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Systematic study of H2 production from catalytic photoreforming of cellulose over Pt catalysts supported on TiO2
No full textHydrogen (H2) production from photocatalytic reforming of cellulose is a promising way for sustainable H2 to be generated. Herein, we report a systematic study of the photocatalytic reforming of cellulose over Pt/m-TiO2 (i.e. mixed TiO2, 80% of anatase and 20% of rutile) catalysts in water. The optimum operation condition was established by studying the effect of Pt loading, catalyst concentration, cellulose concentration and reaction temperature on the gas production rate of H2 (rH2) and CO2 (rCO2), suggesting an optimum operation condition at 40 °C with 1.0 g·L−1 of cellulose and 0.75 g·L−1 of 0.16-Pt/m-TiO2 catalyst (with 0.16 wt% Pt loadting) to achieve a relatively sound photocatalytic performance with rH2 = 9.95 µmol·h−1. It is also shown that although the photoreforming of cellulose was operated at a relatively mild condition (i.e. with an UV-A lamp irradiation at 40 °C in the aqueous system), a low loading of Pt at ~0.16 wt% on m-TiO2 could promote the H2 production effectively. Additionally, by comparing the reaction order expressed from both rH2 (a1) and rCO2 (a2) with respect to cellulose and water, the possible mechanism of H2 production was proposed
Seeking sustainable futures in marketing and consumer research
No full textPurpose Seeking ways towards a sustainable future is the most dominant socio-political challenge of our time. Marketing should have a crucial role to play in leading research and impact in sustainability, yet it is limited by relying on cognitive behavioural theories rooted in the 1970s, which have proved to have little bearing on actual behaviour. This paper interrogates why marketing is failing to address the challenge of sustainability, and identifies alternative approaches.Design/methodology The constraint in theoretical development contextualises the problem, followed by a focus on four key themes to promote theory development: developing sustainable people; models of alternative consumption; building towards sustainable marketplaces; and theoretical domains for the future. These themes were developed and refined during the 2018 Academy of Marketing workshop on seeking sustainable futures. MacInnis’s (2011) framework for conceptual contributions in marketing provides the narrative thread and structure.Findings The current state of play is explicated, combining the four themes and MacInnis’s framework to identify the failures and gaps in extant approaches to the field.Research Implications This paper sets a new research agenda for the marketing discipline in our quest for sustainable futures in marketing and consumer research.Practical Implications Approaches are proposed which will allow the transformation of the dominant socio-economic systems towards a model capable of promoting a sustainable future.Originality/value The paper provides thought leadership in marketing and sustainability as befits the special issue, by moving beyond description of the problem to making a conceptual contribution and setting a research agenda for the future
A brief psychometric and clinimetric evaluation of self-report burden and mental health measures completed by care partners of people with Parkinson’s-related dementia.
No full textThis report describes the evaluation of the psychometric and clinimetric properties of nine self-report measures completed by informal care partners of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) or dementia in Parkinson’s disease (PDD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). One hundred thirty-six care partners completed measures on relationship satisfaction, burden, stress, mood, resilience, health, quality of life and feelings related to care provision. Psychometric properties, such as internal consistency, convergent validity, floor and ceiling effects, completion rate and data missingness, as well as clinimetric properties, such as time to administer, ease of scoring, readability and availability of the scales, were examined. Additionally, the design of the measure development studies was assessed with the 2018 COSMIN Risk of Bias checklist. Participants were mostly married women (> 85%) with a mean age of 69.4 years. The methodological quality of the design of all measure development studies was ‘inadequate’. Five widely applied measures (Zarit Burden Interview, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Short Form 12 Health Survey, Relatives’ Stress Scale and EuroQoL-5D) and two less researched instruments (Brief Resilience Scale, Relationship Satisfaction Scale) had high internal consistency and completion rates, moderate to strong convergent validity, low missingness and floor effects, and excellent clinical utility ratings. Two scales (Dyadic Relationship Scale, Family Caregiving Role) received poor psychometric ratings and their usage amongst informal care partners is not recommended. In conclusion, well-validated and widely used measures received strong psychometric and clinimetric ratings. Future studies are required to determine the most reliable, valid and robust caregiver-reported measures
Stepping Out of the Shadows: Supporting Actors’ Strategies for Managing End-user Experiences in Service Ecosystems
No full textIn service ecosystems not all actors have direct relationships with end users, yet they are often critical for delivering better service experiences. Specific events (e.g. service failures) may require these supporting actors, who are often hidden during regular customer experience journeys, to become visible when deviations or disruptions occur. Deciding whether and when to come out of the shadows presents a complex managerial challenge for ecosystem actors providing supporting services, with important implications for end user’s experiences. We examine strategies that service ecosystem actors can adopt for managing end-user experiences in complex ecosystems, and the implications for themselves and other ecosystem actors. Based upon two dimensions, visibility and synchronization, six experience management strategies are outlined and contrasted. Using case vignettes, we explore how and when such strategies might be adopted and potential impacts on service sellers and end-user experiences during regular and atypical service journeys, and present future research propositions
Cause of intrauterine and neonatal Death in Twin Pregnancies (CoDiT): development of a novel classification system
No full textObjective: Twin pregnancies have a significantly higher perinatal mortality than singleton pregnancies and current classification systems for perinatal death lack twin-specific categories, potentially leading to loss of important information regarding cause of death. We introduce and test a classification system designed to assign a cause of death in twin pregnancies (CoDiT).Design: Retrospective cross-sectional study.Setting: Tertiary maternity unit in England with a perinatal pathology service.Population: Twin pregnancies in the West Midlands affected by fetal or neonatal demise of one or both twins between 1st January 2005 and 31st December 2016 in which post-mortem examination was undertaken.Methods: A multidisciplinary panel designed CoDiT by adapting the most appropriate elements of singleton classification systems. The system was tested by assigning cause of death in 265 fetal and neonatal deaths from 144 twin pregnancies. Cause of death was validated by another obstetrician blinded to the original classification.Main Outcome Measures: Inter-rater, intra-rater, inter-disciplinary agreement and cause of death.Results: Cohen’s Kappa demonstrated “strong” (>0.8) inter-rater, intra-rater and inter-disciplinary agreement (95% CI 0.70-0.91). The commonest cause of death irrespective of chorionicity was the placenta; twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) was the commonest placental cause in monochorionic twins and acute chorioamnionitis in dichorionic twins.Conclusions: This novel classification system records causes of death in twin pregnancies from postmortem reports with high inter-user agreement. We highlight differences in aetiology of deathbetween monochorionic and dichorionic twins
Men Behaving Badly: Representations of Masculinity in Post-Global Financial Crisis Cinema
No full textFilms about finance often deploy masculinity as a key locus of critique, most recently in post-global financial crisis (GFC) cinema. While feminist IPE can direct attention to certain heteronormative limitations in the gendered critique of finance – i.e. it relays stereotypes of “reckless” risky men who need to be reined in by “responsible” “prudent” women – this paper discerns important nuances in the representation of masculinity in post-GFC cinema. Beyond moralizing binaries of stable, responsible husbands vs. greedy, predatory bankers, we argue that post-GFC cinema has augmented the gendered critique of crisis by focusing on “multiple masculinities”, the “outsiders and the weirdos”, as well as the working class “gangs” of finance in films like Inside Job, Margin Call, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Big Short. Instead of turning to women as the naturalized redeemers of “testosterone capitalism”, these films use humor and irony to create a reflexive distance, while celebrating the potential of emotional and geeky masculinities. Gone are the ‘redemptive women’ of embedded liberal finance, to reveal a vision of adaptable financial man that both naturalizes complexity and constricts the scope of financial critique to a moral valorization of resilience
Alicyclic Polyesters from a Bicyclic 1,3-dioxane-4-one
No full textAlicyclic polymers with in-chain aliphatic rings promote improved thermal and optical performance due to backbone rigidity but remain limited in their functional diversity. In this paper we report the first polyester system with solely alicyclic ring connectivity, afforded through ring-opening of a bicyclic dioxan-4-one ring. Polymerisation of the accessible trans isomer is challenging, but affords a novel family of polymers and copolymers
Sequential Microwave-Assisted Dealumination and Hydrothermal Alkaline Treatments of Y Zeolite for Preparing Hierarchical Mesoporous Zeolite Catalysts
No full textA novel post-synthetic method combining the microwave (MW)-assisted dealumination and hydrothermal (HT) alkaline treatment for obtaining mesoporous Y zeolite catalysts is presented. In the first-step MW-assisted dealumination of the pristine Y zeolite, both the mineral acid (i.e. hydrochloric acid, HCl) and organic carboxylic acids (e.g. oxalic and diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid) were used (all at 0.16 M), and their effects on the physical and chemical properties of the resulting modified zeolites (after the identical HT alkaline treatment using 0.2 M sodium hydroxide solution) are studied in detail by comprehensive characterisation of the bulk silicon-to-aluminium (SAR) ratio, crystallinity and textural properties. The findings show that, in the developed sequential method, (i) HCl was only effective to achieve the hydrolysis of the zeolite, (ii) carboxylic acids with the function of chelation was very capable of extracting Al species and creating mesopores, and (iii) the mesopores formation is a function of the number of coordination sites in the carboxylic acid. The hierarchical feature of the mesopores in the modified zeolites (using carboxylic acids) was probed by the model reaction of aldol condensation of 1-heptanal with benzaldehyde for the selective formation of jasminaldehyde. The normalised selectivity to jasminaldehyde (with respect to the strong acidity) was proportionally related to the specific mesopores volume of the zeolites, revealing hierarchical porous networks in the relevant modified Y zeolites and indicating the effect of hierarchical mesopores in the zeolites on their catalytic performance
Impact of Using a PCM-Copper Foam Composite on Charging/Discharging Process of Bundled-Tube LHTES Units
No full textA promising alternative to either chemical or sensible heat energy storage systems is the latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) due to its superiority in many design aspects such as the high storage capacity as well as chemical stability and relatively low cost. Due to its potentials to overcome the problems of instability and intermittency of energy through using phase change material (PCM), latent heat energy storage has been used in a variety of practical applications. However, most of the phase change materials possess poor thermal conductivity resulting in modest charging/discharging rate. To overcome this deficit, high porosity metal foam is used to improve the overall thermal conductivity of the phase change materials leading to enhancing the heat transported, and hence, promoting the PCM melting and solidification.This proposal has been utilised to improve the performance of a latent heat thermal storage system having a parallel/staggered tube-bundle structure filled with paraffin as a PCM, where an open-cell copper foam is compounded to the paraffin wax. The PCM unit is charged/discharged using a relatively hot/cold water stream flowing across the tube-bundle units. The feasibility of such a configuration is examined numerically through simulating the proposed PCM-metal foam composite units and their surrounding shell computationally. The ANSYS Fluent CFD commercial code has been employed to solve the volume averaged Navier-Stokes equations taking into account the local thermal non-equilibrium expected to occur between the solid metal foam matrix and the paraffin phase-change material. The impact of some design and operating parameters on the charging/discharging performance has been tested including the water flow strength as well as the tube-bundle configuration. The currently proposed design of LHTES system has been found not only easy to configure but practically efficient as well, where the charging/discharging rate can be remarkably boosted through wise selection of design parameters.<br/