The stewardship of things: Property and responsibility in the management of manufactured goods

In the context of broad-based concerns about the need to move towards a more sustainable materials economy, particularly as they are expressed in debates around ecological modernisation (EM), we argue that product stewardship has radical potential as a means to promote significant change in the relationship between society and the material world. We focus on two important dimensions that have been neglected in approaches to product stewardship to date. Firstly, we argue that immanent within the basic concept of stewardship is a problematisation of dominant understandings of property ownership in neoliberal market economies. In the space opened up by notions of stewardship, different ways of enacting both rights and responsibilities to products and materials emerge which have potential to advance the sustainability of material economies. Secondly, through exploration of existing expressions of product stewardship, we uncover a neglected scale of action. Both policy and dominant articulations of EM focus primarily on the efficiency of production processes; and secondarily, the attitudes and behaviours of individual consumers. Missing from this is the 'meso-scale' of social collectives including households, neighbourhoods, more distributed communities and small scale social enterprises. Based on a review of existing research from Australia and the UK, including our own, we argue that understanding of embedded practices of material responsibility at the household scale can both reinvigorate the concept of product stewardship as a potentially radical intervention, and reveal the potential of the meso-scale as a challenging but worthwhile realm of policy intervention

Towards a geographical information system for European economic community regional data

The study proposes the development of a geographical information system for European Economic Community (EEC) regional data. The features of geographical information systems and some related issues are discussed. An outline is given of likely user requirements and attempts by various European organisations to make provision for these. The practical work involves the application of three selected data analysis, manipulation and mapping packages, and operating system facilities to tasks which users of the data might wish to undertake. For this purpose, EEC "Level II" region boundaries were digitised, and selected socio-economic attributes for 1977 organised in disc files. Ten choropleth maps of the Level II regions (eight original variabels and two composite variables) are displayed. Although there is a lack of certain, more specialised features in the software system used, it is considered that there exists the imprtant basic requirements of data analysis, manipulation and mapping in package form, upon which to build the proposed geographical information system

An evolutionary algorithm for online, resource constrained, multi-vehicle sensing mission planning

Mobile robotic platforms are an indispensable tool for various scientific and industrial applications. Robots are used to undertake missions whose execution is constrained by various factors, such as the allocated time or their remaining energy. Existing solutions for resource constrained multi-robot sensing mission planning provide optimal plans at a prohibitive computational complexity for online application [1],[2],[3]. A heuristic approach exists for an online, resource constrained sensing mission planning for a single vehicle [4]. This work proposes a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based heuristic for the Correlated Team Orienteering Problem (CTOP) that is used for planning sensing and monitoring missions for robotic teams that operate under resource constraints. The heuristic is compared against optimal Mixed Integer Quadratic Programming (MIQP) solutions. Results show that the quality of the heuristic solution is at the worst case equal to the 5% optimal solution. The heuristic solution proves to be at least 300 times more time efficient in the worst tested case. The GA heuristic execution required in the worst case less than a second making it suitable for online execution.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L

A Wolf in Sheep���s Clothing? An analysis of student engagement with virtual learning environments.

The article is freely available on-line via The Higher Education Academy website.The growth in the use of virtual learning environments to support learning and teaching should be accompanied by research to examine their effectiveness. The aim of this study was twofold: a) To explore the views, opinions and experiences of student engagement or non-engagement in online learning activities; b) To use this knowledge to develop learning and teaching strategies that enhance student engagement with online learning activities. Focus groups were conducted with students studying leisure and tourism degree programmes to explore reasons for usage and non-usage of the online activities in the Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework (WOLF). Results identified issues related to student awareness, motivation, behaviour and learning approaches, assessment and technical factors. Findings from the study have implications for practice, including how to enhance the relevance of information, technical factors, enhancing awareness and links with assessment

A reading workbook of stories and exercises with first grade vocabulary and fourth grade interests

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Charge assignments in multiple-U(1) gauge theories

We discuss the choice of gauge field basis in multiple-U(1) gauge theories. We find that there is a preferred basis, specified by the charge orthogonality condition, in which the U(1) gauge fields do not mix under one-loop renormalization group running.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe

Differential Astrometry of Sub-arcsecond Scale Binaries at the Palomar Testbed Interferometer

We have used the Palomar Testbed Interferometer to perform very high precision differential astrometry on the 0.25 arcsecond separation binary star HD 171779. In 70 minutes of observation we achieve a measurement uncertainty of approximately 9 micro-arcseconds in one axis, consistent with theoretical expectations. Night-to-night repeatability over four nights is at the level of 16 micro-arcseconds. This method of very-narrow-angle astrometry may be extremely useful for searching for planets with masses as small as 0.5 Jupiter Masses around a previously neglected class of stars -- so-called ``speckle binaries.'' It will also provide measurements of stellar parameters such as masses and distances, useful for constraining stellar models at the 10^-3 level.Comment: 19 pages including 6 figures. Submitted to ApJ. Typos corrected, several parts reworded for clarificatio

Normative values for the profile of mood states for use with athletic samples

The Profile of Mood States (POMS) has been used extensively for the assessment of mood in the sport and exercise environments. The purpose of the study was to develop tables of normative values based on athletic samples. Participants (N = 2,086), comprising athletes at the international (n = 622), club (n = 628), and recreational (n = 836) levels, completed the POMS in one of three situations: pre-competition/exercise, post-competition/exercise, and away from the athletic environment. Differences between the athletic sample and existing norms were found for all mood subscales. Main effects of level of competition and situation were identified. The results support the proposition that the use of the original tables of normative values in sport and exercise environments is inappropriate