Do we need personalization more than normalization

Sustainability is a current buzzword, used profusely in academia, business and public life, yet it seem to be merely the latest expression of the Human Exemptionalism Paradigm: a framing that reinforces the perceived separation between humans and nature. The 1987 UN sustainability definition of meeting 'the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' is an anthropocentric perspective that also serves to further separate us from present participation in environmental change. It is future generations who will be compromised, so, by extension, the present situation must have been caused by past generations (not us!). This us-versus-them, guilt/blame narrative also encourages all-too-familiar frames such as the War on Terra. To counteract this approach, a more ecopsychological framing – that where we are is part of who we are, with sustainability emerging from wellbeing – might personalize how we understand and address environmental change

Editorial: ecopsychology: past, present and future

Opening paragraph: One of the central tenets of ecopsychology is the articulation and examination of our psychological, including the emotional, relationships with the natural world. The fundamental challenge is to locate the human mind back within the natural world and to understand that this relationship is a reciprocal one (e.g., Boston, 1996; Schroll, 2007; Scull, 2009; Greenway, 2010). However, finding a 'core' language to represent ecopsychology as a unified discipline is problematic, and it might best be seen as a space for thought, language and practical actions that attempt to articulate the human-nature relationship which, thus far, other branches of the social and natural sciences have failed to do

Financing and Managing Public Services: An Assessment

Public services can be, and are, delivered according to a variety of different arrangements. The public sector can finance and provide a service itself, or contract with the private sector to participate in provision, or its role may be limited to regulating a private provider. In this paper we examine the features determining the effectiveness of public-service delivery, including incentives for employees and teams within organizations providing public services, the structure of the organization and the competitive framework that it faces, and the role of the private sector. We assess the reform programme in the UK, which has involved substantial reorganization of public services and increasing involvement of the private sector. Reforms focus on the improvement of incentives; but while incentives are critical, the special characteristics of public services (and the people who provide them) must be recognized in the implementation of new structures and incentive schemes.public services, public management

MAZI Deliverable Report D2.5: – Design, progress and evaluation of the Deptford CreekNet pilot (version 2)

In this deliverable, the second in a series of three, we report on progress in the Creeknet pilot. We describe progress towards tasks identified in the Description of Work (DoW) for Task 2.2, focusing on activities in Year 2 (2017: months 13-24) and look forward to Year 3. The Creeknet pilot consists of four phases. This year, our focus has been on consolidating initial contacts made in Year 1 (Phase 1), and continuing community engagement activities alongside carrying out an initial deployment of the MAZI toolkit with a number of engaged community groups and individuals (Phase 2). In the second half of the year, as the toolkit was developed and an integrated set of tool established these groups and others were invited to engage in further trials, and feedback was gathered to further inform onward development (Phase 3). We have continued with our efforts to build upon existing relationships in Deptford Creek and further afield to help us explore the different ways in which DIY networking in the broadest sense and the use of the MAZI toolkit in particular might help address local challenges. We have reassessed some of our foci through seeking out new opportunities for engagement and trialling the MAZI toolkit. A major activity was planning and running the two day MAZI London Cross-fertilisation symposium. This created the opportunity for Creeknet participants to share their experiences and engage with the other MAZI pilots, bringing together existing community contacts in Deptford Creek, and MAZI partners, and attracted new contributors. Through our activities, working with the emerging MAZI toolkit that evolved through several iterations during the year, we have better understood local circumstances and the complexity involved in the conceptualisation of ‘DIY networking’ - it cannot be assumed to be a single notion. We have identified that both social and technological concerns can restrict its uptake, and consider routes to overcoming these challenges. We provide analysis of work carried out so far, and look towards the future activities

Evidence for asymmetric inertial instability in the FIRE satellite dataset

One of the main goals of the First ISCCP Regional Experiment (FIRE) is obtaining the basic knowledge to better interpret satellite image of clouds on regional and smaller scales. An analysis of a mesoscale circulation phenomenon as observed in hourly FIRE satellite images is presented. Specifically, the phenomenon of interest appeared on satellite images as a group of propagating cloud wavelets located on the edge of a cirrus canopy on the anticylonic side of a strong, upper-level subtropical jet. These wavelets, which were observed between 1300 and 2200 GMT on 25 February 1987, are seen most distinctly in the GOES-West infrared satellite picture at 1800 GMT. The purpose is to document that these wavelets were a manifestation of asymmetric inertial instability. During their lifetime, the wavelets were located over the North American synoptic sounding network, so that the meteorological conditions surrounding their occurrence could be examined. A particular emphasis of the analysis is on the jet streak in which the wavelets were imbedded. The characteristics of the wavelets are examined using hourly satellite imagery. The hypothesis that inertial instability is the dynamical mechanism responsible for generating the observed cloud wavelets was examined. To further substantiate this contention, the observed characteristics of the wavelets are compared to, and found to be consistent with, a theoretical model of inertia instability by Stevens and Ciesielski

Comparing the degrees of incompatibility inherent in probabilistic physical theories

We introduce a new way of quantifying the degrees of incompatibility of two ob- servables in a probabilistic physical theory and, based on this, a global measure of the degree of incompatibility inherent in such theories, across all observable pairs. This opens up a novel and flexible way of comparing probabilistic theories with respect to the nonclassical feature of incompatibility, raising many interesting questions, some of which will be answered here. We show that quantum theory contains observables that are as incompatible as any probabilistic physical theory can have if arbitrary pairs of observables are considered. If one adopts a more refined measure of the degree of incompatibility, for instance, by restricting the comparison to binary observables, it turns out that there are probabilistic theories whose inherent degree of incompatibility is greater than that of quantum mechanics.Comment: Minor corrections in version 2, several new results added in version 3. Version 4 contains more detail on some proofs and terminological improvement

Blocking of word-boundary consonant lengthening in Sienese Italian

This paper examines an aspect of Raddoppiamento sintattico (RS), the lengthening of word-initial consonants following certain words e.g. tre [mm]ele ‘three apples’ in Italian. Most phonological accounts claim the phenomenon is predictable and obligatory (e.g. Nespor & Vogel 1986). However, descriptive sources on Italian (e.g. Camilli 1941) have long claimed that RS interacts with and can be blocked by other phenomena operative in natural speech e.g. pausing. In this paper we outline the phonetic details of the RS blocking phenomena and present the results of an auditory and preliminary acoustic analysis of the interaction between RS and these other phenomena based on a corpus of spontaneous speech data

Sustainable wellbeing: linking the personal and the planetary

Whether in the popular media or in academic teaching, wellbeing and environmental sustainability are often presented as separate issues. At best, sustainable practices are acknowledged as having some beneficial side-effects on wellbeing (e.g., less air pollution means less respiratory ailments); At worst, the two are presented as mutually exclusive (i.e., sustainability necessarily means a lower standard of living). But an argument can be made for an opposite view: That if we focus on being well, we will find that environmental sustainability emerges from that state. Although there is ongoing debate in the area, there is general agreement (OECD, 2005) that there are three broad areas of key competencies needed for humans to progress towards environmental sustainability: (1) The ability to use a wide range of interactive media to acquire, organise and interpret data; (2) Engagement with heterogenous groups; (3) Be able to act autonomously, managing life in meaningful and responsible ways. Current strategies tend towards the creation of favourable learning environments that help develop or acquire such competencies, yet at the same time, psychologists (Deci & Ryan, 2008) model wellbeing as that state which arises when individuals feel they have the qualities of competence, relatedness and autonomy. This suggests that intervention strategies aimed at improving wellbeing would also meet the goals of education for sustainability. References Deci, E.L. & Ryan, R.M., 2008. Hedonia, eudaimonia, and wellbeing – An introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9, 1-11. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2005). The definition and selection of key competencies - Executive summary. Accessed 18th Feb 2011 from http://www.deseco.admin.ch/bfs/deseco/en/index/02.htm

Healthy, happy, hippy: sustainability as an emergent property of wellbeing

Wellbeing and sustainability are often presented as separate issues. At best, sustainable practises might have some beneficial side-effects on wellbeing (e.g., less air pollution means less respiratory ailments); at worst, the two are presented as mutually exclusive (i.e., sustainability necessarily means a lower standard of living). But I think the argument can be made for an opposite view: that if we focus on being well, we will find that sustainability emerges from that state. While there is still debate over definitions of wellbeing, it can be generally seen as a state in which our basic, universal needs are met (objective wellbeing), where we experience a predominance of positive mood in our lives (subjective or hedonic wellbeing) and, perhaps most important of the three aspects, where we feel autonomously purposeful, part of something greater that offers meaning to our lives (eudaimonic wellbeing). Drawing on ecopsychological research and theory – including the author's own experimental studies linking personal and environmental health via perceptual pathways – this paper shows how a garden designed to promote these three aspects of wellbeing (a “restorative environment”) would also be a microcosm model for sustainable practise