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Architecture as Mnemonic: The Central Post Office, Kaunas, Lithuania
No full textThis chapter focuses on the former Central Post Office in Kaunas, which is one of the most iconic Modernist buildings in Lithuania. The building was designed by Feliksas Vizbaras (1880–1966) in 1930 and opened in 1931. It has been recognised as an important symbol of the newly independent Lithuanian state. More than a symbolic object, the contextual response, vernacular reinterpretation and user experience of this Modernist building all contribute to shaping its meanings and memories of place, which are lasting beyond the changing conditions of society. This case study echoes a lesser-known alternative modernism influenced by the region’s vernacular architecture, its sustained meaning and accumulated memories. It also reconfirms the mnemonic potential of architecture to act as a bearer of memories
Molecular-modified dyes for dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs): a computational chemistry investigation
Get PDFDye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) are of great potential for science development to solve the problem of energy crisis. The sensitizers (dyes) for DSSCs are explored and discussed in this project. Computational chemistry investigations based on Gaussian 09 are carried out to determine the computational data of dye molecules and to deduce their properties. Light absorptions, molecular orbitals, and energy levels of dyes are specifically explored and discussed. Molecular structures are modified diversely to achieve better features. The new dye molecule with better properties is successfully designed
Aphasia partnership training: what outcomes do people with aphasia, family members and speech and language therapists expect?
Get PDFIntroduction
Life with aphasia affects the whole family with shorter, less frequent conversations, frustration, reduced social networks, isolation and tension in relationships. Evidence suggests communication partner training (CPT) benefits families. However, expected improvements are poorly articulated. The Aphasia Partnership Training (APT) project aimed to identify target outcomes of a new family dyad CPT programme through persons with aphasia (PWA), family member and speech and language therapist (SLT) consensus.
Method
Consensus on desired outcomes was achieved through nominal groups with 20 people with mild to severe aphasia across five groups and 10 family members of people with mild to severe aphasia across three groups, each facilitated by —two to three SLTs. Twelve CPT researchers 16 clinical SLTs with experience of CPT participated in a three-round eDelphi to gain consensus on outcomes they perceived most likely to change. Results were triangulated using a convergence coding scheme to demonstrate agreement, partial agreement, dissonance or silence amongst the three stakeholder groups.
Results
All stakeholders agreed ‘conversation’ and ‘thoughts and feelings’ were very important outcomes of APT/very likely to change (agreement). Change in ‘relationships’ was very important to family members, important to PWA and considered very likely to change by SLTs (partial agreement). Change in ‘language’ (specifically talking) was very important to PWA, but not important to family members, and SLTs were uncertain about language improvement from APT (dissonance). Each outcome construct is illustrated by specific examples generated and agreed by all stakeholder groups.
Conclusions
We should aim to achieve improvements in conversation and thoughts and feelings with CPT, consider the impact on relationships and investigate the potential for language improvement (talking) as an outcome of APT. Outcome measures can be selected based on good coverage of examples generated within these constructs, ensuring they are meaningful to PWA and family members.
WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS
What is already known on the subject
We know that people with aphasia (PWA) and their family members often find it difficult to communicate together with wide-reaching consequences. We know that communication partner training (CPT) benefits families as demonstrated in two systematic reviews of 56 small studies. We also know what outcomes PWA and their families want from speech and language therapy in general, but there is little clarity in the literature about what outcomes are expected from CPT specifically.
What this paper adds to existing knowledge
This paper highlights the outcomes PWA, family members and speech and language therapists expect from a new CPT programme called Aphasia Partnership Training. These outcomes can be considered for all family dyad CPT programmes.
What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?
The outcomes identified through the stakeholder consensus presented from this study can be used to set goals and monitor the success of CPT, help PWA and family members decide whether they want to participate in a communication partner intervention, and ensure that measures used to evaluate the success of CPT interventions are meaningful to PWA and their families
Collaboration before competition: how smart city entrepreneurs co-create temporary ecosystems to build capacity for learning
Get PDFThis article explores how smart city entrepreneurs (SCEs) learn to address urban sustainability challenges with innovative digital products and services. SCEs embody social, digital, and urban entrepreneurialism features and play a pivotal role in advancing smart city development. But despite their importance, little is known about the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to become an SCE. Grounded in entrepreneurial learning theory, our study helps fill this gap. Using the city of Edinburgh, UK, as our empirical setting, we examine the learning process of 34 SCEs. Our findings offer three core contributions. First, we show that collaborative learning is a key driver of innovation in the smart city domain. SCEs significantly benefit from collaborative efforts rather than competitive strategies alone. Second, we show that these collaborations develop in temporary ecosystems that contribute to enhancing the innovative capacities of SCEs. Building on these findings, we expand entrepreneurial learning theory, highlighting the critical yet overlooked role of temporary ecosystems and intermediaries in stimulating collaboration and knowledge exchange among SCEs. Third, we provide practical recommendations for policymakers, emphasizing the importance of supporting the development of strategic learning capacities and diverse learning modalities for SCEs
Backreacted Coulomb energy in the Skyrme model
Get PDFThe Skyrme model is extended with the Maxwell action and a source term for the gauge field. We consider the specialized case of vanishing isospin states, such that only an electric potential is turned on and study the backreaction onto the Skyrme fields. In particular, we study Skyrmions with baryon numbers B = 4, 8, 12, 16 and 40. We find, in agreement with physical expectations, that the Coulomb backreaction is most pronounced for large Skyrmions and find furthermore that the dynamics of the theory is more sensitive to the backreaction than the ground states (global minimizers of the energy). Calibrating the model to Carbon-12, we find excellent agreement of the masses of the studied Skyrmions — within 1.86% of experimental data. The Coulomb energies are slightly larger than phenomenological fits suggest, but only by about 3 – 22%, whereas the radii are within 15% errors, with the largest errors on the smallest baryon number (B = 4) and the smallest errors on the large baryon numbers
To play or not to play: mapping unequal provision of children’s playgrounds
Get PDFChildren’s playgrounds are an important component providing opportunities for children’s play. Few studies, however, have explored the unequal geographic provision of these valuable spaces. This work addressed this research gap by identifying the key data and methods required to analyse children’s playground provision at both global and national geographic scales. The aims of the paper were twofold: It firstly explored the potential for mapping children’s playground provision at a global scale and validated such an approach using finer spatial scales. Secondly, the unequal provision of playgrounds was investigated at a national scale in England, UK using open data sources. Relationships with the size of the settlement and deprivation were also explored. The work used a range of secondary datasets through applying quantitative GIS and statistical approaches. The results demonstrated that, due to data quality issues, a world approach to map playground provision was not currently viable. At a national scale, results highlighted substantial inequality in provision, with some settlements in England experiencing five times the number of children per playground, despite being broadly comparable in terms of population. Deprived settlements in England tended to have fewer, smaller, and further-away playgrounds. The patterns were most stark in the largest settlements. London, however, was consistently an exception to these patterns, where deprived areas tended to have more and closer playgrounds. Acknowledging the numerous competing different metrics to measure provision of children’s playgrounds, the research generated a framework for bringing together a wide range of interrelated data into a condensed form for comparison. Thus, the approach facilitated the identification of interventions within different contexts in order to reduce inequalities in playground provision and bolster children’s democratic right to the city for play
Membrane transport modulates the pH-regulated feedback of an enzyme reaction confined within lipid vesicles
Get PDFUnderstanding ion transport dynamics in reactive vesicles is pivotal for exploring biological and chemical processes and essential for designing synthetic cells. In this work, we investigate how proton transport and membrane potential regulate pH dynamics in an autocatalytic enzyme reaction within lipid vesicles. Combining experimental and numerical methods, we demonstrate that compartmentalization within lipid membranes accelerates internal reactions, attributed to protection from the external acidic environment. In experiments, we explored how proton movement significantly impacts internal reactions by changing bilayer thickness, adding ion transporters, and varying buffers. Numerical investigations incorporated electrical membrane potential and capacitance into a kinetic model of the process, elucidating the mechanisms that dictate the control of reaction time observed in the experiment, driven by both electrical and chemical potential gradients. These findings establish a framework for controlling pH clock reactions via membrane changes and targeted manipulation of proton movement, which could aid in the design of synthetic cells with precise, controlled functionalities
Integrated National Transport Strategy: A call for ideas - Response as an organisation. INFUZE.
Get PDFCall for evidence description: The Department for Transport is developing a strategy which will set the high-level direction for how transport should be designed, built and operated in England over the next 10 years. It will set out a single national vision which will put people who use transport and their needs at its heart and empower local leaders to deliver integrated transport solutions that meet the needs of their local communities. To help us create the strategy, we are now asking people: about their experience of transport in England, what we could do to make it better. We want to hear from: people who use any form of transport, including cars, vans, motorbikes, mopeds, trains, underground, metro, trams, buses, minibuses, coaches, bikes, e-bikes, walking or wheeling, frontline transport workers – people who work in the transport industry, companies and organisations that operate in the transport sector, Responses to this call for ideas will be considered in the drafting of the Integrated National Transport Strategy
Physically based modelling of glacier evolution under climate change in the tropical Andes
Get PDFIn recent years, opportunities have opened up to develop and validate glacier models in regions that have previously been infeasible due to observation and/or computational constraints thanks to the availability of globally capable glacier evolution modelling codes and spatially extensive geodetic validation data. The glaciers in the tropical Andes represent some of the least observed and modelled glaciers in the world, making their trajectories under climate change uncertain. Studies to date have typically adopted empirical models of the surface energy balance and ice flow to simulate glacier evolution under climate change, but these may miss important non-linearities in future glacier mass changes. We combine two globally capable modelling codes that provide a more physical representation of these processes:(i) the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), which solves the full energy balance of snow and ice, and (ii) the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM), which solves a flowline representation of the shallow-ice equation to simulate ice flow. JULES–OGGM is applied to over 500 tropical glaciers in the Vilcanota-Urubamba basin in Peru, home to more than 800 000 people that predominantly live in rural communities with low socioeconomic development and high vulnerability to climate change. The model is evaluated against available glaciological and geodetic mass balance observations to assess the potential for using the modelling workflow to simulate tropical glacier evolution over decadal timescales. We show that the JULES–OGGM model can be parameterized to capture decadal (2000–2018) mass changes in individual glaciers, but we also show that limitations in the JULES prognostic snow model prevent accurate replication of observed surface albedo fluctuations and mass changes across all glaciers simultaneously. Specifically, the model cannot replicate the feedbacks between the driving meteorology, surface energy balance, ablation processes, and snow darkening. Only by forcing the model with observed net radiation variables were we able to capture observed surface albedo dynamics. When driven with statistically downscaled climate change projections, the JULES–OGGM simulations indicate that, contrary to point-scale energy balance studies, sublimation plays a very minor role in glacier evolution at the basin scale and does not bring about significant non-linearities in the glacier response to climate warming. The ensemble mean simulation estimates that total glacier mass will decrease to 17 % and 6 % of that in 2000 by 2100 for Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively, which is more conservative than estimates from some other global glacier models
Neuronal polyunsaturated fatty acids are protective in ALS/FTD
Get PDFHere we report a conserved transcriptomic signature of reduced fatty acid and lipid metabolism gene expression in a Drosophila model of C9orf72 repeat expansion, the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia (ALS/FTD), and in human postmortem ALS spinal cord. We performed lipidomics on C9 ALS/FTD Drosophila, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell neurons and postmortem FTD brain tissue. This revealed a common and specific reduction in phospholipid species containing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Feeding C9 ALS/FTD flies PUFAs yielded a modest increase in survival. However, increasing PUFA levels specifically in neurons of C9 ALS/FTD flies, by overexpressing fatty acid desaturase enzymes, led to a substantial extension of lifespan. Neuronal overexpression of fatty acid desaturases also suppressed stressor-induced neuronal death in iPS cell neurons of patients with both C9 and TDP-43 ALS/FTD. These data implicate neuronal fatty acid saturation in the pathogenesis of ALS/FTD and suggest that interventions to increase neuronal PUFA levels may be beneficial
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