Another Take on “A Different View” from an (access to) HE perspective

Teachers and lecturers helping youngsters and mature students to prepare for the transition from secondary to tertiary (HE) geography will be familiar with the challenges of encouraging pupils into students undergound this transition. What we ought to be concentrating on is critical thinking and debate, through the medium of geography as a discipline. After all, most of our students will not be employed as "geographers" after they graduate, though some will become geography teachers who need a critical edge to be able to teach and influence. I am proposing to have another look at a “A Different View” (ADV), the Geographical Associations' new manifesto - which I very much like, but expand on here

Future “greener” urban transport: accessible, mobile and resilient cities?

Geographers, amongst others, have been considering urban futures for some time now. They all try to conceptually understand what a “sustainable city” in Europe / the UK / globally might look like. oncepts such as liveable, “green”, sustainable and resilient are being discussed, with carbon emissions and transitions, including from transport. Mobility (or what some authors call motility) is one strand, with lifecycle assessment of vehicles and fuels being applied . This article reviews visions and policies for more resilient urban transport

What Could / Should YOUR “Urban Village” be (like) ?

This presentation is an expanded version of an invited input contribution to the Ouseburn Management Board in one of closed their strategy meeting earlier in May of that year. It looks critiaclly and the concept of "urban villages", how this might apply to the (Lower) Ousburn Valley, and how the community and its various player themselves could devise a process to explore a clearer understanding and positioning vis-a-vis the applicability and usefulness of this concept for their locality, on their terms

A review of electric vehicle charge point map websites in the NSR: Interim report

This interim report is a review of the EV charge point (station) map websites in the North Sea Region (NSR) with the aim to identify if there are any patterns, or any noticeable gaps on the information presented by the interactive EV charge point tools. For each example of the charge point (station) map website, a review has been undertaken by visiting the charge point (station) map website and recording if the site contains the information, which is of key importance from an EV user perspective, for example an interactive map; any information on the charger power of the charge points (stations); the type of connection of the charge points (stations); the addresses of the charge points (stations) and further helpful details

Student-produced podcasts as an assessment tool: an example from Geomorphology

The emergence of user-friendly technologies has made podcasting an accessible learning tool in undergraduate teaching. In a geomorphology course, student-produced podcasts were used as part of the assessment in 2008-2010. Student groups constructed radio shows aimed at a general audience to interpret and communicate geomorphological data within the context of relevant social and environmental issues. Questionnaire results suggest that the novel format engaged students, and promoted group working, IT, language and oral communication skills, and a deeper understanding of the context of geomorphic data. For teachers, podcasting technology offers efficient teaching of oral communication, with opportunities for distance and self-directed learning

A rights-based approach for risk reduction in the Thai-Burmese border region

This paper/presentation reflects on the developing approaches to Disaster Risk Reduction via a case study of the Thai-Burma border region, and concludes that governance is essntial, coupled with both transparancy and cultural awareness and sensitivity. Rights are conceived of as BOTH collective/ communal and individual, and this cannot be traded off against each other, but will create conflicts

Under What Conditions Do Community Demographics Influence Aggregate Recycling?

Diversion rates of solid waste due to recycling and other efforts vary across communities for multiple reasons. Past research has provided demographic and attitudinal profiles of recyclers and non-recyclers at mainly the individual and household levels with some at the community level. Researchers have found both commonalities and variations in these profiles. Studies have also looked at how the structure of a recycling program influences recycling behavior. The question asked here is how community-level demographic and attitudinal characteristics interact with the structure of public recycling programs to influence aggregate rates of recycling participation and diversion in 40 cities in the western United States. The results of this study provide modest support for my hypotheses that when recycling programs are less convenient, demographics and attitudinal characteristics will explain more variation in diversion of waste at the community scale. Similarly, as recycling programs become more convenient, the roles of demographic and attitudinal factors (recycling friendliness) are expected to decrease. This study found increased recycling program convenience and less visible fee assessment structures were associated with higher rates of recycling among cities regardless of their degree of recycling friendliness. When recycling outcomes were cross tabulated with indicators convenience and fee assessment, low rates were generally found among cities with low program convenience and high rates were generally found among cities with high program convenience. Cities with less convenient programs were more likely to see higher rates of recycling when their underlying demographic and attitudinal attributes reflected characteristics that have been associated with increased recycling activity. However, when program convenience was high (and fee structures less visible) high rates of recycling were found across cities with both favorable and unfavorable demographic characteristics. I use case-specific detailed narratives to explore the factors that influence outcomes among selected cities that did or did not meet my expectations

Diversifying assessment across the ‘Two Cultures’: student-produced podcasts in Geography

Since 2008, following growing collective interest in learning technologies and pedagogy, Geography and History departments at Northumbria and Newcastle Universities have successfully incorporated student-generated podcasting into a mixture of science, humanities and social science modules across all undergraduate levels. This paper presents a number of innovative examples using this approach, with the aim of promoting student creativity and analytical skills in ways different from traditional report- or essay-based assessments. It goes on to consider some of the advantages and challenges of this alternative assessment mode, from both student and tutor perspectives, across the science-humanities divide

X-Ray Spectroscopic Mapping of Three Unusual Active Galaxies (NGC 4258, NGC 1097, and NGC 1068)

One enigmatic class of objects whose structures are interesting and only recently explored are active galactic nuclei (AGN). These are galaxies in which massive black holes sit at the center and accrete matter. The term active refers to energetic processes which are not directly attributable to stars and which occur in the innermost portions of galaxies. Astrophysicists have developed general descriptions of AGN, but details about these objects remain incomplete. Notably, the thermal and ionization structures of AGN accretion disks and the geometries of the circum-source clouds which surround the black hole and comprise an important portion of the energy emitting core, as well as the importance of thermal stability to the emission of radiation, is unclear at this time. Therefore, along with my research advisor, Dr. Cynthia Hess, I have studied the unusual active galaxies NGC 4258, NGC 1097, and NGC 1068 in an attempt to shed light upon the morphologies oftheir central regions

Experimental investigation of the manufacture of tunable graphene oxide filter membranes using intense pulse light

Reduced graphene oxide is a thin, strong, and inexpensive material with a channel and pore structure that make it a promising candidate for a filtration material. Reduced graphene oxide has been produced and tested in the laboratory, but a lack of scalable manufacturing techniques have limited its commercial use. This thesis has shown that graphene oxide can be rapidly manufactured with an industrially scalable flash reduction process. The flash reduction process uses 0.58 millisecond pulses from a xenon lamp to reduce the graphene oxide film in less than a minute. Results for partially reduced graphene oxide membranes tuned by the length of exposure have variable filtration flux and filtrate rejection rates. Graphene oxide films were found to reject 20% to 90% of a methyl-red dye solution, depending on their reduction level. Finally, the color of graphene oxide films was correlated to their reduction level using digital photography. Graphene oxide films were exposed to 10, 40, 70, and 100 light pulses with xenon lamp powers of 1.8 kV, 2.0 kV, and 2.2 kV. The colors of the resulting films were determined by the amount of energy the films had received. The experimental methods used to obtain these results include vacuum filtration of graphene oxide monolayer dispersions, flash reduction of the resulting films, and pressurized filtration testing. The experimental results were characterized by atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, digital color measurement, and ultraviolet and visible light spectrophotometry