University Writing programs deliver, so let's turn the page

Brien, DL ORCiD: 0000-0002-9005-3645This article, commissioned by 'The Conversation' discusses the benefits that creative writing programs deliver to student, the university in which such programs reside, the community in which those universities exist, and the broader community, as well as writing, editing, publishing and literature more broadly

Toward user-centred prosthetics research beyond the laboratory

The purpose of this study was to explore a range of perspectives on how academic research and clinical assessment of upper-limb prosthetics could happen in environments outside of laboratories and clinics, such as within peoples’ homes. Two co-creation workshops were held, which included people who use upper limb prosthetic devices (hereafter called users), clinicians, academics, a policy stakeholder, and a representative from the upper-limb prosthetics industry (hereafter called professionals). The discussions during the workshops indicate that research and clinical assessment conducted remotely from a laboratory or clinic could inform future solutions that address user needs. Users were open to the idea of sharing sensor and contextual data from within their homes to external laboratories during research studies. However, this was dependent upon several considerations, such as choice and control over data collection. Regarding clinical assessment, users had reservations of how data may be used to inform future prosthetic prescriptions whilst, clinicians were concerned with resource implications and capacity to process user data. The paper presents findings of the discussions shared by participants during both workshops. The paper concludes with a conjecture that collecting sensor and contextual data from users within their home environment will contribute towards literature within the field, and potentially inform future care policies for upper limb prosthetics. The involvement of users during such studies will be critical and can be enabled via a co-creation approach. In the short term, this may be achieved through academic research studies, which may in the long term inform a framework for clinical in-home trials and clinical remote assessment

Determining heat use in residential buildings using high resolution gas and domestic hot water monitoring

Residential buildings consume about a third of the UKs total energy and the need to reduce this as part of achieving the 2050 CO2 emissions targets driving the interest the modelling and performance simulation of homes. While simulation and modelling tools are in wide spread use, the detailed empirical data with which to understand the effect of systems and operational complexities of households on the consumption of energy is less developed than it is for commercial buildings. This paper reports some early results from a whole house monitoring trial in the UK where high resolution measurements of gas, hot water and power are being used to disaggregate heat use. The study has shown that: equipment used for domestic heat generation varies considerably between households; gas demand is highly variable at the sub-hourly level, far greater than some of the available hourly monitored data would suggest; and that the current information on hot water consumption characteristics is poor and so some new, more comprehensive data is presented

Exploring the impact of model calibration on estimating energy savings through better space heating control

It is widely accepted that simulation tools need to be carefully configured with appropriate inputs to yield good estimates of building performance. Having a good representation of a building’s performance is particularly important when trying to generate a baseline against which energy savings are to be measured. This is especially challenging in residential buildings where there is a high dependency on occupant behaviour. Relevant data for domestic building is scarce and an option is to use existing guidelines published by organisations such as CIBSE or DOE. This paper considers the relative savings that might be expected by implementing several space heating control strategies, by evaluating the change in performance from a baseline model. The impact of calibrating the model on the results is given as is a description of the calibration approach used. It is demonstrated that potential energy savings can be either over or under predicted depending on the nature of the control strategy employed