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Unlocking Covid-19 knowledge sharing within North West Universities
No full textPurpose Based on initial observation, this paper aims to explore the current practices of collaborative knowledge sharing (KS) between North West Universities and highlight new avenues of future relevant research. Design/methodology/approach A netnographic observation was conducted to unveil the current practices of KS between North West Universities. Findings The paper concludes that there is little or no evidence of collaborative KS practices amongst North West Universities in response to the present Covid-19 transition. Practical implications This paper provides useful, practical insight that may assist decision-makers to establish KS initiatives within North West Universities and beyond. A strategy is also proposed to nurture collaborative KS amongst North West Universities and within wider work-applied management practice. Originality/value This paper presents an unconventional conceptualisation of KS practices amid the present Covid-19 pandemic with the fresh perspective of North West England Universities
Exploring L2 teacher motivation to participate in a theatre festival
No full textTeacher motivation is a key component for increasing teachers' commitment to their professionalism and the quality of their teaching. This paper provides insight into L2 teacher motivation in the context of their sustained engagement with a theatre festival for schools. Drawing on self-determination theory, it investigates how this extracurricular activity enables the teachers to fulfil their individual and professional needs. The findings from eight semi-structured interviews of Slovak ELT teachers suggest the festival offers them a space for satisfaction of their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the long term. The festival enables them to pursue their own intrinsic appreciation of arts and theatre that is then shared with their pupils. Teachers appreciate the co-creative process during the rehearsals, which enhances learners' intrinsic and instrumental value of learning English. They believe the festival fosters their learners' language development in a holistic way, enhancing their emotional and social skills
For whom the bell CHIMEs: A synthesis of remarkable student lives
No full textThe aim of this paper is to review the 20 Remarkable Lives student accounts published in this journal. These Recovery Narratives (RNs) are examined first in terms of whether they meet the five elements of the CHIME Model of recovery, and then in terms of what makes each account remarkable.Two Excel spreadsheets were created. One had each author’s name and the five elements of the CHIME model, the other the features of a remarkable life.All 20 accounts fulfilled the criteria for the CHIME Model, independently validating this model of recovery. Hence, each account showed evidence of Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment. A number of additional characteristics stood out from the accounts, such as the importance of motherhood and of education.All 20 accounts were only reviewed by the two authors, who may be subject to bias. To reduce this, the first author did the bulk of the ratings. This paper shows the importance of education for recovery.Some 15/20 accounts reported problems with mental health services, mainly around waiting lists. Must mental health always remain a Cinderella service? More value needs to be accorded to education as a means to recovery.This is the first attempt to synthesise this particular set of recovery narratives, entitled Remarkable Lives. These accounts show the richness of the recovery journeys embarked on by many sufferers, and these are just drawn from one University. Like the authors of these stories, we too as recovery specialists have much to learn from their inspiring accounts
Security of Things intrusion detection system for smart healthcare
No full textWeb security plays a very crucial role in the Security of Things (SoT) paradigm for smart healthcare and will continue to be impactful in medical infrastructures in the near future. This paper addressed a key component of security-intrusion detection systems due to the number of web security attacks, which have increased dramatically in recent years in healthcare, as well as the privacy issues.Various intrusion-detection systems have been proposed in different works to detect cyber threats in smart healthcare and to identify network-based attacks and privacy violations. This study was carried out as a result of the limitations of the intrusion detection systems in responding to attacks and challenges and in implementing privacy control and attacks in the smart healthcare industry.The research proposed a machine learning support system that combined a Random Forest (RF) and a genetic algorithm: a feature optimization method that built new intrusion detection systems with a high detection rate and a more accurate false alarm rate. To optimize the functionality of our approach, a weighted genetic algorithm and RF were combined to generate the best subset of functionality that achieved a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate. This study used the NSL-KDD dataset to simultaneously classify RF, Naive Bayes (NB) and logistic regression classifiers for machine learning. The results confirmed the importance of optimizing functionality, which gave better results in terms of the false alarm rate, precision, detection rate, recall and F1 metrics. The combination of our genetic algorithm and RF models achieved a detection rate of 98.81% and a false alarm rate of 0.8%. This research raised awareness of privacy and authentication in the smart healthcare domain, wireless communications and privacy control and developed the necessary intelligent and efficient web system. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm was applied to examine the F1-score and precision performance as compared to the NSL-KDD and CSE-CIC-IDS2018 datasets using different scaling factors. The results showed that the proposed GA was greatly optimized, for which the average precision was optimized by 5.65% and the average F1-score by 8.2
The effects of some phosphorus-containing fire retardants on the properties of glass fibre-reinforced composite laminates made from blends of unsaturated polyester and phenolic resins
No full textThis study investigated the effects of phosphorus fire retardants (FRs) in matrices from co-cured blends of an unsaturated polyester (UP) with inherently fire-retardant phenolic resoles (PH) on the mechanical and flammability properties of resultant glass fibre-reinforced composites.Three different phenolic resoles with UP have been used:(i) an ethanol soluble (PH-S), (ii) an epoxy-functionalised (PH-Ep), and (iii) an allyl-functionalised resin (PH-Al) with two different phosphorus FRs: resorcinol bis (diphenyl phosphate) (RDP) and 9,10-dihydro-9-oxa-10-phosphaphenanthrene-10- oxide (DOPO). The flammabilities of the resultant composites were evaluated using cone calorimetry and the UL-94 test. Cone calorimetric results showed reductions in peak heat release rate (PHRR) and total heat released (THR) as expected compared to those of UP and respective UP/PH composite laminates without FRs. UL-94 tests results showed that while all composites had HB rating, FR containing samples self-extinguished after removal of the flame. The mechanical properties of the composites were evaluated using flexural, tensile and impact tests. All FRs reduced the mechanical properties, and the reduction in mechanical properties was more severe in UP/PH-S (least compatible blends) composites with FRs than in UP/PH-Al (most compatible blends) composites with FRs.Amongst the different composites, those from UP/PH-Al with DOPO showed the best fire retardancy with little deterioration of mechanical performance
Supply chain collaboration of Ghana's gold mining industry
No full textThe gold mining industry contributes about 41% of Ghana's export earnings, generating about 14% as tax revenue and a total of 5.5% gross domestic product (GDP). It is essential to salvage the industry’s image. Employees of the industry can be laid off and made redundant because the industry's financial position is almost always affected during critical moments. This in most cases result in the holding up of suppliers' payments and operations grinding to a halt due to procurement, logistics and inventory issues. In light of this, an empirical study is being conducted with the aim of identifying the factors of supply chain collaboration in Ghana's mining industry.Mixed methods were used including a purposive sampling method which was used with survey questionnaires administered on eleven operational mining companies in Ghana. SPSS tool was used in the analysis of data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at the mines site (company premises) in September 2019 in Ghana. The results identified some factors that affect the collaborative supply chain. These are the pricing of products and service, variable payment systems, open book, the share of company values, and consolidation of orders. Identifying these factors contribute to existing literature which makes this study unique as they have not been discovered in any of the supply chain literature in the context of gold mining. A framework in supply chain collaboration was developed, which is unique to the gold mining sector in Ghana. The result will have managerial implications to drive the gold mining industry's performance forward. Mining organisations will benefit from this study as this can be replicated in other gold mining sectors in Africa and across the globe’s mining industry
Bridging the skills gap: Apprentice Assistant Practitioners (AAP) having an impact in Mental Health Care Services. Part 3: The Mentor experience
No full textUnderstanding the relevance of the AAP role in mental health is important for future developments within mental health services. This third article in a series exploring the potential impact of AAPs in bridging the gap in mental health services, focuses on the experiences of the mentor role. Mentorship in the development of health service workers is crucial to ensure competent, confident and skilled staff at all levels. This small-scale study looks at the experiences the mentor in general and more specifically, the experiences of a small group of mentors supporting AAPs in mental health services.A questionnaire was sent to mentors at different stages of the AAPs journey and asked them to consider three broad themes; supporting the AAP, helpfulness of the AAP standards in mentoring and the impact of the AAP in mental health services. The results show a positive response in general from the mentors and the use of apprenticeship standards to focus the mentorship of the AAP as well as the potential benefits the Assistant Practitioner (AP) role has in both supporting services users and the service as a whole
Effects of edge shapes on thermal-fluid processes in oscillatory flows
No full textThermoacoustic machines, Stirling engines or coolers, and pulse tube coolers are examples of energy systems that operate based on oscillatory flow principles. This class of technology would achieve an improved efficiency from appropriately designed heat exchangers, stacks, regenerators and thermal buffer tubes. In this paper, heat transfer and oscillatory flow behaviour in three identical parallel-plate heat exchangers, one ‘heat source’ positioned between two ‘heat sinks’, are investigated using numerical method. The effect of different plate edge shapes on heat transfer, flow structures and acoustic pressure drop are examined at a selected drive ratio of 0.3 – 2.0%. Flow parameters show a strong dependency on drive ratio and flow direction, especially at low excitation where gas displacements are below or comparable to the heat exchanger length. Cone edge shape minimises the flow complexity better than other shapes with a negligible effect on the heat transfer. The result of this study will benefit the design and development of compact and high-efficiency heat exchangers for the next generation of oscillatory-flow energy and thermal management systems
Distilling agency in BIM-induced change in work practices
No full textPurpose: Critics of claims about BIM’s capability to revolutionise construction industry practices, describe it as overhyped, fallacious, and therefore suggest that there is need for a more critical examination of its’ change impacts. Others have posited that the changes BIM induces are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In this vein, a careful analysis of the nature of such changes was undertaken to distil actual changes that happened, and the type of agency that brings such changes about.Design: Drawing from appropriate qualitative research strategies, data was collected through key informant interviews from consulting organisations in South Africa that have implemented BIM within their organisations and on projects.Findings: Changes in organisations’ work practices were evident in their workflows, formal/informal methods of interaction, norms, leadership and authority structures, remuneration, and the way work was conceived or conceptualised. Furthermore, changes in organisational work practices do not solely occur through the direct agency of the BIM tool’s implementation. Instead, BIM-induced change occurs by delegated, conditional and needs-based agency – which are not mutually exclusive.Originality: The nature of changes in professional work practices could be misconstrued as being solely due to the actions of agents who actively participate in implementing BIM. The discussion in the literature has been advanced from general to specific theoretical understandings of BIM-induced change, that emphasise the need for construction stakeholders to actively participate in developing the innovations that drive change in the industry rather than hand the power to drive change to BIM authoring and management application developers who have less stake in the industry
A business case argument for corporate social responsibility disclosure in Nigeria
No full textFrom the theoretical perspectives of stakeholder, agency and slack resources, and using fixed effects and random effects models, this study investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance. The study adopts fixed and random effects panel estimates which deal with unobserved heterogeneity not addressed by OLS. The result is positive between CSR and Tobin’s q. This strengthens the argument that CSR creates value for stakeholders. The implications of this study lie in the common knowledge that Nigerian companies should address CSR from a strategic context of meeting stakeholder needs, in addition to satisfying shareholder expectations. Given that Nigeria’s economy by GDP is the largest in Africa, findings in this study have far-reaching implications in the African context