Nuclear Architecture: Perceptions of Architectural Technology

In this paper we explore the implications of pluralist curricula for architectural technology. This includes the potential effects on strengthening the identity of the architectural technology profession and the academic development of the discipline. This latter relies, arguably, on research being explicit in CIAT’s eight mandatory threshold standards. This work concentrates on one of the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologist’s (CIATS’s) key subjects; 'design', defined as detail design for the architectural technologist. In postulating a philosophy of architectural technology epistemology with a focus on detail design, the pedagogy of architectural detailing in practice and academia is investigated: the associated roles of creativity and conditioning are explored. The interrelationship between conceptual design and construction processes in practice is outlined, identifying the role of the detail design specialist (architectural technologist) in the management of design and production information. Thus is identified the future architectural technologists’ specialisation of nuclear architecture: the total quality construction created by quality of thinking which permeates from and to detail design for assembly/disassembly and production within a collaboratively mechanised AEC team. A theory of nuclear architecture and an associated approach to detail design pedagogy are postulated, aiming to promote a revised perception of the definition of design for the architectural technologist. How this theory can be applied to the creation of a paradigmatic student project, themed on designing for disassembly as a key future focus of ‘Healthy Building’ design is introduced for future exploration. This future research into detail design, the authors propose, should be predicated on the appropriate methodology related to the epistemology of a design-based area of the architectural technology discipline. The roles of Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRB) in the evaluation and subsequent dissemination of this detail design pedagogy, with the aim of strengthening the architectural technology discipline are emphasised.

Priorities for the Juncker Commission: Policy recommendations and advice from the research team at CEPS. CEPS Special Report No. 92, 22 October 2014

In the months leading up to his nomination as President of the European Commission by the European Council in June 2014 through to his approval by the European Parliament in mid-July and finally his approval at a second special summit in August, CEPS’ researchers have closely followed the travails of Jean-Claude Juncker. We have also carefully studied his fundamental restructuring of the College in re-grouping commissioners around seven project teams, each headed by a vice-president. In our view, these changes promise to improve internal coordination, policy-making and transparency of rule-making and hopefully will reduce the personalisation of portfolios. This Special Report brings together under a single cover a series of 14 separate commentaries prepared by senior CEPS researchers, offering their assessment of these profound changes underway and their policy advice to the new commissioners from the perspective of their field of specialisation.

The radical Islamic militants of Central Asia. OSW Report, November 2013

Radical Islamic militants from Central Asia have ceased to be a local phenomenon. The organisations created by those groups (the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Union) engage in propaganda, recruitment, fundraising and terrorist operations in states distant from their traditional area of interest, such as European Union countries, South Asia and the United States. Their ranks contain not only Central Asian Islamists, but also those from other countries, such as Russia, Pakistan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, Turkey and even Myanmar. These organisations’ current activities and forms are multidimensional and complicated, characterised by combat versatility, structural amorphism, operational mobility and simultaneous operations in different fields and theatres. As a result of the universalization of Islamic terrorism, these organisations have been intensifying contacts with other international Islamic terrorist organisations based in Waziristan (mainly al-Qaida, Taliban and the Haqqani Network). A specific system of mutual cooperation has developed between them, involving the specialisation of various terrorist organisations in particular aspects of terrorist activity. The IMU and IJU specialise in the recruitment and training of Islamic radicals from around the world, and have thus become a kind of ‘jihad academy’.

Parceria escola-família: como envolver os pais nas práticas educativas na educação pré-escolar e ensino do 1º ciclo do ensino básico

Trabalho final apresentado para a obtenção do grau de mestre na área de Educação pré-escolar e ensino do 1º ciclo do ensino básico

(Table 2) Planktic foraminifera and their diversity indices of sediment surface samples from the Atlantic Ocean

Species distribution patterns in planktonic foraminiferal assemblages are fundamental to the understanding of the determinants of their ecology. Until now, data used to identify such distribution patterns was mainly acquired using the standard >150 µm sieve size. However, given that assemblage shell size-range in planktonic foraminifera is not constant, this data acquisition practice could introduce artefacts in the distributional data. Here, we investigated the link between assemblage shell size-range and diversity in Recent planktonic foraminifera by analysing multiple sieve-size fractions in 12 samples spanning all bioprovinces of the Atlantic Ocean. Using five diversity indices covering various aspects of community structure, we found that counts from the >63 µm fraction in polar oceans and the >125 µm elsewhere sufficiently approximate maximum diversity in all Recent assemblages. Diversity values based on counts from the >150 µm fraction significantly underestimate maximum diversity in the polar and surprisingly also in the tropical provinces. Although the new methodology changes the shape of the diversity/sea-surface temperature (SST) relationship, its strength appears unaffected. Our analysis reveals that increasing diversity in planktonic foraminiferal assemblages is coupled with a progressive addition of larger species that have distinct, offset shell-size distributions. Thus, the previously documented increase in overall assemblage shell size-range towards lower latitudes is linked to an expanding shell-size disparity between species from the same locality. This observation supports the idea that diversity and shell size-range disparity in foraminiferal assemblages are the result of niche separation. Increasing SST leads to enhanced surface water stratification and results in vertical niche separation, which permits ecological specialisation. Specific deviations from the overall diversity and shell-size disparity latitudinal pattern are seen in regions of surface-water instability, indicating that coupled shell-size and diversity measurements could be used to reconstruct water column structures of past oceans.

Teaching and organisation, with special reference to secondary schools, a manual of practice,

Contains bibliographies.

Social forces in England and America,

These essays originally appeared in various periodicals.

The market for preferences

Learning processes are widely held to be the mechanism by which boundedly rational agents adapt to environmental changes. We argue that this same outcome might also be achieved by a different mechanism, namely specialisation and the division of knowledge, which we here extend to the consumer side of the economy. We distinguish between high-level preferences and low-level preferences as nested systems of rules used to solve particular choice problems. We argue that agents, while sovereign in high-level preferences, may often find it expedient to acquire, in a pseudo-market, the low-level preferences in order to make good choices when purchasing complex commodities about which they have little or no experience. A market for preferences arises when environmental complexity overwhelms learning possibilities and leads agents to make use of other people's specialised knowledge and decision rules.

Explaining variations in the knowledge economy in three small wealthy countries

At a broad level, it has been shown that different institutional contexts, policy regimes and business systems affect the kinds of activities in which a nation specialises. This paper is concerned with the way in which different national business systems affect the nature of participation of a nation in the knowledge economy. The paper seeks to explain cross-national variations in the knowledge economy in the Australia, Denmark and Sweden with reference to dominant characteristics of the business system. Although Australia, Denmark and Sweden are all small wealthy countries, they each have quite distinctive business systems. Australia has been regarded as a variant of the competitive business system and has generally been described as an entrepreneurial economy with a large small firm population. In contrast Sweden has a coordinated business system that has favoured large industrial firms. The Danish variant of the coordinated model, with its well-developed vocational training system, is distinguishable by its large population of networked small and medium size enterprises. The three countries also differ significantly on two dimensions of participation in the knowledge economy. First, there is cross-national variation in patterns of specialisation in knowledge intensive industries and services. Second, the institutional infrastructure of the knowledge economy (or the existing stock of knowledge and competence in the economy, the potential for generation and diffusion a new knowledge and the capacity for commercialisation of new ideas) differs across the three countries. This paper seeks to explain variations in these two dimensions of the knowledge economy with reference to characteristics of the business system in the three countries.

Community paediatrics: Soft science or firm foundations?

Community paediatrics strives to integrate the biology of health into the social and psychological worlds within which children grow and develop. Consumer demand for limited community paediatric clinical services is increasing and medico-legal pressures escalate professional and personal concern. Meanwhile, the profession, through training and professional support, has struggled to keep up. Research into community paediatrics and its integration into policy and clinical practice remains limited, raising the perception that it is a 'soft' science. Our viewpoint is that necessary progress in this field requires leadership, apprenticeship and research. We argue that to build firm foundations for the future requires structures to enable clinical specialisation and continuing professional development in this area.

The Integration of Rural Households Into Ruminant Livestock Industries in China

A major determinant of rural development in China is the way by which rural households integrate with rural industries. Three forms of integration – market integration, vertical integration and integration through local groups – are investigated. Policy measures that may facilitate household integration, household specialisation and market segmentation are identified. Findings for the ruminant livestock sector are widely applicable to other agricultural industries in China.

Finite-size effects in on-line learning of multilayer neural networks

We complement recent advances in thermodynamic limit analyses of mean on-line gradient descent learning dynamics in multi-layer networks by calculating fluctuations possessed by finite dimensional systems. Fluctuations from the mean dynamics are largest at the onset of specialisation as student hidden unit weight vectors begin to imitate specific teacher vectors, increasing with the degree of symmetry of the initial conditions. In light of this, we include a term to stimulate asymmetry in the learning process, which typically also leads to a significant decrease in training time.

Genetics and competing strategies in a threshold model for mail processing

Multi-agent algorithms inspired by the division of labour in social insects are applied to a problem of distributed mail retrieval in which agents must visit mail producing cities and choose between mail types under certain constraints.The efficiency (i.e. the average amount of mail retrieved per time step), and the flexibility (i.e. the capability of the agents to react to changes in the environment) are investigated both in static and dynamic environments. New rules for mail selection and specialisation are introduced and are shown to exhibit improved efficiency and flexibility compared to existing ones. We employ a genetic algorithm which allows the various rules to evolve and compete. Apart from obtaining optimised parameters for the various rules for any environment, we also observe extinction and speciation. From a more theoretical point of view, in order to avoid finite size effects, most results are obtained for large population sizes. However, we do analyse the influence of population size on the performance. Furthermore, we critically analyse the causes of efficiency loss, derive the exact dynamics of the model in the large system limit under certain conditions, derive theoretical upper bounds for the efficiency, and compare these with the experimental results.

Disordered connectivity in the autistic brain:challenges for the 'new psychophysiology'

In 2002, we published a paper [Brock, J., Brown, C., Boucher, J., Rippon, G., 2002. The temporal binding deficit hypothesis of autism. Development and Psychopathology 142, 209-224] highlighting the parallels between the psychological model of 'central coherence' in information processing [Frith, U., 1989. Autism: Explaining the Enigma. Blackwell, Oxford] and the neuroscience model of neural integration or 'temporal binding'. We proposed that autism is associated with abnormalities of information integration that is caused by a reduction in the connectivity between specialised local neural networks in the brain and possible overconnectivity within the isolated individual neural assemblies. The current paper updates this model, providing a summary of theoretical and empirical advances in research implicating disordered connectivity in autism. This is in the context of changes in the approach to the core psychological deficits in autism, of greater emphasis on 'interactive specialisation' and the resultant stress on early and/or low-level deficits and their cascading effects on the developing brain [Johnson, M.H., Halit, H., Grice, S.J., Karmiloff-Smith, A., 2002. Neuroimaging of typical and atypical development: a perspective from multiple levels of analysis. Development and Psychopathology 14, 521-536].We also highlight recent developments in the measurement and modelling of connectivity, particularly in the emerging ability to track the temporal dynamics of the brain using electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) and to investigate the signal characteristics of this activity. This advance could be particularly pertinent in testing an emerging model of effective connectivity based on the balance between excitatory and inhibitory cortical activity [Rubenstein, J.L., Merzenich M.M., 2003. Model of autism: increased ratio of excitation/inhibition in key neural systems. Genes, Brain and Behavior 2, 255-267; Brown, C., Gruber, T., Rippon, G., Brock, J., Boucher, J., 2005. Gamma abnormalities during perception of illusory figures in autism. Cortex 41, 364-376]. Finally, we note that the consequence of this convergence of research developments not only enables a greater understanding of autism but also has implications for prevention and remediation. © 2006.

Sociolinguistic variability in oral narrative.

This thesis begins with a sociolinguistic correlational study of three phonetic variables - (h), (t) and (ing) - as used by four occupational groups - nurses, chefs, hairdressers and taxi-drivers. The groups were selected to incorporate three independent variables: sex (male-dominated versus female-dominated occupations); training (length and specialisation - nurses and chefs being more specialised than hairdressers and taxi-drivers) and location (the populations were selected from two cities - Liverpool and Birmingham). Although the correlational work demonstrates intra-sex and occupation consistency in speakers' choice of linguistic variants (females (particularly nurses) being significantly closer to the prestige norm), it is essentially non-explanatory and cannot accout for narrative dynamics and style shift. Therefore, an in-depth qualitative examination of the data (which draws mainly on Narrative and Discourse Analysis) forms the major part of the analysis. The study first analyses features common to all the narratives, direct speech, expressive phonology and linguistic ambiguity emerging as characteristic of all humorous storytelling. Secondly, three major sources of inter-personal variation are invetigated: narrator perspective, sex and occuptational role. Perspective is found to vary with topic and personality, greater narrator involvement coinciding with a higher proportion of internal evaluation devices. Sex differences include topic choice and bonding in the storytelling sessions. Sex differences are also evident in style shifting, where the narrator mimics the voice of a character in the narrative (aodpting segmental and/or prosodic tokens to signal a change of persona). The research finds that female narrators rarely employ segmental accommodation downwards on the social scale (whereas men do), but are on the other hand adept at using prosodic effects for mimicry. Taxi-drivers emerge as the group with the most distinctive narrative flair, a fact which is related to their occupation. The conclusion stresses a need for both quantitative and qualitative approaches to data; the importance of occupational role, as opposed to sex role per se in determining narrative conventions; the view of narrative as a negotiable entity, which is the product of relationships among participants; and the importance of considering the totality of the communicative act.