Designing with Care - Interior Design and Residential Child Care Final Report

This exploratory study examined the attitudes to a range of design interventions in four residential care homes for children in South Lanarkshire. The project set out to identify the benefits and disadvantages to young people and staff of a change in approach to the design of interior spaces. It was undertaken by Farm7 (specialists in design research and consultancy) and the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (SIRCC). The main focus of the research was to evaluate design interventions aimed at removing 'institutional' approaches to design in the care environment and improving the experience of looked after children. This involved the commissioning of interior design consultants Graven Images in the development and design of South Lanarkshire's residential children's homes. Post-occupancy evaluation of the four residential homes was undertaken with the participation of both looked after children and staff. It was envisaged that this study would contribute to the development of design guidance that will promote a more systematic approach to the design of care environments. This will allow social work and design professionals to draw on a design framework in order to significantly enhance the experience of looked after children and staff

Recruitment : Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction

In this article, we examine methods that participants use to resolve troubles in the realization of practical courses of action. The concept of recruitment is developed to encompass the linguistic and embodied ways in which assistance may be sought – requested or solicited – or in which we come to perceive another’s need and offer or volunteer assistance. We argue that these methods are organized as a continuum, from explicit requests, to practices that elicit offers, to anticipations of need. We further identify a class of subsidiary actions that can precede recruitment and that publicly expose troubles and thereby create opportunities for others to assist. Data in American and British English

‘A productive and happy collaboration’: maximising impact through project design

This case study describes a highly collaborative project created to develop an online self-assessment tool that offers students the opportunity to plan their preparedness to enter the work place named the Preparation for Placement Assessment Tool. The aim of the project was to develop an artefact that aidsall students to think about and prepare for placements, and more broadly to be work-ready. It also aims to help disabled students to identify and manage their individual needs. Working in collaboration with students is offered as an effective strategy for improving project outcomes and managing the tensions for academics of balancing research, teaching, learning and scholarly activities.This paper discusses the project background, design and delivery, which includes the engagement of a diverse mix of students, and the practice research methodologies used. Discussion focuses on the project’s impact, particularly on the students involved. Four key factors: student power, methodology, the use of funding and slow burn are identified as significant for success

Searching for Trouble: Recruiting Assistance through Embodied Action

The recruitment of assistance constitutes a basic organizational problem for participants in social interaction. The methods of recruitment that we have identified include embodied displays of trouble which create opportunities for others to give or offer assistance. In this report, we examine one coherent set of such embodied displays in detail: visible searches of the environment. We first distinguish between looking and searching as different forms of embodied action and then describe the specific embodied practices that participants use to produce visible searches

Developing system leaders : A research engagement approach

For those in ‘system leader’ roles in English schools, whether formally designated or informally appropriated, there has not been much systematic or long-term thinking about professional development to date. To contribute to such thinking, this paper presents a common framework for system leader development, based on consultancy research. The framework is broad in scope and critical in approach and can be adapted to role and function. Working within the assumption that all system leaders are consultants, it shows how a research engagement process can combine consultancy practice with consultancy research to generate professional development activities. During this process, system leaders work with higher education institution (HEI) researchers, to progressively interrogate their practice against consultancy research around four themes: ‘relationships’; ‘skills’; ‘outcomes’; and ‘the wider context’. At the same time, the researchers variously move through the roles of providers of research summaries, to co-creators of professional development activities, to co-facilitators of Action Learning Sets. It is argued that this research engagement process has much to offer HEIs and groups of schools wishing to collaborate on system leader development in the interest of generating principled, long-term helping relationships in a self- improving system

Depletion of atmospheric nitrate and chloride as a consequence of the Toba Volcanic Eruption

Continuous measurements of SO42− and electrical conductivity (ECM) along the GISP2 ice core record the Toba mega‐eruption at a depth 2590.95 to 2091.25 m (71,000±5000 years ago). Major chemical species were analyzed at a resolution of 1 cm per sample for this section. An ∼6‐year long period with extremely high volcanic SO42− coincident with a 94% depletion of nitrate and 63% depletion of chloride is observed at the depth of the Toba horizon. Such a reduction of chloride in a volcanic layer preserved in an ice core has not been observed in any previous studies. The nearly complete depletion of nitrate (to 5 ppb) encountered at the Toba level is the lowest value in the entire ∼250,000 years of the GISP2 ice core record. We propose possible mechanisms to explain the depletion of nitrate and chloride resulting from this mega‐eruption

The boundary of recruitment: a response

In their commentaries, both Heritage (2016/this issue) and Zinken and Rossi (2016/this issue) provide some context for our concept of and approach to recruitment in terms of previous research into requesting and offering. In doing so, they usefully consider what might be the “boundaries” of recruitment—what might be included and what might not be included or treated as recruitment. We respond here to their suggestions concerning these boundaries

Blind estimation of room acoustic parameters from speech and music signals

The acoustic character of a space is often quantified using objective room acoustic parameters. The measurement of these parameters is difficult in occupied conditions and thus measurements are usually performed when the space is un-occupied. This is despite the knowledge that occupancy can impact significantly on the measured parameter value. Within this thesis new methods are developed by which naturalistic signals such as speech and music can be used to perform acoustic parameter measurement. Adoption of naturalistic signals enables passive measurement during orchestral performances and spoken announcements, thus facilitating easy in-situ measurement. Two methods are described within this work; (1) a method utilising artificial neural networks where a network is taught to recognise acoustic parameters from received, reverberated signals and (2) a method based on the maximum likelihood estimation of the decay curve of the room from which parameters are then calculated. (1) The development of the neural network method focuses on a new pre-processor for use with music signals. The pre-processor utilises a narrow band filter bank with centre frequencies chosen based on the equal temperament scale. The success of a machine learning method is linked to the quality of the training data and therefore realistic acoustic simulation algorithms were used to generate a large database of room impulse responses. Room models were defined with realistic randomly generated geometries and surface properties; these models were then used to predict the room impulse responses. (2) In the second approach, a statistical model of the decay of sound in a room was further developed. This model uses a maximum likelihood (ML) framework to yield a number of decay curve estimates from a received reverberant signal. The success of the method depends on a number of stages developed for the algorithm; (a) a pre-processor to select appropriate decay phases for estimation purposes, (b) a rigorous optimisation algorithm to ensure the correct maximum likelihood estimate is found and (c) a method to yield a single optimum decay curve estimate from which the parameters are calculated. The ANN and ML methods were tested using orchestral music and speech signals. The ANN method tended to perform well when estimating the early decay time (EDT), for speech and music signals the error was within the subjective difference limens. However, accuracy was reduced for the reverberation time (Rt) and other parameters. By contrast the ML method performed well for Rt with results for both speech and music within the difference limens for reasonable (<4s) reverberation time. In addition reasonable accuracy was found for EDT, Clarity (C80), Centre time (Ts) and Deutichkeit (D). The ML method is also capable of producing accurate estimates of the binaural parameters Early Lateral Energy Fraction (LEF) and the late lateral strength (LG). A number of real world measurements were carried out in concert halls where the ML accuracy was shown to be sufficient for most parameters. The ML method has the advantage over the ANN method due to its truly blind nature (the ANN method requires a period of learning and is therefore semi-blind). The ML method uses gaps of silence between notes or utterances, when these silence regions are not present the method does not produce an estimate. Accurate estimation requires a long recording (hours of music or many minutes of speech) to ensure that at least some silent regions are present. This thesis shows that, given a sufficiently long recording, accurate estimates of many acoustic parameters can be obtained directly from speech and music. Further extensions to the ML method detailed in this thesis combine the ML estimated decay curve with cepstral methods which detect the locations of early reflections. This improves the accuracy of many of the parameter estimates.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Potential atmospheric impact of the Toba Mega‐Eruption ∼71,000 years ago

An ∼6‐year long period of volcanic sulfate recorded in the GISP2 ice core about 71,100 ± 5000 years ago may provide detailed information on the atmospheric and climatic impact of the Toba mega‐eruption. Deposition of these aerosols occur at the beginning of an ∼1000‐year long stadial event, but not immediately before the longer glacial period beginning ∼67,500 years ago. Total stratospheric loading estimates over this ∼6‐year period range from 2200 to 4400 Mt of H2SO4 aerosols. The range in values is given to compensate for uncertainties in aerosol transport. Magnitude and longevity of the atmospheric loading may have led directly to enhanced cooling during the initial two centuries of this ∼1000‐year cooling event