Developing enterprise opportunities from placements to graduate consultancy in lean sustainable design

This paper reports on the adaption of a model for consultancy of using graduates working on a contract basis for Bournemouth University (BU) but within a client organisation, and managed by a member of academic staff. The model is based on BU Design graduates undertaking a 6 month consultancy under the direction of an academic. The adapted model, discussed in this paper, offers consultancy in the area of lean sustainable design, a research specialism of the Sustainable Design Research Centre. The paper discusses the industrial relevance of design education and how design education and design research are strengthening each other with industrial relevance and investigates how to exploit existing relationships with companies who employ undergraduates on placement. It is envisaged that in order for graduates to work effectively as consultants, they will need additional development in the area of sustainable design and lean design. To address this possible shortfall a short continuing professional development (CPD) course is being developed, which will be offered to perspective consultant graduates to provide training to them in appropriate areas. In order to manage the risk associated with using inexperienced graduates to conduct the consultancy work, the projects will be managed by academics as well as providing support, by way of mentoring, to the graduates during the consultancy periods. The paper reports on research undertaken with final year design students to determine the content of this short cours

An exploration of progression rates of widening participation students on to an Integrated Master of Engineering

This paper reports on an investigation into the potential to widen participation to Higher Education provided by a flexible learning MEng Engineering. The MEng is part of an integrated programme that provides progression routes from a traditional day release Apprenticeship, through HNC, FdEng at a Further Education College to a flexible learning BEng/MEng at a Higher Education Institution. The programme was originally developed to answer a demand from local industry to upskill the engineering workforce, however, the nature of the provision means that it meets much of the best practice for widening participation. The investigation concludes that while the programme provides an opportunity for mature learners to undertake higher education, it largely provides an alternative pathway through vocational education to higher education qualifications for a white male middle class cohort. It also highlights that entry to apprenticeships that lead to progression opportunities is controlled not by educational institutions but by industry

An investigation into what feedback students recognise as feedback

The paper reports on a study conducted with final year undergraduates on a product design course, in the UK, to attempt to better understand how they both interpret and respond to feedback on their academic work. The starting point for this study was the relatively poor scores attained for the elements of assessment and feedback in the National Student Survey (NSS) results for this course. The paper draws upon an existing body of literature around assessment and feedback related to the NSS results nationally. Based upon the literature an intervention relating to an element of assessment was made with these students and data collected on the students’ response to this intervention. The results of analyzing this data suggest that while students’ responded positively to some aspects of the intervention it is apparent that students’ still struggle to understand how to deploy the feedback to improve their work. This study is part of a longitudinal study, the next part of which involves a second intervention with the same student cohort that will attempt to ascertain what they would like to receive in terms of feedback

Engineering Design, Apprenticeships & Diversity

This paper reports on a study that set out to understand the backgrounds of apprentices studying Engineering pathways at one FE College in the UK where an integrated programme of qualifications from level 2 to level 7 exists. The research presented here follows on from a previous study that suggested diversity was very low across the programme and that progression opportunities to level 4 and above, that is, Higher Education are not evenly distributed across the socio-economic groupings. The findings are presented in the light of relevant literature indicating concerns nationally and across sectors about Apprenticeship opportunities not being fairly distributed across socio-economic groupings. The report concludes that there is a relationship between those from lower socio-economic groups being more likely to engage with craft type qualifications which do not offer progression possibilities to Higher Education than those from higher socio-economic groups who are more likely to engage with technical qualifications. The report makes suggestions for further investigation related to careers advice and suggests some interventions that might increase the diversity of the engineering Apprentice population

Unpicking the Barriers to Diversity in Engineering Apprenticeships

The study reported in this paper investigated some of the barriers to increasing diversity in those taking up engineering apprenticeships. Specifically, the papers report an investigation of progression opportunities for level 2 and 3 engineering design apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds studying on the south coast of the UK. The outcome of the investigation lead to a series of interventions being made with both the companies employing apprentices and the section of the local Further Education college responsible for recruitment for all engineering apprentices in the local area. The impact of the study has led to a significant increase (from 11% to 26%) of apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds entering level 2 technical qualifications in Sept 2017 which provide them with progression opportunities to Higher Education at level 4 and beyond. The interventions also lead a raising of awareness of the imbalance of backgrounds of students. This has led to a more systemised and rigorous approach to career/progression pathway advice to apprenticeship applicants within the college

Palliative care clinical trials: how nurses are contributing to ethical, integrated and evidence based care of palliative care patients participating in clinical trials

The aim of this paper is to describe the emerging role of the palliative care clinical trials nurse in an era of evidence based practice and increasing clinical trial activity in palliative care settings across Australia. An overview of the current clinical trials work is provided with a focus on three aspects of clinical trials nursing practice which have significant implications for patients: (1) the consent process; (2) integration of clinical trials into multidisciplinary care, and (3) promotion of evidence based practice in palliative care settings. Clinical trials roles provide palliative care nurses with an opportunity to contribute to clinical research, help expand palliative care’s evidence base as well as develop their own research capabilities

Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in Captive Cheetah

We describe virus isolation, full genome sequence analysis, and clinical pathology in ferrets experimentally inoculated with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus recovered from a clinically ill captive cheetah that had minimal human contact. Evidence of reverse zoonotic transmission by fomites underscores the substantial animal and human health implications of this virus

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis

CD8+ T cells from a novel T cell receptor transgenic mouse induce liver-stage immunity that can be boosted by blood-stage infection in rodent malaria

To follow the fate of CD8+ T cells responsive to Plasmodium berghei ANKA (PbA) infection, we generated an MHC I-restricted TCR transgenic mouse line against this pathogen. T cells from this line, termed PbT-I T cells, were able to respond to blood-stage infection by PbA and two other rodent malaria species, P. yoelii XNL and P. chabaudi AS. These PbT-I T cells were also able to respond to sporozoites and to protect mice from liver-stage infection. Examination of the requirements for priming after intravenous administration of irradiated sporozoites, an effective vaccination approach, showed that the spleen rather than the liver was the main site of priming and that responses depended on CD8α+ dendritic cells. Importantly, sequential exposure to irradiated sporozoites followed two days later by blood-stage infection led to augmented PbT-I T cell expansion. These findings indicate that PbT-I T cells are a highly versatile tool for studying multiple stages and species of rodent malaria and suggest that cross-stage reactive CD8+ T cells may be utilized in liver-stage vaccine design to enable boosting by blood-stage infections

Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies