is feasible to approach the study of identity through the examination of space. One will attempt to analyze and interpret areas of high connectivity that will be determined by the analysis applied. Within the areas of high connectivity one will determine if there is a specific identity being projected. It will be from the interpretations that one might discover a collective cultural identity of the people. This research aims to gain a better understanding of past identities of the people of Lepcis Magna through the application of Space Syntax theory.Show less
During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union demonstrated a shared interest in a military status quo in Earth orbit and exercised considerable restraint by not placing weapons in space....Show moreDuring the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union demonstrated a shared interest in a military status quo in Earth orbit and exercised considerable restraint by not placing weapons in space. However, despite ever-increasing state dependency on civilian space applications, militarisation efforts have accelerated in recent decades, heightening fears that one or more states may deploy space weapons. Indeed, the catastrophic consequences of a space war appear to provide the world with an interest in keeping space conflict free but key space power states have been reluctant to implement a prohibition on weapons in space. To understand why, this paper analyses the history of space militarisation and arms control and the two most prominent explanations offered to date – that the United States has acted as a non-status quo state and that international governance has failed to deliver on its promise. Finding these unsatisfactory, the paper proposes that the absence of a space weapons prohibition is instead best understood as the product of security dilemma dynamics. These can lead even benign states with significant common interests to a self-reinforcing spiral of insecurity driven by uncertainty and fear.Show less
