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Get PDFThis book is for higher and further education tutors who wish to build on their experience, and deliver exciting and accessible classroom techniques and practices that are highly interactive, creative, and engaging to help further the teaching of sustainability.RKT16/0
Advances in preparation of acellular human dermis for tissue banking and transplantation
Get PDFThe version of record of this article, first published in [Cell and Tissue Banking], is available online at Publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10561-024-10153-0Non-healing wounds cost the National Health Service over £5.6 billion annually in wound management. Skin allografts are used to treat non-healing wounds, ulcers and burns, offering the best protection against infection. In order to allow host cells to repopulate and to avoid immunogenicity, cell components are removed through decellularisation. Decellularisation of human dermis has so far been performed in NHS Blood and Transplant using a combination of two enzymes (RNase T1 and the recombinant human DNase Pulmozyme)®. This study aims at validating a new method to remove DNA from donated dermis via the use of a single enzyme, Benzonase, known for its effectiveness of DNA digestion. Skin samples were decellularised by removing the epidermis, lysing of dermal cells, removal of cellular fragments by a detergent wash and removal of nucleic acids by a nuclease incubation with either Benzonase or Pulmozyme + RNase T1. DNA quantification with PicoGreen, as well as histology on wax-embedded biopsies, stained with DAPI and haemotoxylin and eosin, were performed. In vitro toxicity test on human osteosarcoma immortalised cells and skin fibroblasts, and biomechanical (tensile) testing, were also performed. The effectiveness of DNA digestion with the new methodology was comparable to previous procedure. Mean DNA removal percentage following decellularisation with Pulmozyme + RNase was 99.9% (3.83 ng/mg). Mean DNA removal percentage with Benzonase was 99.8% (9.97 ng/mg). Histology staining showed complete decellularisation following either method. Benzonase was proven to be non-toxic to both cell lines used, and a one-way Anova test showed no significant difference in neither stress nor strain between acellular dermal matrix decellularised with either Benzonase or Pulmozyme + RNase T1. Benzonase was able to effectively decellularise dermis after prior removal of epidermis. It performed just as well as the combination of Pulmozyme + RNase T1, but represents significant advantages in terms of cost effectiveness, procurement and storage; Benzonase has been successfully used in the decellularisation of other tissues, thus would be better for Tissue Banking use. Switching to this combined DNase/RNase can have far-reaching consequences in the production of acellular human dermal matrix by NHSBT and in the treatment of patients requiring it.Unfunde
Parametric optimisation of resistance welding thermoplastics-based composites via computational and experimental approaches
Get PDF© 2023 International Committee on Composite Materials. All rights reserved.In this study, the resistance welding process for carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites (FRTPC) has been parametrically investigated through simulation and experiment processes. Heat transfer of resistance welding was studied computationally to generate optimum welding parameters. By applying a transient three-dimensional heat transfer model on COMSOL Multiphysics, evolution of temperature in the joint during welding process was simulated with various combinations of power densities and clamping distances. From different combinations of parameters, two main characteristics of heat transfer were revealed, which consequently resulted in various melting degree, uniformity of temperature upon welding interface, and heat penetrating through laminates in thickness direction. Based on optimum parameters, experimental welding tests were conducted, and mechanical tests showed that lap shear strength is proportional to melting degree but is independent of thermal penetration.European Union’s Horizon EuropeConference duration: 30/08/2023 - 04/08/202
Flexibility
No full textThis is a draft chapter. The final version is available in [Elgar Encyclopedia of Organizational Psychology] edited by [P. Matthijs Bal], published in 2024, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.Importance and popularity of the concept of flexibility in the context of work is only matched by its lack of clarity. While it is clearly on the upward trajectory, both as an organizational practice and as a topic for discussions on academic and practitioner fora, it is yet riddled with paradoxes, used to denote different meanings and practices, and therefore confusion as regards flexibility at work is never far away. This entry intends to present the practical importance of flexibility at work, while also demonstrating the complex nature of discussions in which it is imbued and the divergent practices which it is used to designate. It also attempts to provide a critical reflection on the potential trajectory which could lead to alleviating the paradigmatic fractures between different flexibility clusters towards supporting a more seamless practical application and more coherent intellectual environment for exploring it.Unfunde
Towards Social Justice for Student-Parents: Learning from lived experiences to address social injustice for undergraduate students with parental responsibility in the UK
No full textOver the past two decades, students with parental responsibility have been encouraged into university by successive governments’ Widening Participation (WP) and Lifelong Learning agendas but have been consistently let down by a failure on behalf of institutions and policy makers to provide appropriate support for this cohort once they arrive at university. As such, student-parents have been unable to participate in their education on an equal footing with their non-WP peers, and in being expected to adapt to systems and expectations neither designed for nor accommodating of their needs, they have experienced a socially unjust higher education journey.
This commentary introduces two research projects which produced original insight into the lived experiences of undergraduate student-parents in the UK and presents nine publications emanating from these projects, with a view to testing the following overriding thesis:
‘A socially just higher education experience for student-parents can be facilitated by gaining a rich insight into their lived experiences and from this, developing mechanisms to respond to their needs.’
The commentary explores the originality of the publications, evaluates their contribution to the literature and to the student-parents’ agenda, and presents two new models to address social injustice for student-parents. The influence, impact, and policy and practice implications of the work presented are considered, and evidence is put forward to demonstrate that the work presented has facilitated, and will continue to facilitate, the journey towards social justice for undergraduate student-parents in the UK and beyond. The commentary concludes with a consideration of my personal and professional journey in undertaking a PhD by Published Works and evaluates the extent to which this doctoral route is a facilitator of social justice for pracademics in a higher education context
Flexible Lives: Spatial, Temporal, and Behavioural Boundaries in a Fluid World of Work and Home
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Culture and Organization on 08/08/2023, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2023.2211375The world of work and home has become increasingly fluid (Bauman 2000), due to an increase in flexible working. Work has become decoupled from time and space (Gajendran and Harrison 2007), making it increasingly common for knowledge-based workers to work at different times and in multiple spaces across a working day or week (Duxbury et al. 2014; Sewell and Taskin 2015; Kingma 2016). The Covid-19 pandemic in particular has been a catalyst for questioning accepted norms of where, when, and how work takes place and has encouraged many to experiment with new ways of working at spatio-temporal distance from a regular workplace (Gandini and Garavaglia 2023). This reshaping of traditional modes of working has had a significant effect on working patterns, social workplace interactions, personal relationships, and the boundaries between familial and working lives, which we seek to explore in this Special Issue.The AAM was added to the record on 13/11/202
Menopause and the Legal Sector: A Call for Awareness and Action
No full textTo access this article please click on the URL under the Additional Links headingThis article celebrates World Menopause day and calls on the legal sector to reflect on the importance of increasing awareness and activity to support those experiencing the menopause while pursuing a legal career in the profession.Unfunde
Ungendered flesh: Racial grammars in Western engagements with sexual violence in the DRC
Get PDF© The Author(s) 2024.This article centres Hortense Spillers’ vocabulary of ‘flesh’, ‘ungendering’ and ‘pornotroping’ in order to analyse the racial grammars and continuing coloniality that informs western engagements with sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Contextualising international interventions within a longer colonial history of gendered, sexualised and racialised violence, this article traces the modern industry that has developed around survivors of sexual violence, voyeuristic representations of violated bodies and strategies to elicit western audiences’ empathy through restaging scenes of violence as occurring to white bodies. It argues that such interventions risk reinforcing aspects of the colonial ungendering of black women through reproducing them as objects in global political economies and visual regimes of violence and through rendering their suffering as visible and intelligible only in relation to white liberal humanism. In doing so, it makes the case for further engagement with Spillers’ work in critical and feminist International Relations.UnfundedAAM removed and archived 25/11/2024. VoR uploaded to CR 25/11/202
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