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In the context of steadily declining Natural Capital and universal recognition of the imperative to reverse this trend before we get to the point that nature is not able to restore itself, cities have a crucial role to play. The UK Government commissioned a comprehensive study into the value of biodiversity, and by extension nature, reinforcing “why we should change our ways”—yet what is missing is the “how?”. This paper uniquely describes both the “how?” and a conclusive demonstration of the remarkable benefits of implementing it in a city. Critical to this process, it took a UK Parliamentary Inquiry to reveal that nature has become invisible within the economy, yet the ecological ecosystem services nature provides have enormous benefits to both people and the economy. Therefore integration—or seamless weaving—of urban greenspace and nature into people's lives and the places where they live, work, and spend their leisure time is vital. Moreover, what nature does not provide must be provided by engineered systems, and these have an economic cost; put another way, there are enormous cost savings to be made by taking advantage of what nature provides. In addressing these issues, this paper is the definitive paper from a 20-year portfolio of research on how to bring about transformative change in the complex system-of-systems that make up our cities, providing as it does the crucial in-depth research into the many diverse strands of governance—the last link in a chain of the creation, testing and proof of efficacy of methodologies underpinning a theory and practice of change for infrastructure and cities. The impact of this portfolio of research on Birmingham is two-fold: the Star Framework that placed natural environment considerations at the heart of all decision-making in the city, and the successful bid for the largest of the UK Future Parks Accelerator awards. While both are transformative in their different ways, yet mutually supportive, the latter enabled the design of a suite of system interventions from which the value of Birmingham's greenspaces is estimated to rise from £11.0 billion to £14.4 billion—a remarkable return on investment from the research's conceptualization of Birmingham's urban greenspace as a “business” (with its associated business models). In achieving this, the necessary enablers of thinking and practicing systemically, seamlessly working across disciplinary boundaries, an unusually strong focus on both the aspirations of all stakeholders and the context in question to define “the problem,” and the testing of proposed system intervention(s) both now and in the future have been iteratively combined. However, it is the critical enabling steps of identifying the complete range of value-generating opportunities that the interventions offer, formulating them into alternative business models to underpin the case for change and ensuring that they are synergistic with all the dimensions of governance that yielded the profound outcomes sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This meeting report gives an overview of the DAFx 2019 conference held in September 2019 at Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK. The conference had the same theme as this special issue: digital audio effects. In total, 51 papers were presented at DAFx 2019 either in oral or in poster sessions. The conference had 157 delegates, almost half from industry and the rest from universities around the world. As the number of submissions and participants remains sufficiently high, it is planned that the DAFx conference series will be continued every autumn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the analysis of different geographic scales for studying the spatial patterning of crime has profoundly deepened our theoretical grasp of crime dynamics. However, a similar investigation is lacking when it comes to the patterning of offender residences, despite there being clear theoretical and empirical reasons for doing so, among them, the close relationship between where offenders live and where their corresponding crimes are committed. This paper delves into the concentration and variance of offender residences across different levels of spatial aggregation. The data used contains the locations of residence for known offenders in Birmingham between the years 2006 and 2016. Resident locations are aggregated to Output Areas (OA), nested within Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA), further nested within Middle Super Output Areas (MSOA). Descriptive and model-based statistics are deployed to quantify concentration and variation at each spatial scale. Results suggest that most variance (48%) in offender residence concentrations is attributable to the largest spatial scale (MSOA level). Output Areas capture approximately 38% of the variance. Findings open up discussions on the role of urban development in determining the appropriateness of spatial scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provocation within the heart of the Congruence Engine leads us to consider not only the connections between our industrial collections, but the differences which shine a light on the gaps that exist nationally as well as institutionally due to the unique ways in which those collections were built. Emerging out of discussions held at the project's launch conference, this paper will compare and contrast the foundation and development of the industrial collections held within our three institutions: National Museums Scotland (NMS), Tyne & Wear Archive & Museums (TWAM) and Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT). The dedicated industrial collections which now sit within these organisations were founded in three quite distinct contexts: the Industrial Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh in 1854, the Municipal Museum of Science and Industry in Newcastle in 1934, and Birmingham's Museum of Science & Industry in 1951. Beyond these founding moments, their deeper roots and ongoing development have been shaped by an array of events, individuals and organisations from the local to the international, including some they hold in common and some that are unique. In charting their stories, we will explore why our collections have acquired their particular strengths and weaknesses, and the implications of this for their contributions to a distributed national collection of science and industry. This will act as the foundation for further collaborative research throughout the project as we investigate how and why particular textiles, energy and communication stories can be explored within and between our collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out the future potential and challenges for developing an interdisciplinary, mixed-method Citizen Social Science approach to researching urban emotions. It focuses on urban stress, which is increasingly noted as a global mental health challenge facing both urbanised and rapidly urbanising societies. The paper reviews the existing use of mobile psychophysiological or biosensing within urban environments—as means of 'capturing' the urban geographies of emotions. Methodological reflections are included on primary research using biosensing in a study of workplace and commuter stress for university employees in Birmingham (UK) and Salzburg (Austria) for illustrative purposes. In comparing perspectives on the conceptualisation and measurement of urban stress from psychology, neuroscience and urban planning, the difficulties of defining scientific constructs within Citizen Science are discussed to set out the groundwork for fostering interdisciplinary dialogue. The novel methods, geo-located sensor technologies and data-driven approaches to researching urban stress now available to researchers pose a number of ethical, political and conceptual challenges around defining and measuring emotions, stress, human behaviour and urban space. They also raise issues of rigour, participation and social scientific interpretation. Introducing methods informed by more critical Citizen Social Science perspectives can temper overly individualised forms of data collection to establish more effective ways of addressing urban stress and promoting wellbeing in urban communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positron emission particle tracking (PEPT), a powerful technique for studying fluid and granular flows, has been developed at Birmingham over the last 30 years. In PEPT, a "positron camera" is used to detect the pairs of back-to-back photons emitted from positron annihilation. Accurate high-speed tracking of small tracer particles requires a positron camera with high sensitivity and data rate. In this paper, we compare the sensitivity and data rates obtained from the three principal cameras currently used at Birmingham. The recently constructed SuperPEPT and MicroPEPT systems have much higher sensitivity than the longstanding ADAC Forte and can generate data at much higher rates, greatly extending the potential for PEPT studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-precision road detection from very high resolution (VHR) remote sensing images has broad application value. However, the most advanced deep learning based methods often fail to identify roads when there is a distribution discrepancy between the training samples and test samples, due to their limited generalization ability. In this paper, to address this problem, an open-source data-driven domain-specific representation (OSM-DOER) framework is proposed for cross-domain road detection. On the one hand, as the spatial structure information of the source and target domains is similar, but the texture information is different, the domain-specific representation (DOER) framework is proposed, which not only aligns the distributions of the spatial structure information, but also learns the domain-specific texture information. Furthermore, in order to enhance the representation of the target domain data distribution, open-source and freely available OpenStreetMap (OSM) road centerline data are utilized to generate target domain samples, which are then used in the network training as the supervised information for the target domain. Finally, to verify the superiority of the proposed OSM-DOER framework, we conducted extensive experiments with the public SpaceNet and DeepGlobe road datasets, and large-scale road datasets from Birmingham in the UK and Shanghai in China. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed OSM-DOER framework shows obvious advantages over the mainstream road detection methods, and the use of OSM road centerline data has great potential for the road detection task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Meaningful public involvement in maternity research remains challenging, partly due to the transient nature of pregnancy. This paper reflects on the development, implementation and simple evaluation of an innovative and inclusive approach to engaging and involving pregnant and early postnatal women in research. Methods: Between January and February 2018, a Research Fellow in Maternity Care, a Professor of Evidence Based Maternity Care, and a Patient and Public Involvement Lead convened for a number of meetings to discuss how public involvement and engagement might be improved for pregnancy-related research. A stakeholder group was created, including a local community matron, a community engagement officer at a local children's centre, public contributors, and senior members of the Maternal and Child Health theme of the West Midlands Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC WM). The team worked together to develop a format for Yoga for Bump sessions: a free 90-min session, offered weekly, which included research involvement/engagement, pregnancy yoga, and a 'question and answer' session with a midwife. Results: A total of 67 women from two local communities in Birmingham attended Yoga for Bump sessions, which ran between May and December of 2018. Evaluation of the sessions suggested benefits to both women and researchers: it created mutually beneficial relationships between contributors and researchers, provided opportunities for women to engage and get involved in research that was directly relevant to them, and provided a convenient and efficient way for researchers to involve and engage pregnant women from diverse backgrounds in their research. Unintended benefits included self-reported improvements in women's health and wellbeing. Conclusions: Yoga for Bump demonstrates an innovative approach to engaging and involving pregnant and early postnatal women; combining a free exercise class with healthcare advice and opportunities to engage with and be involved in research, and demonstrating mutual benefits for those involved. This model has the potential to be replicated elsewhere to support inclusive public involvement in pregnancy-related research. Further work is needed to design and evaluate similar approaches to involvement/engagement and explore potential funding avenues to enhance sustainability. Plain English summary: Making sure that the public are involved in research is really important. It can sometimes be hard for pregnant women to get involved with research because they are only pregnant for a short amount of time and they are often busy with other things. This means that the research might only feel directly relevant and important to them for a short time. We designed a new way to encourage pregnant women to get involved and engaged in research. We did this by offering a free pregnancy yoga class to women. This class included a 'question and answer' session with a midwife and a discussion with a researcher about some research to do with pregnancy. We ran two classes a week, in two different parts of Birmingham, United Kingdom (UK). The classes took place between May and December 2018 and 67 different women attended the classes. We wanted to see if this was a good way to involve and engage pregnant women in research, so we did a simple evaluation. We used some questionnaires and notes that we had made. We found that the sessions were helpful for both women and researchers. Women enjoyed being involved in the research and told us they had felt healthier and less stressed from the yoga. Researchers found it really useful to be able to talk to women from lots of different backgrounds and experiences. There were some difficult parts of running the sessions, like the costs, and the time needed from us to make sure sessions ran smoothly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, a metal detectorist discovered a hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver in a field in Staffordshire. Hence, it quickly became known as 'The Staffordshire Hoard'. It was, and remains, the biggest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold (4 kg) and silver (1.7 kg) ever discovered and comprised of more than 4000 fragments that equated to over 600 discrete objects and larger pieces. The Staffordshire Hoard is co-owned by Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent City Councils and is cared for on behalf of the nation by Birmingham Museums Trust and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. Over the intervening years, most of the larger and recognisably important pieces have now been identified and catalogued. We now also know an exceptional amount about their probable methods of manufacture, artistic styles, date, and function. This paper focuses on what is now known to be one of the most fragmented yet magnificent of its objects, a Helmet that has been declared as being 'fit for a king', but which was found scattered into well over 1000 disparate fragments. Fragments that are now considered to make up around one-third of the Hoard's total of finds and compose this single high-status Golden Helmet. Too damaged and incomplete to be re-joined or displayed in a form that delivers to the casual observer a true sense of the majesty of the original. Thus, the museums responsible for the collection commissioned an experimental reconstruction project to create two of the helmets for display in their shared Hoard collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Investigaciones Geograficas is the property of Universidad de Alicante, Instituto Universitario de Geografia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this special issue we present a selection of papers from the Symposium on Natural/Unconventional Computing and its Philosophical Significance, held during the AISB/IACAP 2012 World Congress in Birmingham (UK). This article is an editorial, introducing the special issue of the journal with the selected papers and the research program of Natural/Unconventional Computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of College of Sharia & Islamic Studies is the property of Qatar University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Public Art is the property of Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher Ltd. co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Cycling has a range of benefits as is recognised by national and international policies aiming to increase cycling rates. Darkness acts as a barrier to people cycling, with fewer people cycling after-dark when seasonal and time-of-day factors are accounted for. This paper explores whether road lighting can reduce the negative impact of darkness on cycling rates. Changes in cycling rates between daylight and after-dark were quantified for 48 locations in Birmingham, United Kingdom, by calculating an odds ratio. These odds ratios were compared against two measures of road lighting at each location: 1) Density of road lighting lanterns; 2) Relative brightness as estimated from night-time aerial images. Locations with no road lighting showed a significantly greater reduction in cycling after-dark compared with locations that had some lighting. A nonlinear relationship was found between relative brightness at a location at night and the reduction in cyclists after-dark. Small initial increases in brightness resulted in large reductions in the difference between cyclist numbers in daylight and after-dark, but this effect reached a plateau as brightness increased. These results suggest only a minimal amount of lighting can promote cycling after-dark, making it an attractive mode of transport year-round. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Territorios: Revista de Estudios Regionales y Urbanos is the property of Universidad de los Andes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is an examination of the relationship between London retailers and their provincial suppliers associated with a particular category of commodities, domestic luxury metalwares, in the second half of the eighteenth century. Innovative metal-working processes were introduced into the Sheffield and Birmingham manufactories in the 1740s and 1750s which were combined with traditional craft skills, such as hand-raising associated with the metropolitan trade and the production of a new material, Sheffield plate. The interdependence of the provincial and London trades, in terms of access to specialist skills and specific markets, and at a time of growing demand and fierce competition, produced almost inevitable tensions. These were most dramatically expressed in debates over the acknowledgement of authorship of both design and manufacture. In an industry that increasingly depended on the supply of novel goods, in terms of new materials, form and ornament, the origination, dissemination, adaptation and protection of designs played a crucial role. This paper will examine whether novelty challenged intrinsic value in the competition for sales, and whether imitation, as a form of invention was desirable in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Public Art is the property of Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher Ltd. co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Smart cities are part of the ongoing advances in technology to provide a better life quality to its inhabitants. Urban mobility is one of the most important components of smart cities. Due to the growing number of vehicles in these cities, urban traffic congestion is becoming more common. In addition, finding places to park even in car parks is not easy for drivers who run in circles. Studies have shown that drivers looking for parking spaces contribute up to 30% to traffic congestion. In this context, it is necessary to predict the spaces available to drivers in parking lots where they want to park. We propose in this paper a new system that integrates the IoT and a predictive model based on ensemble methods to optimize the prediction of the availability of parking spaces in smart parking. The tests that we carried out on the Birmingham parking data set allowed to reach a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.06% on average with the algorithm of Bagging Regression (BR). This results have thus improved the best existing performance by over 6.6% while dramatically reducing system complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To evaluate the efficacy of SIMBA as an educational intervention for both HCPs and people with either PCOS or adrenal conditions and to study the change in knowledge of people with PCOS or adrenal conditions about the conditions and expectations from the HCPs involved in their care following SIMBA-PPI sessions. Methods: Two SIMBA-PPI sessions (SIMBA-PPI Polycystic ovary syndrome (SIMBA-PCOS) and SIMBA-PPI Adrenal conditions (SIMBA-Adrenal conditions)) were conducted in September 2021 and March 2022. In both sessions, HCPs interacted with moderators on patient management through WhatsApp. Patients with respective conditions underwent workshop-style learning in the same cases. SIMBA-PCOS transcripts were also translated into Brazilian Portuguese and workshops were held in both Brazilian Portuguese and English. The two groups (HCPs and patients) were then brought together to discuss exploring gaps in knowledge and expectations. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test compared differences in pre- and post-SIMBA self-reported confidence levels in HCPs and patients. Qualitative data from the online recordings were transcribed and analysed with inductive thematic analysis to identify gaps in knowledge and expectations from managing the cases. Results: 48 HCPs and 25 patients participated in our study. When compared to pre-SIMBA confidence levels, SIMBA-PPI sessions effectively improved clinicians' confidence in managing PCOS (40.5%, p <.001) and adrenal conditions (23.0%, p <.001) post-SIMBA. Patient participants' confidence in HCPs significantly increased in the PCOS session (SIMBA-PCOS: 6.25%, p = 0.01). Conclusions: Integration of PPI into SIMBA improved HCPs' confidence in managing PCOS and adrenal conditions. SIMBA-PPI also improved patients' confidence in HCPs. Our findings suggest that participating in SIMBA-PPI sessions can reduce the gap in knowledge and expectations between patients and HCPs involved in their care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK air pollutant data collected over a 10-year period (2010–2019) from 46 sites with Urban Traffic, Urban Background, Suburban Background, Rural Background, and Urban Industrial environmental types were analysed to study the relationships between [NO] vs. [PM2.5] and [O3] vs. [PM2.5] during the summer for each site type. These results were used to describe the consequence of recent PM2.5 reductions on NO and O3 concentrations at different site types across the UK. The strongest positive [NO] vs. [PM2.5] correlation was observed for the Urban Traffic site type overall, but it displayed the weakest positive [O3] vs. [PM2.5] correlation. Analysis of individual Urban Traffic sites revealed an overall negative [O3] vs. [PM2.5] gradient at the London Marylebone Road (LMR) site. A sharp 35% PM2.5 decrease occurred at LMR between 2011 and 2015 before annual mean concentrations plateaued. Further examination of annual correlations revealed negative [O3] vs. [PM2.5] gradients in each year directly proceeding the sharp 35% PM2.5 decrease at LMR. NOx fluctuations were minimal and accompanied by comparable volatile organic compound (VOC) decreases; thus, VOC-limited chemistry at LMR was deemed to not be the primary cause of O3 increases. Instead, PM2.5 reductions are suggested to be a more significant factor in causing O3 increases, as suppression of O3 production by PM2.5 chemistry decreases with declining [PM2.5]. The remaining two Urban Traffic sites in Birmingham did not display a negative [O3] vs. [PM2.5] correlation in the years studied. This was partly ascribed to the Birmingham measurement sites not being under the influence of the street canyon effect like LMR. Principal attribution was to the lower-average absolute initial PM2.5 concentrations and absence of a significant (>26%) continuous mean PM2.5 decline of greater than 2 years. This study therefore proposed a threshold initial PM2.5 concentration (t) above which O3 suppression by PM2.5 chemistry is sufficient to induce O3 increases when average PM2.5 concentrations significantly decline (by >26% across >2 years), where 17 μg m−3 < t < 26 μg m−3. Extending this analysis to additional cities across the UK as sufficient data become available would allow refinement of the proposed threshold and improved understanding of the influence from the street canyon effect. These results inform future air pollution policies, in the UK and across the globe, in which further joint reductions of PM2.5 and O3 are crucial to achieve maximum benefits to human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the 8-th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning held in Birmingham, England from December 16-19, 2007 is presented. Topics include bioinformatics, neural networks, and adaptive learning algorithms. The conference is dedicated to promote advanced techniques in the said areas.

This paper provides a new discussion of how people learn through deliberative processes, drawing upon empirical analysis of a novel public engagement process for urban river restoration. Such critical evaluation is rare and yet will be crucial to both theoretical development and learning about engagement practice, not least in a policy area subject to strong regulatory drivers for public participation. The analysis supports two important learning mechanisms – the use of ‘gatekeepers’ of knowledge, interests and values, and the privileging of narrative. It provides new evidence of instrumental and communicative learning about shared priorities and criteria for effective river restoration that evolved through the deliberative process and directly informed the restoration scheme. It is important to question whether and how such site or context-specific learning might inform other restoration schemes. Finally, the paper questions the often ignored issue of expert learning, not least the issue of the link between individual and organizational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AimsInvestigations into glaucoma awareness have drawn on informed, clinic-based populations. The paper reports a section of findings from a larger study that aimed to elicit the perceptions of those potentially less informed in community settings.MethodsA qualitative investigation used face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions with 48 African Caribbean participants outside the hospital eye-service. Interview data were transcribed and coded using manual and computer-aided methods. Inferences and interpretations were corroborated by discussion with expert advisors and community members not directly involved in the study.ResultsPositive attitudes to health promotion existed, but ‘eye health’ did not appear to be integral to individuals' health schemas. The capacity for primary eye care to enhance glaucoma knowledge appeared under utilised and inconsistent across modes of service delivery and was undermined by perceived conflicts of interest.ConclusionsEnhancing reciprocal understanding between service users and ophthalmic practitioners in primary care is central to developing flexible, responsive local eye-care services. The study suggested useful foci for cultural self-reflection and self-awareness on the part of health professionals themselves, in relation to glaucoma detection. Areas for further research are identified.Eye (2007) 21, 912–920; doi:10.1038/sj.eye.6702461; published online 11 August 2006 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Postal questionnaires are an economical and simple method of data collection for research purposes but are subject to non-response bias. Several studies have explored the effect of monetary and non-monetary incentives on response. Recent meta-analyses conclude that financial incentives are an effective way of increasing response rates. However, large surveys rarely have the resources to reward individual participants. Three previous papers report on the effectiveness of lottery incentives with contradictory results. This study aimed to determine the effect of including a lottery-style incentive on response rates to a postal health survey. Methods: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: North and West Birmingham. 8,645 patients aged 18 or over randomly selected from registers of eight general practices (family physician practices). Intervention: Inclusion of a flyer and letter with a health questionnaire informing patients that returned questionnaires would be entered into a lottery-style draw for £100 of gift vouchers. Control: Health questionnaire accompanied only by standard letter of explanation. Main outcome measures: Response rate and completion rate to questionnaire. Results: 5,209 individuals responded with identical rates in both groups (62.1%). Practice, patient age, sex and Townsend score (a postcode based deprivation measure) were identified as predictive of response, with higher response related to older age, being female and living in an area with a lower Townsend score (less deprived). Conclusion: This RCT, using a large community based sample, found that the offer of entry into a lottery style draw for £100 of High Street vouchers has no effect on response rates to a postal health questionnaire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a discussion of how the educational attitudes, perspectives and experiences of young South Asian women in schools and colleges in the city of Birmingham, UK, are affected by domestic religio-cultural norms and values. Taking into consideration social class and the different types of schools they attend, young South Asian women were interviewed and surveyed to ascertain the effects of religion and culture upon education. The empirical findings show that all young South Asian women had supportive parents who actively encouraged them in education, irrespective of religion. For young Muslim women a strong bond between religion and individual was found, but for Hindus and Sikhs it was more tentative. For young working-class South Asian women, Hindus and Sikhs also regarded religion as less significant in their lives, but for Muslims it was again seen as crucial--but certain practices were argued to be more cultural than religious, and thereby problematic. For some young South Asian Muslim women, it leads to further marginalisation in education, given that they also originate from lower social class positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic non-methane volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the United Kingdom have been substantially reduced since 1990, which is, in part, attributed to controls on evaporative and vehicle tailpipe emissions. Over time, other sources with a different speciation (for example, alcohols from solvent use and industry processes) have grown in both relative importance and, in some cases, in absolute terms. The impact of this change in speciation and the resulting photochemical reactivities of VOCs are evaluated using a photochemical box model constrained by observational data during a summertime ozone event (Birmingham, UK) and apportionment of sources based on the UK National Atmospheric Emission Inventory (NAEI) data over the period 1990–2019. Despite road transport sources representing only 3.3 % of UK VOC emissions in 2019, road transport continued being the sector with the largest influence on the local O 3 production rate (P(O 3)). Under case study conditions, the 96 % reduction in road transport VOC emissions that has been achieved between 1990 and 2019 has likely reduced daytime P(O 3) by ∼ 1.67 ppbv h -1. Further abatement of fuel fugitive emissions was modeled to have had less impact on P(O 3) reduction than abatement of VOCs from industrial processes and solvent use. The long-term trend of increased emissions of ethanol and methanol has somewhat weakened the benefits of reducing road transport emissions, increasing P(O 3) by ∼ 0.19 ppbv h -1 in the case study. Abatement of VOC emissions from multiple sources has been a notable technical and policy success in the UK, but some future benefits (from an ozone perspective) of the phase-out of internal combustion engine passenger cars may be offset if domestic and commercial solvent use of VOCs continue to increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement and source apportionment of atmospheric pollutants is crucial for the assessment of air quality and the implementation of policies for its improvement. In most cases, such measurements use expensive regulatory grade instruments, which makes it difficult to achieve wide spatial coverage. Low-cost sensors may provide a more affordable alternative, but their capability and reliability in separating distinct sources of particles have not yet been tested extensively. The present study examines the ability of a low-cost Optical Particle Counter (OPC) to identify the sources of particles and conditions that affect particle concentrations at an urban background site in Birmingham, UK. To help evaluate the results, the same analysis is performed on data from a regulatory-grade instrument (SMPS) and compared to the outcomes from the OPC analysis. The analysis of the low-cost sensor data manages to separate time periods and atmospheric conditions according to the level of pollution at the site. It also successfully identifies a number of particle sources, which were also identified using the regulatory-grade instruments. The low-cost sensor, due to the particle size range measured (0.35 to 40 µm), performed rather well in differentiating sources of particles with sizes greater than 1 µm. However, the ability of the low cost sensor to distinguish diurnal variations and separate sources of smaller particles was more limited. This study highlights the current capability of low-cost sensors in source identification and differentiation using clustering approaches. The current level of source identification demonstrated in this paper indicates the combination of hardware and analytical technique is useful for background site studies, where larger particles with smaller temporal variations are of significant importance. Future directions towards particulate matter source apportionment using low cost OPCs are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful transitioning to a circular economy city requires a holistic and inclusive approach that involves bringing together diverse actors and disciplines who may not have shared aims and objectives. It is desirable that stakeholders work together to create jointly-held perceptions of value, and yet cooperation in such an environment is likely to prove difficult in practice. The contribution of this paper is to show how collaboration can be engendered, or discord made transparent, in resource decision-making using a hybrid Game Theory approach that combines its inherent strengths with those of scenario analysis and multi-criteria decision analysis. Such a methodology consists of six steps: (1) define stakeholders and objectives; (2) construct future scenarios for Municipal Solid Waste Management; (3) survey stakeholders to rank the evaluation indicators; (4) determine the weights for the scenarios criteria; (5) reveal the preference order of the scenarios; and (6) analyse the preferences to reveal the cooperation and competitive opportunities. To demonstrate the workability of the method, a case study is presented: The Tyseley Energy Park, a major Energy-from-Waste facility that treats over two-thirds of the Municipal Solid Waste of Birmingham in the UK. The first phase of its decision-making involved working with the five most influential actors, resulting in recommendations on how to reach the most preferred and jointly chosen sustainable scenario for the site. The paper suggests a supporting decision-making tool so that cooperation is embedded in circular economy adoption and decisions are made optimally (as a collective) and are acceptable to all the stakeholders, although limited by bounded rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of mucosal immunity in IgA nephropathy (IgAN) and indicate its current status, hot sopts, and direction of future studies. Methods: The literature data was collected from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace 6.1.R3 was employed to conduct a visualization bibliometric analysis of mucosal immunity in IgA nephropathy, including authors, countries, journals, keywords, organizations, references, the bursts of keywords and references, and the timeline of keyword clusters and reference clusters. Results: A total of 315 publications from 1990 to 2022 were included. The number of articles in this field has increased in recent years. Suzuki H, Coppo R, and Feehally J took the first place parallelly with 18 articles. Japan contributes the most articles, accounting for 27.3% of all the publications. The institutions with the most publications were Juntendo University and University of Alabama Birmingham. 453 keywords were concluded in the analysis, which mainly focus on the mucosal pathogenesis and therapy of the IgAN. The top five co‐cited reference cluster are "aberrantly glycosylated IgA," "corticosteroids," "animal models," "o‐glycosylationm" and "microRNA‐630." The most recently burst of keyword is "tonsillectomy" and "gut." Conclusion: This was the first bibliometric analysis to systematically analyze the mucosal immunity in IgAN, which obtained the current status and indicated the future research hotspots and development trends. The gut microbiota and the related therapy‐targeted mucosal immunity might be the future research hotspot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lifelong strength is fundamental to physical function, health, and quality of life. Reliable appropriate strength assessment measures for older adults play an important role in effective evaluation of baseline ability and exercise prescription to counter disease and disuse. This study aimed to investigate the within-session reliability of maximal isometric knee extension and flexion, hip abduction and adduction, and handgrip strength measures in frail and pre-frail older adults. Method: The study was conducted at a residential care home in Birmingham, UK. All care home residents aged ≥ 65 years; pre-frail or frail according to the Fried Frailty phenotype criteria; able to speak and read English; not currently involved in any other clinical trial; without severe sensory impairments; and with a predicted life expectancy greater than the trial length were eligible. Maximal isometric lower limb testing was performed using specialised resistance training equipment and a portable measurement device, and grip strength was assessed using a portable dynamometer. All eligible participants attended a single testing session and performed three trials per measure. Peak force measures were obtained for analysis. Within-session reliability for each measure was calculated from repeated-measures analysis of variance, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), and coefficients of variation (CV) with 95% confidence intervals. Results: Eleven frail and eleven pre-frail older adults participated in the study. Within-session absolute and relative measures were found to be reliable with the highest overall repeatability indicated between trial 2 and trial 3 for knee extension, hip abduction, and handgrip (CV ≤ 4.65%, ICC ≥ 0.96) with variation evident across all measures, except knee extension, from trial 1 to 2. Conclusions: Overall, maximal isometric strength in frail and pre-frail older adults with no previous testing experience can be measured with good to high reliability within their first testing session. An initial two familiarisation trials followed by two measurement trials is recommended to achieve the highest level of overall repeatability. Trial registration: The trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03141879 on 05/05/2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the socio-economic impacts and associated policy responses to the collapse of MG Rover at Longbridge in Birmingham. Critically, it attempts to move beyond a 'standard' taskforce narrative that emphasizes the role of the regional response. While recognizing that significant policy 'successes' were indeed evident at the regional level in anticipating and responding to the crisis, a wider perspective is required that situates this taskforce response in (1) a fuller understanding of labour market precariousness (that in turn mitigates some of its policy 'successes'), and (2) more local perspectives that highlight the local impacts of closure, the role of the neighbourhood level officials and the third sector in mediating these. Taking this broader perspective suggests that longer-term, workers face a precarious situation and the need for policies to create and sustain 'good quality' jobs remains paramount. Adding in more local perspectives, a key lesson from the Longbridge experience for dealing with closures more generally is that the public policy responses must be: multidimensional in that they transcend narrow sector-based concerns and addresses broader spatial impacts; inclusive in that they build on a broad coalition of economic and social stakeholders; and long-term in that they acknowledge that adaptation takes many years. If anything, the Birmingham Longbridge experience demonstrates the difficulty of achieving such responses in the context of crisis where action is imperative and deliberation a luxury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 2009, at the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland (APGBI) Annual Meeting in Birmingham, a workshop was held to consider the changing demographics of the medical profession, its potential effects on the Association’s stated aims of promoting academic excellence and ways of ensuring that medical academia is attractive to everyone with the ability and drive it needs. This paper reports the discussions of the workshop participants and also summarises recommendations for actions by both the Association and its membership, which will encourage interest, equal opportunities and personal development for all in academic medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is increasingly understood that the emergence of the knowledge-based economy (KBE) at local, sub-regional and regional level may be accompanied by increased social polarization -- in essence certain communities are in danger of being left behind. The broad perspective for this paper is the concern that, as a counterbalancing measure, the secondary education sector needs to be more wholly integrated into the design and delivery of KBE policy at the concept stage of localized initiatives. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on KBE policy by considering the extent to which local KBE initiatives across cities in England can connect with local communities. In particular, we argue that the local secondary education (11-19 year old) sector has a bridging role to play in connecting local communities to local KBE agendas. The education sector is ideally placed to help local communities prepare for the opportunities that will emerge from KBE activity. The challenge of incorporating the sector is elaborated through the examination of a case study of the Central Technology Belt (CTB) in south Birmingham. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent traffic management is an important issue for smart cities. City councils try to implement the newest techniques and performant technologies in order to avoid traffic congestion, to optimize the use of traffic lights, to efficiently use car parking, etc. To find the best solution to this problem, Birmingham City Council decided to allow open-source predictive traffic forecasting by making the real-time datasets available. This paper proposes a multi-agent system (MAS) approach for intelligent urban traffic management in Birmingham using forecasting and classification techniques. The designed agents have the following tasks: forecast the occupancy rates for traffic flow, road junctions and car parking; classify the faults; control and monitor the entire process. The experimental results show that k-nearest neighbor forecasts with high accuracy rates for the traffic data and decision trees build the most accurate model for classifying the faults for their detection and repair in the shortest possible time. The whole learning process is coordinated by a monitoring agent in order to automate Birmingham city's traffic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Exercise has been shown to be beneficial for selected patients with heart failure, but questions remain over its effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and uptake in a real world setting. This paper describes the design, rationale and recruitment for a randomised controlled trial that will explore the effectiveness and uptake of a predominantly home-based exercise rehabilitation programme, as well as its cost-effectiveness and patient acceptability. Methods/design: Randomised controlled trial comparing specialist heart failure nurse care plus a nurse-led predominantly home-based exercise intervention against specialist heart failure nurse care alone in a multiethnic city population, served by two NHS Trusts and one primary care setting, in the United Kingdom. 169 English speaking patients with stable heart failure, defined as systolic impairment (ejection fraction ⩽ 40%). with one or more hospital admissions with clinical heart failure or New York Heart Association (NYHA) II/III within previous 24-months were recruited. Main outcome measures at 1 year: Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire, incremental shuttle walk test, death or admission with heart failure or myocardial infarction, health care utilisation and costs. Interviews with purposive samples of patients to gain qualitative information about acceptability and adherence to exercise, views about their treatment, self-management of their heart failure and reasons why some patients declined to participate. The records of 1639 patients managed by specialist heart failure services were screened, of which 997 (61%) were ineligible, due to ejection fraction>40%, current NYHA IV, no admission or NYHA II or more within the previous 2 years, or serious co-morbidities preventing physical activity. 642 patients were contacted: 289 (45%) declined to participate, 183 (39%) had an exclusion criterion and 169 (26%) agreed to randomisation. Discussion: Due to safety considerations for home-exercise less than half of patients treated by specialist heart failure services were eligible for the study. Many patients had co-morbidities preventing exercise and others had concerns about undertaking an exercise programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birmingham has embarked on a brave attempt to broaden its planning ethos and incorporate elements of the city's diverse cultural population. A key feature of this new ethos is a re-scripting of its ethnic minorities as an asset rather than a problem. In this paper, I track the characterization of Birmingham's ethnic minorities through the newspaper archive and mobilize a politics of difference as a critical reading strategy. In so doing, I suggest the narrative form on Birmingham's ethnic minorities has persistently made apparent forms of co-existence which flag up a discontinuity between ‘diversity’ and the characterization of its ethnic minorities as an asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To discover the importance of social sources of tobacco to young people as opposed to commercial sources; to describe the peer market for cigarettes in schools and the consequences for young people of their involvement in it. Study design: Cross sectional questionnaire survey, one-to-one interviews, and focus groups. Setting: Seven schools in Birmingham, UK. Subjects: All students in two randomly selected classes from each school completed the questionnaire, and never smokers, occasional smokers, and regular smokers were interviewed. Results: Two thirds of occasional smokers and one quarter of regular smokers obtained cigarettes socially, mostly for free. A few smokers regularly bought their cigarettes from others. Among friendship groups, both smokers and non-smokers were involved in the exchange of cigarettes, often for money, which is a common activity. A few young people use the selling of cigarettes to fund their own smoking. Some young people, smokers and non-smokers, are involved in semi-commercial selling of cigarettes. All school students ore aware of where to purchase cigarettes from non-friends, which is only used "in emergency" because of the high price. One school had a strong punishment policy for students caught with cigarettes. In this school, more people bought singles from the peer market and the price was higher. Conclusions: The passing and selling of cigarettes in school is a common activity, which from the young persons perspective, ensures that all share cross counter purchases. A few people are prepared to use the peer market for monetary gain and it appears to be responsive to external conditions. The peer market might mean that efforts to control illegal sales of cigarettes are not as effective as hoped. INSET: What this paper adds.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The views of a range of teachers towards South Asians in schools and colleges in Birmingham are explored in this paper. Based on 23 teachers, often senior in nature, from 11 educational institutions (9 schools [1 independent, 2 selective, 6 comprehensive] and 2 further education colleges), analysis of attitudes is in relation to gender and religion; socialisation and language differences between South Asian groups; and teacher ethnicity and antiracist multicultural education policy. It was broadly found that teachers viewed the education of South Asians based on the modus operandi of the educational institution they represented as well as the way in which differing South Asians based on socio-economic status, ethnicity and gender were thought to act and behave. There are implications for how South Asians are perceived as individuals as well as groups by teachers, as well as how schools can make a real attempt to improve existing home–school relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birmingham is re–inventing itself through a strategy of prestige city centre regeneration. Drawing on the theoretical lenses of transnationalism and postcolonialism, we sketch one alternative vision of Birmingham’s economic place in the world. Through a focus on ‘ethnic diversity’, and the subsequent distinctiveness of the city’s economy, this paper re–visions Birmingham as a ‘global’ city. Reflecting on a ‘politics of scale’, we highlight a ‘globalization from below’ that draws on the city’s residents and their histories [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of questionnaire responses describing the writing processes associated with a total of 715 essays (term papers) produced by undergraduate psychology students identified four distinct patterns of writing behaviour: a minimal-drafting strategy which typically involved the production of one or at most two drafts; an outline-and-develop strategy which entailed content development both prior to and during drafting; a detailed-planning strategy which involved the use of content-development methods (mindmapping, brainstorming or rough drafting) in addition to outlining, and a ``think-then-do'' strategy which, unlike the other three strategies, did not involve the production of a written outline. The minimal-drafting and outline-and-develop strategies appeared to produce the poorest results, with the latter being more time consuming. The detailed-planning and ``think-then-do'' strategies both appeared to result in better quality essays, although differences were small. We analysed the writing strategies for a subset of these essays produced by a cohort of 48 students followed through the three years of their degree course. We found some evidence of within-student consistency in strategy use with on average two out of every three of a student's essays being written using the same type of strategy. There was no evidence of systematic change in writing strategy from year to year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial improvements to silver plating through the work of electroplating firms such as Elkington, Mason and Co are an important part of our industrial heritage, bridging art, science and industry to form a significant portion of museum collections. However, the impact of this development of silverplating technology upon photography has not previously been explored. This article details the improvements that electroplated silver brought to the daguerreotype photographic process and to the manufacture of daguerreotype plates in Birmingham, offering a material reappraisal of the inventive qualities of the daguerreotype within a wider narrative of industrial manufacture. Chemists in 1840s Birmingham were developing photographic techniques and silverplating processes at the Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, later Queens College on Paradise Street. These scientists -- George Shaw (1818-1904) and John Percy (1817-1889) -- had detailed, tactile knowledge of the convergent chemistry and processes in both arenas. Developments in the industrial manufacture of silverplate in 1840s Birmingham created significant improvements to the materials used in the daguerreotype photographic process, making photography more viable as a commercial venture. Shaw planned an early portrait studio and worked with early innovators in electroplating techniques the Marrian brothers (Francis (1802-1893) and Benjamin James Pratt Marrian (1811-1891)) using magneto-plate technology developed by another Birmingham industrial entrepreneur John Woolrich (c. 1791-1843). This potential studio did not emerge due to restrictive patenting and licensing restrictions around the practice of daguerreotype photography, yet extant daguerreotypes tell a story of improvements stemming from technical innovation. These daguerreotypes situate industrial Birmingham as a place of innovation and invention and place the daguerreotype photographic process within narratives of industrial improvements and radically inventive manufacturing practices. Key to the analysis presented here is the role of the recreation of historic techniques in historical research and the value of acquiring tactile knowledge of the behaviour of materials during the processes explored. Here practical experiments allowed the author to look beyond the surviving daguerreotypes via material knowledge to the circumstances and social environment of production. This approach revealed new knowledge which offers an alternative reading of the history of objects through their materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the global net-zero strategy implementation, decarbonisation of transport by massive deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) has been considered to be an essential solution. However, charging EVs and integration into electricity grids is going to be a fundamental challenge to future electricity systems. Hence, in this situation, how to effectively deploy massive numbers of EVs, and in the meantime what can be developed to deliver vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services, become a fundamental yet interesting tech-economical issues. Furthermore, uncertainty in lack of vehicle availability and EV battery degradation could lead to revenue loss when using EVs as ancillary services aggregators. With such considerations, this paper presents a new optimised V2G aggregator scheduling service that has taken into consideration of a number of risks, including EV availability and battery degradation through conditional value-at-risk. The proposed method for V2G scheduling service, as an independent aggregator, is formulated as a bi-level optimisation problem. The performance of the proposed method is to be evaluated through case studies on the Birmingham International Airport parking lot with onsite renewable generation. Uncertainties of EVs and the differences in weekdays and weekends are also compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, some recent findings about the nature of plea negotiation in the Birmingham Crown Court in England are discussed. These findings, to which the legal profession in England reacted with hostility, raise doubts about traditionally accepted assumptions concerning the role of plea bargaining in English criminal justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: IgA nephropathy is a common glomerular disease on a global scale, which has resulted in significant economic burdens. The complement system plays a vital role in enhancing the efficacy of antibodies and phagocytic cells in eliminating microbes and damaged cells, and promoting inflammation. Complement activation has been found to contribute to the progression of various renal diseases, including IgA nephropathy. Methods: In this study, a thorough analysis was conducted on publications related to complement in IgAN from 1991 to 2022, retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus database. The analysis focused on various aspects such as annual publications, country, institution, author, journal, keywords, and co-cited references, utilizing Citespace and Vosviewer. Results: A total of 819 publications were obtained, and while there were slight fluctuations in annual publications, an overall upward trend was observed. China, Japan and the United States were the leading countries in terms of publications, with China having the highest number of publications (201). Collaborative network analysis revealed that England, University of Alabama Birmingham, and Robert J Wyatt were the most influential country, institution, and author, respectively, in this field of research. Furthermore, the analysis of references and keywords indicated that complement activation contributes to IgAN, and immunosuppression in IgAN are a hot topic of research. Discussion: This study identifies current research hotspots and advanced tendencies in the study of complement in IgAN, providing scholars with crucial directions in this research area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]