Streets for people, or why we should reuse buildings in the city centre

Cities are constantly changing, and city centres are the pinnacle of that change. In the last hundred years these changes have been dramatic, transforming city centres from a complex combination of uses into exclusively retail and leisure areas. Meanwhile, most residents of city centres fled to the suburbs, removing much of the livelihood of central areas. These transformations has been stronger in Northern Europe and especially in English speaking countries, where zoning policies were instrumental in urban development since the 1960s. This process along with the rise of shopping malls left many city centre streets lifeless, which in turn caused the dereliction and demolition of significant heritage areas and buildings. Belfast is no exception, where the broad process of suburbanization and zoning since the 1970s produced a city centre for either retail or dereliction, where much built heritage has been lost or is at risk of being lost.

Helping the most vulnerable out of the poverty trap and reducing inequality: Policies, strategies, and services for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, including intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities: Benchmarking Autism Services Efficacy: BASE Project (Volume 3) Secondary Data analysis

1) Executive Summary
Legislation (Autism Act NI, 2011), a cross-departmental strategy (Autism Strategy 2013-2020) and a first action plan (2013-2016) have been developed in Northern Ireland in order to support individuals and families affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) without a prior thorough baseline assessment of need. At the same time, there are large existing data sets about the population in NI that had never been subjected to a secondary data analysis with regards to data on ASD. This report covers the first comprehensive secondary data analysis and thereby aims to inform future policy and practice.
Following a search of all existing, large-scale, regional or national data sets that were relevant to the lives of individuals and families affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Northern Ireland, extensive secondary data analyses were carried out. The focus of these secondary data analyses was to distill any ASD related data from larger generic data sets. The findings are reported for each data set and follow a lifespan perspective, i.e., data related to children is reported first before data related to adults.
Key findings:
Autism Prevalence:
Of children born in 2000 in the UK,
• 0.9% (1:109) were reported to have ASD, when they were 5-year old in 2005;
• 1.8% (1:55) were reported to have ASD, when they were 7-years old in 2007;
• 3.5% (1:29) were reported to have ASD, when they were 11-year old in 2011.
In mainstream schools in Northern Ireland
• 1.2% of the children were reported to have ASD in 2006/07;
• 1.8% of the children were reported to have ASD in 2012/13.

Economic Deprivation:
• Families of children with autism (CWA) were 9%-18% worse off per week than families of children not on the autism spectrum (COA).
• Between 2006-2013 deprivation of CWA compared to COA nearly doubled as measured by eligibility for free school meals (from near 20 % to 37%)
• In 2006, CWA and COA experienced similar levels of deprivation (approx. 20%), by 2013, a considerable deprivation gap had developed, with CWA experienced 6% more deprivation than COA.
• Nearly 1/3 of primary school CWA lived in the most deprived areas in Northern Ireland.
• Nearly ½ of children with Asperger’s Syndrome who attended special school lived in the most deprived areas.

Unemployment:
• Mothers of CWA were 6% less likely to be employed than mothers of COA.
• Mothers of CWA earned 35%-56% less than mothers of COA.
• CWA were 9% less likely to live in two income families than COA.

Health:
• Pre-diagnosis, CWA were more likely than COA to have physical health problems, including walking on level ground, speech and language, hearing, eyesight, and asthma.
• Aged 3 years of age CWA experienced poorer emotional and social health than COA, this difference increased significantly by the time they were 7 years of age.
• Mothers of young CWA had lower levels of life satisfaction and poorer mental health than mothers of young COA.
Education:
• In mainstream education, children with ASD aged 11-16 years reported less satisfaction with their social relationships than COA.
• Younger children with ASD (aged 5 and 7 years) were less likely to enjoy school, were bullied more, and were more reluctant to attend school than COA.
• CWA attended school 2-3 weeks less than COA .
• Children with Asperger’s Syndrome in special schools missed the equivalent of 8-13 school days more than children with Asperger’s Syndrome in mainstream schools.
• Children with ASD attending mainstream schooling were less likely to gain 5+ GCSEs A*-C or subsequently attend university.



Further and Higher Education:
• Enrolment rates for students with ASD have risen in Further Education (FE), from 0% to 0.7%.
• Enrolment rates for students with ASD have risen in Higher Education (HE), from 0.28% to 0.45%.
• Students with ASD chose to study different subjects than students without ASD, although other factors, e.g., gender, age etc. may have played a part in subject selection.
• Students with ASD from NI were more likely than students without ASD to choose Northern Irish HE Institutions rather than study outside NI.

Participation in adult life and employment:
• A small number of adults with ASD (n=99) have benefitted from DES employment provision over the past 12 years.
• It is unknown how many adults with ASD have received employment support elsewhere (e.g. Steps to Work).
•
Awareness and Attitudes in the General Population:
• In both the 2003 and 2012 NI Life and Times Survey (NILTS), NI public reported positive attitudes towards the inclusion of children with ASD in mainstream education (see also BASE Project Vol. 2).

Gap Analysis Recommendations:
This was the first comprehensive secondary analysis with regards to ASD of existing large-scale data sets in Northern Ireland. Data gaps were identified and further replications would benefit from the following data inclusion:
• ASD should be recorded routinely in the following datasets:
o Census;
o Northern Ireland Survey of Activity Limitation (NISALD);
o Training for Success/Steps to work; Steps to Success;
o Travel survey;
o Hate crime; and
o Labour Force Survey.
• Data should be collected on the destinations/qualifications of special school leavers.
• NILT Survey autism module should be repeated in 5 years time (2017) (see full report of 1st NILT Survey autism module 2012 in BASE Project Report Volume 2).
• General public attitudes and awareness should be assessed for children and young people, using the Young Life and Times Survey (YLT) and the Kids Life and Times Survey (KLT); (this work is underway, Dillenburger, McKerr, Schubolz, & Lloyd, 2014-2015).
 

Updating Addison: Culture, Appropriation and The Connoisseur

This article explores The Connoisseur's combined engagement with its most important literary precursor and the society of its day. With its satire on the fashionable leisure culture of the mid-eighteenth century, Bonnell Thornton and George Colman's periodical, published from 1754 to 1756, followed self-consciously in the footsteps of Addison. Yet adopting the Addisonian model at mid-century was no straightforward task. Not only had the cultural landscape shifted during the forty years since The Spectator, but emulating this modern classic raised thorny issues regarding the originality and value of The Connoisseur itself. In appropriating the Addisonian essay, the challenge for Colman and Thornton was thus to update Addison: to adapt their model to changing times. This article examines how Colman and Thornton sought to validate their particular contribution to the polite periodical tradition, along with the difficulties they encountered in maintaining a Spectatorial detachment from the fashionable milieu that was their primary theme.

Could occupational physical activity mitigate the link between moderate kidney dysfunction and coronary heart disease?

Background

Chronic kidney disease is now regarded as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The impact of occupational or non-occupational physical activity (PA) on moderate decreases of renal function is uncertain.

We aimed to identify the potential association of PA (occupational and leisure-time) on early decline of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and to determine the potential mediating effect of PA on the relationship between eGFR and heart disease.

From the PRIME study analyses were conducted in 1058 employed men. Energy expended during leisure, work and commuting was calculated. Linear regression analyses were used to determine the link between types of PA and moderate decrements of eGFR determined with the KDIGO guideline at the baseline assessment. Cox proportional hazards analyses were used to explore the potential effect of PA on the relationship between eGFR and heart disease, ascertained during follow-up over 10 years.

For these employed men, and after adjustment for known confounders of GFR change, more time spent sitting at work was associated with increased risk of moderate decline in kidney function, while carrying objects or being active at work was associated with decreased risk. In contrast, no significant link with leisure PA was apparent. No potential mediating effect of occupational PA was found for the relationship between eGFR and coronary heart disease.

Occupational PA (potential modifiable factors) could provide a dual role on early impairment of renal function, without influence on the relationship between early decrease of e-GFR and CHD risk.

The inclusion of open-ended questions on quantitative surveys of children: Dealing with unanticipated responses relating to child abuse and neglect

Web surveys have been shown to be a viable, and relatively inexpensive, method of data collection with children. For this reason, the Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) was developed as an annual online survey of 10 and 11 year old children. Each year, approximately 4,000 children participate in the survey. Throughout the six years that KLT has been running, a range of questions has been asked that are both policy-relevant and important to the lives of children. Given the method employed by the survey, no extremely sensitive questions that might cause the children distress are included. The majority of questions on KLT are closed yielding quantitative data that are analysed statistically; however, one regular open-ended question is included at the end of KLT each year so that the children can suggest questions that they think should be asked on the survey the following year. While most of the responses are innocuous, each year a small minority of children suggest questions on child abuse and neglect. This paper reports the responses to this question and reflects on how researchers can, and should, deal with this issue from both a methodological and an ethical perspective.

Autism in the air: using Point of View Video Priming and Natural Environment Teaching to help children with autism travel by plane

This paper describes a study that used video materials and visits to an airport to prepare children on the autism spectrum for travel by plane. Twenty parents and carers took part in the study with children aged from 3 to 16 years. The authors explain that the methods they used were based on Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) research; a video modeling technique called Point-Of-View Video-priming and during visits to an airport they used procedures known as Natural Environment Teaching. The findings suggest that using video and preparing children by taking them through what is likely to happen in the real environment when they travel by plane is effective and the authors suggest these strategies could be used to support children with autism with other experiences they need or would like to engage in such as visits to the dentist or hairdressers and access to leisure centres and other public spaces.

The Aran jumper: Crafting a Transatlantic Heritage

The garment we now recognise as the Aran jumper emerged as an international symbol of Ireland from the twin twentieth century transatlantic flows of migration and tourism. Its power as a heritage object derives from: 1) the myth commonly associated with the object, in which the corpse of a drowned fisherman is identified and claimed by his family due to the stitch patterns of his jumper (Pádraig Ó Síochain 1962; Annette Lynch and Mitchell Strauss 2014); 2) the meanings attached to those stitch patterns, which have been read, for example, as genealogical records, representations of the natural landscape and references to Christian and pre-Christian ‘Celtic’ religion (Heinz Kiewe 1967; Catherine Nash 1996); and 3) booming popular interest in textile heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, fed by the reframing of domestic crafts such as knitting as privileged leisure pursuits (Rachel Maines 2009; Jo Turney 2009). The myth of the drowned fisherman plays into transatlantic migration narratives of loss and reclamation, promising a shared heritage that needs only to be decoded. The idea of the garment’s surface acting as text (or map) situates it within a preliterate idyll of romantic primitivism, while obscuring the circumstances of its manufacture. The contemporary resurgence in home textile production as recreation, mediated through transnational online networks, creates new markets for heritage textile products while attracting critical attention to the processes through which such objects, and mythologies, are produced. The Aran jumper’s associations with kinship, domesticity and national character make it a powerful tool in the promotion of ancestral (or genealogical) tourism, through marketing efforts such as The Gathering 2013. Nash’s (2010; 2014) work demonstrates the potential for such touristic encounters to disrupt and enrich public conceptions of heritage, belonging and relatedness. While the Aran jumper has been used to commodify a simplistic sense of mutuality between Ireland and north America, it carries complex transatlantic messages in both directions.

The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation

Outlining sociology’s distinctive contribution to childhood studies and our understanding of contemporary children and childhood, The Sociology of Children provides a thought provoking and comprehensive account of the connections between the macro worlds of childhood and the micro worlds of children’s everyday lives.

Examining children’s involvement in areas such as the labour market, family life, education, play and leisure, the book provides an effective balance between understanding childhood as a structural phenomenon, and recognising children as meaning makers actively involved in constructing, co-constructing and reconstructing their everyday lives.

Through the concept of 'generagency' Madeleine Leonard offers a model for examining and illuminating how structure and agency are activated within interdependent relationships influenced by generational positioning. This framework provides a conceptual tool for thinking about the continuities, challenges and changes that impact on how childhood is lived and experienced.

Protestantism, Spectacle, Motherhood and Vice: Dublin's New Pleasure Gardens

In 1748, Bartholomew Mosse, a curious combination of surgeon, obstetrician and entertainment impresario, established a pleasure garden on the northern fringes of Dublin. Ostensibly designed to fund the construction of a maternity hospital to be located adjacently, Mosse’s New Pleasure Gardens became one of the premier leisure resorts in Dublin. This was to have a profound effect on the city’s urban form. Within a few years the gardens became an epicentre of speculative development as the upper classes jostled to build their houses in the vicinity. Meanwhile, the creation nearby of Sackville Mall, a wide and generous strolling ground, established a whole section of the city dedicated to haute spectacle, display and leisure. Like other pleasure gardens in the British Isles, Mosse’s venture introduced new, commodified forms of entertainment. In the colonial context of eighteenth-century Ireland, however, ‘a land only recently won and insecurely held’ (Foster, 1988) by the Protestant Anglo-Irish settler class, the production of culture and spectacle was perhaps more significant than elsewhere. Indeed, the form of Mosse’s gardens echoed the private city gardens of a key figure in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, while the hospital itself was constructed in a style of a Palladian country house, symbol of colonial presence in the countryside. However, like other pleasure gardens, the mix of music and alcohol, the heterogeneous crowd culled from across social and gender boundaries, and a landscape punctuated with secluded corners, meant that it also acquired a dubious reputation as a haunt of louche and illicit behaviours. The curious juxtaposition between a maternity hospital and pleasure garden, therefore, begins to assume other, hitherto hidden complexities. These are borne out by a closer examination of the architecture of the hospital, the shape of its landscape and the records of its patrons and patients.

Home and Workplace Built Environment Supports for Physical Activity

BACKGROUND: Physical inactivity has been associated with obesity and related chronic diseases. Understanding built environment (BE) influences on specific domains of physical activity (PA) around homes and workplaces is important for public health interventions to increase population PA.

PURPOSE: To examine the association of home and workplace BE features with PA occurring across specific life domains (work, leisure, and travel).

METHODS: Between 2012 and 2013, telephone interviews were conducted with participants in four Missouri metropolitan areas. Questions included sociodemographic characteristics, home and workplace supports for PA, and dietary behaviors. Data analysis was conducted in 2013; logistic regression was used to examine associations between BE features and domain-specific PA.

RESULTS: In home neighborhoods, seven of 12 BE features (availability of fruits and vegetables, presence of shops and stores, bike facilities, recreation facilities, crime rate, seeing others active, and interesting things) were associated with leisure PA. The global average score of home neighborhood BE features was associated with greater odds of travel PA (AOR=1.99, 95% CI=1.46, 2.72); leisure PA (AOR=1.84, 95% CI=1.44, 2.34); and total PA (AOR=1.41, 95% CI=1.04, 1.92). Associations between workplace neighborhoods' BE features and workplace PA were small but in the expected direction.

CONCLUSIONS: This study offers empirical evidence on BE supports for domain-specific PA. Findings suggest that diverse, attractive, and walkable neighborhoods around workplaces support walking, bicycling, and use of public transit. Public health practitioners, researchers, and worksite leaders could benefit by utilizing worksite domains and measures from this study for future BE assessments.

Social Ecological Constraints to Park Use in Communities with Quality Access

Evidence correlates physical activity, psychological restoration, and social health to proximity to parks and sites of recreation. The purpose of this study was to identify perceived constraints to park use in low-income communities facing significant health disparities, with access to underutilized parks. We used a series of focus groups with families, teens, and older adults in neighborhoods with similar demographic distribution and access to parks over 125 acres in size. Constraints to park use varied across age groups as well as across social ecological levels, with perceived constraints to individuals, user groups, communities, and society. Policies and interventions aimed at increasing park use must specifically address barriers across social ecological levels to be successful.

Holidays in the Danger Zone: Entanglements of War and Tourism

A timely, and uniquely historical, look at how war turns soldiers, and all of us, into tourists. Holidays in the Danger Zone exposes the mundane and everyday entanglements between two seemingly opposed worlds—warfare and tourism. Debbie Lisle shows how a tourist sensibility shapes the behavior of soldiers in warespecially the experiences of Western military forces in “exotic” settings. This includes not only R&R but also how battlefields themselves become landscapes of leisure and tourism. It further explores how a military sensibility shapes the development of tourism in the postwar context, from “Dark Tourism” (engaging with displays of conflict and atrocity) to exhibitions of conflict in museums and at memorial sites, as well as in advertising, film, journals, guidebooks, blogs, and photography. Focused on how war and tourism reinforce prevailing modes of domination, Holidays in the Danger Zone critically examines the long historical arc of the war-tourism nexus from nineteenth-century imperialism to World War I and World War II, from the Cold War to globalization and the War on Terror.

(Re)examining the relationship between children's subjective wellbeing and their perceptions of participation rights

In recent years wellbeing has been linked increasingly with children’s rights, often characterised as central to their realisation. Indeed it has been suggested that the two concepts are so intertwined that their pairing has become something of a mantra in the literature on childhood. This paper seeks to explore the nature of the relationship between wellbeing and participation rights, using a recently developed ‘rights-based’ measure of children’s participation in school and community, the Children’s Participation Rights Questionnaire (CPRQ), and an established measure of subjective wellbeing – KIDSCREEN-10. The data for the study came from the Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) which is an annual online survey of Primary 7 children carried out in Northern Ireland. In 2013 approximately 3,800 children (51% girls; 49% boys) from 212 schools participated in KLT. The findings showed a statistically significant positive correlation between children’s overall scores on the KIDSCREEN-10 subjective wellbeing measure and their perceptions that their participation rights are respected in school and community settings. Further, the results indicated that it is the social relations/autonomy questions on KIDSCREEN-10 which are most strongly related to children’s perceptions that their participation rights are respected. Exploration of the findings by gender showed that there were no significant differences in overall wellbeing; however girls had higher scores than boys on the social relations/autonomy domain of KIDSCREEN-10. Girls were also more positive than boys about their participation in school and community. In light of the findings from this study, it is suggested that what lies at the heart of the relationship between child wellbeing and children’s participation rights is the social/relational aspects of both participation and wellbeing.

Factores que influenciam o peso e crescimento de cabritos da raça Murciana-granadina, em aleitamento artificial

A exploração caprina de leite tem evoluído no sentido de alguma intensificação, com recurso a raças de elevado potencial produtivo, de que é exemplo a raça Murciana- Granadina. O leite constitui a principal fonte de receita destas explorações. Complementarmente, vendem animais para carne e, as de melhor nível genético, animais para reprodutores. Analisaram-se os pesos de 241 cabritos da raça Murciana-Granadina, numa exploração comercial, com o objectivo de quantificar os pesos e crescimento de cabritos, e identificar os factores que os influenciam. Os cabritos foram aleitados artificialmente, em regime ad libitum, com leite de substituição comercial, dispondo ainda de concentrado comercial, feno de luzerna e palha. Os cabritos foram pesados ao nascimento e, posteriormente, semanalmente, até aos 60 dias de idade. Calcularam-se os respetivos pesos ajustados, bem como os ganhos médios diários, a diferentes idades padrão. Procedeu-se a uma análise de variância com um modelo linear que incluiu os efeitos da época de parto, tipo de parto, sexo e idade da cabra. Foram registados pesos superiores nos partos simples e duplos, relativamente aos triplos, e nos machos, relativamente às fêmeas. Os ganhos médios diários, a partir do mês de idade, registaram valores inferiores na época inverno-primavera, comparativamente com a época primavera-verão. Dairy goat farming has evolved towards intensification, with increased use of high milk-yielding breeds, including the Murciano-Granadina breed. Milk is the main source of farm income. Secondary income sources are the sale of animals for meat and, in genetically superior herds, the sale of breeding animals. The weights of 241 commercial farms artificially reared Murciano-Granadina kids were analyzed with the objective of quantifying weight and growth and identifying variation factors. Kids were artificially reared to weaning, on ad libitum commercial milk replacer, commercial concentrate, lucerne hay and straw. Kids were weighed at birth and at weekly intervals until 60 days of age. Age adjusted weights and growth-rates were calculated. A variance analysis was performed with a model including the effects of season of birth, number of kids per kidding, sex and age of dam. Single and twin-born kids had higher weights than triplets, and males had higher weights than females. Average daily gain after one month of age was lower for kids born in winter-spring than for those born in spring-summer

Influência de fatores ambientais na condição corporal e produção de leite da cabra serrana – ecótipo ribatejano

A cabra Serrana destaca-se, no panorama das raças autóctones, pela sua considerável distribuição geográgica, expressão numérica e desempenho produtivo. A preservação destes recursos genéticos em sistemas produção rentáveis, requer um aprofundamento do conhecimento sobre os fatores que influenciam o seu desempenho produtivo. Observaram-se 51 animais de raça Serrana, ecótipo Ribatejano, inscritos no Registo Zootécnico, em 4ª ou 5ª lactação, provenientes de seis explorações, recolhendo-se dados realativos à idade ao parto, condição corporal e grau de parasitismo (estrongilídeos gastrintestinais, oocistos e larvas de primeiro estadio de estrongilídeos pulmonares). Utilizou-se a informação do contraste leiteiro das cabras, disponibilizada pela Associação de Criadores de Caprinos e Ovinos do Ribatejo e Oeste. A condição corporal foi analisada considerando os efeitos do criador, mês e tipo de parto, e como covariável, o efeito linear da produção de leite, eliminação parasitária e os efeitos linear e quadrático da idade ao parto. Os fatores ambientais idade ao parto, produção de leite e a eliminação de estrongilídeos gastrintestinais, influenciaram significativamente (p<0,05) a condição corporal. A condição corporal registou valores superiores em cabras com idades compreendidas entre 50 e 60 meses de vida, e foi influenciada negativamente pela elevação da produção de leite e pelo nível de estrongilídeos gastrintestinais. The Serrana stands out among autochthonous goat breeds for its wide geographical distribution, large inventory and considerable productive performances. The preservation of animal genetic resources of this kind requires a better knowledge of the factors affecting productive performance. Data has been collected on 51, 4th and 5th lactation registered Serrana goats of the Ribatejano ecotype, from six different herds. Parameters examined were age at kidding, body condition score and parasitic infection level (gastrointestinal strongyles, oocysts and first stage larvae of pulmonary strongyles). Lactation data from the official milk recording service have been supplied by the Associação de Criadores de Caprinos e Ovinos do Ribatejo e Oeste. Body condition score was analysed for the discrete effects of herd, kidding month and number of kids born per kidding, the covariant linear effects of milk yield and parasitic infection and the linear and quadratic effects of age at kidding. Age at kidding, milk yield and gastrointestinal strongyle fecal egg counts have significantly affected body condition scores (p<0,05). Body condition scores were higher for 50 to 60-month old goats, and were negatively influenced by milk yield and gastrointestinal strongyle infection level.