Internationalisation: The opportunities and challenges associated with student outward mobility at undergraduate level in UK higher education

As the UK prepares to leave the EU, the UK government has indicated a need for the country to become even more global and internationalist in action and spirit. “Outward mobility can form a key part of this agenda, in enhancing the domestic skills base and making students more globally engaged. The benefits of mobility are many and varied: international experience helps develop critical skills such as intercultural awareness and foreign language competency, and can increase students’ employability, helping them to be competitive in the global jobs market. Beyond these private benefits, the international mobility of students can create positive externalities by internationalising campuses, and fostering global networks that can in turn facilitate research, knowledge transfers and university–business engagement. These external benefits also help enhance the UK’s soft power and support the UK’s trading and diplomatic relationships longer term” (UUKi, 2017a). There’s a significant body of research that demonstrates the benefits of student mobility and the positive impact outward mobility can have on students and their personal development and growth However, despite the many positive benefits of an international mobility experience, the UUKi (2018:8) report identified only 7.2% of the 2015-16 graduating cohort were mobile during their degree programme. At Manchester Metropolitan University, only 1% of students undertake a mobility experience, which is lower than the national sector average of 7.2% of the student population. Students from the lowest HE participation neighbourhoods (LPNs) are underrepresented in the internationally mobile population each year, while students from the highest HE participation neighbourhoods have been overrepresented by a greater percentage. The university has an ambition to increase student outward mobility from 1% to 5% by 2021. My interest in this area is as a practitioner researcher. In order to work on the ‘Routes into Languages’ thematic strand of promoting ‘student outward mobility’ for undergraduates in my faculty, I wanted to undertake a small scale research project to explore some of the factors influencing students’ choices/decisions regarding outbound mobility. In addition to the reports and policy documents, I wanted to hear the rich narratives and experiences of students who opted/did not opt for a study/work abroad opportunity during their undergraduate study, with the view to increase student outward mobility. Building on a theoretical framework focusing on the globalisation/education/mobility relationship and based on semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students and policy document analysis, the thesis identifies some of the similarities and disconnects between the two with the view to assist formulating tailored remedial interventions to boost undergraduate students’ outward mobility in MMU’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Accountability and legitimacy of non‐profit organisations: Challenging the current status quo and identifying avenues for future research

Issues of accountability, legitimacy and trust have remained at the forefront of debate surrounding non‐profit organisations and their activities. The purpose of this study is to review the literature on non‐profit accountability from the lens of organisational legitimacy. Specifically, we ask what we can learn from the literature on non‐profit organisation (NPO) accountability and consider what further work needs to be done to strengthen NPO legitimacy. We attempt to go beyond mere gap‐spotting and seek to challenge the current status quo within this body of literature

Audit committee chair and financial reporting timeliness : a focus on financial, experiential and monitoring expertise

In this study, we examine the association of audit committee chair financial, experiential and monitoring expertise with the audit report lag period. We find that the experiential and monitoring expertise of audit committee chairs have a significant negative association with the delay in the audit report lag period, possibly resulting in more effective audit committee chairs, at least in the face of financial reporting timeliness. We also find that the audit committee composite compliance variable has a significant negative association with the audit report lag period, which suggests that a firm's compliance with audit committee regulations is also beneficial for financial reporting timeliness. These are important findings from the practice, academic and public policy perspectives

Ethical Governance: Insight from the Islamic perspective and an empirical enquiry

Charity governance is undergoing a crisis of confidence. In this paper, we suggest an alternative approach to how governance could be perceived and conceptualized by considering the ethical notions of governance embedded in religious enquiry, with a specific focus on the Islamic perspective of governance. We firstly develop an ethical framework for charity governance, utilizing insight from the Islamic perspective. Secondly, we undertake an empirical study to assess the experience of governance within Islamic charity organizations. Our theoretical framework provides a comprehensive approach to viewing organizational governance with an emphasis on governance as a mechanism for working towards social justice and the public good. However, our empirical findings reveal an ‘ethical gap’ between the ideals of the Islamic Ethical Framework and the reality of governance practice within Muslim charity organizations. We consider the implications of these findings and outline avenues for future research

Exploring ‘Instancing’ and Its Applications in 3D Programming

‘Instancing’ is a technique widely used in 3D programming to draw multiple copies of an object with a single drawing command. The conventional approach of drawing several copies of an object is to send a separate drawing command for each copy. However, instancing facilitates drawing several copies of an object with repeating patterns substantially quicker than conventional approaches. With instancing, an object’s geometry data is stored once for drawing several copies of it. Without instancing, information is stored per copy requiring an additional amount of memory for each additional copy, so, an object’s geometry is read afresh each time it is drawn. Instancing makes better memory usage and faster execution of the program as it knows the geometry of an object before drawing multiple copies of it. Millions, or even billions of objects can be drawn in the blink of an eye because a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerates computation with its massively parallel architecture. Instancing is popular in film and animation for rendering forests, flower fields, crowd simulations, and more. This research explores different applications of instancing. While drawing multiple copies of the same object, different patterns or characteristics are also incorporated. For example, a tulip festival is generated from a single tulip plant by instantiating an assortment of colors in different rows. A floral park with varied patterns of plants, soldiers in a battlefield in different movements, and more have been explored

Blockchain for Transforming International Trade: Bangladesh Perspective

Blockchain is one of the key pillars of the fourth industrial revolution and blockchain become an enormous excitement in many industries including the international trade ecosystem. As we move forward to the fourth industrial revolution, the digitalization of the traditional international trade process is vital. Research on blockchain technology in the field of international trade is very limited. The purpose of this qualitative study is to look at the blockchain application in the field of international trade for Bangladesh perspective. To find out a comprehensive view of blockchain in the international trade ecosystem, in-depth primary interview with relevant stakeholders was taken in addition to analyzing secondary data. The study found that blockchain can transform many parts of the existing international trade process in Bangladesh including customs, trade document management, trade method, payment, transport document, certifications and combating fraudulent activities.

SCIENTIFIC VALIDATION OF JATIPHALA AND JAVITRI IN HYPER PIGMENTATION

Traditionally used medicinal plants have recently received the attention of the pharmaceutical and scientific communities. There is a need to develop new effective traditional drugs with scientific validation. The seed and aril of Jatiphala (Myristica fragrans Houtt.) of family Myristicaceae have the utilized therapeutically as medicine as well as a spice. Research into the scientific validation of nutmeg used in the treatment of Antidiarrheal, Hypnotic, Analgesic, Antimicrobial, Antidepressant and Sexual dysfunction has been done. In the present study Pharmacognostic study, Phytochemical study, Physico-chemical study and High performance thin layer chromatography are taken for the scientific validation of nutmeg.The Pharmacognostic study of macroscopic and microscopic identity of nutmeg was taken in order to set the quality standards of the market sample. The Phytochemical screening and its nutrients was done using Standarad methods. Qualitative analysis of Aqueous and Milk extracts of Seed and Aril of the nutmeg was studied for the presence of the Alkaloids, Carbohydrates, Proteins and Amino acids, Tannins, Saponins, Flavonoids and Fixed oils. Physico-chemical study involves the determination of identity, purity, and quality of nutmeg by the evaluation of Loss on Drying, Total Ash, Acid Insoluble Ash, Water Soluble Matter and Alcohol Soluble Matter parameters. High performance thin layer chromatography is one of the Sophisticated instrumental techniques for Identification and Quantitative determination of Phytochemical constituents of Seed and Aril part of the Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans Houtt)

The Most Common Characteristics of Fragile Video Watermarking: A Review

The progress of network and multimedia technologies has been phenomenal during the previous two decades. Unauthorized users will be able to copy, retransmit, modify reproduction, and upload the contents more easily as a result of this innovation. Malicious attackers are quite concerned about the development and widespread use of digital video. Digital watermarking technology gives solutions to the aforementioned problems. Watermarking methods can alleviate these issues by embedding a secret watermark in the original host data, allowing the genuine user or file owner to identify any manipulation. In this study, lots of papers have been analyzed and studied carefully, in the period 2011–2022. The historical basis of the subject should not be forgotten so studying old research will give a clear idea of the topic. To aid future researchers in this subject, we give a review of fragile watermarking approaches and some related papers presented in recent years. This paper presents a comparison of many relevant works in this field based on some of the outcomes and improvements gained in these studies, which focuses on the common characteristics that increase the effect of watermarking techniques such as invisibility, tamper detection, recovery, and security &nbsp