Under-tapped potential: practitioner research as a vehicle for widening participation

Practitioners working to widen participation to universities in England are an increasingly important and professionally diverse group but surprisingly absent from the academic literature and lacking in access to bespoke professional development pathways in HE. In England current approaches within policy and research also tend to position them as gatherers of evidence with a mission to inform change rather than developing their capacity to be(come) agents of change in their own right. Drawing on the perspectives of three widening participation practitioners who had recently completed a research-based MA, this paper explores the opportunity that this provided to illuminate the complexities encountered in routine practice, contributing to positive change. Rather than being methodologically inferior, practitioner research emerged as highly complementary and in the case of WP its transformative potential is currently hugely under-tapped

Diagnostic Dilemma of Cardiac Syncope in Pediatric Patients

Aims Syncope is defined as temporary loss of consciousness and postural tone resulting from an abrupt transient decrease in cerebral blood flow. The present work aimed at determining how diagnostic tests are used in the evaluation of pediatric syncope at a tertiary pediatric referral center and to report on the utility and the yield of these tests.Settings and Design Retrospective study conducted at a tertiary referral arrhythmolology serviceMethods and Material The clinical charts of 234 pediatric patients presenting with a primary complaint of syncope with an average age of 7.48 ± 3.82(3.5-16) years were reviewed by the investigators.Statistical analysis used Statistical Package of social science (SPSS) version 9,0 was used for analysis of data.Results The commonest trigger for syncope in the study population was early following exercise (n=65) and the commonest prodrome was palpitation, noted in 25 patients. A murmur was present in 19 of our patients (8.3%) while 10.7% (n=25) had abnormal ECGs. Of the 106 echocardiograms done, 14 (13.2%) were abnormal. Only two of them were missed by ECG. All patients were offered ambulatory 24 hour ECG. One patient with sick sinus syndrome was diagnosed only with Holter.Conclusions Clues to the presence of cardiac syncope may include acute onset of syncope, frequent episodes, low difference between blood pressure readings in supine and erect positions (after standing for 2 minutes) and most importantly an abnormal 12 lead ECG. Transthoracic echo and Holter monitoring have low yield in pediatric syncope

Accelerating Sustainability: The Variations of State, Market and Society Dynamics in Diverse Contex

The normative aims of sustainability seen in terms of matching environmental integrity, equality and social justice are clear. Yet, questioning how to get there is centrally about politics. This article presents two examples that illustrate the tensions and synergies across state, market and society alliances in accelerating sustainability. The first example addresses the question of financialization of nature by exploring the alliances created around offsets in international carbon markets under REDD+. The second example presents alliances for green transformation in Africa through Kenya’s pro-poor renewable energy experience. Both cases explore the importance of the political economy of the tripartite relationship between states, markets and society in tackling inequality. They also show the importance of inclusive transformation and the relevance of context in diverse sustainability pathways

Decentralize Internet Voting Model with Blockchain Smart Contract

A blockchain smart contract for internet voting offers the benefits of decentralization, immutability, security, privacy, and transparency. The study adopts design science research approach to create and deploy a model utilizing Ethereum's platform, known for its flexible and expressive smart contract development capabilities. The study progresses through three stages: a review and contract implementation phase, a mining network phase, and a decentralized wallet application design phase. Using an Ethereum account, election authorities, candidates, and voters can generate a unique, encrypted identity key that can only be decrypted with a passphrase to conduct voting transactions. The system ensures real-time, verifiable election results, as it automatically closes at the designated deadline. The result prohibits a single voter from registering twice and voting for multiple candidates. The voting system utilizes the security features of blockchain technology to ensuring transparent, immutable, and secure voting transactions. Security and forensic experts can investigate the artifacts made of the blockchain technology's cryptographic algorithms. Future studies should evaluate the trade-offs between security and efficiency in different consensus mechanisms and optimization of blockchain resources for large scale elections

Physiological, Morphological and molecular biological studies of the effect of Glucagon-like peptide-1 and exenatide in the diabetic rat pancreas

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major health problem currently affecting over 225 million people worldwide. It is often described as a major metabolic disorder, which can result in numerous long-term complications including retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy and cardiomyopathy. DM is due to a deficiency of insulin or insulin resistance. Of the 225 million diabetic patients, around 5-10% suffer from type 1 DM (T1DM) and the remaining 90-95% suffer from type 2 diabetes (T2DM). T1DM is due to insulin deficiency whereas T2DM is due to either a reduction in insulin secretion or insulin resistance. Patients with both T1DM and T2DM normally require insulin and hypoglycaemic drugs, respectively. Changes in life style habits, regular exercise and healthy diets can also help to control blood glucose in T2DM patients. Mediators that can help to increase the health of pancreatic islets to synthesize and secrete insulin will be of tremendous benefit to diabetic patients. This study investigated the beneficial effects of incretins, substances such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and its synthetic agonist, exenatide on the diabetic rat pancreas compared to healthy, agematched controls. These incretins exert their beneficial effects by repairing the pancreatic islets. Thus, increasing pancreatic beta (β) cell mass and in turn it will help to synthesize and secrete insulin into the circulation. The rationale of this study was to find out how these two incretins can improve insulin secretion both in vivo and in vitro employing the rat model of T1DM following injection with streptozotocin (STZ). The project employed six groups of rats, with three groups serving as age-matched, healthy controls and the other three groups rendered diabetic. One set of rats from each group was untreated while the rats from the other four groups were given either GLP-1(50 nmol/kg body weight) or exenatide (1 μg/kg body weight) over 10 weeks. The project measured body weight, levels of blood glucose and insulin. The plasma levels of liver and kidney markers were also determined. The in vitro study measured insulin secretion from pancreatic fragments, the distribution of insulin- and glucagon-positive cells in pancreatic islets, granules, co-localization of different peptides in the islets, biochemical, and molecular biological changes, which may occur in the pancreas during the experimental period. For the in vivo study, the results have shown mild gain in body weight and no change in blood glucose levels in both treated and untreated age-matched normal control rats. Furthermore, the results show a significant reduction in blood glucose levels in diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide, but the beneficial effect was more pronounced following GLP-1 treatment. The results also show no changes in glucose handling between normal treated or normal untreated rats following blood glucose tolerance test (GTT). However, in diabetic rats, the results show that the GTT reveals a better glucose tolerance in these diabetic animals treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide but the effect was more significant with GLP-1 compared with untreated diabetic rats. The present study shows that diabetic rats secreted significantly less insulin in the blood than normal healthy rats and a significant increase in serum insulin was detected in both normal and diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide compared to untreated controls. The results also show significant reductions in the liver enzymes, aspartate transferase and alanine transferase in the diabetic rats. A similar beneficial effect on kidney function was obtained owing to a small reduction in blood urea nitrogen, serum creatinine and serum uric acids in both normal and diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide. In the lipid profile study, the results show a mild reduction in serum cholesterol and a marked reduction in serum triglyceride in both normal and diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide. The results from the in vitro study show that either GLP-1 or exenatide can evoke marked dose-dependent release (secretion) of insulin from pancreatic tissue fragments of normal and diabetic rats, indicating that there is a clear role for either GLP-1 or exenatide in inducing insulin secretion. In this study, an attempt was also made to investigate both the number and distribution of endocrine cells in the control and diabetic rat pancreas using immnohistochemistry. The results show a significant increase in the number of cells containing either insulin or GLP-1 in both normal and diabetic treated rats. However, in the case of exenatide, catalase and glutathione reductase-positive cells were only significantly increased in diabetic rats, but the increase was not significant in normal rats treated with either GLP- 1 or exenatide. These results show that the significant increase in number of catalase and glutathione-positive cells in diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide reveal the beneficial antioxidant effect of both GLP-1 and exenatide in treatment of oxidative stress, which usually occurs in DM. On the other hand, there was a significant decrease in glucagon-positive cells in both normal and diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide. The immunohistochemical and immunofluorescent studies also revealed that insulinpositive cells were distributed both in the central and peripheral portions of the islets of Langerhans in normal pancreas. In contrast, glucagon-positive cells were located in the peripheral part of the islets of Langerhans. After the onset of diabetes, the number of insulin-positive cells was reduced significantly. In contrast, the number of glucagonpositive cells increased significantly with abnormal pattern of distribution compared to normal pancreas. The pattern of distribution of both GLP-1 and exenatide has indicated co-localization not only with insulin, but also with glucagon. Furthermore, catalase and glutathione reductase-positive cells were distributed homogenously all over the islet of Langerhans with no specific co-localization with specific type of endocrine cell. In the gene expression study, the results show significant increases in the levels of mRNA of pancreatic duodenal hoeobox-1, heat shock protein-70, glutathione peroxidase, insulin receptor and glucagon like peptide-1 receptor in both normal and diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide. However, the increase was not significant in mRNA gene expression of either insulin receptor or glucagon like peptide-1 receptor in normal rats treated with GLP-1. On the other hand, the gene expression results show that glucagon mRNA level was significantly decreased in both normal and diabetic rats treated with either GLP-1 or exenatide. In conclusion, the results of this study have clearly demonstrated that both GLP-1 and exenatide have marked beneficial effects on pancreatic islet cells, especially β- and α- cells, which produce insulin and glucagon, respectively. The two incretins seem to repair the diabetic pancreas, which in turn secretes more insulin and less glucagon

PENGARUH KEPEMILIKAN KELUARGA TERHADAP KINERJA PERUSAHAAN DENGAN AGENCY COST SEBAGAI VARIABEL PEMODERASI: studi pada perusahaan food and beverages yang terdaftar di BEI tahun 2012-2014

Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui pengaruh kepemilikan keluarga terhadap kinerja perusahaan dengan agency cost sebagai variabel pemoderasi pada perusahaan food and beverages yang terdaftar di BEI tahun 2012-2014. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode deskriptif dan inferensial dengan pendekatan kuantitatif. Populasi pada penelitian ini adalah perusahaan food and beverages yang terdaftar di BEI tahun 2012-2014. Metode pengambilan sampel dalam penelitian ini menggunakan metode sampel jenuh. Dari metode tersebut diperoleh 13 perusahaan yang memenuhi kriteria untuk digunakan sebagai sampel penelitian. Dalam menganalisis data, penelitian ini menggunakan regresi linier berganda dan jenis data yang digunakan adalah data sekunder. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara parsial kepemilikan keluarga berpengaruh positif terhadap kinerja perusahaan dengan dimediasi oleh internal controlnya yang baik. Sedangkan agency cost terbukti dapat memperkuat pengaruh kepemilikan keluarga terhadap kinerja perusahaan. Kata kunci: Leverage, Size, Family Firm, ROA, Agency Cost, Internal Control The Purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of family firm on company performance with agency cost as moderating variable on the company's food and beverages sub-sector listed on the Stock Exchange in 2012-2014. The method in this research is descriptive and inferential methods with quantitative approach. Population in this research is a food and beverages company listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2012-2014. The sampling method in this study using saturated sample. It acquired 13 companies that suit the criteria to be use as samples. This study use secondary data and analyze using multiple linear regression. Results of the study showing that family firm have positive effect on company performance partially, with high internal control as mediator. Whereas agency cost are proven strengthen the influence of family firm on company performance. Keywords: Leverage, Size, Family Firm, ROA, Agency Cost, Internal Contro

GAMBARAN PENGETAHUAN PENDERITA TUBERKULOSIS (TB) TENTANG TB DI WILAYAH KERJA PUSKESMAS GARUDA KECAMATAN ANDIR KOTA BANDUNG

Tuberkulosis merupakan masalah kesehatan yang mendunia. Di Kota Bandung pada tahun 2014 ditemukan 2.047 kasus dan terjadi peningkatan pada tahun 2016 menjadi 2.149 kasus. Pengobatan TB yang tepat dapat mencegah terjadinya resistensi dan jika dilakukan secara tepat maka penularan dapat menurun. Tujuan penelitian adalah mengetahui gambaran pengetahuan penderita Tuberkulosis (TB) tentang TB di Wilayah Kerja Puskesmas Garuda Kota Bandung. Metode penelitian yang dilakukan menggunakan deskriptif kuantitatif. Populasi penelitian sebanyak 187 penderita TB dengan jumlah sampel 47 responden menggunakan teknik purposive sampling. Instrumen yang digunakan dalam penelitian adalah butir soal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tingkat pengetahuan penderita TB tentang pengobatan TB di Puskesmas Garuda Kota Bandung lebih dari setengahnya adalah baik dengan jumlah 25 orang (51,0%) dan sebagian kecil kurang yaitu 1 orang (2,0%). Kesimpulan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tingkat pengetahuan penderita TB tentang TB dalam kategori baik. Peneliti menyarankan agar penderita TB selalu patuh dalam pengobatan untuk mencegah pengulangan pengobatan sehingga dapat tercapainya kesembuhan.-- Tuberculosis is a worldwide health problem. In the city of Bandung in 2014 found 2,047 cases and increased in 2016 to 2149 cases. Proper TB treatment can prevent the occurrence of resistance and if done properly then the transmission may decrease. The purpose of this research is to know the description of Tuberculosis (TB) patient knowledge about TB in region of Puskesmas Garuda Bandung. Methods of research conducted using descriptive quantitative. The population of the study were 187 patients with TB and sample of 47 respondents using purposive sampling technique. The instrument used in this research is questionnaire. The results showed that the level of knowledge of TB patients about TB in Puskesmas Garuda Bandung more than half of them is good with the number of 25 people (51.0%) and a small part less that is 1 person (2.0%). The conclusions of the study indicate that TB patients' knowledge of TB is in good category. Researchers suggest that TB patients are always adherent in treatment to prevent repetition of treatment so as to achieve healin