Interrogating the Dynamics of Regulations on the Design of Energy Performance in Housing

Regulations are embedded in the practices of architects and, with growing regulatory complexity, particularly in the context of energy, understanding the role of regulations in shaping design decisions is becoming increasingly important. This paper conceptualizes the design of buildings as a socio-technical process. Using actor-network theory and controversy mapping techniques, it considers in detail how regulations, including non-energy-related regulations, interact with the design process to shape the energy performance of a dwelling for which I was the project architect. In doing so, the paper reveals that regulations are embedded in the design process and their flexibility impacts upon both the role of architects as intermediaries and the ability to predict performance outcomes on site

Developing digital interventions: a methodological guide.

Digital interventions are becoming an increasingly popular method of delivering healthcare as they enable and promote patient self-management. This paper provides a methodological guide to the processes involved in developing effective digital interventions, detailing how to plan and develop such interventions to avoid common pitfalls. It demonstrates the need for mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in order to develop digital interventions which are effective, feasible, and acceptable to users and stakeholders

Intellectualizing Adult Basic Literacy Education: A Case Study

At a time when accusations of American ignorance and anti-intellectualism are ubiquitous, this article challenges problematic assumptions about intellectualism and proposes an expanded view of intellectualism. It is important to recognize and to challenge narrow views of intellectualism because they not only influence public perceptions of and engagement with education and intellectualism, but they also affect what and how we teach in U.S. schools and aid in institutionalizing social hierarchies that privilege the knowledge, learning sites, and educational experiences of the cultural elite. To demonstrate the benefits of revising our views of intellectualism, I draw upon my observations of and interviews with adult learners participating in GED-preparation writing workshops

Revenge of the Realtors: The Procompetitive Case for Consolidating Multiple Listing Services

To say residential real estate is an important part of our nation\u27s economy is an understatement. Home ownership is either an asset or an aspiration for millions of Americans, and one needs only rewind the clock a decade for evidence of the financial ruin possible from buying and selling homes. But residential real estate transactions do not materialize out of thin air. Rather, the parties involved in a typical sale-buyers, sellers, agents, brokerages, online portals-all rely on critical infrastructure known as a multiple listing service (MLS) to get deals done. Simply put, an MLS is a platform that serves as a comprehensive database for information about the residential properties for sale within a specific geographic market at any given time. MLSs exist to facilitate connections between folks on opposite sides of the transaction by increasing listing exposure for sellers and by reducing search costs for buyers. While MLSs have existed for over a hundred years, they are currently undergoing a swift transformation in form, if not function. Where, as recently as fifteen years ago, there were more than one thousand MLSs across the country, there are now fewer than 650. But individual MLSs are not going away. No, they are being consolidated-merging with one another to expand territorial footprints, create operational efficiencies, and achieve the scale necessary to bargain effectively with disruptive new entrants. In our age of mega-mergers, these MLS consolidations may appear insignificant, but where there is consolidation there is the possibility of competitive harm under federal antitrust laws. Given the importance of MLSs to the market for residential real estate, any anticompetitive practices that attend a merger of MLSs could have devastating consequences. This Comment addresses that concern head-on. It contends that MLS mergers, on balance, enhance competition in the residential real estate industry and should survive the searching scrutiny of antitrust regulators

Identifying attack surfaces in the evolving space industry using reference architectures

The space environment is currently undergoing a substantial change and many new entrants to the market are deploying devices, satellites and systems in space; this evolution has been termed as NewSpace. The change is complicated by technological developments such as deploying machine learning based autonomous space systems and the Internet of Space Things (IoST). In the IoST, space systems will rely on satellite-to-x communication and interactions with wider aspects of the ground segment to a greater degree than existing systems. Such developments will inevitably lead to a change in the cyber security threat landscape of space systems. Inevitably, there will be a greater number of attack vectors for adversaries to exploit, and previously infeasible threats can be realised, and thus require mitigation. In this paper, we present a reference architecture (RA) that can be used to abstractly model in situ applications of this new space landscape. The RA specifies high-level system components and their interactions. By instantiating the RA for two scenarios we demonstrate how to analyse the attack surface using attack trees