Time-Resolved DRIFTS, MS, and Resistance Study of SnO2 Materials: The Role of Surface Hydroxyl Groups in Formation of Donor States

Time-resolved DRIFTS, MS, and resistance measurements were used to study the interaction of undoped and Pd-doped SnO2 with H-2 in air and argon at 300 degrees C. Using first-order kinetics, we compare the time constants for the resistance drop and its partial recovery with those of the surface hydroxyl evolution and water formation in the gas phase upon exposure to hydrogen. In the case of the undoped oxide, resistance and bridging hydroxyls (BOHs) evolve similarly, manifesting a fast main drop followed by recovery at a similar rate. The rate of water formation for this material was found to be much slower than that of the main drop in both the resistance and BOHs. In contrast, the resistance change for SnO2-Pd appeared to be similar to that of water formation, and no correlation was found between the evolution of resistance and surface OHs. Isotopic exchange on both materials revealed that water formation occurs via fast and slow hydrogen transfer to surface oxygen species. While the former originates from just-adsorbed hydrogen, the latter appears to proceed from the preadsorbed OHs. Both surfaces exhibit close interaction between chemisorbed oxygen and existing bridging OH groups, indicating that the latter is an intermediate in the hydrogen oxidation and generation of donor states on the surface.

USING ‘NUTRITIONAL NARRATIVE’ AND FOCUS GROUPS TO UNDERSTAND HOW NUTRITIONAL CARE CAN BETTER PRIORITISED FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN HOSPITAL SETTINGS

Introduction: Poor nutritional status among older people is well documented with 40% of older people reported as malnourished on hospital admission. Poor nutrition contributes to increased infection, poorer patient outcomes and death and longer hospital stays. In this study, we assessed the ‘nutrition narrative’ from older hospital patients together with nutrition knowledge among nursing and medical staff and students.
Methods: The study used a convenience sample of older people (30, mean age 82 years) in two large geographically separate city hospitals. Patients mentally alert and consenting, gave a recorded ‘nutrition narrative’ to get a sense of how they felt their nutritional needs were being met in hospital. Main themes were identified by grounded analysis framework. Focus groups were recruited from medical/nursing teachers and students to assess their working knowledge of nutrition and the nutritional needs of the older patient group.
Results: Analysis of the ‘nutrition narrative’ suggested several themes (i) staff should listen to patients' needs/wishes in discussion with themselves and family members (ii) staff should continue to encourage and progress a positive eating experience (iii) staff should monitor food eaten/or not eaten and increase regular monitoring of weight. The focus groups with medical and nursing students suggested a limited knowledge about nutritional care of older people and little understanding about roles or cross-talk about nutrition across the multidisciplinary groups.
Conclusions: The ‘nutrition narrative’ themes suggested that the nutritional experience of older people in hospital can and must be improved. Nursing and medical staff providing medical and nursing care need better basic knowledge of nutrition and nutritional assessment, an improved understanding of the roles of the various multidisciplinary staff and of hospital catering pathways. Care professionals need to prioritise patient nutrition much more highly and recognise nutritional care as integral to patient healing and recovery

Context-Aware Body Area Networks (CABAN) for interactive smart environments:Interference characterization

Body Area Networks are unique in that the large-scale mobility of users allows the network itself to travel across a diverse range of operating domains or even to enter new and unknown environments. This network mobility is unlike node mobility in that sensed changes in inter-network interference level may be used to identify opportunities for intelligent inter-networking, for example, by merging or splitting from other networks, thus providing an extra degree of freedom. This paper introduces the concept of context-aware bodynets for interactive environments using inter-network interference sensing. New ideas are explored at both the physical and link layers with an investigation based on a 'smart' office environment. A series of carefully controlled measurements of the mesh interconnectivity both within and between an ambulatory body area network and a stationary desk-based network were performed using 2.45 GHz nodes. Received signal strength and carrier to interference ratio time series for selected node to node links are presented. The results provide an insight into the potential interference between the mobile and static networks and highlight the possibility for automatic identification of network merging and splitting opportunities. © 2010 ACM.

Participatory Action Research with and within community activist groups: capturing the collective experience of Ireland's Community and Voluntary Pillar

The inclusion of community activists in policy planning is increasingly recognized at the highest international level. This article shows how the use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) can present a deeper and more holistic picture of the experiences of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in shaping national-level social policy. By utilizing action-based research, the Community and Voluntary Pillar (CVP) of Ireland’s system of social partnership is shown to be an important agent in deliberating national bargaining outcomes (known as the Towards 2016 national agreement). The key contribution of this research is the reflective methodological considerations in terms of PAR design, execution and participant integration in the research process as a way to enrich and develop a deeper and more informed community of practice.

Cooperative learning in science:Intervention in the secondary school

The use of cooperative learning in secondary school is reported - an area of considerable concern given attempts to make secondary schools more interactive and gain higher recruitment to university science courses. In this study the intervention group was 259 pupils aged 12-14 years in nine secondary schools, taught by 12 self-selected teachers. Comparison pupils came from both intervention and comparison schools (n = 385). Intervention teachers attended three continuing professional development days, in which they received information, engaged with resource packs and involved themselves in cooperative learning. Measures included both general and specific tests of science, attitudes to science, sociometry, self-esteem, attitudes to cooperative learning and transferable skills (all for pupils) and observation of implementation fidelity. There were increases during cooperative learning in pupil formulation of propositions, explanations and disagreements. Intervened pupils gained in attainment, but comparison pupils gained even more. Pupils who had experienced cooperative learning in primary school had higher pre-test scores in secondary education irrespective of being in the intervention or comparison group. On sociometry, comparison pupils showed greater affiliation to science work groups for work, but intervention pupils greater affiliation to these groups at break and out of school. Other measures were not significant. The results are discussed in relation to practice and policy implications. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Law and Society: Volume III: Legal Processes and Professional Groups within the Legal Field

The thriving and well-established field of Law and Society (also referred to as Socio-legal Studies) has diverse methodological influences; it draws on social-scientific and arts-based methods. The approach of scholars researching and teaching in the field often crosses disciplinary borders, but, broadly speaking, Law and Society scholarship goes behind formalism to investigate how and why law operates, or does not operate as intended, in society. By exploring law’s connections with broader social and political forces—both domestic and international—scholars gain valuable perspectives on ideology, culture, identity, and social life. Law and Society scholarship considers both the law in contexts, as well as contexts in law.
Law and Society flourishes today, perhaps as never before. Academic thinkers toil both on the mundane and the local, as well as the global, making major advances in the ways in which we think both about law and society. Especially over the last four decades, scholarly output has rapidly burgeoned, and this new title from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Law series answers the need for an authoritative reference collection to help users make sense of the daunting quantity of serious research and thinking.
Edited by the leading scholars in the field, Law and Society brings together in four volumes the vital classic and contemporary contributions. Volume I is dedicated to historical antecedents and precursors. The second volume covers methodologies and crucial themes. The third volume assembles key works on legal processes and professional groups, while the final volume of the collection focuses on substantive areas. Together, the volumes provide a one-stop ‘mini library’ enabling all interested researchers, teachers, and students to explore the origins of this thriving sub discipline, and to gain a thorough understanding of where it is today.

Key Players and Key Groups in Teams

This paper contributes to the literature on centrality measures in economics by defining a team game and identifying the key players and key groups
in the game. We extend the work of Ballester et al. (Econometrica, 2006) by incorporating a network outcome component in the players' payoff functions and prove that there is a unique interior Nash Equilibrium in pure strategies. We develop a team intercentrality measure based on alternative scenarios that capture the externality created by teammates on each player.

Dendrons with spermine surface groups as potential building blocks for nonviral vectors in gene therapy

This paper investigates a series of dendrons based on the Newkome dendritic scaffold that displays a naturally occurring polyamine (spermine) on their surface. These dendrons have previously been shown to interact with DNA in a generation dependent manner with the more highly branched dendrons exhibiting a strong multivalency effect for the spermine surface groups. In this paper, we investigate the ability of these dendrons to transfect DNA into cells (human breast carcinoma cells, MDA-MB-231, and murine myoblast cells, C2C12) as determined by the luciferase assay. Although the dendrons are unable to transfect DNA in their own right, they are capable of delivering DNA in vitro when administered with chloroquine, which assists with escape from endocytic vesicles. The cytotoxicity of the dendrons was determined using the XTT assay, and it was shown that the dendrons were nontoxic either alone or in the presence of DNA. However, when administered with DNA and chloroquine, the most highly branched dendron did exhibit some cytotoxicity. This paper elucidates the relationship between in vitro transfection efficiency and toxicity. While transfection efficiencies are modest, the low toxicity of the dendrons, both in their own right, and in the presence of DNA, provides encouragement that this type of building block, which has a relatively high affinity for DNA, will provide a useful starting point for the further synthetic development of more effective gene transfection agents.

Distribution of terminal nerve entry points to the flexor and extensor groups of forearm muscles:An anatomical study

The motor points of the skeletal muscles, mainly of interest to anatomists and physiologists, have recently attracted much attention from researchers in the field of functional electrical stimulation. The muscle motor point has been defined as the entry point of the motor nerve branch into the epimysium of the muscle belly. Anatomists have pointed out that many muscles in the limbs have multiple motor points. Knowledge of the location of nerve branches and terminal nerve entry points facilitates the exact insertion and the suitable selection of the number of electrodes required for each muscle for functional electrical stimulation. The present work therefore aimed to describe the number, location, and distribution of motor points in the human forearm muscles to obtain optimal hand function in many clinical situations. Twenty three adult human cadaveric forearms were dissected. The numbers of primary nerves and motor points for each muscle were tabulated. The mean numbers and the standard deviation were calculated and grouped in tables. Data analyses were performed with the use of a statistical analysis package (SPSS 13.0). The proximal third of the muscle was the usual part of the muscle that received the motor points. Most of the forearm muscles were innervated from the lateral side and deep surface of the muscle. The information in this study may also be usefully applied in selective denervation procedures to balance muscles in spastic upper limbs. Copyright © 2007 Via Medica.

Doing Focus Groups and Interviews with Recent Migrants to Northern Ireland: A Dynamic Interplay of Ethics, Language and Access

This case describes a qualitative social science research project that was conducted in 2009 and that examined the experiences of recent migrants to Northern Ireland. While background to the research and key findings are presented, the topic forms a backdrop to the case. The following aspects of the study are presented: the theoretical context; formulating the research question, design and methodology; key methodological issues; data collection and analysis; project dissemination; and research funding and reporting. The case pays particular attention to the needs and impact of different groups including the researcher, the funding body, the researcher’s employer and the researched. The significance of access, language and ethics to this study are examined. Finally, the way in which the research unfolded in an often-unpredictable way throughout the implementation process is highlighted in the narrative.

Operator systems from discrete groups

We express various sets of quantum correlations studied in the theoretical physics literature in terms of different tensor products of operator systems of discrete groups. We thus recover earlier results of Tsirelson and formulate a new approach for the study of quantum correlations. To do this we formulate a general framework for the study of operator systems arising from discrete groups. We study in detail the operator system of the free group Fn on n generators, as well as the operator systems of the free products of finitely many copies of the two-element group Z2. We examine various tensor products of group operator systems, including the minimal, the maximal, and the commuting tensor products. We introduce a new tensor product in the category of operator systems and formulate necessary and sufficient conditions for its equality to the commuting tensor product in the case of group operator systems.