The accessible museum: towards an understanding of international museum audio description practices

Introduction: Audio description (AD) in museums is crucial for making them accessible for people with visual impairments. Nevertheless, there are limited museum-specific AD guidelines currently available. This research examines current varied international practitioner perspectives on museum AD, focusing on imagery, meaning, emotion and degrees of objectivity, and the regional differences (Europe, US) in AD traditions, in order to better understand how museum AD can be used to enhance access. Methods: Forty-two museum describers from 12 countries responded to a questionnaire requiring fixed-choice and free-text responses about the purpose and construction of museum AD. Results: Inference tests showed that European describers agreed more strongly than US describers that AD should ‘explore meaning’ (U = 91.00, N1 = 24, N2 = 14, p = 0.03), and ‘create an emotional experience’ (U = 89.50, N1 = 24, N2 = 14, p = 0.03), rating the use of cognitive prompts as more important (U = 85.50, N1 = 21, N2 = 14, p = 0.04). Qualitative data enriched this understanding by exploring participant responses on the themes of mental imagery, objectivity and interpretation and cognitive prompts. This highlighted broader agreement between regions on mental imagery, but more acceptance of interpretation in AD from the European respondents. Discussion: US and European describers’ opinions differ regarding the purpose of AD: whether it is about conveying visual information or whether broader interpretations should be incorporated into descriptions for audiences with visual impairments. Implications for Practitioners: These findings indicate that further discussion is needed regarding the purpose of museum AD, and in particular the way in which objectivity is contextualised. They raise questions about AD providing visual information, and/or seeking to address a wider museum experience, including the stimulation of curiosity or emotion

‘I felt I was right there with them’: the impact of sound-enriched audio description on experiencing and remembering artworks, for blind and sighted museum audiences

This study explored the impact of sound-enriched audio descriptions (AD) on the experience and memorability of a digitally presented photography exhibition. Forty blind and partially blind (BPB) and forty sighted participants were presented with eight photographs from the Museum of London’s archive. Four photos were presented with a standard audio descriptive guide (ADG) and four with a sound-enriched audio descriptive guide (EDG). Experience and memorability were assessed directly after the presentation, and approximately 4 weeks later. Results demonstrated that sighted people remembered more photos than BPB people did with ADG. However, when photos were presented with EDG, the BPB and sighted groups remembered equal number of photos and equal numbers of details. EDG was also enjoyed and preferred by both BPB and sighted participants. Findings suggest that EDGs could be used within mainstream museum offerings as inclusive audio interpretation, thus enhancing access and enjoyment for many visitors and facilitating shared experiences

Remembering Cultural Experiences: lifespan distributions, richness and content of autobiographical memories of museum visits

Little is known about our autobiographical memories for cultural events. This represents an opportunity for cultural institutions such as museums, as examination of visitor memories is one way in which they can seek to understand the long-term impact they may have on their visitors. This research applied a coding model developed from autobiographical memory theory to analysis of participants’ memories for museum visits, considering the distribution of memories across the life span, types of memories and content. Differences between visitor groups (age, visit frequency) were also considered. Findings showed a strong recency effect in the life-span distribution, suggesting the importance of social sharing in memories of cultural experience. Analysis of content showed a hierarchy of information that was present in museum memories. Knowledge acquired during the event of the visit was important, as was contextualising information whereby visitors situated the memory within their autobiographical knowledge and chronology. Emotions and thoughts were also salient. Visitor differences had minimal impact on content, with the exception of some effects that were consistent with the literature on memory and ageing. This research develops understanding of autobiographical memories for cultural experiences and provides insight to museums, with practical implications in terms of understanding visitors’ experiences

On the Nature of Singularities in Plane Symmetric Scalar Field Cosmologies

The nature of the initial singularity in spatially compact plane symmetric scalar field cosmologies is investigated. It is shown that this singularity is crushing and velocity dominated and that the Kretschmann scalar diverges uniformly as it is approached. The last fact means in particular that a maximal globally hyperbolic spacetime in this class cannot be extended towards the past through a Cauchy horizon. A subclass of these spacetimes is identified for which the singularity is isotropic.Comment: 7 pages, MPA-AR-94-

Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) Architecture

This document describes a general architecture for flow admission and termination based on pre-congestion information in order to protect the quality of service of established, inelastic flows within a single Diffserv domain.\u

Observation of critical phenomena and self-similarity in the gravitational collapse of radiation fluid

We observe critical phenomena in spherical collapse of radiation fluid. A sequence of spacetimes $\cal{S}[\eta]$ is numerically computed, containing models ($\eta\ll 1$) that adiabatically disperse and models ($\eta\gg 1$) that form a black hole. Near the critical point ($\eta_c$), evolutions develop a self-similar region within which collapse is balanced by a strong, inward-moving rarefaction wave that holds $m(r)/r$ constant as a function of a self-similar coordinate $\xi$. The self-similar solution is known and we show near-critical evolutions asymptotically approaching it. A critical exponent $\beta \simeq 0.36$ is found for supercritical ($\eta>\eta_c$) models.Comment: 10 pages (LaTeX) (to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett.), TAR-039-UN

Independence for Whom? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Onboarding a Home Health Monitoring System for Older Adult Care

Home health monitoring systems (HHMS) are presented as a cost-effective solution that will assist with collaborative care of older adults. However, instead of care recipients feeling like collaborators, such systems often disempower them. In this paper, we examine the dissemination, onboarding, and initial use of an HHMS to see how the discourse used by developers and participants affects users' collaborative care efforts. We found that the textual information provided often contrasted with how our participants managed their care. Instead of providing participants with 'independence,' 'safety,' and 'peace of mind,' care recipients were placed in a more dependent, less proactive role, and care providers were pressured to take on more responsibilities. We position HHMS, as they are currently marketed and onboarded, as normalizing pseudo-institutionalization. As an alternative we advocate that the discourse and design of such systems should reflect and re-enforce the varied roles care recipients take in managing their care

Development of engineering methods for the rapid evolution of membrane filtration within bioprocesses.

With the advent of high-throughput screening technologies, key constraints associated with identifying potential drug candidates are being removed---the bottleneck in the timely delivery of new drugs will inevitably shift toward process development. Conventionally, the pilot plant studies required for process design only start when there is confidence that the drug candidate will make it to market. This means that this development period is very limited, and the flowsheet that enters the manufacturing phase is often sub-optimal. Collaborative work at UCL has been developing new strategies that aim to change this paradigm. The use of scale-down experiments in the drug discovery phase, in conjunction with modelling techniques, has been shown to be capable of providing more robust process definition early on in development. Such methodologies allow the study of more process options and hence rapid identification of optimal conditions, and thus mitigate the risks associated with equipment capital investment. Further advantages are that the experiments require less material, and can be done prior to. as well as in parallel to, pilot plant development. Scale-down can also be useful for the analysis of existing processes, e.g. for validation and troubleshooting, especially where material is valuable and/or scarce. This thesis describes the design and development of a scale-down device for membrane filtration, with a focus on tangential flow microfiltration for primary clarification. The device uses a rotating disk suspended above a static membrane surface to generate surface shear, in order to mimic the global, hydrodynamic conditions found in commercial crossflow modules. Results are presented showing how filtration performance of the scale-down device (3.5x10 m2 membrane area) correlates well with pilot scale data (0.1 m2) for a range of representative biological materials including yeast, bacterial and mammalian cell cultures. Methodologies for confident assessment of microfiltration performance are given, which are capable of dealing with different feedstocks, membrane types, and a range of operating strategies, using greatly reduced quantities of feed. The steps required to design and build the next generation of filtration scale-down device for rapid process development are also addressed, along with a discussion of the related business and regulatory issues that shape the industry

Generalized Misner-Sharp quasi-local mass in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity

We investigate properties of a quasi-local mass in a higher-dimensional spacetime having symmetries corresponding to the isomertries of an $(n-2)$-dimensional maximally symmetric space in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity in the presence of a cosmological constant. We assume that the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant is non-negative. The quasi-local mass was recently defined by one of the authors as a counterpart of the Misner-Sharp quasi-local mass in general relativity. The quasi-local mass is found to be a quasi-local conserved charge associated with a locally conserved current constructed from the generalized Kodama vector and exhibits the unified first law corresponding to the energy-balance law. In the asymptotically flat case, it converges to the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner mass at spacelike infinity, while it does to the Deser-Tekin and Padilla mass at infinity in the case of asymptotically AdS. Under the dominant energy condition, we show the monotonicity of the quasi-local mass for any $k$, while the positivity on an untrapped hypersurface with a regular center is shown for $k=1$ and for $k=0$ with an additional condition, where $k=\pm1,0$ is the constant sectional curvature of each spatial section of equipotential surfaces. Under a special relation between coupling constants, positivity of the quasi-local mass is shown for any $k$ without assumptions above. We also classify all the vacuum solutions by utilizing the generalized Kodama vector. Lastly, several conjectures on further generalization of the quasi-local mass in Lovelock gravity are proposed.Comment: 13 pages, no figures, 1 table; v4, new results added in the asymptotically AdS case, accepted for publication in Physical Review

There are no magnetically charged particle-like solutions of the Einstein Yang-Mills equations for Abelian models

We prove that there are no magnetically charged particle-like solutions for Abelian models in Einstein Yang-Mills, but for non-Abelian models the possibility remains open. An analysis of the Lie algebraic structure of the Yang-Mills fields is essential to our results. In one key step of our analysis we use invariant polynomials to determine which orbits of the gauge group contain the possible asymptotic Yang-Mills field configurations. Together with a new horizontal/vertical space decomposition of the Yang-Mills fields this enables us to overcome some obstacles and complete a dynamical system existence theorem for asymptotic solutions with nonzero total magnetic charge. We then prove that these solutions cannot be extended globally for Abelian models and begin an investigation of the details for non-Abelian models.Comment: 48 pages, 1 figur