Imagination Of Researchers Research Articles

Underwater Transparent Miniature "Mechanical Hand" Based on Femtosecond Laser-Induced Controllable Oil-Adhesive Patterned Glass for Oil Droplet Manipulation.

Development of underwater superoleophobic surfaces has captured the imagination of researchers because of their applications; especially, oil manipulation based on such surfaces has attracted much attention. Here, we show a simple and effective way to fabricate an underwater transparent miniature "mechanical hand" based on controllable oil-adhesive patterned glass using a femtosecond laser. The underwater oil-adhesive force of the patterned glasses that compose the "mechanical hand" device can be controlled from ultralow to ultrahigh by adjusting the ratio of the untreated flat glass area to the laser-ablated rough area. These surfaces also showed favorable transparency in water. Various oils such as chloroform, hexadecane, n-dodecane, decane, liquid paraffin, and petroleum ether were tested, and their repellency against the as-prepared surfaces in water medium was confirmed. Moreover, the "mechanical hand" was used to implement oil transportation, fusion, and rapid capture, which can be applied in the construction of microfluidic devices, in situ detectors, and bioreactors.

Do the complementarities of electrokinetic and chromatographic procedures represent the "Swiss knife" in proteomic investigation? An overview of the literature in the past decade.

This report reviews the literature of the past decade dealing with the combination of electrokinetic and chromatographic strategies in the proteomic field. Aim of this article is to highlight how the application of complementary techniques may contribute to substantially improve protein identification. Several studies here considered demonstrate that exploring the combination of these approaches can be a strategy to enrich the extent of proteomic information achieved from a sample. The coupling of "top-down" and "bottom-up" proteomics may result in the generation of a hybrid analytical tool, very efficient not only for large-scale profiling of complex proteomes but also for studying specific subproteomes. The range of applications described, while evidencing a continuous boost in the imagination of researchers for developing new combinations of methods for protein separation, also underlines the adaptability of these techniques to a wide variety of samples. This report points out the general usefulness of combining different procedures for proteomic analysis, an approach that allows researchers to go deeper in the proteome of samples under investigation.

Book Review: Asia as Method in Education Studies: A Defiant Research Imagination

Book Review: Asia as Method in Education Studies: A Defiant Research Imagination

Book Review: Asia as Method in Education Studies: A Defiant Research Imagination

Book Review Asia as Method in Education Studies: A Defiant Research Imagination. By Hongzhi Zhang, Philip Wing Keung Chan and Jane Kenway (Eds.) (2015), 182pp. ISBN: 9781138785960, New York: Abingdon, Oxon.

Surface-etched halloysite nanotubes in mixed matrix membranes for efficient gas separation

Possessing the advantages of both polymeric membranes and the specific inorganic nanoparticles or nanotubes, mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) have captured the imagination of researchers for a possible technological breakthrough for efficient gas separation. However, it is still very challenging to achieve defect-free interface between fillers and polymer matrix. In this study, the naturally abundant and low cost halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) were applied as fillers for MMMs synthesis. To improve the filler dispersion and filler-matrix interface affinity, the raw HNTs were modified by either alkali etching or (3-Aminopropyl) triethoxysilane grafting. After surface etching, the defect holes were formed on the surfaces of etched-HNTs, resulting in the rougher HNT walls and significant increment of surface area and CO2 adsorption capacity. The filler/polymer interfacial voids and filler dispersion were quantitatively assessed by tomographic focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy. HNTs surface etching significantly improved the HNTs/polymer interfacial affinity (void% = 0.06% for Raw-HNTs MMM, 0.02% for Etched HNTs MMMs) and filler dispersion, while grafted-HNTs mainly contribute to the filler dispersion. Compared to the pure polymer membrane and MMMs with untreated HNTs, MMMs containing 10 wt.% etched HNTs filler exhibited both increased CO2 permeability (807.7 Barrer) and higher CO2 selectivity (CO2/CH4 selectivity of 27.8) on the well-known limit of Robeson upper bound. In contrast, grafting HNTs only increased the membrane permeability without enhancing CO2 selectivity. The results suggest that surface etching can be an effective route in filler modification to improve interfacial morphology and membrane separation performance.

The last two decades of life course epidemiology, and its relevance for research on ageing.

The term ‘life course epidemiology’ was coined in 1997 with the publication of the first edition of A Life Course Approach to Chronic Disease Epidemiology.1 This book reviewed the pre-adult risk factors for cardiometabolic and respiratory disease, the catalyst being the imaginative research on the fetal origins of adult disease being driven forward at that time by Professor David Barker. We defined life course epidemiology as ‘the study of long-term biological, behavioural and psychosocial processes that link adult health and disease risk to physical or social exposures acting during gestation, childhood, adolescence, earlier in adult life or across generations’.1 Although our definition of life course epidemiology has stood the test of time, the field has evolved and there have been conceptual developments, methodological innovations which facilitate efforts to test these concepts, and an increasing corpus of empirical research demonstrating how factors from earlier life are associated with later life health and disease, as well as the pathways and biological mechanisms that may be involved. These developments have generated further ideas and challenges to life course models in an iterative process. As the theme of this special issue suggests, one important development has been the gradual shift of research focus from clinical disease endpoints to multi-faceted traits and longitudinal trajectories of functional phenotypes that can be assessed well before any clinical threshold is reached. This has naturally led on to the application of a life course epidemiological approach to ageing. The purpose of this overview is therefore to assess the development and current state of the field of life course epidemiology, including its recent application to the study of ageing as the focus of this special issue.

Putting mobility theory to work: Conceptualizing employment-related geographical mobility

Although the “mobility turn” has captured the critical imaginations of researchers studying an array of topics, its possible contributions to analyses of the spectrum of employment-related geographical mobility have only begun to be defined. Studies of work have engaged with the growing body of mobility theory in limited ways; by the same token, mobilities studies have taken a somewhat narrow and sometimes uncritical view of work, labor, and employment. This article draws on a major interdisciplinary research project into the socio-historical patterns, contexts, and impacts of employment-related geographical mobility in Canada to build a conceptual bridge between these two literatures. We re-visit established bodies of work on migration, work, and political economy and look at new avenues for conceptualizing employment-related geographical mobility. We then examine a case study from the Alberta Oil Sands and suggest an agenda for future research on mobility and work.

Dynamic resource allocation in TDD-based heterogeneous cloud radio access networks

To fulfill the explosive growth of network capacity, fifth generation (5G) standard has captured the attention and imagination of researchers and engineers around the world. In particular, heterogeneous cloud radio access network (H-CRAN), as a promising network paradigm in 5G system, is a hot research topic in recent years. However, the densely deployment of RRHs in H-CRAN leads to downlink/uplink traffic asymmetry and severe inter-cell interference which could seriously impair the network throughput and resource utilization. To simultaneously solve these two problems, we proposed a dynamic resource allocation (DRA) scheme for H-CRAN in TDD mode. Firstly, we design a clustering algorithm to group the RRHs into different sets. Secondly, we adopt coordinated multipoint technology to eliminate the interference in each set. Finally, we formulate the joint frame structure, power and subcarrier selection problem as a mixed strategy non-cooperative game. The simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm by compared with the existing work.

Networks in the Social Sciences

While the question of networks have appeared in social sciences since decades, they can be still regarded as one of the significant concepts which grasps the imagination of both theorists and empirical researchers. Because of this interest many different forms of network approaches have been developed. In many cases these theoretical and analytical developments have occurred relatively independently from each other using different vocabularies and research styles. This paper aims to present two prominent network approaches, namely Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and Social Network Analysis (SNA), in order to highlight the similarities and differences between them. This parallel presentation also allows to map the possible connections between these two separate schools of thought. Consequently, the first and second main sections of the paper introduces ANT and SNA respectively, while the last section of the paper discusses similarities and differences, as well as, possible fruitful convergences between these two.

A sign of the times: To have or to be? Social capital or social cohesion?

Among various social factors associated with health behavior and disease, social cohesion has not captured the imagination of public health researchers as much as social capital as evidenced by the subsuming of social cohesion into social capital and the numerous studies analyzing social capital and the comparatively fewer articles analyzing social cohesion and health. In this paper we provide a brief overview of the evolution of the conceptualization of social capital and social cohesion and we use philosopher Erich Fromm’s distinction between “having” and “being” to understand the current research focus on capital over cohesion. We argue that social capital is related to having while social cohesion is related to being and that an emphasis on social capital leads to individualizing tendencies that are antithetical to cohesion. We provide examples drawn from the literature where this conflation of social capital and cohesion results in non-concordant definitions and subsequent operationalization of these constructs. Beyond semantics, the practical implication of focusing on “having” vs. “being” include an emphasis on understanding how to normalize groups and populations rather than providing those groups space for empowerment and agency leading to health.

Perspective: Computer simulations of long time dynamics.

Atomically detailed computer simulations of complex molecular events attracted the imagination of many researchers in the field as providing comprehensive information on chemical, biological, and physical processes. However, one of the greatest limitations of these simulations is of time scales. The physical time scales accessible to straightforward simulations are too short to address many interesting and important molecular events. In the last decade significant advances were made in different directions (theory, software, and hardware) that significantly expand the capabilities and accuracies of these techniques. This perspective describes and critically examines some of these advances.

In memory of all the broken ones: catalytic validity through critical arts research for social change

The authors of this article use data produced in a collaborative community arts group in BC Canada as a way to think about validation in arts-based educational research (ABER). As Lather attempted to find middle ground between ‘rampant subjectivity’ and ‘pointless precision’ in research, she (1986) suggested that studies with an ideological or critical agenda might be validated by their catalytic potential – the ability to generate change. She has further argued that such work must be both conceptually and methodologically rigorous. With this charge in mind, the authors describe and discuss a memory box made by one participant in a two-year federally funded postdoctoral research project. They consider the catalytic validity of this artefact and reflect upon research methodology in ABER, in terms of triangulation, face and construct validities and member checks. They conclude with a challenge: What new and imaginative research methodologies might be invented for critical research in arts-based education?

Measuring creative imagery abilities.

Over the decades, creativity and imagination research developed in parallel, but they surprisingly rarely intersected. This paper introduces a new theoretical model of creative visual imagination, which bridges creativity and imagination research, as well as presents a new psychometric instrument, called the Test of Creative Imagery Abilities (TCIA), developed to measure creative imagery abilities understood in accordance with this model. Creative imagination is understood as constituted by three interrelated components: vividness (the ability to create images characterized by a high level of complexity and detail), originality (the ability to produce unique imagery), and transformativeness (the ability to control imagery). TCIA enables valid and reliable measurement of these three groups of abilities, yielding the general score of imagery abilities and at the same time making profile analysis possible. We present the results of nine studies on a total sample of more than 1700 participants, showing the factor structure of TCIA using confirmatory factor analysis, as well as provide data confirming this instrument's validity and reliability. The availability of TCIA for interested researchers may result in new insights and possibilities of integrating the fields of creativity and imagination science.

Stem Cell-Based Tissue Replacement After Stroke: Factual Necessity or Notorious Fiction?

The increasing stroke incidence and the long-term, severe disability of survivors requiring complex nursing care over extended time periods cause an enormous social and economic burden to ageing societies. Unfortunately, all clinical trials on neuroprotectants have failed thus far.1 The only approved therapy is clot lysis (recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator [r-tPA]), which is restricted to only 4.5 hours poststroke onset.2 Although r-tPA application is statistically justified, it can result in severe adverse events,3 complicating individual r-tPA treatment decisions. Thus, the current strategies in stroke management are focused on prevention by identification of risk factors4 and intensive rehabilitation in the chronic phase.5 However, stroke outcomes remain poor, causing a strong but unmet demand for alternative therapeutic approaches. The failure of the neuroprotective paradigm and limited eligibility for thrombolysis spawned an interest in stem cell–based neurorestoration,6 which is characterized by a wide therapeutic window and is highly convergent with rehabilitation. However, stem cell–based tissue replacement may be aggravated by pathophysiological and anatomic features, whereas the beneficial effects of (stem) cells may not necessarily result from cellular restoration. Here, we review the state of the art of cell-based stroke therapies and balance arguments supporting and challenging the concept of poststroke tissue restoration. Moreover, we discuss the respective therapeutic mechanisms related to tissue restoration versus indirect means of regenerative support including practical issues such as transplantation time windows, routes of cell administration, and potential detrimental effects. The replacement of lost brain tissue by transplanted cells has fired the imagination of researchers for decades. Studies on lesion-induced axonal sprouting of catecholamine neurons devised the fundamentals for brain-regenerating strategies. Then, the functional connections of transplanted monoamine neurons were demonstrated, whereas fetal nigral transplants were able to reverse parkinsonism in animal models and patients.7 These early proof-of-principle studies supported the …

The Role of Radical Imagination in Social Work Education, Practice, and Research

This article addresses the role of imagination in social work education, practice, and research. Following a brief discussion of terms, the author attempts to identify the various contributions of human imagination to social change processes. The second part presents the argument that the cultural structure known as Social Darwinism significantly curtails the abilities of people holding (or held within) these patterns of thinking to imagine. The third section discusses the ways in which historical key figures, events, and alternative stories can be used to stimulate radical imagination in social work education, research, and practice.

Peripheral vision as anthropological critique

In the context of rapid neoliberal reform, both anthropology as a discipline and the social and cultural phenomena it studies are undergoing profound changes. In this article we develop June Nash's concept of “peripheral vision” to show how peripheries, and the politics of “peripheralization”, can illuminate processes of neoliberalization and the implications that this has for anthropological knowledge production. We argue that anthropology is uniquely situated to examine the conceptual blind spots produced by capitalism. By recasting “peripheral vision” as an analytic concept and methodological tool, we show how cultivating our ethnographic sensibilities to identify and hone in on events and processes that lie beyond our immediate field of vision can provide a useful antidote to the seductive fantasies of contemporary capitalism. In doing so, we also suggest how this approach can help counter some of the increasing strictures on knowledge production and narrowing of the research imagination that neoliberal reforms impose.

Blogging as public pedagogy: creating alternative educational futures

In this study, I explore ‘blogging’, the use of a regularly updated website or web page, authored and curated by an individual or small group, written in a conversational style, as a form of public pedagogy. I analyse blogs as pre-figurative spaces where people go to learn with/in a public sphere, through collaboration with interested others. However, my intention is not to conceptualize blogging spaces as such, but rather—having framed them in a particular way—to explore the extent to which they globalise dissent. My argument is that the blogs I explore, understood as public pedagogic spaces, cultivate voices of educational dissent. Positioning itself within the global research imagination, the study draws extensively on data generated by two blogging communities with a combined international readership in excess of 40,000 people; one of the blogs is based in the UK, written by a group of adult educators. The other is based in Canada written by a group of adult literacy practitioners. Whilst both blogs are authored, curated and carried by a named individual, as public pedagogic spaces, they are implicated in the creation of a dialogic self: a self which is developed collaboratively with/in the interests of and through a public that coalesces around them. The pedagogies associated with these spaces are argued as explicit and intentioned. The public that coalesces around them learns how to survive a global neoliberal policy nexus that is unsympathetic towards the ideals they pre-figuratively embody. In so doing, they call into being the creation of alternative educational understandings of themselves and each other in relation to policy, pedagogy and the purposes of education.

Andrea Geddes Poole. Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women's Citizenship: Lady Frederick Cavendish and Miss Emma Cons.

In this book Andrea Geddes Poole successfully pairs biographies of two influential if atypical Victorian British contemporaries, Lucy (Lady Frederick) Cavendish (1841–1925) and Emma Cons (1838–1912). Neither of them has been given a real biography and Poole's extensive and imaginative research on each figure makes up for this. The book is not intended as a double biography, however, but as an exploration of the changing scope, recruitment, and meanings of female voluntarism in the late Victorian and Edwardian years. The two figures could not have been more different. Lucy Cavendish was aristocratic and well connected: William Gladstone was her uncle by marriage; she was one of the famed Lyttelton sisters; she had been a maid of honor to the queen for a time. In her early twenties, in a real love match, she married Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Liberal politician who was assassinated in Dublin in 1882 shortly after being named chief secretary for Ireland. His death meant that the more traditional duties of an aristocratic political hostess would not be required of Lucy Cavendish, and she began to augment her efforts for the Girls Public Day School Trust and the Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education. She also became involved with several Church of England charities, including the Ladies Diocesan Association, as well as with the campaign to elect women to local government offices. The Royal Victoria Hall and Morley College would soon engross her. Emma Cons, housing activist and cultural entrepreneur, was the London-born daughter of a successful craftsman whose ill health required that his daughters would have to work for their living. Cons began her career as a beneficiary of philanthropy. As a teenager she was accepted into Caroline Hill's Ladies Art Guild, which trained girls in skills that would bring a livelihood, and this is how she met Hill's daughter Octavia. Emma Cons met John Ruskin through the Hills, worked for him for two years, and eventually worked with Octavia Hill as a (paid) rent collector. As a self-supporting housing manager, first with Hill in central London and then on her own in south London, Cons always lived modestly on the premises she managed. Cons's forthright gestures, terrible taste in clothes, and cockney accent made it obvious that, as Beatrice Webb famously observed, she was “‘not a lady by birth’” (p. 104), and she was never concerned about it. Her long-term partner from about 1882, Ethel Everest (daughter of Sir George Everest) was very wealthy, however, and the two lived part time at Everest's country home in Kent as well as at Cons's cottage in the Surrey Buildings.

Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education: Southern Theory, Postcolonial Perspectives, and Alternative Epistemologies

Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education: Southern Theory, Postcolonial Perspectives, and Alternative Epistemologies

When the Going Gets Weird: An Invitation to Gonzo Sociology

This paper serves as a call to reinvigorate the practice of “gonzo sociology,” an immersive, reflexive methodology which eschews rigidity and formulaic design in favor of innovative and imaginative research on places and peoples ignored by the academy. Employing an autoethnographic account of the author’s experiences researching the reconstruction of the Iraqi police force, this paper serves as both an invitation and a rough how-to guide for gonzo research projects. While a variety of factors—ranging from funding sources to time constraints to anxiety to institutional review concerns—make this type of unorthodox research difficult, it is argued this is exactly what makes it both a necessary corrective to the staid formalism of the field as well as an avenue for incorporating the voices of those least represented in the academy.