Newcastle Business School Principles of Responsible Management Education Project (NBS PRIME)

The world is changing rapidly and new demands face business leaders to deal with the planet and environment more sustainably, to deal with the numerous societies their organisations operate in more equitably and with greater cultural understanding, and to be more open, transparent and responsible with respect to their stakeholders. Recent events such as the credit and banking crisis alongside general global corporate social responsibility and sustainability concerns, have led to questions as to whether current management education is adequate to equip and develop future leaders with the requisite skills to meet these new demands (Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, Dolle, & Shulman, 2011; Datar, Garvin, & Cullen, 2010; Weybrecht, 2010). For these reasons it is essential that universities and business schools seek to embrace principles of sustainability and responsible management into their teaching, research and enterprise activities. Newcastle Business school is ideally placed to make a significant contribution to social, environmental and economic well being through its global reputation for delivering some of the best business management education in the UK

Nanostructured Ir-based electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution prepared by galvanic displacement of Co and Ni

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers are promising devices to produce hydrogen as a green fuel. Currently, this technology is limited by the sluggish kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In this work, we describe an environmentally safe method for the preparation of Ir oxide thin films (IrO2) for OER. Electrodeposition of Co and Ni was performed in the non-toxic choline chloride:urea deep eutectic solvent (ChCl:urea DES), followed by galvanic displacement reaction (GDR) of Co and Ni by Ir(IV). We evaluated how the GDR conditions, such as the metal replaced (Co or Ni), time and temperature affect both the activity and stability of the deposited IrO2 films on gold substrates. We observed that GDR of Ni at 90 ◦C induces morphological changes on the IrO2 nanostructures which resulted in higher activity and stability towards OER. We highlight that not only reducing mass loadings of Ir but also tuning the surface morphology and structure controlling the synthesis preparation, as well as investigating the role of the substrate, are key to design more active and stable OER electrocatalysts

Engineering improved ethylene production: Leveraging systems Biology and adaptive laboratory evolution

Ethylene is a small hydrocarbon gas widely used in the chemical industry. Annual worldwide production currently exceeds 150 million tons, producing considerable amounts of CO2 contributing to climate change. The need for a sustainable alternative is therefore imperative. Ethylene is natively produced by several different microorganisms, including Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola via a process catalyzed by the ethylene forming enzyme (EFE), subsequent heterologous expression of EFE has led to ethylene production in non-native bacterial hosts including E. coli and cyanobacteria. However, solubility of EFE and substrate availability remain rate limiting steps in biological ethylene production. We employed a combination of genome scale metabolic modelling, continuous fermentation, and protein evolution to enable the accelerated development of a high efficiency ethylene producing E. coli strain, yielding a 49-fold increase in production, the most significant improvement reported to date. Furthermore, we have clearly demonstrated that this increased yield resulted from metabolic adaptations that were uniquely linked to the EFE enzyme (WT vs mutant). Our findings provide a novel solution to deregulate metabolic bottlenecks in key pathways, which can be readily applied to address other engineering challenges

Adsorption properties of chalk:contributions from calcite and clays

AbstractWater and ethanol vapour adsorption measurements were used to estimate the contribution from calcite and clay (kaolinite) on the adsorption behaviour of outcrop chalk. Both sets of measurements indicate that adsorption isotherms of chalk can be closely mimicked by a linear combination of clay and calcite adsorption isotherms. The values of the isosteric heat of adsorption for all investigated surfaces were determined in the temperature range 273 – 293K. Pure calcite adsorbs water and ethanol vapour with energies typical of chemisorption, while chalk and kaolinite show adsorption energies more typical for physisorption and form multilayers of adsorbed water and ethanol on their surfaces