The world turned upside-down : architects as subcontractors in design-and-build contracts

The traditional role of the Architect on UK building projects is well-known and has been the subject of much study and comment. However, recent surveys indicate that design-and-build arrangements now exceed traditional procurement in terms of their share of total UK construction. On such projects, architects and other designers are engaged, not by the employer, but under sub-contract to the main contractor. The question arises as to the effect this has had. This has been approached by considering architects and other design consultants as professional contractors, as opposed to trade contractors - a term adopted to describe the more traditional type of subcontractor. Within these distinctions there are contractual, managerial and cultural implications for the relationships between the parties. To explore this further, representatives of five main contractors were questioned on their relationships with the two types. Clear differences emerged in matters such as contract formation, price-setting, payment and claims; the treatment of selection, work scheduling, and defects / omissions was more complicated. Within trade contractors there is a strong argument for recognising a further category of specialist contractors, who include a design service in their work package. Within the professional contractor category, architects were clearly differentiated from other design team members. The findings are analysed to suggest a theoretical framework with four dimensions that relate to process/product, attitude/motivation, working culture and relative power. The concern is not to be definitive at this stage, but to suggest an agenda for future research into the issues that have emerged

A Virial Core in the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

The projected virial theorem is applied to the case of multiple stellar populations in the nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies. As each population must reside in the same gravitational potential, this provides strong constraints on the nature of the dark matter halo. We derive necessary conditions for two populations with Plummer or exponential surface brightnesses to reside in a cusped Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) halo. We apply our methods to the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal, and show that there is no NFW halo compatible with the energetics of the two populations. The dark halo must possess a core radius of ~ 120 pc for the virial solutions for the two populations to be consistent. This conclusion remains true, even if the effects of flattening or self-gravity of the stellar populations are included.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, ApJL, submitte

Arts and Non-arts Partnerships: Opportunities, Challenges, and Strategies

Provides lessons learned from the Wallace Foundation's Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation initiative. Includes assessing the benefits to both parties in arts/non-arts partnerships, and developing strategies to maximize chances of success

Midcourse Corrections to a Major Initiative: A Report on The James Irvine Foundation's CORAL Experience

Draws lessons from the reorientation of the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) Initiative, a $60 million initiative aimed at improving educational achievement in low-performing schools in five California cities

Aloe tomentosa - a species with unusual hairy flowers from the Yemen

Aloe tomentosa is unusual within the huge diversity of this large genus, since it is one of a small group with hairy flowers that have a limited distribution in the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia

Evolution of a robotic soccer player

Robotic soccer is a complex domain where, rather than hand-coding computer programs to control the players, it is possible to create them through evolutionary methods. This has been successfully done before by using genetic programming with high-level genes. Such an approach is, however, limiting. This work attempts to reduce that limit by evolving control programs using genetic programming with low-level nodes

How much of the variation in the mutation rate along the human genome can be explained?

It has been claimed recently that it may be possible to predict the rate of de novo mutation of each site in the human genome with a high degree of accuracy [Michaelson et al. (2012), Cell 151: 143121442]. We show that this claim is unwarranted. By considering the correlation between the rate of de novo mutation and the predictions from the model of Michaelson et al., we show there could be substantial unexplained variance in the mutation rate. We investigate whether the model of Michaelson et al. captures variation at the single nucleotide level that is not due to simple context. We show that the model captures a substantial fraction of this variation at CpG dinucleotides but fails to explain much of the variation at non-CpG sites

‘There’s no pill to help you deal with the guilt and shame’: Contemporary experiences of HIV in the United Kingdom

© The Author(s) 2017. The experience of living with HIV, in the global north, has changed significantly over the past 20 years. This is largely the result of effective biomedical methods of treatment and prevention. HIV is now widely considered to be a long-term condition like many others – it has been argued that HIV has been ‘normalised’. Drawing on online qualitative survey data, with respondents aged 18–35 years, diagnosed with HIV in the past 5 years, this research explores contemporary subjective experiences of being diagnosed, and living, with HIV in the United Kingdom. The data reveal ambiguous experiences and expectations, as the ‘normative’ status of HIV exists alongside ongoing experiences of fear, shame and stigma – maintaining its status as the most ‘social’ of diseases. In rendering HIV ‘everyday’, the space to articulate (and experience) the ‘difference’ which attaches to the virus has contracted, making it difficult to express ambivalence and fear in the face of a positive, largely biomedical, discourse. In this article, the concepts of normalisation and chronicity provide an analytical framework through which to explore the complexity of the ‘sick role’ and ‘illness work’ in HIV

BECTA research project: International Baccalaureate E-Learning Laboratory (iBEL): evaluation report

The International Baccalaureate E-Learning Laboratory (iBEL) investigated the role that design-for-learning (D4L) plays in fostering independent learning on the International Baccalaureate programme using integrated open source platforms, namely Moodle and LAMS. Results from the project indicate these technologies increased independent learning, especially when teachers provided a clear framework by linking to pre-selected, reliable resources, and structured these through appropriate activities. Visual design was highly valued and learners enjoyed using resources containing rich media. In subject disciplines such as Modern Foreign Languages and English they were motivated by the integration of social learning tools, notably forum, glossary tools and chat. Students expected the use of technologies to form a part of their learning. Some teachers found that the use of the technologies assisted with long-term planning and enhanced their relationships with students. Adoption of a D4L system is more likely to succeed if introduced as a repository for existing content to which activities are later added and where it supports flexibility, fits the way that practitioners normally plan for learning, integrates easily with F2F teaching, contains a variety of easy to use tools, and accommodates the integration and updating of existing resources created by staff, such as Word, pdf and PowerPoint