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Advancements in data analysis and visualisation techniques to support multiple single-subject analyses: an assessment of movement coordination and coordination variability
No full textVector coding is a data analysis technique that quantifies inter-segmental coordination and coordination variability of human movement. The usual reporting of vector coding time-series data can be difficult to interpret when multiple trials are superimposed on the same figure. This study describes and presents novel data visualisations for displaying data from vector coding that supports multiple single- subject analyses. The dataset used in this study describes the lumbar-pelvis coordination in the transverse plane during a gait cycle. The data visualisation techniques presented in this study consists of the use of colour and data bars to map and profile coordination pattern and coordination variability data. The use of colour mapping provides the option to classify commonalities and differences in patterns of coordination between segment couplings and between individuals across a big dataset. Data bars display segmental dominancy data that can provide an intuitive summary on coupling angle distribution over time. The data visualisation in this study may provide further insight on how people with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis perform goal-orientated movements following an intervention, which would support clinical management strategie
Quantifying three-dimensional lumbar kinematics during gait using optoelectronic motion capture: a comparison of two kinematic models
No full textWhitegold International Ceramics Prize Convivial Clay - public art project, Grow It Cook It Eat It
Get PDFThe Portland Inn Project were one of the winners of the Whitegold International Ceramics Prize 2020, which resulted in the public art project Grow It Cook It Eat It with Whitegold and Edible St Austell.
Due to Covid restrictions the first phase of the project was conducted online, with The Portland Inn Project artists Anna Francis, Rebecca Davies and Alice Thatcher sending making packs containing clay and seeds by post to participants. Face Pot making workshops were conducted, and the participants grew plants to bring to the open day at the Edible St Austell allotment and green space at the open day on June 19th 2021.
A large scale face pot was built on site, to be left with the Edible St Austell volunteers, and a shop window was displayed about the project during the Whitegold festival.
Info shared about the project: GROW it, COOK it, EAT it with The Portland Inn Project (Stoke-on-Trent.)
200 Words about our Project:
We are excited to be working as part of Whitegold to celebrate the strengths of community organisations based in St Austell and St Blazey.
Key themes emerged from our conversations with community groups: heritage, growth, learning, organising and sustainability. Our approach, as artists is to develop these themes using creative methods that truly represent the community.
Our project is in three stages:
GROW it: We will recruit community members to work with us to create face-pots representing our people and places. We will discuss the importance of eating together, while collecting recipes, and will grow salads and herbs in the pots we make.
COOK it: We will explore the significance of the gathered recipes and how they represent our cultures/families/history.
The virtual workshops, creative packs and physical workshops (across stage 1 and 2), will enable an exchange of ideas, knowledges, experience and matter – clay!
EAT it: A hosted feast will be programmed, and the group will put together the menu, and the guest list; using the meal as a chance to advocate for and with their communities, inviting local identified stakeholders to join in the celebration of the community and host conversations that they wish to instigate.
Quote about our interest in The Whitegold Project:
At the heart of The Portland Inn Project is an understanding of the amazing material potential of Clay for our community, both in terms of a locational history, but also in something quite primal we experience when we work together with clay. We love the work being done by Whitegold with communities and the landscape, and recognise a correlation between our places. For this reason we are so pleased to be able to share our work and learn from our experiences with Whitegold.
Delivering a programme for our community during the Coronavirus Crisis has been challenging, but has afforded us some time to reflect on the work we have been doing here since 2015, and to spend some time planning for the future. We have been able to create a successful programme of creative packs and online workshops with our community, experience which will be so valuable in relation to the Whitegold Project we have planned
Mental health interventions by lay counsellors: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Get PDFObjective
To investigate the effectiveness of community-based mental health interventions by professionally trained, lay counsellors in low- and middle-income countries.
Methods
We searched PubMed®, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PROSPERO and EBSCO databases and professional section publications of the United States National Center for PTSD for randomized controlled trials of mental health interventions by professionally trained, lay counsellors in low- and middle-income countries published between 2000 and 2019. Studies of interventions by professional mental health workers, medical professionals or community health workers were excluded because there are shortages of these personnel in the study countries. Additional data were obtained from study authors. The primary outcomes were measures of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and alcohol use. To estimate effect size, we used a random-effects meta-analysis model.
Findings
We identified 1072 studies, of which 19 (involving 20 trials and 5612 participants in total) met the inclusion criteria. Hedges' g for the aggregate effect size of the interventions by professionally trained, lay counsellors compared with mostly either no intervention or usual care was −0.616 (95% confidence interval: −0.866 to −0.366). This result indicates a significant, medium-sized effect. There was no evidence of publication bias or any other form of bias across the studies and there were no extreme outliers among the study results.
Conclusion
The use of professionally trained, lay counsellors to provide mental health interventions in low- and middle-income countries was associated with significant improvements in mental health symptoms across a range of settings
Social Norms and Reducing Belief in Conspiracy Theories
Get PDFConspiracy theories are explanations for important events that involve secret plots from powerful malevolent groups. Research finds that belief in conspiracy theories can lead to negative consequences for individuals and society. Importantly, belief in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories is related to vaccine hesitancy. Intervention attempts to attenuate the consequences of these beliefs thus far have had limited success. This thesis empirically tests social norms-based interventions to address anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs.
Social norms are expectations about appropriate social behaviour. Our perceptions of social norms can exert a powerful influence on beliefs and behaviours. Across four studies, we found that perceived norms of in-group conspiracy beliefs are strongly related to personal conspiracy beliefs; demonstrated in a student sample (Study 1), in a community sample (Study 2), and specific to anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs in a UK parent sample (Study 4). Similarly, the level of identification to the in-group is important in this relationship (Study 3). This thesis also found that individuals overestimated the perceived belief of others in conspiracy theories, misperceiving that these beliefs are more normative than they are.
Utilizing this knowledge, two experimental studies with UK parents were conducted, which paired anti-conspiracy counterarguments and social norm messages to address anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs. However, these interventions were ineffective in reducing anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs and increasing vaccination intentions (Studies 5 and 6). Combatting limitations of the previous interventions tested in this thesis, a Social Norms Approach (SNA) intervention was conducted, using normative feedback to challenge misperceptions of anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs amongst UK parents (Study 7). The SNA intervention successfully reduced these beliefs, but the effects did not extend to increasing vaccination intentions.
Overall, the research in this thesis demonstrates the strong relationship between perceived norms of conspiracy beliefs and personal beliefs and the potential of the SNA to address these beliefs. Future research is invited to further explore the contribution of the SNA to reduce anti-vaccine conspiracy endorsement
Old wine in a new bottle: Revisiting organisational conceptions of leadership to understand what place leaders ‘actually’ do to make things happen
Get PDFPlace Leadership, as ‘a specific form of leadership at the urban and regional scale’ is
considered central to urban and regional growth because it brings together actors from different backgrounds, operating at different scales and with differing levels of power and authority, to work in partnership with others, who may not share their ideological views or business interests. But despite knowing much about what leaders do in organisations and where matters of governance might sit, we’ve never fully understood ‘what it is that place leaders actually do to make things happen at the sub-national scale’. In this chapter, I return to the Organisation Studies literature to see how leadership is ‘actually conceptualised’ and use this to analyse ‘actually existing’ case of place leadership, to show how these specific talents, need to differ, in different contexts, in order to get the job done. What this shows, is
that, in keeping with Critical Management, it is only through discursive analysis of place leaders’ accounts of their practice, that we are able to reveal how these attributes and processes ‘actually come together’. This is in keeping with the observations of Beer (2015) that only by acknowledging that regions are construed both materially and discursively through a myriad of processes (Lagendijk 2007) will we succeed in better aligning policy to the specificity of place
Covid-19 will forever shift the educational landscape within healthcare [blog]
No full textEscalating concerns regarding the huge strain upon healthcare systems globally are occurring on a daily basis and are currently becoming significantly worse due to new variants of coronavirus.
This crisis not only impacts frontline staff but all systems and communities. Covid-19 has severely disrupted universities, and subsequently nurse education, and other allied health professionals. Schools of nursing have responded and continue to adapt nurse education in an attempt to ‘work with’ these unique challenges to develop the next generation of care providers.
The most recent announcement from the Nursing Midwifery Council has, again, caused great unrest and anxiety among healthcare students, qualified staff and higher education institutions (HEIs) across the country
“For Dust Thou Art, and Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return”: Jewish Law, Forensic Investigation, and Archaeology in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Get PDFJewish communities across Europe were irrevocably decimated during the Holocaust by systematic and ad hoc executions, forced labor, and various forms of ill-treatment (Rees 2017). The scope and scale of the killing, types of killing techniques deployed, and need to dispose of large quantities of corpses—as well as the total disregard for the human and religious rights of the victims—was an unprecedented violation of human life and dignity. This chapter considers (1) how the specific nature of genocidal actions defiled Jewish customs relating to death and burial during the Holocaust, (2) how and why Rabbinical, forensic and archaeological responses to the Holocaust have been at odds and (3) how recent developments in archaeological approaches offer the opportunity to respect Jewish law while deriving important new information about the crimes perpetrated and experiences of the victims
Use and Ornament - The British Ceramics Biennial 2021
No full textUse and Ornament was an exhibition curated by Anna Francis as part of the 2021 British Ceramics Biennial 2021, held in Stoke-on-Trent, UK. The exhibition was held at Artist Led Gallery, AirSpace, in the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent.
Exhibition Info:
USE AND ORNAMENT is a multi-media group exhibition which explores contemporary understandings of clay, as material and resource, the role and purposes it might have today; and delves into what ceramics can offer us, as we move into a time of recovery and rebuilding.
Artists:
BRICKFIELD
CLAY COLLEGE
ANNA COLLETTE HUNT
INSIDEOUTSIDEHOUSE
CLAIRE LODER
KATY SPRAGG
FRANCES DISLEY
curated by
ANNA FRANCIS
Use and Ornament, creates a space for respite and refuge from a time of difficulty, setting out some practical uses for this very earthly of materials, and how it might help us to recover, when the time comes. But it also goes further, in the belief that the role of art, and therefore the occupation of the artist and maker, is to create moments that move us beyond the bounds of the earthly, to that important place of imagination, exploration and departure.
An exhibition in two halves, the works shown discuss the need to make more sustainable choices in how we make and consume, acknowledging a need to shift our value systems in relation to global resources. We then move on to recognise that there is good reason to celebrate the sublime; for as much as we need our art to have a role and a purpose, sometimes that role and purpose can be to lift us out of the hole we are in, even if just for a moment, to dream of the future.
The exhibition comprises works by 6 artists/collectives, including work made during a public facing and participatory artist residency, completed in August 2021.
USE AND ORNAMENT : A Manual for Recovery through Pottery and Ceramics
Essay by Anna Francis
Since its first iteration in 2009, every two years AirSpace Gallery has mounted an exhibition as part of the British Ceramics Biennial, exploring clay and its applications. As a visual arts gallery, we have always aimed to create space for dialogues and critique within our programmes, and often, in the works and projects we have developed for BCB, we have aimed to gain an understanding of what role ceramics plays in our place; what the material may mean to the people and communities here, and what significance this has had and still continues to have via our global connections as a city. For BCB 2021, the Use and Ornament Exhibition aims to examine and explore contemporary understandings of clay, via the work of 6 artists and arts collectives.
In describing the exhibition as a manual, the aim is to suggest something useful: perhaps a set of instructions that can be followed; a recipe for something certain, a set number of ingredients which always result in the same outcome.
As the first public exhibition that the gallery has been able to display since the pandemic took hold in 2020, perhaps the suggestion of a formula that can be followed provides some much-needed certainty. Life today looks almost unrecognisable in some respects; much of what we thought of as definite and fixed has changed and shifted position. An exhibition arriving in the wake of such unimaginable upheaval must address some of the difficulties and challenges which have impacted on every human being on the planet these past 18 months, but the need for recovery mentioned in the exhibition’s subtitle speaks additionally about the purpose and role of art, given the global context of climate change, and more locally, concerns of a city aiming to find a new identity, as much of its traditional industries have dwindled, these past 50 years.
The role of ceramic here then is of particular interest, being a city whose fortunes have been tied up with clay as far back as 2000 BC, but most notably, since the Industrial Revolution saw the region eventually defined and known for what it makes: ‘The Potteries’. How do you rethink the role of ceramics in the Stoke-on-Trent of today, and what relevance can be found in this material, clay, given the local and global challenges we face?
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
Throughout the exhibition, Use and Ornament will be augmented by a series of public activities, taking the core underlying principles of the exhibition as a starting point and working outwards to explore contemporary societal concerns in visual arts and ceramic contexts.
The Public Programme will comprise
• Artists' talks and public discussions - delving into the issues facing contemporary arts and crafts
• The return of our Artist Soup Kitchen series, to explore support networks, good practice and sustainability of the arts and artists in an ever changing and challenging world.
• Creative, hands-on workshops
• A special Film Club with our Use And Ornament resident artists
• A final Use And Ornament Social, hosted by renowned influencers Hayley and Bill - which will seek to make the case for beauty, and the arts
Beyond the Blue Economy; Creative Industries and Sustainable Development in Small Island Developing States
Get PDFThis book argues for a broader approach to sustainable growth in Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Small island states such as those in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and South Pacific face significant and growing threats from climate change, increasing political and social volatility, and rapidly evolving global trends in technology and tourism. Based on ten years of research, this book looks beyond the Blue Economy of tourism and fisheries and provides a model of how creative industries, innovation networks, creative clusters and digital transformation can give SIDS the foundation for a strong sustainable future. The book provides not only insights into how these emerging digital-creative sectors can drive developing economies but also actionable tools for policy makers, entrepreneurs and academics to deliver increased performance on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and, ultimately, growth and sustainability.
This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of economic geography, sustainable development, development studies and the creative industries
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