'while gazing at a smack of moon jellies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium': a reading of a poem by Janine Bradbury from her ignitionpress pamphlet Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy.
Effective public space design hinges on robust interactions between its form (shape, size, access) and the dynamics of public life. Yet, designing spaces conducive to public life is complex, influenced by evolving factors such as culture, age, gender, sociology, and psychology. Subsequently, public spaces can often be removed from public life, contributing to declining civic engagement and the emergence of an increasingly individualised society (Gehl and Svarre, 2013). Additionally, competing demands for mobility and transit further diminish the sociability of public spaces, fostering a trend where social interactions increasingly occur in privatised spaces (Gehl, 2010). Oxford City Centre faces a culmination of these challenges, identified with a deficit of well-designed public spaces serving as a locus for public life (Oxford City Council, 2022), lacking bespoke design solutions. This research applies the 'third place' theory (Oldenburg, 1989) to encapsulate public life and its relationships with spaces th…
It is forecast that by 2050, 153.8 million people will be living with dementia worldwide. Understanding effective interventions is key to building, delivery and maintaining sustainable excellence in dementia care. First conceptualised in 2003, Namaste Care is a multimodal intervention that focuses on sensory stimulation to improve quality of life. The core principles of Namaste Care are creating a calm environment, providing loving touch and engaging the senses. This literature review was conducted to consolidate evidence for the benefits of implementing Namaste Care. Four themes were identified; behavioural benefits, improved quality of life, physical benefits and institutional benefits. This review concluded that Namaste Care can reduce agitation, increase communication, strengthen relationships, improve wellbeing, provide health benefits, influence care culture, enable respite and support organisational improvements.
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) has recently become available on the NHS in the UK, and is a vital form of HIV prevention that can contribute to international AIDS eradication targets. One group at higher risk for HIV is men who have sex with men (MSM), who may also engage in sexual behaviours that further increase risk. Little research exists to explore the impact of PrEP of sexual behaviours of MSM in the UK, hence a quasi-systematic review has been conducted to explore whether increased availability of PrEP has led to a change in sexual behaviours from 2015 to present. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research was collated and synthesised, considering a range of sexual behaviours and outcomes such as condomless anal intercourse, multiple sexual partners, engagement in chemsex, need for post-exposure prophylaxis, and diagnosis of sexually transmitted infection (STIs). The review has found that MSM, particularly those who engage in riskier behaviours, are highly aware of and accepting of PrEP …
This project addresses the contested space that is the Arab female body and provides a reading of Arab women that enables them to be heard. The texts I engage with allow me to provide a critical analysis of the Arab female body: Silence is a Sense by Leyla AlAmmar (2021) and Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (1972). Both take place in different times and spaces, one in the UK in the 2010s and the other in Egypt between 1930-1960, highlighting the relationship between the Arab female body and the West in differing ways. The project itself is separated into three parts: ‘Silence’, ‘Resistance’ and ‘Power and the Law’. These sections align with my thesis statement as a means to convey the forces that oppress the Arab female body. I consulted a variety of secondary sources to develop this project, such as Tangled in Terror by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, A Decolonial Feminism by Françoise Vergès and El Saadawi’s non-fiction work The Hidden Face of Eve. Reading these texts alongside a variety of articles allowe…
Zoos have developed enrichment programmes to tackle behavioural abnormalities that are often caused by captivity. Primates share the same personality traits as humans, which can be determined using the Hominoid Personality Questionnaire (HPQ). Behaviour and personality traits were explored when Twycross Zoo posed two questions: does primate personality affect enrichment engagement in L’Hoest’s monkeys? and how can we use this to tailor enrichment to individual animals? 420 hours of instantaneous behavioural observations were conducted from May-July 2022, and seven HPQ’s were completed by primate care staff, determining the activity budgets and personality type of each L’Hoest’s monkey. There were four hypotheses: dominant males will be first to engage with enrichment; youngest L’Hoest’s monkeys will engage with enrichment most; lowest ranking individuals will engage with surroundings less; and they would all favour feeding enrichment. Results found a significant correlation between personality and enrichment …
Several studies revealed that bilingual children outperform their monolingual peers on some tasks assessing executive functions. However, a growing body of evidence questions the robustness of a possible bilingual advantage since mixed results are starting to appear. Hence, this study seeks to investigate whether bilingualism grants a cognitive advantage. It will explore the impact of bilingualism on the development of executive functions, specifically memory, selective attention, and mental imagery, in children aged 3 to 5 years. The study consisted of four age-appropriate tasks involving images, a robot and an iPad to assess participants’ cognitive abilities. Five-year-old children outperformed their peers on the selective attention and mental imagery tasks. No bilingualism effect was found for the selective attention or the working memory tasks. No association was found between parental level of education and the amount of exposure to the different languages regarding the tasks’ performances. However, five…
This study is about the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in managing risks in construction industry. The aim is to explore the capabilities of AI and automation for a better risk management. Secondary research using Science Direct is conducted to assess the capabilities of AI in risk management. Risks faced in the construction sector such as safety incidents, schedule setbacks, cost overruns, and delays in the delivery of materials. To address these issues effectively, a thorough analysis and implementation of mitigation strategies are essential. Adopting a data-driven strategy, facilitated by AI, machine learning, and sophisticated data collection technologies, can significantly enhance risk management. These tools allow for real-time analysis, offering a substantial benefit in proactively managing risks. Given that construction projects often differ greatly in terms of location, weather, and other factors, risk management must be tailored to each project's specific needs, re…
Currently, the only treatment for diseases caused by the lack of an enzyme such as Lysosomal Storage Diseases, is enzyme replacement therapy. This involves the injection of recombinantly produced enzymes to fix the deficiency; however, these are currently only produced in chicken eggs which presents an issue with immunogenicity. Those with an allergy have few alternatives but the development of a plant-based expression system would solve this issue. To begin to develop a plant-based expression system, we need to engineer a mammalian glycosylation system within a plant. Glycosylation plays a key role in enzyme function and would need to be modified to accommodate a human enzyme. To do this, you need to look at four specific mammalian enzymes within the glycosylation pathway and try to express them within a tobacco plant. This specific study looked at the human enzyme galactosyltransferase 4 (GnTIV) and aimed to understand its localisation to organelles within the plant cell called the Golgi bodies. Using …
Since the aftermath of World War II, urban planning has overwhelmingly favoured private car infrastructure over pedestrian and public transportation amenities. Consequently, this bias has erected physical and psychological barriers to health, social interaction, and employment accessibility. However, recent shifts in environmental perceptions by the public have had an increase in the use of multimodal public transportation, particularly railways. This paper investigates how we can design the public realm surrounding and inside major rail hubs, to support and promote the use of sustainable multimodal public transport. The paper will use a variety of different primary and secondary data collection techniques to produce an end framework giving guidance on how a positive public realm can be created. Some of these methods include; semi-structured interviews with professional transport planners to understand what makes a positive public realm from a professional perspective, using GIS to assess walking distances be…