Gaining a “sense of place”: students’ affective experiences of place leading to transformative learning on international fieldwork

This paper reveals the extent to which undergraduate students demonstrate transformative learning whilst on international fieldwork in Barcelona, Spain. Groups of students create a series of discrete active learning situations that allow them and their peers to engage more fully with their locale and in turn experience a deeper understanding of “place”. Reflective field trip notebooks are used to capture the experiences of students. Results show that through the use of the affective domain (Krathwohl’s taxonomy) and applying cyclic experiential learning (Kolb) combined with critical reflection (Mezirow), students demonstrate progression and, in some cases, regression along Krathwohl’s taxonomy

Unravelling the geographical palimpsest through fieldwork: discovering a sense of place

Fieldwork enables students to gain a greater understanding of the people and places that they encounter. Urban areas are popular destinations for fieldwork because they present a landscape that is in a continual state of change. Yet, as this article indicates, the past is ever present in the urban landscape as each place can be regarded as a palimpsest, where layers of history, geography, culture and politics co-exist. Through active participation in fieldwork, students have the potential to unravel this palimpsest and discover a deeper sense of that place. The example used here reflects upon urban fieldwork in Barcelona as experienced by a group of undergraduate students who, as they carry out and reflect upon their field work, benefit from gaining a sense of place informed by a range of geographical processes and meanings. The article concludes with a series of suggestions for those embarking on fieldwork and wishing to unravel the geographical palimpsest

A homeostatic function of CXCR2 signalling in articular cartilage

Funding This work was funded by Arthritis Research UK (grants 17859, 17971, 19654), INNOCHEM EU FP6 (grant LSHB-CT-2005-51867), MRC (MR/K013076/1) and the William Harvey Research FoundationPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Three resilient megastructures by Pier Luigi Nervi

Resilience, as the ability of a structure to withstand threats and continue to function, it is normally related to durability and performance to accepted standards over time. The resilience of a structure can be threatened by poor design, changes in the public's perception of style, the potential for a change-in-use and structural attack; catastrophic events such as fire, explosion or impact are usually considered the main threats for Resilience. In the contemporary built environment Resilience is considered increasingly important; it has, in fact, become one of the major design issues, especially for large, iconic or public and prominent structures: this has not always been the case. Following the Second World War, building designers faced the necessity to conceive projects within severe financial constraints, hence the proliferation of a low quality and limited life-span structures; buildings which were designed to be replaceable, cheap and perhaps anonymous. This was thought to be an effec-tive answer to quickly accommodate the large number of people moving towards the urban environment partly destroyed by the WWII. These very buildings now constitute the backbone of our urban scenery and although some still function adequately, many are perfect examples of structures which exhibit a lack of re-silience. Fortunately, there were a few designers who refused this post-war tendency and attempted to design lasting structures of quality: most of them were engineers. This is not a coincidence, engineers had less to do with the issue of providing residential accommodations and more with the erection of large structures which necessitated a higher quality control on materials and technologies: Pier Luigi Nervi was one of them. This work considers three large structures designed and built fifty years ago,in 1961, by the Italian engineer. The structures are the Bus Station at the George Washington Bridge in New York (USA); The Burgo Paper Mill in Mantua (Italy); and the Palace of Labour in Turin (Italy). All of these buildings are hybrid structures (concrete and steel), an unusual choice for Nervi that perhaps reects the design climate at the time; These buildings reacted quite differently to the events that have occurred over the past half century. One of the key factors to achieve resilience it is considered to be the quality of the buildings, which includes their ability to perform maintenance. The lack of which for whatever reason, this paper aims to demonstrate, will inevitably result in a weak performance in terms of resilience on the long run

Preclinical animal acute toxicity studies of new developed MRI contrast agent based on gadolinium

Acute toxicity test of new developed MRI contrast agent based on disodium salt of gadopentetic acid complex were carried out on Mus musculus and Sprague Dawley rats according to guidelines of preclinical studies [1]. Groups of six animals each were selected for experiment. Death and clinical symptoms of animals were recorded during 14 days. As a result the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) for female mice is 2.8 mМ/kg of body weight, male mice - 1.4 mМ/kg, female rats - 2.8 mМ/kg, male rats - 5.6 mМ/kg of body weight. No Observed Adverse Effect Dose (NOAEL) for female mice is 1.4 mМ/kg, male mice - 0.7 mМ/kg, male and female rats - 0.7 mМ/kg. According to experimental data new developed MRI contrast agent based on Gd-DTPA complex is low-toxic

ICT tools for enhancing sustainable water management in rural environments

Numerical models are relevant tools to achieve the proper application of the Water Framework Directive (WFD, EU 2000). Their major advantage is to foster a full characterization of the involved flow terms and contaminant transport pathways. Thanks to their predictive function, numerical models can help also to address planning and management activities. Many hydrological codes developed so far have faced the problem of tackling multiscale territorial planning (e.g., Bergez et al. 2012). We introduce here the GIS-integrated FREEWAT platform aimed at providing a unique modeling environment to simulate multiple hydrological processes, with a focus on the sustainable management of conjunctive use of surface- and ground-water resources in rural environments. FREEWAT (FREE and open source software tools for WATer resource management; Rossetto et al., 2015) is an EU HORIZON 2020 project, whose main goal is to simplify the application of EU water-related Directives. It aims at integrating a simulation platform in a Geographic Information System (GIS), coupling the power of GIS geo-processing and post-processing tools in spatial data analysis to that of simulation codes. The FREEWAT platform is being developed within the QGIS free open source software package and fosters the simulation of the whole hydrological cycle using open source numerical codes mainly belonging to the USGS MODFLOW family

A pseudo-spectral time-domain method for ultrasound wave propagation in soft biological tissue

We introduce a Pseudo-Spectral Time-Domain (PSTD) method to simulate acoustic wave propagation in soft biological tissues, incorporating frequency-dependent power-law absorption and dispersion. A comprehensive Von-Neumann stability analysis highlights the influence of material parameters, time step, and spatial discretization on numerical stability. Validation is conducted through one-dimensional tests comparing numerical results with theoretical predictions for dispersion and attenuation, and two-dimensional simulations benchmarked against analytical Green's functions. Additionally, forward simulations on a breast phantom model using typical ultrasound parameters demonstrate the method's accuracy in modeling wave attenuation and dispersion. This PSTD method provides a reliable and efficient computational tool for advanced biomedical ultrasonics research.The research leading to these results has received funding from the QUSTom project with proposal no. 101046475 under the call HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDEROPEN-01.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version