Is green a grey area? Sustainability and inclusivity; the ageing population and recycling

There are growing pressures (political, legislative and environmental) to increase material recovery through recycling. There are two basic recycling schemes in the UK; kerbside and bring-site schemes. With current kerbside schemes, when a householder becomes unable, through age, illness or disability, to physically move their waste containers (bins,boxes or bags) onto the pavement for collection, the refuse collection service provider will enter the property premises, take the containers out to the refuse collection vehicle (RCV), empty them before returning them to the starting point. Obviously, with bring sites, people travel to the site and place the recycling in the banks themselves. With an ageing population, increasing numbers of older people are requiring specialist recycling services. These are likely to become more time consuming and costly as household numbers increase. Bring sites have obvious limitations for older people with their limited mobility and reduce strength. To date little or no previous research has been undertaken about barriers to recycling for older people and the implications to waste management providers of an ageing population. This paper describes initial work beginning to assess this problem within Lab4Living at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU).In this positioning paper, we examine literature regarding barriers to recycling and relationships with age. We outline a hypothetical scenario for the impact of the ageing population on future material recovery rates in the UK, present the initial results of a survey and we describe the potential role that design can play to eliminate these barriers and our activities within this area in our project; ‘The Grey Areas of Green Design’

Sue

Sue is a collection of poetry investigating the cyclical nature of grief through the lens of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s schemas of paranoid and reparative readings. The poems employ motifs such as hunting, disease, and human remains to capture the temporal disorientation experienced in the wake of loss. Via an extensive use of metaphor and recurring poem titles, Sue exploits the multivalence of language to conjure a dense field of meaning, meant to capture the undecidability of language noted by philosopher Jacques Derrida. This collection also employs several vectors of derivation, including erasure of text lifted from the 2002 strategy video game Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade and a sequence of responses to Suzanne Vega’s 1990 album Days of Open Hand in the ekphrastic spirit. Thus, Sue is intended to contribute to and deepen the meaning of these other pieces of art while also forwarding its own unique perspectives on grief, language, and formal play

The Microscopic Structure of Adsorbed Water on Hydrophobic Surfaces under Ambient Conditions

The interaction of water vapor with hydrophobic surfaces is poorly understood. We utilize graphene templating to preserve and visualize the microscopic structures of adsorbed water on hydrophobic surfaces. Three well-defined surfaces [H–Si(111), graphite, and functionalized mica] were investigated, and water was found to adsorb as nanodroplets (~10–100 nm in size) on all three surfaces under ambient conditions. The adsorbed nanodroplets were closely associated with atomic-scale surface defects and step-edges and wetted all the hydrophobic substrates with contact angles < ~10°, resulting in total water adsorption that was similar to what is found for hydrophilic surfaces. These results point to the significant differences between surface processes at the atomic/nanometer scales and in the macroscopic world

Assisted Services - Physical support or psychological blow?

Work by Yoxall (2010) and Light (2010) showed that the relationship between artefacts and their use is complex; often beyond mere functional and physical use to a wider psychosocial context. Lack of understanding of this psychosocial aspect of product or service use immediately compromises the product or services design and future success. Further, in attempting to alleviate one issue through improved design we may create others. There is then an inherent complexity in the provision of design solutions that could be specific for each design. That the design process is complex and is involved in attempting to provide answers to 'wicked' problems (Rittel and Weber, 1973) is well understood. However, little work has been undertaken investigating the relationship between design solutions (either artefacts or services) and their effect on wellbeing. To that end the authors have undertaken a number of case studies outlining the complexity of design solutions, the unintended consequences and the effects on wellbeing of the individuals studied. Further the authors attempt to develop enhanced design processes to understand the complexity of the design solutions proposed and improve their effectiveness. The development of this understanding has required an interdisciplinary approach and has been a significant factor in arriving at the recognition of the importance of these psychosocial attachments. Hence this work examines these case studies in detail and examines the benefits and issues of interdisciplinary research activity

Exploring the Electrical Properties of Twisted Bilayer Graphene

Two-dimensional materials exhibit properties unlike anything else seen in conventional substances. Electrons in these materials are confined to move only in the plane. In order to explore the effects of these materials, we have built apparatus and refined procedures with which to create two-dimensional structures. Two-dimensional devices have been made using exfoliated graphene and placed on gold contacts. Their topography has been observed using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) confirming samples with monolayer, bilayer, and twisted bilayer structure. Relative work functions of each have been measured using Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM) showing that twisted bilayer graphene has a surface potential 20mV higher than that of monolayer graphene and 35 mV below bilayer graphene

Method of remotely characterizing thermal properties of a sample

A sample in a wind tunnel is radiated from a thermal energy source outside of the wind tunnel. A thermal imager system, also located outside of the wind tunnel, reads surface radiations from the sample as a function of time. The produced thermal images are characteristic of the heat transferred from the sample to the flow across the sample. In turn, the measured rates of heat loss of the sample are characteristic of the flow and the sample

Supporting Special-Purpose Health Care Models via Web Interfaces

The potential of the Web, via both the Internet and intranets, to facilitate development of clinical information systems has been evident for some time. Most Web-based clinical workstations interfaces, however, provide merely a loose collection of access channels. There are numerous examples of systems for access to either patient data or clinical guidelines, but only isolated cases where clinical decision support is presented integrally with the process of patient care, in particular, in the form of active alerts and reminders based on patient data. Moreover, pressures in the health industry are increasing the need for doctors to practice in accordance with ¿best practice¿ guidelines and often to operate under novel health-care arrangements. We present the Care Plan On-Line (CPOL) system, which provides intranet-based support for the SA HealthPlus Coordinated Care model for chronic disease management. We describe the interface design rationale of CPOL and its implementation framework, which is flexible and broadly applicable to support new health care models over intranets or the Internet

Toward the Understanding of Organizational Flexibility

Contingency planning is widely touted as a method of preparing for and confronting disruptions to organizational activity; its attributes are proposed to promote organizational flexibility. This study examines the relationship between information sharing, internal and external collaboration, and information technology use and organizational flexibility and develops a model that will provide both academicians and practitioners with a means of determining the attributes with the highest relationship to organizational flexibility. This knowledge will allow for prioritization of resources in the planning process. A survey of 50 professionals from various sectors of the government is used to test the hypotheses developed