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Indigo-carmine-mediated direct alkaline fuel cells have demonstrated superior power outputs over their non-mediated counterparts. Currently, the mechanism of mediation and stability of mediators are poorly understood. Upon exposure to highly alkaline solutions, we observed that the redox action of indigo carmine diminished, and significant currents were produced, indicating substantial degradation of the dye. The decomposition of indigo carmine at high pH and a poor thermal stability suggest that alternative mediators with low toxicity may be required to enable the widespread application of this device type.

This research focuses on the important issues of age discrimination and intergenerational knowledge transfer. Through online questionnaire method, where 291 effective responses were acquired, this research found that perceived age discrimination by senior employees was negatively related to their intention to transfer their knowledge to younger employees. This negatively effect was fully mediated by organizational identification, where perceived age discrimination was negatively related to organizational identification while organizational identification was positively related to intergenerational knowledge transfer intention. This research made theoretical contribution by linking the two important issues, age discrimination and intergenerational knowledge transfer, as well as by identifying the underlying mechanism for this linkage. The research would hopefully help manager in workplace to encourage senior employees to transfer knowledge to younger employees, by providing a more respectful workplace for senior employees.

Though direct carbohydrate fuel cells offer a highly efficient pathway from abundant, non-toxic sugars to electricity, currently their potential remains untapped due to a lack of knowledge of the impact of different cell geometries on their output power. In this work, simple modifications to the configuration of carbohydrate fuel cells are shown to significantly impact the performance of alkaline carbohydrate fuel cells. Increasing the density of a metal foam anode from 250 to 1000 mg/cm3 was found to increase power output by up to ~30%. These anode density changes also affected optimal fuel concentrations, which dropped from 1 M to 0.75 M. Decreasing the distance between electrodes from 20 mm to 6 mm resulted in improved maximum power outputs of ~35%. Identifying these new loss mechanisms in this device type provides a basis to optimise alkaline carbohydrate fuel cell performance and provide insights that help reconcile some of the disparities observed throughout the research space.

IntroductionPatients who repeatedly attend the emergency department (ED) often have underlying complex social, psychological and chronic medical issues which are difficult to address in the emergency/acute medicine environment alone. Their attendances not only present a burden to the ED, but also can be a sign that the patient’s primary issue has been insufficiently addressed. At West Suffolk Hospital, we are trialling an approach to reduce frequency of ED attendances in a specific cohort of patients identified as being frequent attenders. In order to do this, we are using a multi-disciplinary approach including psychiatry services and ED clinicians.MethodsOur cohort of frequent attenders were identified as patients presenting more than 4 times to ED between March 2017 to April 2018. Exclusion criteria was if the patient is under 18 years old, has known long term medical conditions and known safeguarding concerns. With collaborative working by the emergency medicine clinician and liaison psychiatry, a letter was sent to 38 patients in May 2018, identifying them as frequent attenders and inviting them to a tailored multi-disciplinary team meeting. Initially we are assessing the impact of the letter, so 6 months after the letters were sent out, we assessed patient attendances again. 2 patients were excluded due to moving out of area and being in prison. Paired sample for means t-test was used to compare attendances pre- and post-intervention.ResultsThere were a wide range of presenting complaints to ED, most of which were psychiatric related – overdose, deliberate self harm, alcohol/drug related. The intervention letter improved the attendance rate the most in this cohort, whereas it had a negligible effect on attendances with physical complaints. The average fall in attendance was 33% in the 6 months post patients receiving the intervention letter. This reached significance level with p=0.039.ConclusionsSending frequent attender patients a letter and putting in place a care plan could significantly reduce Emergency Department attendances. However there were a small number of patients, making it difficult to assess the efficacy of our intervention especially when adjusting for patient relocation.We are hoping to disseminate the locally trialed strategy region wide across East Anglia, providing many more data points. We can also implement the model not just in patients with psychiatric background, but also patients with chronic medical problems too with additions to the multi-disciplinary team as per the needs of the patient.