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Exploring age-friendly urban design through co-creation: insights from EngAGE4Change, a health CASCADE study
No full textThis study showcases a co-creative approach to urban design specifically tailored to meet the physical activity and socialization needs of older adults in Barcelona, Spain. It explores how older adults can be involved in the planning process of spaces that foster their physical and social activities. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, the research facilitated a collaborative design effort that engaged older adults, community stakeholders, and researchers to ensure a wide range of perspectives and inclusivity. These findings underscore the feasibility of a co-creative process in urban design and planning, revealing older adults' preferences for public spaces that promote healthy ageing and social well-being
Local stakeholders’ perspectives on food-related wellness tourism in Central Vietnam: challenges and opportunities
No full textWithin the wellness tourism trend, healthy food-related tourism has emerged, especially in Asia, often linked to Buddhist/Hindu food, vegetarian food and tea/herbal medicine. This research explores food-related wellness tourism in Thua Thien Hue, Vietnam, where tourism is the primary economic driver, leveraging the region's rich heritage and food cultures. The study focuses on local stakeholders' perspectives regarding current practices, challenges and future opportunities. Semi-structured interviews and observations reveal the local stakeholders' awareness, interest and pride in developing food-related wellness tourism. However, products remain underdeveloped due to a lack of education and training opportunities, support, human resources, investment, connections, public transport and planning, as well as modest international tourist numbers. Small businesses face more challenges, including limited market understanding and insufficient skills. The study highlights the need for systematic support such as collaborative networks, digital skills and joint marketing and product development initiatives for SMEs. This research contributes to both wellness and food tourism literature by providing supply-side perspectives and emphasising the close relationship between food and wellness tourism, which has not been extensively explored in tourism research. By listening to the voices of marginalised stakeholders, the findings can aid policymakers in developing sustainable and inclusive food-related wellness tourism initiatives
Voltage regulation and reactive power optimization for integration of distributed energy resources into smart grids
No full textVolt/var control (VVC) is one of the primary functions of the distribution management system, aiming at optimum operation of power distribution networks while respecting all of their operational and security constraints. However, the recent huge integration of highly stochastic distributed generation (DG) sources with the grid presents a significant challenge to the traditional VVC schemes, which assume the future to be perfectly known. This chapter presents a two-stage chance-constrained optimization scheme to handle these nodal power uncertainties and guarantees that the system constraints are respected for almost all realizations of the uncertainty. The optimization scheme not only dispatches the optimum schedule for discrete voltage-controlling devices like transformers and shunt capacitors but also optimizes predefined decision rules for reactive power control of DG sources. Finally, two simple methods are presented to approximately model static power system loads with good accuracy with the advanced VVC optimization schemes.</p
Book Review: Transitional safeguarding
No full textThis book opens by asserting that it is the first on the issue of transitional safeguarding and sets out with a number of key aims, in particular to challenge the binary thinking behind service responses to children and adults, which has too often led to young people falling off a service cliff edge, just at the time in their lives they are most vulnerable. It adopts the definition of transitional safeguarding of Holmes and Smale (2018: 3) as ‘an approach to safeguarding adolescents and young people fluidly across developmental stages which builds on the best available evidence…’, and it is that blend of evidence-based approaches and creative thinking that makes it an extremely welcome publication that should reach a wide audience.However, the book clearly recognizes that the concept itself is far from static and is subject to change in the light of experience as well as emerging understanding of adolescence and early adulthood. A significant theme that runs throughout the book is the application of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, both to the experience of young people themselves and to the systems that seek to support them, and this gives the book a clear sense of coherence
'Proving themselves no mean experts at the game': Women's Football in Scotland, 1914-1921
No full textReferrals offered to affected family members: a cross-sectional analysis of a substance use programme register
No full textBackground: Demand is growing for support services for affected family members (AFM) of relatives with a substance use disorder or problematic substance use. This study examined referral patterns and factors influencing referral types of AFM who sought support through the program ‘Recomeço Família’ in São Paulo, Brazil. Methods: A cross-sectional retrospective analysis of 5,192 records of family members registered in the program between 2014 and 2018. Referrals made by health professionals to external services were assessed and factors associated with referral types were assessed through univariate binary logistic regressions. Results: Most of the referrals were to individual therapies (counseling/psychotherapy)(64.30%), followed by family support groups (21.15%) and psychoeducational programs (14.55%). Referral destinations varied by AFM and their relative characteristics, including gender, age, kinship, levels of emotional distress, help-seeking history and substance type. Conclusion: The findings highlight factors that may influence referral decisions and underscore the need for further investigation into whether these referrals effectively address the specific needs of AFM.</p
Multi-objective data-driven mixed H2/H∞ controller design for uncertain structural systems
No full textThis paper presents a multi-objective, linear matrix inequality-based (LMI-based) data-driven mixed H2/H∞ control approach for attenuating norm-bounded disturbances in seismically excited structural systems. The identification-free nature of the data-driven control technique effectively addresses parameter uncertainty issues in structural systems. While the proposed technique does not require knowledge of the system matrices A and Bu, it only necessitates the bounds on states and disturbances for controller design. In the proposed method, the full-block S procedure is employed to define the norm-bounded uncertain disturbance input, allowing the use of convex-hull relaxation. Moreover, the dilation technique on LMIs enables the use of non-common Lyapunov matrices in H2 and H∞ control problems. As a result, the proposed method provides a solution to the convex optimization problem for multi-objective control with minimal conservatism. The effectiveness of the proposed data-driven controller is evaluated using a four-storey structural system subjected to ground motions from earthquake data collected during the Kobe and Northridge earthquakes. Numerical examples and extensive case studies demonstrate that the proposed method achieves successful active vibration control comparable to model-based approaches and exhibits robustness under different earthquake excitations and system mass variations
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