The exotic invasive plant Vincetoxicum rossicum is a strong competitor even outside its current realized climatic temperature range

Dog-strangling vine (Vincetoxicum rossicum) is an exotic plant originating from Central and Eastern Europe that is becoming increasingly invasive in southern Ontario, Canada. Once established, it successfully displaces local native plant species but mechanisms behind this plant’s high competitive ability are not fully understood. It is unknown whether cooler temperatures will limit the range expansion of V. rossicum, which has demonstrated high tolerance for other environmental variables such as light and soil moisture. Furthermore, if V. rossicum can establish outside its current climatic limit it is unknown whether competition with native species can significantly contribute to reduce fitness and slow down invasion. We conducted an experiment to test the potential of V. rossicum to spread into northern areas of Ontario using a set of growth chambers to simulate southern and northern Ontario climatic temperature regimes. We also tested plant-plant competition by growing V. rossicum in pots with a highly abundant native species, Solidago canadensis, and comparing growth responses to plants grown alone. We found that the fitness of V. rossicum was not affected by the cooler climate despite a delay in reproductive phenology. Growing V. rossicum with S. canadensis caused a significant reduction in seedpod biomass of V. rossicum. However, we did not detect a temperature x competition interaction in spite of evidence for adaptation of S. canadensis to cooler temperature conditions. We conclude that the spread of V. rossicum north within the tested range is unlikely to be limited by climatic temperature but competition with an abundant native species may contribute to slow it down

The Way We Live Now : How Architectural Education can support the Urban Development of Small Settlements

One of the most significant aspects of twenty-first century society is the need for the individual to lay claim to the control of many aspects of the circumstances of life. Traditional government, in which policy is formed by experts and administered by state officials, is increasingly being challenged. Top-down enforcement of regulations, rules or directives is no longer acceptable to many people who feel that the individual or small collective is much better placed to make important decisions about things that happen within their own neighbourhood. It is well documented that the UK has a shortage of well-constructed and affordable housing. Neighbourhood Planning was part of the Localism Bill introduced in 2011 by the British Government. It passes responsibility for important decisions about the development of the built environment from the centralised government to the local community. This should, in theory be a very good thing. The community is much better positioned to understand the needs and capability of their environment. Neighbourhood Planning certainly enables communities to play a much stronger role in shaping the areas in which they live and work. It provides an opportunity for communities to set out a vision for how they want their community to develop in ways that meet identified local need and make sense for local people. However, there is the danger of well-meaning, but ill-informed individuals making decisions that have massive implications for the community. Continuity in Architecture, a studio for research, practice and teaching at the Manchester School of Architecture have been working directly with the local communities to develop meaningful and productive proposals for the development of the built environment. This chapter examines the evolution of Neighbourhood Planning, then discuss the projects that the studio have been involved with before offering some thoughts for the development of future initiatives

UnDoing Buildings Tour

Sally Stone, and Laura Sanderson from the Manchester School of Architecture, along with architect and conservationist Johnathan Djabarouti will lead a tour of some of the most interesting and compelling examples of adaptation and re-use in the city. These will range from prominent and well known buildings to secret places that have delicate relationships with their surroundings. Sally, Laura and Jonathan will encourage discussion and debate during the walk

“Would you decide to keep the power?”: reflexivity on the interviewer–interpreter–interviewee triad in interviews with female punjabi rheumatoid arthritis patients

This article presents methodological reflections on the different streams of knowledge that are drawn upon during interpreted interviews and the shifts of power between (1) the interviewer, (2) the interpreter/co-researcher, and (3) the interviewee. Interpreters are increasingly seen as active agents in the interview process, and they act as cultural brokers.Interpretation by a nurse researcher introduces further challenges and benefits to the interview dynamic, which was explored through reflexive discussions with an independentresearcher. These challenges include conducting interviews in a clinical setting, where the health professional–patient relationship remains active. A modified discourse analysis was used to examine the subject positioning in the interview situation and the power negotiationsthat ensued. The main conclusion that can be drawn from these reflexive accounts is that the use of different streams of knowledge (experiential, clinical, cultural, and academic)enhanced the interview interaction, and power relations were successfully negotiated to facilitate rapport and data collection. Reflexivity provides an important tool for identifying,and learning from, the challenges and benefits of working with an interpreter, who is also a co-researcher with multiple professional roles

UnDoing

UnDoing An exhibition at the Castlefield Art Gallery curated by Sally Stone (Reader in Architecture) and Laura Sanderson (Senior Lecture) at the Manchester School of Architecture https://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/event/undoing/ 22 March 2019 — 26 May 2019 UnDoing is an exhibition that explores the close relationships between architecture and art, focussing especially upon the reuse of the existing situation, that is: Buildings, Rooms, Landscapes and Cities. It explores how buildings, places and artefacts are re-used, reinterpreted and remembered. The project was initiated by Sally and Laura’s research into the often-conflicted relationship between past and present in architecture. UnDoing includes photography, models, sculpture and film by artists and architects that explore how buildings, places and artefacts are re-used, reinterpreted and remembered. Buildings hold histories. Architectural style and function can teach us about our historical predecessors and our contemporaries, but more than this, buildings store the individual histories of the people who used them. Worn floors, damaged surfaces, graffitied walls, these serve as records of the people who were here, for whom a particular building was a fundamental part of the infrastructure of daily life. In any given building exciting things have happened, terrible things have happened, but mostly, things have just happened, everyday life continued and for the most part, it wasn’t notable, except to the person who lived it. So, what happens when an architect renovates or redevelops an existing building or place? Often, this is simply the necessary work to make a building useable. But redevelopment can also be a threat. It can herald gentrification, or the loss of the history attached to a specific building. Any significant redevelopment inevitably attracts criticism from people who are worried that they will lose something, whether that is the affordability to continue living in their home, or the historical value attached to a certain site. How then, do architects manage the conflict between the needs of the present with the value of the past? What is lost once a building is gone for good? What is our relationship to our history, and how do we inhabit and respond to our present environment? These are questions that are explored throughout UnDoing, with contributions from a range of international architects and artists who explore how buildings, places and artefacts are re-used, reinterpreted and remembered. Exhibitors: James Ackerley, Nazgol Ansarinia, Tom Dale, Connor + Darby, Lost Spaces Project, Malcolm Fraser, MAP Studio, , Abigail Reynolds, Larissa Sansour, Adrien Tirtiaux, and Sarah Westphal. Included with UnDoing is a special exhibit: Lost Spaces. This was a project directed by academics Sally Stone, Tom Jefferies and Tom Jefferies, and completed by postgraduate Manchester School of Architecture students. This model-making exercise explored the memory of the remains of important lost buildings. The students studied nine different spaces (seven of which are shown in this exhibition), all had been lost: to time, to progress, to misfortune or to conflict. The students were asked to develop a series of models that investigated the particular qualities and characteristics of specific spaces or interiors that had been destroyed. These were not necessarily meant to represent reality, but to express an interpretation of it. The careful and considered construction of models led to discussions about loss, interpretation and authenticity. UnDoing features a number of these models, including a sliding model of Manchester’s legendary nightclub The Hacienda, a model of a hut built by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in which he wrote his most celebrated work Philosophical Investigations (1953) while living as a hermit in the remote village of Skjolden, Norway (1936-1937), and a cast-metal model of the Caffè degli Inglesi, Rome by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) which was destroyed during the Napoleonic wars

UnDoing: An Essay by Sally Stone and Laura Sanderson

Manchester has moved far from the image of a dark and gloomy, northern English city built upon hard work and dirt, synonymous with just three things: industry, football and music. The place was known for its warehouses, cotton mills, railway viaducts, and canals – as would be expected from the first modern, industrial conurbation, however the continually evolving city has been reinvented as a significant situation that embraces the new while recognising the importance of this architectural and environmental heritage. This mid ground is an architectural bricolage, where a series of existing built elements are collected and reworked, where everything is of importance and everything is relevant. It is a wondrous combination of new and old, of the worthy, modest, exciting, significant, unimportant, and the almost invisible. Manchester is a vigorous and vibrant environment that is continually adjusting itself to the gait of the evolving narrative of urban life

Teaching-Learning-Research: Design and Environments

This is Manchester: We do things differently here Manchester, once the ‘Industrial Capital’ of the world, has long been a test bed for architectural and urban experimentation. From the early settlements that challenged the resilience of the Romans, and then the Vikings, through the massive boom of the industrial period, when such was the frenzy in the city that it earned the sobriquet Cottonopolis, beyond the economic melancholia of the late 20th century, to the unbridled optimism of the 21st. As a progressive city, Manchester has continually reinvented itself. The present reincarnation was led through cultural regeneration facilitated by the adaptive reuse of those great redundant industrial structures, it is a city that encourages smart technologies and embraces a community of 24 Hour Party People. Where better then to hold a conference that explores progressive architectural pedagogy – especially a virtual one! The architectural, landscape, and design studio is a laboratory for experimentation where students are encouraged and expected to question and disrupt the status quo, to explore possible different futures, and to propose radical solutions to unsolvable problems. The need to fuel this move away from more traditional tabular rasa education is the responsibility of academics, and this conference was a wonderful vehicle to explore, expound, discuss, and debate the future of architectural education. During the pandemic we have had to learn to do things differently, not to be down heartened by the difficulty of interacting solely through the computer, but to embrace the nearness that digital communication provides. We have adapted methods of teaching and learning to accommodate this extraordinary situation, we have creatively responded to the pandemic and developed strategies that encourage endeavour, promote wellbeing, and support scholarship. Extraordinary strategies are needed for an extraordinary situation. It was a great pleasure to be able to host the AMPS Teaching – Learning – Research: Design and Environments conference at the Manchester School of Architecture. It was lovely to welcome so many virtual guests to the city. The great success of the online event was the demonstrated by the enthusiasm with which speakers engaged with the conference, the quality of the post-session debate combined with the international dialogue and collaboration, (especially in this time of uncertainty) created by such global citizens. It is an honour to introduce the conference proceedings, presented here as collection of well argued, forward thinking, deliberately controversial, and valuable papers

MSA CATALYSTS: advanced peer learning through vertical group projects

The Manchester School of Architecture has advanced peer-to-peer learning by linking multi-level group projects with outreach work. This pedagogic approach has become an essential vehicle to progress the School’s ambition to connect academia, the architectural profession and societal networks whilst offering a rich learning experience for the student. Embedded into the curriculum, the School adopts this approach at key points during the academic year, requiring students to collaborate through intense ‘vertical’ projects. Students from different levels of study across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes unite to explore an architectural proposal or contemporary agenda in relation to a live project as group work. The addition of external collaborators, who may act as client or participate as an active team member, enhances student learning, experience and debate. This paper will introduce and analyse this model’s pedagogy and good teaching practice through two examples of the School’s established peer-learning projects, MSA Events (2008 to date) and the All School Project (2015 to date). An associated pedagogic research project, named MSA CATALYSTS initiated by this paper’s authors, Jolley and Sanderson, will also been outlined. Reflecting on the School’s vertical project’s inception, evolution and ongoing legacy, this paper will demonstrate the effectiveness and value of the resulting educational ecosystem and note impact on skills and knowledge acquisition. This will be mapped through specific case studies to illustrate built legacy, legislative legacy, and research legacy in the city of Manchester and beyond. This will provide an insight into the thinking, strategy, advantages, outcomes and possibilities of this alternative approach

Thick blood film examination for Plasmodium falciparum malaria has reduced sensitivity and underestimates parasite density

BACKGROUND: Thick blood films are routinely used to diagnose Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Here, they were used to diagnose volunteers exposed to experimental malaria challenge. METHODS: The frequency with which blood films were positive at given parasite densities measured by PCR were analysed. The poisson distribution was used to calculate the theoretical likelihood of diagnosis. Further in vitro studies used serial dilutions to prepare thick films from malaria cultures at known parasitaemia. RESULTS: Even in expert hands, thick blood films were considerably less sensitive than might have been expected from the parasite numbers measured by quantitative PCR. In vitro work showed that thick films prepared from malaria cultures at known parasitaemia consistently underestimated parasite densities. CONCLUSION: It appears large numbers of parasites are lost during staining. This limits their sensitivity, and leads to erroneous estimates of parasite density

Chocolate consumption and cardiometabolic disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective To evaluate the association of chocolate consumption with the risk of developing cardiometabolic disorders