A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on a Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in co-ordination, mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst students.

Differential drift and parasitism in invading and native Gammarus spp. (Crustacea : Amphipoda)

Invading and native species often interact directly, such as by predation, producing patterns of exclusion and coexistence. Less direct factors, such as interactions with the broader abiotic and biotic environment, may also contribute to such patterns, but these have received less recognition. In Northern Ireland, the North American Gammarus tigrinus has invaded freshwaters populated with the native Gammarus duebeni celticus, with intraguild predation between the two implicated in their relative success. However, these species also engage in day and night

Monozygotic twins discordant for phacomatosis pigmentovascularis: evidence for the concept of twin spotting.

The term phacomatosis pigmentovascularis (PPV) refers to the occurrence of vascular nevi with melanocytic or epidermal nevi. We report on monozygotic twins (MZTs) discordant for phacomatosis cesioflammea (PPV type II) providing evidence for the mechanism of twin spotting in the development of PPV. The affected twin had a nevus flammeus on the right arm and the right maxilla, and a pigmented area on the trunk in keeping with a persistent, aberrant Mongolian spot. The affected twin had bilateral ocular melanocytosis with abnormal scleral pigmentation, iris mamillations, increased pigmentation of the trabecular meshwork, and increased fundal pigmentation and secondary glaucoma. DNA testing confirmed monozygosity. This case of MZTs discordant for PPV supports the hypothesis that PPV results from mosaicism due to a post-zygotic mutational event and the concept of twin spotting.

The Contours of the Right to Self-defence: Is the Requirement of Imminence Merely a Translator for the Concept of Necessity?

The right to self-defence has lately been subjected to intense academic controversy, both at the domestic and international level. The debate is focused on the question of whether or not the requirement of imminence is merely a translator for the notion of necessity. At the domestic level, the debate has mainly been kindled by feminist scholars, who, in the context of the 'battered woman', argue that the requirement of imminence should be discarded from the contours of the self-defence doctrine. The purpose of this article is to prove the necessity of the imminence requirement as a litmus test to detect possible abuses of the self-defence doctrine.

An exploratory study of Principal Investigator roles in UK University Proof-of-Concept processes: an Absorptive capacity perspective

The increasing emphasis on academic entrepreneurship, technology transfer and research commercialisation within UK universities is predicated on basic research being developed by academics into commercial entities such as university spin-off companies or licensing arrangements. However, this process is fraught with challenges and risks, given the degree of uncertainty regarding future returns. In an attempt to minimise such risks, the Proof-of-Concept (PoC) process has been developed within University Science Park Incubators (USIs) to test the technological, business and market potential of embryonic technology. The key or the pivotal stakeholder within the PoC is the Principal Investigator (PI), who is usually the lead academic responsible for the embryonic technology. Within the current literature, there appears to be a lack of research pertaining to the role of the PI in the PoC process. Moreover, Absorptive Capacity (ACAP) has emerged within the literature as a theoretical framework or lens for exploring the development and application of new knowledge and technology, where the USI is the organisation considered in the current study. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the role and influence of the PI in the PoC process within a USI setting using an ACAP perspective. The research involved a multiple case analysis of PoC applications within a UK university USI. The results demonstrate the role of the PI in developing practices and routines within the PoC process. These practices and processes were initially tacit and informal in nature but became more explicit and formal over time so that knowledge was retained within the USI after the PIs had completed the PoC process. © 2010 The Authors. R&D Management © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.