Same-sex adoptive families’ journey through education: a multi-perspective interpretative phenomenological analysis study

This thesis consists of three separate parts: a review of the relevant research and literature relating to the subject of the study, an empirical paper and a reflective account from the researcher. The literature review examines historical context on same sex parenting and specifically discusses research relating to adopted young people in same sex families and their experiences in education including factors influencing those experiences. The empirical paper consists of an exploratory qualitative study carried out with a small sample of adopted young people and adoptive gay or lesbian parents in same sex families within the East of England. The study used online semi-structured interviews to elicit the experiences of the two groups about their educational journey so far as well as their experiences of educational support received. Finally, the reflective chapter provides the personal reflections of the researcher about this study from the initial conception of the subject area and research questions to the completion of the analysis and write-up of the paper. Further implications on the researcher professional development and for the profession of educational psychology and research are also explored

Modeling of crisis periods in stock markets

We exploit a recent computational framework to model and detect financial crises in stock markets, as well as shock events in cryptocurrency markets, which are characterized by a sudden or severe drop in prices. Our method manages to detect all past crises in the French industrial stock market starting with the crash of 1929, including financial crises after 1990 (e.g. dot-com bubble burst of 2000, stock market downturn of 2002), and all past crashes in the cryptocurrency market, namely in 2018, and also in 2020 due to covid-19. We leverage copulae clustering, based on the distance between probability distributions, in order to validate the reliability of the framework; we show that clusters contain copulae from similar market states such as normal states, or crises. Moreover, we propose a novel regression model that can detect successfully all past events using less than 10% of the information that the previous framework requires. We train our model by historical data on the industry assets, and we are able to detect all past shock events in the cryptocurrency market. Our tools provide the essential components of our software framework that offers fast and reliable detection, or even prediction, of shock events in stock and cryptocurrency markets of hundreds of assets.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl

ELECTRON: An Architectural Framework for Securing the Smart Electrical Grid with Federated Detection, Dynamic Risk Assessment and Self-Healing

The electrical grid has significantly evolved over the years, thus creating a smart paradigm, which is well known as the smart electrical grid. However, this evolution creates critical cybersecurity risks due to the vulnerable nature of the industrial systems and the involvement of new technologies. Therefore, in this paper, the ELECTRON architecture is presented as an integrated platform to detect, mitigate and prevent potential cyberthreats timely. ELECTRON combines both cybersecurity and energy defence mechanisms in a collaborative way. The key aspects of ELECTRON are (a) dynamic risk assessment, (b) asset certification, (c) federated intrusion detection and correlation, (d) Software Defined Networking (SDN) mitigation, (e) proactive islanding and (f) cybersecurity training and certification

Μεταβολές της αγωνιστικής απόδοσης σε κολυμβητές παιδικής ηλικίας

Σκοπός της παρούσας έρευνας είναι να εξετάσει τις μεταβολές της επίδοσης σε κολυμβητές προαγωνιστικής κατηγορίας από το χειμερινό στο καλοκαιρινό πρωτάθλημα. Στη μελέτη συμμετείχαν 14 αθλητές, 8 κορίτσια και 6 αγόρια, ηλικίας 10 και 11 ετών (Μ.Ο 10.50±0.50). Πριν από την έναρξη του χειμερινού και Θερινού πρωταθλήματος κατεγράφησαν τα ανθρωπομετρικά χαρακτηριστικά των αθλητών (μάζα σώματος και ύψος), η μέγιστη ταχύτητα στην απόσταση των 25 μέτρων και υπολογίστηκε το μήκος χεριάς στην απόσταση 50 μέτρων που εκτελέστηκε με ένταση 85% της μέγιστης ταχύτητας. Στη διάρκεια των πρωταθλημάτων κατεγράφησαν οι επιδόσεις, το μήκος και η συχνότητα χεριάς στην αγωνιστική απόσταση. Πριν από το θερινό πρωτάθλημα οι κολυμβητές εμφάνισαν αύξηση του αναστήματος (χειμερινό: 1,4±0,1 Θερινό: 1,5±0,1m) χωρίς να παρατηρηθεί αύξηση της μάζας σώματος (p=0,92). Βελτιώθηκε σημαντικά ο χρόνος και η ταχύτητα στα 25 μέτρα κολύμβησης μέγιστης έντασης με σταθερή συχνότητα χεριάς (χειμερινό: 50,0±6,7 χεριές/λεπτό, καλοκαιρινό: 50,6±3,5 χεριές/λεπτό) και αύξηση μήκους χεριάς (χειμερινό: 1,66±0,25 μέτρα, καλοκαιρινό: 1,70±0,2 μέτρα). Διαπιστώθηκε καλύτερη τεχνική λόγω καλύτερης τιμής μέσου όρου μήκους χεριάς. Ακόμη, βελτιώθηκε ο χρόνος και το μήκος χεριάς στα 50 μέτρα στο 85% της μέγιστης έντασης (χειμερινό: 1,575±0.19 μέτρα, καλοκαιρινό: 1,625±0,20 μέτρα) ενώ παρέμεινε σταθερή η συχνότητα χεριάς (χειμερινό: 43,7±6,0 χεριές/λεπτό, καλοκαιρινό: 43,4±5,2 χεριές/λεπτό). Συνολικά, εμφανίσθηκε βελτίωση της επίδοσης αγώνα (χειμερινό: 139,6±91,7s και καλοκαιρινό: 136,0±91,5s) και ιδιαίτερα της ταχύτητας αγώνα (χειμερινό: 1,085±0,12m/s, καλοκαιρινό: 1,119±0,12 m/s). Σημειώθηκε βελτίωση χρόνου χωρίς αλλαγή στο ρυθμό χεριάς καθώς δεν παρατηρήθηκαν σημαντικές αλλαγές στη συχνότητα χεριών και στο χρόνο χεριών αγώνα (χειμερινό: 40,8±6,6, καλοκαιρινό: 41,9±5,6). Συνολικά, συμπέρασμα της παρούσας μελέτης είναι ότι δεν παρατηρήθηκε μεταβολή στην επίδοση των κολυμβητών προαγωνιστικής κατηγορίας στο καλοκαιρινό πρωτάθλημα σε σχέση με το χειμερινό.n

Stem cells for spinal cord injuries bearing translational potential

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a highly debilitating neurological disease, which still lacks effective treatment strategies, causing significant financial burden and distress to the affected families. Nevertheless, nanotechnology and regenerative medicine strategies holding promise for the development of novel therapies that would reach from bench to bedside to serve the SCI patients. There has already been significant progress in the field of cell-based therapies, with the clinical application for SCI, currently in phase II of the clinical trial. Stem cells (e.g., induced pluripotent stem cells, fetal stem cells, human embryonic stem cells, and olfactory ensheathing cells) are certainly not to be considered the panacea for neural repair but, especially when combined with rehabilitation or other combinatorial approaches using the help of nanotechnology, they seem to be the source of some of the most promising and clinical translatable cell-based therapies that could help solving impactful problems on neural repair

Injectable Hydrogel versus Plastically Compressed Collagen Scaffold for Central Nervous System Applications

Central Nervous System (CNS) repair has been a challenge, due to limited CNS tissue regenerative capacity. The emerging tools that neural engineering has to offer have opened new pathways towards the discovery of novel therapeutic approaches for CNS disorders. Collagen has been a preferable material for neural tissue engineering due to its similarity to the extracellular matrix, its biocompatibility, and antigenicity. The aim was to compare properties of a plastically compressed collagen hydrogel with the ones of a promising collagen-genipin injectable hydrogel and a collagen-only hydrogel for clinical CNS therapy applications. The focus was demonstrating the effects of genipin cross-linking versus plastic compression methodology on a collagen hydrogel and the impact of each method on clinical translatability. The results showed that injectable collagen-genipin hydrogel is better clinical translation material. Full collagen compression seemed to form extremely stiff hydrogels (up to about 2300 kPa) so, according to our findings, a compression level of up to 75% should be considered for CNS applications, being in line with CNS stiffness. Taking that into consideration, partially compressed collagen 3D hydrogel systems may be a good tunable way to mimic the natural hierarchical model of the human body, potentially facilitating neural repair application

Advances in regenerative therapies for spinal cord injury: a biomaterials approach

Spinal cord injury results in the permanent loss of function, causing enormous personal, social and economic problems. Even though neural regeneration has been proven to be a natural mechanism, central nervous system repair mechanisms are ineffective due to the imbalance of the inhibitory and excitatory factors implicated in neuroregeneration. Therefore, there is growing research interest on discovering a novel therapeutic strategy for effective spinal cord injury repair. To this direction, cell-based delivery strategies, biomolecule delivery strategies as well as scaffold-based therapeutic strategies have been developed with a tendency to seek for the answer to a combinatorial approach of all the above. Here we review the recent advances on regenerative/neural engineering therapies for spinal cord injury, aiming at providing an insight to the most promising repair strategies, in order to facilitate future research conduction

Translational Regenerative Therapies for Chronic Spinal Cord Injury

Spinal cord injury is a chronic and debilitating neurological condition that is currently being managed symptomatically with no real therapeutic strategies available. Even though there is no consensus on the best time to start interventions, the chronic phase is definitely the most stable target in order to determine whether a therapy can effectively restore neurological function. The advancements of nanoscience and stem cell technology, combined with the powerful, novel neuroimaging modalities that have arisen can now accelerate the path of promising novel therapeutic strategies from bench to bedside. Several types of stem cells have reached up to clinical trials phase II, including adult neural stem cells, human spinal cord stem cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, autologous Schwann cells, umbilical cord blood-derived mononuclear cells, adult mesenchymal cells, and autologous bone-marrow-derived stem cells. There also have been combinations of different molecular therapies; these have been either alone or combined with supportive scaffolds with nanostructures to facilitate favorable cell–material interactions. The results already show promise but it will take some coordinated actions in order to develop a proper step-by-step approach to solve impactful problems with neural repair