26 research outputs found
At the Crossroads of Sustainability: The Natural Recompositioning of Architecture
It is widely acknowledged that the mantra of sustainability has triggered a fundamental reversal in the core of design practice: If the original purpose of architecture was to protect humans from the destructive actions of nature,today it should protect nature from the damaging actions of humans. But sustainable design is far from being a coherent body of fully totalized ideas:it has a broad spectrum of disputing interpretations that oscillate between the
deterministic models of energy control and technological efficiencies, and the moralistic and romantic approaches that attempt to see in nature and natural processes a fundamental way to de-escalate the global urban footprint and its associated patterns of consumption.
However, mainstream green design has been evolving by progressively absorbing the narrative of deep ecology. Nature has been being integrated into architecture literally, by inserting vegetation onto buildings; digitally, by bringing environmental data into the design process (climate records, wind streams, sun rotation and air flows are computed, modelled and effectually shape architectures), and transcendentally, by claiming that sustainable architecture nurtures âthe existing and evolving connections between spiritual and
material consciousness.â The acknowledgement of the inexorable affiliation between architecture and the environment is, of course, not exactly new. What
is distinctive today is the reification of the role of nature in architecture as an ideological stance, now totally intertwined with state-of-art data processing
and the market-driven tools brought by Natural Capitalism.
This paper will examine emblematic âgreenâ buildings produced by leading architects such as Pelli Clarke Pelli, William McDonough, Stefano Boeri,
Norman Foster and BIG in the light of Tim Mortonâs, Slavoj Zizek and Bruno Latourâs critique of nature. It will illustrate how, despite being able to successfully
forge new creative freedoms by exploring hybridizations between the domains of design and science, sustainabilityâs self-righteous ânaturalisticâ narrative is enabling a vision of the architect as an âexpert managerâ
focused on producing projects of ecologic âbeautificationâ while assumed to be âsaving the world,â effectively depoliticizing the architectural practice.
Nevertheless, these examples attest that there is a vast and fertile field of ideas to be explored and in this regard it is important to underline that we are still
in the embryonic outset of the engagement of architecture with sustainability
Interpreting whole genome sequencing for investigating tuberculosis transmission: a systematic review
BACKGROUND: Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is becoming an important part of epidemiological investigations of infectious diseases due to greater resolution and cost reductions compared to traditional typing approaches. Many public health and clinical teams will increasingly use WGS to investigate clusters of potential pathogen transmission, making it crucial to understand the benefits and assumptions of the analytical methods for investigating the data. We aimed to understand how different approaches affect inferences of transmission dynamics and outline limitations of the methods. METHODS: We comprehensively searched electronic databases for studies that presented methods used to interpret WGS data for investigating tuberculosis (TB) transmission. Two authors independently selected studies for inclusion and extracted data. Due to considerable methodological heterogeneity between studies, we present summary data with accompanying narrative synthesis rather than pooled analyses. RESULTS: Twenty-five studies met our inclusion criteria. Despite the range of interpretation tools, the usefulness of WGS data in understanding TB transmission often depends on the amount of genetic diversity in the setting. Where diversity is small, distinguishing re-infections from relapses may be impossible; interpretation may be aided by the use of epidemiological data, examining minor variants and deep sequencing. Conversely, when within-host diversity is large, due to genetic hitchhiking or co-infection of two dissimilar strains, it is critical to understand how it arose. Greater understanding of microevolution and mixed infection will enhance interpretation of WGS data. CONCLUSIONS: As sequencing studies have sampled more intensely and integrated multiple sources of information, the understanding of TB transmission and diversity has grown, but there is still much to be learnt about the origins of diversity that will affect inferences from these data. Public health teams and researchers should combine epidemiological, clinical and WGS data to strengthen investigations of transmission
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their impact on academic library services: exploring the issues and challenges
2012 was a year of rapid change for education with the advent of MOOCsâMassive Open Online Coursesâavailable for the world to use to learn for free. But what does this mean for the role of the librarian? How has the landscape in education changed, and what are the issues and challenges that librarians now face? This article reviews the position of libraries in the emergence of MOOCs and the role that a librarian could undertake within the research, production, and presentation of MOOCs