The Influence of professional doctorates on practice and the workplace

This paper investigates the influence that undertaking a professional doctorate has on the practice of the graduate and their workplace or organisation. There is a growing literature on how undertaking such advanced development influences the individual graduate at the personal and professional level but there is little evidence of a wider impact on practice in general or at the organisational level. This study seeks to address this issue through a qualitative study of practitioners from a range of professional arenas and sectors who have graduated from a professional doctorate within the past 10 years. Through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews and the candidates’ project reports we explore their experience of applying their learning within their workplaces providing insight into the level and degree of influence such development can have on organisational contexts. The paper does not focus on the academic or personal impact of their experience as the intention of these particular doctoral researchers is the creation of new knowledge embedded in practice

Soluble non-starch polysaccharides derived from complex food matrices do not increase average lipid droplet size during gastric lipid emulsification in rats

The creation of a finely dispersed lipid emulsion is essential for efficient hydrolysis of dietary triglycerides. The effectiveness of emulsification within the stomach depends upon the shear force generated by gastric motility and the concentration of emulsifiers present in the gastric contents. Other dietary constituents can modify these factors, and previous studies have suggested that the presence of soluble non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) during digestion might increase the average size of intraluminal emulsion droplets. In the present study, we developed a new technique for the isolation and analysis of intraluminal lipid emulsions by optical diffraction analysis. The method was applied to rats fed powdered semipurified diets that were free of all NSP or supplemented with insoluble cellulose, guar gum, or NSP derived from apple, carrot or rolled oats. Cellulose had no significant effect on emulsion size, and there was no evidence that the average sizes of lipid droplets in the gastric fundus or antrum were higher than control values in rats fed diets supplemented with any source of soluble NSP. In the groups fed oats and cooked carrot NSP, the mean droplet diameters approached half the values for diets free of NSP or containing insoluble cellulose. The difference between rats fed NSP from cooked carrot and those fed cellulose was significant in the proximal stomach (P < 0.05), and that between rats fed raw oats and rats fed cellulose was significant in the distal stomach (P < 0.05). Soluble dietary fiber does not inhibit lipid or cholesterol absorption via any inhibition of lipid emulsification

The influence of xanthan and gamma-carrageenan on the creaming and flocculation of an oil-in-water emulsion containing soy protein

The effect of polysaccharide content on the stability of an oil-in-water emulsion (20% oil, droplet diameter 6.5 µm, pH = 7) containing soy protein (5 mg/ml) as the emulsifying agent was studied. Flocculation occurs by addition of two depletion flocculants: xanthan (0.01- 0.4%) and λ-carrageenan (0.001- 2%). We report that in both cases the onset of flocculation occurs below the overlap polymer concentration (c* = 0.15 % for xanthan and c* = 0.58% for λ-carrageenan). The strength of depletion interaction is dependent on such factors as polymer concentration, molecular weight and also the presence of other macromolecules. Profiles of the creaming behaviour of the sample emulsions were obtained by measuring the height of the boundary between the cream phase and the serum as a function of time for each emulsion. The result indicates that creaming kinetics is dependent on polymer concentration in a complex way. The turbidity of the serum gave an indication of whether the system was fully flocculated or contained flocks together with unflocculated droplets. At very low polymer concentrations the droplets cream individually or in small aggregates at the top of the container. At higher concentrations the droplets appear to cream as a single entity, with a sharp lower boundary separating the cream phase from a clear serum. In these emulsions and in some of the coexistent ones, there is a delay before creaming starts. The presence of the polymers at higher concentrations resulted in a stable emulsion with a very high apparent viscosity for the continuous phase and/or a strong emulsion gel network. The length of the delay phase increased with increasing concentration of both polymer

Fat emulsification measured using NMR transverse relaxation

This paper presents a novel method of measuring the droplet size in oil-in-water emulsions. It is based on changes in the NMR transverse relaxation rate due to the effect of microscopic magnetic susceptibility differences between fat droplets and the surrounding water. The longitudinal and transverse relaxation rates of a series of emulsions with constant oil volume fraction and five different mean droplet sizes, in the range 0.4-20.9 microm, were measured in vitro at 37 degrees C using EPI. While the longitudinal relaxation rate 1/T(1) did not change significantly, 1/T(2) was observed to increase with mean droplet size. The measured changes in 1/T(2) were found to be in good agreement with results predicted from proton random walk simulations, and were also consistent with analytical solutions based on an outer sphere relaxation model. Measurements of 1/T(2) on emulsions with a higher oil volume fraction, and on emulsions of a fixed size where the water phase was doped with gadolinium to modulate the susceptibility difference between the phases, also showed the predicted behavior. As part of this study the susceptibility difference between olive oil and water was measured to be 1.55 ppm