An appreciative inquiry to midwifery education in Aotearoa

Background: Education is a transformative process, that promotes both self and professional development, and has rewards and challenges (Griffiths, 2012). For women, choosing a career pathway that gives meaning and purpose is an integral element of their decision making (Elley-Brown, 2015). The themes from our literature review identify midwifery educators as helping to sustain the profession by inspiring others, and promoting self and professional development through higher education. The role of the educator is identified as highly relational and often assumes an advisory and mentoring role (Elly-Brown, 2015). Midwifery educators promote growth and development of the profession (Albarran & Rosser, 2014). When considering recruitment of students into midwifery as a profession and midwives into education, it was clear that this is strongly linked to internal drivers; these include the feeling of making a difference, inspiring educational role models, having particular attributes, and encouragement from others (Albarran, & Rosser, 2014; Crowther, Hunter, McAra-Couper, Warren, Gilkison, Hunter, Fielder, & Kirkam, 2016; Doherty, M, 2010; Elley-Brown, 2015; Gilkison, Pairman, McAra-Couper, Kensington, & James, 2016; Gui, Barriball, & While, 2009). The credibility and impact of midwifery teachers was explored by Fraser, Avis & Mallik (2013) who found that teachers were valued for their unique and crucial role in the support of student’s application of knowledge into practice. Briscoe & Clarke, (2018) also commented that midwifery education needs to be dynamic and responsive to societal changes, showing authenticity within a curriculum that is evidence-based and supports students to reach their full potential as a health professional. Reciprocity of relationship between women and midwives, midwifery colleagues, students and teachers are also valued (Crowther, Hunter, McAra-Couper, Warren, Gilkison, Hunter, Feilder, Kirkham, 2016). He aha te mea nui? He tāngata, He tāngata, He tāngata! What is the greatest thing? It is people, it is people, it is people

Computer simulation of bistable switching in a nematic device containing pear-shaped particles

We study the microscopic basis of bistable switching of a confined liquid crystal via Monte Carlo simulations of hard pear-shaped particles. Using both dielectric and dipolar field couplings to this intrinsically flexoelectric fluid, it is shown that pulsed fields of opposing polarity can be used to switch between the vertical and hybrid aligned states. Further, it is shown that the field-susceptibility of the surface polarisation, rather than the bulk flexoelectricity, is the main driver of this switching behaviour.</p

Alternative Supersymmetric Spectra

We describe the features of supersymmetric spectra, alternative to and qualitatively different from that of most versions of the MSSM. The spectra are motivated by extensions of the MSSM with an extra U(1)' gauge symmetry, expected in many grand unified and superstring models, which provide a plausible solution to the mu problem, both for models with supergravity and for gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. Typically, many or all of the squarks are rather heavy (larger than one TeV), especially for the first two families, as are the sleptons in the supergravity models. However, there is a richer spectrum of Higgs particles, neutralinos, and (possibly) charginos. Concrete examples of such spectra are presented, and the phenomenological implications are briefly discussed.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe

Mesh-free simulation of complex LCD geometries

We use a novel mesh-free simulation approach to study the post aligned bistable nematic (PABN) cell. By employing the Qian-Sheng formalism for liquid crystals along with a smooth representation of the surface posts, we have been able to identify two distinct stable configurations. The three-dimensional order field configurations of these states and their elastic free energies are consistent with both experimental results and previous simulation attempts. However, alternative states suggested in previous studies do not appear to remain stable when finite post curvature is considered.</p

Nematic-Isotropic Transition with Quenched Disorder

Nematic elastomers do not show the discontinuous, first-order, phase transition that the Landau-De Gennes mean field theory predicts for a quadrupolar ordering in 3D. We attribute this behavior to the presence of network crosslinks, which act as sources of quenched orientational disorder. We show that the addition of weak random anisotropy results in a singular renormalization of the Landau-De Gennes expression, adding an energy term proportional to the inverse quartic power of order parameter Q. This reduces the first-order discontinuity in Q. For sufficiently high disorder strength the jump disappears altogether and the phase transition becomes continuous, in some ways resembling the supercritical transitions in external field.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, to be published on PR

Computer simulations of hard pear-shaped particles

We report results obtained from Monte Carlo simulations investi- gating mesophase formation in two model systems of hard pear-shaped particles. The first model considered is a hard variant of the trun- cated Stone-Expansion model previously shown to form nematic and smectic mesophases when embedded within a 12-6 Gay-Berne-like po- tential [1]. When stripped of its attractive interactions, however, this system is found to lose its liquid crystalline phases. For particles of length to breadth ratio k = 3, glassy behaviour is seen at high pressures, whereas for k = 5 several bi-layer-like domains are seen, with high intradomain order but little interdomain orientational correlation. For the second model, which uses a parametric shape parameter based on the generalised Gay-Berne formalism, results are presented for particles with elongation k = 3; 4 and 5. Here, the systems with k = 3 and 4 fail to display orientationally ordered phases, but that with k = 5 shows isotropic, nematic and, unusually for a hard-particle model, interdigitated smectic A2 phases.</p

Quenched disorder and spin-glass correlations in XY nematics

We present a theoretical study of the equilibrium ordering in a 3D XY nematic system with quenched random disorder. Within this model, treated with the replica trick and Gaussian variational method, the correlation length is obtained as a function of the local nematic order parameter and the effective disorder strength. These results clarify what happens in the limiting cases of diminishing order parameter and disorder strength, that is near a phase transition of a pure system. In particular, it is found that quenched disorder is irrelevant as the order parameter tends to zero and hence does not change the character of the continuous XY nematic to isotropic phase transition. We discuss how these results compare with experiments and simulationsComment: 19 pages, 6 figures, corrected typo

Furthering critical institutionalism

This special issue furthers the study of natural resource management from a critical institutional perspective. Critical institutionalism (CI) is a contemporary body of thought that explores how institutions dynamically mediate relationships between people, natural resources and society. It focuses on the complexity of institutions entwined in everyday social life, their historical formation, the interplay between formal and informal, traditional and modern arrangements, and the power relations that animate them. In such perspectives a social justice lens is often used to scrutinise the outcomes of institutional processes. We argue here that critical institutional approaches have potentially much to offer commons scholarship, particularly through the explanatory power of the concept of bricolage for better understanding institutional change. Critical institutional approaches, gathering momentum over the past 15 years or so, have excited considerable interest but the insights generated from different disciplinary perspectives remain insufficiently synthesised. Analyses emphasising complexity can be relatively illegible to policy-makers, a fact which lessens their reach. This special issue therefore aims to synthesise critical institutional ideas and so to lay the foundation for moving beyond the emergent stage to make meaningful academic and policy impact. In bringing together papers here we define and synthesise key themes of critical institutionalism, outline the concept of institutional bricolage and identity some key challenges facing this school of thought

Interaction potentials for soft and hard ellipsoids

Using results from colloid science we derive interaction potentials for computer simulations of mixtures of soft or hard ellipsoids of arbitrary shape and size. Our results are in many respects reminicent of potentials of the Gay-Berne type but have a well-defined microscopic interpretation and no adjustable parameters. Since our potentials require the calculation of similar variables, the modification of existing simulation codes for Gay-Berne potentials is straightforward. The computational performance should remain unaffected.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Orientational and phase-coexistence behaviour of hard rod-sphere mixtures

Results are presented from Monte Carlo simulations of bulk mixtures of Hard Gaussian Overlap particles with an aspect ratio of 3:1 and hard spheres with diameters equal to the breadths of the rods. For sphere number-concentrations of 50% and lower, compression of the isotropic fluid results in formation of a homogeneous (i.e. compositionally mixed) nematic phase. The volume fraction of this isotropic-nematic transition is found to increase approximately linearly with sphere concentration. On compression to higher volume fractions, however, this homogeneous nematic phase separates out into coexisting nematic and isotropic phases.</p