The Effect of Real Time Phase Conjugation Within a Reverberant Environment

In this study, the authors provide experimental characterisation of the field location effects that occur within a reverberant environment. This is achieved using a single active analogue phase conjugating unit positioned within a reverberant chamber. The authors demonstrate significant spatial focusing of ON-OFF-keyed 2.4 GHz signals. Furthermore, the effect of polarisation randomisation within such environments is discussed and it is shown that the system is highly tolerant of antenna orientation and does not require line of sight for its operation. © 2012 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Designing for dementia : an assessment of the impact of the physical environment on wayfinding success for residents in long term care settings

It is acknowledged that one of the consequences of the ageing process is cognitive decline, which leads to an increase in the incidence of illnesses such as dementia. This has become ever more relevant due to the projected increase in the ageing demographic. Dementia affects visuo-spatial perception, causing difficulty with wayfinding, even during the early stages of the disease. The literature widely recognises the physical environment’s role in alleviating symptoms of dementia and improving quality of life for residents. It also identifies the lack of available housing options for older people with dementia and consequently the current stock is ill-equipped to provide adequate support.
Recent statistics indicate that 80% of those residing in nursing or residential care homes have some form of dementia or severe memory problems. The shift towards institutional care settings, the need for specialist support and care, places a greater impetus on the need for a person-centred approach to tackle issues related to wayfinding and dementia.
This thesis therefore aims to improve design for dementia in nursing and residential care settings in the context of Northern Ireland. This will be undertaken in order to provide a better understanding of how people with dementia experience the physical environment and to highlight features of the design that assist with wayfinding. Currently there are limited guidelines on design for dementia, meaning that many of these are theoretical, anecdotal and not definitive. Hence a greater verification to address the less recognised design issues is required. This is intended to ultimately improve quality of life, wellbeing, independence and uphold the dignity of people with dementia living in nursing or residential care homes.
The research design uses a mixed methods approach. A thorough preparation and consideration of ethical issues informed the methodology. The various facets were also trialled and piloted to identify any ethical, technological, methodological, data collection and analysis issues. The protocol was then amended to improve or resolve any of the aforementioned issues. Initially a questionnaire based on leading design recommendations was conducted with home managers. Semi-structured interviews were developed from this and conducted with staff and resident’s next of kin. An evidence-based approach was used to design a study which used ethnographic methods, including a wayfinding task. This followed a repeated measures design which would be used to actively engage residents with dementia in the research. Complementary to the wayfinding task, conversational and semi-structured interviews were used to promote dialogue and direct responses with the person with dementia. In addition to this, Space Syntax methodologies were used to examine the physical properties of the architectural layout. This was then cross-examined with interview responses and data from the wayfinding tasks.
A number of plan typologies were identified and were determined as synonymous with decision point types which needed to be made during the walks. The empirical work enabled the synthesis of environmental features which support wayfinding.
Results indicate that particular environmental features are associated with improved performance on the wayfinding tasks. By enhancing design for dementia, through identifying the attributes, challenges with wayfinding may be overcome and the benefits of the physical environment can be seen to promote wellbeing.
The implications of this work mean that the environmental features which have been highlighted from the project can be used to inform guidelines, thus adding to existing knowledge. Future work would involve the dissemination of this information and the potential for it to be made into design standards or regulations which champion design for dementia. These would increase awareness for designers and stakeholders undertaking new projects, extensions or refurbishments.
A person-centred, evidence-based design was emphasised throughout the project which guaranteed an in-depth study. There were limitations due to the available resources, time and funding. Future research would involve testing the identified environmental features within a specific environment to enable measured observation of improvements.

Performing in the face of the academy: challenges for a creative practitioner within a university

This piece of writing is an excerpt from a keynote talk given at the Symposium on Artistic Research in Borås, Sweden, on 28 November 2014.

Analyzing the Influence of Gender Upon High Technology Venturing Within the Context of Business Incubation

We explore the influence of sex role attribution and associated gendered ascriptions upon the entrepreneurial experiences of a female high-technology business owner operating within the context of business incubation. Our literature analysis and empirical evidence suggest that stereotypical gendered expectations surrounding incubated high-technology venturing reproduce masculine norms of entrepreneurial behavior. The adoption of a gendered perspective to explore the experience of business incubation responds to contemporary calls to embed feminist analyses within the entrepreneurial field of enquiry. Furthermore, we draw upon evidence from a detailed case study informed by a life history narrative to explore a female entrepreneur's experience of incubated high-technology entrepreneurship. © 2011 Baylor University.

A hybrid metaheuristic approach to the university course timetabling problem

This paper describes the development of a novel metaheuristic that combines an electromagnetic-like mechanism (EM) and the great deluge algorithm (GD) for the University course timetabling problem. This well-known timetabling problem assigns lectures to specific numbers of timeslots and rooms maximizing the overall quality of the timetable while taking various constraints into account. EM is a population-based stochastic global optimization algorithm that is based on the theory of physics, simulating attraction and repulsion of sample points in moving toward optimality. GD is a local search procedure that allows worse solutions to be accepted based on some given upper boundary or ‘level’. In this paper, the dynamic force calculated from the attraction-repulsion mechanism is used as a decreasing rate to update the ‘level’ within the search process. The proposed method has been applied to a range of benchmark university course timetabling test problems from the literature. Moreover, the viability of the method has been tested by comparing its results with other reported results from the literature, demonstrating that the method is able to produce improved solutions to those currently published. We believe this is due to the combination of both approaches and the ability of the resultant algorithm to converge all solutions at every search process.

Body-centric ultra-wideband multi-channel characterisation and spatial diversity in the indoor environment

This study presents the findings of an empirical channel characterisation for an ultra-wideband off-body optic fibre-fed multiple-antenna array within an office and corridor environment. The results show that for received power experiments, the office and corridor were best modelled by lognormal and Rician distributions, respectively [for both line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) scenarios]. In the office, LOS measurements for t and tRMS were both described by the Normal distribution for all channels, whereas NLOS measurements for t and t were Nakagami and Weibull distributed, respectively. For the corridor measurements, LOS for t and t were either Nakagami or normally distributed for all channels, with NLOS measurements for t and t being Nakagami and normally distributed, respectively. This work also shows that achievable diversity gain was influenced by both mutual coupling and cross-correlation co-efficients. Although the best diversity gains were 1.8 dB for three-channel selective diversity combining, the authors present recommendations for improving these results. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2013.

Corporate Social Responsibility within the Northern Ireland Construction Industry: A Regional Review

As the construction industry continues to struggle with a poor societal image, many organizations have adopted a positive corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards their surrounding environment, with the objective of improving their persona within social circles. The aim of this research is to identify and document the various approaches adopted by UK contractors in relation to their international counterparts to aid in the identification of possible future benefits which may be exploitable.
In order to acquire the relevant information, a number of qualitative methodologies are adopted including a review of the current literature on the topic along with a detailed semi-structured interview with a UK based industry professional that specializes in corporate social responsibility. Through assessing the findings using qualitative analysis software, it is possible to disseminate the information, resulting in the identification of key findings. This research concludes that a number of factors profoundly affect corporate social responsibility within the UK versus other regions. These factors are identified as the effect of the recession, implementation and reporting along with competitiveness within the sector.
The impaction for practice within the UK construction sector of this research is that it enables various industry leaders to actively consider the findings of the research while also vigorously encouraging the establishment and development of corporate social responsibility, not only within their respective organizations, but within the construction industry as a whole. This would not only result in a more environmentally sustainable industry, but would also raise the awareness of the sector locally, nationally and internationally, therefore improving the overall perception of the sector on a variety of levels. This will ultimately lead to a more sustainable, environmentally friendly and collective industry while also considering the needs of one of its most important external stakeholders – the local community.

Health status and 6 years survival of 552 90+ Italian sib-ships recruited within the EU Project GEHA (GEnetics of Healthy Ageing).

In a scenario of increasing life expectancy worldwide, it is mandatory to identify the characteristics of a healthy aging phenotype, including survival predictors, and to disentangle those related to environment/lifestyle versus those related to familiarity/genetics. To this aim we comprehensively characterised a cohort of 1,160 Italian subjects of 90 years and over (90+, mean age 93 years; age range 90-106 years) followed for 6 years survival, belonging to 552 sib-ships (familiar longevity) recruited (2005-2008) within the EU-funded GEHA project in three Italian geographic areas (Northern, Central and Southern Italy) different for urban/rural and socio-economical characteristics. On the whole, the following factors emerged as significant predictors of survival after 90 years of age: absence of cognitive impairment and physical disability, high hand grip strength scores and body mass index (BMI) values, "excellent/good" self-reported health, high haemoglobin and total cholesterol levels and low creatinine levels. These parameters, excluding BMI values, were also significantly associated within sib-ships, suggesting a strong familial/genetic component. Geographical micro-heterogeneity of survival predictors emerged, such as functional and physical status being more important in Southern than in Central and Northern Italy. In conclusion, we identified modifiable survival predictors related to specific domains, whose role and importance vary according to the geographic area considered and which can help in interpreting the genetic results obtained by the GEHA project, whose major aim is the comprehensive evaluation of phenotypic and genetic data.

Detailed validation of an automotive catalysis model using spatially resolved measurements within the catalyst substrate

Many kinetic models have appeared in literature in past decades using two main approaches: the traditional global kinetics approach, or the more complex micro-kinetics approach. Whether global or micro-kinetics, kinetic models have been based on experimental data obtained at the end of the monolith. The experimental procedure using end pipe analysis may give an accurate overview of the reaction mechanisms that occur; however, the lack of information from within the catalyst can ultimately lead to inaccuracies in the kinetic model and parameters used.

Using SpaciMS, a spatially resolved experimental technique developed at the Queen's University Belfast, information from within the catalyst can be obtained. This minimally invasive technique provides detailed information of the gas concentration and temperature profile from inside the catalytic monolith. This paper presents a kinetic model and simulations validated against experimental data obtained from three positions inside the catalyst monolith at 2, 14, and 26 mm in, using data from the SpaciMS. Also, simulations of end pipe analysis, using a commercial reactor, for the CO oxidation are presented and analyzed. The simulations presented are for varying concentrations of both CO and O2 (0.5 % and 1 % CO, 0.5 % and 2 % O2) for both the global and micro-kinetic approach.

Small–scale fading characteristics of diversity combining schemes used for body–to–body communications within an urban environment at 2.45 GHz

In this paper, an analysis of spatial diversity and small-scale fading characteristics for body-to-bodycommunications is presented. The measurements were made at 2.45 GHz in an urban environment with uncontrolled pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The virtual array of four distributed receive antennas where situated on the centralchest, central waist, left waist and left wrist of the user’s body. Combining of the received signal measured at each ofthe antennas in the virtual array has shown that an average diversity gain of up to 11.8 dB can be achieved when usingfour distributed antennas and a maximal ratio combining scheme. To model the small-scale fading characteristics obtained at the output of the virtual combiners, we use diversity specific, theoretical probability density functions for multi-branch receivers operating in Nakagami-m fading channels. It is shown that these equations provide an excellent fit to the measured channel data.