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Landscape photography exhibited in 'TOWNER 100: Unseen', Towner Gallery, Eastbourne
No full textLandscape Photography exhibited in "TOWNER 100: Unseen", Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, (11th February to 14th May 2023)
This exhibition presented recent work acquired for Towner's permanent collection and marked Towner's one hundredth year. It asked questions such as: "What does a public collection look like in the 21st century? Which artists and artworks get acquired for a gallery collection and which get displayed? How are these decisions made and who is making them? What does a town’s collection say about its communities?"
Towner’s collection has developed over time and continues to reflect the ambitions of the organisation to support artists at all stages of their careers - it collects both emerging and contemporary artists as well as works by modern British artists.
The exhibition included painting, moving image, prints, drawing and illustration, sculpture, installation, and photography. Besides Billingham, artists featured included Michael Rakowitz, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Tom Hammick, Jananne Al-Ali, Roland Jarvis, Rachel Jones, David Nash, Elizabeth Price, Jem Southam, Andy Warhol, André Derain and Clare Woods.
A second exhibition "Alongside TOWNER 100: The Living Collection" in Gallery 1, told some of the stories about gifts, bequests and purchases that have contributed to making the collection what it is today and looked at how it might develop into the future
A compact neural network for high accuracy bioimpedance-based hand gesture recognition
Get PDFThis paper presents a compact customised neural network with 44 parameters for hand gesture recognition based on electrical impedance tomography (EIT) using a flexible 8-electrode band. The classification accuracy is improved by assigning higher weights to the impedances captured closer to the current injection position. The non-fully connected layer working as a spatial filter reduces the complexity of the network structure. Validated on a discrete EIT system, the proposed network structure can distinguish eight gestures with an accuracy of 99.49%. Towards a low-power wearable design, an analogue inference circuit based on the proposed network structure was also designed in 65 nm CMOS. The system features a low-power multi-output digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) to provide data for the analogue computation efficiently. This designed CMOS analogue inference has a recognition accuracy of 98.13%
Development of teixobactin analogues containing hydrophobic, non-proteogenic amino acids that are highly potent against multidrug-resistant bacteria and biofilms
Get PDFTeixobactin is a cyclic undecadepsipeptide that has shown excellent potency against multidrug-resistant pathogens, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE). In this article, we present the design, synthesis, and antibacterial evaluations of 16 different teixobactin analogues. These simplified analogues contain commercially available hydrophobic, non-proteogenic amino acid residues instead of synthetically challenging expensive L-allo-enduracididine amino acid residue at position 10 together with different combinations of arginines at positions 3, 4 and 9. The new teixobactin analogues showed potent antibacterial activity against a broad panel of Gram-positive bacteria, including MRSA and VRE strains. Our work also presents the first demonstration of the potent antibiofilm activity of teixobactin analogoues against Staphylococcus species associated with serious chronic infections. Our results suggest that the use of hydrophobic, non-proteogenic amino acids at position 10 in combination with arginine at positions 3, 4 and 9 holds the key to synthesising a new generation of highly potent teixobactin analogues to tackle resistant bacterial infections and biofilms
Performance for Futures
No full textOpening address at the Performance for Futures Seminar, Middlesex University 2023
Improvement of process and outcomes through a STEEPLED analysis of system failures
No full textFailure of systems occur in all domains of human activity. Apart from identifying who will be deemed accountable, a thorough analysis of a failure also provides understanding of the causes. This is the first step towards learning and future improvement. It has become evident that process improvement improves the resulting products and services. Prevention is always desirable, but more often than not, the predictability of future behavior of systems is difficult. Hence, most of the learning takes place in the analysis of failures. This paper focuses on a STEEPLED analysis of system failures, with particular emphasis on failed systems from the fields of Architecture, Engineering, and Healthcare systems. This transdisciplinary and multi-dimensional view of systems provides a holistic thinking instrument for structuring the analysis of failures and for enabling action in order to avoid or at least minimize future failures
Fostering sustainable practices: the case of micro and small designer fashion enterprises
No full textIn Chapter 9, Black et al. highlight that the UK designer fashion sector is largely made up of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) and represents a significant part of the UK’s creative industries, widely recognised for its fashion influence beyond the UK. In addition to its cultural and economic distinction, the sector is acknowledged globally for its pioneering sustainability-led practices. This chapter presents findings from the Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices project, working with 48 innovative fashion MSEs in the UK. With their strongsense of values and purpose, contributing to community alongside maintaining viability, such MSEs provide best-practice examples of innovation to foster sustainability in fashion. More are gaining the internationally recognised B Corp certification, demonstrating that social justice and environmental stewardship are equally as important as financial success. Values-based fashion design entrepreneurs pursue growth organically to increase their positive social and environmental impact, and develop strong customer relationships through direct communication, transparency and engagement activities, foregrounding sufficiency. Despite the severe effects of Covid-19, the investigation revealed some fashion design entrepreneurs showing exceptional resilience. Such agile, purpose-led enterprises exemplify a redefinition of what fashion business can be, presenting viable pathways to recovery, and building towards a sustainable prosperity that transforms how fashion is done
(Re)storying postpartum psychosis: a critical narrative analysis of women’s stories of postnatal distress
Get PDFResearch indicates that postpartum psychosis is extremely rare, occurring in approximately one out of every 1000 births (Sit et al., 2006). Nevertheless, the postnatal period is considered a time in which women experience the greatest probability of psychosis, with research suggesting that women are 20-30 times more likely to be hospitalised after childbirth that at any other point in their lives (Twomey, 2009). Whilst there is a growing field of psychologically-informed research into postnatal distress more broadly, research into postpartum psychosis continues to be dominated by a biomedical framework. As a result, psychologically-informed understandings and interventions are markedly lacking, as reflected in the literature and in recommended guidelines for clinical practice (NICE, 2014). This research speaks to this gap in exploring the subjective experience of postpartum psychosis through women’s narratives. Using a feminist social constructionist approach, it also intends to examine critically the role of broader discourses in shaping how women make sense of, and narrate, their experiences of postnatal distress.
In this research, five women told their stories of postpartum psychosis, conveying a rich and profound sense of the experience of postnatal distress. Participants’ stories were analysed using Critical Narrative Analysis (Langdridge, 2007). The following identity constructions were proposed: ‘a lost self’; ‘a medicalised self’; ‘a transformed self’ and ‘the good mother’. Tensions around agency and disempowerment were also explored in the context of identity work. Five main themes were noted across participants’ narratives: ‘explanatory frameworks’; ‘power’; ‘the multidimensional nature of family support’; ‘stigma’ and ‘recovery’. Finally, a biomedical discourse of ‘mental illness’ and a canonical narrative of ‘good’ motherhood were problematised from a feminist perspective in a critical hermeneutic of suspicion, with the suggestion that participants navigate discursive constructions of motherhood and mental health in restricted yet agentic ways.
This research builds upon a small body of literature that explores the subjective experience of postpartum psychosis. It is, to date, the only research that has considered the narrative construction of postpartum psychosis from a counselling psychology perspective. This research points to an unaddressed need for more considered and specific support for women experiencing this kind of postnatal distress, along with their partners and family members. It also raises important questions regarding the nature and timing of information provision for women experiencing these kinds of difficulties, and points to the importance of future research exploring women’s relationship with psychiatric diagnosis in the context of postpartum psychosis. Finally, this research underscores the importance of integrating discursive representations of motherhood in psychologically-informed interventions for postpartum psychosis, particularly if and when women’s experiences deviate from normative representations
Supporting people diagnosed with schizophrenia living in the community and their caregivers: the Ghanaian perspective
Get PDFThe transition from hospital-based to community-based mental health services in Ghana has
faced significant obstacles due to insufficient resources and a lack of social support for both service users and their caregivers. Schizophrenia is recognised as one of the top 20 disease burdens globally, and mental disorders are major contributors to disability. Although the overall incidence of schizophrenia is low, its impacts on service users, families, and society are profound. The ramifications of schizophrenia often include social isolation, feelings of worthlessness, and a diminished social status, stemming from the individual's inability to fulfil socially defined roles.
Despite existing research, there is a notable gap in the literature concerning schizophrenia and the support available to affected individuals and their families within Ghana's community mental health services. Consequently, this study aims to explore the support mechanisms in place for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and their caregivers living in Ghana. This exploration focuses on the perceived meaning of support for service users, the nature of professional care provided to community mental health service users, the experiences of nurses working in the community mental health setting, the challenges facing community mental health services, and the appropriateness of services offered to caregivers.
Methodology: This study employed a qualitative approach, utilising interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) aided by the conceptual frameworks of the ecological model for health promotion (EMHP) and ladder of citizen participation. A purposive sample of 10 community service users diagnosed with schizophrenia, 21 caregivers of these individuals, and six community mental health nurses was recruited. Participants shared their lived experiences regarding the support of service users and their caregivers through in-depth interviews. The interviews were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed for thematic analysis.
Findings: The findings indicate that support for service users encompasses three dimensions: general, physical, and psychological. Furthermore, professional support was identified to consist of care reviews, assessments of service user needs, health promotion initiatives, access to medication and treatment, and counselling. Within the experiences of nurses providing care in community mental health settings, the study revealed numerous challenges, including a lack of free psychotropic medication for service users, inconsistent staff training, stigmatising attitudes toward mental disorders, and transportation difficulties for mental health nurses. Additionally, the services available to caregivers were often inadequate or non-existent, rendering them unsuitable.
To address these issues, the study recommends several actions, including policy reform to improve caregiver assessment processes, provision of free psychotropic medication, enhancement of caregiver group support, transportation provisions for nurses, establishment of resource centres, implementation of proactive mental health crisis teams, and a review of education and training for nurses.
Conclusion: The burden of caregiving on caregivers is significant. Recognising the significant burden placed on families in caregiving, gaining a deep understanding of the real challenges faced by service users and their relatives will enhance the quality of care they receive. Therefore, it is crucial to proactively identify and address the needs of both service users and their caregivers to ensure they receive the necessary and appropriate support. Introducing a social dimension into community mental healthcare will be crucial in mobilising resources within the community to enhance the wellbeing of service users and their relatives. This approach will also strengthen the delivery of community healthcare services by actively involving both service users and their caregivers, contributing to the overall rehabilitation of community mental health. The study recommends a comprehensive policy planning and implementation that emphasises resource allocation for health supplies, staff training, and caregiver group support. This innovative approach has the potential to inspire a review and establishment of community mental healthcare services that are truly effective and suitable for the context of Ghana, with implications potentially extendable to other similar nations in Africa
Learning to deliver LGBT+ aged care
No full textThis article has been selected for three reasons. Firstly, it allows us to consider aged care, and, more specifically, the challenges encountered by older people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ‘other less-articulated sexual and gender identities (LGBT+)’ (page 2). Secondly, and just as significantly, it is an example of research that is co-produced by educators, health and social care professionals and LGBT+ lay older people. Finally, it demonstrates the value of taking an intersectional approach to delivering good practice in social work. Trish Hafford-Letchfield (a social work academic who has worked in this field for many years) and others introduce us to a cross-national study in which participants from four European countries met at World Café workshops to share their experiences and document best practices for educators and learners in health and social care in the future. The chosen extracts draw from the findings and conclusion sections of the article
Worker productivity during Covid-19 and adaptation to working from home
No full textWe examine reported productivity changes of workers over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, which we validate against external metrics. On average, workers report being at least as productive as before the pandemic’s onset. However, this average masks substantial heterogeneity, which is linked to job quality, gender, the presence of children, and ease of working from home. As the pandemic progressed, those who previously performed well at home were more likely to remain there. Building on these findings, we estimate factors affecting productivity outcomes across locations controlling for endogenous selection. We find that those in ‘good’ jobs (with managerial duties and working for large firms) were advantaged specifically in the home environment. More generally we find an effect of key personality traits – agreeableness and conscientiousness – on productivity outcomes across locations