Super Contemporary

Interview with the Design Museum for inclusion in the exhibition: http://www.dezeen.com/2009/12/09/super-contemporary-interviews-wendy-dagworthy/ The interview overall, focuses primarily on people and places that have been significant in shaping London’s fashion scene. In relation to my work and career, fashion in the 70s, how it has changed over the decades, and London’s role in educating the fashion designers for the future. “Super Contemporary” was a landmark exhibition that traces the city’s creative networks and maps the impace of London’s rich design history. The exhibition highlighted the creative draw that is unique to London wherein many designers from around the world choose the city to learn, work and establish a name within the industry. It explores what it is that has made design in London so special and asks some of the exciting talents what London means to them. It charts key moments and influential figures within the design world alongside commissioned work which will reveal designers’ unique relationship with the city. I created, for the Design Museum exhibition a wall chart map of my London, which was a collage of words and images that communicates my creative London from 1968 to the present day. The maps from 15 of Londons’ leading contributors are a main feature of the exhibition sitting alongside a series of commissioned work and against the backdrop of a timeline charting the last 50 years of creative activity in London. The 15 commissions from London’s future stars and its current elite, including fashion designer Paul Smith, designer Thomas Heatherwick and product designer Ron Arad, form the centre of the exhibition. Their brief was to give something back to the metropolis in which they have made their name, and their designs, to be revealed in the exhibition, reflect acute and varied observations on London life. Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum comments, “There is no London style, it’s the city in which designers can be themselves. It’s where art and fashion, architecture and design mix with combustible results. And this is a moment to look at what makes London special, and what lies in store” Super Contemporary is on tour at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, from 27th August until 27th November 201

Fixperts

FIXPERTS is a creative social campaign and design education programme that inspires people with imagination and skills to solve problems for others and share the results. It sets out to generate a positive social impact by challenging designers, known as Fixperts, to help people with worthwhile, everyday problems that they face (Fix Partners). The Fixperts’ creativity and knowledge of the design process allows them to apply ingenious, flexible and low-cost solutions to their Fix Partners’ challenges, with resultant immediate and positive impact on their everyday lives. For the designers it fine tunes their understanding of social impact as well as developing their sense of empathy, valuable qualities in future society. The whole process is captured in short films and shared on the Fixperts website to give others the insight and encouragement find their own innovative solutions. The 250 Fixperts films from around the world are a growing resource that also contributes to design education by offering opportunity and encouragement to people, particularly students, to apply the design process to fixing challenges. The films have been viewed over 400,000 times and featured in mainstream media from Berlin to Calcutta. Fixperts collaborates with schools, universities and colleges across the world and has developed a brief and project guidelines to support educators to run Fixperts as part of their course. Fixperts has ambitions to bring fixing into the curriculum in secondary schools and has recently been working with one of the UK examination boards to pilot Fixperts as part of a new STEM technical qualification

The cultural role(s) of makerspaces

Makerspaces and maker programmes are evolving and expanding the roles they are undertaking. This is a work-in-progress summary as of September 2016. The segmentation proposed is an early stage exploration. This excerpt is taken from a presentation event examining the models and tools these spaces are using toward cultural end

Social innovation in the curriculum : a model for community engagement and design intervention

Social impact implies the capacity to create positive social change for communities and individuals. It is essential that innovation addresses the needs of those less fortunate, and empowers individuals and communities for improved societal wellbeing. This necessitates a fresh approach to curriculum and pedagogy, and educators have responded by engaging with humanitarian aid agencies to expose students to real world problem scenarios. These social design educational initiatives, however well intentioned, are often remotely located and students lack access to users and communities in need. Without this interaction, cultural and contextual aspects can be misunderstood, and solutions may be misdirected. A local context facilitates engagement and allows co-design processes to occur. The social project discussed in this paper has proven to be an effective model for social design. Students engage with end users within their local community, using design skills to respond to specific needs. Recipients benefit from assistive solutions, whilst students develop empathy and understanding. This design intervention model has delivered successful outcomes, and a unique learning experience

Fixperts : models, learning and social contexts

Fixperts is a learner-centred, creative-problem-solving and project-based learning programme. In a Fixperts project, participants (Fixperts) team-up with an insight provider (Fix Partner) to identify a daily problem in the Fix Partner’s life that becomes the focus of a project aimed at delivering a solution or Fix. This paper introduces four pedagogic models developed via delivery of Fixperts projects at leading international design universities. It presents four approaches to the challenge of moving from the Person, to the Problem, to the Fix. These four models – Primary, Partnership, Community, Public - represent the evolution of the Fixperts framework to better enable the development of students as confident and empathetic socially-led designers. Fixperts builds competencies which are predicted to become essential to an ability to thrive in our increasingly uncertain future

Safety of liver resection and effect on quality of life in patients with benign hepatic disease: Single center experience

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although liver resection has long been established for selected patients with benign hepatic disease, the success of surgical treatment of these patients cannot be evaluated exclusively through postoperative morbidity and mortality. Therefore, the aim of the study was to prove the safety of liver resection in the treatment of benign liver tumors and to evaluate the effect of surgical treatment on the patients' qauality of life.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 146 patients who underwent liver resection because of benign liver tumors were included in this study. Postoperative outcome was assessed and patients evaluated their quality of life before surgery and at the present time using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core-30 (QLQ C-30).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The rate of serious (> grade 2) complications was 4.1% with no postoperative death. The quality of life assessment revealed an overall improvement of general health status after resection (0.7 vs. 0.56, p < 0.001) and additionally a significant reduction of 6 out of 9 symptoms. Furthermore, compelling benefits in the patients' social and emotional coping could be detected after surgery.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Liver resection for benign liver disease is a safe procedure and leads to a significant improvement of quality of life in selected patients.</p

Design and Deploying Tools to ‘Actively Engaging Nature’: The My Naturewatch Project as an Agent for Engagement

‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’ is highly apparent in the context of generational shifts in work and life patterns that reduce interaction with and knowledge of the natural world, and therefore expectations of it. This is exacerbated by changes in the natural world itself due to climate change, biodiversity decline and a range of anthropogenic factors. Distributed and accessible technologies, and grass roots approaches provide fresh opportunities for interactions, which enable active engagement in ecological scenarios. The My NatureWatch project uses digital devices to collect visual content about UK wildlife, promoting ‘active engagements with nature’. The project embodies Inclusive Design in the Digital Age, as the activity; engages a wide demographic community, can be used by all, provided user led agency and produced methodological design lessons. The article frames My Naturewatch as an agent for active designed engagements with nature. The research objective is to comprehend ‘how to design tools for positive nature engagement’ holding value for; (1) academic communities as validated methodologies (2) the public through access to enabling technologies, content and knowledge (3) industry in the form of new; experiences, engagements and commerce. The approach is specifically designed to yield insights from a multitude of engagements, through the deployment of accessible, lowcost products. Project reporting documents the benefits, pitfalls and opportunities in the aforementioned engagement uncovered through design-led approaches. Insights are gathered from public/community facing workshops, wildlife experts, ecologists, economists, educators and wildlife NGO’s. The engagement methodologies are compared highlighting which initiative yielded ‘Active Engagement with Nature’

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| &lt; 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

An embedding technique to determine ττ backgrounds in proton-proton collision data

An embedding technique is presented to estimate standard model tau tau backgrounds from data with minimal simulation input. In the data, the muons are removed from reconstructed mu mu events and replaced with simulated tau leptons with the same kinematic properties. In this way, a set of hybrid events is obtained that does not rely on simulation except for the decay of the tau leptons. The challenges in describing the underlying event or the production of associated jets in the simulation are avoided. The technique described in this paper was developed for CMS. Its validation and the inherent uncertainties are also discussed. The demonstration of the performance of the technique is based on a sample of proton-proton collisions collected by CMS in 2017 at root s = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41.5 fb(-1).Peer reviewe

Measurement of b jet shapes in proton-proton collisions at root s=5.02 TeV

We present the first study of charged-hadron production associated with jets originating from b quarks in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The data sample used in this study was collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 27.4 pb(-1). To characterize the jet substructure, the differential jet shapes, defined as the normalized transverse momentum distribution of charged hadrons as a function of angular distance from the jet axis, are measured for b jets. In addition to the jet shapes, the per-jet yields of charged particles associated with b jets are also quantified, again as a function of the angular distance with respect to the jet axis. Extracted jet shape and particle yield distributions for b jets are compared with results for inclusive jets, as well as with the predictions from the pythia and herwig++ event generators.Peer reviewe