Insight on the stability of iron phthalocyanine/carbon nanotube hybrid catalysts for the electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction reaction

In recent years, the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) through the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (ECO2RR) has attracted considerable attention due to the characteristics of utilizing secondary energy electricity as the driving force and being able to convert CO2 into high-value chemical products. Until now, various catalysts have been developed. Because of the clear molecular structure and well-defined metal active center, metal phthalocyanines (MPcs) are one of the most attractive catalysts and have been widely used in the research of reaction mechanisms. A series of strategies are employed to adjust and optimize their catalytic performance for ECO2RR, including changing the metal center atom, forming hybrid catalysts, adding substituents, forming polymers, and so on. However, these strategies mainly focus on enhancing the activity and selectivity of MPcs, and the research on stability is severely lacking. In order to fill this research gap, I successfully synthesized the hybrid catalysts of FePc/CNT and FePc-NO2/CNT through a simple physical mixing method. Experimental results demonstrate that the introduction of -NO2 substituents improves the catalytic performance of ECO2RR. FePc-NO2/CNT shows a higher activity, selectivity, and stability than FePc/CNT. Finally, the reasons for poor reaction stability are discussed, confirming that the main cause of catalyst deactivation is metal leaching, while the strong adsorption of intermediates is a secondary factor. This work provides guidance for adjusting the performance of MPc-based catalysts and studying their deactivation mechanism

Dataset and software for the paper "Space Weather Effects on the Altitude of the CUAVA-1 2 CubeSat" by Cairns, Monger, and Arudselvan

This zipped folder contains the datsets and some python codes used to perform the analyses described in the paper "Space Weather Effects on the Altitude of the CUAVA-12 CubeSat" by Cairns et a. submitted to the AGU journal Space Weather in May 2024.As described in the paper

Anticipating Hazards in Machine Translations of Public Health Resources via Advanced Text Classification Pipelines

Public health educational resources developed by health institutions aim for high accessibility of information. The translation of these resources, which provide the public with a basic understanding of health risks and diseases, is commonly conducted by professional translators to cater to diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In recent years, the global advancement of information technology has broadened the use of Machine Translation (MT) in online health education and promotion. MT tools such as Google Translate, DeepL, and ChatGPT have significantly improved performance, yet they face challenges posed by the language complexity, content complexity, and formality of professional medical resources. In this study, we leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) tools to harness the power of text classification, a vital task that assigns text to one or more predefined categories. We aim to develop machine learning classifiers within our newly proposed Multi-Dimensional Text Classification Pipeline (MD-TCP) framework. As a risk-prevention mechanism, MD-TCP assists medical professionals with limited knowledge of the patient's language and helps patients who wish to self-navigate. Our model predicts the likelihood of clinical mistakes or incomprehensible machine translation outputs based on the features of English source input to the machine translation systems. MD-TCP is a new, comprehensive pipeline for data mining and feature extraction that we developed to achieve this goal. The pipeline has demonstrated significant improvements in both of our datasets. Regarding Accuracy, AUC, Sensitivity, Precision, and Specificity, our method improved by 24% - 33% compared to baseline methods. This underscores the potential of machine learning, mainly when implemented through MD-TCP, in predicting translation errors, thereby ensuring more accurate and understandable translations for health resources across diverse populations

Uncertain Waters: A Game of Collective Cooperation and Climate Change

This cooperative tabletop game immerses players in the complexities of managing flood risk under climate change. Players collaborate to implement adaptation strategies to protect community assets from flood impacts. Through dynamic gameplay and real-world decision-making scenarios, players must plan for evolving uncertainty and carefully allocate their resources to build a flood-resilient community. The game is suitable for 4-7 players and for ages 10+. The game is suitable for a range of applications and audiences, from use as a teaching tool for students to facilitating conversations between governments and communities

Explore the anticancer and antimetastatic effect of soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors (sEHI) in the treatment of human uveal melanoma (UM) in 2d and 3d cell culture models

Uveal melanoma is the primary form of eye cancer– a rare but deadly disease with up to 50% of the patients’ died from metastasis. Patients with metastatic UM have a lifespan of up to 18 months. There are few proven pharmacological treatments for UM, which are associated with suboptimal clinical outcomes. The pathogenesis of UM is largely unknown, which greatly limited the progress of UM drug discovery. This project is to screen novel candidate drugs from a group of kinase inhibitors for the treatment of UM, which will address the unmet need to treat this rare but deadly cancer. Soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) is a key enzyme involved in fatty acid metabolism, which is involved in cell mitochondrial function. Its inhibitors have been shown to exhibit anti-cancer effect; however, little is known regarding their applications in the treatment of UM. This study screened the anti-cancer and anti-metastatic effect of a group of in-house synthesised epoxide hydrolase inhibitors (sEHIs) in UM cell lines. UC2288 is the lead molecule selected from this compound library due to its potent effect in reducing cell viability in UM cell lines. Further molecular assays have been performed to evaluate the anti-UM effect of this lead molecule in both 2D and 3D UM cell culture models. The findings in this study indicated that 2288 is a novel drug candidate for UM, which shall be further investigated in in vivo settings

Applying principles of motor learning to speech intervention for children with cleft palate: is it effective?

Cleft palate with/without cleft lip (CP+/-L) is a common congenital defect and it is known to impact speech development. Minimising speech and resonance difficulties is a primary aim of CP+/-L repair. However, it is estimated that between 50-70 percent of children with CP+/-L will require speech pathology intervention, even after surgical repair. There is currently a paucity of evidence to support any speech intervention approach with children with CP+/-L, making it difficult for clinicians to choose an evidence-based intervention approach. Principles of motor learning (PML) provide clinicians with advice on the structure and frequency of practice and how to provide feedback that best facilitates learning, retention, and transfer of skill. However, despite the growing body of literature to support the principles of motor learning in the treatment of motor speech disorders in children, little is known about the effectiveness of using PML with children with CP+/-L. This research aimed to determine the effectiveness of speech interventions that apply PML, both clinician-led and parent-led app-based, in improving speech outcomes at word level for children with CP+/-L. Both clinician-led and parent-led app-based speech interventions were effective for children with cleft related speech errors. Nine of the eleven children experienced improvement for all phases of treatment completed, and the remaining two children made improvements in one of the two phases completed

Embodied Cities, Citied Bodies: Assembling Urban Research through Movement

While urban environments are commonly characterised and studied as nodes in international networks of migration, economics, cultures and policies, they are also sites for everyday embodied experience through which local cultures and identities are performed and produced in dynamic ways. Cities are bricks and mortar, steel and sheet glass, concrete and bitumen, but they are also vulnerable bodies with their fleshy, wet textures, navigating the precarity of existing in and amongst others. These bodies both make and are made by urbanity, just as urbanity makes and is made by these bodies. And more. The flows and frictions that result from being in and moving through environments complicates the binary frameworks that are often used to study ‘the city’. This thesis inhabits the gaps between these polarities, attempting to mediate dichotomies of space and place, local and global, past and present, human and ‘non-human’, among others. To do so, I dwell in the specifics of the urban assemblages that are Sydney, Australia and Lisbon, Portugal. Drawing on ethnographic and autoethnographic methodologies, I offer a hybrid account of how these cities are (co-)produced through movement and how bodies passing-by are (co-)produced through cities. Urbanity emerges in the varied configurations of textures, structures and ruptures that both make and are each of these cities, as well as in the stories I tell here. As such, I argue that cities are not just physical points of interconnection, but as an object of study, urban assemblages require research approaches and methodologies that sit between academic disciplines

Vaccination against chlamydiosis: An effective disease management tool in wild koala populations?

The koala, Phascolarctos cinereus, is classified as endangered following population declines due to numerous threats, one prominent threat being chlamydiosis, caused by Chlamydia pecorum infection. This has necessitated the exploration of effective management solutions to address chlamydiosis in wild koala populations. Vaccination offers the most promise to deliver immediate outcomes. Currently there is limited evidence that vaccination is efficacious in wild koala populations affected by chlamydiosis. The central aim of this thesis was to assess the suitability vaccination as a management tool to address chlamydiosis in wild koala populations, with the overarching goal of enhancing conservation management for the koala. This thesis evaluated the ability of two vaccines to reduce chlamydial shedding, prevent infection, and minimise the development and progression of chlamydiosis in diverse populations, in two field-based blinded randomised placebo-controlled trials. The vaccines examined in this thesis did not significantly reduce chlamydial shedding, prevent infection, or prevent or mitigate chlamydiosis when compared to a placebo-control cohort. The conclusion reached from this body of work is that these vaccines are not effective as standalone tools for managing chlamydiosis. It is hypothesised that these vaccines did not stimulate an appropriate immune response to confer beneficial effects. This prompted investigation of the immunological profiles of koalas naturally infected with C. pecorum and comparisons were made to vaccine-elicited immune responses. The findings revealed differences between diseased, infected and non-diseased, infected koalas, offering insights into vaccine trial outcomes. The findings of this thesis contribute knowledge that will allow for advancements in vaccine efficacy and highlight prospective areas for future research, essential for the use of vaccination as a management strategy to address chlamydiosis within wild koala populations

Graphitic Carbon Materials from Clean Hydrogen Production for Advanced Energy Storage Systems

Catalytic methane pyrolysis (CH4 → 2H2 + C), which directly splits methane into hydrogen and solid carbon, is a promising hydrogen production process with no direct emissions of carbon dioxide. With a mass ratio of hydrogen to solid carbon of 1 to 3, large amounts of carbon materials are generated from the methane pyrolysis process. Developing value-added applications for these solid carbon co-products could eliminate waste generation from the process, bring economic benefits to the process, and significantly offset hydrogen production costs. Herein, graphitic carbon materials were synthesized from catalytic methane pyrolysis and were further purified by a high-temperature thermal treatment or room-temperature electrochemical purification. A comprehensive set of characterization tools investigated their physiochemical properties. Afterward, essential functions of these graphitic carbon materials for energy storage applications were demonstrated in battery systems, which involved conductive additives in manganese dioxide cathodes for zinc-carbon batteries, and electrode active materials for dual-carbon batteries. This opens new energy storage applications for these graphitic carbon materials from catalytic methane pyrolysis, benefiting the broader adoption of the clean hydrogen production process via methane pyrolysis

Mental health recovery resources

This is a sample of some interviews produced as part of the mental health recovery project. This was designed for health science students to gain an insight into mental health challenges from the perspective of people with lived experience