Assessing the impact of amended building regulations on the operations of UK construction companies

The UK government continues to make regular amendments to building regulations. This is in order to keep these regulations relevant to today’s prevailing construction environment. More recently, UK building regulations have been amended to facilitate the introduction of the sustainability concepts in UK building design and delivery. This paper examines the impact that these amendments on the operations of UK Construction companies. To conduct the study, five major building practitioners were interviewed. We found from this preliminary study that changes to building regulations do have a considerable impact on the operations of UK Construction companies. It is however important to highlight that a full assessment of the impact of these changes in building regulations is still not fully assessed due to the limitations with the sample size

Sound insulation design of modular construction housing

This paper provides an insight into the acoustic issues of modular housing using the Verbus System of construction. The paper briefly summarises the history of the development of Verbus modular housing and the acoustic design considerations of the process. Results are presented from two sound insulation tests conducted during the course of the project. The results are discussed in terms of compliance with Approved Document E1 and increased performance standards such as EcoHomes2

Can Anyone Be the Victim of a Hate Crime?

In re B.C., 680 N.E.2d 1355, 1370 (11. 1997)

Multicast communications in distributed systems

PhD ThesisOne of the numerous results of recent developments in communication networks and distributed systems has been an increased interest in the study of applications and protocolsfor communications between multiple, as opposed to single, entities such as processes and computers. For example, in replicated file storage, a process attempts to store a file on several file servers, rather than one. MUltiple entity communications, which allow one-to-many and many-to-one communications, are known as multicast communications. This thesis examines some of the ways in which the architectures of computer networks and distributed systems can affect the design and development of multicast communication applications and protocols.To assist in this examination, the thesis presents three contributions. First, a set of classification schemes are developed for use in the description and analysis of various multicast communication strategies. Second, a general set of multicast communication primitives are presented, unrelated to any specific network or distributed system, yet efficiently implementable on a variety of networks. Third, the primitives are used to obtain experimental results for a study ofintranetwork and internetwork multicast communications.Postgraduate Scholarship, The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada: Overseas Research Student Award: the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the Uni ted Kingdom

How can K12 Education reduce prejudice?

This thesis investigates how K-12 education can reduce prejudice. Firstly, I define what I mean by prejudice and explain what my research methodology is for the study. Through a conceptual examination of existing research, including theories on why people are prejudiced and what we know about prejudice reduction from social psychology, I go on to propose four areas of individual cognitive and social development in which educational strategies can act on prejudicial thinking and lessen it. These are: - Understanding beyond the other; - Critical Thinking; - Metacognitive thought; - Empathy. I also synthesise findings into two institutional approaches that are effective. These are: - The contact hypothesis; - Specific pedagogical principles that are embedded in international education. These six areas are brought together in a multi-facetted response to the problem of prejudice. The thesis problematises the construct of prejudice reduction by grappling with its complexity through a critical account of the substantial literature on the subject. This means not only contextualising studies according to the parameters of their method but also engaging with prominent discourses in associated fields in a reflexive manner. The thesis is an original contribution to knowledge in that it builds a bridge between work on prejudice in the schools of social psychology, cognitive psychology and neurobiology and K-12 education. My study offers a framework synthesising effective classroom interventions that can be adapted and adopted in a variety of contexts to combat the central operating system of prejudice formation

Globalisation, food and health in Pacific Island countries

Pacific Island countries (PICs) are experiencing an epidemic of obesity and consequent chronic diseases. Despite investment in the development of National Plans of Action for Nutrition (NPANs) and interventions to promote healthy eating and physical activity, nutritional status appears to show little improvement. This paper presents a synthesis of the findings from two research papers that were prepared for a 2003 food safety and quality meeting in Nadi, Fiji. The findings indicate that although lifestyle behaviours might be the immediate cause of dietary imbalances, greater attention should focus on omnipresent influences of globalisation as a critical element of the nutrition transition in the Pacific. In particular, those aspects of globalisation mediated through the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements that are placing pressures on food security and fostering increased dependence on imported food of poor nutritional quality. Rapid, significant and sustainable improvements in public health in PICs require interventions that can tackle these underlying contributors to ill health. There are opportunities to explore the use of food regulatory approaches to influence the composition, availability and accessibility of food products. Within the context of the WTO Agreements the legitimacy of food regulatory approaches will depend upon the case to demonstrate the relationship between the intervention and the protection of food security and public health nutrition. The challenges in realising these opportunities are: 1) to have the capacity to construct a case, 2) meet the technical and financial demands to administer and enforce regulatory approaches, and 3) to take advantage of opportunities available and to be able to fully participate in the international policy-making process.<br /

Cis-regulatory basis of sister cell type divergence in the vertebrate retina

Multicellular organisms evolved via repeated functional divergence of transcriptionally related sister cell types, but the mechanisms underlying sister cell type divergence are not well understood. Here, we study a canonical pair of sister cell types, retinal photoreceptors and bipolar cells, to identify the ke

Kinesin-II is required for axonal transport of choline acetyltransferase in Drosophila

KLP64D and KLP68D are members of the kinesin-II family of proteins in Drosophila. Immunostaining for KLP68D and ribonucleic acid in situ hybridization for KLP64D demonstrated their preferential expression in cholinergic neurons. KLP68D was also found to accumulate in cholinergic neurons in axonal obstructions caused by the loss of kinesin light chain. Mutations in the KLP64D gene cause uncoordinated sluggish movement and death, and reduce transport of choline acetyltransferase from cell bodies to the synapse. The inviability of KLP64D mutations can be rescued by expression of mammalian KIF3A. Together, these data suggest that kinesin-II is required for the axonal transport of a soluble enzyme, choline acetyltransferase. in a specific subset of neurons in Drosophila. Furthermore, the data lead to the conclusion that the cargo transport requirements of different classes of neurons may lead to upregulation of specific pathways of axonal transport