Inclusive Design of Workspaces: Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Users

Accessible design within the built environment has often focused on mobility conditions and has recently widened to include mental health. Additionally, as one in seven are neurodivergent (including conditions such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and dyspraxia), this highlights a growing need for designing for ‘non-visible’ conditions in addition to mobility. Emphasised by the growing disability pay gap and the disability perception gap, people with disabilities are still facing discrimination and physical barriers within the workplace. This research aimed to identify key ways of reducing physical barriers faced by people with a disability and thus encourage more comfortable and productive use of workspaces for all. Once the need for designing for a spectrum of users and inclusive workspace design was understood, a survey was then circulated to students and staff at a large university in the UK (working remotely from home), with the aim of understanding how people have adapted their home spaces and what barriers they continue to face. Quantitative and qualitative results were compared to the literature read with key issues emerging, such as separating work and rest from spaces in bedrooms. The survey findings and literature were evaluated, extracting key performance-based goals (e.g., productivity and focus within a study space) and prescriptive design features (e.g., lighting, furniture, and thermal comfort), whilst also considering the inclusivity of these features. The key conclusion establishes that, to achieve maximum benefit, it is important to work with the users to understand specific needs and identify creative and inclusive solutions

Work in Progress: Transformational Change in a Masters-level Integrated Capstone Design Course that Partners Industry and Academia

Integrated capstone design courses in civil engineering pose a major challenge for educators because of the breadth of topics covered. Partnering with industry has historically provided a way to alleviate some of these challenges and provide a more authentic design experience. While external partnership in capstone design courses can provide added authenticity as well as fringe benefits such as networking opportunities, there are risks associated with an industry-driven approach. We also argue there is a need to shift from an emphasis on product to pedagogy in capstone design and that authenticity from industry is not an end in itself. In this work-in-progress paper, we present our project to reimagine the integrated capstone design course at a large, public research university in the United Kingdom. This project has three major goals: (1) Develop an understanding of how to balance industry involvement; (2) Generate mechanisms for sustainable adoption of changes; and (3) Evaluate short- and long-term student outcomes for the course. We will present an overview of our intended curricular changes as well as research and evaluation plans to date. This project fits uniquely in the current literature on engineering design education in that it centers around a masters-level course and challenges the notion of what constitutes healthy industry partnership. As a starting point, our first research question considers how the current capstone design course came to be a primarily outsourced effort and what factors impacted this organizational shift to lower academic ownership from within the department

Investigating Varied Pedagogical Approaches for Problem-Based Learning in a Fire Safety Engineering Course

Fire safety engineering is a critical component of a well-rounded engineering undergraduate curriculum but is understudied in the context of engineering education literature. Guided by previous work in problem-based learning, we conducted a multiple case study structured around three sections of a fire safety engineering course for students across engineering programmes. Our goal was to develop a better understanding of the impact of different pedagogical approaches on students. These approaches were chosen for study because they align with predominating approaches to industry practice in fire safety engineering. Classroom observations and student coursework from each of the three sections were used to evaluate the different approaches: (A) controlling (the specialist approach), (B) student autonomy (the generalist approach), and (C) combination strategy (autonomous/generalist and controlling/specialist). Findings confirm more autonomous/generalist approaches foster positive student experiences and outcomes, but a balance of instructional techniques is still needed. It is clear that more work needs to be done to explore engineering education in the context of fire safety engineering, and this study provides preliminary results that suggest areas for future scholarship

The Cognitive Link Between Geography and Development: Iodine Deficiency and Schooling Attainment in Tanzania

An estimated 20 million children born each year are at risk of brain damage from in utero iodine deficiency, the only micronutrient deficiency known to have significant, non-reversible effects on cognitive development. Cognitive damage from iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) has potentially important implications for economic growth through its effect on human capital attainment. To gauge the magnitude of this influence, we evaluate the impact of reductions in fetal IDD on child schooling attainment that resulted from an intensive distribution of iodized oil capsules (IOC) in Tanzania. We look for evidence of improvements in cognitive ability attributable to the intervention by assessing whether children who benefited from IOC in utero exhibit higher rates of grade progression at ages 10 to 14 relative to siblings and older and younger children in the district who did not. Our findings suggest that reducing fetal IDD has significant benefits for child cognition: Protection from IDD in utero is associated with 0.36 years of additional schooling. Furthermore, the effect appears to be substantially larger for girls, consistent with new evidence from laboratory studies indicating greater cognitive sensitivity of the female fetus to maternal thyroid deprivation. There is no indication that IOC improved rates of illness or school absence due to illness, suggesting that IOC improves schooling through its effect on cognition rather than its effect on health. However, there is weak evidence that the program also reduced child but not fetal or infant mortality, which may bias downward the estimated effect on education. Cross-country regression estimates corroborate the results from Tanzania, indicating a strong negative influence of total goiter rate and strong positive influence of salt iodization on female school participation. Together, these findings provide micro-level evidence of the direct influence of ecological conditions on economic development and suggest a potentially important role of variation in rates of learning disability in explaining cross-country growth patterns and gender differences in schooling attainment.

Downward Flame Spread over PMMA Spheres

Experiments were conducted to measure downward flame spread over PMMA spheres, and an underpinning theoretical basis was developed to explain the relevant mechanisms governing flame spread over spherical geometries. Flame spread over a sphere was classified into two distinct regimes, that being spread over the upper and lower hemispheres. Experiments were conducted using cast PMMA spheres 40 and 50 mm in diameter. Samples were ignited at the top of the sphere and the progression of the flame front was determined using video analysis. The time resolved flame spread rate was found to increase nearly linearly in time while the flame spread across the upper hemisphere of the sample (at rates ranging from approximately 2.0–3.5 mm/min). Flame spread on the lower hemisphere was observed to accelerate nonlinearly reaching instantaneous flame spread rates greater than 15 mm/min. The flame spread rates were found to be unsteady (i.e., continuously increasing) throughout each experiment. A Stokes flow solution was found to adequately characterize the opposed flame spread rate over the upper hemisphere with respect to the induced buoyant flow. Flame spread rates in the lower hemisphere were found to be controlled by a combination of increasing velocity of the ambient flow and increased heat transfer through the interior of the solid. Flame spread rates for each diameter tested were normalized and presented as a function of the relative angle of inclination at the flame front, . Thus, the two regimes of flame spread identified in this work are largely independent across sphere size for the diameters used in this study. The study of flame spread over spheres provides a unique condition to observe the transition from spread dictated by a well-defined flow condition to one in which heat transfer effects through the solid become increasingly significant

On the effect of pressure, oxygen concentration, air flow and gravity on simulated pool fires

The initial development of a fire is characterized by the establishment of a diffusion flame over the surface of a the condensed fuel and is particularly influenced by gravity, with most of the gaseous flow induced by natural convection. Low initial momentum of the fuel vapor, strong buoyant flows induced by the hot post-combustion gases and consequently low values of the Froude number (inertia-gravity forces ratio) are typical of this kind of scenario. An experimental study is conducted by using a porous burner to simulate the burning of a horizontal combustible surface. Ethane is used as fuel and different mixtures of oxygen and nitrogen as oxidizer. The magnitude of the fuel injection velocities is restricted to values that will keep the Froude number on the order of 10-5, when calculated at normal gravity and pressure, which are characteristic of condensed fuel burning. Two different burners are used, a circular burner (62 mm diameter) placed inside a cylindrical chamber (0.3 m diameter and 1.0 m height) and a rectangular burner (50 mm wide by 200 mm long) placed in a wind tunnel (350 mm long) of rectangular cross section (120 mm wide and 90 mm height). The first burner is used to study the effect of pressure and gravity in the absence of a forced flow parallel to the surface. The second burner is used to study the effect of a forced flow parallel to the burner surface as well as the effect of oxygen concentration in the oxidizer flow. In this case experiments are also conducted at different gravity levels (micro-gravity, 0.2 g(sub 0), g(sub 0) and 1.8 g(sub 0)) to quantify the relative importance of buoyancy

Socioeconomic and technical considerations to mitigate land and water degradation in the Peruvian Andes

This project aims to increase agricultural productivity, incomes, and sustainable management of land and water by small farmers in the rural Sierra region of Peru. Although results demonstrate the effectiveness of increased productivity and commercialization of high value agricultural commodities, this type of activity may be limited to certain parts of the watershed with access to irrigation and startup capital. Interventions promoting commercialization, such as those of CEDEPAS Norte, may result in reduced soil degradation and decreased conversion of pastures to cropland. On the other hand, the evaluation results for PRONAMACHCS indicate how difficult it is to improve the standard of life of the population by focusing exclusively on soil and water conservation techniques. Thus, this analysis indicates that a combination of activities may be necessary in order to improve productivity in the short term and promote adoption of sustainable soil and water conservation techniques in the medium and long term

A simplified correction method for thermocouple disturbance errors in solids

When a thermocouple is embedded in a material of lower thermal conductivity, under certain heating or cooling conditions, the presence of the thermocouple can distort the surrounding temperature field. As a result, the measured temperatures may be very different to the ‘undisturbed’ temperatures that would exist without the thermocouple. This study presents the results of a sensitivity analysis of key factors influencing this thermal disturbance. A series of heat transfer models and accompanying experiments are used to demonstrate the effects of thermocouple geometry, contact conditions, thermal properties, and heating regime on the temperature measurement error. These tailored finite element models were validated against experiments on vermiculite insulation board, which confirmed the accuracy of the models in simulating the thermal disturbance for inert heating conditions. Also, a simplified version of the finite element model was used to calculate the thermal disturbance error for a number of conditions, and subsequently to predict a range of corrected temperatures for the experimental measurements. This correction method was found to greatly improve the accuracy of the results for inert heating conditions. Since the method does not account for the effects of moisture in heat transfer, a creep of uncorrected errors could be observed