Tackling barriers to take-up of fuel poverty alleviation measures

Although there has been much work around the take-up of fuel poverty alleviation programmes carried out this has generally focussed on evidence from frontline managers and other stakeholders. Any investigation with end users has been minimal. Funded by Eaga Partnership Charitable Trust, Sustainable Cities Research Institute carried out a community-based investigation into barriers and possible solutions to the uptake of fuel poverty alleviation programmes. A combination of desk-based research with frontline staff and Participatory Appraisal (PA) techniques with communities were used to carry out this research. 362 people took part in the PA and 17 frontline staff returned detailed questionnaires. 4 areas were studied: 3 with poor and one with good take-up. Additionally vulnerable groups of consumers were identified; elderly, Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups and rural consumers. Each of the 3 areas with poor take-up has a good concentration of one of the identified vulnerable groups

Alignment of professional, academic and industrial development needs for quantity surveyors

The academic, professional and training needs of Quantity Surveyors are pulled by different stakeholders in different directions. Academics are interested in producing a rounded graduate with the basic foundation in knowledge for further development whereas professional bodies are interested in graduates capable of progression to full professional status through the achievement of the required core competencies (RICS, 2009). The industry is looking for a graduate who can straight away contribute to the growth and daily functions of business activity. Hence, there is a three directional pull on the development needs of the Quantity Surveyor (QS). The present education system of the QS does not recognise these multi-directional needs and hence often produces a graduate whom the industry sees as not fulfilling their requirements. This leads to many problems with greater levels of employer and graduate dissatisfaction and obstacles to early career development of the QS graduate. This research aims at investigating the changing development needs of Quantity Surveyors within a post recession industrial environment that satisfies the aspirations of industrial, professional and academic stakeholders. The paper will present the initial findings of the research based on a series of stakeholder interviews examining RICS competencies and academic curricular

Heart to Heart: Exploring Heart Rate Variability in Insomnia Patient Subtypes

Insomnia is one of the most common complaints in medical practice and the sleep disorder of highest prevalence. At least 10% of the worldwide population has chronic insomnia, which has been associated with a range of negative health outcomes. Within the clinical setting, patient subtypes have been defined according to symptomology. More recently insomnia researchers have proposed phenotypes based on total sleep time during overnight polysomnography (PSG). Short-sleeping insomnia patients are purported to be a biologically severe phenotype at higher risk of cardiovascular morbidity, poor mental health, and obesity (compared to healthy controls). Heart rate variability (HRV) is an objective marker that provides insight into autonomic nervous system dynamics. The overarching aim of my research was to explore a large clinical sample of patients with Insomnia Disorder to determine whether differences in HRV exist during sleep in empirically-derived insomnia patient subtypes. The aim of the work presented within Chapter 2 was to identify all previous insomnia-HRV research to determine if HRV was impaired in adult patients with insomnia, and whether treatments altered HRV. A systematic review of five web databases located 22 relevant articles; 17 case-control studies and 5 interventions studies. Results were difficult to synthesise due to incomparable methodology and reporting. There was a high risk of bias in the majority of studies. It was concluded that although HRV impairment in insomnia may be a widely-accepted concept, it is not supported by research nor has it been determined if it varies after treatment or according to patient subtype. The aim of the first empirical study of the thesis (Chapter 3) was to objectively-derive insomnia patient subtypes and evaluate their physiological signals (HRV and electroencephalography [EEG]) during sleep onset. Patients (n = 96) with clinically-diagnosed Insomnia Disorder underwent overnight PSG to determine sleep metrics for cluster analysis using Ward’s method: Total Sleep Time (TST), Wake After Sleep Onset (WASO) and Sleep Onset Latency (SOL). Electrocardiogram (ECG) from the PSG was extracted in the 10 minutes before and after sleep onset. After R-wave detection, the ECG was visually checked and manually corrected as required. Six time and frequency-domain HRV measures were analyzed; heart rate (HR), standard deviation of all N-N intervals (SDNN), root mean square of successive R-R intervals (RMSSD), percentage of successive R-R intervals that differ by > 50 ms (PNN50), high frequency (HF), and low frequency (LF)/HF ratio. Cluster analysis derived two solutions; one comprising two subtypes and another with three subtypes. The two cluster solution consisted of insomnia with short-sleep duration (I-SSD: n = 43) and insomnia with normal objective sleep duration (I-NSD: n = 53). At sleep onset, between-group HRV analysis revealed reduced parasympathetic activity (PNN50 and RMSSD) in the short-sleeping subtype. This was not mirrored by significant increases in HR and/or the LF/HF ratio. These findings suggested that reduced parasympathetic activity during sleep onset might contribute to poor cardiometabolic health outcomes previously reported in short-sleeping insomnia patients. The final component of this thesis was a case-control study (Chapter 4) which examined whether HRV measures differed between insomnia subtypes across the nocturnal period. It was hypothesized that short-sleeping insomnia patients would have impaired HRV compared to normal-sleep duration insomnia patients, consistent with differences observed at sleep onset (Chapter 3). Insomnia patients underwent overnight PSG, which provided sleep metrics for cluster analysis and ECG for HRV analysis. ECG was visually checked for accurate R-wave detection, and manually corrected as required. HRV analysis was performed from lights-off to lights-on (and separately by sleep/wake stage) using time and frequency-domain measures. Differences in HRV measures (HR, SDNN, RMSSD, LF, HF, LF/HF) were tested between the subtypes using General Linear Models controlling for age as a core confounder. Short-sleeping insomnia patients (I-SSD: n = 34; 45.5 ± 10.5 years) and normal-sleep duration insomnia patients (I-NSD: n = 41; 37.6 ± 10.9 years) were included in the HRV analysis. There were no statistically significant nocturnal HRV differences between subtypes after controlling for age. As such, short-sleeping insomnia patients did not have statistically significant reductions in HRV measures representative of parasympathetic activity.«br /» In summary, there was a lack of persistent nocturnal HRV disparities (between empirically-derived insomnia patient subtypes) that extended beyond sleep onset in this large clinical sample of patients with Insomnia Disorder. The central tenet of 24-hour hyperarousal amongst short-sleep duration insomnia patients cannot be supported by the combined findings of these two empirical studies. Post-hoc calculations revealed larger sample sizes would be required to determine a small to medium effect size difference in nocturnal HRV between insomnia patient subtypes. Until this time, the directional relationship between insomnia, heart rate variability, hyperarousal and cardiovascular disease remains unclear in the heterogeneous insomnia population

Appraisal of the housing, renewal and sustainability needs of rural areas of Gateshead

Gateshead Council commissioned Sustainable Cities Research Institute (SCRI) and Banks of Wear Community Projects Ltd (BOW) to carry out a housing, renewal and sustainability appraisal of rural areas of Gateshead Borough between May and August 2006. The work involved: A desk-based review of relevant strategies and documents. A door-to-door survey of 2,342 households in Gateshead’s six rural wards (Birtley; Lamesley; Ryton, Crookhill and Stella; Crawcrook and Greenside; Chopwell and Rowlands Gill; and Whickham South and Sunniside). The survey covered approximately 10% of the 23,266 households in these wards. Consultation with residents and other key stakeholders through focus groups and interviews. This process targeted: harder to reach groups such as younger and aspiring households, people who work, older people, and recent incomers to the area; estate agents, developers and other property professionals; local shopkeepers and traders; local businesses; public sector professionals active in relevant fields such as education, leisure, social and community services; elected members; and transport providers. SCRI managed the project and delivered the desk-based review and survey, while BOW carried out the consultation with stakeholders as a sub-contractor to SCRI

Scaling up: material culture as scaffold for the social brain

Many other species besides Homo sapiens are tool-users and even tool-makers, but one aspect of material culture still sets modern humans apart: our emotional and social engagement with objects. Here I argue that this engagement acted as a crucial scaffold for the scaling-up of human social networks beyond those of our closest relatives the chimpanzees to the global ‘small world’ of modern humans. Material culture plays a crucial role in conveying social information about relationships between people, places and things that extend geographically and temporally beyond the here and now – a role which allowed our ancestors to off-load some of the cognitive demands of maintaining such extensive social networks, and thereby surpass the limits to sociality imposed by neurology alone. Broad-scale developments in the archaeological record of the Lower Palaeolithic through to the early Neolithic are used to trace the process by which hominins and humans slowly scaled up their social worlds