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Advances and recent trends in plant-based materials and edible films: a mini-review
Get PDFPlant-based materials and edible films have emerged as promising alternatives to conventional packaging materials, offering sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions. This mini-review highlights the significance of plant-based materials derived from polysaccharides, proteins, and lipids, showcasing their renewable and biodegradable nature. The properties of edible films, including mechanical strength, barrier properties, optical characteristics, thermal stability, and shelf-life extension, are explored, showcasing their suitability for food packaging and other applications. Moreover, the application of 3D printing technology allows for customized designs and complex geometries, paving the way for personalized nutrition. Functionalization strategies, such as active and intelligent packaging, incorporation of bioactive compounds, and antimicrobial properties, are also discussed, offering additional functionalities and benefits. Challenges and future directions are identified, emphasizing the importance of sustainability, scalability, regulation, and performance optimization. The potential impact of plant-based materials and edible films is highlighted, ranging from reducing reliance on fossil fuels to mitigating plastic waste and promoting a circular economy. In conclusion, plant-based materials and edible films hold great potential in revolutionizing the packaging industry, offering sustainable alternatives to conventional materials. Embracing these innovations will contribute to reducing plastic waste, promoting a circular economy, and creating a sustainable and resilient planet
Feeling Rules and Emotion Work in Geomorphology Fieldwork
Get PDFGeography’s fieldwork culture has been subject to much scrutiny in recent decades. With roots in colonial exploration and shaped by Enlightenment ideals of reason and rationality, the presence of emotion in physical geography fieldwork has remained invisible, unspoken. This article draws on geomorphologists’ fieldwork stories, accessed via questionnaire and interviews, to provide insight into the emotion work involved in collaborative fieldwork, depicted here through a career/life-course chronology. This in turn enables articulation of the ‘feeling rules’ of geomorphology fieldwork; implicit, unwritten expectations of ‘how to be’ a field geomorphologist. Acknowledging that fieldwork is a positive aspect of the discipline for many, the article provides insight into the ways that the burdens of fieldwork may shift throughout a career and considers the implications for creating more inclusive field environments
Place, space and time: A topological perspective of a forest school-based educational mode of existence
Get PDFThis paper explores the question: ‘how do teachers shape children’s connections to forest places and establish educational ways of being and knowing (an educational mode of existence) during Forest School sessions?’. A Forest School ‘movement’ has grown in popularity in Europe over the last decade, alongside a marked expansion in the field of learning outside the classroom (LOTC). Part of this movement has focused on the importance of developing children’s relationship with nature. However, little literature speaks to how child-nature relationships manifest, nor implications for educational ways of being (and knowing). This paper steps outside of popularised notions of ‘nature deficit disorder’ to reimagine Forest Schooling as intentional construction of a specific educational mode of existence, reliant upon careful evolution of children’s connections to forest places. The term ‘place’ is necessarily complicated in this paper, arguing that only through recent developments in (social) topological perspectives and theories of modes of existence can we begin to fully understand place connection. Drawing on ethnographic data, this paper argues for greater focus on intersections between materiality and meaning constructed in multidimensional time and space in establishing educational modes of existence and related place connections
Foreign Business and Revolution: The British Engineering Company of Russia and Siberia, 1918–1921
No full textThis article examines the activities of the British Engineering Company of Russia and Siberia and of its managing director, Arthur Marshall, in the almost three years between the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power and the signing of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement. Sources from the Leeds Russian Archive outline how the company attempted to continue operations in Russia after the establishment of the Soviet government. In Great Britain, meanwhile, the managing director sought compensation for losses incurred during the Revolution and attempted to influence government policy towards permitting commerce with Soviet Russia. This article argues that although Marshall was unsuccessful in securing recompense for his company’s losses, his outward support for establishing Anglo-Soviet trade contributed to the pressures which, some interpretations conclude, make the 1921 agreement chiefly an economically rather than politically motivated arrangement from Britain’s perspective
The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond
No full textLong-term self-reported attendance in exercise training or lung choir and status of quality of life following initial pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD
Get PDFBackground: Both adherence rates to pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) programmes and long-term attendance in exercise training after PR remain a challenge. In our previous randomised controlled trial (RCT), effects were positively associated with a dose-response pattern, regardless of whether PR contained conventional physical exercise training (PExT) or Singing for Lung Health (SLH) as a training modality within a 10 weeks’ PR programme for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, long-term status of this RCT cohort remains unknown. In this study, we investigated whether current status (=attendance in supervised exercise training or a lung choir and scoring in quality of life (QoL)) was related to initial PR completion, randomisation, or adherence. Methods: We collected data via telephone, using a researcher-developed questionnaire on current self-reported attendance in supervised exercise training or a lung choir and on perceived benefits of the initial RCT intervention. Additionally, we used COPD-validated questionnaires (primarily: QoL (measure: St George's Respiratory Questionnaire; SGRQ). Results: In 2023 (i.e., mean/median 4.7 years after initial PR), surviving participants were contacted (n = 196; 73% of 270), and 160 (82% of 196) were included. Out of the included participants, 30 (19%) had not completed initial PR. Compared to the initial PR-completers, non-completers reported less current attendance in exercise training or lung choir (24% vs. 46%, p = 0.03) but SGRQ scores were comparable. Yet, those who attended exercise training or lung choir at present (n = 66/160; 41% out of 160) reported better QoL score than those with no current attendance (SGRQ; Attending: 39.9 ± 15.4; Not attending: 43.1 ± 16.7; p = 0.02). Neither having had SLH instead of PExT, nor adherence level during initial PR, was related to current attendance or to QoL scores. Conclusion: This study indicates that long-term self-reported attendance and current QoL scores are positively related to initial completion of a PR programme. Surprisingly, neither initial PR content (PExT or SLH) nor initial PR adherence was related to long-term outcomes. We suggest that future PR programmes include special attention to those who do not complete PR to support long-term attendance and QoL status
Female Nazi concentration camp guards: the true horror lies in their similarities to ourselves
No full textProcess-based Pedagogies for Creative Practice Studies
Get PDFMusic studies is, for the most part, concerned with the products of music (cf. Bennett, 2014; Collins, 2016), even in creative practice pedagogies we find ourselves fixating on the song over the songwriting. Asking ‘how can we know the mind of the composer?’ would lead us to a Cartesian reduction, and what benefit would it bring our students to know the mind of Max Martin or David Bowie? I propose that the current gap would be more effectively filled with approaches that autonomises learning for creative practice students.
Incorporating this methodology into our pedagogy will require a radical shift in what and how we assess our students. Currently, we assess abilities and infer understanding from a few songs submitted. To support our students to become lifelong learners of creative practices, we should teach them sustainable skills and practices. Assessing students’ reflections of their practices and learning would support learning these skills and make the assessment far more objective.
In this chapter, I offer a phenomenological approach to reflect on creative practice learning. The phenomenological ontology (Merleau-Ponty, 1945) permits our experiences to be accepted as part of a larger schema of being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1924). Reflective practice allows the student to construct their own understanding of their practice promoting autonomy from the teacher, the institute and the temporality of education. Epistemological knowledge of songwriting, popular music and creativity continues to play a crucial role in the critical reflection. In my example, the Systems Model of Creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014) provides the wider context for analysing and evaluating creative practice and our understanding thereof
Exercise therapy for chronic symptomatic peripheral artery disease: a clinical consensus document of the ESC Working Group on Aorta & Peripheral Vascular Diseases in collaboration with the European Society of Vascular Medicine, and the European Society for Vascular Surgery
Get PDFAll guidelines worldwide strongly recommend exercise as a pillar of the management of patients affected by lower extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD). Exercise therapy in this setting presents different modalities, and a structured programme provides optimal results. This clinical consensus paper is intended for clinicians to promote and assist for the set-up of comprehensive exercise programmes to best advice in patients with symptomatic chronic PAD. Different exercise training protocols specific for patients with PAD are presented. Data on patient assessment and outcome measures are narratively described based on the current best evidence. The document ends by highlighting disparities in access to supervised exercise programmes across Europe and the series of gaps for evidence requiring further research