Concerning the house museum and the picturesque landscape in the work of Sir John Soane : with raw hints for post-heritage museum space

The picturesque aesthetic in the work of Sir John Soane, architect and collector, resonates in the major work of his very personal practice – the development of his house museum, now the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. Soane was actively involved with the debates, practices and proponents of picturesque and classical practices in architecture and landscape and his lectures reveal these influences in the making of The Soane, which was built to contain and present diverse collections of classical and contemporary art and architecture alongside scavenged curiosities. The Soane Museum has been described as a picturesque landscape, where a pictorial style, together with a carefully defined itinerary, has resulted in the ‘apotheosis of the Picturesque interior’. Soane also experimented with making mock ruinscapes within gardens, which led him to construct faux architectures alluding to archaeological practices based upon the ruin and the fragment. These ideas framed the making of interior landscapes expressed through spatial juxtapositions of room and corridor furnished with the collected object that characterise The Soane Museum. This paper is a personal journey through the Museum which describes and then reviews aspects of Soane’s work in the context of contemporary theories on ‘new’ museology. It describes the underpinning picturesque practices that Soane employed to exceed the boundaries between interior and exterior landscapes and the collection. It then applies particular picturesque principles drawn from visiting The Soane to a speculative project for a house/landscape museum for the Oratunga historic property in outback South Australia, where the often, normalising effects of conservation practices are reviewed using minimal architectural intervention through a celebration of ruinous states.

Sir Neville Howse (VC), Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick and Private Martin O’Meara (VC) and their contributions to Australian military medicine

Medical personnel serving with the Defence Forces have contributed to the evolution of trauma treatment and the advancement of prehospital care within the military environment. This paper investigates the stories of an Australian Medical Officer, Sir Neville Howse, and two stretcher bearers, Private John Simpson (Kirkpatrick) and Private Martin O’Meara, In particular it describes the gruelling conditions under which they performed their roles, and reflects on the legacy that they have left behind in Australian society. While it is widely acknowledged that conflicts such as World War One should never have happened, as civilian and defence force paramedics, we should never forget the service and sacrifice of defence force medical personnel and their contribution to the body of knowledge on the treatment of trauma. These men and women bravely provided emergency care in the most harrowing conditions possible. However, men like Martin O’Meara may not have been given the same status in society today as Sir Neville Howse or Simpson and his donkey, due to the public’s lack of awareness and acceptance of war neurosis and conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder, reactive psychosis and somatoform disorders which were suffered by many soldiers during their wartime service and on their return home after fighting in war.

David Hicks and Cathie Holden (eds.) (2007). Teaching The Global Dimension. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 212 pages.

Teaching The Global Dimension (2007) is intended for primary and secondary teachers, pre-service teachers and educators interested in fostering global concerns in the education system. It aims at linking theory and practice and is structured as follows. Part 1, the global dimension, proposes an educational framework for understanding global concerns. Individual chapters in this section deal with some educational responses to global issues and the ways in which young people might become, in Hick’s terms, more “world-minded”. In the first two chapters, Hicks presents first, some educational responses to global issues that have emerged in recent decades, and second, an outline of the evolution of global education as a specific field. As with all the chapters in this book, most of the examples are drawn from the United Kingdom. Young people’s concerns, student teachers’ views and the teaching of controversial issues, comprise the other chapters in this section. Taken collectively, the chapters in Part 2 articulate the conceptual framework for developing, teaching and evaluating a global dimension across the curriculum. Individual chapters in this section, written by a range of authors, explore eight key concepts considered necessary to underpin appropriate learning experiences in the classroom. These are conflict, social justice, values and perceptions, sustainability, interdependence, human rights, diversity and citizenship. These chapters are engaging and well structured. Their common format consists of a succinct introduction, reference to positive action for change, and examples of recent effective classroom practice. Two chapters comprise the final section of this book and suggest different ways in which the global dimension can be achieved in the primary and the secondary classroom.

Selection of solar energy for green building using superiority and inferiority multi-criteria ranking (SIR) method

Green energy is one of the key factors, driving down electricity bill and zero carbon emission generating electricity to green building. However, the climate change and environmental policies are accelerating people to use renewable energy instead of coal-fired (convention type) energy for green building that energy is not environmental friendly. Therefore, solar energy is one of the clean energy solving environmental impact and paying less in electricity fee. The method of solar energy is collecting sun from solar array and saves in battery from which provides necessary electricity to whole house with zero carbon emission. However, in the market a lot of solar arrays suppliers, the aims of this paper attempted to use superiority and inferiority multi-criteria ranking (SIR) method with 13 constraints establishing I-flows and S-flows matrices to evaluate four alternatives solar energies and determining which alternative is the best, providing power to sustainable building. Furthermore, SIR is well-known structured approach of multi-criteria decision support tools and gradually used in construction and building. The outcome of this paper significantly gives an indication to user selecting solar energy.

A review of "The Peace In Between : Post-war violence and peacebuilding", edited by Astri Suhrke and Mats Berdal, Routledge, 2012

The term post-war violence has been with us for much of the twentieth century but the issue itself has existed for centuries. The study of violence in post-war societies has been explored by philosophers (Erasmus), statesmen (Sir Thomas More) and sociologists (Emile Durkheim). In many cases the cessation of war and the signing of peace accords do not always mean an end to the violence. This book examines in considerable detail the causes and purposes of post-conflict violence and argues that features which constrain or encourage violence accumulate in such a manner as to create distinct and different types of post-war environments...

Block models for improved earthwork allocation planning in linear infrastructure construction

Earthwork planning has been considered in this article and a generic block partitioning and modelling approach has been devised to provide strategic plans of various levels of detail. Conceptually this approach is more accurate and comprehensive than others, for instance those that are section based. In response to environmental concerns the metric for decision making was fuel consumption and emissions. Haulage distance and gradient are also included as they are important components of these metrics. Advantageously the fuel consumption metric is generic and captures the physical difficulties of travelling over inclines of different gradients, that is consistent across all hauling vehicles. For validation, the proposed models and techniques have been applied to a real world road project. The numerical investigations have demonstrated that the models can be solved with relatively little CPU time. The proposed block models also result in solutions of superior quality, i.e. they have reduced fuel consumption and cost. Furthermore the plans differ considerably from those based solely upon a distance based metric thus demonstrating a need for industry to reflect upon their current practices.

A case study of the Iranian national railway and its absolute capacity expansion using analytical models

Identifying railway capacity is an important task that can identify "in principal" whether the network can handle an intended traffic flow, and whether there is any free capacity left for additional train services. Capacity determination techniques can also be used to identify how best to improve an existing network, and at least cost. In this article an optimization approach has been applied to a case study of the Iran national railway, in order to identify its current capacity and to optimally expand it given a variety of technical conditions. This railway is very important in Iran and will be upgraded extensively in the coming years. Hence the conclusions in this article may help in that endeavor. A sensitivity analysis is recommended to evaluate a wider range of possible scenarios. Hence more useful lower and upper bounds can be provided for the performance of the system

Tales of science and defiance : the case for co-learning and collaboration in bridging the science/emotion divide in water recycling debates

Although science is generally assumed to be well integrated into rational decision-making models, it can be used to destabilise consultative processes, particularly when emotions are involved. Water policies are often seen as debates over technical and engineering issues, but can be highly controversial. Recycled water proposals, in particular, can create highly emotive conflicts. Through a case study regarding the rejection of recycled water proposals in the south-east Queensland, Australia, we explore the influence of science and emotions in contemporary water planning. We highlight the dangers inherent in promoting technical water planning issues at the expense of appropriate consideration of citizen concerns. Combining the science–policy interface and stakeholder engagement literatures, we advocate for collaborative decision-making processes that accommodate emotions and value judgements. A more collaborative stakeholder engagement model, founded on the principles of co-learning, has the potential to broaden the decision-making base and to promote better and more inclusive decision-making.

Bayesian estimation of the dynamics of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza transmission in Queensland: A space–time SIR-based model

Background A pandemic strain of influenza A spread rapidly around the world in 2009, now referred to as pandemic (H1N1) 2009. This study aimed to examine the spatiotemporal variation in the transmission rate of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 associated with changes in local socio-environmental conditions from May 7–December 31, 2009, at a postal area level in Queensland, Australia. Method We used the data on laboratory-confirmed H1N1 cases to examine the spatiotemporal dynamics of transmission using a flexible Bayesian, space–time, Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) modelling approach. The model incorporated parameters describing spatiotemporal variation in H1N1 infection and local socio-environmental factors. Results The weekly transmission rate of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 was negatively associated with the weekly area-mean maximum temperature at a lag of 1 week (LMXT) (posterior mean: −0.341; 95% credible interval (CI): −0.370–−0.311) and the socio-economic index for area (SEIFA) (posterior mean: −0.003; 95% CI: −0.004–−0.001), and was positively associated with the product of LMXT and the weekly area-mean vapour pressure at a lag of 1 week (LVAP) (posterior mean: 0.008; 95% CI: 0.007–0.009). There was substantial spatiotemporal variation in transmission rate of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 across Queensland over the epidemic period. High random effects of estimated transmission rates were apparent in remote areas and some postal areas with higher proportion of indigenous populations and smaller overall populations. Conclusions Local SEIFA and local atmospheric conditions were associated with the transmission rate of pandemic (H1N1) 2009. The more populated regions displayed consistent and synchronized epidemics with low average transmission rates. The less populated regions had high average transmission rates with more variations during the H1N1 epidemic period.