How can the architectural design of public buildings be improved for Visually Impaired people?

The aim of this paper is to identify issues that visually impaired (VI) people face in public buildings and, where possible, suggest design solutions. Research methods involved interviewing VI individuals with varying levels of vision, to gain first-hand insight into their experiences within public buildings. Several discussed issues included the importance of multi-sensory design and the observation that acoustic features can lead to disorientation. The paper considers use of lighting, importance of design consistency, and benefits of natural light and hindrance of glare. It emphasises the importance of contrast, to distinguish between features, around doorframes and on the nosing of stairs, and use of staircase tactile indicators and extended handrails, to improve safety. The paper also highlights the importance of consulting VI individuals to make use of their embodied expertise in a co-design process, to hopefully help make public buildings more accessible to VI people

Annotated Bibliography: Interdisciplinarity

This annotated bibliography contains journal articles, reports and online resources relating to the contemporary state-of-play of interdisciplinary research within the social sciences, with an emphasis upon the United Kingdom. It forms the initial part of a scoping study conducted by the NCRM hub between October 2008 and March 2009

Governing the knowledge economy : the World Bank as a gatekeeper for development

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Developing the implicit association test to uncover hidden preferences for sustainable drainage systems

Understanding public perceptions of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) is critical for addressing barriers to their implementation. Perceptions are typically evaluated using explicit measures (e.g. questionnaires) that are subject to biases and may not fully capture attitudes towards SuDS. A novel image-based application of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is developed to investigate unconscious perceptions of SuDS in public greenspace, and combined with explicit tests to evaluate perceptions of greenspace with and without SuDS, focussing on a sample population in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Greenspace with or without SuDS is perceived positively by the sample population. Overall, respondents implicitly and explicitly prefer greenspace without SuDS, and perceive greenspace without SuDS as more attractive, tidier and safer. The wide distribution of scores for SuDS, nonetheless, suggests a range of opinions and illustrates the complex nature of preferences for the use of greenspace. That the strongly negative explicit scores were not reflected in the implicit tests may suggest that explicit attitudes towards tidiness and safety may not be deep-rooted and are subject to social bias. Combined explicit and implicit tests may help us to understand any disconnect between expressed positive attitudes to natural spaces and behaviours around them, and inform SuDS design to increase public acceptance

Willing to have, willing to help, or ready to own—Determinants of variants of stewardship social practices around Blue-Green Infrastructure in dense urban communities

IntroductionThere is increasing acceptance of the desirability of involving communities in stewardship activities around urban blue-green infrastructure (BGI) to generate acceptance, reduce vandalism and decrease the maintenance burden on authorities. However, little is yet known about the willingness of communities to engage in such stewardship, or the drivers to participate in activities.MethodsThis research adopted a practice lens and firstly defined three variants of BGI stewardship associated with passive acceptance, active care for and ownership of BGI. Secondly, the research conceptualized these practices within a complex of pro-environmental practices communities could perform. Through a face-to-face household survey in a dense UK urban area, the research sought to identify the prevalence of these variants of practice, their associations with other pro-environmental practices and the meanings, resources and competencies that drive a household's willingness to engage.ResultsThe research found different willingness for the three variants with passive most popular and ownership least. Meanings associated with BGI stewardship practice appeared to differ in crucial respects from other pro-environmental practices and were most associated with water-management rather than climate concern, however some place-based motivations were also involved. Practical resource and competency considerations also affected willingness to perform active stewardship and ownership variants.DiscussionThe research concluded that promoting the water-management aspects of BGI for all variants, along with facilitation of engagement with more active variants, could increase interest in BGI stewardship participation

Sustainable Blue-Green Infrastructure: A social practice approach to understanding community preferences and stewardship

© 2019 Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) is an approach to urban flood resilience, recognised globally and in international literature, that capitalises on the benefits of working with urban green-spaces and naturalised water-flows. Literature reveals BGI's sustainable functioning and benefits-provision depend on the behaviour of those who use it, therefore local stewardship is often proposed to support maintenance. However, there is a gap in understanding the requirements and behaviours of users, as well as their potential for developing stewardship behaviours, that is not addressed through traditional analysis approaches based around demographics. Therefore, this research used correlation analysis of survey data from two locations in the UK to explore the potential contribution of Social Practice Theory (SPT) to improve such understanding. Results show statistically significant correlation (better than 1%) between performance of practices associated with urban BGI and attitudes towards BGI stewardship, whereas demographic variables showed little correlation. Reflection on the practices demonstrates that this connection is traceable through the meanings people attach to their practices, the benefits of BGI spaces as material to those practices and their competencies in relation to existing and proposed stewardship practices. Practices, it is proposed, have embedded behaviours and attitudes that transcend locational and demographic factors. These findings imply in a wider context that, for any proposed or existing BGI, understanding associated practices would improve targeting of stewardship-engagement towards users with compatible meanings and competencies. Furthermore, sustainable design of BGI would benefit from consultation with all identified user-groups in order to understand existing and potential practices

Relationship of C-reactive protein reduction to cardiovascular event reduction following treatment with canakinumab: a secondary analysis from the CANTOS randomised controlled trial

Canakinumab, a monoclonal antibody targeting interleukin-1β, reduces inflammation and cardiovascular event rates with no effect on lipid concentrations. However, it is uncertain which patient groups benefit the most from treatment and whether reductions in the inflammatory biomarker high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) correlate with clinical benefits for individual patients.The Canakinumab Anti-Inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study (CANTOS) used computer-generated codes to randomly allocate 10 061 men and women with a history of myocardial infarction to placebo or one of three doses of canakinumab (50 mg, 150 mg, or 300 mg) given subcutaneously once every 3 months. In a prespecified secondary analysis designed to address the relationship of hsCRP reduction to event reduction in CANTOS, we evaluated the effects of canakinumab on rates of major adverse cardiovascular events, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality according to on-treatment concentrations of hsCRP. We used multivariable modelling to adjust for baseline factors associated with achieved hsCRP and multiple sensitivity analyses to address the magnitude of residual confounding. The median follow-up was 3·7 years. The trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01327846.Baseline clinical characteristics did not define patient groups with greater or lesser cardiovascular benefits when treated with canakinumab. However, trial participants allocated to canakinumab who achieved hsCRP concentrations less than 2 mg/L had a 25% reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events (multivariable adjusted hazard ratio [HRadj]=0·75, 95% CI 0·66-0·85, p<0·0001), whereas no significant benefit was observed among those with on-treatment hsCRP concentrations of 2 mg/L or above (HRadj=0·90, 0·79-1·02, p=0·11). For those treated with canakinumab who achieved on-treatment hsCRP concentrations less than 2 mg/L, cardiovascular mortality (HRadj=0·69, 95% CI 0·56-0·85, p=0·0004) and all-cause mortality (HRadj=0·69, 0·58-0·81, p<0·0001) were both reduced by 31%, whereas no significant reduction in these endpoints was observed among those treated with canakinumab who achieved hsCRP concentrations of 2 mg/L or above. Similar differential effects were found in analyses of the trial prespecified secondary cardiovascular endpoint (which additionally included hospitalisation for unstable angina requiring unplanned revascularisation) and in sensitivity analyses alternatively based on median reductions in hsCRP, on 50% or greater reductions in hsCRP, on the median percent reduction in hsCRP, in dose-specific analyses, and in analyses using a causal inference approach to estimate the effect of treatment among individuals who would achieve a targeted hsCRP concentration.The magnitude of hsCRP reduction following a single dose of canakinumab might provide a simple clinical method to identify individuals most likely to accrue the largest benefit from continued treatment. These data further suggest that lower is better for inflammation reduction with canakinumab.Novartis Pharmaceuticals

Sustainable drainage systems: Helping people live with water

Sustainable drainage systems or ‘Suds’ are increasingly accepted as an effective means of ‘making space for water’, adapting to possible climate change and helping communities become more flood and drought resilient. This study explores potential shifts in perception and attitude through Suds installation, development and habituation. Attitudes and awareness in communities in the USA and UK, where Suds have been in place for some time, were compared and contrasted, examining any evolution of beliefs and practices and wider community resilience. The principal finding was that there existed a lack of understanding about the existence and function of Suds. The paper concludes that consultation regarding solutions during Suds planning and installation, and ongoing dialogue afterwards, could usefully be explored as a means to improve local awareness of and satisfaction with Suds and promote greater understanding of their function. This may in turn encourage behaviour change to improve longer-term functionality of Suds and increase community resilience to flooding and drought

Initiating and continuing participation in citizen science for natural history

Background: Natural history has a long tradition in the UK, dating back to before Charles Darwin. Developing from a principally amateur pursuit, natural history continues to attract both amateur and professional involvement. Within the context of citizen science and public engagement, we examine the motivations behind citizen participation in the national survey activities of the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) programme, looking at: people’s experiences of the surveys as ‘project-baed leisure’; their motivations for taking part and barriers to continued participation; where they feature on our continuum of engagement; and whether participation in an OPAL survey facilitated their movement between categories along this continuum. The paper focuses on a less-expected but very significant outcome regarding the participation of already-engaged amateur naturalists in citizen science. Methods: The paper draws upon research conducted by the authors (a sociologist of science and a cultural geographer) over a five-year period, who followed the development and implementation of the OPAL surveys. The authors engaged with members of the public and natural history enthusiasts to understand how and why people engaged with the OPAL surveys, seeking to explore the motivations and barriers they faced to any further engagement with natural history. This involved carrying out interviews and focus groups with willing participants. Results: Our main findings relate to: first, how committed amateur naturalists (already-engaged) have also enjoyed contributing to OPAL and the need to respect and work with their interest to encourage broader and deeper involvement; and second, how new (previously-unengaged) and relatively new participants (casually-engaged) have gained confidence, renewed their interests, refocussed their activities and/or gained validation from participation in OPAL. Overall, we argue that engagement with and enthusiasm for the scientific process is a motivation shared by citizens who, prior to participating in the OPAL surveys, were previously-unengaged, casually-engaged or already-engaged in natural history activities. Conclusions: Citizen science has largely been written about by professional scientists for professional scientists interested in developing a project of their own. This study offers a qualitative example of how citizen science can be meaningful to participants beyond what might appear to be a public engagement data collection exercise