The social mediation of multinational legal education: A case study of the University of London’s undergraduate laws programme for external/international students.

PhDThis thesis examines the social mediation of a transnational educational programme, namely the University of London’s International (External) Undergraduate Laws Programme. The thesis explores the lived experiences of a variety of stakeholders – university academics, frontline teaching staff and students - in the context of historical legacy and current development. The University of London’s International (External) programmes is one of the oldest forms of distance education, and the Undergraduate Laws Programme is the second largest subscribed programme and represent the fundamental academic legal education for the legal profession in numerous countries. With the separation of teaching, assessment and award as the distinguishing feature consequential to the origins of the University of London its legacy results in multitude stakeholders with vested interests in each aspect. The thesis seeks to understand the motivations behind and implications resulting from the various stakeholders’ experiences through an analysis of their narratives gleaned from interviews and data recorded from observations. Is there a distinct identity and culture within each group of stakeholders which has developed through the evolution of the programme? Can a pattern or theory of teaching and learning unique to the programme be identified and if so, what kind of impact has that had on legal education? The possibility of identifying existing and/or emerging communities of practice within and across each group of stakeholders is a recurring theme discussed on the basis that the theory of situated learning within a community of practice is a form of active learning; an objective which the University of London has sought to actively achieve since 2005. By building an ethnography of the various stakeholders, the thesis explores a formerly under researched aspect of undergraduate legal education and acts as a prompt for future areas of research in the areas of legal and distance education

Gasification of Low Ash Partially Composted Dairy Biomass with Enriched Air Mixture

Biomass is one of the renewable and non-conventional energy sources and it includes municipal solid wastes and animal wastes in addition to agricultural residue. Concentrated animal feeding operations produce large quantities of cattle biomass which might result in land and water pollution if left untreated. Different methods are employed to extract the available energy from the cattle biomass (CB) which includes co-firing and gasification. There are two types of CB: Feedlot biomass (FB), animal waste from feedlots and dairy biomass (DB), animal waste from dairy farms. Experiments were performed in the part on gasification of both FB and DB. Earlier studies on gasification of DB with different steam-fuel ratios resulted in increased production of hydrogen. In the present study, dairy biomass was gasified in a medium with enriched oxygen percentage varying from 24% to 28%. The effect of enriched air mixture, equivalence ratio and steam-fuel ratio on the performance of gasifier was studied. Limited studies were done using a mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen as the gasification medium and also a methodology was developed to determine the gasification efficiency based on mass and heat contents of gas. The results show that the peak temperature within the bed increases with increase in oxygen concentration in the gasification medium. Also carbon dioxide concentration in the mixture increases with corresponding decrease in carbon monoxide with increase in oxygen concentration of the incoming gasification medium. The peak temperature increased from 988°C to 1192°C as the oxygen concentration increased from 21% to 28% at ER=2.1. The upper limit on oxygen concentration is limited to 28% due to high peak temperature and resulting ash agglomeration. Higher heating value (HHV) of the gases decreases with increase in equivalence ratio. The gases produced using carbon dioxide and oxygen mixture had a higher HHV when compared to that of air and enriched air gasification. Typically the HHV of the gases increased from 2219 kJ/m³ to 3479 kJ/m³ when carbon dioxide and oxygen mixture is used for gasification instead of air at ER=4.2 in the absence of steam

Effect of Co-Firing Torrefied Woody Biomass with Coal in a 30 kWt Downfired Burner

Mesquite and juniper can be beneficially utilized for gasification and combustion applications. Torrefaction has been considered to be one of the thermal pretreatment options to improve the chemical (e.g. heat content) and physical (e.g. grindability) properties of raw biomass. A simple three component parallel reaction model (TCM) was formulated to study the effect of heating rate, temperature, residence time and type of biomass on torrefaction process. Typically inert environment (e.g. N_(2), He, Ar) is maintained to prevent oxidation of biomass during torrefaction. A novel method for utilization of carbon dioxide as the pretreatment medium for woody biomass has been investigated in the current study. Both raw and the torrefied biomass (TB) were pyrolyzed using TGA under N_(2). The TB fuels were also fired with coal in a 30 kWt downfired burner to study the NOx emission. In addition, tests were also done using raw biomass (RB) (mesquite and juniper) blended with coal and compared with results obtained from cofiring TB with coal. A zero dimensional model has been developed to predict the combustion performance of cofired fuels. The results are as follows. TGA studies yielded global kinetics based on maximum volatile release (MVR) method. TCM predicts higher loss of hemicellulose upon torrefaction when compared to the other components, cellulose and lignin resulting in improved heat values of TB. Comparable mass loss at lower temperatures, improved grindability, and improved fuel properties were observed upon using CO_(2) as the torrefaction medium. Co-firing 10% by mass of raw mesquite with coal reduced the NOx emission from 420 ppm to 280 ppm for an Equivalence ratio (ER) of 0.9. Further cofiring TB with coal reduced the NOx emission by 10% when compared to base case NOx emission from combustion of pure PRB coal. NOx emission decreased with increase in equivalence ratio. In addition, a term used in the biological literature, respiratory quotient (RQ), is applied to fossil and biomass fuels to rank the potential of fuels to produce carbon dioxide during oxidation process. Lesser the value of ‘RQ’ of a fuel, lower the global warming potential

POEM: Pricing Longer for Edge Computing in the Device Cloud

Multiple access mobile edge computing has been proposed as a promising technology to bring computation services close to end users, by making good use of edge cloud servers. In mobile device clouds (MDC), idle end devices may act as edge servers to offer computation services for busy end devices. Most existing auction based incentive mechanisms in MDC focus on only one round auction without considering the time correlation. Moreover, although existing single round auctions can also be used for multiple times, users should trade with higher bids to get more resources in the cascading rounds of auctions, then their budgets will run out too early to participate in the next auction, leading to auction failures and the whole benefit may suffer. In this paper, we formulate the computation offloading problem as a social welfare optimization problem with given budgets of mobile devices, and consider pricing longer of mobile devices. This problem is a multiple-choice multi-dimensional 0-1 knapsack problem, which is a NP-hard problem. We propose an auction framework named MAFL for long-term benefits that runs a single round resource auction in each round. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed auction mechanism outperforms the single round by about 55.6% on the revenue on average and MAFL outperforms existing double auction by about 68.6% in terms of the revenue.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, Accepted by the 18th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP

Immune status of health care personnel & post vaccination analysis of immunity against rubella in an eye hospital

Background & objectives: Congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) accounts for a significant amount of mortality and morbidity in India. Rubella vaccination is not included in our national immunization programme. Occupational exposure of the health care personnel to rubella infection is well known. This study aims to assess the serological status of health care workers against rubella virus in Aravind Eye Care System, Madurai and to follow the immune response in the seronegative individuals after vaccination

Torrefied biomass fuels as a renewable alternative to coal in co-firing for power generation

This study aims to assess the torrefaction of biomass as alternative renewable energy fuel to coal during co-firing. It was evaluated that torrefaction improves biomass grindability to such an extent that it can be used in coal mills with coal in co-firing without capital intensive modification. Torrefaction of beech wood was performed on a batch scale reactor at three different temperatures (200, 250 and 300 °C) with 30 min of residence time. The chemical structural changes in torrefied biomass were investigated with binding energies and FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) analysis. Monocombustion and co-combustion tests were performed to examine the combustion behaviour regarding flue gas emissions (CO, NOx and SO2) at 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5 m distance from the burner opening along with fly ash analysis. The FTIR and binding energies showed that lignin hardly affected during light torrefaction while hemicellulosic material was significantly depleted. The Hardgrove grindability index (HGI) was calculated with three methods (DIN51742, IFK and ISO). The medium temperature torrefied biomass (MTTB) yields HGI value in the range of 32–37 that was comparable with HGI of El Cerrejon coal (36–41). A slight change in temperature enabled the torrefied beech wood to be co-milled with coal without capital intensive modification and improved grindability. Comparing the combustion behaviour of single fuels, low temperature torrefied biomass (LTTB) produces less amount of NOx (426 mg/m3), CO (0.002 mg/m3) and SO2 (2 mg/m3) as compared MTTB and raw beech wood. In the case of co-combustion, it was found that blending of coal with raw biomass does not show a stable behaviour. However, premixing of 50% of coal with 50% of torrefied biomasses (MTTB and LTTB) gives most stable behaviour and reduces NOx almost 30% and SOx up to almost 50% compared to coal. The fly ash contents analysis proved that K2O contents much decreased during co-firing of coal and torrefied fuels that could cause ash related issues during combustion of raw biomass

The impact of surgical delay on resectability of colorectal cancer: An international prospective cohort study

AIM: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to explore the impact of surgical delays on cancer resectability. This study aimed to compare resectability for colorectal cancer patients undergoing delayed versus non-delayed surgery. METHODS: This was an international prospective cohort study of consecutive colorectal cancer patients with a decision for curative surgery (January-April 2020). Surgical delay was defined as an operation taking place more than 4 weeks after treatment decision, in a patient who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy. A subgroup analysis explored the effects of delay in elective patients only. The impact of longer delays was explored in a sensitivity analysis. The primary outcome was complete resection, defined as curative resection with an R0 margin. RESULTS: Overall, 5453 patients from 304 hospitals in 47 countries were included, of whom 6.6% (358/5453) did not receive their planned operation. Of the 4304 operated patients without neoadjuvant therapy, 40.5% (1744/4304) were delayed beyond 4 weeks. Delayed patients were more likely to be older, men, more comorbid, have higher body mass index and have rectal cancer and early stage disease. Delayed patients had higher unadjusted rates of complete resection (93.7% vs. 91.9%, P = 0.032) and lower rates of emergency surgery (4.5% vs. 22.5%, P < 0.001). After adjustment, delay was not associated with a lower rate of complete resection (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.90-1.55, P = 0.224), which was consistent in elective patients only (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.69-1.27, P = 0.672). Longer delays were not associated with poorer outcomes. CONCLUSION: One in 15 colorectal cancer patients did not receive their planned operation during the first wave of COVID-19. Surgical delay did not appear to compromise resectability, raising the hypothesis that any reduction in long-term survival attributable to delays is likely to be due to micro-metastatic disease

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Elective cancer surgery in COVID-19-free surgical pathways during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: An international, multicenter, comparative cohort study

PURPOSE As cancer surgery restarts after the first COVID-19 wave, health care providers urgently require data to determine where elective surgery is best performed. This study aimed to determine whether COVID-19–free surgical pathways were associated with lower postoperative pulmonary complication rates compared with hospitals with no defined pathway. PATIENTS AND METHODS This international, multicenter cohort study included patients who underwent elective surgery for 10 solid cancer types without preoperative suspicion of SARS-CoV-2. Participating hospitals included patients from local emergence of SARS-CoV-2 until April 19, 2020. At the time of surgery, hospitals were defined as having a COVID-19–free surgical pathway (complete segregation of the operating theater, critical care, and inpatient ward areas) or no defined pathway (incomplete or no segregation, areas shared with patients with COVID-19). The primary outcome was 30-day postoperative pulmonary complications (pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, unexpected ventilation). RESULTS Of 9,171 patients from 447 hospitals in 55 countries, 2,481 were operated on in COVID-19–free surgical pathways. Patients who underwent surgery within COVID-19–free surgical pathways were younger with fewer comorbidities than those in hospitals with no defined pathway but with similar proportions of major surgery. After adjustment, pulmonary complication rates were lower with COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.2% v 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.62; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.86). This was consistent in sensitivity analyses for low-risk patients (American Society of Anesthesiologists grade 1/2), propensity score–matched models, and patients with negative SARS-CoV-2 preoperative tests. The postoperative SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was also lower in COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.1% v 3.6%; aOR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.36 to 0.76). CONCLUSION Within available resources, dedicated COVID-19–free surgical pathways should be established to provide safe elective cancer surgery during current and before future SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks