The physical structure of a city frequently defines how people interact with each other and their environment. This paper examines the use of personas as a user-centred design tool for the re-engineering of a city to promote sustainable behaviour and social inclusion of its citizens (the Eight Eyes of Dublin Project). The research was carried out through the adoption of personas and collaboration with design partners to identify barriers to sustainability, and resulted in recommendations for the future development of Dublin city, Ireland. These recommendations are then compared with the draft Dublin development plan 2011–17 to determine the effectiveness of personas as a design tool for identifying key issues for sustainability in the built environment. The results suggest that personas may be an appropriate tool for universal design and may act as a good diagnostic tool in the early stages of the re-engineering of urban areas towards sustainability. It is concluded that personas may work most effectively when used in combination with other user-centred design tools, such as participatory design.
Toxic insects advertise their defended state to potential predators using warning displays. Frequently these displays use cues through more than one sensory modality, and combine color, smell and sound to produce a multimodal warning display. Signalling through more than one sensory pathway may enhance the rate of avoidance learning, and the memorability of the learned avoidance. A common insect warning odor, pyrazine, has previously been shown to increase the rate of learned avoidance of unpalatable yellow prey by domestic chicks (Gallus gallus domesticus), and the odor also improved memory of this learned avoidance. However, to date no research has examined this response to pyrazine odor using wild birds under natural conditions. This study used wild robins (Erithacus rubecula) to investigate whether wild birds avoided yellow baits that smelled of pyrazine more strongly than those presented with no odor. The results provide some evidence that pyrazine odor does increase the level of protection an aposematic insect gains from a wild avian predator, but that the effect of pyrazine on learned avoidance was much weaker than was found with domestic chicks [Current Zoology 57 (2): 208-214, 2011].
Sustainable development indicators are an important tool in the management of cities and regions, whose use allows the baselining of current performance, the setting of targets and the measurement of progress over time. Large numbers of sustainable development indicator suites are used internationally and further suites have been developed at the individual city and region scale. This can lead to confusion over what measurements should be prioritised. Stakeholder participation in sustainable development practice is well established; however, in order to be successful there is a need to develop a structured process of participation that results in tangible outputs. This work presents a case study of stakeholder engagement aimed at developing a shared vision of sustainable development for the Dublin region. Interviews and workshops were used to develop a sense of co-ownership of the project and integrated topdown indicators suites with bottom-up measures. A set of 38 headline sustainable development indicators wasidentified that examine all aspects of the city region's development and include all stakeholders in the coordinated movement towards the vision of a more sustainable Dublin. A number of issues were identified throughout the process such as data gaps and a lack of established indicators to measure specific issues relevant at a regional scale.The indicators identified have been integrated into the Dublin region Sustainability Report and will inform future development plans for the region. While this method was tested in the Dublin region, it could easily be utilised by other city regions to identify their own suite of indicators.
Many aposematic insect species advertise their toxicity to potential predators using olfactory and auditory signals, in addition to visual signals, to produce a multimodal warning display. The olfactory signals in these displays may have interesting effects, such as eliciting innate avoidance against novel colored prey, or improving learning and memory of defended prey. However, little is known about the effects of such ancillary signals when they are auditory rather than olfactory. The few studies that have investigated this question have provided conflicting results. The current study sought to clarify and extend understanding of the effects of prey auditory signals on avian predator responses. The domestic chick Gallus gallus domesticus was used as a model avian predator to examine how the defensive buzzing sound of a bumblebee Bombus terrestris affected the chick’s innate avoidance behavior, and the learning and memory of prey avoidance. The results demonstrate that the buzzing sound had no effect on the predator’s responses to unpalatable aposematically colored crumbs, suggesting that the agitated buzzing of B. terrestris may provide no additional protection from avian predators.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.