Policy and practice: Design education in England from 1837-1992, with particular reference to furniture courses at Birmingham, Leicester and the Royal College of Art.

This thesis is an examination of policy-making and practice in design education in England from 1837-1992. It takes a longue durée approach to the history of the development of design education to provide a new narrative which shows a pattern of recurring debates concerning the purpose of design education and how it should be taught. Using the curricula of furniture design courses at three art schools to illustrate the way policy was put into practice, this thesis argues that historical context is key to understanding why debates regarding the way designers should be trained for industry have recurred since 1837. Based on a wide variety of primary source material the thesis contributes to historiography by extending the scope of previous histories of art and design education, and also, for the first time, focuses solely on the development of design education, whilst acknowledging its place in the wider development of art and design education. Following the introduction, chapter two of this thesis examines the events which led to the 1835-6 Select Committee and argues that many of the issues raised during the Committee influenced the teaching of design education through the remainder of the nineteenth century; this is further demonstrated through chapter three. Charting the development of design education into the twentieth century through chapters four, five and six, this thesis shows that changing historical contexts, such as the development of industrial methods or wider changes in higher education, have also had an impact on design education. In the light of changing historical contexts, policy makers for design education have continually questioned what design students should be taught and how they should be taught, which accounts, in part, for the recurring nature of debates in design education

Turning Wounds into Wisdom: An Intuitive Inquiry into Healing Women’s Body Image through Creative Expression

Body dissatisfaction among women is prevalent, affecting many facets of life and presenting few effective healing interventions for changing one’s body perception. In the qualitative contexts of the critical paradigm and an intuitive culture of inquiry, we used A/R/Tography with the four researchers also acting as participants. To describe how creative expression may change a woman’s deeply held perception of her body, we conducted and participated in a retreat focused on personal narratives, reflective journaling, storytelling, and individual creativity. Through the application of thematic analysis, we identified themes of community, exhaustion, hope, and insight. Results of this research suggest the potential for positive transformation in female body image perception by engaging in creative expression. Thus, women should be encouraged and empowered to participate in community-based events involving creative expression and storytelling as a modality for healing

Pengembangan Modul Intervensi Untuk Meningkatkan Resiliensi Pada Individu Yang Mengalami Perubahan Fisik Menjadi Penyandang Disabilitas

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menindaklanjuti temuan sebelumnya dengan mengembangkan modul intervensi secara terperinci, yang selanjutnya dapat digunakan sebagai panduan dalam membantu meningkatkan resiliensi individu yang mengalami Perubahan kondisi fisik menjadi penyandang disabilitas. Penulis menyusun serta merinci rancangan implementasi awal yang direkomendasikan oleh penelitian sebelumnya kedalam langkah-langkah yang lebih sistematis dan operasional hingga memperoleh hasil akhir berupa modul. Metode yang digunakan berbasis tahapan riset aksi, meskipun proses yang dilakukan hanya sampai pada langkah ketiga, yaitu Perumusan solusi dari persoalan yang diangkat. Partisipan terdiri dari delapan individu yang mengalami Perubahan kondisi menjadi penyandang disabilitas. Selain partisipan, empat orang psikolog juga dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini sebagai penelaah modul. Hasil penelitian ini berupa sebuah paket modul intervensi untuk peningkatan resiliensi melalui penguatan faktor protektif serta pengembangan strategi koping dan adaptasi pada individu yang mengalami Perubahan kondisi fisik menjadi penyandang disabilitas. Paket modul tersebut terdiri dari 5 sub-modul yang telah disusun sedemikian rupa untuk memudahkan pelaksanaannya, terdiri dari modul: (1) memperkuat dukungan keluarga terhadap penyandang disabilitas; (2) pendampingan awal penyandang disabilitas; (3) intervensi lanjut 1 (penguatan faktor protektif internal); (4) intervensi lanjut 2 (pengembangan strategi koping); dan (5) intervensi lanjut 3 (langkah adaptasi positif)

Tradespace Investigation of a Telescope Architecture for Next-generation Space Astronomy and Exploration

Humanity’s endeavor to further its scientific understanding of the celestial heavens has led to the creation and evolution of increasingly powerful and complex space telescopes. Space telescopes provide a view of the solar system, galaxy, and universe unobstructed by Earth’s atmosphere and have profoundly changed the way people view space. In an effort to further advance space telescope capability and achieve the accompanying scientific understanding, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), specifically, course 16.89 Space Systems Engineering, explored the tradespace of architectural enumerations encompassed within the design of an ultraviolet-optical-infrared (UVOIR) space telescope located at Sun-Earth Lagrangian Point Two (SE-L2). SE-L2 presents several advantages as an operating location for a UVOIR telescope such as a thermally stable environment and an orbit that allows the telescope to maintain a constant orientation with respect to all of the primary sources of heat and light. The main disadvantages associated with SE-L2 are caused by its relatively large distance from Earth, which marginalizes the effectiveness of real-time telerobotics because of latency and increases the cost of communications, launch, and servicing. Course 16.89 believes that, for this UVOIR application, the strengths of this operating location outweigh its weaknesses and therefore decided to explore the family of opportunities associated with SE-L2. This course used appropriate performance and system metrics to quantify the effectiveness of the aforementioned architectures and create a Pareto front of viable architectures. Evaluating the designs along the Pareto front allowed the course to characterize and group architectures and present these group-types to stakeholders for the selection of an optimal space telescope according to stakeholder requirements and resources. This course also developed sensitivity analysis, which allowed for a greater understanding of how architectural decisions affect the performance of the satellite. Segmentation, modularity, assembly, autonomy, and servicing were key aspects of this multidimensional analysis given the 16.8-meter class size and location of the telescope. Within the respective operating environment and for a spacecraft of similar characteristics, this model will allow stakeholders to predict the long-term operational effectiveness of different space telescope architectures and capture the synergistic effects of combining various architectural decisions into a spacecraft design. The following sections step through the aforesaid analysis and design efforts conducted in 16.89 beginning with Section III, which explicitly performs the stakeholder analysis and articulates the requirements of the mission. Section IV gives an overview of past designs and expands upon the architecture enumerations pertinent to this project, while Section V presents the methods and metrics by which those architectures will be evaluated and the system metrics which will be balanced and optimized in the creation of this space telescope. Section VI will present the model validation of this project and Section VII will discuss the results and analyses of the project. Finally, Section VIII will explore the future work opportunities of this project, while Section IX will present the conclusions and recommendations drawn from this project.MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautic

DrugBank 3.0: a comprehensive resource for ‘Omics’ research on drugs

DrugBank (http://www.drugbank.ca) is a richly annotated database of drug and drug target information. It contains extensive data on the nomenclature, ontology, chemistry, structure, function, action, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, metabolism and pharmaceutical properties of both small molecule and large molecule (biotech) drugs. It also contains comprehensive information on the target diseases, proteins, genes and organisms on which these drugs act. First released in 2006, DrugBank has become widely used by pharmacists, medicinal chemists, pharmaceutical researchers, clinicians, educators and the general public. Since its last update in 2008, DrugBank has been greatly expanded through the addition of new drugs, new targets and the inclusion of more than 40 new data fields per drug entry (a 40% increase in data ‘depth’). These data field additions include illustrated drug-action pathways, drug transporter data, drug metabolite data, pharmacogenomic data, adverse drug response data, ADMET data, pharmacokinetic data, computed property data and chemical classification data. DrugBank 3.0 also offers expanded database links, improved search tools for drug–drug and food–drug interaction, new resources for querying and viewing drug pathways and hundreds of new drug entries with detailed patent, pricing and manufacturer data. These additions have been complemented by enhancements to the quality and quantity of existing data, particularly with regard to drug target, drug description and drug action data. DrugBank 3.0 represents the result of 2 years of manual annotation work aimed at making the database much more useful for a wide range of ‘omics’ (i.e. pharmacogenomic, pharmacoproteomic, pharmacometabolomic and even pharmacoeconomic) applications

Metabolite profiling of Dioscorea (yam) species reveals underutilised biodiversity and renewable sources for high-value compounds

Yams (Dioscorea spp.) are a multispecies crop with production in over 50 countries generating ~50 MT of edible tubers annually. The long-term storage potential of these tubers is vital for food security in developing countries. Furthermore, many species are important sources of pharmaceutical precursors. Despite these attributes as staple food crops and sources of high-value chemicals, Dioscorea spp. remain largely neglected in comparison to other staple tuber crops of tropical agricultural systems such as cassava (Manihot esculenta) and sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). To date, studies have focussed on the tubers or rhizomes of Dioscorea, neglecting the foliage as waste. In the present study metabolite profiling procedures, using GC-MS approaches, have been established to assess biochemical diversity across species. The robustness of the procedures was shown using material from the phylogenetic clades. The resultant data allowed separation of the genotypes into clades, species and morphological traits with a putative geographical origin. Additionally, we show the potential of foliage material as a renewable source of high-value compounds

SMPDB: The Small Molecule Pathway Database

The Small Molecule Pathway Database (SMPDB) is an interactive, visual database containing more than 350 small-molecule pathways found in humans. More than 2/3 of these pathways (>280) are not found in any other pathway database. SMPDB is designed specifically to support pathway elucidation and pathway discovery in clinical metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and systems biology. SMPDB provides exquisitely detailed, hyperlinked diagrams of human metabolic pathways, metabolic disease pathways, metabolite signaling pathways and drug-action pathways. All SMPDB pathways include information on the relevant organs, organelles, subcellular compartments, protein cofactors, protein locations, metabolite locations, chemical structures and protein quaternary structures. Each small molecule is hyperlinked to detailed descriptions contained in the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) or DrugBank and each protein or enzyme complex is hyperlinked to UniProt. All SMPDB pathways are accompanied with detailed descriptions, providing an overview of the pathway, condition or processes depicted in each diagram. The database is easily browsed and supports full text searching. Users may query SMPDB with lists of metabolite names, drug names, genes/protein names, SwissProt IDs, GenBank IDs, Affymetrix IDs or Agilent microarray IDs. These queries will produce lists of matching pathways and highlight the matching molecules on each of the pathway diagrams. Gene, metabolite and protein concentration data can also be visualized through SMPDB’s mapping interface. All of SMPDB’s images, image maps, descriptions and tables are downloadable. SMPDB is available at: http://www.smpdb.ca

The future of metabolomics in ELIXIR.

Metabolomics, the youngest of the major omics technologies, is supported by an active community of researchers and infrastructure developers across Europe. To coordinate and focus efforts around infrastructure building for metabolomics within Europe, a workshop on the "Future of metabolomics in ELIXIR" was organised at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. This one-day strategic workshop involved representatives of ELIXIR Nodes, members of the PhenoMeNal consortium developing an e-infrastructure that supports workflow-based metabolomics analysis pipelines, and experts from the international metabolomics community. The workshop established metabolite identification as the critical area, where a maximal impact of computational metabolomics and data management on other fields could be achieved. In particular, the existing four ELIXIR Use Cases, where the metabolomics community - both industry and academia - would benefit most, and which could be exhaustively mapped onto the current five ELIXIR Platforms were discussed. This opinion article is a call for support for a new ELIXIR metabolomics Use Case, which aligns with and complements the existing and planned ELIXIR Platforms and Use Cases

Deciphering lipid structures based on platform-independent decision rule sets

We developed decision rule sets for Lipid Data Analyzer (LDA; http://genome.tugraz.at/lda2), enabling automated and reliable annotation of lipid species and their molecular structures in high-throughput data from chromatography-coupled tandem mass spectrometry. Platform independence was proven in various mass spectrometric experiments, comprising low- and high-resolution instruments and several collision energies. We propose that this independence and the capability to identify novel lipid molecular species render current state-of-the-art lipid libraries now obsolete