Gate 81: Saving Preston Bus Station

Abstract: The discovery and recognition of the embodied meaning of a place can be interpreted through the existing building. The installation artist, the designer and the architect regard the building not as a blank canvas but as multi-layered structure, which they have the opportunity to activate. They have the opportunity to reflect upon the contingency, usefulness and emotional resonance of a particular place and use this knowledge to heighten the viewer’s perception of it. The relationship between the building and its wider location has often been seen as somewhat ambiguous and yet it is possible to describe some spaces as encapsulating, in miniature, the characteristic qualities or features of a much wider situation. The interior has an obvious and direct relationship with the building that it occupies, the people who use it, and also it can have a connection with the area in which it is located. Preston Bus Station is a marvellously brutal building. In 2012, the Preston City Council proposed its demolition and replacement with a surface car park; they refused to consider proposals for building re-use. This provocative act galvanised the various groups that were campaigning to save the building and proved to be the impetus for a number of different types of projects. Gate 81, a collaboration between architects, designers, academics and arts organisations, curated a series of events within the bus station with the intention of raising the profile of the building. This paper will discuss the nature of the building, document the Gate 81 projects and report upon this sanguine approach to conservation

Trouble in Happy Valley: The Documentation of a Research Through Design Collaborative Project between a Postgraduate Atelier at the Manchester School of Architecture and the Local Community of a Small Town.

Places are defined by the people who live within them. As individuals and communities, deep significance is attached to familiar places, and complex relationships can develop between the residents and the place that they inhabit. This quality is present in the nature of the buildings and the streets, It is often generated by the ordinary actions of local people, many of who believe that their identity is essentially tied to the place that they occupy. This local distinctiveness is characterized by the activities that occur within the specific environment. Thus significant markers are formed, in both the present and in the past, which will allow a society to relate to a particular environment. Events that hold value in a community are often manifested in physical form, and therefore allow a population to trace back meanings and connections with their past. This organisation of the past seems to stimulate social cohesion and the feeling of being part of a community, and so, physical links with the past are often important elements within the cohesion of a community

Oddments and Epigrams

Neighbourhood Planning is a highly controversial policy. It was part of the Localism Bill introduced by the British Government in 2011. The policy shifted the responsibility for the decisions about the size, shape and location of neighbourhood development from central to local government. Communities are now asked to decide upon the nature and character of their particular district and actively participate in decisions about future developments. One such town engaged with this process is Bollington, a small post-industrial town in Cheshire in the North West of England, just within commuter distance of Manchester. It is a town defined by its topography; with heroic remnants of the Industrial Revolution such as the canal and the railway, contrasting with a calmer and more picturesque local vernacular of cottage, terraces, garrets and greens. Despite the remnants and detritus of warehouses and factories, it is an attractive and desirable place to live. The town council has already approved a number of substantial new - home developments, despite the fact that their Neighbourhood Plan is not yet in place, indeed, the discussion has hardly even started. In September 2015 a collaboration began between Bollington Neighbourhood Plan Committee and the Continuity in Architecture atelier at Manchester School of Architecture to jointly develop a plan for the town that would sustain the place for the foreseeable future, that would allow the town to grow without losing its inherent character and would facilitate a future for all of the residents, not just those who can afford to live there. This book chapter documents the process and outputs (exhibitions, installations, designs, research) of this unique collaboration, examining the potential of architectural education to act as a catalyst for Neighbourhood Planning agendas

The Dance of Dead Things

One of the most pressing concerns for our twenty first century society is the challenge of the huge stock of existing buildings that have outlived the function for which they were built. Their worth is well recognised, and the importance of retaining them has been long debated, but if they are to be saved, what is to be done with these redundant buildings? Whether these are edifice of character and worth, or ordinary straightforward structures that have simply outlived their purpose; demolition and rebuild is no longer seen as the obvious solution to the continuous use of the specific site. It is now a commonplace architectural approach to re-use, adapt and add-to, rather than the building being razed and a new structure erected in its place. This does present the problem of what to do with these buildings, too often it seems that the only possible solution is another gallery, however, a society can only support so many museums

Bridging the gap between pragmatic intervention design and theory: using behavioural science tools to modify an existing quality improvement programme to implement "Sepsis Six"

BACKGROUND: Sepsis has a mortality rate of 40 %, which can be halved if the evidence-based "Sepsis Six" care bundle is implemented within 1 h. UK audit shows low implementation rates. Interventions to improve this have had minimal effects. Quality improvement programmes could be further developed by using theoretical frameworks (Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF)) to modify existing interventions by identifying influences on clinical behaviour and selecting appropriate content. The aim of this study was to illustrate using this process to modify an intervention designed using plan-do-study-act (P-D-S-A) cycles that had achieved partial success in improving Sepsis Six implementation in one hospital. METHODS: Factors influencing implementation were investigated using the TDF to analyse interviews with 34 health professionals. The nursing team who developed and facilitated the intervention used the data to select modifications using the Behaviour Change Technique (BCT) Taxonomy (v1) and the APEASE criteria: affordability, practicability, effectiveness, acceptability, safety and equity. RESULTS: Five themes were identified as influencing implementation and guided intervention modification. These were:(1) "knowing what to do and why" (TDF domains knowledge, social/professional role and identity); (2) "risks and benefits" (beliefs about consequences), e.g. fear of harming patients through fluid overload acting as a barrier to implementation versus belief in the bundle's effectiveness acting as a lever to implementation; (3) "working together" (social influences, social/professional role and identity), e.g. team collaboration acting as a lever versus doctor/nurse conflict acting as a barrier; (4) "empowerment and support" (beliefs about capabilities, social/professional role and identity, behavioural regulation, social influences), e.g. involving staff in intervention development acting as a lever versus lack of confidence to challenge colleagues' decisions not to implement acting as a barrier; (5) "staffing levels" (environmental context and resources), e.g. shortages of doctors at night preventing implementation. The modified intervention included six new BCTs and consisted of two additional components (Sepsis Six training for the Hospital at Night Co-ordinator; a partnership agreement endorsing engagement of all clinical staff and permitting collegial challenge) and modifications to two existing components (staff education sessions; documents and materials). CONCLUSIONS: This work demonstrates the feasibility of the TDF and BCT Taxonomy (v1) for developing an existing quality improvement intervention. The tools are compatible with the pragmatic P-D-S-A cycle approach generally used in quality improvement work

Reflectance Fluctuations in an Absorbing Random Waveguide

We study the statistics of the reflectance (the ratio of reflected and incident intensities) of an $N$-mode disordered waveguide with weak absorption $\gamma$ per mean free path. Two distinct regimes are identified. The regime $\gamma N^2\gg1$ shows universal fluctuations. With increasing length $L$ of the waveguide, the variance of the reflectance changes from the value $2/15 N^2$, characteristic for universal conductance fluctuations in disordered wires, to another value $1/8 N^2$, characteristic for chaotic cavities. The weak-localization correction to the average reflectance performs a similar crossover from the value $1/3 N$ to $1/4 N$. In the regime $\gamma N^2\ll1$, the large-$L$ distribution of the reflectance $R$ becomes very wide and asymmetric, $P(R)\propto (1-R)^{-2}$ for $R\ll 1-\gamma N$.Comment: 7 pages, RevTeX, 2 postscript figure

The first clawed lobster virus Homarus gammarus nudivirus (HgNV n. sp.) expands the diversity of the Nudiviridae

This is the final version. Available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record. Viral diseases of crustaceans are increasingly recognised as challenges to shellfish farms and fisheries. Here we describe the first naturally-occurring virus reported in any clawed lobster species. Hypertrophied nuclei with emarginated chromatin, characteristic histopathological lesions of DNA virus infection, were observed within the hepatopancreatic epithelial cells of juvenile European lobsters (Homarus gammarus). Transmission electron microscopy revealed infection with a bacilliform virus containing a rod shaped nucleocapsid enveloped in an elliptical membrane. Assembly of PCR-free shotgun metagenomic sequencing produced a circular genome of 107,063 bp containing 97 open reading frames, the majority of which share sequence similarity with a virus infecting the black tiger shrimp: Penaeus monodon nudivirus (PmNV). Multiple phylogenetic analyses confirm the new virus to be a novel member of the Nudiviridae: Homarus gammarus nudivirus (HgNV). Evidence of occlusion body formation, characteristic of PmNV and its closest relatives, was not observed, questioning the horizontal transmission strategy of HgNV outside of the host. We discuss the potential impacts of HgNV on juvenile lobster growth and mortality and present HgNV-specific primers to serve as a diagnostic tool for monitoring the virus in wild and farmed lobster stocks.Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS)Innovate UKBBSR

Systematic mapping shows the need for increased socio-ecological research on oil palm

Abstract In the past century, oil palm has developed from a sustenance crop in West Africa to a major global agricultural commodity, with substantial impacts on biodiversity, the environment, society, and livelihoods. Although the oil palm industry contributes to local and national economies across the tropics, there are significant concerns about the negative effects of oil palm cultivation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, as well on local communities and farmers. There is a growing awareness of the need for managing agricultural landscapes more sustainably, and the importance of ecological, social, and also interdisciplinary research to inform this. To understand the current status of research across these areas for oil palm, we carried out a systematic mapping exercise to quantify social, ecological, and interdisciplinary socio-ecological research on oil palm cultivation, assess trends in the research, and to identify priority knowledge gaps in the literature. Literature was searched using adapted preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses and Collaboration for Environmental Evidence protocols. We reviewed 4959 publications on the ecological, social, and socioecological effects of oil palm cultivation. Each publication was classified according to study context (the study site location and type), comparators (the type of comparison the study makes), intervention (the potential action or decision being studied), and outcome (the effects of the intervention on the population). This resulted in 443 classified papers, which we then analyzed in more detail, to identify co-occurrence of different research foci between the disciplines and in socio-ecological research. We found a global increase in oil palm research over the past three decades, with a clear bias to Malaysia and Indonesia, mirroring global production trends. Over 70% of the research was focused on ecological outcomes, 19% on social, and less than 10% interdisciplinary. The majority of studies were conducted within industrial plantations, with comparisons to non-modified habitats, such as forests. Research has focused most on the effects of cultivation on yield, invertebrate biodiversity, and livelihood. To place our findings in context of production of palm oil and sustainability priorities, we used information on regional oil palm production in Tonnes, priorities of sustainable certification bodies, and recognized causes of yield gaps. The most pressing knowledge gaps included a lack of studies on the effects of plantation inputs on pollination and herbivory, the relationship between ecological factors and human health and wellbeing, and comparisons of different management practices within oil palm plantations. We advocate that these gaps become the focus of future research attention, as they lie in identified priority research areas and outcomes are likely to be critical to informing the development of more sustainable palm oil production.Gates Cambridge Trus