A work-based research assessment of the impact of 'lean manufacturing' on health and safety education within an SME

Globalisation has had a major impact on the engineering industry as pacific Rim countries undercut manufacturing costs and provide a more cost-effective location for many businesses. Engineering in Nortehrn Ireland has mostly declined owing to increased competition from these countries. Engineering companies are now forced to streamline their production processes and employ cost-reducing practices in order to meet customer demands at reduced prices. This article aims to analyse the effects of one such streamlining endeavour which was first introduced after World War II in Japan- 'lean manufacturing' . 'Lean manufacturing' aims to reduce all wasteful activities within the production process in order to improve productivity, while reducing manufacturing costs. The work-based project under consideration was concerned with the impact 'lean manufacturing' may have on health and safety performance and education within an engineering company. The focus of the project was to determine through work-based research, and quantitative analysis, the employee perception on health and safety: has it changed (either positively or negatively), as a consequence of implementing 'lean manufacturing'.

Crossing borders through cyberspace: a discussion of a social work education electronic exchange pilot project across the Atlantic

This article discusses a trial electronic exchange project developed between social work education departments in the Republic of Ireland and the USA. It outlines the contemporary significance and challenges of integrating global content into national social work curricula, which are often strongly tied to statutory or accreditation requirements. The mechanics of the exchange are explained and critiqued in detail. An illustrative example of how the transnational students discussed two questions is analyzed. The article finds that an international electronic exchange has great potential to make global social work real to students by allowing them to cross borders through cyberspace, however it requires careful planning and attention to cultural and educational system differences.

Threshold effects in the Teaching Space Allocation Problem with Splitting

Universities aim for good “Space Management” so as to use the teaching space efficiently. Part of this task is to assign rooms and time-slots to teaching activities with limited numbers and capacities of lecture theaters, seminar rooms, etc. It is also common that some teaching activities require splitting into multiple events. For example, lectures can be too large to fit in one room or good teaching practice requires that seminars/tutorials are taught in small groups. Then, space management involves decisions on splitting as well as the assignments to rooms and time-slots. These decisions must be made whilst satisfying the pedagogic requirements of the institution and constraints on space resources. The efficiency of such management can be measured by the “utilisation”: the percentage of available seat-hours actually used. In many institutions, the observed utilisation is unacceptably low, and this provides our underlying motivation: to study the factors that affect teaching space utilisation, with the goal of improving it. We give a brief introduction to our work in this area, and then introduce a specific model for splitting. We present experimental results that show threshold phenomena and associated easy-hard-easy patterns of computational difficulty. We discuss why such behaviour is of importance for space management.

Contemporary Studies of the Effectiveness of Social Work

This article is based upon an analysis of 95 experimental, quasi-experimental, preexperimental and client-opinion studies of the effectiveness of social work. Three-quarters of these screened studies show positive results within their different methodological conventions. An examination is made of which methods and patterns of helping are correlated with positive outcomes and the implications for practice, training, and management explored.

A feasibility study on the development and integration of a teaching aid for pharmacology

Traditional methods of teaching and learning in higher education are ever-evolving. This report assesses the feasibility of developing a teaching aid for pharmacology modules. Focus groups were established to gauge student and staff opinions on the use of teaching aids and an extensive literature review was conducted. The study identifies and critically evaluates a range of possibilities that could be developed and discusses practical issues such as accessibility, inclusion and assessment, associated with these potential aids. This initial study concludes that a suitable aid could take the form of a student-led development of a wiki-type website resource that included access to case-studies giving students ‘real-life’ experience of the concepts being studied. This type of project requires considerable time and financial support; nevertheless, this idea could be extended for many drugs and could be used in any health science course.

A connectionist perspective of the transition from Face-to-Face to online teaching in Higher Education

Existing research shows a slow transition to online education by many university teaching staff. A mixed methods approach is used to survey teacher educators in three jurisdictions in the UK who have made the transition to online teaching, followed by focus group and individual interviews to triangulate the data. The eight tenets of connectivism are used as a lens for analysis. Findings reveal sound pedagogical reasons for the limited choice of online tools and tutors highlight two elements, namely, self-fulfilment and their desire to continually develop as an educator, as the rationale for adopting informal professional development in the 21st century.

Comments and Additional Work on “High-Pressure Volumetric Properties of Imidazolium-Based Ionic Liquids: Effect of the Anion”

This works follows a publication of our group in J. Chem. Eng. Data2007, 52, 2204–2211 presenting high temperature and pressure density data for five imidazolium-based ionic liquids. At this period, very few ionic liquid density data were available in the literature, especially at high pressure, and the uncertainty of published results was calculated with respect to the literature data available for three of the five ionic liquids studied. Since 2007, the ionic liquid density databank has largely increased. In this work, a comparison of our published data in J. Chem. Eng. Data2007, 52, 2204–2211, with more than 1800 high pressure data coming from the literature up to December 2011 is presented to assess the uncertainty of our published values. The claimed uncertainty is close to 0.31 % for all IL density data sets except in the case of the [C1C2Im][EtSO4], where the uncertainty is up to 1.1 %. Reported data in J. Chem. Eng. Data2007, 52, 2204–2211, for this particular ionic liquid cannot be used as a reference. For this ionic liquid, new density measurements of the same sample batch have been remeasured by using the same experimental technique, and new experimental data presented herein are clearly higher than our previous published results. A 1H NMR analysis of the sample has confirmed hydrolysis of the ethylsulfate anion to ethanol and hydrogenate anion which explains the differences observed between our density data and the literature.