Designing resilient creative communities through biomimetic service design

Creative communities are grassroots, bottom-up initiatives of people who through their diffuse design capacity propose new, desirable service futures that address the problems of their everyday life. The solutions designed by these communities provide a much-needed alternative to the breakdowns of the top-down sociotechnical support systems that were meant to address these needs. These creative communities exist within a transition from mo­dernity towards sustainment, the next epoch of human development. The adversarial character of these systems causes them to embody alternative values such as conviviality, solidarity, openness and shift the focus from growth to flourishing (Ehrenfeld, 2008). Not only are the systems of values adopted by these communities more compatible with sustainability they also challenge a hierarchical order. Such action is collective rather than in­dividual. It concerns a group of people who have been presupposed unequal by a particular hierarchical order, as well as those in solidarity with them, acting as though they were indeed equal to those above them in the order, and thus disrupting the social order itself. What is disrupted are not only the power arrangements of the social order, but, and more deeply, the perceptual and epistemic underpinnings of that order. Such a disruption is what Rancière calls a “dissensus” (2010). A dis­sensus is not merely a disagreement about the justice of particular social arrangements, it is also the revelation of the contingency of the entire per­ceptual and conceptual order in which such arrangements are embedded, the contingency of what Rancière calls the partition or distribution of the sensible (le partage du sensible) (Rancière, 2010). Increasing the variety of these systems is a necessary perquisite to both overcome control from the hegemonic ideology (law of requisite variety) as well as to increase the resi­lience of these systems. Resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to retain its organisational closure while absorbing external perturbations (Walker and Salt, 2012). The sociotechnical system that is a creative community creating social innova­tion faces constant threats due to the collapse of traditional support structu­res and their disruptive, adversarial character. Identifying strategies to in­crease the capacity of any system to resist external forces are necessary to ensure their survival in a time of unprecedented environmental and social pressures but in the context of the wider transitions towards sustainment and the necessary reconstitution of the domains of everyday life. In order to create the strategies necessary, we turn to nature for inspiration and mentoring. Biomimisis is a framework that designs solutions inspired by biological systems. It opens up possibilities of seeing the way nature wor­ks, teaches and informs arts and sciences (Sanchez Ruano, 2016). It encou­rages deeper studies in order to arrive at technologies and strategies that may be achieved through interdisciplinary dialogues. Ecosystems display differing degrees of resilience. Understanding the strategies developed by nature to increase the resilience of eco-systems is a first step. Identifying and reframing these solutions can foster the resilience necessary for creati­ve communities to flourish. The emerging fields of biomimetic design of ser­vices can support the evolution of service design (Ivanova, 2014). methods in the context of social innovation and shift the underlying assumptions behind the decisions made. Biomimisis has proven a robust methodology for the development of solutions in the fields of material engineering and product design, applying lessons from nature is a frontier for service design and the creation of resilient organisations. We argue that permaculture, an agroecological systemic design tradition (Cassel, 2015), provides an interesting direction for the development and re­search in the context of social innovation. In contrast to monoculture where only one type of value is the goal of the system, permaculture provides a systemic view that is focused in fostering virtuous cycles and cooperation between different symbiotic systems. Looking at creative communities as an interconnected ecosystem instead of discrete systems provides a different avenue for increasing their resilience and capability for flourishing by crea­ting positive feedback within a wider ecosystem of bottom up initiatives on both a local and global level. This paper aims to identify strategies from different permaculture systems to approaches that when applied in sociotechnical systems lead to increased resilience. Applying these through designs can provide a way to reconstitute the domains of everyday life (Kossoff, 2015) and transition towards sustai­nability in some grassroots, distributed way. At the same time these diffe­rent ways of looking at provide a direction that seems to provide an answer to many emerging issues in the context of service design within a systems thinking framework. In order to elaborate the strategies recognised the ‘Apano Meria’ Social en­terprise will be analysed with respect to the relationships between different focus groups and how these can increase the overall resilience of the system. The object of this case study is a collection of different creative communi­ties with various interests but connected by a common theme: enabling the flourishing of the island of Syros. In order to achieve this goal three main themes have been adopted: the environment, culture and people. Each of these themes is made up of different special interest groups that are inter­connected both within the theme and in the wider scope of the community. For example, in the context of the environment different groups of people are working with the fauna and the flora while a different team looks at issues of marine ecology. Additionally, a different community studies the unique geological characteristics of the island. All of these teams are in an open dialogue amongst them and with the legal team that either informs them of legal framework or translates their wants and need to law propo­sals. Understanding the flows of information, the juxtaposition of people in different roles as well as increasing the overall diffuse design capacity of the participants in the social enterprise is the first step in creating a resilient or­ganisation. Identifying relevant biological models that create virtuous cycles and translating these to design strategies will increase variety, resilience and the contingency between different people and communities

Neutron Correlations in the Decay of the First Excited State of 11Li

The decay of unbound excited 11Li was measured after being populated by a two-proton removal from a 13B beam at 71 MeV/nucleon. Decay energy spectra and Jacobi plots were obtained from measurements of the momentum vectors of the 9Li fragment and neutrons. A resonance at an excitation energy of ∼1.2 MeV was observed. The kinematics of the decay are equally well fit by a simple dineutron-like model or a phase-space model that includes final state interactions. A sequential decay model can be excluded

Women Scientists Who Made Nuclear Astrophysics

Female role models reduce the impact on women of stereotype threat, i.e., of being at risk of conforming to a negative stereotype about one's social, gender, or racial group [1,2]. This can lead women scientists to underperform or to leave their scientific career because of negative stereotypes such as, not being as talented or as interested in science as men. Sadly, history rarely provides role models for women scientists; instead, it often renders these women invisible [3]. In response to this situation, we present a selection of twelve outstanding women who helped to develop nuclear astrophysics

Child-Led Research, Children’s Rights and Childhood Studies: a Defence

Recent articles by Kim and Hammersley have critiqued, respectively: the methodological and normative assumptions that underlie research ‘by’ children; claims made about the implications of children’s rights for the ethics of research with children; and more broadly, some of the central commitments of Childhood Studies. This paper offers a response to these critiques, seeking to distinguish between those that clearly should be accepted, those that appear to be based on a misreading of the claims being made by scholars and researchers, and those that represent serious challenges to defend, redefine or rethink our aims, claims or practices

An overview of monitoring methods for assessing the performance of nature-based solutions against natural hazards

To bring to fruition the capability of nature-based solutions (NBS) in mitigating hydro-meteorological risks (HMRs) and facilitate their widespread uptake require a consolidated knowledge-base related to their monitoring methods, efficiency, functioning and the ecosystem services they provide. We attempt to fill this knowledge gap by reviewing and compiling the existing scientific literature on methods, including ground-based measurements (e.g. gauging stations, wireless sensor network) and remote sensing observations (e.g. from topographic LiDAR, multispectral and radar sensors) that have been used and/or can be relevant to monitor the performance of NBS against five HMRs: floods, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, and storm surges and coastal erosion. These can allow the mapping of the risks and impacts of the specific hydro-meteorological events. We found that the selection and application of monitoring methods mostly rely on the particular NBS being monitored, resource availability (e.g. time, budget, space) and type of HMRs. No standalone method currently exists that can allow monitoring the performance of NBS in its broadest view. However, equipments, tools and technologies developed for other purposes, such as for ground-based measurements and atmospheric observations, can be applied to accurately monitor the performance of NBS to mitigate HMRs. We also focused on the capabilities of passive and active remote sensing, pointing out their associated opportunities and difficulties for NBS monitoring application. We conclude that the advancement in airborne and satellite-based remote sensing technology has signified a leap in the systematic monitoring of NBS performance, as well as provided a robust way for the spatial and temporal comparison of NBS intervention versus its absence. This improved performance measurement can support the evaluation of existing uncertainty and scepticism in selecting NBS over the artificially built concrete structures or grey approaches by addressing the questions of performance precariousness. Remote sensing technical developments, however, take time to shift toward a state of operational readiness for monitoring the progress of NBS in place (e.g. green NBS growth rate, their changes and effectiveness through time). More research is required to develop a holistic approach, which could routinely and continually monitor the performance of NBS over a large scale of intervention. This performance evaluation could increase the ecological and socio-economic benefits of NBS, and also create high levels of their acceptance and confidence by overcoming potential scepticism of NBS implementations

Nature-based solutions efficiency evaluation against natural hazards: modelling methods, advantages and limitations

Nature-based solutions (NBS) for hydro-meteorological risks (HMRs) reduction and management are becoming increasingly popular, but challenges such as the lack of well-recognised standard methodologies to evaluate their performance and upscale their implementation remain. We systematically evaluate the current state-of-the art on the models and tools that are utilised for the optimum allocation, design and efficiency evaluation of NBS for five HMRs (flooding, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, and storm surges and coastal erosion). We found that methods to assess the complex issue of NBS efficiency and cost-benefits analysis are still in the development stage and they have only been implemented through the methodologies developed for other purposes such as fluid dynamics models in micro and catchment scale contexts. Of the reviewed numerical models and tools MIKE-SHE, SWMM (for floods), ParFlow-TREES, ACRU, SIMGRO (for droughts), WRF, ENVI-met (for heatwaves), FUNWAVE-TVD, BROOK90 (for landslides), TELEMAC and ADCIRC (for storm surges) are more flexible to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of specific NBS such as wetlands, ponds, trees, parks, grass, green roof/walls, tree roots, vegetations, coral reefs, mangroves, sea grasses, oyster reefs, sea salt marshes, sandy beaches and dunes. We conclude that the models and tools that are capable of assessing the multiple benefits, particularly the performance and cost-effectiveness of NBS for HMR reduction and management are not readily available. Thus, our synthesis of modelling methods can facilitate their selection that can maximise opportunities and refute the current political hesitation of NBS deployment compared with grey solutions for HMR management but also for the provision of a wide range of social and economic co-benefits. However, there is still a need for bespoke modelling tools that can holistically assess the various components of NBS from an HMR reduction and management perspective. Such tools can facilitate impact assessment modelling under different NBS scenarios to build a solid evidence base for upscaling and replicating the implementation of NBS

Strange Quark Matter and Compact Stars

Astrophysicists distinguish between three different types of compact stars. These are white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. The former contain matter in one of the densest forms found in the Universe which, together with the unprecedented progress in observational astronomy, make such stars superb astrophysical laboratories for a broad range of most striking physical phenomena. These range from nuclear processes on the stellar surface to processes in electron degenerate matter at subnuclear densities to boson condensates and the existence of new states of baryonic matter--like color superconducting quark matter--at supernuclear densities. More than that, according to the strange matter hypothesis strange quark matter could be more stable than nuclear matter, in which case neutron stars should be largely composed of pure quark matter possibly enveloped in thin nuclear crusts. Another remarkable implication of the hypothesis is the possible existence of a new class of white dwarfs. This article aims at giving an overview of all these striking physical possibilities, with an emphasis on the astrophysical phenomenology of strange quark matter. Possible observational signatures associated with the theoretically proposed states of matter inside compact stars are discussed as well. They will provide most valuable information about the phase diagram of superdense nuclear matter at high baryon number density but low temperature, which is not accessible to relativistic heavy ion collision experiments.Comment: 58 figures, to appear in "Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics"; References added for sections 1,2,3,5; Equation (116) corrected; Figs. 1 and 58 update

Catching Element Formation In The Act

Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic photons in nature to address some of the most pressing puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It encompasses a wide range of objects and phenomena: stars, supernovae, novae, neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, nucleosynthesis, the interstellar medium, cosmic rays and relativistic-particle acceleration, and the evolution of galaxies. MeV gamma-rays provide a unique probe of nuclear processes in astronomy, directly measuring radioactive decay, nuclear de-excitation, and positron annihilation. The substantial information carried by gamma-ray photons allows us to see deeper into these objects, the bulk of the power is often emitted at gamma-ray energies, and radioactivity provides a natural physical clock that adds unique information. New science will be driven by time-domain population studies at gamma-ray energies. This science is enabled by next-generation gamma-ray instruments with one to two orders of magnitude better sensitivity, larger sky coverage, and faster cadence than all previous gamma-ray instruments. This transformative capability permits: (a) the accurate identification of the gamma-ray emitting objects and correlations with observations taken at other wavelengths and with other messengers; (b) construction of new gamma-ray maps of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies where extended regions are distinguished from point sources; and (c) considerable serendipitous science of scarce events -- nearby neutron star mergers, for example. Advances in technology push the performance of new gamma-ray instruments to address a wide set of astrophysical questions.Comment: 14 pages including 3 figure

Child-led research:Questioning knowledge

Over the last twenty years, childhood studies has challenged the schooled and developmental models of childhood. The children’s rights agenda has combined with academic childhood studies, to emphasise that children are and can be social actors and to seek ways to recognise and support their participation rights. For those who promote the participation of children and young people, there is considerable enthusiasm to involve them in all research stages—from research planning, fieldwork, and analysis to dissemination, leading to growth in what is often called ‘child-led research’. This article draws upon an empirical study of ‘child-led research’ projects, undertaken in Bangladesh, Jordan and Lebanon, for a critical examination of the meanings and implications of ‘child-led research’. In particular, this paper explores what counts as knowledge in social science research within contexts of generational difference and power