Story telling ...

I believe it is possible to tell stories through architecture. Indeed, it is my practice to create buildings that tell stories. It is important to build and elaborate connections between past and present, to tease out memories and discover meanings. These define and strengthen a sense of community - in this instance the very community of which I am a part. My oeuvre springs from cultural - even anecdotal - reference points, more than from the work of my architectural forebears and compatriots. Other architects design through a creative interaction with their unconscious: they develop doodles and lines, and resolve them into ordered spatial environments. Instead, when I claim to design buildings that tell stories, I mean that I create a spatial identity that resonates with memories and unconscious associations. This entails the very deliberate ordering of spaces - external and internal - where cultural considerations and their associated meanings are developed from the outset, informing the whole design process. My materials are the traditional fabric of contemporary architecture. I use them to modify buildings and shape spaces to visual symbols, objects by association. My early work evolved in such a way that projects could be read as a illustrated story. I have more recently begun to engage in a more psychological 'place making' to conceive a building's form. The functional aspect of layout is always overlaid with visual imagery designed to evoke memories among the ordinary, mostly architecturally-illiterate people who use the buildings. I am continually challenged to create architectural forms that more effectively engage with the culture and traditions of people and place. But neither my architectural practice nor my designs can be termed 'traditional'. Here I seek to describe story-telling as an architectural form. Stories are my contextual framework for thinking. And story-telling is my way to connect buildings with people

Depletion through social reproduction and contingent coping in the lived experience of parents on Universal Credit in England

We report data from longitudinal qualitative interviews with thirteen people claiming Universal Credit (UC) immediately before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. The article utilizes concepts from feminist theory: “Social Reproduction” and “Depletion.” We make several novel contributions, including bringing depletion into conversation with the related concept of “contingent coping.” We argue that the lived experience of UC involves material and emotional depletion, but that UC also helps recipients to “cope” contingently with this depletion. In this sense, depletion through social reproduction is an ongoing and harmful state of being. We show how highly conditional and disciplinary welfare policies both partially mitigate but also accentuate structural pressures associated with an unequal, insecure, and competitive labor market

Population Differences in Death Rates in HIV-Positive Patients with Tuberculosis.

SETTING: Randomised controlled clinical trial of Mycobacterium vaccae vaccination as an adjunct to anti-tuberculosis treatment in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive patients with smear-positive tuberculosis (TB) in Lusaka, Zambia, and Karonga, Malawi. OBJECTIVE: To explain the difference in mortality between the two trial sites and to identify risk factors for death among HIV-positive patients with TB. DESIGN: Information on demographic, clinical, laboratory and radiographic characteristics was collected. Patients in Lusaka (667) and in Karonga (84) were followed up for an average of 1.56 years. Cox proportional hazard analyses were used to assess differences in survival between the two sites and to determine risk factors associated with mortality during and after anti-tuberculosis treatment. RESULTS: The case fatality rate was 14.7% in Lusaka and 21.4% in Karonga. The hazard ratio for death comparing Karonga to Lusaka was 1.47 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.9-2.4) during treatment and 1.76 (95%CI 1.0-3.0) after treatment. This difference could be almost entirely explained by age and more advanced HIV disease among patients in Karonga. CONCLUSION: It is important to understand the reasons for population differences in mortality among patients with TB and HIV and to maximise efforts to reduce mortality

A physics-based life prediction methodology for thermal barrier coating systems

A novel mechanistic approach is proposed for the prediction of the life of thermal barrier coating (TBC) systems. The life prediction methodology is based on a criterion linked directly to the dominant failure mechanism. It relies on a statistical treatment of the TBC's morphological characteristics, non-destructive stress measurements and on a continuum mechanics framework to quantify the stresses that promote the nucleation and growth of microcracks within the TBC. The last of these accounts for the effects of TBC constituents' elasto-visco-plastic properties, the stiffening of the ceramic due to sintering and the oxidation at the interface between the thermally insulating yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) layer and the metallic bond coat. The mechanistic approach is used to investigate the effects on TBC life of the properties and morphology of the top YSZ coating, metallic low-pressure plasma sprayed bond coat and the thermally grown oxide. Its calibration is based on TBC damage inferred from non-destructive fluorescence measurements using piezo-spectroscopy and on the numerically predicted local TBC stresses responsible for the initiation of such damage. The potential applicability of the methodology to other types of TBC coatings and thermal loading conditions is also discussed

Cell-Cell Death Communication by Signals Passing Through Non-Aqueous Environments: A Reply

The effects of the emission of low intensity light from cells and organelles, known as biophotons, or ultraweak photon emission, are not well understood and subject to debate. Potapovich & Kostyuk recently proposed that the induction of oxidative stress generates non-chemical death signals which can induce cell death in neighbouring, chemically isolated cells (termed detector cells). Given the significance of these results, here we attempt to replicate their findings. We found treatment of “inductor cells” with duroquinone dissolved in ethanol does indeed induce significant cell death in neighbouring “detector” cells relative to distant control cells (64.53% ± 14.42 vs 99.72% ± 6.09 cell viability), closely reproducing their original results. However, this was no longer true if the induction drug was dissolved in a less volatile solvent, suggesting that their original findings may have been a result of volatile solvent-based transmission as opposed to light-based non-chemical signalling