Is the Invisibility of Dementia a Super-Power or a Curse? A Reflection on the SUNshiners' Questionnaire into the Public Understanding of Dementia as an Invisible Disability: A User-Led Research Project.

The SUNshiners group includes people in the early stages of dementia with an interest in dementia activism and research. The group found that despite the growing awareness of invisible disabilities, there is very limited research into the pros and cons of the invisibility of dementia. Our paper explores the SUNshiners research which stemmed from varied individual experiences of disclosing diagnoses. The group designed and developed a short survey to explore what the public knew about dementia and what they thought about the invisibility of dementia. A mixture of open- and closed-ended questions were used to gain meaningful data. A total of 347 people completed the survey (315 online and 32 paper-based), which was then co-analysed. The findings suggest that the majority of the public felt that the invisibility of dementia was negative; that knowing someone had dementia when first meeting them would be beneficial; that people living with dementia should maintain the right to vote; and that people living with dementia do not automatically require a consistent, regular carer. Common themes from the open-ended answers included capacity, severity of dementia, and access to support. The findings support the disclosure of dementia diagnosis; however, more action is needed to tackle stigmatised views, particularly as the SUNshiners felt that people do not have enough dementia education to support a positive disclosure experience. They shared their experiences of the group and the project's benefits, but also the losses they have faced. Our paper aims to be as accessible as possible.

Component-Level Residential Building Material Stock Characterization Using Computer Vision Techniques.

Residential building material stock constitutes a significant part of the built environment, providing crucial shelter and habitat services. The hypothesis concerning stock mass and composition has garnered considerable attention over the past decade. While previous research has mainly focused on the spatial analysis of building masses, it often neglected the component-level stock analysis or where heavy labor cost for onsite survey is required. This paper presents a novel approach for efficient component-level residential building stock accounting in the United Kingdom, utilizing drive-by street view images and building footprint data. We assessed four major construction materials: brick, stone, mortar, and glass. Compared to traditional approaches that utilize surveyed material intensity data, the developed method employs automatically extracted physical dimensions of building components incorporating predicted material types to calculate material mass. This not only improves efficiency but also enhances accuracy in managing the heterogeneity of building structures. The results revealed error rates of 5 and 22% for mortar and glass mass estimations and 8 and 7% for brick and stone mass estimations, with known wall types. These findings represent significant advancements in building material stock characterization and suggest that our approach has considerable potential for further research and practical applications. Especially, our method establishes a basis for evaluating the potential of component-level material reuse, serving the objectives of a circular economy.

On the use of random graphs in analysing resource utilization in urban systems.

Urban resource models increasingly rely on implicit network formulations. Resource consumption behaviours documented in the existing empirical studies are ultimately by-products of the network abstractions underlying these models. Here, we present an analytical formulation and examination of a generic demand-driven network model that accounts for the effectiveness of resource utilization and its implications for policy levers in addressing resource management in cities. We establish simple limiting boundaries to systems' resource effectiveness. These limits are found not to be a function of system size and to be simply determined by the system's average ability to maintain resource quality through its transformation processes. We also show that resource utilization in itself does not enjoy considerable size efficiencies with larger and more diverse systems only offering increased chances of finding matching demand and supply between existing sectors in the system.

Psychological and Mnemonic Benefits of Nostalgia for People with Dementia.

BACKGROUND: Studies with non-clinical populations show that nostalgia increases psychological resources, such as self-esteem and social connectedness. OBJECTIVES: Our objectives were to find out if the benefits of nostalgia in non-clinical populations generalize to people with dementia and if nostalgia facilitates recall of dementia-related information. METHODS: All three experiments recruited participants with mild or moderate levels of dementia. Experiment 1 tested whether nostalgia (compared to control) enhances psychological resources among 27 participants. Experiment 2 used music to induce nostalgia (compared to control) in 29 participants. Experiment 3 compared recall for self-referent dementia statements among 50 participants randomized to either a nostalgia or control condition. Findings across experiments were synthesized with integrative data analysis. RESULTS: Nostalgia (compared to control) significantly increased self-reported social connectedness, meaning in life, self-continuity, optimism, self-esteem, and positive (but not negative) affect (Experiments 1-3). Compared to controls, nostalgic participants also recalled significantly more self-referent dementia-related information (Experiment 3). CONCLUSION: This series of experiments extends social psychological research with non-clinical populations into dementia care, providing evidence that nostalgia significantly enhances psychological resources. The finding that nostalgia increased recall of self-referent statements about dementia suggests that this emotion lends participants the fortitude to face the threat posed by their illness. The finding has potentially important clinical implications both for the development of reminiscence therapy and for facilitating adjustment to a diagnosis of dementia.