Safe Environments for Innovation: the development of a new multidisciplinary masters programme

In September 2007, three schools at Northumbria University came together in collaboration to create a Masters Programme in Multidisciplinary Design Innovation (MDI). The lead school was the School of Design working together with the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences (CEIS) and the Newcastle Business School (NBS). This innovation was in response to an emerging understanding within the School of Design of the value of ‘Design-Thinking’ as a multi-disciplinary activity (developed and reinforced through a series of under-graduate pilot projects) and the Cox Review of Creativity in Business: building on the UK’s strengths, which was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, at the time of the 2005 Budget (Cox, 2005). (Design-Thinking is an approach to viewing business and organisational situations from a more interpretative perspective than that of traditional business analysis (Lester et al,1998)) The programme was launched in September 2008

Women of Color and Philosophy

Book Review of Naomi Zack's Women of Color and Philosoph

The relationships and supports that matter to children looked after (CLA) in long term voluntary accommodation (Children Act 1989, s 20)

The overall aim of this practitioner-led research project was to explore relationships and conceptualisations of ‘permanence in foster care’ from the young person’s perspective. A multidimensional conceptualisation of permanence, with a focus on supportive networks, was used to identify the relationships that a group of looked after young people viewed as significant to them and to explore which relationship groups they accessed for social support. Participants were a convenience sample of six (two male, four female) young people (aged 13 – 16) who were voluntarily accommodated (Children Act 1989, s.20) in the long term care of the local authority. Four participants were living with foster carers and two were in residential homes. Participants constructed a personal network map, placing themselves at the centre of a concentric circles diagram and the names of the people in their support network in the surrounding circles. To ascertain participants’ perceptions of who provides what type of support, they were asked how they would respond in three scenarios that were designed to elicit specific measures of social support (affective support, self-affirmation, and instrumental assistance). The results showed that the young people considered a wide variety of relationships as important to them and were able to utilise a range of relationships as sources of social support. Significantly, despite their physical absence, sibling relationships were unanimously viewed as important and appeared to hold the potential to provide much support. This research suggests the potential value in moving beyond physical conceptualisations of permanence and instead adopting a systemic relationships-based approach, which recognises a young person’s entire social network. Recommendations for practice include providing support to strengthen all significant relationships, regardless of their physical presence. This research project hopes to highlight the potentially unique needs of voluntarily accommodated young people. The discussion suggests the importance of reinforcing the implementation of voluntary accommodation as it was intended, as “support for children and families” (Children Act 1989, part 3)

Staggered Heavy Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory

Although taste violations significantly affect the results of staggered calculations of pseudoscalar and heavy-light mesonic quantities, those entering staggered calculations of baryonic quantities have not been quantified. Here I develop staggered chiral perturbation theory in the light-quark baryon sector by mapping the Symanzik action into heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. For 2+1 dynamical quark flavors, the masses of flavor-symmetric nucleons are calculated to third order in partially quenched and fully dynamical staggered chiral perturbation theory. To this order the expansion includes the leading chiral logarithms, which come from loops with virtual decuplet-like states, as well as terms the order of the cubed pion mass, which come from loops with virtual octet-like states. Taste violations enter through the meson propagators in loops and tree-level terms the order of the squared lattice spacing. The pattern of taste symmetry breaking and the resulting degeneracies and mixings are discussed in detail. The resulting chiral forms are appropriate to lattice results obtained with operators already in use and could be used to study the restoration of taste symmetry in the continuum limit. I assume that the fourth root of the fermion determinant can be incorporated in staggered chiral perturbation theory using the replica method.Comment: 54 pages; v2: corrected discussion in Sec. III.C, conclusions unchange

Physical Therapy and Proper Sleep Positions Lead to Improved Hamstring Flexibility

Research Question: How effectively can physical therapy and correct sleep positioning improve hamstring flexibility and reduce pain, based on age and everyday activity

Social deprivation and widening participation: the continuing power of local cultures

This paper considers social deprivation and widening participation in a South Yorkshire community. It examines why young adults living within a working class community choose not to enter higher education. It discusses the expectations, motivations and aspirations of these young adults, whilst focusing on the impact of local, cultural, social and economic factors

Assistive Technology, Accommodations, and the Americans with Disabilities Act

This brochure on Assistive Technology, Accommodations, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one of a series on human resources practices and workplace accommodations for persons with disabilities edited by Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, SPHR, Director, Program on Employment and Disability, School of Industrial and Labor Relations - Extension Division, Cornell Universit

Working at the edges

In this short article, the author explains how approaches to programme philosophy, curriculum structure and assessment design have liberated students to work creatively at the edges of their disciplines where they intersect with others. The article outlines the development of a Masters programme in Multidisciplinary Design Innovation