13,964 research outputs found

    Microsoft Teams and team performance in the COVID-19 pandemic within an NHS Trust Community Service in North-West England

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    Purpose This study aims to evaluate the impact the introduction of Microsoft Teams has had on team performance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic within a National Health Service (NHS) Community Service. Design/methodology/approach Microsoft Teams was rolled out across the NHS over a period of four days, partly in response to the need for social distancing. This case study reviews how becoming a virtual team affected team performance, the role Microsoft Teams had played in supporting staff to work in higher virtuality, understand what elements underpin a successful virtual team and how these results correlate to the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1985). Findings The findings indicate that Teams made a positive impact to the team at a time of heightened clinical pressures and working in unfamiliar environments without the supportive benefits of face-to-face contact with colleagues in terms of incidental knowledge sharing and health and well-being. Originality/value Further developments were needed to make virtual meetings more accessible for introverted colleagues, support asynchronous communication, address training needs and support leaders to adapt and operate in higher virtuality

    Message Journal, Issue 5: COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE Capturing visual insights, thoughts and reflections on 2020/21 and beyond...

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    If there is a theme running through the Message Covid-19 special issue, it is one of caring. Of our own and others’ resilience and wellbeing, of friendship and community, of students, practitioners and their futures, of social justice, equality and of doing the right thing. The veins of designing with care run through the edition, wide and deep. It captures, not designers as heroes, but those with humble views, exposing the need to understand a diversity of perspectives when trying to comprehend the complexity that Covid-19 continues to generate. As graphic designers, illustrators and visual communicators, contributors have created, documented, written, visualised, reflected, shared, connected and co-created, designed for good causes and re-defined what it is to be a student, an academic and a designer during the pandemic. This poignant period in time has driven us, through isolation, towards new rules of living, and new ways of working; to see and map the world in a different light. A light that is uncertain, disjointed, and constantly being redefined. This Message issue captures responses from the graphic communication design community in their raw state, to allow contributors to communicate their experiences through both their written and visual voice. Thus, the reader can discern as much from the words as the design and visualisations. Through this issue a substantial number of contributions have focused on personal reflection, isolation, fear, anxiety and wellbeing, as well as reaching out to community, making connections and collaborating. This was not surprising in a world in which connection with others has often been remote, and where ‘normal’ social structures of support and care have been broken down. We also gain insight into those who are using graphic communication design to inspire and capture new ways of teaching and learning, developing themselves as designers, educators, and activists, responding to social justice and to do good; gaining greater insight into society, government actions and conspiracy. Introduction: Victoria Squire - Coping with Covid: Community, connection and collaboration: James Alexander & Carole Evans, Meg Davies, Matthew Frame, Chae Ho Lee, Alma Hoffmann, Holly K. Kaufman-Hill, Joshua Korenblat, Warren Lehrer, Christine Lhowe, Sara Nesteruk, Cat Normoyle & Jessica Teague, Kyuha Shim. - Coping with Covid: Isolation, wellbeing and hope: Sadia Abdisalam, Tom Ayling, Jessica Barness, Megan Culliford, Stephanie Cunningham, Sofija Gvozdeva, Hedzlynn Kamaruzzaman, Merle Karp, Erica V. P. Lewis, Kelly Salchow Macarthur, Steven McCarthy, Shelly Mayers, Elizabeth Shefrin, Angelica Sibrian, David Smart, Ane Thon Knutsen, Isobel Thomas, Darryl Westley. - Coping with Covid: Pedagogy, teaching and learning: Bernard J Canniffe, Subir Dey, Aaron Ganci, Elizabeth Herrmann, John Kilburn, Paul Nini, Emily Osborne, Gianni Sinni & Irene Sgarro, Dave Wood, Helena Gregory, Colin Raeburn & Jackie Malcolm. - Coping with Covid: Social justice, activism and doing good: Class Action Collective, Xinyi Li, Matt Soar, Junie Tang, Lisa Winstanley. - Coping with Covid: Society, control and conspiracy: Diana BĂźrhală, Maria Borțoi, Patti Capaldi, TĂąnia A. Cardoso, Peter Gibbons, Bianca Milea, Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Danne Wo

    Molecular diagnosis of Mycoplasma bovis

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    Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina VeterinĂĄriaMycoplasma bovis is a bacteria responsible for different disease presentations in cattle, such as pneumonia, mastitis, otitis, genital disorders, keratoconjuntivitis and arthritis, presently considered as one of the major emerging pathogens affecting cattle. Until this day, it is responsible for losses in animal production of over 150 million euros across Europe. The pathogenesis of Mycoplasma-associated diseases is multifactorial and the highly variable surface lipoproteins allows a fast and efficient dissemination of M. bovis within the host and the herd. Due to its high antigenic plasticity, its ability to survive within multiple host cells and the capacity to establish multiple synergistic interactions with other pathogens, makes M. bovis and associated infections are a major challenge in Veterinary Medicine, since the vaccine is not efficient and antibiotics are almost inefficient. This study aims at developing and validating a quantitative PCR protocol for the diagnosis of M. bovis. 93 milk samples, from 5 different Portuguese farms, were collected, processed and each one’s DNA extracted to be analyzed through a qPCR method targeting the uvrC and uvrC2024 genes. Given the percentage of positivity, which was high, the conclusion we can take from the study is that there is still work to do, in terms of establishing a uniformed practice to tackle the wide presence of M. bovis in farms.RESUMO - DiagnĂłstico Molecular de M. bovis - Mycoplasma bovis Ă© uma bactĂ©ria cuja infecção pode ter diferentes apresentaçÔes tais como pneumonia, mastite, otite, afecçÔes genitais, queratoconjuntivite e artrites. É um dos agentes considerados emergentes e que afecta a produção agropecuĂĄria, sendo responsĂĄvel por perdas na ordem dos 150 milhĂ”es de euros na Europa. Tem uma patogĂ©nese multifactorial e as proteĂ­nas membranares Ă  sua superfĂ­cie conferem uma variabilidade que permite uma rĂĄpida e eficiente disseminação no hospedeiro, e no rebanho. Esta variabilidade e capacidade de resistir Ă  imunidade do hospedeiro, assim como as suas interacçÔes sinĂ©rgicas com outros agentes patogĂ©nicos, tornam as infecçÔes por M. bovis um obstĂĄculo difĂ­cil de conter e ultrapassar na Medicina VeterinĂĄria, isto porque quer a antibioterapia, quer a vacina, nĂŁo sĂŁo eficientes. Este estudo procura desenvolver e contribuir para o estabelecimento de um protocolo de diagnĂłstico para a detecção de M. bovis. Vindas de 5 produçÔes portuguesas diferentes, 93 amostras foram processadas e analisadas atravĂ©s de um qPCR, com os genes uvrC e uvrC2024 como genes alvo. Dados os resultados, com uma positividade significativa pode-se considerar que ainda hĂĄ trabalho pela frente em termos de estabelecer e uniformizar uma prĂĄtica para combater a larga presença de M. bovis nas exploraçÔes.N/

    Metaphors of London fog, smoke and mist in Victorian and Edwardian Art and Literature

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    Julian Wolfreys has argued that after 1850 writers employed stock images of the city without allowing them to transform their texts. This thesis argues, on the contrary, that metaphorical uses of London fog were complex and subtle during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, at least until 1914. Fog represented, in particular, formlessness and the dissolution of boundaries. Examining the idea of fog in literature, verse, newspaper accounts and journal articles, as well as in the visual arts, as part of a common discourse about London and the state of its inhabitants, this thesis charts how the metaphorical appropriation of this idea changed over time. Four of Dickens's novels are used to track his use of fog as part of a discourse of the natural and unnatural in individual and society, identifying it with London in progressively more negative terms. Visual representations of fog by Constable, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Markino, O'Connor, Roberts and Wyllie and Coburn showed an increasing readiness to engage with this discourse. Social tensions in the city in the 1880s were articulated in art as well as in fiction. Authors like Hay and Barr showed the destruction of London by its fog because of its inhabitants' supposed degeneracy. As the social threat receded, apocalyptic scenarios gave way to a more optimistic view in the work of Owen and others. Henry James used fog as a metaphorical representation of the boundaries of gendered behaviour in public, and the problems faced by women who crossed them. The dissertation also examines fog and individual transgression, in novels and short stories by Lowndes, Stevenson, Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad. After 1914, fog was no more than a crude signifier of Victorian London in literature, film and, later, television, deployed as a cliche instead of the subtle metaphorical idea discussed in this thesis

    Building body identities - exploring the world of female bodybuilders

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    This thesis explores how female bodybuilders seek to develop and maintain a viable sense of self despite being stigmatized by the gendered foundations of what Erving Goffman (1983) refers to as the 'interaction order'; the unavoidable presentational context in which identities are forged during the course of social life. Placed in the context of an overview of the historical treatment of women's bodies, and a concern with the development of bodybuilding as a specific form of body modification, the research draws upon a unique two year ethnographic study based in the South of England, complemented by interviews with twenty-six female bodybuilders, all of whom live in the U.K. By mapping these extraordinary women's lives, the research illuminates the pivotal spaces and essential lived experiences that make up the female bodybuilder. Whilst the women appear to be embarking on an 'empowering' radical body project for themselves, the consequences of their activity remains culturally ambivalent. This research exposes the 'Janus-faced' nature of female bodybuilding, exploring the ways in which the women negotiate, accommodate and resist pressures to engage in more orthodox and feminine activities and appearances

    Queer spies in British Cold War culture: literature, film, theatre and television

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    This PhD thesis investigates how male homosexuality has been represented in British spy fiction from the 1950s to the 2010s in multiple media: literature, film, television and theatre. Due mainly to the betrayal of the Cambridge Spy ring around the middle of the century, British culture has associated spies with homosexuality, while the wider Anglophone world was in the grip of a homophobic atmosphere created by McCarthy's Red Scare. My thesis explores how this history is reflected in the spy genre from the Cold War to the present, in which male homosexuality and secret agency intersect as “queer”, in so far as they were both considered to be discreet and criminal, existing outside of the heteronormative order. By following multiple texts across media and time, I discuss how some writers, television and film directors and actors update queer identity in spy fiction, creating a shifting image of queer spies through decades. I refer to the findings of adaptation studies and queer studies, along with numerous studies on spy fiction. I conclude that the interrelation of different media has contributed to the re-drawing of queer identity in spy fiction. These developments have enabled the spies' queer identity to transcend its pejorative history in British culture, towards its more flexible and pliant sense which is designated by the term's modern usage. I also discuss that spies’ homosexuality has been represented as a fleeting ghost in most of the texts examined, hovering on the margins of pages and screen. Although homosexuality is not “the love that dare not speak its name” anymore, clandestine queer spies have been preserved as spectral others in the genre for many years. Spy fiction is a cultural repository retaining the memory of violence inflicted against those who have been called “queer” in twentieth century Britain, and the spectral nature of queer spies narrates this history reaching back to the Oscar Wilde trial in 1895, from which point British queer identity as we know now developed. This thesis benefits the study of spy fiction by filling a gap in the investigation of homosexual representation. It also contributes to the field of gender studies of literature, film, television, and theatre by illustrating queer history in a genre which has not received a great deal of focus on its representation of homosexuality. Spy fiction occupies a central position in British popular culture, and by exploring this genre in terms of homosexuality, this research will identify the role which same-sex desire has historically played in the British cultural imagination

    Supernatural crossing in Republican Chinese fiction, 1920s–1940s

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    This dissertation studies supernatural narratives in Chinese fiction from the mid-1920s to the 1940s. The literary works present phenomena or elements that are or appear to be supernatural, many of which remain marginal or overlooked in Sinophone and Anglophone academia. These sources are situated in the May Fourth/New Culture ideological context, where supernatural narratives had to make way for the progressive intellectuals’ literary realism and their allegorical application of supernatural motifs. In the face of realism, supernatural narratives paled, dismissed as impractical fantasies that distract one from facing and tackling real life. Nevertheless, I argue that the supernatural narratives do not probe into another mystical dimension that might co-exist alongside the empirical world. Rather, they imagine various cases of the characters’ crossing to voice their discontent with contemporary society or to reflect on the notion of reality. “Crossing” relates to characters’ acts or processes of trespassing the boundary that separates the supernatural from the conventional natural world, thus entailing encounters and interaction between the natural and the supernatural. The dissertation examines how crossing, as a narrative device, disturbs accustomed and mundane situations, releases hidden tensions, and discloses repressed truths in Republican fiction. There are five types of crossing in the supernatural narratives. Type 1 is the crossing into “haunted” houses. This includes (intangible) human agency crossing into domestic spaces and revealing secrets and truths concealed by the scary, feigned ‘haunting’, thus exposing the hidden evil and the other house occupiers’ silenced, suffocated state. Type 2 is men crossing into female ghosts’ apparitional residences. The female ghosts allude to heart-breaking, traumatic experiences in socio-historical reality, evoking sympathetic concern for suffering individuals who are caught in social upheavals. Type 3 is the crossing from reality into the characters’ delusional/hallucinatory realities. While they physically remain in the empirical world, the characters’ abnormal perceptions lead them to exclusive, delirious, and quasi-supernatural experiences of reality. Their crossings blur the concrete boundaries between the real and the unreal on the mental level: their abnormal perceptions construct a significant, meaningful reality for them, which may be as real as the commonly regarded objective reality. Type 4 is the crossing into the netherworld modelled on the real world in the authors’ observation and bears a spectrum of satirised objects of the Republican society. The last type is immortal visitors crossing into the human world. This type satirises humanity’s vices and destructive potential. The primary sources demonstrate their writers’ witty passion to play with super--natural notions and imagery (such as ghosts, demons, and immortals) and stitch them into vivid, engaging scenes using techniques such as the gothic, the grotesque, and the satirical, in order to evoke sentiments such as terror, horror, disgust, dis--orientation, or awe, all in service of their insights into realist issues. The works also creatively tailor traditional Chinese modes and motifs, which exemplifies the revival of Republican interest in traditional cultural heritage. The supernatural narratives may amaze or disturb the reader at first, but what is more shocking, unpleasantly nudging, or thought-provoking is the problematic society and people’s lives that the supernatural (misunderstandings) eventually reveals. They present a more compre--hensive treatment of reality than Republican literature with its revolutionary consciousness surrounding class struggle. The critical perspectives of the supernatural narratives include domestic space, unacknowledged history and marginal individuals, abnormal mentality, and pervasive weaknesses in humanity. The crossing and supernatural narratives function as a means of better understanding the lived reality. This study gathers diverse primary sources written by Republican writers from various educational and political backgrounds and interprets them from a rare perspective, thus filling a research gap. It promotes a fuller view of supernatural narratives in twentieth-century Chinese literature. In terms of reflecting the social and personal reality of the Republican era, the supernatural narratives supplement the realist fiction of the time
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