How do psychological therapy practitioners, in their therapeutic approach, understand and work towards the empowerment of women who have been victims of violence?

Violence against women and women’s oppression are reciprocally related – just as oppressive patriarchal contexts are conducive to violence, violence is also a tool for subjugating women. Women’s empowerment is therefore often cited as a goal for psychological therapies provided to women who have been subjected to violence. However, literature surrounding empowerment within therapy holds various contradictions, gaps and problematic implications for women. Little is known about how UK practitioners navigate these issues. This research explored how practitioners conceptualise and approach empowerment within their therapeutic work with women subjected to violence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 psychological therapy practitioners representing a range of modalities, experienced in working with women subjected to violence. A reflexive thematic analysis, through a critical realist and feminist lens, was used to analyse participants’ reports. Three overarching themes were constructed: understanding empowerment, ‘what I do with clients’, and ‘a hand tied behind our back’: practitioners face barriers to empowering therapeutic practice. Participants predominantly aligned with an individualistic approach to empowerment centred around connection, coping, and reparation; and highlighted systemic barriers to ideal practice. Implications, limitations and suggested further research are discussed

The relationship between motivations of architectural designers and environmentally sustainable construction design

Research on sustainability in construction design has tended to focus on technological, institutional and economic drivers but there has been little change in the industry. Social scientific approaches offer insights on the lack of progress. However, few previous studies have investigated psychological factors despite the pivotal role of the individual professional decision-maker. The aim was to understand what personal motivations drive architectural designers to pursue sustainable design in their work and whether non-environmental motivations can drive sustainable outcomes. Twenty-eight architectural designers in fourteen small firms in the London area were interviewed. Thematic analysis was conducted, informed by the self-determination theory of motivation. Although extrinsic motivators were noted, autonomous motivations including a moral imperative and personal commitment predominated. Further, the participants demonstrated other self-determined motivations including realisation of self-identity, pursuit of quality in design and awareness of their work’s impact on people. These autonomous motivations align closely with sustainability principles including design for durability, high standards and technical expertise. The findings point to the risks of reliance on extrinisic motivators such as regulation, and the opportunities to engage architectural designers more extensively in sustainable design by linking sustainability to autonomous motivations

The role of environmental sustainability in marketing of small architectural design practices

Environmental sustainability in construction is a pressing concern. Despite their importance to the industry, and evident differences from large organizations in business strategy, markets and challenges, the literature has little to say about how small architectural design firms view the marketing potential of improved environmental sustainability. The aim is to address this gap by examining practitioner experience of sustainability and marketing in small architectural design practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 such practices. A critical interpretive stance was adopted in analysis, drawing on the theoretical framings of service-dominant logic (SDL) and relationship marketing. Sustainable design is part of the co-creation of value in architecture, enhancing the value proposition beyond a cost basis. Its inclusion contributed to business development through referrals. Taken together, co-creation of value and asymmetry of knowledge between professional and client drive the conclusion that the architectural designer has primary responsibility in guiding clients towards greater environmental sustainability. This responsibility and the role of sustainability in business development were not necessarily recognized by the designers. Insights from SDL challenge assumptions that cost and lack of client demand prevent greater sustainability in design

Fast, Linear Time Hierarchical Clustering using the Baire Metric

The Baire metric induces an ultrametric on a dataset and is of linear computational complexity, contrasted with the standard quadratic time agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm. In this work we evaluate empirically this new approach to hierarchical clustering. We compare hierarchical clustering based on the Baire metric with (i) agglomerative hierarchical clustering, in terms of algorithm properties; (ii) generalized ultrametrics, in terms of definition; and (iii) fast clustering through k-means partititioning, in terms of quality of results. For the latter, we carry out an in depth astronomical study. We apply the Baire distance to spectrometric and photometric redshifts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using, in this work, about half a million astronomical objects. We want to know how well the (more costly to determine) spectrometric redshifts can predict the (more easily obtained) photometric redshifts, i.e. we seek to regress the spectrometric on the photometric redshifts, and we use clusterwise regression for this.Comment: 27 pages, 6 tables, 10 figure

Network Resources for Astronomers

The amount of data produced by large observational facilities and space missions has led to the archiving and on-line accessibility of much of this data, available to the entire astronomical community. This allows a much wider multi-frequency approach to astronomical research than previously possible. Here we provide an overview of these services, and give a basic description of their contents and possibilities for accessing them. Apart from services providing observational data, many of those providing general information, e.g. on addresses, bibliographies, software etc. are also described. The field is rapidly growing with improved network technology, and our attempt to keep the report as complete and up-to-date as possible will inevitably be outdated shortly. We will endeavor to maintain an updated version of this document on-line.Comment: 53 pages; uuencoded compressed PostScript; includes one table, no figures; Lyon-41 (Aug'94) and ESO-1033 (Sept'94), to appear in PASP, November 1994 issu

Astronomical Seeing from the Summits of the Antarctic Plateau

From the South Pole, microthermal turbulence within a narrow surface boundary layer some 200m thick provides the dominant contribution to the astronomical seeing. We present results for the seeing at a wavelength of 2.4um. The narrow turbulence layer above the site, confined close to the surface, provides greatly superior conditions for adaptive optics correction than do temperate latitude sites. An analysis of the available meteorological data for the Antarctic plateau suggests that sites on its summit, such as Domes A and C, probably experience significantly better boundary layer seeing than does the South Pole. In addition, the inversion layers may be significantly narrower, lending the sites even further to adaptive optics correction than does the Pole.Comment: 9 pages, including 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 200