An investigation into the use of an atomised, hermeneutic, holistic approach in education relating to the architectural design process

Within architectural education, students arrive fore-armed with; their life-experience; knowledge gained from subject-based learning; their brains and more specifically their imaginations. The learning-by-doing that they embark on in studio-based/project-based learning calls for supervision that allows the student to proactively undertake research and experimentation with design solution possibilities. The degree to which this supervision includes direction is subject to debate and differing opinion. It can be argued that if the student is to learn-by-doing, then design decision making within the design process needs to be instigated and owned by the student so that they have the ability to personally reflect on and evaluate those decisions. Within this premise lies the problem that the student's endeavours can become unstructured and unfocused as they work their way into a new and complex activity. A resultant weakness can be that the design activity is compartmented and not holistic or comprehensive, and therefore, the student's reflections are consequently impoverished in terms of providing a positive, informative feedback loop. The construct proffered in this paper is that a supportive 'armature' or 'Heuristic-Framework' can be developed that facilitates a holistic approach and reflective learning. The normal explorations of architectural design comprise: Analysing the site and context, reviewing building precedents, assimilating the briefing information. However, the student can still be compromised by 'not knowing what they need to know'. The long-serving triad 'Firmness, Commodity and Delight' provides a broad-brush framework of considerations to explore and integrate into good design. If this were further atomised in subdivision formed from the disparate aspects of architectural design that need to be considered within the design process, then the student could sieve through the facts more methodically and reflectively in terms of considering their interrelationship conflict and alliances. The words facts and sieve hold the acronym of the aspects that form the Heuristic-Framework: Function, Aesthetics, Context, Tectonics, Spatial, Servicing, Infrastructure, Environmental, Value and Ecological issues. The Heuristic could be used as a Hermeneutic Model with each aspect of design being focused on and considered in abstraction and then considered in its relation to other aspect and the design proposal as a whole. Importantly, the heuristic could be used as a method for gathering information and enhancing the design brief. The more poetic, mysterious, intuitive, unconscious processes should still be able to occur for the student. The Heuristic-Framework should not be seen as comprehensive prescriptive formulaic or inhibiting to the wide exploration of possibilities and solutions within the architectural design process

NMH studies of porous silicate gels and related materials: both in the solid and solution-state

The purpose of this thesis is to describe research, using both solid and solution-state NMR techniques, to investigate the properties of a wide variety of silicon-containing materials. One solid-state (^29)Si NMR technique ((^29)Si-(^1)H cross-polarisation), and the experimental aspects important when using it, has been discussed in detail, and later used together with single pulse (^29)Si NMR techniques, to obtain information concerning geometry and local site symmetry of silicon sites in organo silicon compounds and silicate minerals. These techniques, together with a range of h CRAMPS experiments have also proved to be powerful tools for investigating the structure and properties of porous silicate gels (i.e. xero gels). (^29)Si and (^23)Na NMR measurements have been used to acquire evidence for the relaxation mechanisms of silicate species present in aqueous alkaline silicate solutions, and a technique for investigating the properties of sodium ions in colloidal silica solutions is tentatively proposed. Conclusions are drawn from the results obtained, demonstrating that where structural information can be obtained from these systems using other techniques (e.g. X-ray diffraction) NMR proves to be a valuable adjunct. However, in situations where this information is unknown or difficult to obtain using other techniques, NMR may yield new insights into the structural properties of the materials

Coarse embeddability of Wasserstein space and the space of persistence diagrams

We prove an equivalence between open questions about the embeddability of the space of persistence diagrams and the space of probability distributions (i.e.~Wasserstein space). It is known that for many natural metrics, no coarse embedding of either of these two spaces into Hilbert space exists. Some cases remain open, however. In particular, whether coarse embeddings exist with respect to the $p$-Wasserstein distance for $1\leq p\leq 2$ remains an open question for the space of persistence diagrams and for Wasserstein space on the plane. In this paper, we show that embeddability for persistence diagrams implies embeddability for Wasserstein space on $\mathbb{R}^2$, with the converse holding when $p > 1$. To prove this, we show that finite subsets of Wasserstein space uniformly coarsely embed into the space of persistence diagrams, and vice versa (when $p>1$).Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

An obstruction to property A

We discuss large scale geometric properties of Cayley graphs of the integers using different infinite generating sets. We define the notion of k-prisms for graphs and study the large scale geometry of graphs with this property. It turns out that graphs with k-prisms for all k cannot have property A and thus are infinite dimensional in a strong sense. We give an example of an infinite family of graphs that have k-prisms for all k and we also give an example of a space the has property A and "almost has" k-prisms

Atomic Resonance and Scattering

Contains reports on eleven research projects.U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research (Grant AFOSR-81-0067

Resolvin E1 (RvE1) attenuates LPS induced inflammation and subsequent atrophy in C2C12 myotubes

Resolution of inflammation is now known to be an active process which in part is instigated and controlled by specialised pro-resolving lipid mediators (SPM’s) derived from dietary omega-3 fatty acids. Resolvin E1 (RvE1) is one of these SPM’s derived from the omega-3 fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid. Using both molecular and phenotypic functional measures we report that in a model of Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced inflammation, RvE1 attenuated mRNA gene expression levels of both interlukin-6 and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 whilst having no effect on tumour necrosis factor-α or Interlukin-1β in C2C12 skeletal muscle myotubes. Findings at the molecular level were transferred into similar changes in extracellular protein levels of the corresponding genes with the greatest attenuation being noted in IL-6 protein concentrations. RvE1 instigated beneficial morphological changes through the prevention of endotoxin induced skeletal muscle atrophy, thus resulting in a rescue of endotoxin force losses in tissue engineered skeletal muscle. These findings demonstrate, in our model of endotoxin induced inflammation in skeletal muscle, that RvE1 has pro-resolving properties in this cell type. Our data provides rationale for further investigation into the mechanistic action of RvE1 in skeletal muscle, with the vision of having potential benefits for the prevention/resolution of in vivo skeletal muscle atrophy