Adolescent Girls Economic Opportunities Study in Rwanda

This study aims to understand the economic barriers and constraints facing adolescent girls in Rwanda, as well as the opportunities for building assets, increasing empowerment, and tackling discriminatory institutions so that girls can better access and benefit from viable opportunities.It delivers a situational analysis with recommendations that inform the design of programmes for creating economic empowerment for adolescent girls

What If (Dublin)

Raby developed three ‘What If...’ exhibitions with Dunne (RCA), asking what role design can play in imagining possible futures and raising social, cultural and ethical questions, building on 20 years’ practice in Critical Design theorised inter alia in Dunne and Raby’s Design Noir (2001), Hertzian Tales (2005) and Speculative Everything (2013). Raby’s research included concept development, extended collaboration with exhibitors to develop their contributions, and devising the engagement strategy: all three required localised approaches to audiences, circumstances and commissioning hosts. Extensive investigation was needed in synthetic biology, nanotechnology, surveillance technologies and the domestication of natural phenomena, working with scientific partners at Imperial College and Cambridge University. ‘What If…’ Dublin (2009) comprised 29 projects envisioning hypothetical futures and was reviewed in Irish broadsheets (Examiner, Times, Independent), Wired and New Scientist: ‘the exhibits…address questions on scientific or medical ethics that must be asked in our bio-technological age’ (http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/12/post-2.html). Exhibits were also shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Israel Museum, MoMA and Ars Electronica Center. About 1.8 million people pass the windows of the Wellcome Trust building in London annually, making them an important means of science communication. Wellcome commissioned a changing ‘What If…’ exhibition of 15 themes over 15 months (February 2010 – March 2011). Raby reconceived the design strategy with exhibits engaging at different distances, from passing buses to close-up study. The third exhibition, for the Beijing International Design Triennial (2011), explored the impact on future life of novel technologies through 58 projects in 130 exhibits from 36 designers (12 from China), for a diverse audience. The exhibition and related symposium at Tsinghua University were supported by the British Council. The Triennial was visited by approximately 500,000 visitors and featured widely, e.g. China Central Television, People's Daily, New York Times (all 2011) and Zhuangshi journal (2011 and 2012)

How to Read (Anything as) Art

Alberti defines beauty in architecture as a state of harmony in so much as that any change in the building would be for the worse. Yet, it is hard to believe that any physical object can ever become so perfect. Hence, Alberti seems to leave us with only two alternatives; either there can never be beauty in architecture, or else architectural masterpieces and other works of art are not material things at all, but rather belong to a world of Greek necessity, inhabited by gods and, if Freud is right, dreams as well. Through a discussion of architectural criticism, I try to show how works of art are constituted in interpretation as perfect artifacts in such a way that Alberti's vision isboth possible and inevitable (see note 1)

Spartan Daily, February 14, 1955

Volume 42, Issue 87https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/12137/thumbnail.jp

Conceptual coordination bridges information processing and neurophysiology

Information processing theories of memory and skills can be reformulated in terms of how categories are physically and temporally related, a process called conceptual coordination. Dreaming can then be understood as a story understanding process in which two mechanisms found in everyday comprehension are missing: conceiving sequences (chunking categories in time as a higher-order categorization) and coordinating across modalities (e.g., relating the sound of a word and the image of its meaning). On this basis, we can readily identify isomorphisms between dream phenomenology and neurophysiology, and explain the function of dreaming as facilitating future coordination of sequential, cross-modal categorization (i.e., REM sleep lowers activation thresholds, “unlearning”)

Silver Dreams Fund Learning and Evaluation Contract: Final report June 2014

This is a summary of the Final Report which presents the findings of the evaluation of the Big Lottery Fund's Silver Dreams Fund conducted by Ecorys.The Silver Dreams Fund was a £10 million programme which sought to address the gaps in provision by challenging organisations to come up with an innovative idea for a project that would "pioneer ways to help vulnerable older people deal more effectively with life-changing events".Our approach involved both formative and summative elements and was based upon a robust and evidence-based outcome evaluation framework. In addition, we have also undertaken an evaluation of the new programme management processes employed by the Big Lottery Fund which has been reported separately.In summary, the evaluation involved:- development of an evaluation framework and common indicators to measure outcomes;- provision of a package of self-evaluation support to projects;- programme level work to provide independent primary qualitative research and to validate findings from self-evaluations;- a range of learning activities; and- analysis and reporting