Dielectric Properties of Textile Materials: Analytical Approximations and Experimental Measurements—A Review

Deciphering how the dielectric properties of textile materials are orchestrated by their internal components has far-reaching implications. For the development of textile-based electronics, which have gained ever-increasing attention for their uniquely combined features of electronics and traditional fabrics, both performance and form factor are critically dependent on the dielectric properties. The knowledge of the dielectric properties of textile materials is thus crucial in successful design and operation of textile-based electronics. While the dielectric properties of textile materials could be estimated to some extent from the compositional profiles, recent studies have identified various additional factors that have also substantial influence. From the viewpoint of materials characterization, such dependence of the dielectric properties of textile materials have given rise to a new possibility—information on various internal components could be, upon successful correlation, extracted by measuring the dielectric properties. In view of these considerable implications, this invited review paper summarizes various fundamental theories and principles related to the dielectric properties of textile materials. In order to provide an imperative basis for uncovering various factors that intricately influence the dielectric properties of textile materials, the foundations of the dielectrics and polarization mechanisms are first recapitulated, followed by an overview on the concept of homogenization and the dielectric mixture theory. The principal advantages, challenges and opportunities in the analytical approximations of the dielectric properties of textile materials are then discussed based on the findings from the recent literature, and finally a variety of characterization methods suitable for measuring the dielectric properties of textile materials are described. It is among the objectives of this paper to build a practical signpost for scientists and engineers in this rapidly evolving, cross-disciplinary field.

I Do, We Do, You Do Home Economics: Explicit Instruction Connecting Content with Ideology

Explicit instruction is a teaching model that demonstrates to students what to do and how to do it. One purpose of ideology is to focus the who, what, when, where, and why of a disciplinary field. Trained home economists make a sustained commitment to the core ideology of home economics. Mechanisms for identifying locally relevant challenges faced by individuals, families, and communities are embedded in the home economics knowledge base. To identify challenges and locate solutions (who, what, when, where, and how), home economics education programmes must actively teach or provide explicit instruction about the ideology that underpins the home economics disciplinary field. Neglecting ideology results in teaching unrelated subjects or compartmentalised content that may dilute connection to the core aims of the home economics’ ‘big picture’. This paper outlines how explicit instruction and embedded home economics ideology have positively impacted perceptions of the discipline amongst professionals who are new to the field. In teaching and learning environments, making home economics ideology visible and reinforced continuously across all content specialisation areas, the author observed that students acquired the words and concepts to explain the importance of home economics to others. Professionals who are new to the field became more confident and passionate advocates for home economics, because they had learnt and appreciated, through explicit instruction techniques, the what, the how to, and the why of home economics. Equipped with the discipline’s core ideology, professionals who make visible the home economics ‘big picture’ (i.e., the why) to others are better equipped to enact real-world applications of home economics that can adapt continuously to meet ever-changing and complex societal needs.

Characterisation of a Novel Benzopyran Library Using High-Throughput Microscopy

<p>Drug discovery is a multi-disciplinary field incorporating both chemistry and biology to create novel pharmaceuticals. Nature synthesizes a diverse range of chemical entities that can demonstrate a wide range of biological interactions, though often produces these compounds in small amounts. Using natures structural diversity as a template, organic synthetic chemistry can tap into the structures of natural products and provide novel structures as well as overcome supply issues through large-scale synthetic chemical processes. A novel benzopyran library was synthesised by Sandile Simelane by reacting 3,4,6,-tri-O-acetyl-D-galactal with various phenols to create a novel focused library of bridged benzopyrans. Each molecule has unique functional groups at defined points in the structure due to varying the functional groups on the phenol, allowing for variation within the library whilst retaining the core scaffold. In this thesis, the bioactivity of this novel benzopyran library was explored using a phenotypic screen measuring growth inhibition. A compound, S13, was determined to be the most potent in the library, therefore genome-wide screening was performed using S13. High-throughput microscopy of 4,100 strains, each with a different GFP-tagged protein, was utilized to determine proteins that increased in abundance or changed localization in response to perturbation with S13. Following treatment with S13, the yeast vacuole increased in size due to an aggregation of proteins in the vacuolar lumen. The increase in vacuole size was coincident with a decrease in vacuolar acidity, potentially disrupted autophagy and the upregulation of several proteins involved in ergosterol biosynthesis. Together, these results reveal a novel bridged benzopyran that increases vacuolar size and pH through an epistatic mechanism involving ergosterol biosynthesis.</p>

Characterisation of a Novel Benzopyran Library Using High-Throughput Microscopy

<p>Drug discovery is a multi-disciplinary field incorporating both chemistry and biology to create novel pharmaceuticals. Nature synthesizes a diverse range of chemical entities that can demonstrate a wide range of biological interactions, though often produces these compounds in small amounts. Using natures structural diversity as a template, organic synthetic chemistry can tap into the structures of natural products and provide novel structures as well as overcome supply issues through large-scale synthetic chemical processes. A novel benzopyran library was synthesised by Sandile Simelane by reacting 3,4,6,-tri-O-acetyl-D-galactal with various phenols to create a novel focused library of bridged benzopyrans. Each molecule has unique functional groups at defined points in the structure due to varying the functional groups on the phenol, allowing for variation within the library whilst retaining the core scaffold. In this thesis, the bioactivity of this novel benzopyran library was explored using a phenotypic screen measuring growth inhibition. A compound, S13, was determined to be the most potent in the library, therefore genome-wide screening was performed using S13. High-throughput microscopy of 4,100 strains, each with a different GFP-tagged protein, was utilized to determine proteins that increased in abundance or changed localization in response to perturbation with S13. Following treatment with S13, the yeast vacuole increased in size due to an aggregation of proteins in the vacuolar lumen. The increase in vacuole size was coincident with a decrease in vacuolar acidity, potentially disrupted autophagy and the upregulation of several proteins involved in ergosterol biosynthesis. Together, these results reveal a novel bridged benzopyran that increases vacuolar size and pH through an epistatic mechanism involving ergosterol biosynthesis.</p>

Stratégies conversationnelles dans le discours médical médiatisé

A través de este artículo, que se enmarca en el campo disciplinar del análisis del discurso, intentaremos identificar las principales estrategias conversacionales desplegadas en el discurso médico mediado, apoyándonos en una entrevista exclusiva emitida en el canal de televisión BFMTV. Más precisamente, destacaremos las especificidades discursivas propias de este tipo de comunicación y analizaremos de cerca la dinámica interactiva y los comportamientos lingüísticos específicos de los interlocutore Through this article, which falls within the disciplinary field of discourse analysis, we will try to identify the main conversational strategies deployed in mediated medical discourse, by relying on a corpus made up of an exclusive interview broadcast on the BFMTV television channel. More precisely, we will highlight the specific discursive features specific to this type of communication and will closely analyze the interactive dynamic and the specific language behaviors of the interlocutors.

The Arts of Coexistence: A View From Anthropology

In this perspectives essay, I propose some ways in which current thinking in anthropology might inform the emergent cross-disciplinary field of coexistence studies. I do so following recent calls from within the conservation science community (including this special issue), acknowledging that understanding human-wildlife coexistence in the fractured landscapes of the Anthropocene1 requires being open to alternative approaches beyond conventional frameworks of conservation science and management (see for instance; Carter and Linnell, 2016; Pooley, 2016; Chapron and López-Bao, 2019; Pooley et al., 2020). The essay suggests that relational (non-dualist) ways of thinking2 in anthropology, often building on Indigenous philosophy and expertise, may help ground coexistence studies beyond Euro-Western modernist conceptual frameworks—frameworks that perpetuate exploitative and colonial logics that many scholars from across academia view as being at the heart of our current ecological crisis (e.g., Lestel, 2013; van Dooren, 2014; Tsing, 2015; Todd, 2016; Bluwstein et al., 2021; Schroer et al., 2021). By proposing “relations” rather than objectified “Nature” or “wildlife” as the more adequate subject of understanding and facilitating coexistence in shared landscapes, I understand coexistence and its study first and foremost as an ethical and political endeavor. Rather than offering any conclusive ideas, the essay's intention is to contribute some questions and thoughts to the developing conversations of coexistence studies scholars and practitioners. It does so by inviting conservation scientists to collaborate with anthropologists and take on board some of the current thinking in the discipline. Amongst other things, I suggest that this will help overcome a somewhat dated notion of cultural relativism—understood as many particular, cultural views on one true objective Nature (only known by Science), a perspective that explicitly and implicitly seems to inform some conservation science approaches to issues of culture or the “human dimensions” of conservation issues. Ultimately, the paper seeks to make a conceptual contribution by imagining coexistence as a dynamic bundle of relations in which the biological, ecological, historical, cultural, and social dimensions cannot be thought apart and have to be studied together.

FOREST protocol: a qualitative study exploring health and sexuality of transmasculine individuals in France

IntroductionWhile current research on sexuality and health often explores sexual behaviours among heterosexual and gay cisgender individuals, little is known about the sexualities of transgender people, especially transmasculine people. When data are available, sexual health is often reduced to risk exposure, not considering in detail social context and determinants that could contribute to a more comprehensive approach, such as general health, class, race, exposure to violence or social representations. Recognising this gap, identified in both national (French) and international scientific literature, this study aims to explore the sexual health of transmasculine people, employing an intersectional approach and considering both positive and negative health determinants.MethodsThis 2-year research based in the disciplinary field of social psychology, with a gender perspective, and will apply qualitative methods. We adopt a community-based research approach, integrating one university and one community-based organisation in the coordination of the study. In a triangulation perspective, two rounds of semistructured interviews will be performed with key informants (medical practitioners, community-based support services workers, etc) and with people self-identifying as transmasculine. Focus groups will complement data collection.Ethics and disseminationFOREST protocol was approved by the Comité d’Évaluation Éthique (CEEI) de l’Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale (CEEI/International Review Board 00003888). The research adopts the principles of open science, and findings will be published assuring participants’ confidentiality. Informative flyers and videos will be elaborated to communicate study findings to participants, stakeholders and the transcommunities at large, and data will be stored in lasting archives.

Bodily Processing: What Progress Has Been Made in Understanding the Embodiment of Computing Systems?

" In this article I will address the issue of the embodiment of computing sys-tems from the point of view distinctive of the so-called Unconventional Computation, focusing on the paradigm known as Mor-phological Computation. As a first step, I will contextualize Morphological Computa-tion within the disciplinary field of Embod-ied Artificial Intelligence: broadly con-ceived, Embodied Artificial Intelligence may be characterized as embracing both conventional and unconventional ap-proaches to the artificial emulation of natu-ral intelligence. Morphological Computa-tion stands out from other paradigms of unconventional Embodied Artificial Intelli-gence in that it discloses a new, closer kind of connection between embodiment and computation. I will further my investigation by briefly reviewing the state-of-the-art in Morphological Computation: attention will be given to a very recent trend, whose core concept is that of “organic reconfigu-rability”. In this direction, as a final step, two advanced cases of study of organic or living morphological computers will be pre-sented and discussed. The prospect is to shed some light on our title question: what progress has been made in understanding the embodiment of computing systems? Keywords: Embodied Artificial Intelligence; Morphological Computation; Reservoir Compu-ting Systems; Organic Reconfigurability; 3D Bio-Printed Synthetic Corneas; Xenobots "

Social Research about Online Crime: Global Range of Topics and a Systematic Analysis of Research in Lithuania

Social research about online crime is a multi-disciplinary field addressing a wide array of topics since its inception in the 1980s. Based on a broad review of state-of-the-art literature and gaps identified in review publications (Holt, Bossler 2014; Stratton, Powell, Cameron 2017; Maimon, Louderback 2019, and others), in this paper I outline 41 key topic in social research about online crime, classified into four broad categories: 1) research focusing on specific types of online crime, 2) research about perpetrators, victims, and law enforcement, 3) research about online crime discourses and public perceptions, 4) research putting the local and global specifics of online crime into perspective. Based on the topic map, I undertook a systematic review of literature on research about online crime published in Lithuania from the empirical social scientific perspective. The results show that very few such studies are carried out in Lithuania. From 2004 to 2020, 26 publications have been found in total. 10 of them were theoretical briefs, while 16 were based on empirical data. Out of the 41 key topic, 14 were covered in the publications, while 29 or roughly two thirds remained unaddressed. The dominant contributors were legal scholars writing about the social aspects of online crime across a variety of topics, and mostly focusing on specific crime types. The most developed topic was cyberbullying, with contributions by scholars mostly from the fields of psychology and education. To fill in these glaring gaps, it is vital to develop this field of research with an emphasis on both wider and deeper research agendas, complex, valid and reliable research data and critical theoretical approaches, inviting systematic contributions from criminology, sociology, communication and media studies, and political science.

Understanding Past and Present Vegetation Dynamics using the Palynological Approach: An Introductory Discourse

Palynology is a multi-disciplinary field of science that deals with the study and application of extinct, [fossilised] and extant palynomorphs (pollen and spore) and other related microscopic biological entities in the environment. It is divided into palaeo- and actuo-palynology, and provides substantial proxies to understanding past and present vegetation dynamics respectively. With reference to the two geological principles of uniformitarianism and of the evolution of fauna/flora, the distribution of plant indicators across ecological zones, palynomorph morphology and pollen analysis, palynology can be used to identify the change in past and present local and regional vegetation and climate and humans impact on the environment. Other supportive areas of endeavour like radiocarbon dating, sedimentology, taphonomic processes and geomorphology can be used to triangulate inferences drawn from palynological data. Palynomorphs are made of outer cell walls embedded with an inert, complex and resistant biopolymeric signature (called sporopollenin) which helps to facilitate long term preservation in different environmental matrices under favourable conditions, hence its widespread applicability. Palynology have proven to very reliable in reconstructing past vegetation, decrypting essential honeybee plants and understanding the impact of climate on plant population using pollen analysis, for which is the basis for the application of palynology in environmental studies. The application of palynology in climate, vegetation and anthropogenic studies begins with the selection of matrix (sediments from lake, river, ocean, excavation, relatively intact soil profile, bee products), coring or collection of samples, subjection to a series of chemically aided digestion, separation, physical filtration, decanting, accumulating of palynomorphs, microscopic study and ends with the interpretation of recovered information. Literature review on the application of palynology for understanding vegetation and climate interactions is presented in this paper.