Search Results (4)

When access to natural speech is limited or challenging, as is the case for people with complex communication needs, self-created digital film can be practical to use as one of the resources within a multimodal conversation about a personal experience. The detailed and contextual information such audiovisual media offers with today’s available technology may assist the utility of other communication modes, such as (computerized) spoken, written or signed language, to foster mutual understanding and story growth. To promote the use of self-created film, here named a personal-video-scene (PVS), in the practice of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), a greater understanding is required of how such media can operate as a resource within social interactions, such as daily conversations. This study therefore introduces a multimodal coding model developed to study the employment of a PVS within a film-elicited conversational narrative, relating to four aspects of conversational control: (a) topic development, (b) conversational structure, (c) conversational repair and (d) conversational maintenance. A case study illustrates how the use of a PVS in story-sharing was instrumental in establishing common ground between narrators, boosting the frequency of comments and questions, mitigating instances of conversational repair and expanding topic development. Full article

The objective of this work was to investigate the use of nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) as a drug-delivery excipient for buccal films. Gel-like dispersions were created by blending either gel or powder NCC (gNCC or pNCC) with natural polymers (alginate, pectin, or chitosan) in water, with glycerol serving as a plasticiser. Ibuprofen (IBU) as an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) was dissolved in a self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) to improve its solubility prior to its addition to gel-like dispersions. Dispersions were dried, and resulting films were cut to 3 cm × 1.5 cm size, appropriate for buccal delivery. Rheological measurements revealed that shorter, thinner, and less crystalline nanocellulose fibres are more favourable for stronger gel properties. While overall, weaker gel structure prior to film casting also resulted in shorter disintegration time, this was not the case for NCC–chitosan films; here, the low solubility of chitosan in neutral media proved to be the main obstacle. Nevertheless, the prolonged disintegration of NCC–chitosan films did not impact the dissolution of IBU, as these films exhibited the fastest dissolution rate, followed by NCC–pectin and NCC–alginate. Furthermore, NCC properties significantly influenced the dissolution behaviour of the chitosan formulations, with gNCC favouring faster IBU release due to weaker gel formation prior to film casting. Full article

Degradation of pharmaceuticals in water by TiO₂ photocatalysis often suffers from low efficiency due to low activity and mass transfer limitation. In this work, diclofenac removal in tap water was performed by photocatalysis on TiO₂ nanotube growth on Ti mesh substrate assisted by ozone (O₃), which was generated from a hole-arrayed boron-doped diamond (HABDD) film electrode. The vertically oriented TiO₂ nanotubes were used as the heterogeneous photocatalyst. The HABDD, as a self-standing diamond electrode, was designed and custom-made by MWCVD technology. The microstructures and crystalline of the TiO₂ nanotubes and HABDD were characterized by a scanning electronic micrograph (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Unlike other ozone generation methods, direct generation of ozone in the flowing water was applied in the photocatalysis process, and its effect was discussed. The diclofenac removal performance of the electrochemical-photocatalytic system was studied depending on O₃ generation efficiency, flowing rate, and the initial diclofenac concentration. The enhanced degradation effect from O₃ molecules on TiO₂ photocatalysis was attributed to the larger active surface area, the increased photo-generated charge separation rate, and the contact area of O₃. The degradation efficiency in the combined electrochemical-photocatalytic TiO₂/O₃/UV system was higher than that of the O₃/UV and TiO₂/UV routes individually. Furthermore, a theoretical calculation was used to analyze the TiO₂/O₃ interface in aqueous media in terms of the final energy. This system created an almost in situ feeding channel of oxidants in the TiO₂ photocatalysis process, thus increasing photocatalytic efficiency. This synergetic system is promising in the treatment of pharmaceuticals in water. Full article

Clement Greenberg interpreted the rise of authentic modern art as a rejection of kitsch and “half-baked” religiosity and celebrated Jackson Pollock as representing what he called for. However, his presentation of Pollock as a leading modernist fails to do justice to his lifelong spiritual quest and to his desire to reach a broad public, which led him to open his art and person to the popular media of photography and film. Following Greenberg, Donald Kuspit would have us understand Pollock’s embrace of and by the public as a self-betrayal, transforming his great abstractions into decorative kitsch. Kuspit’s understanding of Pollock’s “true self”, however, cannot convince. His embrace of the public did lead Pollock to doubt his artistic enterprise: his dream of art as alchemy. But, the great abstractions testify to the power of that dream to create great art, challenging us to reconsider the relationship between authentic art and mass culture, of modernism, spirituality, and the public. Full article