Iridium oxide supported on antimony-doped tin oxide as an electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction

The generation of high purity hydrogen by renewable, sustainable means is a crucial building block towards the realisation of a carbon-free energy economy. Proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) offers a promising route for the generation of clean hydrogen, using renewable energy, for both stationary and mobile energy storage applications, and as a feedstock for the chemical industry. As water electrolysis is an electrochemical redox reaction, cathodic hydrogen evolution cannot occur without an efficient, and rapid anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). While both iridium and ruthenium oxides are state-of-the-art OER catalysts in acidic environment, the latter undergoes dissolution under anodic OER conditions much more rapidly than the former, and this makes iridium oxide the most suitable catalytic material for electrolyser anodes. Several strategies have been explored as a means to lower the iridium content in OER catalysts, and of these, the use of cheap, stable support materials has been seen as a promising means to produce highly active, durable catalysts, by enhancement of the electrocatalytically active surface area. In this thesis, the viability of an organometallic chemical deposition method for the deposition of IrOₓ nanoparticles on antimony-doped tin oxide (ATO) support is investigated. The effect of the gas environment (oxygen or argon) and the temperature used for the deposition was examined. The ex-situ OER performance of the synthesised electrocatalysts was evaluated using the rotating disk electrode technique. Using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high-resolution transmission scanning electron microscopy (HR-STEM), the physical properties of the synthesised IrOₓ/ATO catalysts were elucidated, in order to understand the observed oxygen evolution activity and stability of IrOₓ/ATO in relation to the OMCD technique. In addition to developing an understanding towards the physical and electrochemical properties of the synthesised materials, strategies to optimise the Ir yield achieved by the organometallic chemical deposition process were explored

The Price of Citizenship: Corporations, Congress and Mineral Depletion in 1969

Taxes are generally not given a particularly detailed treatment as analytic concepts. Instead, thinking on taxes has tended to focus on the technical aspects of how they behave. Historians have generally dealt with taxes in two ways: the first looks at them as encapsulating a moral transaction based on duty to the state and fellow citizens; and the other treats taxes as though they were simply a tool by which the government raises revenues. The second approach does not take full appreciation of the extra-economic implications and meanings of tax transactions while the first does not actually explain how taxes work to enforce these moral obligations. Taxes affect all parties in the nation in significant but almost completely imperceptible ways. For this reason, tax relationships between citizens and the state are complicated enough; let alone the interactions between corporations and the state. The corporation was and continues to be a key structure that enables and is enabled by the nation state. Despite its long and storied history in America, it occupies an ambiguous place in American society and law. Legal thinkers have tried to understand the corporate entity as existing in an uneasy cohabitation with the individualist legal tradition in America, yet this becomes harder and harder to do as corporations have come to dominate the economic and thus legal landscapes. Legislators have come to equate conceptually corporations and citizens. This becomes problematic because of the different roles that are played by corporations and citizens, a fact that is highlighted during moments of tax reform. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the oil industry. After the railroads of the Gilded Age, no other industry has so completely transformed the American economy and the way of life of American citizens. Yet the tax privileges granted to the oil industry have always sparked the ire of various citizens even as they are vociferously defended by others. The arguments tend to focus on why and how taxes and tax breaks for corporations can be justified. This question is a reflection of a more significant one: what is the place of the corporation in American society? I believe that the financial crisis of the late 1960s, which provoked Nixon's tax reform of 1969, gives us some insight into how legislators have sought to grapple with this question. The arguments for and against the mineral depletion allowance in 1969 are thus indicative of a much deeper trend in American thinking on the corporation

Contextualizing the Global Nursing Care Chain: International Migration and the Status of Nursing in Kerala, India

In this article I explore the issue of nursing status in Kerala, India and how over time a colonial discourse of caste‐based pollution has given way to a discourse of sexual pollution under expanding migratory opportunities. Based on survey and qualitative research findings, I caution that the improving occupational status of nursing in India is not directly mapped onto social status, and this is particularly evident in the matrimonial market. In the light of these findings I argue that global nursing care chain (GNCC) analysis must assess more than just workplace contexts in order to conceptualize how global care chains (GCCs) interlock, and how they are differentiated from each other

The development of the nursing profession in a globalised context: a qualitative case study in Kerala, India

In the paper, we are looking at the relationship between globalisation and the professional project, using nursing in Kerala as an exemplar. Our focus is on the intersection of the professional project, gender and globalisation processes. Included in our analysis are the ways in which gender affects the professional project in the global south, and the development of a professional project which it is closely tied to global markets and global migration, revealing the political-economic, historical, and cultural factors that influence the shape and consequences of nurse migration. The phenomenon that enabled our analysis, by showing these forces at work in a particular time and place, was an outbreak of strikes by nurses working in private hospitals in Kerala in 2011–2012

N-acetylcysteine reduces oxidative stress in sickle cell patients

Oxidative stress is of importance in the pathophysiology of sickle cell disease (SCD). In this open label randomized pilot study the effects of oral N-acetylcysteine (NAC) on phosphatidylserine (PS) expression as marker of cellular oxidative damage (primary end point), and markers of hemolysis, coagulation and endothelial activation and NAC tolerability (secondary end points) were studied. Eleven consecutive patients (ten homozygous [HbSS] sickle cell patients, one HbSβ0-thalassemia patient) were randomly assigned to treatment with either 1,200 or 2,400 mg NAC daily during 6 weeks. The data indicate an increment in whole blood glutathione levels and a decrease in erythrocyte outer membrane phosphatidylserine exposure, plasma levels of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) and cell-free hemoglobin after 6 weeks of NAC treatment in both dose groups. One patient did not tolerate the 2,400 mg dose and continued with the 1,200 mg dose. During the study period, none of the patients experienced painful crises or other significant SCD or NAC related complications. These data indicate that N-acetylcysteine treatment of sickle cell patients may reduce SCD related oxidative stress

Two Concepts of Basic Equality

It has become somewhat a commonplace in recent political philosophy to remark that all plausible political theories must share at least one fundamental premise, ‘that all humans are one another's equals’. One single concept of ‘basic equality’, therefore, is cast as the common touchstone of all contemporary political thought. This paper argues that this claim is false. Virtually all do indeed say that all humans are ‘equals’ in some basic sense. However, this is not the same sense. There are not one but (at least) two concepts of basic equality, and they reflect not a grand unity within political philosophy but a deep and striking division. I call these concepts ‘Equal Worth’ and ‘Equal Authority’. The former means that each individual’s good is of equal moral worth. The latter means that no individual is under the natural authority of anyone else. Whilst these two predicates are not in themselves logically inconsistent, I demonstrate that they are inconsistent foundation stones for political theory. A theory that starts from Equal Worth will find it near impossible to justify Equal Authority. And a theory that starts from Equal Authority will find any fact about the true worth of things, including ourselves, irrelevant to justifying legitimate action. This helps us identify the origin of many of our deepest and seemingly intractable disagreements within political philosophy, and directs our attention to the need for a clear debate about the truth and/or relationship between the two concepts. In short, my call to arms can be summed up in the demand that political philosophers never again be allowed to claim ‘that all human beings are equals’ full stop. They must be clear in what dimension they claim that we are equals—Worth or Authority (or perhaps something else)

Learning to be indigenous or being taught to be Kenyan : the ethnography of teaching art and material culture in Kenya

Several independent African states promote teaching of a national culture as one culture and learning about ethnic cultures as separate and distinct aspects of other cultures of the nation. This is often articulated in development philosophies and political discourses that complement both being modern and being ethnic with almost equal emphasis. This dissertation is about learning African culture in the school system in Kenya.The dissertation reviews the historical development of learning about culture in Kenya and particularly about material culture and the arts from pre-Christian and colonial times to post independence. This last period covers the presidencies of Jomo Kenyatta (1963-1978) and Daniel arap Moi (1978-1996). Exemplification of this learning is investigated first at the general national level and then at three particular regions comprising an all Christian, third and fourth generation school-going agriculturist community, a first generation school-going pastoralist nomadic community and a multi-ethnic urban community. In the three regions, the study examines the present situation as it is in the classroom at the level of contact between the art teacher and the pupil in primary schools during the formative years of children's growth. This also spans the period described as the golden years of children's art.Through qualitative and quantitative material and analyses of political discourses and educational and cultural policy documents. The thesis demonstrates that the art and craft curriculum follows the presidential philosophy of Nyayoism. In theory this philosophy promotes modernization and maintenance of indigenous traditions but in practice leans towards modernization, in actual terms, Europeanization. Modernization is attempting to create one Kenyan national culture using schools as a vehicle.The research demonstrates how the present national cultural heritage curriculum focusing on material culture is not likely to be an effective arts educational tool and a medium for transmission of indigenous aesthetic knowledge in three school sites representing three broad cultures and traditions of Kenya i.e. agriculturist, pastoralist and multi-ethnic urban