"What is it with all this | |
... what I want is for those with the power, to keep the planet cool." |
http://westernflag.johngerrard.net
John Gerrard - Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), 2017
My source: Twitter
In London currently, 20th - 23rd I was on my way to Bankside Gallery and walking by Temple Place, #2 to be precise, on a board outside I read:'The Weight of Being: Vulnerability, Resilience and Mental Health in Art'
Taking in the mental health and illness of artists, gender, domesticity, industrial and political struggle, COVID, and Gaza I spent and enjoyed a two hour detour. The building is also amazing. The exhibition is on until 19 April 2026, closed on Monday's and today 21st February. Before I share some text from their website, the interior of the building was a 'virtual' experience, but without the technology. Helpfully, the exhibition is spread across several rooms.
'Curated by Angela Thomas, this new exhibition explores artistic expression and mental health. Through depictions of deeply personal and collective experiences, it examines the powerful ways in which artists capture vulnerability, resilience, and their search for solace.
Including the work of a diverse range of twentieth century and contemporary artists and their varying perspectives, The Weight of Being showcases how artists have captured the psychological and emotional impact of societal pressures, resilience in the face of adversity, and existential uncertainty.
Alongside dozens of artworks drawn from galleries and collections across the UK, the portraits, landscapes, and figurative studies of the lesser-known artist John Wilson McCracken (1936–1982) are woven throughout. Denied the opportunity to return to the Slade School of Art following a period of hospitalisation for mental health reasons, McCracken spent much of his career in Hartlepool, producing work that reflects a profound sensitivity to the emotional and social pressures of his time. Shaped by personal and collective struggles, his art offers a deeply human perspective on the exhibition’s themes, revealing how external forces imprint themselves on the mind, body, and creative spirit.' Continued . . .
The building as a whole - Two Temple Place is owned and run by a registered charity, the Bulldog Trust.
I will definitely (hopefully!) visit again, on the way or returning from the South Bank of the Thames. The video below presents key aspects of the building's amazing interior and history:
Dear CHAIN member,
We would like to draw your attention to the following funding opportunity offered by NIHR. Please pass on the information as appropriate. Thank you.
‘Short Placement Award for Research Collaboration (SPARC) (Cohort 12)
This award offers a unique opportunity to design and undertake a short, bespoke placement within a part of the NIHR. Tailored to your individual research training needs and background, the award aims to enhance your research career, skills, and professional network.
What are the priority themes for an NIHR SPARC?
If you wish to publicise information on the CHAIN Network please email your request to: enquiries AT chain-network.org.uk
CHAIN - Contact, Help, Advice and Information Network – is an online international network for people working in health and social care. For more information on CHAIN and joining the network please visit website: www.chain-network.org.uk
Follow CHAIN on X: @CHAIN_Network ; Connect with CHAIN on LinkedIn
See also: 'long term' : 'academia' : 'interfaces' : 'industry' : 'social care'
Graphene just broke a fundamental law of physics.
Its electrons just did something physicists thought was impossible. For nearly 200 years, metals have obeyed the Wiedemann-Franz law – the rule that electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity always rise and fall together.But in ultra-clean graphene, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science found the opposite. As electrical conductivity increased, thermal conductivity dropped, shattering a principle taught in every physics textbook.The key lies at the “Dirac point,” a strange electronic tipping point where graphene is neither a metal nor an insulator. Here, electrons stop behaving like individual particles. Instead, they flow collectively as a nearly perfect fluid – a state called a “Dirac fluid.”This discovery doesn’t just rewrite the rules for graphene. It provides a tabletop window into extreme physics usually reserved for black holes and high-energy colliders. Scientists say this behavior could help probe mysteries of quantum entanglement, black hole thermodynamics, and the very fabric of matter itself.["Universality in quantum critical flow of charge and heat in ultraclean graphene." Nature Physics, 2025] ...
While I can't fully understand this paper (even the abstract!), I realise that it is taking what seems a long time^ for industry and business to understand and realise the potential of graphene in industrial and technological applications. |  |
Hopefully, applications will emerge, that are beneficial to all. Reducing energy use, improving efficiency, removing pollutants even more effectively, imcreasing the durability and hence lifetime of materials and products, and more. | Also, marvellous to see global collaboration at work, as science continues to asks questions. ^I could have written exploitation there, but could we put the collective and planetary first? |
My source: https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1966896966316474505
Which includes a video 5m 'Quantum Critical Flow in Graphene: Charge & Heat Dynamics'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrImy9PAHGk
Kafue River - ( clearly - not a 'person', nor the Rio Doce ) Signs of Life Signs of Government, Law & Accountability | |
See also:
Person & Sense of Place: A River runs through it ...
BBC - Artist explores the toxic mining legacy of Zambia's 'black mountains'
Heritage Management Process: Before & After
My prompt: Channel 4 News, UK 28 August 2025 1900.
Does the language we use really matter? A public NHS document includes the following:
'PHARMACY
2.1BackgroundHealth and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs) in England hold statutory responsibility to publish and keep up to date a statement of the needs for pharmaceutical services of the population in its area, referred to as a pharmaceutical needs assessment (PNA). PNAs are used by the NHS to make decisions on which NHS funded services need to be provided by local community pharmacies.'
drugs manufactoring testing | |
(April 27, 1928 – April 9, 2025) |
My choices |
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freedom |
24 October 2024
The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee demands that the Government should develop a comprehensive, integrated long-term new strategy to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legislative framework. This is the key conclusion of the Committee’s report, ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’.
Chair's comments
Baroness Walmsley, Chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee, said:
“Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people ill. Something must be going wrong if almost two in five children are leaving primary school with overweight or obesity and so many people are finding it hard to feed healthy food to their families. That is why we took a root and branch look at the food system and analysed what had gone wrong over the past few decades.
“Over the last 30 years successive governments have failed to reduce obesity rates, despite hundreds of policy initiatives. This failure is largely due to policies that focused on personal choice and responsibility out of misguided fears of the ‘nanny state’. Both the Government and the food industry must take responsibility for what has gone wrong and take urgent steps to put it right.
“We hope, given the recent comments from the Prime Minister, Lord Darzi and the Secretary of State for Health, that there is now an appetite to shift towards prevention of ill health. We urge the Government to look favourably on our plan to fix our broken food system and accept that not only is it cost-effective, but that it would lead to a lot less human misery.”
[My emphasis]
Personal responsibility Educational determinants Health literacy My choices Role model Internal - Extrinsic motivation The life chances I am afforded impact my 'health career'. | Environmental/Physical determinants Ultra Processed Foods Smoking Food & Nutrition Impacts of Obesity Child development Nutritional value of foods |
Social determinants public (mental) health information Family economics Social values Sustainable Living | Political determinants 'Nanny State' (political rhetoric) Lobbying - (Food) Industry Business ethics Food poverty Advertising regulation Cost to Government, NHS, Society Security |
Spiritual determinants: Values of society, governments, citizens, business . . .
Previously:
Jones P, Wirnitzer K. Hodges’ model: the Sustainable Development Goals and public health – universal health coverage demands a universal framework. BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health 2022;5: https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/5/2/358
'nutrition' on W2tQ
https://x.com/search?q=%40h2cm%20%27nanny%20state%27&src=typed_query&f=live
Gambling?
In July I posted news of this month's Real AI event 27th September. Plans are in place to attend.
In November, London beckons again:
Following a BCS event last year, Hodges' model has been recognised. A video chat and many email exchanges has revealed there is a model possessed with the necessary holistic bandwidth. Hodges' model has the conceptual scope to encompass intelligence(s), One Health and planetary health.
This also fits with current reading - interrupted by Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology (£2.00) - with posts to follow that will also inform November's co-presentation.
More to follow and clearly I have learned a great deal from engaging with the BCS. While my affiliate membership has lapsed now, since the early 1990s the Society's publications, specialist groups: medical informatics, nursing, methods, security, expert systems, and now AI have proved well worth getting involved!
I am also hoping for some part-time tutoring at Bolton University in the new academic year.
BCS-SGAI, the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence, is the organiser of one of the longest running annual series of AI conferences in Europe: the AI-20xx series. In recent years we have seen a rise in popularity of one aspect of the conference: the industry case studies. These have presented AI as it is actually implemented out there in the real world, with all the triumphs and challenges that brings.
Building on this success, we are pleased to present Real Artificial Intelligence, a series of meetings showcasing practical applications of AI.
We have aimed the event less at deep AI specialists and more at those who may be interested in understanding what AI can offer, and what it is doing right now. The event will feature talks from leading exponents and case studies outlining practical applications of AI from a wide range of application domains. Plenty of time has been allowed in the programme for discussion.
We hope that you will come and join us, and that you enjoy this new offering from the BCS SGAI.
Full details are available at http://www.bcs-sgai.org/realai2024
---------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Max Bramer
Chair, BCS Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence
bcs-sgai.org
What am I doing? | Define: 'nutrition', 'evidence-based policy', and 'food security' ... | ||
What are we doing? |
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"In November 2022, I spent a month on remand at HMP Bronzefield for my part in the Just Stop Oil protests on the M25. I was happy to go to prison for something I know is morally right. Drawing in prison became my saviour against the monotony. I rarely draw from life anymore, but we were given a little notebook in our 'welcome' bags of grey tracksuits, pastel pants and toothbrush." p.19.
"This drawing is Slugfields Luxury Prison, (152×120cm) the institutional blue doors, plastic chairs, toilet in the corner and the panoptican architecture mirror that of Bronzefields. It's not quite finished yet, but it's been a cathartic experience to draw some of my thoughts on prison life and incarceration by the state." Instagram (and image source).
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"In man we see the highest manifestation of this tendency. By virtue of his complexity of structure, he is furthest removed from the inorganic world in which there is least individuality. Again, his intelligence and adaptability commonly enable him to maintain life to old age - to complete the cycle of his existence; that is, to fill out the limits of his individuality to the full. Again, he is self-conscious; that is, he recognizes his own individuality." p.238. | "Spencer's key concept was 'evolution', by which he meant the process of increasing differentiation (that is to say specialization of functions) and integration (by which he meant mutual interdependence of the structurally differentiated parts and co-ordination of their functions.)" p.8. "Here we see longitudinal and transverse integration going on simultaneously; ..." p.66. |
"Having invented the word sociology, Comte is often treated as the founder of the study itself, although his contribution to empirical knowledge is meagre, and cannot be even remotely equated with that of Montesquieu or John Millar. His excellence lies in methodology in which field he laid the foundations for the systematic (or scientific, if you like) study of society." p.15. | "There is no sudden leap from the house-hold type to the factory-type, but a gradual transition. The first step is shown us in the rules of trade-guilds under which, to the members of the family, might be added an apprentice (possibly at first a relation), who, as Brentano says, 'became a member of the family of his master, who instructed him in his trade, and who, like a father, had to watch over his morals, as well as his work'; practically, an adopted son. ... With development of this modified household-group, the master grew into a seller of goods made, not by his own family only, but by others; and, as his business enlarged, necessarily ceased to be a worker, and became wholly a distributor - a channel through which went out the products, not as a few sons, but of many unrelated artisans." pp.135-136. |
"Nos. 7 and 8 pits were a short distance away from the main colliery and were known as Brookside or New Zealand Pits. No coal was raised at these pits when Wigan Coal Corporation took over, but they were used for pumping and ventilation. Shortly afterwards (in 1931) they were filled up.
Wigan Coal and Iron
A very tragic and bizarre accident happened here on 13th April 1945 when Ludovic Berry, a locomotive driver employed by the Coal Corporation, was moving 13 loaded wagons in sidings over the filled up No. 7 shaft which was 12ft. diameter and 400 yd. deep. Suddenly the ground collapsed under the leading wagon which fell into a large cavity followed by the rest of the train and the locomotive at an accelerating pace. The locomotive with all wheels locked by the brakes and the driver still at the controls was dragged into the shaft by the wagons and came to rest wedged in a vertical position with the smokebox uppermost 127 ft. down the shaft. The total length of the train was 283 ft. and there were indications on the rails that the brakes had been applied when the train was 226 ft. from the crater. This crater was 52 ft. long and 34 ft. wide. The body of the driver was never recovered, owing to the dangerous condition of the ground surrounding the cavity." p.181.
Ludovic | | | | ------------------------------------------------------- | | | |
| (Mr) Berry RIP |
D. Anderson, A.A. France (1994) Wigan Coal and Iron. Paperback. Smiths of Wigan.
ISBN 0 9510680 7 5.
Cover image file - Amazon. Cover painting David W. Barrow.
See also:
http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/Collection/ian/2004/page_30.htm
https://www.wiganworld.co.uk/stuff/past1.php
Thanks to Mr Harold Parkinson RIP for the book.
"Long before the Bryant and May Factory was opened in Fairfield Road, Bow in East London, Charles Dickens wrote, in 1852, about the risks of ‘phossy jaw' in matchmaking factories. Yet, when the factory was opened in 1861, they proceeded to use the dangerous white phosphorus that caused the disease." https://www.matchgirls1888.org/the-story-of-the-strike | |
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Spark Catchers
by Lemn Sissay
"... |
"The author Michael Morpurgo (War Horse, Private Peaceful) explores the ways in which folk songs have reflected timeless human experiences, both in the past and today.With help from singers, songwriters and other passionate experts, Michael admires the indelible stories within classic songs that deal with migration, war, protest and love. Over the four themed episodes, Michael considers the locations and historical contexts that gave rise to much-loved traditional songs, and finds out how the same topics are inspiring new folk songs in the 2020s.
Michael Morpurgo In the second episode, Michael considers a song of protest: Four Loom Weaver.
With Professor Lawrence Goldman, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Nancy Kerr, Karine Polwart, Nicola Kearey, Ian Carter, Blair Dunlop and Ashley Hutchings." BBC Radio 4
Michael Morpurgo's Folk Journeys"Many Lancashire folk, can give personal testimony of relative having worked in such a role.
My maternal grandmother was a four loom cotton weaver until the mill, where she worked, in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, was closed and relocated to India in the 1920s approx. Mill workers worked their way up to four looms which were rented from the mill. Four was the maximum so my nan told me, so a four loom weaver was an indication of the level of attainment in the industry. So I think the title is probably correct and not a corruption of a poor loom weaver.
Will Lever, Malpas, Cheshire" Wikipedia
INDIVIDUAL|INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCESHUMANISTIC -------------------------------------- MECHANISTICSOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL|
GROUP
| here ... [or, full-steam ahead?] UCOT | ||
... here ... |
... and here? |
Book cover: c/o Wiley
ii This post reflects the two-sides of technology:
 |
| Brian E. Hodges - c/o Brian's family. |
Born in Liverpool, UK.
Community Mental Health Nurse NHS, Part-time Lecturer,
Researcher Nursing & Technology Enhanced Learning
Registered Nurse - Mental Health & General
Community Psychiatric Nursing (Cert.) MMU
PG Cert. Ed.
BA(Joint Hons.) Computing and Philosophy - BIHE - Bolton
PG(Dip.) Collaboration on Psychosocial Education [COPE] Univ. Man.
MRES. e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, Lancaster Univ.
Live and work in NW England - seeking a global perspective.
The views expressed on W2tQ are entirely my own, unless stated otherwise.
Comments are disabled.
If you would like to get in touch please e-mail me at
h2cmng AT yahoo.co.uk
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
