Social media, social justice? Consideration from a career development perspective

Inside the overall context of careers development, this article will explore how social media relates to social justice through exploring two contrasting perspectives. Firstly we will consider the potential of social media to enhance social justice by democratising social life and so address inequalities related to career development. We will secondly consider if social media develops new forms of inequalities in the forms of the network it creates which harm the progression of social justice. It will be argued that these two perspectives coexist, presenting social media as both disrupting and intensifying inequality in society. This will be particularly highlighted through attaching these positions to different schools of thought related to social capital

Reduced adsorption of caesium on clay minerals caused by various humic substances

The effect of the addition of various humic substances on the adsorption of caesium on two mineral clays has been studied. All measurements were carried out in dilute suspension under controlled conditions of temperature and ionic strength. Only a small proportion of the humic substance was adsorbed on the clays ((10%). In general, the anity of the clay}humic complexes for caesium was less than that of the bare clay. The decrease was greater for illite than for montmorillonite, and greatest at trace concentrations of caesium and increased with increasing concentration of each humic substance. However, no correlation was found between the amount of humic substance adsorbed and the decrease in Cs adsorption when all complexes were considered. Neither size nor the origin of the humic substances could explain the extent of the adsorption decrease. Since neither steric hindrance nor decrease in the number of adsorption sites was the driving force behind this phenomenon, it is hypothesized that the anity of the clay surface is modi"ed by the organic macromolecules. The highly selective frayed edge sites of illite are particularly sensitive to the adsorption of polyanions because of their proximity to anion adsorption sites. The observed decrease in Cs adsorption may contribute to the unexpectedly high bioavailability of Cs in organic soils

Analysis of the contour structural irregularity of skin lesions using wavelet decomposition

The boundary irregularity of skin lesions is of clinical significance for the early detection of malignant melanomas and to distinguish them from other lesions such as benign moles. The structural components of the contour are of particular importance. To extract the structure from the contour, wavelet decomposition was used as these components tend to locate in the lower frequency sub-bands. Lesion contours were modeled as signatures with scale normalization to give position and frequency resolution invariance. Energy distributions among different wavelet sub-bands were then analyzed to extract those with significant levels and differences to enable maximum discrimination. Based on the coefficients in the significant sub-bands, structural components from the original contours were modeled, and a set of statistical and geometric irregularity descriptors researched that were applied at each of the significant sub-bands. The effectiveness of the descriptors was measured using the Hausdorff distance between sets of data from melanoma and mole contours. The best descriptor outputs were input to a back projection neural network to construct a combined classifier system. Experimental results showed that thirteen features from four sub-bands produced the best discrimination between sets of melanomas and moles, and that a small training set of nine melanomas and nine moles was optimum

Informed consent for HIV cure research in South Africa: issues to consider

Background: South Africa has made great progress in the development of HIV/AIDS testing, treatment and prevention campaigns. Yet, it is clear that prevention and treatment campaigns alone are not enough to bring this epidemic under control. Discussion: News that the “Berlin patient” and the “Mississippi baby” have both been “cured” of HIV brought hope to people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa that a cure for HIV/AIDS is within reach. Despite the recent setbacks announced in the “Mississippi Baby” case, protocols aimed at curing HIV/AIDS are being developed in South Africa. However with evidence to suggest that participants in clinical trials do not understand the basic concepts in the informed consent process, there is concern that future participants in HIV/AIDS cure research will lack comprehension of the basic elements of future clinical trials that aims to cure HIV/AIDS and confuse research with clinical care. Summary: Research ethics committees have an important role to play in ensuring that participants understand the basic concepts discussed in the informed consent process, that they understand that research is not clinical care and they are unlikely to benefit from any early phase trials seeking to cure HIV/AIDS

Building online employability: a guide for academic departments

This guide will help academic departments to support students to think about their careers and to use the online environment wisely. Used badly the array of social media and online technologies can seriously disadvantage a students’ career development, but if used well they can support students to find out about and transition into their future career.This work was funded by the University of Derby’s Research for Teaching and Learning programme

Harmonisation of Biobank Regulations in Africa: lessons to be learned from Europe

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Caloric effects around phase transitions in magnetic materials described by ab initio theory : the electronic glue and fluctuating local moments

We describe magneto-, baro-, and elastocaloric effects (MCEs, BCEs, and eCEs) in materials, which possess both discontinuous (first-order) and continuous (second-order) magnetic phase transitions. Our ab initio theory of the interacting electrons of materials in terms of disordered local moments has produced explicit mechanisms for the drivers of these transitions, and here, we study associated caloric effects in three case studies where both types of transition are evident. Our earlier work had described FeRh’s magnetic phase diagram and large MCE. Here, we present calculations of its substantial BCE and eCE. We describe the MCE of dysprosium and find very good agreement with experimental values for isothermal entropy ((ΔSiso) and adiabatic temperature (ΔTad) changes over a large temperature span and different applied magnetic field values. We examine the conditions for optimal values of both ΔSiso and ΔTad that comply with a Clausius–Clapeyron analysis, which we use to propose a promising elastocaloric cooling cycle arising from the unusual dependence of the entropy on temperature and biaxial strain found in our third case study—the Mn3GaN antiperovskite. We explain how both ΔSiso and ΔTad can be kept large by exploiting the complex tensile strain–temperature magnetic phase diagram, which we had earlier predicted for this material and also propose that hysteresis effects will be absent from half of the caloric cycle. This rich and complex behavior stems from the frustrated nature of the interactions among the Mn local moments

Improvement of magnetic hardness at finite temperatures: ab initio disordered local moment approach for YCo5_5

Temperature dependence of the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy and magnetization of the prototypical rare-earth magnet YCo$_5$ is calculated from first principles, utilizing the relativistic disordered local moment approach. We discuss a strategy to enhance the finite-temperature anisotropy field by hole doping, paving the way for an improvement of the coercivity near room temperature or higher.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, some corrections made and a reference update

The regulation of stem cell research in Ireland: from the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction to the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill 2017

In 2005 Ireland’s Commission on Assisted Reproduction (CAHR) published a comprehensive report on the regulation of assisted reproduction and associated technologies. Yet since that that Report, successive Irish governments have failed to bring forth any legislation on this matter. This legislative inaction has resulted in a situation whereby the embryo in vivo has the right to life under the Irish Constitution, but embryos in vitro have no protection in law. Irish policy makers have also endorsed and funded embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) at a European level, but continues to prevent researchers in Ireland from accessing any public funds for this research. The publication in October 2017 of the General Scheme of the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill 2017 is thus a welcomed development. However further reading of the Bill reveals that it is restrictive in nature and likely to stifle research in Ireland. This paper will discuss the legal, ethical and scientific developments that have occurred since the CAHR report and the impact, if any, they have had on the development of this Bill. It will critically reflect on provisions of the Bill as they relate to ESCR and make a number of suggestions for reform

"It’s about actually having a proactive regulatory framework versus a reactive one" - stakeholder perspectives on the governance of embryonic stem cell research in Ireland

Over the past 20 years, the ethical concerns associated with embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) have been the source of great debate. Due to the promise of ESCR, many jurisdictions have introduced regulations to govern it. Despite this, Irish policymakers have failed to introduce legislation to regulate ESCR and embryo research. Successive calls for legislation were ignored until the publication of the General Scheme of the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill 2017 in October 2017. Although the publication of the Heads of this Bill is welcomed, there have been no attempts to assess the current regulatory framework and its impact on the development of stem cell research in Ireland. To address this vacuum, empirical research was conducted with scientists, regulators and funders to explore the current regulatory framework in Ireland. This paper reports on and discusses the findings of these interviews and critically reviews the 2017 Bill