Data protection, safeguarding and the protection of children's privacy: exploring local authority guidance on parental photography at school events

Should parents be allowed to take photographs at school events? Media reports suggest that increasingly schools are answering no to this question, either prohibiting or imposing stringent restrictions upon such photography. The legal justifications for such restrictions are, however, unclear. Accordingly, in 2013 freedom of information requests were sent to local education authorities across England, Scotland and Wales, the aim being to determine what advice local education authorities provide to schools in relation to parental photography at school events, and to identify how education authorities’ understandings of the law influence the advice they offer. That research reveals that local education authorities’ understandings of the law vary significantly and that where authorities do not fully appreciate the extent of the legal obligations arising this may have significant repercussions for the children concerned

Cytotoxic and antibacterial activity of the mixture of olive oil and lime cream in vitro conditions

The mixture of olive oil and lime cream has been traditionally used to treat external burns in the region of Hatay/Antakya and middle Anatolia. Olive oil and lime cream have been employed by many physicians to treat many ailments in the past. A limited number of studies have shown the antibacterial effect of olive oil and that it does not have any toxic effect on the skin. But we did not find any reported studies on the mixture of olive oil and lime cream. The aim of this paper is to investigate the cytotoxic and antibacterial activity of olive oil and lime cream individually or/and in combination in vitro conditions, by using disk-diffusion method and in cell culture. The main purpose in using this mixture is usually to clear burns without a trace. Agar overlay, MTT (Cytotoxicity assay) and antibacterial susceptibility tests were used to investigate the cytotoxic and antibacterial activity of olive oil and lime cream. We found that lime cream has an antibacterial activity but also cytotoxic on the fibroblasts. On the other hand olive oil has limited or no antibacterial effect and it has little or no cytotoxic on the fibroblasts. When we combined lime cream and olive oil, olive oil reduced its cytotoxic impact. These results suggest that mixture of olive oil and lime cream is not cytotoxic and has antimicrobial activity.Keywords: Olive oil, lime cream, burn, in vitro, cytotoxic activity, antibacterial activit

Impact of Industry 4.0 on Occupations and Employment in Turkey

New technologies of this age is widely referred as Industry 4.0. The rapid increase in digitalization, robotization, and intelligent automation has great impact on markets, including the labour market. Technological changes destroy some jobs while generating new jobs and occupations. Replacement of jobs by robots, smart vehicles, digitalized and connected processes will have great impact on labour market resulting in mass unemployment. This paper aims to highlight prospective changes in occupations and job losses due to new technologies in Turkey. Following the introduction part, the paper proceeds to literature review about the effect of new technologies on jobs, skills, tasks, occupations, and employment. In the next part, a time analysis of occupations in Turkey takes place in order to bring out the occupations which might be substituted by Industry 4.0, and thus might result in mass unemployment. A framework for susbstitutable and complementable occupations in Turkey has been constituted in this part, too. In the concluding remarks, it has been put forward that there will be considerable losses in some occupational categories with routine tasks, both in manual and cognitive jobs. In some other jobs, new technologies have a complementing effect which might lead to employment generation. It has been suggested that Turkey can get the better of negative impacts of Industry 4.0 by fully analysing the issue, improving training and skills upgrading, and promoting jobs in technology and creativity related new fields such as cultural and creative industries

Investigating self-assembly and anchoring of surfactants and nanoparticles on liquid crystal nano-droplets by multi-scale simulations

Liquid crystals (LCs) continue to receive significant attention due to their tunable order-disorder transitions. They are the foundation of many technological advancements such as displays, sensors, and other devices. Applications in which LCs are utilized build on the ability of controlling the orientation of mesogens with respect to a direction vector. To advance applications such as sensing and displays, it is required to detect and control, respectively, changes in LCs order due to external stimuli. To control LCs’ order, it is possible to add amphiphiles to systems in which LC – solvent interfaces are present. One example of the latter approach is provided by the interface between thermotropic LCs and immiscible aqueous phases. Many researchers investigated how to tune the LC phases via external stimuli which take advantage of said interfaces, for example via the introduction of block copolymers or nanoparticles (NP) to LC-containing systems. Although the results are promising, many molecular-level mechanisms remain to be completely understood, including the anchoring strength, and effects due to confinement and temperature. The aim of this thesis is to computationally investigate how adsorption of different compounds such as surfactants and nanoparticles can be used to control LCs droplets’ orientational order. For that purpose, coarse-grained molecular simulations were used. Firstly, in part for computational reasons, cylindrical LC assemblies were investigated. Then, to secure a stronger connection with practical devices, spherical LC droplets were considered. To overcome the limitations of coarse-grained simulation approaches, and to validate the results obtained at the nanometre-scale, the continuum-level Q-tensor approach was used. The latter has been shown to reproduce many experimental observables for bulk systems, and it allowed us to quantitatively analyse the defect structures inside LC droplets. The multiscale approach developed and implemented here, which allows us to investigate the properties of molecular aggregates at the shorter length scale, to macroscopic assemblies at the larger length scale, could provide a computational platform for future LC-based applications such as advanced biosensors that detect e.g., traces of viruses, bacteria, or air contaminants

International Students\u27 Psychological and Sociocultural Adaptation in the United States

International students constitute an important cohort in the United States (U.S.) colleges and universities. In order for the U.S. colleges and universities to better accommodate the significant number of international students and to recruit them in the future, it is critical to identify factors that influence these students’ acculturation and adjustment processes and provide professionals with guidelines for creating culturally appropriate services and programs for them. Therefore the current study examined international students’ adaptation to the U.S. in relation to their acculturation levels, coping processes, and intent to stay in the U.S. after their graduation. Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression scale was used as a measure of psychological adaptation. In addition, Sociocultural Adaptation Scale, Acculturation Index, and Ways of Coping Questionnaire, were used to measure sociocultural adaptation, acculturation dimensions, and coping processes, respectively. A total of 204 F1 visa holding international students participated in the current study. This project was a cross-sectional, exploratory study that measured depression and sociocultural adaptation among international students. Cronbach’s alpha for each instrument was calculated to determine the internal reliability for the current sample. Pearson product moment correlational analyses were performed to examine the relations between interval variables. Analysis of variance was utilized to examine gender differences in coping processes. Multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to explore the predictors of international students’ psychological and sociocultural adaptations. Results showed that in females identification with the host culture was associated with lower levels of depression, and Escape-Avoidance was associated with higher levels of depression. Identification with the host culture and Escape-Avoidance were predictors of sociocultural adaptation for both genders. Specifically, students who identified more strongly with the American culture were less likely to experience difficulty functioning in the U.S. In addition, these students were more likely to report higher levels of English proficiency, higher likelihood of staying in the U.S. after graduation, and lower levels of depression. The study identified important gender differences with regards to acculturation dimensions and coping processes. Implications and suggestions for future research were discussed

Blockchain Games: What On and Off-chain factors affect the volatility, returns, and liquidity of Gaming Crypto Tokens

Blockchain games took the internet by storm as they offered a new way for users to play video games, own the assets in those games, and benefit monetarily from their efforts. Through Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies, new, Web3 games ushered in a unique asset class for retail and institutional investors to diversify into and benefit from. This paper uses cross-sectional data from 30 blockchain gaming companies to identify on and off-chain factors that affect the company’s token volatility, returns, and liquidity. A multiple linear regression found the percentage of tokens dedicated to a company’s private sale and rewarding users, the length of a token’s vesting period, if the token has a fixed supply, and tokens based on the Solana or Polygon blockchains positively affect the volatility of that token. Conversely, the Monthly Active Users of the game, the token’s market capitalization, the amount of funds raised by the company, and the game genre negatively affect volatility. Funds raised, game genre, and Solana-based tokens were also significant in the returns model. Lastly, the number of faucets for the game and the percentage of tokens dedicated to rewards and the private sale showed significance in the liquidity model. This paper adds to the literature in the NFT, cryptocurrency, and blockchain gaming spaces

Determining Patent Worthlesseness for Tax Purposes

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