Everyday Decisions Project Report: Supporting Legal Capacity through Care, Support and Empowerment

This report details the findings from the Everyday Decisions research project. This research was funded by the British Academy and the University of Birmingham, and carried out by Professor Rosie Harding ([email protected]) and Dr Ezgi Tascioglu. The project explored disabled people's experiences of supported decision-making, and care professionals approaches to and experience of supporting decision-making

Impact of Noise Power Uncertainty on the Performance of Wideband Spectrum Segmentation

The objective of this work is to investigate the impact of noise uncertainty on the performance of a wideband spectrum segmentation technique. We define metrics to quantify the degradation due to noise uncertainty and evaluate the performance using simulations. Our simulation results show that the noise uncertainty has detrimental effects especially for low SNR users

Catastrophic secondary antiphospholipid syndrome with peripheral nervous system involvement: a case report.

A 34-year-old woman was admitted to our emergency room with a high fever, abdominal pain, dyspnea and confusion. High fever and abdominal pain had first occured after a cystocele operation 5 months earlier. Later, congestive heart failure with mural thrombus formation, peripheral polyneuropathy and ischemic cerebrovascular accident were identified in clinical follow-ups, and multiple arterial and venous thromboses were seen on cranial and abdominal magnetic resonance imaging angiography. The patient's symptoms improved with anticoagulant treatment. Antiphospholipid syndrome with elevated serum anticardiolipin IgG levels was diagnosed, and ischemic peripheral polyneuropathy with axonal degeneration was determined by sural nerve biopsy. In antiphospholipid syndrome, elevated anticardiolipin antibodies appear to be the most common acquired blood protein defect causing thrombosis. Disseminated vascular thrombosis in catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome can result in multiorgan failure with increased morbidity and mortality. It rarely occurs secondary to various infections as in the case of our patient, who suffered postoperative intraabdominal infection. It is important to note that peripheral nervous system involvement is rare in antiphospholipid syndrome.</p

Consumers\u27 Perceptions Towards Sustainability: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

Sustainability has become a subject of increasing concern to academics and practitioners in recent years. Increasing consumer demand for socially responsible products encouraged supply chains to put increasing emphasis on sustainability. In adapting sustainability practices consumers play a very important role for supply chains. Thus this dissertation examines consumers’ perceptions towards sustainability practices. Although most previous research has examined environmental sustainability practices, the social dimension of sustainability has received little attention. This dissertation attempts to explore both environmental and social sustainability and their effects on consumer perceptions in different cultural contexts and price levels. Two scenario based experiments are utilized. Experiment One examines the effect of environmental sustainability practices on consumer behavior. Experiment Two examines the effect of social sustainability practices on consumer behavior. Data was collected from one individual and one collectivist country to explore if there was a culture effect. Social Exchange Theory (SET) is presented as the theoretical lens for this dissertation. Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) is also discussed as a supporting theory. The findings suggest that high environmental sustainability or social sustainability and a low price strategy will lead to an increase in consumers’ commitment, satisfaction, and loyalty levels. The results also showed that high prices have a more negative effect on consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty in collectivist countries

Impact of Preservative Treatments and Fungal Exposure on Phenolic Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composite Material Utilized in Wood Reinforcement

When wood products are exposed to environmental conditions conducive to biodeterioration, wood preservation becomes a necessity, especially when long-term utilization is desired. Although considerable literature exists on the treatment of laminated timbers and wood composites with wood preservatives, almost no information is available on the exposure of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites to wood preservative chemicals. In this work, FRP material was treated with common preservative chemicals and the effect of wood preservative treatments on mechanical properties of FRP material were investigated. Although the longitudinal elastic modulus was unaffected, some longitudinal strength losses were recorded for CCA and CDDC (water borne) treated FRP coupons. These results were supported by Scanning Electron (SEM) and light microscopy analyses of single glass fibers taken from preservative treated FRP coupons. A further study evaluated the susceptibility of E-glass fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) /phenolic pultruded composite material to fungal degradation. Since the phenolic FRP material was designed for use as reinforcement with wood, two common wood decay fungi, a brown rot and a white rot, were chosen for exposure of the FRP material. Light, fluorescent and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) indicated that both wood decay h g i actively grew and penetrated into the FRP material, especially in high-void content areas. The experimental results indicate that, the mechanical property evaluation technique (ILSS) is promising and sensitive enough to detect the effects of fungal degradation in phenolic FRP materials. The durability of adhesive bonds on wood/FRP interfaces poses a continuing problem for the wood products industry. Wood preservative chemicals are known to interfere with adhesion mechanisms between wood laminates as well as wood/FRP interfaces. The purpose of the third part of this study was to determine the effects of various wood preservative treatments and manufacturing processes (pre- and post-treatment) on wood/FRP bond durability, shear strength and surface energy characteristics of wood and phenolic FRP material. While pre-treatment of individual laminates with oil borne (copper naphthenate, creosote and pentachlorophenol) and water borne (CCA and CDDC) preservatives increased the delamination between the wood and FRP, the post treatments had limited effects on delamination

Principles of Editing and Storytelling in Relation to Editorial Graphic Design

This paper aims to combine film editing principles to basic design principles to explore what graphic designers do in terms of storytelling. The sequential aspect of film is designed and examined through the art of editing. Examining the rules, principles and formulas of film editing can be a method for graphic designers to further practice the art of storytelling. Although there are many research and publications on design basics, time, pace, dramatic structure and choreography are not very well defined in the area of graphic design. In this era of creative storytelling and interdisciplinary collaboration, not only film editors but also graphic designers and students in the arts and design should understand the theory and practice of editing to be able to create a strong mise-en-scène and not only a mise-en-page

Supported decision-making from theory to practice:implementing the right to enjoy legal capacity

The right to equal recognition before the law, protected by Article 12 of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), mandates the use of supported decision-making practices to enable disabled people, particularly those with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities, to enjoy their legal capacity. Finding ways to translate this theoretical mandate into practice poses a number of particularly challenging socio-legal issues, which this research seeks to address. The English Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) sets out a right to support with decision-making (s.1(3)), underpinned by a presumption of capacity (s.1(2)). Qualitative interviews with intellectually disabled people, their supporters, and care and support professionals were undertaken to explore how disabled people make decisions in their everyday lives, the kinds of support they need, and the strategies for supported decision-making used in practice. Analysis of these interviews suggests that a range of supported decision-making techniques have been developed in practice and are effective in supporting everyday preferences and some life choices. Paradoxically, it appears that as decisions become more complex, the support available to disabled people reduces. Specifically, much less support is available for more difficult decisions around finances, healthcare and legal matters. We argue that the reasons for this are due to a web of regulatory, social and policy issues. We conclude that implementing the right to enjoy legal capacity through supported decision-making will require a combination of regulatory reform, social change and policy amendment

A Novel Artificial Pancreas: Energy Efficient Valveless Piezoelectric Actuated Closed-Loop Insulin Pump for T1DM

The objective of this work is to develop a closed-loop controlled insulin pump to keep the blood glucose level of Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients in the desired range. In contrast to the existing artificial pancreas systems with syringe pumps, an energy-efficient, valveless piezoelectric pump is designed and simulated with different types of controllers and glucose-insulin models. COMSOL Multiphysics is used for piezoelectric-fluid-structural coupled 3D finite element simulations of the pump. Then, a reduced-order model (ROM) is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink together with optimal and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers and glucose-insulin models of Ackerman, Bergman, and Sorensen. Divergence angle, nozzle/diffuser diameters, lengths, chamber height, excitation voltage, and frequency are optimized with dimensional constraints to achieve a high net flow rate and low power consumption. A prototype is manufactured and experimented with different excitation frequencies. It is shown that the proposed system successfully controls the delivered insulin for all three glucose-insulin models

I Lived and Learned': Violence, Survival and Knowledge in Trans Women's Lives in Turkey

This article examines life story narratives of trans women in an effort to understand how violence produces and shapes their lives and subjectivities in Istanbul, Turkey. After delineating the main forms of violence that target them, it looks at the ways through which trans women negotiate, challenge and transform the parameters of their life-worlds through an engagement with their violent experiences. I especially focus on trans women's production of a particular kind of knowledge which enables them to claim an authoritative voice and construct themselves as subjects who have access to the hidden realities of life that are not accessible to others who did not go through these experiences. Next, turning my attention to trans women's creative work on their subjectivities, I show how they actively work to cultivate themselves as ethically good, disobedient and struggling beings, as individuals and as a collective, and how the transmission of this construction forms and transforms their selves and relationships. Underlining the intricate ways in which processes of oppression, exclusion and violence affect and inform gendered lives and strategies of survival, this discussion highlights the interconnections between power, subjectivity and resistance, and the productive tensions inherent to the positions of marginality and the potentialities of survival in dire times and places