Photovoice with care: A creative and accessible method for representing lived experiences

Photovoice is a research method with great promise as a tool for people looking to tell stories about their lives and work toward change, it also has much to offer criminology, creating insightful material from the perspectives of those most intimately connected to the research topic. This article reflects on photovoice as a resource for lived experience practitioners, activists, and leaders. The work we reflect upon is a co-designed, participatory study of a community-led crime prevention organisation: ‘Reformed’. We (Natasha and Kemi) founded Reformed after being released from prison to multiple barriers and low expectations from criminal justice professionals.Cheshire and Merseyside Social Work Teaching Partnership [2020–2022] Grant number [HSC 20-27]

Choice of Law and Employee Restrictive Covenants: An American Perspective

Employees are increasingly mobile across state lines. This is partly the result of technological change facilitating individual movement and communication, but also a result of corresponding changes in corporate organization to establish offices and interests in multiple jurisdictions. With these developments, there has been a rise in litigation surrounding the enforcement of employee covenants not to compete when the parties or issues involved have connections to multiple jurisdictions. The emerging body of law intrigues and confounds lawyers and commentators because of its complexity and unpredictability. This essay is an effort to describe recent legal developments in the United States, situating them within the background doctrines of conflict of laws and parallel litigation that govern such disputes. Our aim is to provide a useful comparison with the other essays in this volume dealing with developments in other countries on the same subject. A covenant not to compete (also referred to as a restrictive covenant or non-compete agreement or NCA) is an agreement that an employee will not compete against the employer, or go to work for a competitor, for some specified period after termination of employment. The contract typically also specifies a geographic region, and may specify a trade or profession in which competition is prohibited. Although such restrictions are presumptively unenforceable at common law on public policy grounds, courts in most states will grant an exception if the employer can demonstrate that the covenant in question safeguards a legitimate interest and is reasonable in its scope. The most commonly recognized legitimate interest is the protection of trade secrets. Depending on the state, courts may also recognize other legitimate interests such as customer relationships and goodwill, confidential information not rising to the level of a trade secret, and the services of employees with unique or extraordinary talents (although ordinary training is not usually protectable). The other limitation on enforceability is that the covenant must be reasonable. A broad set of public policy concerns informs the reasonableness test: courts are concerned with protecting employees from hardship, often citing inequality of bargaining power as a basis for giving special scrutiny to non-compete agreements. Courts also articulate a general resistance to restraints on trade. There is a strong imperative that the restriction be no greater in terms of duration, geographic scope, and limitation on vocational activities than is reasonably necessary to protect the interests of the employer

Latent Heat Recovery Modification from Sodium Acetate Trihydrate due to Structural Changes Caused by Silver Nanoparticles

Phase change materials (PCMs) have great potential as energy storage devices through the storage of thermal energy at low temperatures. Sodium acetate trihydrate (SAT) is a PCM commonly used for storing thermal energy for non-electric personal warmers, and releases that energy as latent heat during the phase transition from a supersaturated liquid state to a solid, crystal state at room temperature. SAT is an inexpensive, non-toxic PCM. These characteristics make SAT ideal for the development of reusable, non-electric neonatal blankets. This application requires careful optimization of the maximum temperature attained by the SAT solution, balanced by a prolonged heat release that will last hours. It is hypothesized that latent heat release will be prolonged if crystal growth rate is slowed via the interference of additives with the crystallization process. In this work we investigate the effects of adding nanoparticles to a solution of SAT and water. We find that the nanoparticles expedite the crystal growth, but that the growth rate of SAT crystals is non-monotonic with increasing nanoparticle concentration. Powder X-ray diffraction data indicate that the crystal structure is not affected with larger size particles are added, but strongly modified with the addition of 10nm size silver nanoparticles

Cellular Hokey Pokey: A Coarse-Grained Model of Lamellipodia Protrusion Dynamics Driven by Fluctuations in Actin Polymerization

Animal cells that spread onto a surface often rely on actin-rich cell extensions called lamellipodia to execute cell protrusion. XTC cells on a two-dimensional substrate exhibit regular protrusion and retraction of their lamellipodium, even though the cell is not translating. Travelling waves of protrusion have also been observed, similar to those observed in crawling cells. These periodic fluctuations in leading edge position have been linked to excitable actin dynamics near the cell edge using a one dimensional model of actin dynamics, as a function of arc-length along the cell. In this work we extend this earlier model of actin dynamics into two-dimensions (along the arc-length and radial directions of the cell) and include a model membrane that protrudes and retracts in response to the changing number of free barbed ends of actin filaments near the membrane. We show that if the polymerization rate of these barbed ends changes depending on their local concentration at the leading edge and the opposing force from the cell membrane, the model can reproduce the patterns of membrane protrusion and retraction seen in experiment. We investigate both Brownian ratchet and switch-like force-velocity relationships between the membrane load forces and actin polymerization rate

Appraising HEI-community Partnerships: Assessing Performance, Monitoring Progress, and Evaluating Impacts

Momentum of the creation of partnerships between higher education institutions (HEIs) and communities is strong. As their significance intensifies, the question of how to judge their value is garnering increasing attention. In this perspective article, we develop a framework for comprehensively appraising HEI-community partnerships. Constituent parts of the framework are unpacked, and application of the framework is then discussed. The appraisal framework provides a mechanism to document evidence of worth, and most importantly contributes to the continuous improvement and learning imperative of HEI-community partnerships

Detection of a Substantial Molecular Gas Reservoir in a brightest cluster galaxy at z = 1.7

We report the detection of CO(2-1) emission coincident with the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) of the high-redshift galaxy cluster SpARCS1049+56, with the Redshift Search Receiver (RSR) on the Large Millimetre Telescope (LMT). We confirm a spectroscopic redshift for the gas of z = 1.7091+/-0.0004, which is consistent with the systemic redshift of the cluster galaxies of z = 1.709. The line is well-fit by a single component Gaussian with a RSR resolution-corrected FWHM of 569+/-63 km/s. We see no evidence for multiple velocity components in the gas, as might be expected from the multiple image components seen in near-infrared imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope. We measure the integrated flux of the line to be 3.6+/-0.3 Jy km/s and, using alpha_CO = 0.8 Msun (K km s^-1 pc^2)^-1 we estimate a total molecular gas mass of 1.1+/-0.1x10^11 Msun and a M_H2/M_star ~ 0.4. This is the largest gas reservoir detected in a BCG above z > 1 to date. Given the infrared-estimated star formation rate of 860+/-130 Msun/yr, this corresponds to a gas depletion timescale of ~0.1Gyr. We discuss several possible mechanisms for depositing such a large gas reservoir to the cluster center -- e.g., a cooling flow, a major galaxy-galaxy merger or the stripping of gas from several galaxies -- but conclude that these LMT data are not sufficient to differentiate between them.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Reduced Graphene Oxide on Nickel Foam for Supercapacitor Electrodes

The focus of this paper is the investigation of reduced graphene oxide (GO)/nickel foam (RGON) samples for use as supercapacitor electrodes. Nickel foam samples were soaked in a GO suspension and dried before being subjected to two different methods to remove oxygen. Atmospheric pressure annealed (APA) samples were treated with a varying number (10–18) of nitrogen plasma jet scans, where sample temperatures did not exceed 280 °C. Furnace annealed (FA) samples were processed in an atmosphere of hydrogen and argon, at temperatures ranging from 600 °C to 900 °C. Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) data indicated that the carbon to oxygen (C:O) ratio for APA samples was minimized at an intermediate number of plasma scans. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopic (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopic data supported this finding. ESEM analysis from FA samples showed that with increasing temperatures of annealing, GO is transformed to reduced graphene oxide (RGO), with C:O ratios exceeding 35:1. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) data indicated the formation of RGO with an increasing annealing temperature until 800 °C, when oxygen reincorporation in the surface atomic layers becomes an issue. Supercapacitors, constructed using the FA samples, demonstrated performances that correlated with surface atomic layer optimization of the C:O ratio

Moving beyond misuse and diversion: the urgent need to consider the role of iatrogenic addiction in the current opioid epidemic.

An epidemic of drug overdose deaths has led to calls for programs and policies to limit misuse and diversion of opioid medications. Any parallel call to consider the risk of iatrogenic addiction when treating pain has been muted in comparison. We have moved beyond questions of nonmedical use, abuse, and diversion to highlight the role of prescription opioids in causing addiction even when prescribed and used appropriately. Unfortunately, current evidence is insufficient, and a rapid expansion of longitudinal research is urgently needed to guide clinicians in balancing the need for opioids with the risk of adverse consequences. Meanwhile, medical education should place greater emphasis on the abuse liability of prescription opioids, and providers should endeavor to attenuate risk when possible

Situating Quests: Design Patterns for Quest and Level Design in RolePlaying Games

Abstract. The design of role-playing games (RPGs) is very complex, involving an intricate interweaving of narrative, quest design, and level design. As an important means for conveying the game’s story, quests dictate the setting and contents of levels. Levels provide challenges for the player to overcome in the service of completing quests, and their structure can invite the inclusion of certain kinds of quests. This paper presents an analysis of design patterns present in existing RPGs that aims to better understand such relationships. These patterns identify common design practices for quests and levels at many different levels of granularity

Automated Determination of [Fe/H] and [C/Fe] from Low-Resolution Spectroscopy

We develop an automated spectral synthesis technique for the estimation of metallicities ([Fe/H]) and carbon abundances ([C/Fe]) for metal-poor stars, including carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars, for which other methods may prove insufficient. This technique, autoMOOG, is designed to operate on relatively strong features visible in even low- to medium-resolution spectra, yielding results comparable to much more telescope-intensive high-resolution studies. We validate this method by comparison with 913 stars which have existing high-resolution and low- to medium-resolution to medium-resolution spectra, and that cover a wide range of stellar parameters. We find that at low metallicities ([Fe/H] < -2.0), we successfully recover both the metallicity and carbon abundance, where possible, with an accuracy of ~ 0.20 dex. At higher metallicities, due to issues of continuum placement in spectral normalization done prior to the running of autoMOOG, a general underestimate of the overall metallicity of a star is seen, although the carbon abundance is still successfully recovered. As a result, this method is only recommended for use on samples of stars of known sufficiently low metallicity. For these low-metallicity stars, however, autoMOOG performs much more consistently and quickly than similar, existing techniques, which should allow for analyses of large samples of metal-poor stars in the near future. Steps to improve and correct the continuum placement difficulties are being pursued.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in A