Classroom collaborations: enabling sustainability education via student-community co-learning

open access articlePurpose: This case study explores co-learning classes, a novel approach to leveraging universities’ capacity to contribute to the local sustainable development agenda whilst enhancing students’ learning. These participatory classes were piloted on a UK university Masters module focussed on action for sustainability. The classes sought to combine knowledge exchange, reflection and social network development, by bringing together students and community stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: The classes were run as a series of five free events, each focussed on sustainability issues relevant for local practitioners. These were either regular timetabled sessions opened up to the public or additional on-campus public events. Attendance was either face-to-face or online. Evaluation was based upon participation data, written feedback and module leader’s post-event reflections. Findings: The classes successfully secured participation from diverse community members, including local government staff, voluntary sector workers, and interested individuals. Both students and community stakeholders valued the participatory format, linkages of theoretical and practical knowledge and diversity of attendees. Research limits/implications: Findings are based upon a small-scale pilot study. Further research using a wider range of contexts is required to enhance understanding of the co-learning approach. Practical implications: This paper highlights some key practical issues to consider if employing co-learning approaches in other contexts, including using inclusive language, aligning with students’ motivations and choosing appropriate focal event topics. Originality/value: Opening up participatory university classes for the public to attend as co-learners is a rarely used approach and has little coverage in academic literature. This small-scale study therefore has value by highlighting some of the potential impacts, strengths and limitations of this approach.https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJSHE-11-2018-0220/full/html#sec01

Sowing Seeds and Promising a Harvest: Learning from the Delivery and Evaluation of a Local Sustainability Transition Initiative in the UK

Policymakers, practitioners and researchers increasingly understand sustainability transitions as requiring change within complex socio-technical systems. In parallel in recent years, many community-led initiatives sharing this systemic view of change, have sought to enhance sustainability on a local scale. Despite this alignment of understandings, many evaluations of local sustainability initiatives focus on measuring short term impacts, such as energy savings, rather than longer term shifts towards sustainable social practices. This paper uses the case study of a sustainable food, energy, and water project delivered by a team of staff and other partners in a UK market town to explore the impacts that such projects can achieve and how they can be effectively evaluated. We draw upon in-depth participant observation over four years, project documentation and the reflections of project stakeholders. We analyse the project impacts through three lenses: the process of project delivery; progress towards project-defined outcomes and indicators; and the concept of capacity building for sustainable living. Our findings point to building social capital to enable action for sustainable living as being the project’s key impact. As a result, the capacity building lens was the most appropriate framework to evaluate this initiative. Our findings suggest that a professionally delivered approach to enable sustainable living has value when it aligns well with qualities of the local community. We suggest that future evaluation work of such initiatives could focus on issues of process, indirect impacts and capacities for sustainable living. Future research could seek to put these ideas into practice, enabling evaluation to better reflect processes of community engagement and social change

Towards a low carbon Peabody.

Achieving deep cuts in carbon emissions from existing homes will be one of the major challenges facing social landlords over coming decades. The viability of meeting this goal for existing Peabody stock has been assessed for this report. The findings indicate that there is great potential to meet this goal through physical improvements to existing Peabody estates. However, if challenging carbon reduction targets are to be met, action by Government to decarbonise the grid and action by residents to constrain energy demand is also a necessity. Substantial stock refurbishment is likely to be required for Peabody estates, with solid-walled dwellings being insulated and estates being connected to low-carbon communal heating systems where viable. To achieve deeper emission cuts, micro-generation technologies such as solar photovoltaics are likely to be required. Even with considerable financial support from Government, these improvements will require substantial extra expenditure. In fact, this research points to a future context for carbon reduction refurbishment at Peabody where improvements may not lead to overall savings over the long term. As a result, if rent increases were used to fund the considered emission reduction measures, they would outweigh fuel bill savings, leaving residents worse-off financially. If the task of carrying out comprehensive carbon reduction refurbishment is taken up Peabody, or any social landlord, this research implies that this would be likely to lead to increased costs that the current funding model for social housing is unlikely to be geared up to deliver. This raises important questions on how this increased funding should be delivered. Deep emission cuts can be achieved in social housing, but this research implies that strong action is required by all stakeholders involved, in particular Government, residents, and landlords such as Peabody. This report goes some way towards clarifying some of the challenges and issues involved, and points towards strategies for making strong action on climate change mitigation in the social housing sector a reality

Laser Guide Star Only Adaptive Optics: The Development of Tools and Algorithms for the Determination of Laser Guide Star Tip-Tilt

Adaptive Optics (AO) is a technology which corrects for the effects of the atmosphere and so improves the optical quality of ground based astronomical observations. The bright “guide stars” required for correction are not available across the entire sky, so Laser Guide Stars (LGSs) are created. A Natural Guide Star (NGS) is still required to correct for tip-tilt as the LGS encounters turbulence on the uplink path resulting in unpredictable “jitter”, hence limiting corrected sky coverage. In this thesis an original method is proposed and investigated that promises to improve the correction performance for tomographic AO systems using only LGSs, and no NGS, by retrieving the LGS uplink tip-tilt. To investigate the viability of this method, two unique tools have been developed. A new AO simulation has been written in the Python programming language which has been designed to facilitate the rapid development of new AO concepts. It features realistic LGS simulation, ideal to test the method of LGS uplink tip-tilt retrieval. The Durham Real-Time Adaptive Optics Generalised Optical Nexus (DRAGON) is a laboratory AO test bench nearing completion, which features multiple LGS and NGS Wavefront Sensors (WFSs) intended to further improve tomographic AO. A novel method of LGS emulation has been designed, which re-creates focus anisoplanatism, elongation and uplink turbulence. Once complete, DRAGON will be the ideal test bench for further development of LGS uplink tip-tilt retrieval. Performance estimates from simulation of the LGS uplink tip-tilt retrieval method are presented. Performance is improved over tomographic LGS AO systems which do not correct for tip-tilt, giving a modest improvement in image quality over the entire night sky. Correction performance is found to be dependent on the atmospheric turbulence profile. If combined with ground layer adaptive optics, higher correction performance with a very high sky coverage may be achieved

Imprints of a high velocity wind on the soft x-ray spectrum of PG 1211+143

An extended XMM-Newton observation of the luminous narrow line Seyfert galaxy PG 1211+143 in 2014 has revealed a more complex high velocity wind, with components distinguished in velocity, ionization level, and column density. Here we report soft x-ray emission and absorption features from the ionized outflow, finding counterparts of both high velocity components, v ~ 0.129c and v ~ 0.066c, recently identified in the highly ionized Fe K absorption spectrum. The lower ionization of the co-moving soft x-ray absorbers imply a distribution of higher density clouds embedded in the main outflow, while much higher column densities for the same flow component in the hard x-ray spectra suggest differing sight lines to the continuum x-ray source.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables; Accepted for publication in MNRA

Theoretical studies of one-dimensional and two-dimensional photonic structures

This thesis is concerned with the theoretical study of one-dimensional and two-dimensional photonic structures. Plane-wave calculation methods have been employed to model one-dimensional waveguides and two-dimensional photonic crystals. The one-dimensional structures considered are slab waveguide interferometer devices. A transfer matrix method is described which has been implemented in a biosensor technique know as dual polarisation interferometry. The method presented is used for the characterisation of thin biological films. A similar slab waveguide device is described for the wavelength locking of diode lasers and a novel athermal solution to the problem is proposed. The study of two-dimensional photonic crystals employed a standard bandstructure method and also proposed new approaches to complex photonic bandstructures which are not believed to be available elsewhere. An interface matching calculation is described which employs complex photonic bandstructures and is believed to be the first use of the method described for photonic structures. The theoredcal methods are applied to consider the super- prism effect in square and hexagonal lattice photonic crystals. Optimum superprism structures are arrived at for both lattices. Reflection results from the optimum hexagonal structure are also considered, combined with coupling efficiency to the superprism mode. As a result of the work on photonic crystals new theoretical approaches have been described and implemented to assist with their establishment as calculation tools for two- dimensional photonic crystal structures

Presidents create political inequality by allocatingfederal dollars to electorally useful constituenciesacross the country

For decades, many have been concerned over pork barrel politics in Congress with power over the allocation of federal spending recently flowing towards the presidency as a counter. But what if presidents pursue policies that also channel federal grants to parts of the country that are electorally useful? In new research, Douglas Kriner and Andrew Reeves find that presidents allocate more federal resources (which are worth billions) to swing states, states which reliably back them in elections, and those which elect co-partisans that they are able to build coalitions with

Using Recounts to Measure the Accuracy of Vote Tabulations: Evidence from New Hampshire Elections 1946-2002

The 2000 presidential election exposed a surprisingly high level of inaccuracy in the tabulation of ballots. Differences between total vallots cast and votes counted were as high as 19 percent in some counties in Florida, and these discrepancies were widely attributed to the ballot formats, the handling of ballots, and machine operations. For those involved in the administration of elections the recount was particularly troubling. Over the last 40 years the United States has introduced new technologies, especially punch card and optically scanned ballots, to improve vote tabulations. The problems revealed in Florida suggested that these newer technologies may not in fact represent an improvement over traditional hand-counted paper ballots.Carnegie Corporation of New York; John S. and James L. Knight Foundatio

Managing Risk Online

© This article was published in Therapy Today, the journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/therapy-today/This article considers the professional considerations in working with clients at risk of suicide in an online therapeutic environment