Cultures of Consumption within Residential Care Homes: Understanding Elderly Bricoleurs' Cultural Maps of Meaning

Set within the context that the world’s population is ageing at an unprecedented rate, it is argued that care of the elderly, and their everyday lived experiences are poised to become prominent concerns. In the shadow of this, the ageing population poses a myriad of challenges not only for the elderly but also for policy makers who put in place systems for the provision of services within residential care homes. By virtue, given that communities of elderly consumers voices are often muted within many academic analyses of social policy and service provision this study illuminates and distils communities of elderly consumers understandings of residential care homes. Given the absence of suitable literature within the fields of marketing and interpretive consumer research, this study turns to the sociological and anthropological literature of Hall and Jefferson (1976) and Levi-Strauss (1966). In doing so, communities of elderly consumers within residential care homes can be theorised as a cultural community of ‘bricoleurs’ within a ‘cultural map of meaning’. Furthermore, viewed through this lens, such bricoleurs can be seen to understand their meaningful everyday lived experiences within, and through, the use of ‘bricolage’. Emanating from eight existential-phenomenological interviews, a rich picture emerges wherein bricoleurs understandings of residential care homes can be seen to be embedded not only within, but also through, such things as the body, leisure trips, noise disturbances, death, large items of furniture, small hand-sized objects, mobility aids, quality of care and social interaction. Moreover, in the light of the resultant interpretations common themes can be seen to emerge within communities of bricoleurs social and material understandings of residential care homes, namely the notion of cultures of dependency, trauma and comfort. This research contributes to marketing knowledge in that it argues that communities of ‘elderly bricoleurs’ within residential care homes can be seen to be held together by unique understandings of cultures of dependency, trauma and comfort. Furthermore, it is also argued that elderly bricoleurs address themselves to a relatively limited amount of bricolage that enables them to keep alive actual, desired, imagined and fictional community ties. Furthermore, the reality and efficacy of cultural communities of elderly bricoleurs seems to depend on their ability to address ‘whatever is to hand’ (Levi-Strauss, 1966) in order to construct and understand their cultural maps of meaning within residential care homes

Impact of flow regulation and habitat improvement on brown trout in Yorkshire rivers

In the UK, reservoirs are a relatively common component of the landscape and provide a variety of functions, including the provision of water to meet industrial, agricultural and societal needs, as well as recreational activities such as sailing and fishing. However, reservoir function and operation impacts on downstream aquatic ecosystems by severely altering and degrading the flow regime. The importance of a natural flow regime in rivers is crucial not only to geo-morphological processes, but also to the life cycles and ecology of ichthyofauna present in these rivers. The introduction of the Water Framework Directive in 2000 (WFD: 2000/60/EEC) provided a framework by which the surface water in all 27 EU member states must achieve Good Ecological Status (GES) or Potential (GEP) by 2027. This thesis examines the drivers of population dynamics of brown trout (Salmo trutta L.) in rivers where the natural flow regime is severely degraded due to reservoir operation, as well as determining the effectiveness of introducing and amending reservoir release regimes and physical habitat restoration on the habitat quality and brown trout populations.Using long term brown trout population data and flow, rainfall and temperature data the roles of density-dependent and density –independent regulation were investigated in three heavily impounded Yorkshire Rivers (Rivelin, Loxley and Holme). In each of the three rivers no relationship was found between monthly discharge rates and rainfall levels indicating that the natural flow regime was un-synchronised from that expected under un-impounded conditions. Investigations into density-dependent regulation of 0+ and ≥1+ brown trout, as well as length at age one, found that no meaningful density-dependent regulation was occurring in brown trout populations throughout the three study rivers; this was likely due to the low densities in which brown trout were found throughout the study sites. Using mixed effect linear models, it was found that the variability of flow regime in the summer period (June – September) was significantly correlated with 0+ brown trout densities, and that the flow variability during the emergence period (April –May) was also significantly correlated with the length of brown trout at age one. Temperature and flow during any other period of the year were not found to have any significant interaction with 0+ brown trout density or length at age one.The introduction and amendment of compensation releases from impounding reservoirs is an established methodology for improving the ecological potential in downstream reaches of rivers. Long term effects on brown trout populations and estimates of habitat quality in rivers where new compensation release regimes were introduced were examined in three study rivers (Dibb, Dale Dike and Holme). In all three rivers the changes to densities of three age/size classes of brown trout (0+, ≥1+ 20cm), length at capture of 0+ brown trout and habitat quality for the three age/size classes were examined to determine if the new compensation regime had any meaningful impact using a Before After Control Impact (BACI) study design. In the River Dibb, where a four stage seasonally varied release was introduced, there was no significant changes to the biological metrics but, there was a significant improvement in the habitat quality for ≥1+ ( 20 cm) brown trout, suggesting that the revised compensation release provided better habitat conditions for larger, more fecund brown trout.As it is not always possible to attain GEP in impounded rivers by amending reservoir release regimes due to operational circumstances the use of physical habitat restoration measures can be implemented to improve habitat conditions downstream of impounding reservoirs. In the River Washburn a BACI study was undertaken to detect if any meaningful change to brown trout populations and habitat quality had occurred following habitat improvement works in 2015. Immediately following the habitat improvement works the habitat quality for all brown trout age/size classes improved, but in late 2015 a 1-in-100-year flood event destroyed and damaged a majority of the instream works. There were significant improvements immediately following the habitat restoration work to the habitat quality for both ≥1+ size classes, but due low densities of brown trout following the habitat improvement there was a significant decline in ≥1+ (<20 cm) brown trout populations.As it was found that there were significant changes to the habitat quality for brown trout across the four study rivers, further sampling of brown trout would be required to determine the biological response to the habitat changes. As the level of temporal and spatial variance was high in brown trout populations throughout this study, further monitoring would be required to draw robust conclusions as to the impact of Heavily Modified Water Body (HMWB) mitigation on brown trout populations. As habitat requirements for brown trout are different depending on the life stage, the complementary use of both habitat improvement and flow restoration techniques should be explored in future projects to mitigate HMWB status

DEEP MAPPING THE DAILY SPACES AND HEALTH OF CHILDREN IN THE HISTORIC INDUSTRIAL CITY

The last 50 years have brought about substantial improvements in studying the daily lives of populations in historic cities, especially across North America and England. Overlooked in many of these studies are the children who also lived in these cities and were impacted by their built and social environments (B&SE). This thesis explores the B&SE of schoolchildren in Michigan’s Copper Country around 1920 using a set of local school records contextualized in an existing Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI). Using this data and contextualization, this thesis presents a methodology for processing and integrating children’s historical spatial microdata into an existing HSDI. Using this methodology, it then examines the impacts of children’s B&SE on health through the creation of two composite indices. These indices are significantly correlated with presence of infectious disease in a child’s home, while these effects are significantly moderated by the household head’s income

Land Grant Application- Pike, Timothy (Framingham)

Land grant application submitted to the Maine Land Office on behalf of Timothy Pike for service in the Revolutionary War, by their widow Anne Stone.https://digitalmaine.com/revolutionary_war_mass/1272/thumbnail.jp

Emergency response mobile robot for operations in combustible atmospheres

A mobile, self-powered, self-contained, and remote-controlled robot is presented. The robot is capable of safely operating in a combustible atmosphere and providing information about the atmosphere to the operator. The robot includes non-sparking and non-arcing electro-mechanical and electronic components designed to prevent the robot from igniting the combustible atmosphere. The robot also includes positively pressurized enclosures that house the electromechanical and electronic components of the robot and prevent intrusion of the combustible atmosphere into the enclosures. The enclosures are interconnected such that a pressurized gas injected into any one of the enclosures is routed to all the other enclosures through the interconnections. It is preferred that one or more sealed internal channels through structures intervening between the enclosures be employed. Pressure transducers for detecting if the pressure within the enclosures falls below a predetermined level are included. The robot also has a sensing device for determining the types of combustible substances in the surrounding atmosphere, as well as the concentrations of each type of substance relative to a pre-determined lower explosive limit (LEL). In addition, the sensing device can determine the percent level of oxygen present in the surrounding atmosphere

Mapping Historical Archaeology and Industrial Heritage: The Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure

While a vibrant and growing research literature exists on the value of GIS to archaeology in general, the application of geospatial digital data to the subfield of historical archaeology is less well developed, especially in North America. This is particularly true for the era of industrialization, where the archaeological record is accompanied by a comparatively rich historical record. Historical and industrial archaeology are fundamentally bound up in the interplay between material and historical data, and it is in enhancing the dialogue between these two evidentiary bodies that interdisciplinary geospatial approaches are most fruitful to these subdisciplines. Drawing on recent discussions in digital archaeology and Historical GIS (HGIS), which has a robust history in the social sciences and humanities, we present an approach to modelling, visualizing, and analyzing longitudinal physical and social environment data for historical and industrial archaeology: a Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI). Our HSDI, which is data-rich and highly flexible in scale, is especially well-adapted to facilitating this dialogue within archaeological research, as well as having important applications to heritage management and public engagement, as demonstrated in our case study

The Effect of Resistivity on the Nonlinear Stage of the Magnetorotational Instability in Accretion Disks

We present three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the nonlinear evolution of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) with a non-zero Ohmic resistivity. The properties of the saturated state depend on the initial magnetic field configuration. In simulations with an initial uniform vertical field, the MRI is able to support angular momentum transport even for large resistivities through the quasi-periodic generation of axisymmetric radial channel solutions rather than through the maintenance of anisotropic turbulence. Simulations with zero net flux show that the angular momentum transport and the amplitude of magnetic energy after saturation are significantly reduced by finite resistivity, even at levels where the linear modes are only slightly affected. This occurs at magnetic Reynolds numbers expected in low, cool states of dwarf novae, these results suggest that finite resistivity may account for the low and high angular momentum transport rates inferred for these systems.Comment: 8 figures, accepted for publication in Ap