Human factors in the design of sustainable built environments

Scientific research provides convincing evidence that climate change is having significant impacts on many aspects of life. In the built-environment domain, regulatory requirements are pushing the challenges of environmental, economic, and social sustainability at the core of the professional agenda, although the aims of carbon reduction and energy conservation are frequently given a priority over occupants' comfort, well-being, and satisfaction. While most practitioners declare to embrace sustainability as a driver of their professional approach, a general lack of integrated creative and technical skills hinders the design of buildings centred on articulate and comprehensive sustainability goals, encompassing, other than energy criteria, also human-centred and ethical values founded on competent and informed consideration of the requirements of the site, the programme, and the occupants. Built environments are designed by humans to host a range of human activities. In response, this article aims to endorse a sustainable approach to design founded on the knowledge arising from scholarly and evidence-based research, exploring principles and criteria for the creation and operation of human habitats that can respond to energy and legislative demands, mitigate their environmental impacts, and adapt to new climate scenarios, while elevating the quality of experience and delight to those occupying them

Sounding Situated Knowledges - Echo in Archaeoacoustics

This article proposes that feminist epistemologies via Donna Haraway's “Situated Knowledges” can be productively brought to bear upon theories of sonic knowledge production, as “sounding situated knowledges.” Sounding situated knowledges re-reads debates around the “nature of sound” with a Harawayan notion of the “natureculture of sound.” This aims to disrupt a traditional subject-object relation which I argue has perpetuated a pervasive “sonic naturalism” in sound studies. The emerging field of archaeoacoustics (acoustic archaeology), which examines the role of sound in human behaviour in archaeology, is theorized as an opening with potentially profound consequences for sonic knowledge production which are not currently being realized. The echo is conceived as a material-semiotic articulation, which akin to Haraway's infamous cyborg, serves as a feminist figuration which enables this renegotiation. Archaeoacoustics research, read following Haraway both reflectively and diffractively, is understood as a critical juncture for sound studies which exposes the necessity of both embodiedness and situatedness for sonic knowledge production. Given the potential opened up by archaeoacoustics through the figure of echo, a critical renegotiation of the subject-object relation in sound studies is suggested as central in further developing theories of sonic knowledge production

Into the divide: community identities and the visualisation of place

This article discusses the experience of place in a profoundly divided urban area of Sheffield. At a time when the gap between affluence and poverty has reached its widest point since the 1960s, this paper explores the relationship between individuals and their sense of place and of the trenchant divisions separating communities. The study employs various methods but centres upon the use of hand drawn maps; creating a dialogue between the interviewers and a number of local residents. These maps and the accompanying commentaries demonstrate the diverse individual sense of a particular place and a dialectical sense of space. The resulting picture is one of both the persistence of historical divisions, suggesting regulation and control through planning and policing, but also of complex entanglements of social identities, habitus and place which defy easy categorisiation

Listening geographies: Landscape, affect and geotechnologies

This paper argues for expanded listening in geography. Expanded listening addresses how bodies of all kinds, human and more-than-human, respond to sound. We show how listening can contribute to research on a wide range of topics, beyond enquiry where sound itself is the primary substantive interest. This is demonstrated through close discussion of what an amplified sonic sensibility can bring to three areas of contemporary geographical interest: geographies of landscape, of affect, and of geotechnologies

Enhanced water and salt intake in transgenic mice with brain-restricted overexpression of angiotensin (AT1) receptors

To address the relative contribution of central and peripheral angiotensin II (ANG II) type 1A receptors (AT1A) to blood pressure and volume homeostasis, we generated a transgenic mouse model [neuron-specific enolase (NSE)-AT1A] with brain-restricted overexpression of AT1A receptors. These mice are normotensive at baseline but have dramatically enhanced pressor and bradycardic responses to intracerebroventricular ANG II or activation of endogenous ANG II production. Here our goal was to examine the water and sodium intake in this model under basal conditions and in response to increased ANG II levels. Baseline water and NaCl (0.3 M) intakes were significantly elevated in NSE-AT1A compared with nontransgenic littermates, and bolus intracerebroventricular injections of ANG II (200 ng in 200 nl) caused further enhanced water intake in NSE-AT1A. Activation of endogenous ANG II production by sodium depletion (10 days low-sodium diet followed by furosemide, 1 mg sc) enhanced NaCl intake in NSE-AT1A mice compared with wild types. Fos immunohistochemistry, used to assess neuronal activation, demonstrated sodium depletion-enhanced activity in the anteroventral third ventricle region of the brain in NSE-AT1A mice compared with control animals. The results show that brain-selective overexpression of AT1A receptors results in enhanced salt appetite and altered water intake. This model provides a new tool for studying the mechanisms of brain AT1A-dependent water and salt consumption

“Far Back in American Time”: Culture, Region, Nation, Appalachia, and the Geography of Voice

This paper develops a geography of voice in order to address the ways in which cultures, regions and nations are imagined, figured and defined. It adopts Connor’s (2000) notion of ‘vocalic space’ as a starting point from which to explore folk song collecting practices in Appalachia. It develops this in relation to Bauman and Briggs (2003) post-colonial critique of the status of language and speech in ethnographic theory. Historically the Appalachian region has received substantial ethnographic cultural study. Working with insights supplied by the collecting activities and subsequent writings of two key collectors – Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) and Alan Lomax (1915-2002)– this paper offers a socio-material conception of voice key to its affective politics, whilst examining historical theorisations. These are firstly, derived from folklore and ethnography, later anthropology and sociology and secondly, articulated with regard to geographies of region and nation. These are then considered in relation to geographer James Duncan’s (1980, 1998) critique of the ‘superorganic’ as an explanation of regional cultural distinctiveness. It concludes by arguing that a geography of voice can contribute to critical approaches to regionalism. An understanding of how vocalic spaces are figured and assembled is key to explaining how culture can be translated through levels of abstraction in ways which can marginalise and disenfranchise the very peoples given voice in regional studies of culture