Empowering Positive Partnerships: a review of the processes, benefits and challenges of a university and charity social and emotional learning partnership

‘Working in partnership to transform society through education’ is the inspirational mission statement of our Faculty of Education. But what can and does ‘working in partnership’ mean in practice? This paper outlines a partnership development story with a charity and a university Faculty. There is limited research surrounding academic partnerships with social enterprises, although no shortage of claims to be ‘working in partnership’. This is a research informed review of a social and emotional learning partnership between the charity Family Links and Canterbury Christ Church University which we suggest has had a profound and positive impact on individuals and organisations. We draw on theory based partnership evaluation frameworks and partnership review data, including filmed interviews with project participants, training evaluations and action research case studies to tell this story and discuss the processes, benefits and challenges of our partnership. The impact of key actors’ personal responses to participation and subsequent empowerment as agents of change is highlighted. The active nurturing of emotional leaders and agreeing and reviewing protocols at all levels are key review recommendations. The complexity of measuring improved wellbeing outcomes for learning communities as a desired goal is also highlighted

An investigation of the failure mechanisms in high temperature materials subjected to isothermal and anisothermal fatigue and creep conditions

Many engineering components are subjected to conditions which have a detrimental effect on the materials from which they are made. Such components are used, for example, within high temperature regions of aeroengines (e.g. turbine discs) and power plant (e.g. steam pipes) and such conditions can include periods of isothermal and/or thermo-mechanical cyclic loading which may cause fatigue, excessive plasticity and creep. The combination of conditions to which the materials are subjected can have a strong influence on the failure mechanisms induced within the material. This study is concerned with the identification of the failure mechanisms which occur in RR1000 (a Nickel-based superalloy used in aeroengine turbine discs) tested under both isothermal and anisothermal cyclic conditions. The various types of test conditions applied to the specimens (e.g. waveforms which contain high temperature tensile conditions or alternatively low temperature tensile conditions) and the related failure mechanisms (e.g. intergranular, transgranular or mixed cracking), have been identified. Comparisons of the predictions of failure lives with experimental data from tested specimens, subjected to various test conditions, are also presented

Inter-domain Communication Mechanisms in an ABC Importer: A Molecular Dynamics Study of the MalFGK2E Complex

ATP-Binding Cassette transporters are ubiquitous membrane proteins that convert the energy from ATP-binding and hydrolysis into conformational changes of the transmembrane region to allow the translocation of substrates against their concentration gradient. Despite the large amount of structural and biochemical data available for this family, it is still not clear how the energy obtained from ATP hydrolysis in the ATPase domains is “transmitted” to the transmembrane domains. In this work, we focus our attention on the consequences of hydrolysis and inorganic phosphate exit in the maltose uptake system (MalFGK2E) from Escherichia coli. The prime goal is to identify and map the structural changes occurring during an ATP-hydrolytic cycle. For that, we use extensive molecular dynamics simulations to study three potential intermediate states (with 10 replicates each): an ATP-bound, an ADP plus inorganic phosphate-bound and an ADP-bound state. Our results show that the residues presenting major rearrangements are located in the A-loop, in the helical sub-domain, and in the “EAA motif” (especially in the “coupling helices” region). Additionally, in one of the simulations with ADP we were able to observe the opening of the NBD dimer accompanied by the dissociation of ADP from the ABC signature motif, but not from its corresponding P-loop motif. This work, together with several other MD studies, suggests a common communication mechanism both for importers and exporters, in which ATP-hydrolysis induces conformational changes in the helical sub-domain region, in turn transferred to the transmembrane domains via the “coupling helices”