Door locks, wall stickers, fireplaces: Assemblage Theory and home (un)making in Lewisham’s temporary accommodation

This paper explores resident experiences of life in PLACE/Ladywell, a “pop‐up” social housing scheme in London providing temporary accommodation for homeless families. Specifically, we consider barriers to, and assertions of, homemaking in this temporary setting through fixtures and fittings—a door lock, wall stickers, and a fireplace. The paper utilises assemblage thinking to understand homemaking within these time‐limited and constrained circumstances. Despite their seeming banality, fixtures and fittings offer a material, politicised, and lively means of studying the attempted and thwarted production of home by residents living in PLACE/Ladywell. The absence of door locks reduces parents’ ability to maintain privacy and intimate relations; restrictions on hanging pictures and other decorative measures are circumvented by the use of wall stickers; and a defiant decorative fireplace establishes a sense of home in a temporary setting. Together, these objects constitute vital elements in negotiations between fixity and impermanence in temporary accommodation

Acidification of sandy grasslands - consequences for plant diversity

Questions: (1) Does soil acidification in calcareous sandy grasslands lead to loss of plant diversity? (2) What is the relationship between the soil content of lime and the plant availability of mineral nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in sandy grasslands? Location: Sandy glaciofluvial deposits in south-eastern Sweden covered by xeric sand calcareous grasslands (EU habitat directive 6120). Methods: Soil and vegetation were investigated in most of the xeric sand calcareous grasslands in the Scania region (136 sample plots distributed over four or five major areas and about 25 different sites). Environmental variables were recorded at each plot, and soil samples were analysed for exchangeable P and N. as well as limestone content and pH. Data were analysed with regression analysis and canonical correspondence analysis. Results: Plant species richness was highest on weakly acid to slightly alkaline soil; a number of nationally red-listed species showed a similar pattern. Plant species diversity and number of red-listed species increased with slope. Where the topsoil had been acidified, limestone was rarely present above a depth of 30 cm. The presence of limestone restricts the availability of soil P, placing a major constraint on primary productivity in sandy soils. Conclusions: Acidification of sandy grasslands leads to reduced abundance of desirable species, although the overall effect is rather weak between pH 5 and pH 9. Slopes are important for high diversity in sandy grasslands. Calcareous soils cannot be restored through shallow ploughing, but deep perturbation could increase the limestone content of the topsoil and Favour of target species

Conservation implications of long-term changes detected in a lowland heath plant metacommunity

Conservation management that is focused on the scale of individual habitat patches rarely considers the implications for conservation of metacommunities at the regional scale. Here we examine the conservation implications of long-term changes identified in a vascular plant metacommunity associated with lowland heathland in Dorset, UK. This was achieved by re-surveying 150 patches that were first surveyed in the 1930s and assessing changes in species distributions, diversity, community composition and metacommunity structure. Results were compared for two sets: i) all remaining heathland patches and ii) intact heaths, excluding partly degraded sites. Overall, patterns of change were similar for the two sets. Values of γ and α-diversity both decreased over time as individual patches shifted towards either woodland or improved grassland communities. No significant change in β-diversity occurred. Both sets lost metacommunity structure over time, suggesting a change in structuring processes. These changes were attributable both to management regimes adopted at local sites, relating to their differing ownership, and to wider processes of environmental change. These results highlight the need to place site-based conservation actions in the context of regional-scale processes, to ensure the long-term conservation of metacommunity structure and function

Additional file 1: Figure S1. of A 26-hour system of highly sensitive whole genome sequencing for emergency management of genetic diseases

Screen-shots demonstrating the functionality of SSAGA. A. The clinical feature entry page. Synonyms for each feature are entered in the top left box. Upon entry, a list of matching HPO terms is displayed. The appropriate HPO term is selected and added to the patient’s feature list in the box on the right. This is performed for each clinical feature. In this case, patient CMH672ref, the patient had 11 clinical features that included neonatal seizures and a characteristic facies. B. Upon clicking the ‘Get Diagnosis’ button, the list of all matching diseases is generated. In this case, the differential diagnosis had 1,136 rows, representing 597 genes, of which 222 matched two or more clinical features. (PDF 240 kb

La Petite presse : journal quotidien... / [rédacteur en chef : Balathier Bragelonne]

19 septembre 18791879/09/19 (A13,N4882)