Introducing the Complexity of Educational Diversification

Peer reviewe

Social Practices in the Commons

The regeneration of the commons occurs through direct involvement of groups of people who interact closely with spaces and who aim to improve the overall quality of life and experiences connected with those spaces. This process starts from an increased consciousness towards places that do not belong to the private realm but are public or can potentially be used by the civic society. Revealing the commons means being aware of the potentialities of these “hidden places” to not only connect people with them, but for people to also create a sense of community and owner- ship among themselves that was previously unknown. By showing best practices developed by the Polimi DESIS Lab in the city of Milan and its surroundings, this paper reveals: how design relates to this process; the relationship between the time of involvement and the effectiveness of the result; the short- and long-term impacts of these interventions; and the legacy of the regeneration, including both failures and successes

Design and evaluation of large volume transparent plastic containers for water remediation by solar disinfection

Solar water disinfection (SODIS) is a household drinking water treatmentwith a number of well-known benefits such as simplicity, efficiency and low cost. It consists of solar exposure of water stored in transparent containers (1–2 L) to direct sunlight for at least 6 hours, producing water that is safe for drinking. During recent years, much effort has been directed by the scientific community to increase the batch volume of treated water delivered by SODIS with the main objective of reducing the risk of waterborne disease in communities in resource-poor settings. In this context, this chapter reviews the latest research on the evaluation of common and novel materials employed for the design of larger-volume transparent containers (420 L) to be used for SODIS. The container design and performance of the materials developed are described from different perspectives, including microbial inactivation (bacteria, viruses and protozoan parasites), mathematical modelling of the microbicidal capacity of the container material based on optical characteristics, their lifespan and stability under natural sunlight as well as field experiences for implementation

The Medical Marketplace

In the mid-1980s, a number of Anglophone historians began to describe health care in early modern England as a ‘medical marketplace’ or ‘medical market’. These terms were foregrounded by several scholars more or less simultaneously. The opening chapter of Lucinda Beier’s 1984 Ph.D. thesis (published in 1987) was entitled ‘The Medical Marketplace’.1 In 1985, Roy Porter wrote of the premodern ‘medical market place’ ‘where physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries … melted into each other along a spectrum that included thousands who dispensed medicine full- or parttime’,2 and Irvine Loudon observed that one of the most important unresolved areas of eighteenth-century medicine was ‘the extent of the market for medical care and how that market was satisfied’.3 The following year Harold Cook’s Decline of the Old Medical Regime began with a chapter entitled ‘The Medical Marketplace’.4 This terminology was not confined to scholars working on the United Kingdom. Katherine Park’s Doctors and Medicine in Early Modern Florence (1985) contained an identically entitled chapter.5

Design and evaluation of large volume transparent plastic containers for water remediation by solar disinfection

Solar water disinfection (SODIS) is a household drinking water treatment with a number of well-known benefits such as simplicity, efficiency, and low cost. It consists of solar exposure of water stored in transparent containers (1-2 L) to direct sunlight for at least 6 hours, producing water that is safe for drinking. During recent years, much effort has been directed by the scientific community to increase the batch volume of treated-water delivered by SODIS with the main objective of reducing the risk of waterborne disease in communities in resource-poor settings. In this context, this chapter reviews the latest research on the evaluation of common and novel materials employed for the design of larger volume transparent containers (> 20 L) to be used for SODIS. The container design and performance of the materials developed are described from different perspectives, including microbial inactivation (bacteria, viruses and protozoan parasites), mathematical modelling of the microbicidal capacity of the container material based on optical characteristics, their lifespan and stability under natural sunlight as well as field experiences for implementation.</p

Braving a faceless new world? Conceptualizing trust in the pharmaceutical industry and its products

Pharmaceutical products are commonly relied upon by professionals and correspondingly patients, within a wide range of healthcare contexts. This dependence, combined with the inherent risk and uncertainty surrounding both medical practice and the drugs it harnesses, points towards the importance of trust in the pharmaceutical industry - a subject which has been much neglected by researchers. This article begins to address this deficiency by mapping out a conceptual framework which may form a useful basis for future research into this important topic. The often negative portrayal of the pharmaceutical industry in the public sphere belies a state of apparent confidence in its products. The role of prescribing professionals as 'mediators of trust' amid a faceless system of production and alongside regulators as bases of assurance in the quality of drugs goes some way towards explaining this contradiction. Recent policy moves towards fostering increased patient 'expertise' and responsibility for illness management, a widening of over-the-counter medication availability and a growing market of products (mainstreamand illicit) via the internet suggest this role of 'facework' in facilitating trust may be becoming more marginal. This heightened requirement for trusting amid the unfamiliar, and an apparent willingness to do so, underlines the need for further research into trust in the industry - both mainstream and underground - and its products. Within this discussion an agenda for furthering our understandings of the political-economy of the pharmaceutical industry becomes apparent, one which might be most effectively approached by way of a broader political-economy of hope and trust