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Enhancing poly(lactic acid) microcellular foams by formation of distinctive crystalline structures
Get PDFYesBy controlling the crystallization behavior of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) in the presence of a hydrazide nucleating agent (HNA), PLA-HNA foams with enhanced microcellular structures were prepared via supercritical CO2 foaming. It was found that HNA can self-assemble into fibrillar networks, inducing the crystallization of PLA on their surface, and "shish-kebab"crystalline structures with high crystallinity formed, which can be maintained during the whole foaming process. Incorporation of HNA promoted the formation of gt conformers, improved the amount of dissolved CO2, hindered the escape of CO2, and increased the viscoelasticity of PLA. Compared with neat PLA foam, for PLA-HNA foam, the average cell diameter decreased obviously, from 64.39 to 6.59 μm, while the cell density increased up to nearly three orders of magnitudes, from 6.82 × 106 to 4.44 × 109 cells/cm3. Moreover, lots of fibrillar structures appeared and entangled with each other on the cell wall of the foam. By forming such dense micropores and enhanced fibrillar structures, PLA foam was highly reinforced with significantly improved compressive strength.This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51773122) and State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (grant no. sklpme2019-2-21)
The ambulance service advanced practitioner's role in supporting care homes: a qualitative study of care staff experiences
No full textNoThe demand from care homes on NHS services continues to rise, with little evidence of ambulance service contribution in this area. The Yorkshire Ambulance Service provides an advanced practitioner model to support care homes in Sheffield, as an alternative to calling 999. This study investigated the experiences
and needs of the care home staff who use the ambulance service advanced
practitioner model.
This qualitative study conducted semi-structured, face-to-face interviews
with 19 staff members from 10 different care home settings. Thematic analysis using a
combination of NVivo and manual coding was undertaken.
The three key themes from the interviews were variations in service demand, the service user’s expectations and experience, and benefits to residents. Participants reported that good community services reduced the need to call 999, empowering carers to support residents to remain in the community.
Care homes require comprehensive services that meet their needs. The advanced practitioner model provided by the ambulance service supports this, preventing unnecessary 999 calls and fitting with other community service provision
Stable Isotope Evidence for Dietary Contrast Between Pictish and Medieval Populations at Portmahomack, Scotland
Get PDFNoThe Pictish and Medieval site at Portmahomack contained four skeletal populations belonging respectively to the late Iron-Age/early Pictish period (6th/7th century), to a monastery of the late
Pictish/early medieval period (8th century), to a Norse and Scottish trading place (9th to 11th century)
and to a late medieval parish (15th century). Carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bone and tooth root
collagen from sample individuals from each period were measured for dietary reconstruction. Faunal bone
collagen was also assessed to provide dietary comparisons. The results demonstrate a marked change in diet
between the early and late medieval communities at Portmahomack. Faunal data also presented dietary
differences between the early and later medieval periods, perhaps related to a change in husbandry
practices. Due to the dearth of carbon and nitrogen isotope studies on medieval skeletal collections in
many areas of Britain and Ireland, this study provides valuable data to enhance our knowledge of food
consumption and subsistence in the medieval period.Historic Scotland provided funding the isotope analysi
The Politics of Accountability in South East Asia: The Dominance of Moral Ideologies
No full textNoCalls by political leaders, social activists, and international policy and aid actors for accountability reforms to improve governance have never been more widespread. For some analysts, the unprecedented scale of these pressures reflects the functional imperatives and power of liberal and democratic institutions accompanying greater global economic integration. This book offers a different perspective, investigating the crucial role of contrasting ideologies informing accountability movements and mediating reform directions in Southeast Asia. It argues that the most influential ideologies are not those promoting the political authority of democratic sovereign people or of liberalism's freely contracting individuals. Instead, in both post-authoritarian and authoritarian regimes, it is ideologies advancing the political authority of moral guardians interpreting or ordaining correct modes of behaviour for public officials. Elites exploit such ideologies to deflect and contain pressures for democratic and liberal reforms to governance institutions.
The book's case studies include human rights, political decentralization, anticorruption, and social accountability reform movements in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. These studies highlight how effective propagation of moral ideologies is boosted by the presence of powerful organizations, notably religious bodies, political parties, and broadcast media. Meanwhile, civil society organizations of comparable clout advancing liberalism or democracy are lacking. The theoretical framework of the book has wide applicability. In other regions, with contrasting histories and political economies, the nature and extent of organizations and social actors shaping accountability politics will differ, but the importance of these factors to which ideologies prevail to shape reform directions will not
Intelligent and energy efficient mobile smartphone gateway for healthcare smart devices based on 5G
No full textNoThe healthcare sector is now blending with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) using Internet of Things (IoT) to potentially minimise medical errors and reduce healthcare cost. Patients are now embedded with smart devices like body sensors and wearable devices which can monitor their health without the need for a doctor in physical contact. Such smart devices have the downside of low battery power and are unable to transmit their data to the medical personnel when the patient is on the move away from the smart home/smart clinic fixed gateway. A mobile gateway is required which moves with the patient to process the smart device data without depleting the smartphone battery. This paper proposes an Intelligent and Energy Efficient SG based smartphone Gateway for healthcare smart devices (IEE5GG). In IEE5GG, the 5G architecture is adopted and the patient's smartphone is used as a gateway where multiple smart devices are connected e.g. via Bluetooth. To save energy, requests to the smartphone can either be executed on the smartphone gateway or offloaded and executed in the Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) cloud at close proximity to the smartphone in the 5G Base Station (BS) central Unit (gNB-CU) while considering the transmission power, Quality of Service (QoS), smartphone battery level and Central Processing Unit (CPU) load. Results show that the proposed IEE5GG framework saves up to 38% of energy in the healthcare mobile gateway smartphone and reduces healthcare application service time by up to 41%.British Council Institutional Links grant under the BEIS-managed Newton Fund
Changes in global groundwater organic carbon driven by climate change and urbanization
Get PDFYesClimate change and urbanization can increase pressures on groundwater resources, but little is known about how groundwater quality will change. Here, we rely on a global synthesis (n = 9,404) to reveal the drivers of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which is an important component of water chemistry and substrate for microorganisms which control many biogeochemical reactions. Groundwater ions, local climate and land use explained ~ 31% of observed variability in groundwater DOC, whilst aquifer age explained an additional 16%. We identify a 19% increase in DOC associated with urban land cover. We predict major groundwater DOC increases following changes in precipitation and temperature in key areas relying on groundwater. Climate change and conversion of natural or agricultural areas to urban areas will decrease groundwater quality and increase water treatment costs, compounding existing threats to groundwater resources
Recent developments in mechanochemical materials synthesis by extrusion
No full textNoMechanochemical synthesis, i.e., reactions conducted by grinding solid reactants together with no or minimal solvent, has been demonstrated as an excellent technique for the formation of both organic and inorganic compounds. Mechanochemistry is viewed as an alternative approach to chemical synthesis and is not always considered when developing manufacturing processes of fine chemicals. Here, recent advances are highlighted regarding mechanochemical synthesis, by utilizing a well‐developed continuous technique – extrusion, and the advantages it offers to further support its use in the manufacturing of these chemicals. To put this work into context, it is shown how extrusion plays a vital role for manufacturing in the food, polymer, and pharmaceutical industries, and how the research carried out by these respective industrialists provides great insight and understanding of the technique, with the results being applicable in the chemical industry. The synthesis of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is highlighted herein as an excellent example showcasing the advantages that extrusion provides to the manufacture of these materials, one advantage being the exceptional space time yields (STYs) reported for these processes, at three orders of magnitude greater than conventional (solvothermal) synthesis.EPSRC. Grant Number: EP/L019655/
MotiVar: Motivating Weight Loss Through A Personalised Avatar
No full textNoThis work aims to develop a personalised
avatar based virtual environment for motivating weight loss
and weight management. Obesity is a worldwide epidemic
which has not only enormous resource impact for the
healthcare systems but also has substantial health as well as
a psychological effect among the individuals who are
affected. We propose to tackle this issue via the
development of a personalised avatar, the form of which can
be adjusted to show the present and the future self of the
individual. For the avatar design and development phase,
we utilise a parametric based mathematical formulation
derived from the solutions of a chosen elliptic partial
differential equation. This method not only enables us to
generate a parameterised avatar model, but it also allows us
to quickly and efficiently create various avatar shapes
corresponding to different body weights and even to
different body postures.NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Programme (project reference PB-PG-1215-20016