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Controllable synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles employing substrate/dielectrophoresis/sol-gel
No full textDue to size-dependent catalytic selectivity, the size and special morphology are of great importance to applications of TiO2. The synthesis method of size and morphology control has been in need of innovation. In this study, TiO2 nanoparticles(TiO2-NPs) with well-defined morphology and homogenous size were synthesized using a novel method, in which bamboo substrate, dielectrophoresis (DEP) technology and a sol-gel process were combined(substrate/DEP/sol-gel). Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques were used to characterize the TiO2-NPs. Further study showed that, with this combined method, the size and the uniformity of TiOz-NPs can be controlled by changing the voltage of DEP. The number and arrangement of TiO, nanorods can be controlled by changing the voltage. Substrate/DEP/sol-gel proved to be an efficient way to form special morphologies of TiO2-NPs. A visible -light catalytic activity experiment showed that among three preparation methods, the substrate/DEP/solgel method made TiO2-NPs with the highest catalytic activity for degradation of methyl orange. TiO2-NPs produced by the DEP/sol-gel process presented higher catalytic activity than TiO2-NPs produced by only a sol-gel process
The dynamics of compact laser pulses
No full textWe discuss the use of a class of exact finite energy solutions to the vacuum source-free Maxwell equations as models for multi- and single cycle laser pulses in classical interaction with relativistic charged point particles. These compact solutions are classified in terms of their chiral content and their influence on particular charge configurations in space. The results of such classical interactions motivate a phenomenological quantum description of a propagating laser pulse in a medium in terms of an effective quantum Hamiltonian
Economics of tourism & growth for small island countries
No full textWe theoretically analyze the impact of changes in foreign income from tourism source countries on the growth of tourism dependent small island economies. Using a general theoretical construct, we attempt to answer the question of how price elasticity of demand, income elasticity of tourist and the degree of competition in the service sector influence the economic development of small economies. One of the main results is that politicians may consider applying policies which lead to a competitive environment in the service sector to maximize growth and the consequent labor income share
Realising increased value from using knowledge management to improve customer relationship management in a retail banking environment : the case of Standard Bank in Malawi
No full textRetail banks globally are under the threat of reducing profitability driven by a harsh operating environment. They are facing many challenges including greater competition from non-banking entities, stricter regulatory requirements, more knowledgeable and demanding customers and speed of innovation in terms of new products and services. Customer relationship management (CRM) remains a recognised source of competitive advantage but questions still abound about how it can be deployed effectively and for the benefit of both the customer and the bank. Knowledge management (KM), on the other hand, is also a proven source of competitive advantage and this study uncovers how KM can be used to enhance CRM in order to improve profitability at SBM.This study explored how KM can be deployed to enhance CRM as well as how this resulted in improvement of customer service and satisfaction indices as well as profitability, sales, customer retention and growth in customer base. The sales and customer service teams formed the primary subjects of this study and key productivity measures such as profitability; customer satisfaction as measured through NPS and CEBS, sales trends by segment and customer cross sell ratio by segment were tracked as the output. However, multi-disciplinary teams across Standard Bank in Malawi (SBM) as well as Standard Bank Group (SBG were involved in designing the solutions to customer issues identified.A framework that combines CRM and KM, the MKC Relationship Management was developed as part of this study through literature review. The MKC Relationship Management framework was then tested through cycles of action research where a plan was developed in the first cycle, tested in the second cycle and this was followed by planning for a third cycle. The results of each cycle were measured and tracked over a period of time before being reviewed for impact. The final planning cycle was undertaken to see how further improvements could be made to the framework. The study adopted a critical theory philosophy and the approach was deductive in nature because current theories of KM and CRM were applied to the specific situation at SBM. Qualitative data collection methods were used within the two cycles of AR which included: three in-depth interviews with the heads of the business units within PBB, two focus group discussions (with the business bankers as well as the service teams) and document analysis of past research and project documents were among the qualitative data collection methods used. The data collected from all these sources was analysed using the thematic analysis method. The study resulted in a contribution to knowledge which was both conceptual and practical in nature. The MKC Relationship Management framework contributed to the ever growing theoretical knowledge of how KM and CRM can be integrated. Apart from this, the practical contribution was in the form of increased profitability in SBM Retail Banking, a structured manner of resolving issues that were resulting in negative customer experience. In addition to this, a thematic analysis approach to data analysis was applied in a banking research in Malawi. Further, a home grown IT system known as the I-serve system was commissioned at SBM and put to use to drive business results. The use of social media was also tested in order to take advantage of this growing technological revolution to drive business results using the mobile phone as a catalyst of knowledge sharing. This was among the first formally studied researches into use of such media for business in Malawi
Similarity measures for object matching in computer vision
No full textThe similarity measures for object matching and their applications have been important topics in many fields of computer vision such as those of image recognition, image fusion, image analysis, video sequence matching, and so on. This critical commentary presents the efficiency of new metric methods such as the robust Hausdorff distance (RHD), the accurate M-Hausdorff distance (AMHD), and the fast sum of absolute differences (FSAD). The RHD measure computes the similarity distance of the occluded/noisy image pair and evaluates the performances of the multi-modal registration algorithms. The AMHD measure is utilised for aligning the pair of the occluded/noisy multi-sensor face images, and the FSAD measure in adaptive-template matching method finds the zero location of the slide in an automatic scanning microscope system.A Hausdorff distance (HD) similarity measure has been widely investigated to compare the pair of two-dimensional (2-D) images by low-level features since it is simple and insensitive to the changes in an image characteristic. In this research, novel HD measures based on the robust statistics of regression analysis are addressed for occluded and noisy object matching, resulting in two RHD measures such as M-HD based on the M-estimation and LTS-HD based on the least trimmed squares (LTS). The M-HD is extended to three-dimensional (3-D) version for scoring the registration algorithms of the multi-modal medical images. This 3-D measure yields the comparison results with different outlier-suppression parameters (OSP) quantitatively, even though the Computed Tomography (CT) and emission-Positron Emission Tomography (PET) images have different distinctive features. The RHD matching technique requires a high level of complexity in computing the minimum distance from one point to the nearest point between two edge point sets and searching for the best fit of matching position. To overcome these problems, the improved 3×3 distance transform (DT) is employed. It has a separable scan structure to reduce the calculation time of the minimum distance in multi-core processors. The object matching algorithm with hierarchical structures is also demonstrated to minimize the computational complexity dramatically without failing the matching position. The object comparison between different modality images is still challenging due to the poor edge correspondence coming from heterogeneous characteristics. To improve the robustness of HD measures in comparing the pair of multi-modal sensor images, an accurate M-HD (AMHD) is proposed by utilizing the orientation information of each point in addition to the DT map. This similarity measure can precisely analyse the non-correspondent edges and noises by using the distance orientation information. The AMHD measure yields superior performance at aligning the pairs of multi-modal face images over those achieved by the conventional robust HD schemes. The sum of absolute differences (SAD) is popular similarity measure in template matching technique. This thesis shows the adaptive-template matching method based on the FSAD for accurately locating the slide in automated microscope. The adaptive-template matching method detects the fiduciary ring mark in the slide by predicting the constant used in the template, where the FSAD reduces the processing time with a low rate of error of the template matching by inducing 1-D vertical and horizontal SAD. The proposed scheme results in an accurate performance in terms of detecting the ring mark and estimating the relative offset in slide alignment during the on-line calibration process
Organic information literacy: supporting the developing researcher at the University of Bolton
No full textThe University of Bolton, which positions itself as Teaching Intensive; Research Informed, has a small but significant – and developing - research community. This presentation will explore the ways in which any student engaging in any research – from the beginnings of a final year dissertation to the final stages of a PhD research proposal and writing up a thesis - is encouraged to apply the information literacy skills they already possess. A late adopter of webscale discovery technologies, we have seen a marked change in attitudes to finding online information. Discover@Bolton, our newly-launched webscale discovery service, is showing that students are already empowered to leave their comfort zone. There is a direct correlation between subject enquiries made to librarians and recorded search terms from Discover@Bolton. In addition, the number of searches is significantly higher than the number of visits to the service, suggesting that students come to Discover@Bolton and stay there. Besides this, the University of Bolton has been proactive in encouraging researchers at every stage of their career to engage in open access by means of depositing research in the University of Bolton Institutional Repository, such as depositing examples of excellent research proposals, student poetry that has been published in an in-house publication as well as contributing to the early stages of a project to encourage students to work with supervisors to achieve peer-reviewed publication
A critical and creative examination of the ‘extrospective’ poetry of Keith Douglas
No full textThis is a creative response to the poetry of Keith Douglas (1920-44), focusing particularly on what he described as his ‘extrospective (if the word exists) poetry’.1 My work takes the form of sixty-four of my original poems, plus a thesis of 40,000 words. In my poems Douglas’s extrospective approach is reinterpreted and re-applied to my life, interests, and experiences, including that of being paralysed from the shoulders down and left dependent on a ventilator to breathe, following a spinal injury in 1987. The poems are selected from over 1,000 written during my six years of research and they look at different aspects of what Douglas was doing in his poetry, as well as his ideas about poetry. My 40,000 word thesis was written alongside my selection of poems and it includes three chapters. The first constitutes an examination of Douglas’s use of the term ‘extrospective’ and what his poetry reveals about this definition. Chapter Two explores a selection of poems and publications written since Douglas’s death in order to shed more light on aspects of extrospection. Finally, Chapter Three builds on the previous two chapters to provide an account of my own extrospective poems, on the understanding that these poems are the main focus of the thesis. My work is important because although Douglas’s life and poetry has attracted the attention of poets and critics such as Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Desmond Graham, William Scammell, Roger Bowen, Jonathan Bolton, Adam Piette, Neil Corcoran, and Jon Glover, extrospection has not previously been considered in its own right in great depth
The influence of poly(ethylene glycol) ether tetrasuccinimidyl glutarate on the structural, physical, and biological properties of collagen fibers
No full textVarious chemical, natural, or synthetic in origin, crosslinking methods have been proposed over the years to stabilise collagen fibers. However, an optimal method has yet to be identified. Herein, we ventured to assess the potential of 4-star poly(ethylene glycol) ether tetrasuccinimidyl glutarate, as opposed to glutaraldehyde (GTA), genipin and carbodiimide, on the structural, physical and biological properties of collagen fibers. The 4-star poly(ethylene glycol) ether tetrasuccinimidyl glutarate induced an intermedium surface smoothness, denaturation temperature and swelling. The 4-star poly(ethylene glycol) ether tetrasuccinimidyl glutarate fibers had significantly higher stress at break values than the carbodiimide fibers, but significantly lower than the GTA and genipin fibers. With respect to strain at break, no significant difference was observed among the crosslinking treatments. The 4-star poly(ethylene glycol) ether tetrasuccinimidyl glutarate fibers exhibited significantly higher cell metabolic activity and DNA concentration that all other crosslinking treatments, promoted consistently cellular elongation along the longitudinal fiber axis and by day 7 they were completely covered by cells. Collectively, this work clearly demonstrates the potential of 4-star poly(ethylene glycol) ether tetrasuccinimidyl glutarate as collagen crosslinker
Mobilization of Genomic Islands of Staphylococcus aureus by Temperate Bacteriophage
No full textThe virulence of Staphylococcus aureus, in both human and animal hosts, is largely influenced by the acquisition of mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Most S. aureus strains carry a variety of MGEs, including three genomic islands (νSaα, νSaβ, νSaγ) that are diverse in virulence gene content but conserved within strain lineages. Although the mobilization of pathogenicity islands, phages and plasmids has been well studied, the mobilization of genomic islands is poorly understood. We previously demonstrated the mobilization of νSaβ by the adjacent temperate bacteriophage ϕSaBov from strain RF122. In this study, we demonstrate that ϕSaBov mediates the mobilization of νSaα and νSaγ, which are located remotely from ϕSaBov, mostly to recipient strains belonging to ST151. Phage DNA sequence analysis revealed that chromosomal DNA excision events from RF122 were highly specific to MGEs, suggesting sequence-specific DNA excision and packaging events rather than generalized transduction by a temperate phage. Disruption of the int gene in ϕSaBov did not affect phage DNA excision, packaging, and integration events. However, disruption of the terL gene completely abolished phage DNA packing events, suggesting that the primary function of temperate phage in the transfer of genomic islands is to allow for phage DNA packaging by TerL and that transducing phage particles are the actual vehicle for transfer.These results extend our understanding of the important role of bacteriophage in the horizontal transfer and evolution of genomic islands in S. aureus