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Guest Editorial - Curry clubs, uncertain times, and social media.
No full textCOVID-19, the eternal hospital winter, heatwaves, global warming, energy costs, inflation, and an unnecessary war. We truly do live in uncertain times. That said, we would wager our grandparents said the same thing. What gets us through is family, friends and out shared communities, including acute medicine. Which brings us to this edition of the journal, where many excellent articles will hopefully distract our reader from all the doom and gloom, and instead light up your grey cells
Social enterprise as a model for change: mapping a global cross-disciplinary framework
Get PDFSince the outbreak of COVID-19, social enterprise has experienced a renaissance. In public policy circles, entrepreneurship and innovation are perceived as economic development tools, and in many parts of the world, as catalysts for change that can have a real impact by increasing employment in communities as well as environmental challenges. At a local level, entrepreneurship and innovation enable communities to stay vibrant due to social enterprise organisations offering much-needed goods and services. Social enterprise has been acknowledged as a solution to social inequality and environmental issues in society as it develops new areas of empowerment in local communities. Central to the success of social enterprise is education, training, and the engagement of the higher education sector. Traditionally, entrepreneurship and innovation have fundamentally been entrenched within the business subject area, but have now emerged within other disciplines such as criminology, health and social care, geography, sociology, and politics. The aim of this paper is to map out a new, global, cross-disciplinary framework from a teaching and learning perspective. The authors of this paper call for global empowerment of entrepreneurship education in the higher education sector, using examples from different countries across the world, specifically Ghana, India, and the UK. This paper sets out the vital importance of entrepreneurship in teaching and learning, by showcasing what can be achieved. In this paper, the authors develop and propose a new pedagogical social enterprise model that incorporates and emphasises the ethos of ‘think globally, act locally’ in a sustainability context
A counter-eavesdropping technique for optimized privacy of wireless industrial IoT communications.
Get PDFThe Industrial Internet of Things (IIoTs) is a key component of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) which is faced with privacy issues as the scale and sensitivity of user and system data constantly increases. Eavesdropping attack is one of such privacy issues of the IIoT system especially when the number of transmitting antennas is increased. Thus, the focus of this paper is on establishing efficient privacy in an IIoT-MIMOME communications scenario. To achieve this, a closed-form derivation for asymptotic regularized prompt privacy rate is first formulated for IIoT network system. Then, the study further examines the design of optimal jamming parameters by proposing a model referred as Optimal Counter-Eavesdropping Channel Approximation (OPCECA) technique for tackling eavesdropping attack in IIoT. The simulated performance of the proposed model clearly shows that provided that the channel coherence time is less than two times number of transmitting nodes, a high privacy precision is achieved even without deploying any artificial noise
Autism and wellbeing: A preliminary investigation of ‘Flourishing Autism’.
Get PDFAlthough a plethora of literature and research highlights the benefits of wellbeing and being able to flourish in order to live a long, good, meaningful life of quality, the exploration of these factors among individuals with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) has received a dearth of interest. This is especially relevant when evidence of health inequalities for those diagnosed with ASC are of such a degree that premature deaths and decreased longevity are prevalent. Using a Grounded Theory methodology (GTM), the present study aimed at exploring the perceptions and experiences of adults with ASC regarding the concept of flourishing and the experience of wellbeing.
The study identified that there are two emerging theoretical categories of ‘Meaning’ and ‘Acceptance’ that are key to the concept of flourishing wellbeing for adults with ASC with a mediating factor of the core category of ‘Environmental Conditions’. These identified categories were then used as the building blocks of a proposed substantive theory of wellbeing for adults with ASC. Findings suggest that the needs of those with ASC to be able to flourish into wellbeing are not dissimilar to those described by theories that are for the general population. However, the nuances and meanings behind the categories are of more importance especially when placed upon the continuum of the environment and how that plays a mediating role.
This study’s findings form a basis that would benefit adults WITH ASC, carers, healthcare professionals, social care professionals, teachers, family, friends, and society in general; all those who are committed to ensuring that the life lived by those with ASC is not less rich or healthy than the life of a neurotypical
Optimum operation management of microgrids with cost and environment pollution reduction approach considering uncertainty using multi-objective NSGAII algorithm
Get PDFThe limited fossil fuels and air pollution are among the main incentives for the expansion of this technology.
Producing electricity near the place of consumption, in addition to reducing the system loss, can create more flexibility to
provide a variety of services to consumers. One of the perspectives proposed for effective increase in these resources’
involvement is to combine these resources with the objectives of the visibility of the relationship between distributed
generation resources and power network, as well as control of these resources more efficiently. One of the methods of
combining distributed generation sources is a new concept called micro grid, a topic that is of great importance in this
regard is the proper management of distributed generation resources in micro grid aimed to reduce the costs of generating
electricity and polluting the environment. The resource management in micro grid is a completely non-linear and top-order problem. In this paper, micro grid optimum programming has been studied considering the capacities available in
the electricity market. In order to realize this, as well as reduce pollution and cost simultaneously, NSGAII multi-objective
genetic algorithm is used. The studies have been conducted in the form of three scenarios on a sample micro grid consisting
of solar, wind, micro turbine, fuel cell and battery resources, considering the uncertainty of load and solar and wind
generations. The probabilistic distribution function (PDF) and Roulette Wheel were used to create variables with
uncertainty. The first scenario objective was to reduce costs by PSO, GA, and ABC algorithms’ optimization. In the second
scenario, pollution was reduced and the studies were repeated using these three algorithms. Finally, in the third scenario,
we had a simultaneous reduction in pollution and cost by these three algorithms, taking into account weight coefficients
as well as NSGAII algorithm
Positive psychology pioneers: Professor Martin Seligman's power and potential to influence mental health nursing
No full textThis article introduces a series that will celebrate the work of positive psychologists and discuss how their work has the power and potential to influence mental health nursing practice. The series will provide a historical perspective of early psychologists, their contributions and the continued importance of recognising current positive psychologists, as they also revive and regenerate understanding of the study of the individual. The first paper in the series focuses on the work of Professor Martin Seligman and his interest in optimism and positivity. He is regarded by many as ’the father of positive psychology’
A living tribute to Professor Marius Romme
Get PDFProfessor Marius Romme has been one of the most influential psychiatrists of his generation. He revolutionized the approach to working with people who hear voices. This Living Tribute to Marius features short accounts by many of those he has worked with over the decades from both professional and lived experience perspectives. Thanks to his work and all those who have worked with him, hearing voices is no longer dismissed as a symptom of schizophrenia requiring medication, but as something to be understood in the context of each person’s unique life history
The impact of atmospheric plasma/UV laser treatment on the chemical and physical properties of cotton and polyester fabrics
Get PDFAtmospheric plasma treatment can modify fabric surfaces without affecting their bulk properties. One recently developed, novel variant combines both plasma and UV laser energy sources as a means of energising fibre surfaces. Using this system, the two most commonly used fibres, cotton and polyester, have been studied to assess how respective fabric surfaces were influenced by plasma power dosage, atmosphere composition and the effects of the presence or absence of UV laser (308 nm XeCl) energy. Plasma/UV exposures caused physical and chemical changes on both fabric surfaces, which were characterised using a number of techniques including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), radical scavenging (using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)), thermal analysis (TGA/DTG, DSC and DMA), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Other properties studied included wettability and dye uptake. Intermediate radical formation, influenced by plasma power and presence or absence of UV, was key in determining surface changes, especially in the presence of low concentrations of oxygen or carbon dioxide (20%) mixed with either nitrogen or argon. Increased dyeability with methylene blue indicated the formation of carboxyl groups in both exposed cotton and polyester fabrics. In the case of polyester, thermal analysis suggested increased cross-linking had occurred under all conditions
