Reimagining career guidance: towards a pluralistic perspective

Difficulties concerning the identified mis-match between supply and demand sides of the labour market are discussed. The variability of career guidance services for young people across Europe is illustrated together with policy initiatives in some cases leading to problems of professional identity and limited support to clients of the service. The risks associated with a monoculture of ‘one size fits all’ approach to guidance practice are discussed. The principles of pluralistic approaches to counselling are discussed with the suggestion that this might prove to be a fertile way forward for career guidance practice

Two-dimensional elemental operator for modeling the vectorial hysteresis of soft magnetic composite material

© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents a two-dimensional elemental operator with biaxial anisotropy based on the physical mechanisms of the cubic textured magnetic materials, and deduces an analytical expression of the direct relationship between magnetic field strength H and magnetization M for a single elemental operator by the partial approximate substitutions. To verify the proposed model, the magnetic hysteresis of a soft magnetic composite material SOMALOYTM 500 under alternating excitations was simulated and compared with the experimental results obtained by a 3D magnetic property tester. The results suggest that the proposed approach can be a useful tool in the modeling of vectorial magnetic hysteresis and the calculation of iron loss in practical engineering electromagnetic field analysis

Modeling the stress dependence of magnetic hysteresis based on Stoner-Wohlfarth theory

© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents an improved approach for simulating magnetic hysteresis, which takes into account the effect of applied stress, based on an extended Stoner-Wohlfarth (S-W) model. Meanwhile, the S-W asteroid rotates and shrinks, and the stable direction of magnetization of the particle can be calculated from the new energy minimum conditions. This developed model is applied to analyze the magnetic hysteresis phenomenon of a soft magnetic composite (SMC) material under different compaction process, and the results of simulations are in good quantitative agreement with experimental data

E1-Like Activating Enzyme Atg7 Is Preferentially Sequestered into p62 Aggregates via Its Interaction with LC3-I

p62 is constitutively degraded by autophagy via its interaction with LC3. However, the interaction of p62 with LC3 species in the context of the LC3 lipidation process is not specified. Further, the p62-mediated protein aggregation's effect on autophagy is unclear. We systemically analyzed the interactions of p62 with all known Atg proteins involved in LC3 lipidation. We find that p62 does not interact with LC3 at the stages when it is being processed by Atg4B or when it is complexed or conjugated with Atg3. p62 does interact with LC3-I and LC3-I:Atg7 complex and is preferentially recruited by LC3-II species under autophagic stimulation. Given that Atg4B, Atg3 and LC3-Atg3 are indispensable for LC3-II conversion, our study reveals a protective mechanism for Atg4B, Atg3 and LC3-Atg3 conjugate from being inappropriately sequestered into p62 aggregates. Our findings imply that p62 could potentially impair autophagy by negatively affecting LC3 lipidation and contribute to the development of protein aggregate diseases. © 2013 Gao et al

Fr-TM-align: a new protein structural alignment method based on fragment alignments and the TM-score

©2008 Pandit and Skolnick; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/9/531doi:10.1186/1471-2105-9-531Background: Protein tertiary structure comparisons are employed in various fields of contemporary structural biology. Most structure comparison methods involve generation of an initial seed alignment, which is extended and/or refined to provide the best structural superposition between a pair of protein structures as assessed by a structure comparison metric. One such metric, the TM-score, was recently introduced to provide a combined structure quality measure of the coordinate root mean square deviation between a pair of structures and coverage. Using the TM-score, the TM-align structure alignment algorithm was developed that was often found to have better accuracy and coverage than the most commonly used structural alignment programs; however, there were a number of situations when this was not true. Results: To further improve structure alignment quality, the Fr-TM-align algorithm has been developed where aligned fragment pairs are used to generate the initial seed alignments that are then refined using dynamic programming to maximize the TM-score. For the assessment of the structural alignment quality from Fr-TM-align in comparison to other programs such as CE and TMalign, we examined various alignment quality assessment scores such as PSI and TM-score. The assessment showed that the structural alignment quality from Fr-TM-align is better in comparison to both CE and TM-align. On average, the structural alignments generated using Fr-TM-align have a higher TM-score (~9%) and coverage (~7%) in comparison to those generated by TM-align. Fr- TM-align uses an exhaustive procedure to generate initial seed alignments. Hence, the algorithm is computationally more expensive than TM-align. Conclusion: Fr-TM-align, a new algorithm that employs fragment alignment and assembly provides better structural alignments in comparison to TM-align. The source code and executables of Fr- TM-align are freely downloadable at: http://cssb.biology.gatech.edu/skolnick/files/FrTMalign/

Solutions of Several Coupled Discrete Models in terms of Lame Polynomials of Order One and Two

Coupled discrete models abound in several areas of physics. Here we provide an extensive set of exact quasiperiodic solutions of a number of coupled discrete models in terms of Lame polynomials of order one and two. Some of the models discussed are (i) coupled Salerno model, (ii) coupled Ablowitz-Ladik model, (iii) coupled saturated discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equation, (iv) coupled phi4 model, and (v) coupled phi6 model. Furthermore, we show that most of these coupled models in fact also possess an even broader class of exact solutions.Comment: 31 pages, to appear in Pramana (Journal of Physics) 201

Strained graphene structures: from valleytronics to pressure sensing

Due to its strong bonds graphene can stretch up to 25% of its original size without breaking. Furthermore, mechanical deformations lead to the generation of pseudo-magnetic fields (PMF) that can exceed 300 T. The generated PMF has opposite direction for electrons originating from different valleys. We show that valley-polarized currents can be generated by local straining of multi-terminal graphene devices. The pseudo-magnetic field created by a Gaussian-like deformation allows electrons from only one valley to transmit and a current of electrons from a single valley is generated at the opposite side of the locally strained region. Furthermore, applying a pressure difference between the two sides of a graphene membrane causes it to bend/bulge resulting in a resistance change. We find that the resistance changes linearly with pressure for bubbles of small radius while the response becomes non-linear for bubbles that stretch almost to the edges of the sample. This is explained as due to the strong interference of propagating electronic modes inside the bubble. Our calculations show that high gauge factors can be obtained in this way which makes graphene a good candidate for pressure sensing.Comment: to appear in proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Worksho

Improved phosphate‐based glass fiber performance achieved through acid etch/polydopamine treatment

Phosphate based glass fibres (PGF) are of interest as reinforcements for degradable implants, but have seen limited application due to their rapid loss of strength when subjected to aqueous conditions. Previous studies have utilised heat treatments to improve longer term strength retention at a significant cost to initial strength. In this study, acid etching is used to recover the initial fibre strength after heat treatment and a subsequent coating of polydopamine is applied to provide longer term retention of this recovered strength. After an initial loss of strength after heat treatment (1135-> 509 MPa), an optimised combination of acid treatment and polydopamine coating was able to recover to approximately 85% of the initial strength (969 MPa). The result was significant in comparison to acid treatment (647 MPa) or coating (688 MPa) alone. The combined acid/coating treatment was demonstrated to maintain fibre properties for at least 14 days, although the amount of polydopamine coating was observed to decrease over this period. The approach reported here is of importance as it offers the require