Feral wild boar: species review

Mark Malins looks at the impact and implications of the increasing population of wild boar at loose in the countryside

Parental and Family Leave in the California Construction Industry

Struggles between work life balance often result in lower levels of job and life satisfaction, and higher rates of inefficiency and employee turnover, with varying impact on employees based on seniority, gender and parenthood. Policies such as paid parental leave have shown positive effects on work life balance, but there is a lack of information on leave policies within the American construction industry. Focusing on California, this research aimed to determine employee\u27s understanding, use and acceptance of these leave policies. Using a survey, we gain a better understanding of these goals. Rates of confidence in knowledge of paternal and family leave policies were equal among both genders, however women were more confident in their knowledge of their company’s maternity leave policy then men. These confidence rates for all policies rise further among parents. As a trend among all leave policies, individuals see peers take parental and family leave more often than their supervisors. In questions looking at support and acceptability of personal leave policy use, all women who did not have children responded strongly agree to all questions. Mothers responded to these same questions with a greater variety of responses including disagree. This data shows that HR professionals and upper management should focus on employee understanding leave of rights as well as creating a positive and supportive culture around the use of these leave policies

A structural comparison of models of colloid-polymer mixtures

We study the structure of colloidal fluids with reference to colloid-polymer mixtures. We compare the one component description of the Asakura-Oosawa (AO) idealisation of colloid-polymer mixtures with the full two-component model. We also consider the Morse potential, a variable range interaction, for which the ground state clusters are known. Mapping the state points between these systems, we find that the pair structure of the full AO model is equally well described by the Morse potential or the one component AO approach. We employ a recently developed method to identify in the bulk fluid the ground state clusters relevant to the Morse potential. Surprisingly, when we measure the cluster populations, we find that the Morse fluid is significantly closer the full AO fluid than the one component AO description.Comment: 13 pages, accepted by J. Phys. Condens: Matter special issue for CECAM meeting 'New Trends in Simulating Colloids: from Models to Applications

Strong geometric frustration in model glassformers

We consider three popular model glassformers, the Kob-Andersen and Wahnstr\"om binary Lennard-Jones models and weakly polydisperse hard spheres. Although these systems exhibit a range of fragilities, all feature a rather similar behaviour in their local structure approaching dynamic arrest. In particular we use the dynamic topological cluster classification to extract a locally favoured structure which is particular to each system. These structures form percolating networks, however in all cases there is a strong decoupling between structural and dynamic lengthscales. We suggest that the lack of growth of the structural lengthscale may be related to strong geometric frustration.Comment: 14 pages, Accepted by J. Non-Crystalline Solids, 7th International Discussion Meeting on Relaxation in Complex Systems Proceeding

Innovation by design: a programme to support SMEs.

Small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs)1 are generally clear on the need for innovation; however they are very often less clear on how innovation can be achieved. One possible reason for this may be because of a lack of a culture supportive of innovation within their business. Developing appropriate tools for SMEs to allow them to develop a sustainable innovation culture is a core activity for the Centre for Design & Innovation (http://www.c4di.org.uk). This paper describes how SMEs have been assisted through the application of design thinking to develop their own innovation cultures through a programme of workshops and one-to-one support. This paper strives to look beyond the rhetoric behind design thinking in order to critically evaluate the techniques and approaches that have proved to be of particular value when working with SMEs

Transformative design thinking: a human-centred model for innovation.

In recent years there have been a number of Innovation Centres established in the UK and associated funding calls to support the development of new ones, however there is no common theoretical framework, which underpins the methodology for their operation. Innovation Centres range from Business Parks clustering businesses from similar sectors, through to University Knowledge Exchange projects involving multidisciplinary teams of individuals working with companies from a particular sector or across all sectors, perhaps focused on cultural change. This paper describes a number of models for Innovation Centres some of which are based on principles derived from design thinking (Brown 2009) and others that are more focused on technology push (Martin 1994). Key government policies and subsequent public investment are relying on a number of assumptions that underpin the theoretical frameworks on which these Innovation Centres are based. Developing reliable methods based on a strong theoretical framework that questions existing assumptions has implications for ensuring that these investments are not wasted. This paper examines the use of user-centred design versus the more serendipitous process of invention and concludes that a process based on critical reflective reframing of problems through observational methods involving the identification of key stakeholders, may lead to sustainable transformational innovation. The paper concludes by proposing a theoretical framework and methods for supporting the establishment of a successful Innovation Centre, applying methodology designed to bring about transformational innovation