The Transformation of a Charity Shop into a Specialist Fashion Store

More than ten years ago, a Guardian columnist observed a growth in the charity shop sector due to an increase in the number of such outlets on the high streets of towns and cities in the UK. The Guardian more recently reported on a new charity store image evidenced by brand-new charity fashion boutiques being launched by Oxfam in London. This new mode of charity store sold selected re-styled and re-designed items created by young designers from the London College of Fashion. The article stated that ‘the charity was taking its first step towards a more fashion-conscious image: away from the slightly battered shoes and oversize floral skirts it's known for and into the world of designer one-offs and couture accessories’ (Freeman, 2008). It is unquestionable that charity shops have the potential to offer good value fashion to people on a budget as well as attracting fashion-conscious customers. However, if the charity shop is to make the most of this opportunity then certain retail practices are in need of change. The aim of this research was to explore the current trend of UK charity retailers upgrading towards a new target market through the launching of specialist fashion stores and to examine effective strategies for charity shops to achieve up-market fashion retailing. Three retail models from the literature review were used and the research makes use of illustrated visual evidences to demonstrate the performance of charity shops compared to up-market fashion stores. Structured observations, photography and semi-structured interviews were used to develop a new ‘Mannequin Model’ to provide a strategy for charity shops wanting to move into the mid-upper levels of the fashion market. A synthesis representation of localisation and specialisation was found to have potential for launching a specialist fashion outlet in the charity retail sector

PaLM 2 Technical Report

We introduce PaLM 2, a new state-of-the-art language model that has better multilingual and reasoning capabilities and is more compute-efficient than its predecessor PaLM. PaLM 2 is a Transformer-based model trained using a mixture of objectives. Through extensive evaluations on English and multilingual language, and reasoning tasks, we demonstrate that PaLM 2 has significantly improved quality on downstream tasks across different model sizes, while simultaneously exhibiting faster and more efficient inference compared to PaLM. This improved efficiency enables broader deployment while also allowing the model to respond faster, for a more natural pace of interaction. PaLM 2 demonstrates robust reasoning capabilities exemplified by large improvements over PaLM on BIG-Bench and other reasoning tasks. PaLM 2 exhibits stable performance on a suite of responsible AI evaluations, and enables inference-time control over toxicity without additional overhead or impact on other capabilities. Overall, PaLM 2 achieves state-of-the-art performance across a diverse set of tasks and capabilities. When discussing the PaLM 2 family, it is important to distinguish between pre-trained models (of various sizes), fine-tuned variants of these models, and the user-facing products that use these models. In particular, user-facing products typically include additional pre- and post-processing steps. Additionally, the underlying models may evolve over time. Therefore, one should not expect the performance of user-facing products to exactly match the results reported in this report

Therapeutic Effects of FK506 on IgA Nephropathy Rat

Background/Aims: FK506 is an immunosuppressive drug and a calcineurin inhibitor that has been widely used in kidney disease in recent years. FK506 shows a wide range of biological and pharmaceutical effects; however, the mechanism of its anti- proliferative effect has not been well elucidated. An IgA nephropathy (IgAN) model was used to generate a mesangial cell proliferation model. This study aims to examine the effect of FK506 on IgAN rats and the underlying mechanisms. Methods: Hematuria, proteinuria and renal function were measured. To observe the pathological conditions, we performed HE (hematoxylin - eosin) and PAS (periodic acid - schiff) staining. Transcription and protein expression levels were detected by qRT - PCR (quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction) and Wb (western blotting). The location and semi-quantitative expression levels of TRPCs, CaN (Calcineurin) and α-SMA were examined by IHC (Immunohistochemical staining). Results: We found that FK506 could improve hematuria, proteinuria and renal function, especially in the HF (high-dose FK506) groups. Renal pathological changes were ameliorated in the treatment groups. FK506 could significantly decrease TRPCs, CaN, phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and α-SMA expression. Conclusion: Taken together, these results suggest that the therapeutic effect of FK506 on IgAN might be partially associated with the down-regulated expression of TRPC channels, CaN and phosphorylation of ERK1/2

Chemical sensors based on polymer composites with carbon nanotubes and graphene: The role of the polymer

This review provides an overview of recent research on chemical sensors based on polymer composites with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene (G) for quantitative and qualitative analysis in diverse application fields such as biosensing (DNA, enzymes, proteins, antigens and metabolites), and chemical and gas sensing using electrochemical and optical detection methods. Both CNTs and G show outstanding electrical, chemical, electrochemical and optical properties that make them ideal candidates for use in chemical sensors. The incorporation of polymers into the development of this type of sensor not only improves the CNT and G dispersion, but also enhances some of their properties like redox behaviour and biocompatibility, and provides additional properties such as photoelectric or swelling capacity. Moreover, unique synergistic effects arising from the combination of the matrix and nanofiller contributions are described by means of several examples highlighting the most important achievements in this field. Special emphasis has been placed throughout the review on analysing the role of the polymer in different sensing platforms. The combination of polymers with carbon nanomaterials for the preparation of chemical sensors opens up exciting areas of research due to their biocompatibility, and excellent sensitivity and selectivity.Peer Reviewe