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Placemaking in post-devolution Scotland: the gap between aspiration and implementation
Get PDFThis paper investigates the framing and implementation of a distinct placemaking agenda that emerged in Scotland after devolution. Developed over a period of some twenty-five years, Scotland’s placemaking agenda is often upheld for its ambitious commitment to ‘design value’ and pursuit of social and environmental policy goals. Despite this, there has yet to be a comprehensive study of the agenda and its implementation. This paper’s originality lies in its comprehensive response to this gap, which it addresses in two ways using a rigorous methodology combining primary interview and survey data, archival research, and direct observations of the built environment. First, we trace the evolution of Scotland’s post-devolution planning and urban design policies and highlight their relative divergence from those in the other nations of the UK. Second, we examine the implementation of the placemaking agenda on-the-ground in a series of housing development case studies. From this analysis, we demonstrate that a distinct and progressive commitment to placemaking has emerged in Scotland post-devolution but reveal that implementation has struggled to keep up. We argue that a series of stubborn barriers to implementation have prevented the full realisation of Scotland’s placemaking agenda. Through a fine-grained focus on the cultures of design governance practice that facilitate delivery, we contend that these deeply engrained barriers cannot be addressed by policy change alone, and require a more substantial rethink of Scotland’s placemaking practice. The conclusions are of theoretical and practical significance for understanding the context-dependent cultures of implementation within which design governance and placemaking occur
Nutrition care and dietetic resources in pediatric IBD: an initiative of the ESPGHAN Porto Group and Special Interest Group
No full textObjectives:
Dietary therapy is often used in the management of children with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Nevertheless, appropriate dietetic support and resources are not universally available, potentially leading to variable practices. This survey aimed to describe contemporary dietary practices and resourcing across IBD member centers of European Society of Paediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology & Nutrition (ESPGHAN).
Methods:
An anonymous 33-item questionnaire survey on nutritional care and dietetic resources was circulated to the Porto Group and IBD Interest Group of ESPGHAN in November 2023.
Results:
We obtained responses from 63/145 (43%) physicians from 31 countries. Fifty-four (86%) physicians, routinely use exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) for induction of remission, 26/63 (41%) partial enteral nutrition (PEN) for maintenance of remission and 28 (44%) implement food-based dietary therapies, the most popular being Crohn's Disease (CD) exclusion Diet coupled with PEN 36 (61%). Notably, 41 (65%) reported offering dietary counseling for active CD compared to 20 (32%) for ulcerative colitis (UC, p = 0.005). Availability of a dietitian varied between centers, with 13 (21%) rarely or never having a dietitian available. Among sites where a dietitian was always or mostly available, 93% used EEN compared to 70% of sites where a dietitian was less available (p = 0.028). Access to dietitians was reported for 31% of CD patients in lower-income countries versus 66% in high-income countries (p = 0.015). Over 50% of CD patients sought dietary advice, compared to 41% of UC patients (p < 0.001).
Conclusions:
We identified variable practices in nutritional therapy and dietetic resources among pediatric IBD centers. Addressing these challenges will improve IBD therapy and integrate nutritional therapies in the multi-disciplinary care of these patients
A review of the therapeutic efficacy and safety of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes in preclinical models of subacute and chronic myocardial infarction
Get PDFFor the past decade, cell-based therapies have been the focus of research to investigate their potential to treat ischemic heart disease. The translation to human clinical studies depends on the demonstration of therapeutic efficacy and safety, particularly when transplanted in the subacute and chronic post-MI phase. A number of studies were identified that reported the effect of hiPSC-CMs on cardiac outcomes when transplanted at least 7 days post-myocardial infarction. The mean sample size of the published studies was 30 (±17) animals with a mean follow-up duration of 51 (±37) days. hiPSC-CM transplantation enhanced systolic function through augmented myocardial contractility, decreased infarct size, attenuated ventricular remodeling, and enhanced angiogenesis in the infarct and border zones in both small and large animal models. This effect was enhanced by co-transplantation with cells of vascular or adipose origin and is associated with high expression of VEGF in most studies. Despite this effect, transplanted hiPSC-CMs were structurally immature with limited survival at the endpoint. Epicardial delivery was associated with better efficacy outcomes and lower rates of arrhythmia. No study reported teratoma formation or immune rejection. From the current literature, there appears to be no consensus on the extent to which hiPSC-CMs improved systolic function, nor the degree to which this arises directly from integration of the new myocardium or from a paracrine-mediated mechanism. The nature of this paracrine mechanism and ways to improve the maturity and survival of implanted cardiomyocytes are issues that have yet to be resolved. In summary, while therapeutic benefit from cell therapy is clear, further research is required to establish whether the key mechanisms require a cellular component
Developing and evaluating a situated psychometric instrument for assessing climate anxiety: The SAM2 CAM
Get PDFAlthough increasing research examines climate anxiety, little is known about the situational factors related to it. To assess these factors, we developed and evaluated a situated psychometric instrument for assessing how much climate anxiety individuals recall experiencing in 31 situations where climate anxiety is likely (e.g., hearing about climate catastrophes on the news). Of interest was how climate anxiety is experienced in a country like the UK, where climate disasters are mostly heard about in the media and anticipated in the future, relative to countries where climate disasters are experienced directly and regularly. In an online survey (N = 303; 50.8% female), we investigated how much climate anxiety individuals recall experiencing in situations where climate anxiety is likely to occur, along with how much they recall experiencing 13 factors potentially related to climate anxiety (e.g., threat, violation, rumination). An individual measure of climate anxiety, averaged across situations, exhibited high reliability, construct validity and content validity. Climate anxiety varied widely across situations, with individuals further varying in how much climate anxiety they remembered experiencing in each situation. As predicted, the 13 situational factors tended to correlate significantly with climate anxiety across situations, explaining a median 75% of its variance in individual regressions
An illustrative case study of researcher roles and challenges in a Dutch school-level research-practice partnership
Get PDFResearchers at research-intensive universities may participate in research-practice partnerships (RPPs) to make their research activities more relevant and impacting. RPPs center equity as a goal, which means researchers and other stakeholders participate in defining and enacting equity through the partnership. Researchers must discern how to address equity goals while enacting the roles of knowledge broker, knowledge use facilitator, and knowledge development facilitator. Role enactment occurs as researchers face the challenges related to the content focus of the RPP and time demands. In this study, we examined artifacts (n = 50) from an RPP between a team of researchers and nine educators between 2021 and 2024 to understand how we, as researchers, enacted these roles and negotiated these challenges. Findings show how surface level consensus about the meaning and importance of equity work bought us time to develop the relational capital necessary to lead more authentic discussions about inequitable practices. We co-constructed a research focus to prioritize equity-in-process but thereby curtailed the full engagement of our research expertise. Findings imply that more robust focus on school- and classroom-level RPPs reveal additional dynamics and mechanisms that allow for sustained changes in classroom teaching that support equity
Analysis of Lyman β and Lyman γ lines in a pre-eruptive and eruptive prominence with solar orbiter SPICE observations
Get PDFThe first dedicated observation of an off-limb prominence by the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on board Solar Orbiter took place on April 15, 2023. Our aim is to provide an overview of the potentiality of the diagnostics using these data. We show that we can derive the changes in the physical parameters of the pre-eruptive and eruptive prominence using the Lyman lines. We investigate the integrated intensity and line widths of the Lyman β and Lyman γ lines, finding variations between the prominence, disk, and coronal regions. The results reflect dynamic changes in density, temperature, and optical thickness. We analyze the spatial and temporal evolution of the Lyman β and Lyman γ line profiles. Using a simple geometric model, we obtain the radial velocity of this prominence at the early phase of its eruption with GONG Hα images. This offers a way of calculating the radial velocity of an eruptive filament from a pair of 2D images. The result helps us understand the potential Doppler effect in line profiles. Overall, the spectral profiles indicate that the eruption enhances spatial and temporal variations in line intensity, reflecting dynamic changes in plasma conditions within the prominence. These f indings highlight the diagnostic potential of SPICE observations, and future Non-LTE radiative transfer modeling will help to further constrain prominence plasma parameters
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