11237 research outputs found
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Evaluating the balanced score card for strategic HRM in a higher education institution
No full textThis thesis explores the applicability of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a performance management tool to measure, manage, and improve Human Resource Management (HRM) performance in higher education institutions (HEI). Using a case study approach at an internationally operating, multi-campus university, the research addresses strategic and operational challenges in HRM and investigates how the implementation of the BSC can drive both individual and institutional effectiveness.The research critically examines the broader trends impacting the higher education sector —globalisation, technological advancements, and demographic shifts — and their implications for human resources. It identifies key academic theories, concepts, and frameworks related to HRM and performance management, forming the foundation for a problem definition and research questions. Through the design and implementation of a tailored HR-BSC, the research evaluates its impact on aligning HR practices with institutional goals, addressing organisational complexities, and fostering continuous improvement.Reflecting the interdisciplinary and practical focus of the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programme, this thesis integrates published theories on performance evaluation with real-world application, offering actionable recommendations for enhancing HRM practices in HEI. By doing so, it contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate on adapting corporate performance management models to academic contexts and highlights the critical role of strategic HRM in sustaining institutional competitiveness.</p
The Cambridge and Oxford Majlis: Nationalist Activities among Indian Students in Colonial Britain
No full textWhile the transnational and diasporic dimensions of the Indian freedom movement have received scholarly attention, the nationalist and political engagements of Indian students in the United Kingdom remain largely neglected. By foregrounding the activities of the Cambridge and Oxford Majlis, the paper addresses this gap, situating them both within the struggle for Indian self-rule and the wider networks of anti-colonial internationalist politics that shaped 20th century nationalism.</p
Understanding the spirituality of Christian Chinese-Singaporean older adults who are positively engaged with life
No full textThe purpose of this research was to understand the spirituality of Christian Chinese-Singaporean older adults and how it helped them to be positively engaged with life.Interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology was adopted where one-to-one interviews were conducted with a sample of six participants who were above 65 years old.The findings indicated that they used the contents of their faith to create a Christian worldview which they used to live their daily lives. Their five key beliefs were: that God cares about them; that He is in charge or in control of everything; and He has a plan which they are a part of. They also believed in heaven and the Bible. The research participants demonstrated skills including the ability to find themselves in the Christian master story; to own/disown local concepts and practices; to reframe their lived lives within the master story; and to reframe the master story. The participants also engaged in spiritual practices that helped them stay at peace through the vicissitudes of life. These were: attending church and small group, praying, “quiet time” with God and studying the Bible.The findings were coded and then analysed using literature from gerontology, faith development and theology. The conclusion was that all the participants had the “owned faith” style of Westerhoff’s theory. They did not fit well into Fowler’s theory, showing characteristics of non-consecutive stages though most showed characteristics of Fowler’s third stage, i.e. Synthetic-Conventional Faith. Using the skills identified above, a model of faith development from the Singaporean context is presented for testing and use in this and other contexts.</p
Scalable hybrid online machine learning for real-time intrusion detection in electric vehicle charging systems
No full textElectric Vehicle Charging Systems (EVCS) are increasingly integrated into smart grids, but their openness and connectivity expose them to diverse cyber threats. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are essential for securing these infrastructures; however, conventional offline models struggle with real-time data streams, evolving attack patterns, and concept drift. This study investigates online machine learning for real-time IDS in EVCS. Two approaches are evaluated: a baseline Adaptive Random Forest (ARF) with ADWIN drift detection, and a scalable hybrid ensemble integrating ARF with Naïve Bayes, k-Nearest Neighbors, and Logistic Regression under a meta-learning framework. Experimental results show that while the baseline ARF achieves competitive performance, it incurs high computational cost (267.98 minutes for the 15-class task). In contrast, the hybrid model reduces runtime to 81.65 minutes while improving accuracy (0.8582 vs. 0.8142), precision (0.8796 vs. 0.8341), recall (0.8582 vs. 0.8142), and F1-score (0.8344 vs. 0.8002). Notably, in binary classification, the hybrid ensemble achieves near-perfect detection (F1 = 1.0000) while maintaining stability under drift-free conditions. These findings demonstrate that combining diverse classifiers enhances drift resilience, improves computational efficiency, and strengthens real-time detection, offering a scalable IDS solution tailored to EVCS and advancing the security and reliability of modern smart grids.</p
UK librarians' views of chatbots: a study based on fictional scenarios
No full textThe potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in libraries, including use of chatbots, has been widely discussed in recent years. This paper investigates how library professionals see the role of chatbots in the library context. As a data collection method, the study used the arts-based approach of fictional scenarios, which are short, crafted stories representing possible futures. Participants (UK librarians) responded to researcher-authored fictional scenarios and wrote their own. In response to the fictional scenarios authored by the researchers, participants were negative about giving chatbots agency or human-like characteristics. Resource issues and ethics also appeared in their responses as barriers. Participants were more positive about time saving applications and data analysis. In the fictional scenarios participants wrote themselves they tended to imagine rather narrow, low-level functions for AI. The theory of professions is drawn on to interpret the resistance of professionals to more capable AI and the assertion of human agency.</p
Flagellin fusion proteins as self-adjuvanting vaccines for viral infections and cancer
No full textVaccines can be highly safe and effective tools for disease prevention. However, improvements in the areas of cost, ease of manufacture, distribution, and administration are sought in the next generation of vaccine platforms. A promising candidate is the recombinant flagellin fusion protein platform, which comprises a protein antigen of interest genetically fused to the bacterial protein flagellin. As flagellin stimulates two distinct pattern recognition receptors of the human innate immune system (Toll-like receptor 5 and nucleotide-binding and oligomerization domain-like receptor family apoptosis inhibitory protein) and contains helper T-cell epitopes, it is capable of serving as both a carrier and an adjuvant for the target antigen. Studies in animal models and human clinical trials have shown that flagellin fusion proteins can induce diverse humoral (including various subtypes of IgG), mucosal (including secreted IgA), and cell-mediated (TH1 and TH2 CD4+ helper T-cell and CD8+ cytotoxic T-cell) responses to the covalently linked antigen. Such fusions are also capable of eliciting protective immunity in diverse experimental models of infection and cancer. They are effective via numerous routes of administration, including intranasal delivery, without the requirement for adjuvant or complex delivery vehicles. This review aims to cover recent progress in the investigation of flagellin fusion proteins for their potential to stimulate humoral and cellular immune responses to partner antigens, and their prospects for the prevention or treatment of viral infections and cancer.</p
Investigation of parametric behaviour of reinforced thermoplastic pipes under dynamic loading
No full textGlass-fibre reinforced pipes (GFRP) are increasingly being used in the oil and gas industry for their chemical resistance, corrosion resistance, flexibility in design, high strength-to-weight ratio, and high stiffness-to-weight ratio. They are slowly replacing steel pipes, both onshore and offshore, to transport oil and gas over large distances. Such pipes can be susceptible to accidental dynamic loads from low velocity impacts with high magnitudes of force. To ensure these pipes can safely operate after being subjected to such impact loading conditions, it is vital to investigate their resilience to impact. The nature of these impacts can potentially lead to catastrophic damage, resulting in huge losses. In this work, a numerical study has been conducted in LS-Dyna to investigate the behaviour of glass-fibre reinforced pipes under different impact loading conditions. Two parameters for the reinforcement layer were examined to understand their effect on the overall behaviour of the pipe under dynamic impact to achieve a multi-optimisation strategy capable of enhancing the impact absorption capacity. Different angle (+45/-45, +15/-85, +60/-30, +60/-60, +75/-25, +85/-15) and thickness (combos) combinations were implemented for the GFRP to observe the optimal combination for maximum dynamic impact absorption with a deformable boundary constraint. The existing design of the GFRP was numerically analysed and validated based on ASTM D2444-21 to establish the viability of the simulation as well as its utilisation for further investigation. An iterative method of thickness and angle combinations was implemented through simulations and a composite pipe based on the optimal combination was manufactured as well as experimentally validated. The comparison between the existing design of the GFRP simulation and experimental results show a difference of 7% whereas the optimised pipe results (thickness of 2.5-2.5 mm and angle of +60/-60) show a difference of 15%. The increase in the difference percentage can be attributed to the introduction of modified reinforcement on the proposed composite, constructed with aluminium infused nanocomposites in the resin. The impact resilience of the newly designed pipes is 11% higher than that of the existing pipe design. This work provides a comprehensive numerical study on different design parameters that can be manipulated to enhance the impact resilience of the GFRP</p
Manufacturing practices and operational performance: the roles of supplier and internal integration
No full textOperational performance is considered vital and at top priority in all organizations for profit maximization, which is achieved through the cost and flexibility. Following that, important pillars such as TPM, TQM, supplier integration, and internal integration are crucial for organizations. Therefore, this study focuses on the linkage of these organizational factors to improve cost and flexibility, which enhances performance for identifying and understanding the sustainability and expansion goals of the organizations. More specifically, the current research aims at exploring and understanding the relationships of manufacturing practices (i.e., TPM, TQM) and SCM (i.e., supplier integration, internal integration) along with operational performance (i.e., cost, flexibility) of the industrial firms. This study was conducted through fundamental rules and the basis of the positivist paradigm, which favours using the quantitative method in order to investigate the research problem. The research philosophy follows the objectivism approach through deductive reasoning. This research incorporated quantitative data from 224 Jordanian industrial firms through traditional and online questionnaires. This data was analysed by using SPSS and AMOS software in order to obtain valid, reliable, and generalisable findings and conclusion. In this way, the current study contributed to highlight and develop a better understanding of the potential determinants of operational performance through generally proving its significant correlation with the efficient SCM and the proper implementation of manufacturing practices. Furthermore, findings from this research revealed that supplier integration is significantly as well as positively impacting the cost and flexibility performance of the organisation, while internal integration is found to have significant positive effect on flexibility performance of the organisation. Moreover, the study concluded that understanding the different operational performance’s determinants (cost and flexibility) allows stakeholders in the industrial sector to make thoughtful decisions that can help them producing more unique products with a competitive quality, which enables the industrial organisations to manage their profitability concerns.</p
Review of UK and Ireland Surveys of Health Professional Educators on Teaching of Sexual- and Gender-Minority Health
No full textSexual and gender minority (SGM) people report considerable dissatisfaction with health services compared to heterosexual and/or cisgender people, with health professionals highlighting insufficient training. Teaching about the health of SGM people is not mandated in UK health professionals’ educational curricula. A review of published and unpublished surveys and of UK training courses evaluating LGBTQ+ content, in the UK and Ireland, examining the teaching of the health of SGM people to health professionals was conducted. Fifteen surveys from the perspectives of educators and students were compared and contrasted. Surveys were found from educators from undergraduate medicine, nursing and midwifery, and pharmacy schools, from students at dental, medical, and pharmacy schools, and from qualified doctors and paramedics. Students and clinical staff perceived that they have insufficient training in SGM health, although there is a contradiction in the perception of teaching amount between students and educational staff. Two curriculum reviews of Royal College postgraduate medical training showed either no or very few requirements on SGM health. Although some courses make considerable efforts to fully incorporate SGM health into mandatory curricula appropriately, professionals mention insufficient training. Until curriculum setters mandate SGM health, patient complaints will continue.</p
Behind the scheme: challenges faced by professionals addressing safeguarding issues in housing for Ukrainian refugees in the United Kingdom
No full textThe rapid escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine prompted many European countries to implement emergency sponsorship schemes for displaced Ukrainians. In the United Kingdom, the Homes for Ukraine scheme emerged as a prominent example enabling non-related hosts to accommodate refugees in private homes or other settings While widely praised for its humanitarian intent, the British Association of Social Workers raised early concerns about safeguarding risks within the scheme’s infrastructure. Key issues included the absence of a centralized matching system, reliance on informal arrangements via social media, and limited expert-led placement assessments. These gaps posed significant risks not only to refugees and hosts but also to frontline professionals tasked with addressing safeguarding concerns. Despite these challenges, research documenting their impact on practitioners is scarce. This article reports on findings from an online survey capturing professionals’ experiences of identifying and managing these safeguarding issues and the implications on their well-being. Results indicate that, although practitioners expressed pride in delivering the scheme, its rapid rollout, uneven local implementation, and lack of clear guidance contributed to safeguarding vulnerabilities and professional strain. These insights highlight the need for robust planning, clearer accountability, and culturally informed practices in future emergency initiatives.</p
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