Crafting sustainable repairs: practice-based approaches to extending the life of clothes

Mass-produced ‘fast fashion’ has changed our relationship with clothing – cheap and easy to acquire, we are unlikely to take time to undertake simple repairs or address issues of maintenance, often caused or exacerbated by poor construction and low quality materials (see for example Goworek et al., 2012; You Gov, 2012; Fletcher, 2008; Birtwistle & Moore, 2007). Through complete lifecycle assessment, extending the useful life of clothes has been identified as the most significant intervention in reducing the impact of the clothing industry (Wrap, 2012). However, academic research emerging from both the UK and Scandinavia has identified practical, social, socioeconomic, systemic and psychological barriers that prevent consumers from performing even the most basic of repairs, and as a result damaged or worn items are discarded or taken out of active use (see for example Armstrong et al., 2014; Middleton, 2014; Cooper et al., 2014; Fletcher, 2013; Goworek et al., 2012; Laitala & Boks, 2012). This paper explores the barriers to mending, different perspectives on the reasons behind them, suggested solutions and contemporary approaches to overcoming them. As textile designers and academics whose work is embedded in sustainable principles, we discuss the findings of our own practice-based approaches in relation to these, in order to consider the role fashion and textile designers can play in enabling solutions. Research has been gathered through participatory design workshops and public engagement events, informed by review of historical, existing and emerging repair practices, and personal craft-led design praxis. We have explored ways to address the barriers, add value to the acts of repair by re-framing them as social design-led sharing activities, and discuss the potential of participatory craft praxis as a tool to motivate greater public engagement in repair practice

Estimating Demand with Varied Levels of Aggregation.

The response of consumer demand to prices, income, and other characteristics is important for a range of policy issues. Naturally, the level of detail for which consumer behaviour can be estimated depends on the level of disaggregation of the available data. However, it is often the case that the available data is differently aggregated in different time periods, with the information available in later time periods usually being more detailed. The applied researcher is thus faced with choosing between detail, in which case the more highly aggregated data is ignored; or duration, in which case the data must be aggregated up to the "lowest common denominator". This paper develops a specification/estimation technique that exploits the entire information content of a variably-aggregated data set.Singular demand systems, Linear expenditure system, Almost ideal demand system, Missing data.

Recent findings on trade and inequality:

The 1990's dealt a blow to traditional Heckscher-Ohlin analysis of the relationship between trade and income inequality, as it became clear that rising inequality in low- income countries and other features of the data were inconsistent with that model. As a result, economists moved away from trade as a plausible explanation for rising income inequality. In recent years, however, a number of new mechanisms have been explored through which trade can affect (and usually increase) income inequality. These include within-industry effects due to heterogeneous firms; effects of offshoring of tasks; effects on incomplete contracting; and effects of labor-market frictions. A number of these mechanisms have received substantial empirical support.trade inequality,

Analysis of the Under-Ice Topography in the Arctic Basin as Recorded by the USS Nautilus during August 1958

The USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the first vessel to cross the Arctic Basin via the North Pole in early August 1958. During this expedition almost continuous acoustic under-ice thickness distribution profiles were recorded. This article presents an overall statistical analysis of the under-ice draft measurements obtained during this historic cruise. Geographic areas found to have distinct under-ice-characteristics and ice compositions are identified. Principal findings are: (1) Nautilus recorded an overall mean under-ice draft of 3.68 m across the Arctic Basin; (2) the under-ice topography becomes progressively more severe when proceeding from the Canadian to the Eurasian side of the Arctic Basin; (3) the Canada Basin was observed to contain the most moderate under-ice topography and the greatest number of open water and referent polynyas and leads along the transpolar route taken by Nautilus; (4) Nautilus encountered the most severe under-ice topography of the voyage over the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge; and (5) an overall Arctic Basin mean of 2.6% open water/new ice (<30 cm) was encountered during her voyage beneath the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean.Key words: sea ice, under-ice thickness distribution, sonar, Canada Basin, Central Arctic, Eurasian Basin, arctic submarineMots clés: glace de mer, distribution de l’épaisseur de la glace mesurée par dessous, sonar, bassin canadien, centre de l’Arctique, bassin eurasien, sous-marin arctiqu

MARGINAL EFFECTS OF LAND CHARACTERISTICS AND PURCHASE FACTORS ON RURAL LAND VALUES

Hedonic models estimate the marginal effect of land characteristics and factors that contribute to a purchase decision on rural land values in submarkets of north Louisiana. While size of tract and mix of land use have expected impacts on rural land values, forces that motivate the buyer also affect price.Land Economics/Use,

Two-photon optics of Bessel-Gaussian modes

In this paper we consider geometrical two-photon optics of Bessel-Gaussian modes generated in spontaneous parametric down-conversion of a Gaussian pump beam. We provide a general theoretical expression for the orbital angular momentum (OAM) spectrum and Schmidt number in this basis and show how this may be varied by control over the radial degree of freedom, a continuous parameter in Bessel-Gaussian modes. As a test we first implement a back-projection technique to classically predict, by experiment, the quantum correlations for Bessel-Gaussian modes produced by three holographic masks, a blazed axicon, binary axicon and a binary Bessel function. We then proceed to test the theory on the down-converted photons using the binary Bessel mask. We experimentally quantify the number of usable OAM modes and confirm the theoretical prediction of a flattening in the OAM spectrum and a concomitant increase in the OAM bandwidth. The results have implications for the control of dimensionality in quantum states.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Legal Education at Calgary: Blending Progress and Tradition

The gestation period of the Faculty of Law, University of Calgary was a long one. After a short lived attempt to operate the Calgary College of Law in 1912-14, the southern Alberta city had to await the founding of the University of Calgary in 1966 before the setting up of a law school would emerge again as a serious possibility.\u27 In 1969, after positive recommendations from both the Law Society of Alberta and the Calgary Bar Association that a law school be established at the new university, the latter under the leadership of President Fred Carruthers formed a sub-committee of its Academic Policy Committee to consider the feasibility of setting up a second faculty of law in the province. The sub-committee was chaired by Professor Eugene Dais, then of the Department of Political Science