The effect of representation location on interaction in a tangible learning environment

Drawing on the 'representation' TUI framework [21], this paper reports a study that investigated the concept of 'representation location' and its effect on interaction and learning. A reacTIVision-based tangible interface was designed and developed to support children learning about the behaviour of light. Children aged eleven years worked with the environment in groups of three. Findings suggest that different representation locations lend themselves to different levels of abstraction and engender different forms and levels of activity, particularly with respect to speed of dynamics and differences in group awareness. Furthermore, the studies illustrated interaction effects according to different physical correspondence metaphors used, particularly with respect to combining familiar physical objects with digital--based table-top representation. The implications of these findings for learning are discussed

A universally applicable method of operon map prediction on minimally annotated genomes using conserved genomic context.

An important step in understanding the regulation of a prokaryotic genome is the generation of its transcription unit map. The current strongest operon predictor depends on the distributions of intergenic distances (IGD) separating adjacent genes within and between operons. Unfortunately, experimental data on these distance distributions are limited to Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. We suggest a new graph algorithmic approach based on comparative genomics to identify clusters of conserved genes independent of IGD and conservation of gene order. As a consequence, distance distributions of operon pairs for any arbitrary prokaryotic genome can be inferred. For E.coli, the algorithm predicts 854 conserved adjacent pairs with a precision of 85%. The IGD distribution for these pairs is virtually identical to the E.coli operon pair distribution. Statistical analysis of the predicted pair IGD distribution allows estimation of a genome-specific operon IGD cut-off, obviating the requirement for a training set in IGD-based operon prediction. We apply the method to a representative set of eight genomes, and show that these genome-specific IGD distributions differ considerably from each other and from the distribution in E.coli

Au pairing after the au pair scheme: New migration rules and childcare in private homes in the UK; Interviews with au pairs in UK

Qualitative interviews with 40 au pairs based in the UK. The interviews cover why they became au pairs; what their working routine is like; their relationships with their host families and their future plans. Interviews range in length from 20 minutes to c. 1.5 hours.This project investigates the lives of au pairs and host families in the UK. Au pairs are now depended upon by thousands of British households to provide childcare and help with housework and there is evidence that au pairs are now less distinguishable from other domestic workers. However, au pairs are not protected by employment law. They have no right to a minimum wage, nor defined maximum working hours nor a right to holidays. The project aims are: to investigate the effects of changes to recent UK immigration legislation on the supply of au pairs within the UK to examine the place of au pairing in the life and work trajectories of au pairs to evaluate the subjective experience of au pairs to examine understandings of au pairing within host families’ narratives of (good) parenting. The project uses four methods: an on-line survey and analysis of existing data to provide an overview of the nature and extent of au pairing in the UK; in-depth interviews with au pairs to explore their experiences; interviews with host families to uncover how au pairing to fits with their identity as parents and interviews with key informants to provide context.</p

Diversity and the white working class focus group data

Four focus groups of 15 individuals each were conducted in greater London and Birmingham in adjacent locales, one diverse, one more homogeneous. Locations were Croydon and Bromley in Greater London, and Lozells and Sutton Coldfield in Greater Birmingham. Participants were paid £30 apiece for their time and recruited by a Recruitment company. Respondents were asked about perceptions of immigration and residential choice. We explored the 'halo' effect among those in whiter areas living in proximity to diversity, and the 'contact' effect of whites living with minorities in diverse areas. The former is theorised to increase threat perceptions of diversity, the latter to mitigate them. Questions also explored ethnically motivated 'white flight' or whether social ties and amenities account for ethnic sorting. The link between immigration and issues of fairness, housing, services and employment was also broached. Locations and dates: 3rd April, East Croydon United Reform Church, 6-7.30pm (diverse area) 8th April, Hayes Village Hall, Bromley, 6-7.30pm (White area) 9th April, Trinity Centre, Sutton Coldfield. 6-7.30pm (White area) 10th April, Lozells Methodist Community Centre, Birmingham, 6-7.30pm (diverse area) This project advances the hypothesis that ethnic change in England and Wales is associated with white working-class ‘exit,’ ‘voice’, or ‘accommodation’. ‘Voice’ is manifested as a rise in ethnic nationalist voting and anti-immigration sentiment and ‘exit’ as outmigration from, or avoidance of, diverse locales. Once areas reach a threshold of minority population share, however, these initial responses may give way to ‘accommodation’ in the form of decreased ethno-nationalist voting, reduced anti-immigration sentiment and lower white outmigration. In the course of our investigation, we ask the policy-relevant question: do residential integration and minority acculturation calm or fuel white working-class exit and voice? In other words, does contact improve ethnic relations or do ‘good fences make good neighbours’? This research adds to existing scholarship by integrating individual data with a more complex array of contextual variables, blending quantitative methods with focus-group qualitative research. </p

Tracing the template - Investigating the representation of perceptual relevance: Experimental data

This data collection contains the behavioural and EEG data from the main experiments conducted in this research project. The main goals of this project were as follows: human visual perception is strongly affected by current expectations and intentions. What is perceived is determined by what is attended, and what is attended is determined by "images in the mind" that guide attention in line with active goals and preferences. This project uses new experimental procedures and new methodological techniques (including temporally precise measures of electrical brain activity) to investigate how many things we can attend to at any time, and to study the adverse consequences of having to simultaneously attend to multiple objects in perception, visual working memory, and action. Are there systematic differences between individuals in their ability to attend to more than one thing at a time? We will also develop new methods to obtain precise measures of the speed of voluntary visual attention shifts: If attention is engaged at a particular location, how fast can it be moved to a new potentially relevant object? Our results suggest that the top-down guidance of attention is faster and more flexible than usually assumed, and we will test whether and under which circumstances this is the case. Our results will have important consequences for current theoretical models of how attention operates. The question how "images in the mind" control conscious experience and voluntary action is central to theories of selective attention. Finding new answers to this question will have important general theoretical and conceptual implications for attention research. But our research is also important from an applied perspective. A defining feature of life in our technologically advanced society is the attentional competition between multiple sources of information, which result in permanent demands on attentional object selection and choice. New insights into how attentional templates guide what individuals perceive and how they choose to act therefore has obvious practical implications for areas as diverse as education, workplace design, and economic decision making. Adaptive perception requires the prioritization of relevant over irrelevant information. When we are looking for a specific book of which we only remember the color of its cover, we can limit our search to mainly that color. The mental representation of what we are looking for is called the attentional template (also target template, search template, attentional set; e.g., Folk et al., 1992). An attentional template is a flexible representation reflecting current selection preferences, as derived from continuously changing task demands and prior selection history. Even though attentional templates are essential for shaping and controlling perception and action in everyday life, surprisingly little is known about their nature. For example, when you look for your car keys, do you look for their shape, their color, or both? In case of the latter, are shape and color integrated in a single representation, or are they independently represented? Can you look for your wallet at the same time, without affecting your "key" template? Furthermore, it is often assumed that visual attention is guided by visual templates, but it is perfectly possible that non-visual types of representation (e.g., semantic codes) are also involved. Finally, the nature of the template may change fundamentally in the course of learning, as a result of selection history. The aim of this collaborative project is to answer some of these fundamental questions.</p

Survey on immigration attitudes, voting and 'white flight'

This is a late July 2013 YouGov political tracker survey combining data on attitudes to race and immigration with questions on mobility history as well as voting intention, media consumption and other background variables. Data is also geocoded to ward level and ward-level census variables appended. The quantitative research will be based on ONS longitudinal survey and census data, as well the large-scale Citizenship Surveys and Understanding Society surveys. We will identify individual respondents from the quantitative research and explore their responses through qualitative work, in the form of three focus groups - two in Greater London, one in Birmingham. These will probe connections between respondents' local and national identities, their intentions to move neighbourhood, and their opinions on immigration, interethnic relations, community cohesion and voting behaviour.In the past decade in Britain, the 'white working-class' has been the focus of unprecedented media and policy attention. While class is a longstanding discursive category, the prefix 'white' is an important rider. We live in an era of global migration. Population pressure from the global South, and demand for workers in the developed North, will power what some term a 'third demographic transition' involving significant declines in the white majority populations of the western world (Coleman 2010). In the UK, the upsurge in diversity arguably presents a greater challenge for the working-class part of the white British population than for the middle class. Why? First, because for lower-status members of dominant groups, their ethnic identity tends to be their most prestigious social identity (Yiftachel 1999). Second, minorities tend to be from disadvantaged backgrounds and are therefore more likely to compete for housing and jobs with the white working class. Finally, because the white working-class is less comfortable navigating the contours of the new global knowledge economy than the middle class, it is more attached to existential securities rooted in the local and national context (Skey 2011). How might the white working class respond to increasing diversity? Drawing upon Albert O. Hirschman's classic book Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970), we posit three possible responses: 'exit', 'voice' and 'accommodation.' The first possibility is white 'exit': geographic segregation, or, in the extreme, 'white flight'. A second avenue is 'voice': spearheading an identity politics based on opposition to immigration and voting for white nationalist parties. A third possibility is accommodation, in which members of the white working-class become more comfortable with elevated levels of ethnic diversity in their neighbourhood and nation. From exploratory research and existing literature, we suggest that a three-stage pattern of voice, exit and accommodation may be a useful way of thinking about white working-class responses to diversity in the UK. In other words, initial diversity meets strong white working-class resistance, expressed in attitudes and voting. This is followed by a degree of white out-migration, and then by a decline in anti-immigration sentiment and far right voting. Yet these broad patterns require finer-grained analysis that takes both individual characteristics and local context into account. This project will test these propositions through quantitative and qualitative research. There are three major dimensions of white working class attitudes and behaviour we seek to explain. Namely, whether members of the white working-class: 1) are more likely than other groups to leave or avoid areas with large or growing minority populations; 2) oppose immigration more strongly if they reside in diverse or ethnically changing wards and local authorities; and 3) support far right parties more if they reside in diverse or ethnically changing wards and local authorities. A central question we seek to answer is whether inter-ethnic contact reduces white working-class antagonism toward minorities (the contact hypothesis), or whether increased diversity leads to white flight, leaving relatively tolerant whites remaining in diverse neighbourhoods. The latter, 'hydraulic' process mimics the contact hypothesis but does not signify increased accommodation. </p

Creating Hackney as Home: Films, transcripts and metadata, 2013-2015

This collection contains key elements of data produced as part of the 'Creating Hackney as Home' project (2013-2015). This includes the films created as the central output of the project, transcripts of flipcam reflections and interviews made by the peer researchers, transcripts of team meetings and interviews with stakeholders, as well as transcripts of discussions following public screenings of the films. Creating Hackney as Home (CHasH) is a two year project collaborating with young people in the London Borough of Hackney. Using participatory video research methods, the project aims to understand their experience of space and space use in the formation of 'home' and belonging. Hackney is a part of London undergoing rapid transformation with demands from competing stakeholders leading to juxtaposing expectations of space use and the potential for everyday conflict. Young people, as substantial users of public space, are immersed in debates about social inclusion, crime and media representations, inflected with intergenerational opposition and a discourse of community breakdown. Yet youth voices are often marginalised. Therefore, ChasH takes a participatory approach, explicitly focusing on youth perspectives. It will further theoretical understanding of urban affective geographies, bringing together research on young people, urban transformation and cosmopolitanism. The community arts collaborations embedded in the project will provide skills development in film production, research and project management for the young people involved. The project will also enable an evaluation of the use of participatory video and online media and social networks in producing research data and enhancing youth participation. </p