Edinburgh School Research Articles

Heating system oversizing and low-temperature readiness of a pre-1919 school in Scotland

As part of the decarbonization of its existing building stock the UK needs to replace gas boilers with heat pumps and low-temperature heat networks. Both technologies are efficient at supply temperatures of 55 °C, with a maximum of 70 °C for heat networks, when existing systems have been designed to operate at 82 °C. Most space heating systems are expected oversized and operate most of the year in part-load, which facilitate the temperature reduction, but little is known about the degree of oversizing. This paper uses the case study of a pre-1919 school in Edinburgh to evaluate the true oversizing of its heating system and its consequences on minimum supply temperatures. This building is still equipped with single glazing and is therefore a worst-case scenario. An oversizing of 32 % was estimated which enables the use of a supply temperature below 70 °C all year round. Moreover, the supply temperature can be kept below 55 °C all year round during daytime due to internal heat gains. In conclusion, this building shows a nascent readiness for low-temperature heat. It would benefit from energy efficiency measures such as double-glazed windows, but this is not pre-requisite. Those results are important for the heat network industry when sizing their systems, but also energy and asset managers when they schedule renovation programmes to have their buildings low-temperature-ready.

Consulting in the dark: Robert Hamilton (1749-1830) and the importance of 'tenderness' towards patients.

Robert Hamilton (1749-1830) was born in Coleraine, Ireland, attended medical school in Edinburgh, Scotland, served in the British army and practised in South-East England. In order to differentiate him from his contemporary and namesake, Hamilton is identified by having worked in Ipswich, Suffolk and Colchester, Essex. This submission considers Hamilton's biography, his 1787 book on the British regimental surgeon and his ideas therein about professionalism. Central to his concept of professionalism is 'tenderness', a notion that broadly equates to empathy. He notes that tenderness brings improvement in clinical outcome and he has the foresight to recognise nurses as key to such care. The authors explore the concept of 'consulting in the dark', i.e. without access to clinical investigations. This is exemplified by doctors of the eighteenth century and earlier. Today general practitioners must still be comfortable 'consulting in the dark', e.g. when attending a patient's home. Hamilton's biography offers a further example of 'consulting in the dark': In later life, he lost his vision but continued to practise successfully. Central to his gift of consulting 'in the dark' was likely to be 'tenderness' for his patients, expressed through language and gentle touch. Hamilton's entreaty for 'tenderness' contrasts with modern medical education where reliance upon clinical tests, technology and pharmacology risksblinding young doctors towards patients and their lives.

Decolonizing Veterinary History: On the benefits of telling the story of Dr Jotello Soga, the first South African veterinarian

Although nearly erased from history, the first formally trained South African veterinarian was the little-known Dr Jotello Festiri Soga (1865–1906), son of the Xhosa Reverend Tiyo Soga and his Scottish wife. By detailing Soga's remarkable trajectory, this paper helps to decolonize the history of veterinary medicine, long dominated by the ‘great deeds’ of a succession of white men, and only recently beginning to diversify. This sort of knowledge decolonization has been increasingly advocated by numerous scholars and a growing number of students globally. Dr Soga qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1886, after studying at the Royal (Dick's) Veterinary School in Edinburgh. Appointed Assistant Veterinary Surgeon for Cape Colony in 1889, he made pioneering contributions to veterinary toxicology and vaccination methods over the next decade. Soga was also one of the earliest to warn of the impending disaster of rinderpest, and he played an instrumental role in the containment and eventual eradication of this devastating disease. He provided essential help in communicating with indigenous South Africans about livestock diseases, although his feelings about his countrymen were sometimes conflicted. The processes of decolonization are complex, and frequently difficult, but the benefits are great.

Looking back to look forward: Surviving COVID-19 and the future of the NHS.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected healthcare systems worldwide, including the National Health Service (NHS). It drastically changed the practice and delivery of healthcare and laid bare longstanding structural flaws. It also brought a time of innovation and digitalisation and renewed appreciation of the role of public health. This paper offers a thematic summary of a debate held in December 2021 by the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine. It featured a multi-specialty panel of doctors and patient representative discussing the likely impact of the pandemic on the future of NHS. It serves as a reflection point on the pressures the NHS has faced since and their likely genesis at a time when the impact of the pandemic on staff risks being forgotten.

Sew very relaxing.

After a crafty childhood spent in Toronto, Canada, Melissa Zigler crossed the pond to attend vet school in Edinburgh - and turned to cross stitching as a way to relax.

Cathie Sudlow: devoted to data

Do doctors specialising in medical data science choose it because they dislike working with patients? Over the past decade or so Cathie Sudlow, Professor of Neurology and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and Director of the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre, has emerged as a leading force in medical informatics, so the question is clearly one for her. “Absolutely not”, is her amused response. But, as she concedes, circumstances have changed over time. When Sudlow took on her BHF role in 2020, she had to stop her clinical work entirely. In the 10 years before this she had still been seeing neurology patients weekly and describes her withdrawal from this aspect of medicine as “a natural progression rather than a dichotomy”. At school in Edinburgh she enjoyed science. “But I always had a leaning towards medicine because it was a way of combining science with a kind of schoolgirlish desire to do something for the community…I really did not then have inklings of a research career. It was more a desire to be working directly with people in a clinical context”, she says. So what changed?

Introduction: architectural lineaments — adventures through the work of Peter Wilson

This special issue of The Journal of Architecture has its beginnings in a symposium that was organised jointly by Drawing Matter and the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture,...

Anthony Barrington (“Barry”) Kay: part of the team that unequivocally established the Th2 T lymphocyte hypothesis for bronchial asthma

Photo credit: Rebecca Sutherland Anthony Barrington (“Barry”) Kay, whose work transformed the lives of many patients with asthma, has died at the age of 81 from an acute illness, after...

Critical Care Work During COVID-19: A Sociological Analysis of Staff Experiences

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing healthcare crisis presented staff working in critical care with unprecedented demands. We sought to understand frontline staff’s experiences of working in critical care in the UK during the first wave of the outbreak.Methods: Between August and October 2020, we conducted qualitative, semi-structured telephone interviews with forty NHS staff who worked in critical care during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK. Staff were recruited from four hospitals and included doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and ward clerks. We purposefully sought the experiences of trained and experienced critical care staff and those who were redeployed. We analysed the data using Rapid Analysis and subsequently interpreted the findings using Baehr’s sociological lens of ‘communities of fate’.Findings: COVID-19 presented staff with a situation of extreme stress, duress and social emergency, leading to a shared set of experiences which we have characterised as a community of fate. This involved fear and dread of working in critical care, but also a collective sense of duty and vocation. Caring for patients and families involved changes to usual ways of working, revolving around: reorganisation of space and personnel, personal protective equipment, lack of evidence for treating COVID-19, inability for families to be physically present, and the trauma of witnessing extreme patient acuity and death on a large scale. The stress and isolation of working in critical care during COVID-19 was mitigated by strong teamwork, camaraderie, pride and fulfilment.Interpretation: COVID-19 has changed working practices in critical care and profoundly affected staff physically, mentally and emotionally. Attention needs to be paid to the social and organisational conditions in which individuals work, addressing both practical resourcing and the interpersonal dynamics of critical care provision.Funding: Medical Research Scotland, Wellcome TrustDeclaration of Interests: CM reports a grant from Medical Research Scotland during the conduct of the study; SH reports a grant from Florence Nightingale Foundation, outside the submitted work; SS reports grants from Wellcome Trust, during the conduct of the study; CMC, AD and NP declare no competing interests.Ethics Approval Statement: Ethical approval was granted by the University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science Research Ethics Committee; HRA approval (20/HRA/3270) was also obtained.

James Syme: distinguished Edinburgh surgeon of the 19th century.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of James Syme, one of the most distinguished members of the Edinburgh school of surgery in the 19th century.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)-Based Methods for Solar Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) Retrieval with Non-Imaging Spectrometers: State of the Art

Chlorophyll fluorescence (ChlF) information offers a deep insight into the plant physiological status by reason of the close relationship it has with the photosynthetic activity. The unmanned aerial systems (UAS)-based assessment of solar induced ChlF (SIF) using non-imaging spectrometers and radiance-based retrieval methods, has the potential to provide spatio-temporal photosynthetic performance information at field scale. The objective of this manuscript is to report the main advances in the development of UAS-based methods for SIF retrieval with non-imaging spectrometers through the latest scientific contributions, some of which are being developed within the frame of the Training on Remote Sensing for Ecosystem Modelling (TRuStEE) program. Investigations from the Universities of Edinburgh (School of Geosciences) and Tasmania (School of Technology, Environments and Design) are first presented, both sharing the principle of the spectroradiometer optical path bifurcation throughout, the so called ‘Piccolo-Doppio’ and ‘AirSIF’ systems, respectively. Furthermore, JB Hyperspectral Devices’ ongoing investigations towards the closest possible characterization of the atmospheric interference suffered by orbital platforms are outlined. The latest approach focuses on the observation of one single ground point across a multiple-kilometer atmosphere vertical column using the high altitude UAS named as AirFloX, mounted on a specifically designed and manufactured fixed wing platform: ‘FloXPlane’. We present technical details and preliminary results obtained from each instrument, a summary of their main characteristics, and finally the remaining challenges and open research questions are addressed. On the basis of the presented findings, the consensus is that SIF can be retrieved from low altitude spectroscopy. However, the UAS-based methods for SIF retrieval still present uncertainties associated with the current sensor characteristics and the spatio-temporal mismatching between aerial and ground measurements, which complicate robust validations. Complementary studies regarding the standardization of calibration methods and the characterization of spectroradiometers and data processing workflows are also required. Moreover, other open research questions such as those related to the implementation of atmospheric correction, bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) correction, and accurate surface elevation models remain to be addressed.

Reform, Renewal and Revival: Lamin O. Sanneh and the Place of Africa in World Christianity

Abstract Lamin O. Sanneh of the Yale Divinity School passed on in January 2019 at the age of seventy-six years. He would go down in history as one of the pioneering authors in the field of World Christianity. Sanneh’s impressive legacy of Christian scholarship includes his being a co-founder with Andrew F. Walls of the Yale-Edinburgh Conference that is held annually, alternating between the Yale and Edinburgh schools of divinity. Lamin Sanneh wrote a lot on both Christianity and Islam and this reflection on his legacy focuses on how Africa is presented in his works. The translation of the Scriptures, Lamin Sanneh noted, enhanced the place of Christianity in Africa and contributed directly to the reform, renewal and revival of the faith on the continent. He celebrated western missionaries for their work in promoting translation, but what purpose would that have served without indigenous assimilation of Christianity? In this work, we discuss the place of Africa in World Christianity as the continent and her Christians appear in Sanneh’s writings on World Christianity.

From Scotland to India: the Sources of James Fergusson’s Theory of Architecture’s “True Styles”

James Fergusson’s (1808-86) books on architectural history were widely read in Britain, America, India and Australia. He was born in the Scottish town of Ayr and educated at the Royal High School in Edinburgh. Family connections made it possible for him to work and travel in India between 1829 and 1839. Fergusson wrote notes on a vast array of the country’s antiquities. He began publishing this material in London during the 1840s and completed a comprehensive survey of the subject in 1876, the History of Indian and Eastern Styles of Architecture. For him, each Indian architectural style was classified according to its region and period, as well as the religion and race of the builders. This essay considers the Scottish background for Fergusson’s writings of India, particularly as set out in letters and a diary, written during his journeys within the country. He discerned an ideal, in which the arts of agriculture and architecture are similarly practiced in a logical manner. Fergusson was especially impressed by the way workers in India respected common sense when constructing and adorning a building. Such an edifice was described as “pure”; and conformed to his mature definition of a “true style” of architecture.

Family Law(s) under the Roman Empire

This special edition resulted from a workshop, generously funded by the Journal of Legal History.1 It took place on the 30th November–1st December 2017 at the University of Edinburgh School of Law ...

Beyond the global motion deficit hypothesis of developmental dyslexia: A cross-sectional study of visual, cognitive, and socio-economic factors influencing reading ability in children

Although primarily conceptualized as a disorder of phonological awareness, developmental dyslexia is often associated with broader problems perceiving and attending to transient or rapidly-moving visual stimuli. However, the extent to which such visual deficits represent the cause or the consequence of dyslexia remains contentious, and very little research has examined the relative contributions of phonological, visual, and other variables to reading performance more broadly. We measured visual sensitivity to global motion (GM) and global form (GF), performance on various language and other cognitive tasks believed to be compromised in dyslexia (phonological awareness, processing speed, and working memory), together with a range of social and demographic variables often omitted in previous research, such as age, gender, non-verbal intelligence, and socio-economic status in an unselected sample (n = 132) of children aged 6–11.5 yrs from two different primary schools in Edinburgh, UK. We found that: (i) Mean GM sensitivity (but not GF) was significantly lower in poor readers (medium effect size); (ii) GM sensitivity accounted for only 3% of the variance in reading scores; (iii) GM sensitivity deficits were observed in only 16% of poor readers; (iv) the best predictors of reading performance were phonological awareness, non-verbal intelligence, and socio-economic status, suggesting the importance of controlling for these in future studies of vision and reading. These findings suggest that developmental dyslexia is unlikely to represent a single category of neurodevelopmental disorder underpinned by lower-level deficits in visual motion processing.

Low uptake of nasal influenza vaccine in Polish and other ethnic minority children in Edinburgh, Scotland

Failure to vaccinate is well-recognised in Europe as a contributing factor to outbreaks of infectious diseases. Low immunisation rates are often associated with religious, social and ethnic minorities, including refugees or migrant groups. Polish people form Scotland’s newest and largest migrant group. They have moved to Scotland since 2004, joining established ethnic minorities from China, the Indian subcontinent and Africa.Scotland has had a seasonal influenza nasal vaccination programme for all primary school children since 2013. We investigated three primary schools in Edinburgh, which had reported low influenza vaccination uptake rates in 2016 and 2017 and found that these schools contained many pupils from ethnic minorities, the majority of whom were Polish. Pupils were categorized as one of three ethnic groupings: White British, Polish and Other Identified Ethnic Minority (OIEM). We ascertained ethnicity using NHS and Education Department information sources and name recognition. We examined vaccine acceptance, declination and non-return of consent forms.In 2017, nasal influenza vaccine uptake was 70.7% (65.2–75.6%, p < 0.001) in White British, 60.9% (53.9–67.6%%, p < 0.001) in other identified ethnic minorities and 25.0% (20.9–29.6%, p > 0.001) in Polish children. White British children were more likely to return completed forms (78.9%) than other groups (OIEM 68.2% and Polish 61.8%). 36.8% of Polish families completed a consent form declining vaccination compared to 6.2% of White British families.These findings demonstrate that significant differences exist in nasal influenza vaccination uptake rates, which have important implications for the trans-national study of vaccine hesitancy. Further qualitative work and an investigation of uptake rates of other childhood immunisations in Polish and other migrant groups is required to assess differences in uptake and behaviours.

On SSK and Conversing with Scientists: Eugénia Rodrigues Talks with Michael J. Mulkay

Mike Mulkay takes Eugénia Rodrigues through a journey that revisits his involvement in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and STS. They talk dates, career moves, foundational work, books, and how it all started with a denied visa application from the US. Running under this formalistic level, though, other themes emerge: the notion of a “field” and its meaning in STS; the observed lack of epistemological and methodological rigor in research practice; Mulkay’s unsuccessful (on his own account) project on the literary forms or his unfazed take on the work produced by the “Edinburgh School.” It is a fascinating expedition and one that reveals some very present-day questions for STS, not least about the meanings of engagement and reflexivity. A reflection by Eugénia Rodrigues follows the interview.

See You Tomorrow: A case study of the Understanding Cinema project at Granton Primary School in Edinburgh

This case study describes the experience of 'Le cinéma, cent ans de jeunesse' and the Understanding Cinema project at an after-school film club at Granton Primary School in Edinburgh from 2016 to 2017. It does so from the perspective of the teachers, filmmaker and students involved and focuses in particular on the production of the students' film See You Tomorrow, about a young girl dealing with racist bullies. Exploring the processes undertaken as part of the project and the students' responses to them, this study ultimately advocates for the benefits of using both practical and theoretical approaches to film in primary classrooms.

Interview

AbstractPerhaps the most significant issue for some countries where curbing carbon emissions is concerned is not the capture or the transport, but the storage. The reality is the ideal geology is needed for the safe storage of carbon dioxide and for some countries this is not necessarily a straight forward issue. However a novel approach has been developed through a UK/China research team which could open up whole new reservoirs of storage in those geographical regions where, currently, storage options are limited.In this article Professor Stuart Haszeldine (PSH), from the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, explains the most recent developments in CO2 storage to GHGS&amp;T.

La transformation de l’ancienne Royal High School à Édimbourg, un projet controversé

Au début du xixe siècle, Édimbourg s’affirme comme la capitale intellectuelle et culturelle du Royaume-Uni. L’ancienne Royal High School, bâtiment de style néo-grec construit entre 1825 et 1829 par l’architecte Thomas Hamilton (1784-1858), incarne l’ambition de la ville de devenir nouvelle Athènes. Construite sur le flanc sud du Calton Hill, un site préservé face à la Vieille Ville, l’école s’insère dans un paysage pittoresque et symbolique qui fait écho à celui de l’Acropole grecque. Les Ancienne et Nouvelle Villes furent classées au patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO en 1995 et la valeur universelle du site était à cette occasion consacrée. Ce statut est pourtant menacé par plusieurs projets de développement urbain. La transformation de l’ancienne Royal High School est au cœur des enjeux actuels liés à la conservation des monuments historiques.