Thermal garment

An anthropomorphic thermal garment made entirely of fluid-carrying tubing, joined in such a way that the tubes form a network or mesh fabric, is described

Capacity to consent to healthcare in adults with intellectual disabilities

Section A explores capacity to consent to healthcare in adults with an intellectual disability in a broad context. It examines the legal understanding of capacity to consent as defined by the Mental Capacity Act (2005), before going on to use decision-making theory as a framework for exploring the psychological understanding of capacity to consent. It then examines the empirical literature on what influences capacity to consent to healthcare interventions and research in people with an intellectual disability, highlighting what further research is needed. Section B reports an empirical study, which follows up on some of the further research suggested by Section A. Background: Capacity to consent has been identified as one of the significant barriers to healthcare faced by people with intellectual disabilities. In order to improve understanding, the literature has attempted to investigate factors that influence capacity to consent to healthcare. Materials and Method: This study had 32 participants with learning disabilities, 22 carers and 3 nurse participants. It examined the correlations between verbal ability, decision-making opportunities and previous health experience, with capacity to consent to healthcare in people with learning disabilities, before exploring a regression model to show how the factors interacted. Results: Previous health experience and verbal ability significantly positively correlated with capacity to consent, whilst the correlation with decision-making opportunities was almost significant. However, the regression model showed that only verbal ability was a significant predictor. Conclusion: The study reveals the importance of looking at how factors that influence capacity to consent to healthcare interact with each other, rather than just acting individually. Further research is required to expand this model to include other variables. Section C provides a critical appraisal for the whole project, exploring what was learnt and what could have been improved on, as well as considering the implications for clinical practice and further research

The Measurement of the Reflection and Transmission Properties of Conducting Fabrics to Milli-Metric Wave Frequencies

There is increasing interest in conducting fabrics and their uses at RF and microwave frequencies. This paper for the first time looks at the reflection and transmission measurements of bobbinet and knitted materials from around 8GHz into the milli-metric frequency range 110GHz, where the material geometry is comparable to the wavelength of the wave. Bobbinet materials were found to behave like lossy dielectrics and may be useful in the construction of thin light-weight screening and absorption planes. While the knitted materials, with very small mesh geometry, gave a reflection coefficient which was comparable to a metal foil

Materials, photophysics and device engineering of perovskite light-emitting diodes

Here we provide a comprehensive review of a newly developed lighting technology based on metal halide perovskites (i.e. perovskite light-emitting diodes) encompassing the research endeavours into materials, photophysics and device engineering. At the outset we survey the basic perovskite structures and their various dimensions (namely three-, two- and zero-dimensional perovskites), and demonstrate how the compositional engineering of these structures affects the perovskite light-emitting properties. Next, we turn to the physics underpinning photo- and electroluminescence in these materials through their connection to the fundamental excited states, energy/charge transport processes and radiative and non-radiative decay mechanisms. In the remainder of the review, we focus on the engineering of perovskite light-emitting diodes, including the history of their development as well as an extensive analysis of contemporary strategies for boosting device performance. Key concepts include balancing the electron/hole injection, suppression of parasitic carrier losses, improvement of the photoluminescence quantum yield and enhancement of the light extraction. Overall, this review reflects the current paradigm for perovskite lighting, and is intended to serve as a foundation to materials and device scientists newly working in this field