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This dataset was generated via a focused piece of research conducted by Dr Matilda Aspinall and Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd which investigated the experiences of students and staff involved in Fashion Fictions projects in 2022 at two institutions: LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and Nottingham Trent University. This focused research was situated within the broader Fashion Fictions project. Fashion Fictions, founded by Amy Twigger Holroyd in 2020, brings people together to generate, experience and reflect on engaging fictional visions of alternative fashion cultures and systems. Through these activities, we gain new perspectives on challenges, possibilities and pathways for change in the real world. The project is structured in three stages. Stage 1 prompts contributors to create brief written outlines of fictional fashion cultures and systems, known as Worlds; at Stage 2, participants put flesh on these outlines and create visual or material prototypes to represent their cultures, known as Explorations; at Stage 3, they performatively enact practices or events from the fictional worlds. To find out more about Fashion Fictions, visit the project website. To see other data linked to the project, visit the Fashion Fictions Zenodo community. -------------------------------- In both institutions, Fashion Fictions was initially introduced to the curriculum in the 2020/21 academic year; the activities discussed here took place in the following year, with a second cohort of students. At NTU, first-year undergraduate students from BA (Hons) courses in Fashion Design, Textile Design and Fashion Knitwear Design & Knitted Textiles undertook a short Stage 2 Fashion Fictions project. Spanning three two-hour workshops, the project was part of a Future Thinking toolkit within a module that aims to develop students’ intellectual curiosity and appreciation of the future as something that can be shaped and questioned. Working in small cross-course groups, students were given a specified Stage 1 fiction and asked to create a visual or material prototype to represent everyday life in that world, presented via a selection of images and a short explanatory text. At LASALLE, Fashion Fictions was set up as a major project extending across a 14-week semester for second-year students on two BA (Hons) programmes: Fashion Media and Industries and Fashion Design and Textiles. Also working in cross-course collaborative groups, the students first created their own Stage 1 world and then progressed to create a collection of Stage 2 prototypes in the form of garments and related media such as photographs and films, accompanied by an extensive body of supporting work. -------------------------------- in April and May 2022 we conducted semi-structured interviews with tutors involved in the projects – Lorraine Warde (Principal Lecturer in Fashion Design) at NTU and Martin Bonney and Kathryn Shannon Sim Yen Ping (Lecturers in Fashion, interviewed together) at LASALLE – and with three student groups, selected by the tutors, from each institution. The interview schedules for students and tutors each comprised four reflective questions, designed to gain an insight into the students’ experiences and the tutors’ observations. Each recorded interview lasted between twenty and sixty minutes. -------------------------------- The dataset is organised in nine folders: 1 Project context Project website About page from February 2022 (explaining the wider project at the time of this research). Project website Education projects page from January 2022 (giving context to the education projects taking place at the time of this research). 2 Activity guidance Project website Stage 1 (World) online guide from January 2022 (as available for use by LASALLE students). NTU virtual workspace Stage 2 (Exploration) guidance (as used by NTU students and providing an indication of the type of guidance that would have been offered to LASALLE students for their Stage 2 work - although their project was much longer in duration). 3 Interview documentation Information sheet and consent form given to research participants. Interview questions for staff and students, shared with all participants in advance. 4 LASALLE staff interview Transcript of interview with Martin Bonney and Kathryn Shannon Sim Yen Ping (Lecturers in Fashion). 5 LASALLE student interviews Transcripts of interviews with three student groups, each identified by the number/letter of the Stage 1 World and Stage 2 Exploration they created (as listed on the project website Worlds and Explorations pages). 6 LASALLE student work Project work (Stage 1 Worlds and Stage 2 Explorations) created by the three student groups interviewed, as displayed on the project website. One group (World 154) did not submit their Exploration for the website. 7 NTU staff interview Transcript of interview with Lorraine Warde (Principal Lecturer in Fashion Design). 8 NTU student interviews Transcripts of interviews with three student groups, each identified by the number/letter of the Stage 2 Exploration they created (as listed on the project website Explorations page). 9 NTU student work Project work (Stage 2 Explorations) created by the three student groups interviewed. Two groups' work is as displayed on the project website. One group (World 95, Exploration X) did not submit their Exploration for the website and so their internal presentation has been included instead.

The global restoration agenda can help solve the biodiversity extinction crisis by regenerating biodiversity-rich ecosystems, maximising conservation benefits using natural regeneration. Yet, conservation is rarely the core objective of restoration, and biodiversity is often neglected in restoration projects targeted towards carbon sequestration or enhancing ecosystem services for improved local livelihoods. Here, we synthesise evidence to show that promoting biodiversity in restoration planning and delivery is integral to delivering other long-term restoration aims, such as carbon sequestration, timber production, enhanced local farm yields, reduced soil erosion, recovered hydrological services and improved human health. For each of these restoration goals, biodiversity must be a keystone objective to the entire process. Biodiversity integration requires improved evidence and action, delivered via a socio-ecological process operating at landscape scales and backed by supportive regulations and finance. Conceiving restoration and biodiversity conservation as synergistic, mutually reinforcing partners is critical for humanity's bids to tackle the global crises of climate change, land degradation and biodiversity extinction.

Abstract With drastic fossil fuel depletion and environmental deterioration concerns, a move towards a more sustainable bioenergy-based economy is essential. Lately, the application of microwave (MW) irradiation for waste processing has been attracting interest globally. MW-assisted heating possesses several advantages such as the provision of high microwave energy into dielectric materials with deeper penetration for internal heat generation, showing beneficial features in improving the heating rate and reducing the reaction time. Consequently, the most recent literature regarding the applications of MW-assisted heating for biomass pretreatment as well as biofuel and bioenergy production was reviewed and consolidated in this study. An impressive increase in the product yield and improvement of the product properties are reported, with the use of MW-assisted heating in several conversion routes to produce biofuels. Despite being a promising technology for biofuel production, some major fundamental data of MW-assisted heating have not been comprehensively identified. Therefore, the feasibility of this technology for large-scale implementation is still subpar. Understanding the interaction between the feedstock and the microwave electromagnetic field, and the optimization of several operational and mechanical parameters are the two main keystones that would propel the industrialization of MW heating in the near future. This provides key insights leading to increased feasibility and more advanced application of MW heating.

From the British debate on the depletion of coal in 1865 to the First World Power Conference held in London in 1924, scientists, engineers, industrialists, and politicians produced new interpretations of the past, present, and future in terms of the mobilisation of energy resources. This thesis identifies an emerging ‘energy developmentalism’, which called for maximising energy use to maintain or improve a nation’s place in international competition. Energy developmentalism was not a marginal worldview confined to ‘energeticists’, but a coherent set of claims, measurements, and arguments that informed energy governance on an international scale. Rather than focusing on a single resource, energy developmentalism applied a unified schema to all energy sources, including those like solar and tidal energy that were still mostly theoretical. Drawing on sources from across Europe, while staying grounded in political changes in Britain and France, makes it possible to understand how a general formula for transforming raw materials with maximum efficiency was applied differently depending on specific political contexts. This period saw the articulation of problems like the depletion of resources, the difference between renewable and nonrenewable energy, the intermittency of renewables, the overreliance on a single source of energy, and the centrality of energy to modern economies – problems that are often associated with later periods. Scientific measurements of efficiency, horsepower, and kilowatts became operators in political debates centred on questions of national standing and progress. Even as oil became increasingly important in the world economy, the delegates at the First World Power Conference transformed a vision of a renewable energy future into one of a general expansion of energy consumption as the basis of progress. In so doing, they downplayed the continued importance of fossil fuels and equated ‘conservation’ with the fullest possible use of all energy sources, renewable or not.

ON 16 NOVEMBER 2000, the final report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was launched in London, in the presence of South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela. This represented a remarkable milestone in the history of dam policy and politics. During its two-year existence, WCD had conducted the most extensive review of research and evidence regarding the planning, impacts, and management of large dams. It had engaged with numerous stakeholders around the globe. It also made comprehensive recommendations about how to improve dam planning and management.

Using 40-year experiment data from a mono-modal rainfall area of northern Togo, we analyzed soil fertility dynamics when 2 and 3-year fallows were alternated with 3-year rotation of groundnut, cotton and sorghum. The control treatment consisted to continuous cultivate the soil in a rotation of groundnut/cotton/sorghum without fallow periods. For each rotation, two fertilisation rates were applied: no fertilisation and mineral fertiliser application during the cropping and/or the fallow periods. Yields of unfertilised crops, which averaged 1 t ha-1 during the first years of cultivation, were often nil in the long-term. In the long-term, yields of fertilised cotton and sorghum decreased by 32 and 50 %, respectively compared to the average of 2.4 and 1.6 t ha-1 obtained during the first decade of cultivation. The long-term decline in crop productivity was mitigated when fallow periods were alternated with cropping periods, and consequently there was partial compensation in terms of production for the unproductive fallowed plots. Long-term yields of fertilised cotton and sorghum in the periodically fallowed plots were 40 and 50 % higher than those in continuously cropped plots, respectively; they were 90 and 60 % higher than those in continuously cropped plots without fertilisation. Like for crop productivity, soil C, N and exchangeable Ca and Mg decreased less in periodically fallowed plots than in continuously cropped plots. The limited soil C decline when fallows were alternated with crops appears to be the consequence of no-tillage period rather than the effect of the highest C inputs to the soil.

Responses to recent climatic changes in the sediment of subarctic Lake Saanajärvi in northwestern Finnish Lapland are studied by comparison of various biological and sedimentological proxies with the 200-year long climate record, specifically reconstructed for the site using a data-set of European-wide meteorological data. The multi-proxy evidence of simultaneously changing diatom, Cladocera, and chrysophyte assemblages along with the increased rates of organic matter accumulation and pigment concentrations suggest that the lake has undergone a distinct typological change starting from the turn of the 20th century. This change, indicating an increase in lake productivity, parallels a pronounced rise in the meteorologically reconstructed mean annual and summer temperatures in the region between ca. 1850 and 1930's. We postulate that, during the Little Ice Age, the lake was not, or was only weakly, thermally stratified during summer, whereas the subsequent increase in air and hence epilimnetic water temperatures resulted in the development of the present summer stratification. The increased thermal stability of the lake created more suitable conditions for the growth of phyto- and zooplankton and changed the overall primary production from benthos to plankton. Mineral magnetic and carbonaceous particle records suggest long-distance pollution, particularly since the 1920's, yet the observed changes in lake biota and productivity can hardly be explained by this very minor background pollution; the 20th century species configurations are typical of neutral waters and do not indicate any response to pollution.

Searching suitable panchromatic QD sensitizers for expanding the light-harvesting range, accelerating charge separation, and retarding charge recombination is an effective way to improve power conversion efficiency (PCE) of quantum-dot-sensitized solar cells (QDSCs). One possible way to obtain a wide absorption range is to use the exciplex state of a type-II core/shell-structured QDs. In addition, this system could also provide a fast charge separation and low charge-recombination rate. Herein, we report on using a CdTe/CdSe type-II core/shell QD sensitizer with an absorption range extending into the infrared region because of its exciplex state, which is covalently linked to TiO2 mesoporous electrodes by dropping a bifunctional linker molecule mercaptopropionic acid (MPA)-capped QD aqueous solution onto the film electrode. High loading and a uniform distribution of QD sensitizer throughout the film electrode thickness have been confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) elemental mapping. The accelerated electron injection and retarded charge-recombination pathway in the built CdTe/CdSe QD cells in comparison with reference CdSe QD-based cells have been confirmed by impedance spectroscopy, fluorescence decay, and intensity-modulated photocurrent/photovoltage spectroscopy (IMPS/IMVS) analysis. With the combination of the high QD loading and intrinsically superior optoelectronic properties of type-II core/shell QD (wide absorption range, fast charge separation, and slow charge recombination), the resulting CdTe/CdSe QD-based regenerative sandwich solar cells exhibit a record PCE of 6.76% (J(sc) = 19.59 mA cm(-2), V(oc) = 0.606 V, and FF = 0.569) with a mask around the active film under a full 1 sun illumination (simulated AM 1.5), which is the highest reported to date for liquid-junction QDSCs.