People in public health. Expert hearings: a summary report

People in Public Health is a national study that is looking at how volunteers and lay workers are involved in improving health in their communities. The study’s main aim is to improve understanding of how to support lay people in their many and varied public health roles. In June 2008, three expert hearings were held so that the research team could listen to the views of people with specialist knowledge or practical experience of working in this way. Fifteen experts were invited from around the country to talk about how and why lay people get involved in public health, why the work they do is important and what the main barriers are. Our experts included lay people active in their communities, university researchers, people working in the health service (NHS), local government and the voluntary sector. While some talked about their experience of specific projects, others made more general points about services and support. All the expert hearings were held in public and there were opportunities for discussion

Materializing Memory, Mood, and Agency: The Emotional Geographies of the Modern Kitchen

Drawing upon narrative and visual ethnographic data collected from households in the UK, this essay explores the material and emotional geographies of the domestic kitchen. Acknowledging that emotions are dynamically related and co-constitutive of place, rather than presenting the kitchen as a simple backdrop against which domestic life is played out, the paper illustrates how decisions regarding the design and layout of the kitchen and the consumption of material artefacts are central to the negotiation and doing of relationships and accomplishment of domestic life. Based on fieldwork in northern England, the paper examines the affective potential of domestic space and its material culture, exploring how individuals are embodied in the fabric and layout of domestic space, and how memories may be materialized in their absence

Exploring Light Field camera applications through simulation

Light Field, or Plenoptic, imaging is an exciting new technique where a user can capture 3-D information about a scene in a single acquisition. By placing a microlens array (thousands of tiny lenses) in between a conventional camera's main lens and image sensor, we can split rays which would have met on a single pixel onto different pixels, storing the direction which the ray has come from. By knowing where rays have come from, we can use computational techniques to produce different images from the captured data. This means we can change viewpoint, aperture, and focus after an image has been taken. We can produce an image with everything in focus or a 3-D reconstruction, all from a single acquisition. This technology has many potential benefits in normal photography, and also biomedical imaging techniques such as microscopy. However it is difficult to design, implement, and optimise. Therefore, simulation software has been created so that plenoptic designs and applications can be explored without committing to build and calibrate a system. This will enable advances in biomedical imaging techniques and light field rendering methods to be explored without the need for a physical plenoptic system

English Summaries vol. 72 (2023)

English Summaries vol. 72 (2023

Effect of Deposition Conditions on Properties of Molybdenum Back Electrode for Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Solar Cell and Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Performance Analysis through Numerical Simulation

In the first part of this research, the effect of the deposition conditions on properties of molybdenum thin-film were investigated to achieve desired characteristics for its application as the back electrode of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cell. DC and RF magnetron sputtering modes were employed and two sputtering parameters namely, working pressure and sputtering power, were varied to determine the sputtering mode and the sputtering conditions best suited for Mo thin-films having required properties. Sputtered Mo samples were characterized to determine their structural and mechanical properties such as preferred growth orientation, crystallinity, grain size, dislocation density, adhesion, and micro strain, and electrical property such as sheet resistance. DC sputtering mode, lower working pressure and higher sputtering power yielded single layer Mo thin-films with better properties in general. The single layer Mo thin-films with desired characteristics were then utilized to fabricate bilayer and tri-layer Mo thin-films for further simultaneous improvement of properties such as lower sheet resistance and better adhesion of the films to the substrate along with other features. The all-DC sputtered bilayer and the DC sputtered single layer Mo thin-film which was deposited under lower working pressure exhibited the best of the characteristics required to employ the films as back contact of CIGS solar cell. The RF sputtered single layer Mo thin-film deposited under lower working pressure remained very close to above two in terms of desired characteristics. The best of the tri-layer Mo thin-films- all-DC and all-RF sputtered- displayed inferior properties compared to the best of the single layer and bilayer Mo thin-film samples. In the second part of this research, numerical simulation and analysis of CIGS solar cell were conducted to optimize its performance and compare among the cells using different materials for buffer and window layers. The one-dimensional solar cell simulation program SCAPS-1D (Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator) was used for simulation and analysis purposes. CdS and In2S3 for the buffer layer, and ZnO and SnO2 for the window layer were considered to generate different CIGS cell structures. The effects of variation of bandgap, concentration, and thickness of these materials along with p-type CIGS absorber layer were investigated. Besides the solar cell efficiency, the open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density, fill factor and quantum efficiency of the cell structures were observed from the simulation. The change in cell efficiency with variation in temperature was studied, too. A comparison among the different CIGS cell structures employing different buffer and window materials was performed. The performance of the modeled cell structures was put to comparison against some laboratory research cells, too. All simulated CIGS structures showed better performance compared to the laboratory cells. In2S3 appeared to increase efficiency and thus posed a great potential for non-toxic CIGS solar cells. Though the CIGS absorber layer required more thickness for desired output, the successful application of thinner SnO2 replacing the ZnO buffer layer can pave the way to less thick CIGS thin film solar cells

Convenience as care: Culinary antinomies in practice

This paper addresses the social and cultural significance of convenience food, often regarded as among the least healthy and most unsustainable of dietary options, subject to frequent moral disapprobation. The paper focuses, in particular, on the relationship between convenience and care, conventionally seen in oppositional terms as a culinary antinomy. Informed by a ‘theories of practice’ approach, the paper presents empirical evidence from ethnographically-informed research on everyday consumption practices in the UK to demonstrate how convenience foods can be used as an expression of care rather than as its antithesis. The paper uses Fisher and Tronto’s theorisation of caring about, taking care of, caregiving and care-receiving to draw out the dynamics of this morally contested social practice

Cooking up consumer anxieties about ‘provenance’ and ‘ethics. Why it sometimes matters where foods come from in domestic provisioning

Provenance is fundamentally about foods' point of origin. It is thus, unsurprising that studies of food provenance typically focus on circumstances of production and the routes foods follow to get to situations of exchange and, to a lesser extent, final consumption. However, this dominant framing leads to an asymmetry of attention between production and consumption. By neglecting the situatedness of food purchase and use, much of what makes provenance meaningful and productive for consumers is missed. This paper draws upon qualitative and ethnographic data to explore why and how it sometimes matters where food comes from. What emerges is an expanded and problematized practical understanding of provenance, where concerns for the point of origin is generally inseparable from, and subsumed within, a broader range of ethical concerns about where food comes from