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Brush Strokes on a Turbulent Canvas: Employing Critical Portraiture Methodology to Investigate Teaching Excellence at a Northern University
Get PDFThis study investigates academic narratives on ‘teaching excellence’ (TE) within the neoliberalised higher education (HE) landscape, and develops Critical Portraiture Methodology (CPM) to explore the lived experiences of four social science academics at an English university. TE remains a contested, politicised concept, often reduced to measurable institutional metrics, that overlook the complexities of educators’ professional realities. Addressing this gap, the study offers a nuanced, context-specific examination of TE, highlighting its relational, value-driven, and dynamic nature.This research seeks to paint a richer, more authentic portrait of TE—one that captures the depth, texture, and contradictions embedded within academic life. It critically interrogates how TE is conceptualised and enacted, examining institutional and external pressures that shape it. It contributes to critical HE research by offering an innovative methodological framework (CPM) that foregrounds educators’ lived experiences and agency, while challenging dominant discourses on TE. It extends traditional portraiture by integrating critical inquiry with narrative and artistic traditions. Using longitudinal qualitative research—semi-structured interviews, teaching observations, reflections, and sketch-notes—the study constructs in-depth portraits of four educators recognised for their excellence.Findings reveal that TE is deeply relational, context-specific, and shaped by tensions between pedagogical values and institutional constraints, and influenced by broader structural dynamics. Participants described TE in terms of fostering intellectual curiosity, critical engagement, and the facilitation of co-creational learning spaces—understandings often in conflict with managerial governance, metric-driven accountability, and academic precarity. The research also highlights the emotional and professional toll of neoliberal HE reforms, with participants experiencing change fatigue, disillusionment, and vulnerability due to serial restructuring and the erosion of professional autonomy. Despite this, they resisted performative teaching cultures by fostering spaces for creativity and critical dialogue. In conclusion, the study calls for a reimagining of TE that prioritises relational, values-based, and transformative educational practices over neoliberal performativity
The Arc of Disability in the novels of Wilkie Collins
Get PDFThis thesis examines Wilkie Collins’s engagement with and representation of disability in his fictions. It demonstrates Collins’s range of disabilities and how he subtly and importantly changes social conventions to allow agency to many of his disabled characters. Collins’s representation is not, however, linear or uniform. I argue instead for an ‘arc of disability’ and this thesis follows this arc. The arc’s high point represents fiction in which Collins provides the disabled character with most agency. There is a decline in the arc as we come to many of Collins’s later fiction, in which he becomes less interested in disability. The arc begins with the ‘hidden’ disabilities, peaking with a character who prefers blindness to sight and then declining to a character who is enraged about their disability. Organised in chapters focusing on selected novels it covers the span of Collins’s writing from 1852 to 1888, highlighting the way in which Collins was more advanced than his contemporaries in his attention to disability. Finally, this thesis is intended to fill a lacuna in the way in which Collins’s writing subverts expectations and show his robust research into medical diagnosis and treatments
Plasmonic and metamaterial nanoparticles for nano-light sources and next generation biomedical sensors
Get PDFNanogap-based structures have emerged as a powerful platform for enhancing light-matter interaction on the nanoscale due to their ability to confine electromagnetic fields into subwavelength volumes. This results in a high local density of optical states (LDOS), enhanced quantum yield, and efficient emission coupling, making them promising for applications such as ultrafast light sources, and biosensing. This thesis investigates and compares various nanogap configurations including all-metal, all-dielectric, hybrid dielectric/metal, and metaparticle -based nanogaps, to identify designs that maximize emission efficiency for ultrafast light sources and achieve high refractive index sensitivity for biological sensing applications.Two primary hybrid configurations were examined: silicon nanorods (SiNRs) on gold film and gold nanorods (AuNRs) on silicon substrate. Their performance was compared to their all-metal (AuNRs-Au) and all-dielectric (SiNRs-silicon) counterparts.Nanogaps were formed using polyelectrolyte multilayers (thickness ~ 14 nm), along with a monolayer of CdTe quantum dots, enabling the evaluation of emission rate and photoluminescence intensity.Experimental results showed up to 51-fold and 15-fold enhancements in the emission rate of AuNR-Si nanogaps and SiNR-Au nanogaps respectively. Compared to all-metal and all-dielectric nanogaps, the hybrid structures exhibited substantially higher emission rates, indicating stronger light-matter coupling and improved radiative efficiency. These findings are consistent with FDTD simulations.Additionally, metaparticles-based nanogap structures (MetaP1 and MetaP2) fabricating via wet-chemistry on gold film with 10 nm spacer to tune the optical response of CdTe QD monolayer. These structures showed experimental emission rate enhancements up to 30-fold, compared to 43-fold predicted by Lumerical FDTDsimulations.For biomedical sensing, plasmonic nanogap structures were developed and tested for the detection of DNA hybridization and Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). Theoretical calculations revealed outstanding performance with a bulk sensitivity of 2088.5 ± 11.5 nm/RIU and a surface sensitivity of 953.7 + 11.9 nm/RIU, exceeding many reported values.These results demonstrate the versatility and high performance of the proposed nanogap structures across emission control and biosensing applications
Provenance of late Pleistocene loess in central and eastern Europe: isotopic evidence for dominant local sediment sources
Get PDFLoess profiles along the Danube River provide a record of long-term Quaternary dust (loess) deposition in central-eastern Europe. Here, Sr-Nd isotopic data from four loess-palaeosol profiles (47 samples) spanning the last two-glacial-interglacial cycles are presented. The isotopic compositions generated by this study are compared with bedrock and sedimentary samples from Europe and North Africa to decipher the sources of sediment. The results demonstrate that over the last 300 ka the alluvial plains of the Danube (which are themselves sourced from surrounding mountain belts) are a local source of material and consequently sediment experiences aeolian transport over relatively short distances. The results dispute the commonly held assumption that the Sahara was a sediment contributor to loess in central-eastern Europe as North African contributions are not needed to explain loess signatures. Consequently, the findings suggest a suppressed southerly wind direction and dominance of the westerly and north-westerly wind systems over the entirety of the record
Antenatal pelvic floor muscle exercise intervention led by midwives in England to reduce postnatal urinary incontinence: APPEAL feasibility and pilot randomised controlled cluster trial
Get PDFObjectives To assess the feasibility of an intervention of midwifery support for antenatal pelvic floor muscle exercises (PFME) to prevent postnatal urinary incontinence (UI). Design Feasibility and pilot cluster randomised controlled trial. Clusters were community midwifery teams. Setting Community maternity antenatal care. Participants One hundred seventy-five women; 186 midwives. Intervention Midwifery training and resources for midwives and women to support antenatal PFME. Control clusters continued standard care. Outcomes Women reporting: that their midwife explained how to do PFME, PFME adherence and postpartum UI. Midwives reporting: pre-post-training PFME confidence, intervention acceptability. Fidelity of training delivery and implementation. Results Ninety-five midwives in intervention clusters; 91 midwives in control clusters. Of 998 women sent questionnaires, 175 responded: 15.8% in intervention, 16.4% in control clusters. Women's characteristics in both trial arms were similar and characteristics of respondents and non-respondents were similar. Sixty-five percent (95% CI 56.9% to 72.4%) of women in intervention clusters reported their midwife explained how to do PFME vs 38% (95% CI 24.6% to 51.2%) in control clusters. Fifty percent (95% CI 24.1% to 77.1%) of women in intervention clusters vs 38% (95% CI 12.4% to 67.1%) in control clusters reported doing enough PFME to potentially prevent UI. Fourty-four percent (95% CI 32.0% to 56.1%) of women in intervention clusters reported UI vs 54% (95% CI 42.2% to 65.8%) in control clusters. Intervention training was delivered with fidelity and received positively. Midwives reported improvements in PFME confidence/knowledge (median increase of at least 1 point on a 0-4 scale for each of eight questions). Midwives (26%) most frequently reported insufficient time as an implementation barrier. Conclusions This pilot trial produced consistent new findings that training and resourcing midwives to teach and support pregnant women to undertake PFME is acceptable and feasible for women and midwives. It increased the number of women who are informed about PFME, with potential to improve PFME adherence and reduce postpartum UI. Recent changes to the National Health Service perinatal pelvic healthcare means a full trial is not possible
Nighttime Cough Characteristics in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients
Get PDFCoughing is a symptom of many respiratory diseases. An increased amount of coughs may signal an (upcoming) health issue, while a decreasing amount of coughs may indicate an improved health status. The presence of a cough can be identified by a cough classifier. The cough density fluctuates considerably over the course of a day with a pattern that is highly subject-dependent. This paper provides a case study of cough patterns from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients as determined by a stationary semi-automated cough monitor. It clearly demonstrates the variability of cough density over the observation time, its patient specificity and dependence on health status. Furthermore, an earlier established empirical finding of a linear relation between mean and standard deviation of a session’s cough count is validated. An alert mechanism incorporating these findings is described
The nexus of overnight trend and asset prices in China
Get PDFLeveraging the systematic variations in investor clientele within a day, we validate an adapted version of the Hong and Stein (1999) model that addresses the consequences of slow information diffusion in China. The model predicts that overnight returns, rather than total returns, strongly forecast future returns, as informed overnight clientele underreact to value-relevant signals. Empirically, we establish a consistent overnight trend phenomenon: Firms with a strong overnight trend reliably outperform those with a weak overnight trend in the subsequent month. The phenomenon is more pronounced among stocks with higher levels of information asymmetry, valuation uncertainty, and relative mispricing. Furthermore, the overnight trend predicts positively firm fundamentals in the cross section
Substituent effects on the mechanochromic behaviour of pyrene-based AIEgens
No full textIt is extremely significant and desirable to integrate the fascinating properties of mechanochromism and aggregation-induced emission (AIE) in one simple molecule. Herein, pyrene-based aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) with mechanofluorochromic (MFC) properties solve the traditionally existing aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) challenge. Three cyanoethylene-functionalized pyrene-based derivatives were designed and synthesized. All compounds exhibit remarkable aggregation-enhanced emission (AEE) activity by a 3–20 times enhancement in mixed H2O/THF solutions. More importantly, high fluorescence efficiency was recorded in the solid state, especially for the luminogen 2c, with more than 200 times observed increased efficiency from 0.3% in solution to 69.8% in the solid state. Meanwhile, excellent mechanochromism properties and reversibility against the grinding treatment was systematically investigated. The excellent fatigue resistance properties are a necessity for potential applications in the field of anti-counterfeiting fluorescent inks and for the encryption of security information
Disease progression in chronic heart failure is linear: Insights from multistate modelling
No full textAims: Understanding the pattern of disease progression in chronic heart failure (HF) may inform patient care and healthcare system design. We used a four-state Markov model to describe the disease trajectory of patients with HF. Methods and results: Consecutive patients (n = 4918) were enrolled (median age 75 [67–81] years, 61.3% men, 44% with HF and reduced ejection fraction). We generated a model by observing events during the first 2 years of follow-up. The model yielded surprisingly accurate predictions of how a population with HF will behave during subsequent years. As examples, the predicted transition probability from hospitalization to death was 0.11; the observed probabilities were 0.13, 0.14, and 0.16 at 3, 4, and 5 years, respectively. Similarly, the predicted transition intensity for rehospitalization was 0.35; the observed probabilities were 0.38, 0.34, and 0.35 at 3, 4, and 5 years, respectively. A multivariable model including covariates thought to influence outcome did not improve accuracy. Predicted average life expectancy was approximately 10 years for the unadjusted model and 13 years for the multivariable model, consistent with the observed mortality of 41% at 5 years. Conclusions: A multistate Markov chain model for patients with chronic HF suggests that the proportion of patients transitioning each year from a given state to another remains constant. This finding suggests that the course of HF at a population level is more linear than is commonly supposed and predictable based on current patient status