Architecture Live Projects acquiring and applying missing practice-ready skills

This study concerns itself with examining the degree to which Live Projects can deliver learning experiences that enable architecture students to gain specific professional practice-ready skills and capabilities currently perceived to be lacking within the existing school curriculum - (1) collaborative interaction within and between inter-disciplinary teams, (2) participatory engagement with clients & civic concerns and the (3) capability to manage emergent ambiguities in risk exposure & decision-making –and as a consequence examine (4) how embryonic Live Project assessment rudiments might contribute to this acquisition? Architects are under increased pressure to demonstrate the value of their contribution within the process of building design and construction. They are tasked with working effectively in teams, collaborating effectively with clients and end users and to cope with growing levels of risk and liability, uncertainty and ambiguity, often requiring greater creative leadership and commercial risk-taking in order to succeed. The need for architects to acquire three skillsets to cope with these conditions imposes changing expectations around the architect's role in practice and places increased pressure upon schools of Architecture to ensure their students are equipped with gaining these skillsets. The question emerges as to whether a less-established teaching model – Live Projects - might be able to deliver skills that will not only respond to, but also endure the ongoing changes within professional practice? And if so, in relation to what skillsets? In contrast to other research enquiries concerning Live Projects and literature concerning architectural education in general, this thesis gathered evidence from a highly diverse range of sources – including data on emergent economic and industrial trends outside of the construction sector - as a means to define what the most valuable skillsets might be. For schools of architecture, the specific challenge is to not only to work out how to teach these skillsets but to design and then assess learning activities that facilitate and reward their acquisition. Subsequently, this thesis also examines whether tentative assessment rudiments can play an enabling role in this respect. Within a broader learning theory context, this enquiry supports a wider body of emergent evidence that Live Projects offer learning experiences consistent with much of the literature regarding effective pedagogy - one that involves authentic and active engagement with real situations being more effective at enabling learning more relevant to the nascent demands of wider industry. Subsequently, the main question being considered – as reflected in the title - is: To what extent do Live Projects enable the acquisition and application of three ‘practice-ready’ skillsets? This question is then operationalised by examining this efficacy in relation to four sub-questions. 1. To what extent can Live Projects enable students to acquire inter-disciplinary teamwork capabilities? 2. To what extent can Live Projects enable students to acquire client collaboration & civic engagement capabilities? 3. To what extent can Live Projects enable students to acquire ambiguity tolerance & risk management capabilities? 4. To what extent might Live Project assessment rudiments assist in the acquisition of the three skillsets? In order to answer these questions, the enquiry employed qualitative as well as quantitative data collection methods. The qualitative evidence largely utilised grounded theory methods and analysis as a means to examine the perceptions of educators, architects and students. This involved the discovery of theory through the analysis of data and real world research, which focuses upon problem solving with a view to creating meaningful change. The mixed methods approach relied upon triangulation as a means to cross-examine evidence from the different data sets and to strengthen validity. The themes relating to the missing skillsets were then inter-related to highlight any interdependencies and to ensure a rigorous level of analysis and abstraction. Findings in relation to each skillset were isolated within focused chapters. Mixed method or ‘multi-method’ analysis - involving a series of matrices - was used to compare both quantitative and (selected sections of) qualitative data. In line with practice-based research methodology, an extended and iterative period of data gathering and analysis allowed the researcher to consolidate observations regarding the acquisition of specific skills in both an academic as well as a practice context to consolidate into a concise set of learning concepts. The thesis subsequently used these learning concepts to define tentative assessment rudiments. The samples chosen for this study were situated in two distinctly different contexts; in practice and in education: encompassing architects, trainee architects, students and educators both with and without Live Project experience, to enable a clear set of variables for comparative analysis. The samples were also drawn from both the US and UK – a useful consequence of research funding in terms of providing quantitative data and comparable cohorts. These insights were then used to tentatively explore practical ways the acquisition of these skillsets could be assessed. The conclusions of this study identify that Live Projects can enable students to acquire the three skillsets due to their ability to offer experiences that more closely align with professional practice. However it also pinpoints specific contingencies such as ensuring Live Project success is measured in terms of processes and not just outcomes - and - that keeping Live Projects as non-compulsory, extra curricula options or adjuncts to more established teaching models allows them to retain their inherently flexible, adaptive and responsive nature. Whilst there is general view that a lack of formal acknowledgement of Live Projects within the curricula-validating infrastructure of RIBA & NAAB has contributed to a collective sense that Live Projects are undervalued, the evidence suggests that the opposite is true – that Live Projects do have the ability to meet the criteria for validation extensively and effectively and can make the validation criterion more accessible and meaningful to students – and -because Live Projects encompass a hugely diverse range of projects by their nature of being holistically responsive to a set of site and community specific circumstances – assessment rudiments (rather than a design brief) might be the only unifying criteria. Given the current crisis in underemployment and the rise of the unpaid internship, these capabilities are of increasing relevance and value. Furthermore, it is transposable skills – which all three of the skillsets are – as opposed to those that are exclusive and unique to architecture – that are most likely to best serve students in future, whether or not they choose to become professional architects. Traditional subject specific skills are undeniably important, but transposable skills deserve greater emphasis and investment given the economic reality of finite resources and demands for greater user participation. Finally, for architectural educators already engaged in or initiating Live Projects, this thesis provides theoretical as well as an applied-knowledge framework to draw from, encompassing a practical as well as passionate advocacy for their wider implementation

The noise performance of electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices at X-ray energies

Electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices (EMCCDs) are used in low-light-level (L3) applications for detecting optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared photons (10–1100 nm). The on-chip gain process is able to increase the detectability of any signal collected by the device through the multiplication of the signal before the output node. Thus, the effective readout noise can be reduced to subelectron levels, allowing the detection of single photons. However, this gain process introduces an additional noise component due to the stochastic nature of the multiplication. In optical applications, this additional noise has been characterized. The broadening of the detected peak is described by the excess noise factor. This factor tends to a value of √2 at high gain (>100x). In X-ray applications, the situation is improved by the effect that Fano factor f has on the shot noise associated with X-ray photon detection (f ≈ 0.12 at X-ray energies). In this paper, the effect of the detection of X-ray photons in silicon is assessed both analytically and through a Monte Carlo model of the gain amplification process. The excess noise on the signal is predicted (termed the modified Fano factor) for photon detection in an EM-CCD at X-ray energies. A hypothesis is made that the modified Fano factor should tend to 1.115 at high levels of gain (>10x). In order to validate the predictions made, measurements were taken using an 55 Fe source with Mn k-alpha X-ray energy of 5898 eV. These measurements allowed the hypothesis to be verified

The noise performance of electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices at soft X-ray energy values

The use of electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for high-resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy has been proposed in previous studies, and the analysis that followed experimentally identified and verified a modified Fano factor for X-ray detection using an 55Fe X-ray source. However, further experiments with soft X-rays at 1000 eV were less successful, attributed to excessive split events. More recently, through the use of deep-depletion e2v CCD220 and on-chip binning, it has been possible to greatly reduce the number of split events, allowing the result for the modified Fano factor at soft X-ray energy values to be verified. This paper looks at the earlier attempt to verify the modified Fano factor at 1000 eV with e2v CCD97 and shows the issues created by splitting of the charge cloud between pixels. It then compares these earlier results with new data collected using e2v CCD220, investigating how split-event reduction allows the modified Fano factor to be verified for low-energy X-rays

Creating Calibration Curves to Determine Shock Pressure in Clinopyroxene

Impact cratering is an important geological process that occurs on every rocky body in the solar system. It alters the texture and mineralogy of rocks via shock metamorphism. The peak shock pressures experienced by a rock are traditionally evaluated using qualitative optical methods however, quantitative methods do exist. One such method was developed by Uchizono et al., who used X-ray Diffraction (XRD) to measure lattice strain () in several artificially shocked olivine grains using XRD peak broadening as a function of tan , where is the diffraction angle. They plotted the values against the known peak shock pressures experienced by the olivine grains. Using this calibration curve, the precise shock pressure experienced by a grain of olivine can be determined using its measured value. Another method was developed by McCausland et al. and Izawa et al., who used in situ XRD to measure strain-related mosaicity (SRM) of olivine in several ordinary chondrites and enstatite in enstatite chondrites, respectively. They plotted these results against the shock stage estimates for these meteorites. Using these plots, meteorites can be assigned to shock stage bins by measuring the SRM of olivine and/or enstatite. Both methods are useful for evaluating shock metamorphism, however, they have limitations. Uchizono et al.s calibration curve has been successfully applied to martian meteorites, however it can only be applied to olivine-bearing rocks. McCausland et al.s and Izawa et al.s SRM method is uncalibrated and is limited to binning meteorites by shock stage. This work aims to expand on both methods by creating calibration curves for clinopyroxene (CPX): one for , similar to Uchizono et al.s calibration curve for olivine, and one for SRM. This will extend the application of shock calibration methods to a greater variety of rock types. Preliminary results are presented herein

Electron-multiplying CCDs for future soft X-ray spectrometers

CCDs have been used in several high resolution soft X-ray spectrometers for both space and terrestrial applications such as the Reflection Grating Spectrometer on XMM-Newton and the Super Advanced X-ray Emission Spectrometer at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland. However, with their ability to use multiplication gain to amplify signal and suppress readout noise, EM-CCDs are being considered instead of CCDs for future soft X-ray spectrometers. When detecting low energy X-rays, EM-CCDs are able to increase the Signal-to-Noise ratio of the device, making the X-rays much easier to detect. If the signal is also significantly split between neighbouring pixels, the increase in the size of the signal will make complete charge collection and techniques such as centroiding easier to accomplish. However, multiplication gain from an EM-CCD does cause a degradation of the energy resolution of the device and there are questions about how the high field region in an EM-CCD will behave over time in high radiation environments. This paper analyses the possible advantages and disadvantages of using EM-CCDs for high resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy and suggests in which situations using them would not only be possible, but also beneficial to the instrument

Compact CMOS camera demonstrator (C3D) for Ukube-1

The Open University, in collaboration with e2v technologies and XCAM Ltd, have been selected to fly an EO (Earth Observation) technology demonstrator and in-orbit radiation damage characterisation instrument on board the UK Space Agency's UKube-1 pilot Cubesat programme. Cubesat payloads offer a unique opportunity to rapidly build and fly space hardware for minimal cost, providing easy access to the space environment. Based around the e2v 1.3 MPixel 0.18 micron process eye-on-Si CMOS devices, the instrument consists of a radiation characterisation imager as well as a narrow field imager (NFI) and a wide field imager (WFI). The narrow and wide field imagers are expected to achieve resolutions of 25 m and 350 m respectively from a 650 km orbit, providing sufficient swathe width to view the southern UK with the WFI and London with the NFI. The radiation characterisation experiment has been designed to verify and reinforce ground based testing that has been conducted on the e2v eye-on-Si family of devices and includes TEC temperature control circuitry as well as RADFET in-orbit dosimetry. Of particular interest are SEU and SEL effects. The novel instrument design allows for a wide range of capabilities within highly constrained mass, power and space budgets providing a model for future use on similarly constrained missions, such as planetary rovers. Scheduled for launch in December 2011, this 1 year low cost programme should not only provide valuable data and outreach opportunities but also help to prove flight heritage for future missions