Microwave frequency sensor for detection of biological cells in microfluidic channels

We present details of an apparatus for capacitive detection of biomaterials in microfluidic channels operating at microwave frequencies where dielectric effects due to interfacial polarization are minimal. A circuit model is presented, which can be used to adapt this detection system for use in other microfluidic applications and to identify ones where it would not be suitable. The detection system is based on a microwave coupled transmission line resonator integrated into an interferometer. At 1.5 GHz the system is capable of detecting changes in capacitance of 650 zF with a 50 Hz bandwidth. This system is well suited to the detection of biomaterials in a variety of suspending fluids, including phosphate-buffered saline. Applications involving both model particles (polystyrene microspheres) and living cells—baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and Chinese hamster ovary cells—are presented.     

Credits, Qualifications and the Fluttering Standard

The primary function of credit is to help assess the equivalence of learning and to facilitate student transfer within and between institutions. Recently, attention has focused on the role credit may have in defining the academic standards of qualifications. Some recently proposed qualifications frameworks are one-dimensional in that they have levels as the only measurable parameter. Such 'frameworks' are not true frameworks because there is no basis for differentiating the qualifications at each level. Other frameworks are two-dimensional, using credits and levels as the two parameters. Where the award of credit for a module reflects the satisfactory completion of all the designated learning outcomes at a specified level, there is a clear basis for relating credit to academic standards. In this situation, plotting the credit requirements for qualifications onto a framework that comprises levels and credits makes an important contribution towards understanding the relative standards of the qualifications.     

Fabricated childhoods: uncanny encounters with the more-than-human

ABSTRACT

This article is based on uncanny encounters with Julia deVille's exhibit, Phantasmagoria. Inspired by Deleuzian-informed research practices, the author experiments with provoking practices to defy dominant developmental notions of childhood. This article reworks a humanist ontology by bringing together the discursive, the material, the human, and the more-than-human through the interweaving of provocations and encounters. Enacting an experimental and performative methodology, the reader's movement through the article mimics the journey through an exhibition and the storm of thought and feeling that art can provoke. These provocations set into motion meanings about childhood that sit outside of developmentalism and are rarely entertained in the field of early childhood education.