Numerical Modelling of Timber Beams with GFRP Pultruded Reinforcement

Timber structural members have been widely adopted and used in construction due to their inherent characteristics. The main objective of this work is to assess the performance of timber beams with GFRP pultruded beam reinforcement subjected to flexure. A finite element model (FEM) using ABAQUS FEM software is developed, aiming to provide a benchmark modelling procedure. The modelling method considers the fundamental role of the connections among timber beams, the reinforcing GFRP pultruded profile (adhesive and screw connections), and the grain direction in the timber. To understand the influence of the grain direction, different angles of deviations between the longitudinal direction (along the grain) and the beam axis are considered. The robustness of the developed FEM procedure is validated by the experimental results of timber beams with and without GFRP pultruded reinforcement under flexure. It is demonstrated that the angle of deviation (grain deviation) produces high reductions in the strength of unreinforced timber beams. However, this effect is minimal for GFRP-reinforced timber beams. The experimentally derived benchmark FEM procedure can be used as a computational tool for timber beams with GFRP pultruded reinforcement to capture the capacity, failure mode, and load–displacement response

Emotional interactions and an ethic of care: caring relations in families affected by HIV and AIDS

In the context of global processes of economic restructuring, the HIV and AIDS epidemic and socio-cultural constructions of care, many women and young people in low-income households have been drawn into caring roles within the family. Drawing on the literature on an ethics of care, emotional geographies and embodiment, this paper examines the emotional dynamics of the caring process in families affected by HIV and AIDS. Based on the perspectives of both ‘caregivers’ and ‘care-receivers’ from research undertaken in Namibia, Tanzania and the UK, we examine the everyday practices of care that women and young people are engaged in and explore how emotions are performed and managed in caring relationships. Our research suggests caregivers play a crucial role in providing emotional support and reassurance to people with HIV, which in turn often affects caregivers' emotional and physical wellbeing. Within environments where emotional expression is restricted and HIV is heavily stigmatised, caregivers and care-receivers seek to regulate their emotions in order to protect family members from the emotional impacts of a chronic, life-limiting illness. However, whilst caregiving and receiving may lead to close emotional connections and a high level of responsiveness, the intensity of intimate caring relationships, isolation and lack of access to adequate resources can cause tensions and contradictory feelings that may be difficult to manage. These conflicts can severely constrain carers' ability to provide the ‘good care’ that integrates the key ethical phases in Tronto's (1993) ideal of the caring process

Understanding ethnography through a life course framework:a research journey into alternative spiritual spaces

Recently scholars have emphasised the importance of looking at the researcher's experience and how positionality, emotions and embodiment shape the ethnographic fieldwork process. Specifically, feminist contributions have shown how the professional and the personal can be interlinked when conducting ethnographic research and have reconsidered the role of the researcher in the production of knowledge. However, such accounts often lack analytical engagements and/or reveal little about the researcher's experience beyond the fieldwork. By adopting a life course framework and its conceptual categories of social pathways, turning points, and transitions & trajectories, this paper offers an analytical device to read through the ethnographer's own experience. The paper explores a research journey undertaken in the intentional spiritual communities of Damanhur (Italy) and Terra Mirim (Brazil) by the author, which aimed to study the enactment of alternative spaces. By integrating a life course framework, this paper firstly argues the need to consider how social pathways shape the life course positioning and the research trajectory. Secondly, it shows how turning points can affect both the research direction but also the researcher's life course. Thirdly, the paper argues that the fieldwork is only one of the transitional phases of ethnographic research and encourages the researcher to reflect on its long‐term effects. It concludes by discussing how such experience can impact on the life course of the researcher as well as on the research participants

Me again: Fieldwork, practice and returning

Many researchers return to field sites that are previously known in different capacities, thus upturning traditional notions of the “field,” particularly in qualita- tive fieldwork, of unknown places whose depths the researcher encounters anew. Returning in a different capacity affects not just the researcher, but also partici- pants, and raises questions about research ethics with regard to changing position- ality. This paper looks at the process of returning to a field that is already “known,” not just through books and writing, but through first‐hand experience. It explores the dynamics underlying the process of returning as a researcher, when one has a previously established identity in a place, in this case as a development worker. The paper will explore the nuances of attempting to bridge the divide between being a development worker and then a student doing ethnographic field- work in Assam. It will debate whether it is possible, or useful, to abandon one role for another. It also looks at the way a change in role affects the way we gain access, as well as how returning as a student reveals certain blind spots in the understanding of the field as it was known. Finally, the paper attempts to under- stand how changing positionality affects ethical concerns, such as those of how to engage as an outsider, and whether each return is marked by a different process.Gates Cambridge Trust, University Fieldwork Fund Awar

A systematic review of the health, social and financial impacts of welfare rights advice delivered in healthcare settings

BACKGROUND: Socio-economic variations in health, including variations in health according to wealth and income, have been widely reported. A potential method of improving the health of the most deprived groups is to increase their income. State funded welfare programmes of financial benefits and benefits in kind are common in developed countries. However, there is evidence of widespread under claiming of welfare benefits by those eligible for them. One method of exploring the health effects of income supplementation is, therefore, to measure the health effects of welfare benefit maximisation programmes. We conducted a systematic review of the health, social and financial impacts of welfare rights advice delivered in healthcare settings. METHODS: Published and unpublished literature was accessed through searches of electronic databases, websites and an internet search engine; hand searches of journals; suggestions from experts; and reference lists of relevant publications. Data on the intervention delivered, evaluation performed, and outcome data on health, social and economic measures were abstracted and assessed by pairs of independent reviewers. Results are reported in narrative form. RESULTS: 55 studies were included in the review. Only seven studies included a comparison or control group. There was evidence that welfare rights advice delivered in healthcare settings results in financial benefits. There was little evidence that the advice resulted in measurable health or social benefits. This is primarily due to lack of good quality evidence, rather than evidence of an absence of effect. CONCLUSION: There are good theoretical reasons why income supplementation should improve health, but currently little evidence of adequate robustness and quality to indicate that the impact goes beyond increasing income