Digital, material and networked: some emerging themes for SET education

Boundaries between the digital and material worlds are becoming blurred as the internet increasingly connects us to things as well as people and information. This is increasingly relevant to education as initiatives which significantly combine digital and material elements in networks are becoming a reality for Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) learning. Our paper reports on the initial findings of a project to carry out a ‘state of the art’ review of literature to establish the key themes, opportunities and obstacles that are emerging from the development and use of these ‘hybrid’ systems in learning. We wanted to explore the extent to which this new domain of study is being reported in the literature and to identify work representative of this area. Our aim was to investigate the depth of research in this area by going beyond the technologically descriptive to focus on pedagogical and organisational issues raised in the literature. To identify the state of current research in the area we carried out a systematic search of databases of Science, Engineering and Technology education literature. We found 808 papers relating to the hybrid learning initiatives we are interested in, of which the majority, 81%, involved the Engineering and Technology disciplines while 6.8% related to Science. The vast majority of papers referred to remote laboratories and most of these were concerned with describing the technologies involved. In order to explore issues emerging from the research, we carried out an in-depth text review of a particular subset of the papers found that focussed on pedagogical issues. The three main themes that emerged were: the importance of real data and authenticity in learning; the importance of a sense of presence (e.g. telepresence, social presence and/or immersion) and the locus of control in, and responsiveness of, a hybrid system. We conclude that these new digital ‘hybrid’ pedagogies offer a lens with which to view both the more traditional material pedagogies, e.g. laboratory-based learning, and purely digital pedagogies, e.g. virtual labs. Finally, issues of authenticity, presence and control/responsiveness will be of increasing pedagogical importance to other ‘hybrid’ systems, such as those involving ubiquitous computing

Supporting service discovery, querying and interaction in ubiquitous computing environments.

In this paper, we contend that ubiquitous computing environments will be highly heterogeneous, service rich domains. Moreover, future applications will consequently be required to interact with multiple, specialised service location and interaction protocols simultaneously. We argue that existing service discovery techniques do not provide sufficient support to address the challenges of building applications targeted to these emerging environments. This paper makes a number of contributions. Firstly, using a set of short ubiquitous computing scenarios we identify several key limitations of existing service discovery approaches that reduce their ability to support ubiquitous computing applications. Secondly, we present a detailed analysis of requirements for providing effective support in this domain. Thirdly, we provide the design of a simple extensible meta-service discovery architecture that uses database techniques to unify service discovery protocols and addresses several of our key requirements. Lastly, we examine the lessons learnt through the development of a prototype implementation of our architecture

The lived experiences of individuals who have been technologically stalked by a past intimate : a hermeneutic phenomenological study through a Communication Privacy Management Theory lens

According to the 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey, over half of the estimated 1.7 million technological stalking victims in the United States have had a previous intimate relationship with the aggressor (Baum et al., 2009). Despite growing evidence that this crime is growing in scope and severity, researchers know very little about this phenomenon. Therefore, this current hermeneutic phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of individuals who have been technologically stalked by a past intimate. A Communication Privacy Management Theory lens is used to investigate the participants' narratives for privacy boundary modifications following relational dissolution, but prior to technological stalking, incidents of privacy violations during technological stalking, and reports coping mechanisms used following privacy boundary turbulence. The results indicate (a) victims report contextual factors, such as contact with the aggressor and abuses enacted during the intimate relationship, as key reasons for modifying privacy boundaries with their past partners, (b) aggressors use data-transmission devices in order to commit privacy violations (c) victims' attempts to cope with boundary turbulence are often frustrated by the aggressor, as well as by third parties.Includes bibliographical references (pages 196-217)

The Montreal YWCA and its role in the advancement of women : 1920-1960

Focuses on the educational and club efforts of the Montreal YWCA to further the paid employment of women

Energy stress-mediated cytotoxicity in tuberous sclerosis complex 2-deficient cells with nelfinavir and mefloquine treatment

To find new anti-cancer drug therapies, we wanted to exploit homeostatic vulnerabilities within Tuberous Sclerosis Complex 2 (TSC2)-deficient cells with mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) hyperactivity. We show that nelfinavir and mefloquine synergize to selectively evoke a cytotoxic response in TSC2-deficient cell lines with mTORC1 hyperactivity. We optimize the concentrations of nelfinavir and mefloquine to a clinically viable range that kill cells that lack TSC2, while wild-type cells tolerate treatment. This new clinically viable drug combination causes a significant level of cell death in TSC2-deficient tumor spheroids. Furthermore, no cell recovery was apparent after drug withdrawal, revealing potent cytotoxicity. Transcriptional profiling by RNA sequencing of drug treated TSC2-deficient cells compared to wild-type cells suggested the cytotoxic mechanism of action, involving initial ER stress and an imbalance in energy homeostatic pathways. Further characterization revealed that supplementation with methyl pyruvate alleviated energy stress and reduced the cytotoxic effect, implicating energy deprivation as the trigger of cell death. This work underpins a critical vulnerability with cancer cells with aberrant signaling through the TSC2-mTORC1 pathway that lack flexibility in homeostatic pathways, which could be exploited with combined nelfinavir and mefloquine treatment

Summarised, verified and accessible:Improving clinical information management for potential haematopoietic stem cell transplantation patients

The Welsh Transplantation and Immunogenetics Laboratory (WTAIL) is responsible for managing patient work-up for haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), the only potentially curative option for many haematological and non-haematological conditions. Work-up requires regular communication between WTAIL and the transplanting clinicians, facilitated by weekly multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings, to agree decisions and proceed through each work-up stage. Effective communication and minimising error are critical, as transplanting cells from a suboptimal donor could have severe or fatal consequences for the patient. We reviewed our HSCT patient management and identified issues including staff dissatisfaction with the inefficiency of the current (paper-based) system and concern about the potential for incidents caused by errors in manual transcription of patient information and tracking clinical decisions. Another driver for change was the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented the usual face-to-face MDT meetings in which staff would show clinicians the paper records and reports; the shift to online MDT required new ways of sharing data. In this project we developed a new central reference point for our patient management data along with electronic patient summary sheets, designed with an eye to improving safety and efficiency. Over several improvement cycles we tested and refined the summary sheets with staff and clinicians and experimented with videoconferencing to facilitate data sharing. We conducted interviews with staff from which we concluded that the new process successfully reduced transcription and duplication and improved communication with the clinicians during the pandemic. Despite an increase in workload due to build-up of active patient work-up cases during the pandemic, staff reported that the new summaries enabled them to cope well. A key initiative was creation of a Task and Finish group that helped establish continual improvement culture and identified additional areas for improvement which have been followed up in further improvement projects