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This empirical study examines the experiences of academics and professional service staff in a large UK university during first weeks of the transition to online teaching and working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The method draws on the work by Gourlay and Oliver (2018) to explore engagement with the digital university in everyday practice. Using data from 412 survey responses and 32 interviews, the study traces varying ways staff characterised themselves during the first months of lockdown in the UK (from March to July, 2020). The findings highlight that university support services underwent a metamorphosis to support the transition to online teaching. However, insufficient attention was paid to the 'identity crisis' and threats perceived by academics who were used to teaching students on campus. Academics tended to focus on transferring traditional teaching practices to the online environment, rather than on changing teaching practice, leaving face-to-face teaching as the default point of reference. These cultural barriers are a persistent obstacle to a more productive engagement with digitalisation. Transitioning to online teaching involves continuing existing work while also learning new practices. Such efforts were challenging for teaching staff who did not have dedicated space at home to work and those with caring responsibilities. This, combined with gendered patterns around caring and the extra support needed by students during the crisis, added emotional labour to already-full workloads. We recommend that intersecting forms of disadvantage be acknowledged, supported and rewarded for universities to create sustainable and just futures.

Assessing the embrittlement and hardening of reactor pressure vessel steels is critical for the extension of the service lifetime of nuclear power plants. This paper summarises the tensile test results on the irradiation behaviour of realistic VVER-1000 welds from the STRUMAT-LTO project. The welds were irradiated at the HFR (Petten, the Netherlands) to a fluence of up to 1.087 × 1020 n·cm−2, and their irradiation hardening was studied by means of tensile testing. The four grades, with different Mn and Ni contents, show different hardening behaviours. The highest degree of irradiation hardening is observed for the weld that has the highest combined Ni + Mn content. The results show that there is a synergetic effect of Mn and Ni on the irradiation hardening behaviour of the VVER-1000 welds. Besides irradiation hardening, the effectiveness of post-irradiation annealing treatments on the recovery of the tensile properties is studied in the present work. Post-irradiation annealing treatments conducted at 418 °C and at 475 °C proved to be effective for three of the four investigated welds. For the realistic weld with the highest combined Ni + Mn, only the annealing at 475 °C led to the complete recovery of the tensile properties.

Research has been conducted investigating the neuronal pathways responsible for the generation of chronic neuropathic pain, including the components of it in conditions such as chronic post-surgical pain, phantom limb pain, and cluster headaches. Forming part of the management of such conditions, capsaicin as a molecule has proven effective. This review has investigated the central nervous system modifications exhibited in such conditions and the pharmacological mechanisms of capsaicin relevant to this. The current paradigm for explaining topical capsaicin-induced analgesia is that TRPV1-mediated calcium ion influx induces calpain, in turn causing axonal ablation and functional defunctionalisation in the PNS (Peripheral Nervous System). Demonstrated through the analysis of existing data, this review demonstrates the changes seen in the CNS (Central Nervous System) in chronic neuropathic pain, as well as some of the evidence for capsaicin modulation on the CNS. Further supporting this, the specific molecular mechanisms of capsaicin-induced analgesia will also be explored, including the action of TRPV1, as well as discussing the further need for clinical research into this area of uncertainty due to the limited specific data with suitable parameters. Further research this review identified as potentially useful in this field included fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) studies, though more specific observational studies of patients who have already been administered capsaicin as a current treatment may prove helpful in studying the modification of the CNS in the long term.

Background: While substantial progress has been made in the development of disease-modifying medications for multiple sclerosis (MS), a high percentage of treated patients still show progression and persistent inflammatory activity. Autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) aims at eliminating a pathogenic immune repertoire through intense short-term immunosuppression that enables subsequent regeneration of a new and healthy immune system to re-establish immune tolerance for a long period of time. A number of mostly open-label, uncontrolled studies conducted over the past 20 years collected about 4000 cases. They uniformly reported high efficacy of AHSCT in controlling MS inflammatory disease activity, more markedly beneficial in relapsing-remitting MS. Immunological studies provided evidence for qualitative immune resetting following AHSCT. These data and improved safety profiles of transplantation procedures spurred interest in using AHSCT as a treatment option for MS. Objective: To develop expert consensus recommendations on AHSCT in Germany and outline a registry study project. Methods: An open call among MS neurologists as well as among experts in stem cell transplantation in Germany started in December 2021 to join a series of virtual meetings. Results: We provide a consensus-based opinion paper authored by 25 experts on the up-to-date optimal use of AHSCT in managing MS based on the Swiss criteria. Current data indicate that patients who are most likely to benefit from AHSCT have relapsing-remitting MS and are young, ambulatory and have high disease activity. Treatment data with AHSCT will be collected within the German REgistry Cohort of autologous haematopoietic stem CeLl trAnsplantation In MS (RECLAIM). Conclusion: Further clinical trials, including registry-based analyses, are urgently needed to better define the patient characteristics, efficacy and safety profile of AHSCT compared with other high-efficacy therapies and to optimally position it as a treatment option in different MS disease stages.

In March 2020, populations were forced into home quarantine to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Universities moved the majority of their operations to homeworking, with profound implications for students, academics, and professional services staff. This paper analyses interview and visual data collected as part of a study on the impact of 'moving online' on staff at a large UK university. Drawing on sociomaterial perspectives, it considers the status and role of academics' literacy practices under lockdown, focusing particularly on the ways in which a range of boundaries are negotiated -- spatial, temporal, material, digital, professional, personal and emotional -- in a setting where conventional boundaries have been profoundly disrupted. We argue that these practices form part of emergent, restless and shifting semiotic assemblages. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this conceptual shift for academic work, meaning-making and academic subjectivities, in lockdown and beyond.

Technology has been an important influence on the development of education. However, very little research in Educational Technology considers this history, and even less questions it. In this paper, we argue that our understanding of educational technology should be informed by the philosophy of technology -- a field that has attempted to explore what these historical developments mean. This paper focuses on the ontological turn in philosophy and the technological thought of Marx and Heidegger. This is used to propose a foundation that can help researchers rethink educational technology, expanding research to account for human-education, human-technology and education-technology relations. It is proposed that human-education relationships should make students 'become what they are', highlighting their subjectivity rather than concentrating on information. Human-technology relationships can change the focus of design practice, so that technology is not merely seen as an efficient tool, but something 'handy' for peoples' educational needs. Education-technology relationships explain how technology can shape education, and re-introduces the idea of 'techne' as something to be valued in education.

Evaluating artificial light as a bycatch reduction device (bycatch reduction light, "BRL") requires a multidisciplinary approach that applies knowledge of fisheries science, fishing technology, engineering, physics, optics, vision biology, oceanography, animal behavior, economics, and social science. To support the continued evaluation of BRL, these guidelines were developed for conducting standardized and systematic studies. The guidelines highlight how information from those fields of study contributes to the efficacy of study design and the evaluation of results. The guidance is focused on four core areas: (i) defining the objective of using a BRL; (ii) understanding the context in which the BRL is applied and considering the base knowledge that is needed; (iii) selecting an appropriate study design (including selection and placement of the BRL) and analytical methods for measuring both behavioral responses and catch outcomes from using the BRL; and (iv) interpreting the data through the lens of the base knowledge, context, and study design, and evaluating the results against an established definition of success and variables that affect adoption. The purpose of these guidelines is to increase the ability of researchers and managers to determine if BRL is appropriate for a fishery and to encourage consistency in data collection among studies to support future meta-analyses and inter-study comparison. In addition, suggestions are provided on where more research and technology development are needed to support this rapidly emerging field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews issues of academic integrity, focusing on unethical practices in Kenyan universities. The rapid expansion of university education in Kenya, followed by a significant decline in the number of qualified students seeking to join private universities since 2017 have created financial pressures on universities. Some universities have resorted to unethical practices to enrol students and offer programmes that have not been accredited by the Commission for University Education (CUE). At the same time, there is a growing concern among governments, educators, students, and other stakeholders that unethical practices in higher education are spreading, compromising the integrity of academic programmes.This review suggests strategies that can be put in place to improve academic integrity. The analysis considers what motivates individuals to act unethically, even though doing so contributes to damaging the credibility of the sector. The idea of the prisoner’s dilemma is introduced to explain why it remains in individuals’ interest to act in this way. Based on this, we suggest that changes could be made that shift the balance of risk and reward. These changes can include efforts to detect unethical behaviour; discourage it through more consistent penalties; and to encourage and reward positive alternatives. We propose that everyone in higher education could contribute to these changes, suggesting interventions that could be made by teachers in classrooms; by trainers within universities; and by policy makers nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PurposeGlioma patients face a limited life expectancy and at the same time, they suffer from afflicting symptoms and undesired effects of tumor treatment. Apart from bone marrow suppression, standard chemotherapy with temozolomide causes nausea, emesis and loss of appetite. In this pilot study, we investigated how chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) affects the patients' levels of depression and their quality of life.MethodsIn this prospective observational multicentre study (n = 87), nausea, emesis and loss of appetite were evaluated with an expanded MASCC questionnaire, covering 10 days during the first and the second cycle of chemotherapy. Quality of life was assessed with the EORTC QLQ-C30 and BN 20 questionnaire and levels of depression with the PHQ-9 inventory before and after the first and second cycle of chemotherapy.ResultsCINV affected a minor part of patients. If present, it reached its maximum at day 3 and decreased to baseline level not before day 8. Levels of depression increased significantly after the first cycle of chemotherapy, but decreased during the further course of treatment. Patients with higher levels of depression were more severely affected by CINV and showed a lower quality of life through all time-points.ConclusionWe conclude that symptoms of depression should be perceived in advance and treated in order to avoid more severe side effects of tumor treatment. Additionally, in affected patients, delayed nausea was most prominent, pointing toward an activation of the NK1 receptor. We conclude that long acting antiemetics are necessary totreat temozolomide-induced nausea.

This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing's concept of 'scale-making projects' (2005. "Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection." Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) to connect 'global' narratives to 'local' users in a mobile learning project for Kenyan health workers. Drawing from this exemplar case, we discuss more broadly how FSTS provides useful theory and methods for tracing the trans-national power relations of digital technologies 'on the ground'. The paper concludes by advocating for new forms of emancipatory Ed Tech research -- ones framed not only within oppositional pairings such as 'global' versus 'local', but which elucidate how binaries themselves are constituted through far-flung trans-national arrays of sociomaterial practice.

Although mobile learning is a popular topic in current research, it is not well conceptualized. Many researchers rely on under-theorized conceptions of the topic, and those who have tried to refine the ideas involved have found this to be complex and difficult. In this paper a new interpretation of the concept "mobile learning" is offered, drawing on the tradition of activity theory. The interpretation focuses on the continuity of learning activities that take place in multiple contexts, which are embodied as the combination of the physical and social setting of the learning activities. The paper starts by sketching the current research context and then outlines the theoretical tradition within which the interpretation of "mobile learning" is located. Then the new interpretation is offered and the concepts are applied to case studies to illustrate how this new understanding develops current thinking in the area. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for research of adopting such a perspective. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)

Sharing teachers' professional knowledge remains challenging. Teachers' development often remains ad hoc or local, and attempts to scale this up have proved problematic. To address this, research in areas such as 'learning design' has explored the use of formal representations of practice. This proposes that educational practice can be improved by documenting, sharing and building on what teachers already do. Whilst this has led to some successes, it has not resulted in the widespread transformation of practice. This paper reviews the literature about sharing teacher knowledge. The challenges of scaling up development are then considered in relation to two theories that help explain the challenges: Communities of Practice and Sociomateriality. This analysis is illustrated through case studies in Norway and the UK. These show that teachers already create and share artefacts that represent their pedagogic knowledge. However, they found formal representations, such as learning designs, difficult to work with. The paper concludes that scaling up teacher development using abstract formalisms is unlikely to succeed. Instead, teachers value stories and the materials they already create in their day-to-day practice. It is this intermediate level of representation, between direct experience and formal abstraction, that offers the most promise for sharing practice.

Understanding the mechanical behaviour of reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steels at high fluences has become an important topic in regard to Long-Term Operations (LTO) of existing nuclear power plants (NPP). The effectiveness of thermal annealing treatments to recover the mechanical properties of compositionally tailored pressurised water reactor (PWR) model steels irradiated to high neutron fluences, up to 1.22 × 1020 n·cm−2, is analysed in this study. Tensile testing of four different PWR RPV steels was performed after irradiation and subsequent recovery annealing treatment at 450 °C for 40 h. Irradiation-induced hardening and the effectiveness of recovery thermal annealing have been assessed by comparing the strength and ductility properties of irradiated and irradiated and subsequently annealed samples with unirradiated reference samples for all four model steel. The annealing treatment resulted in a significant recovery of the yield strength (~75–89%) and the ultimate tensile strength (~78–96%) of all four PWR model steels. This study proves that substantial irradiation-induced hardening (up to ~389 MPa) observed in steels containing high Ni and Mn contents can still be recovered using the thermal annealing treatment. No influence of annealing on ductility properties has been observed for all four model steels. Microscopy analyses of these steels to understand the underlying irradiation damage and recovery mechanisms are planned for the near future.

Mobile learning has seen a large uptake in use in low- and middle-income countries. This is driven by rhetorics of easy scaling, reaching the hard-to-reach and the potential for generating analytics from the applications used by learners. Healthcare training has seen a proliferation of apps aimed at improving accountability through tracking and measuring workplace learning. A view of the mobile phone as an agent of change is thus linked with a technocentric approach to measurement. Metrics, initially created as proxies for what gets done by health workers, are now shaping the practices they were intended to describe. In this paper, we show how, despite some valiant efforts, "measuring better" remains difficult to achieve due to entrenched views of what measurement consists of. We analyse a mobile health (mHealth) classification framework, drawing out some implications of how it has been used in training health workers. These lead us to recommend moving away from a view of mobile learning linked tightly to accountability and numbers. We suggest a focus on an alternative future, where "measuring better" is promoted as part of socio-cultural views of learning and linked with a social justice conceptualisation of development.

In this paper we review the literature on teacher inquiry (TI) to explore the possibility that this process can equip teachers to investigate students' learning as a step towards the process of formative assessment. We draw a distinction between formative assessment and summative forms of assessment [CRELL. (2009). The transition to computer-based assessment: New approaches to skills assessment and implications for large-scale testing. In F. Scheuermann & J. Björnsson (Eds.), "JRC Scientific and technical reports." Ispra: Author; Webb, M. (2010). Beginning teacher education and collaborative formative e-assessment. "Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education," 35, 597-618; EACEA. (2009). "National testing of pupils in Europe: Objectives, organisation and use of results." Brussels: Eurydice; OECD. (2010b). "Assessing the effects of ICT in education" (F. Scheuermann & E. Pedró, Eds.). Paris: JRC, OECD]. Our review of TI is combined with a review of the research concerning the way that practices with technology can support the assessment process. We conclude with a comparison of TI and teacher design research from which we extract the characteristics for a method of TI that can be used to develop technology-enhanced formative assessment: teacher inquiry into student learning. In this review, our primary focus is upon enabling teachers to use technology effectively to inquire about their students' learning progress.

This paper explores the ways in which information about course pedagogy has been represented to potential students through national descriptors and specifications such as the United Kingdom's Key Information Set. It examines the extent to which such descriptors provide helpful information about pedagogy, for example innovative uses of technology. The paper starts by exploring the wider context within which these descriptors have been developed, including a comparison of similar descriptions internationally. This is followed by a comparative analysis, in which two courses (one single honours undergraduate degree, one Massive Open Online Course) are classified and compared. This serves to illustrate the blind spots in classifications such as the Key Information Set. The paper concludes by arguing that further work is needed to develop classification schemes that both address explicitly the interests of potential students and are able to represent the pedagogic decisions that differentiate teaching in contemporary higher education.

Work on students' study practices posits the digital and material as separate domains, with the "digital" assumed to be disembodied, decontextualised and free-floating, and spaces in the material campus positioned as prototypically "traditional" and analogue. Libraries in particular are often characterised as symbolic of predigital literacy practices and forms of meaning making. This binary oversimplifies student engagement, particularly in relation to their creation of and interactions with texts. Two studies illustrate this: an investigation of student and staff textual practices that explored the complex and emergent networks they created, adapted and maintained; and one that explored perceptions and use of library spaces (digital and physical). A sociomaterial analysis shows the ongoing importance of institutional, personal and public spaces. This demonstrates that in order to enhance the student experience, a more nuanced understanding of the complex, emergent relationships between digital and print, device and user, and author and text is required.

Many changes in teaching practices (such as introduction of e-assessment) are initiated by school management, or by a lead teacher, but have direct impact on the learning designs of others. However, models of teachers as innovators, conducting evidence-based inquiry into their students' learning, view the teacher as initiator of change in their own practice (normally as individual). This paper addresses the question of whether such models can also be applied to change introduced by top-down processes. In this paper, we examine teacher inquiry in such a context. We discuss a case study in which we worked with the Head of Science (HoS) of a secondary school. The HoS designed a cross-curricular science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) project with 57 STEM teachers and introduced Google Forms as a tool for formative assessment. We supported the HoS to design and conduct an inquiry that involved all teachers. We examine the context and process of inquiry and how it was applied. Our findings provide insight into teachers' use of tools and representations when communicating about learning design, and the implications of this for the development of learning analytics tools. They also inform the development of a method for coordinating teacher inquiry in cross-curricular projects and, more generally, in the context of top-down introduction of change.