Can We Build Social in Face of Conflict

Conference paper, presented at 'Designed to Improve', Hambur

ATM and cashpoint art: what’s at stake in designing against crime

When Hammersmith Police approached the Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC) at the University of Arts London, for help in dealing with theft and fraud linked to users of ATM’s, the DACRC team looked sideways, beyond traditional ‘security solutions’, collaborating with artist Steve Russell, to help find some new and creative ways of influencing behaviour around “cashpoints”. Hammersmith Police contacted DACRC because Prof. Lorraine Gamman, who directs the Centre, has written about design against pickpocketing and bag theft, and works closely with businesses in her role as advisor to the Home Office’s “Design Technology Alliance Against Crime

The Anti-bag Theft and ASB-resistant “Camden Bench"

Case Study

Subordination in Children’s Writing

This paper reports an investigation into the use of subordinate clauses in the writing of a class of seven to nine year old children when attempting five different writing tasks. The investigation was undertaken in part-response to an inspection report on the school by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) which recommended that the school should extend the writing skills of pupils in this age-range. The importance of developing subordination in writing is related to previous research and to evidence from reviews of Ofsted inspection evidence. The different patterns of subordination are discussed, between tasks and pupils and in relation to variation in the writing of individual children when tackling the different tasks. The paper ends by suggesting how similar informal investigations can assist schools in promoting writing development. It also outlines how the teaching approaches outlined in the National Literacy Strategy will provide opportunities for this promotion, particularly by exploiting links between reading and writing

Beyond trade: getting economic integration right

This paper suggests a process for consultation with business, consumers and various levels of government that would enhance outcomes. Introduction Australia has an open economy that is heavily dependent on trade for its wellbeing. Well formulated evidence based trade policy therefore matters greatly, as does the form and content of these economic agreements. Past trade policy practice has been focussed on consultations with industry as a precursor to negotiations, with the aim of rectifying market access issues. Today’s trade treaties go far beyond negotiations about actual trade. They also tackle a wide range of domestic policy issues. These broader ‘economic partnership’ or ‘comprehensive trade’ agreements deal as much, if not more, in regulatory politics as in traditional trade policy. Consequently they affect many nontrading businesses and many segments of the wider community. This article draws on three different perspectives to suggest that consultations on these new generation deals need to be broader and more robust. Input from at least three major sectors of society is essential to identify Australia’s priority ‘demands’ in a negotiation, and those areas of domestic activity that are non-negotiable. Here we suggest a process for consultation with business, consumers and various levels of government that would enhance outcomes. We suggest that the national interest would be better identified in a process that is separate from any particular prospective trade deal (and its politically imposed time constraints) and which fully accounts for our domestic settings. The objective of these agreements should be the maximum benefit to the national interest, rather than achieving specific export successes. Such market entry issues create benefits for only selected businesses. A focus on a broader agenda of prioritised domestic reform would result in a stronger increase in national welfare

Los códigos visuales asociados al deporte: una interpretación del espacio público

Este artículo se centra en algunos temas descubiertos mediante el análisis del aspecto visual o del diseño realizado en los estudios de espacios públicos que se utilizan para las actividades deportivas. Se basa en la investigación realizada sobre redes sociales en los espacios públicos de Barcelona (Puig y Maza, 2008) El artículo se fundamenta en la idea de que el  desarrollo de redes sociales a través de la práctica del deporte en espacios públicos, mejora la posibilidad de mantener la llamada “calidad de vida” en dichos espacios y para las personas que en ellos se encuentran. El objetivo concreto es, sobre la base de la perspectiva de la práctica “centrada en el usuario”, analizar cómo se pueden combinar determinados elementos existentes en los espacios públicos para definir o comunicar códigos visuales, que para mucha gente no son sino pequeños elementos sin interconexión, pero que para quienes practican determinados deportes son ‘ingredientes’ básicos, buscados por la propia actividad deportiva y por las redes sociales asociadas a la misma. Del mismo modo, los ‘códigos visuales’ emitidos por un espacio indican si en él se ‘practica’o no un deporte concreto, el modo en que se realiza y quiénes toman parte en la actividad

Conditional variances in UK regional house prices

The returns of house price indices for the 13 UK regions are modelled using time series processes, including conditional variances. The first conclusion is that the UK follows the USA, with some regions displaying time-varying variances and others with constant variances. Secondly, there is limited evidence of an asymmetric component in six of the seven regions displaying autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity. Thirdly, the results suggest that there are three distinct housing markets in the UK, based on common structures within their mean and variance processes, and that South West England is the region driving the other time-varying variances. Variances conditionnelles dans les prix regionaux de l'immobilier au Royaume-Uni Resume Les resultats de l'indice des prix de l'immobilier pour les 13 regions du Royaume-Uni sont modelises ici au moyen de procedes de series chronologiques, y compris des variances conditionnelles. La premiere conclusion est que le Royaume-Uni suit les Etats-Unis, certaines regions presentant des variances temporelles, d'autres des variances constantes. Deuxiemement, on releve peu de traces d'un composant asymetrique dans six des sept regions presentant une heteroscedasticite conditionnelle autoregressive. Troisiemement, les resultats indiquent qu'il y aurait trois marches de l'immobilier distincts au Royaume-Uni, sur la base de structures communes dans le cadre de leurs procedes moyens et de variance, et que le sud-ouest de l'Angleterre est la region qui dynamise les autres variances temporelles. Varianzas condicionales en los precios regionales de la vivienda en el Reino Unido Extracto Las cifras de los indices de precios de la vivienda en 13 regiones del Reino Unido se modelan utilizando procesos de series temporales, incluyendo varianzas condicionales. La primera conclusion es que el Reino Unido sigue a los EE UU, con varias regiones que muestran varianzas fluctuantes con el tiempo y otras con varianzas constantes. En segundo lugar, existe evidencia limitada de un componente asimetrico en seis de las siete regiones que muestran una heteroesquedacidad condicional autorregresiva. En tercer lugar, los resultados sugieren que existen tres mercados distintivos de la vivienda en el Reino Unido, basados en estructuras comunes dentro de sus procesos de media y varianza, y que el sudoeste de Inglaterra es la region que dirige las otras varianzas fluctuantes con el tiemp

Los códigos visuales asociados al deporte: una interpretación del espacio public (The Visual Codes Associated to Sport: an Interpretation of Public Space)

The article assumes that, where social networks can develop from the practice of sport in public spaces, there is a better chance of maintaining said ‘quality of life’ in the respective spaces and for those that use them. The specific focus of the paper implements a socially responsive study, afforded through design led research (mapable to ‘discover’ and ‘define’ stages), and realised through close collaboration with social scientists, sport scientists and urban professionals and local participants, on ethnographic research and interviews. The research reveals that details or elements within given spaces, which to many people may appear as mundane or disconnected, are communicative and emotive triggers. It is through these details in public spaces that visual codes can be interpreted and defined as key ‘ingredients’ sought by different sporting activities and their associated social networks. It locates these codes as factors of spatial affordance – the action possibilities permitted to us by our interpretation of a space. It is largely via these affordances that the practice of sport has to be facilitated or encouraged, for a social network to be able to develop in public space. In order to engage the interest of the potential sports-players, public sporting facilities most traditionally employ conventions for sporting activities, involving (a) the purposeful specification of spaces with particular three dimensional objects: (e.g. the ‘goal’), and/or (b) two dimensional frontiers (e.g. the ‘pitch’) – codes which often delimit spaces to being for specifc interpretation and use by particular sports. However, this paper considers how the spatial elements required to play a given sport can become intuitively abstracted (as interpretations by the player) from all kinds of elements found in public spaces. In these cases, institutionally-defined (‘formal’) public sporting facilities can become less popular than participant-defined or collaboratively-defined (‘informal’) spaces, where the participants (or ‘users’, in design terms) can express some of their own expertise and experience as the space can become more flexible to their own versions of different activities, often offering added value to a given environment and more diverse user groups. Consequently, the ‘visual codes’ emitted by a space play an important part in determining if sport is ‘played’ there or not, and if so - which type(s) and between who. Designers, architects, planners and place managers need to learn from these scenarios in order to anticipate and facilitate possible ranges of activity within highly demanded city spaces, towards provisions promote growth of social networks without promoting social conflict

Investigation of metabolic responses to exercise in adolescents and adults during high intensity exercise and recovery

Children and adolescents are thought to use oxidative metabolism to a greater extent than adults during high intensity exercise. The studies reported in this thesis examine the nature and implications of age-related differences in muscle metabolism during high intensity exercise and recovery. Chapter 4 concluded that during heavy intensity exercise, phosphocreatine (PCr) kinetics did not differ with age or sex, while Chapter 5 revealed that during very heavy intensity exercise, the fundamental τ was slower and slow component amplitude greater in men compared with adolescent boys, indicating that exercise intensity might play a role in determining age-related differences in muscle metabolism. In Chapter 6, two bouts of very heavy intensity exercise were completed, and prior exercise reduced the PCr slow component amplitude in men but not boys. Deoxyhaemoglobin (HHb) kinetics was faster in adolescents compared with adults during both heavy and very heavy intensity exercise, indicating that matching of oxygen delivery to oxygen utilisation is less precise at the onset of exercise in adolescents compared with adults. PCr recovery from high intensity exercise was faster in boys than men, but not different in girls and women, as described in Chapter 7. The speed of PCr recovery was correlated with maturity in adolescents, but was not correlated with end-exercise [PCr] or pH. Two different tests to measure mitochondrial capacity in adolescents were evaluated in Chapter 8, and a fitted curve and gated test were both used to determine PCr recovery kinetics. Finally, in Chapter 9, age-related differences in muscle metabolism and oxygenation during fatiguing exercise were examined; a strong trend for greater fatigue in adults compared with adolescents was accompanied by greater metabolic perturbation in adults. Overall, these data show that muscle metabolism and oxygenation differs between adolescents and adults during and following very high intensity exercise