RSS 1.0Welcome to ChesterRep - the University of Chester's Online Research Repository
ChesterRep is the University of Chester's institutional repository and an online platform designed to collate, store, and aid discoverability of the University’s research.
All University of Chester staff are expected to use the Current Research Information System, Symplectic Elements, to submit material to ChesterRep. Guidance on how to deposit and manage publications using Elements can be found here. You can also discover more about our editorial and open access policies here. Please note that you must be a member of the University to view these pages.
If you are a student at the University of Chester and want to submit work to ChesterRep, please contact researchsupport.lis@chester.ac.uk.
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Sustainable manufacturing of a Conformal Load-bearing Antenna Structure (CLAS) using advanced printing technologies and fibre-reinforced composites for aerospace applicationsConformal load-bearing antenna structures (CLAS) offer significant advantages in aerospace by reducing drag and weight through highly integrated designs. However, challenges remain in manufacturing, as traditional PCB methods create discontinuous arrays, while directly printed antennas on flexible substrates often lack mechanical strength. Additionally, neither approach integrates well with fibre-reinforced composites, which are widely used in modern aircraft. To address this, the next generation of CLAS must employ continuous surface substrates to maintain aerodynamic profiles and embed antenna systems within composite structures. This research introduces an innovative CLAS manufacturing method that integrates inkjet-printed silver nanoparticle antennas with composite fabrication. The antenna is printed onto Kapton film, which is then co-cured with woven glass fibre composites to ensure mechanical robustness and compatibility with aerospace materials. Flat and 100mm curvature samples were fabricated to investigate electromagnetic performance, with curvature effects analysed. Results confirm that the proposed method achieves both reliability and sustainability, producing smoothly curved CLAS with embedded antenna elements. However, frequency shifts and impedance mismatches were observed, attributed to discrepancies in dielectric constants and substrate volume variations. The conformality study revealed that curvature lowers resonant frequencies due to extended effective electric fields. This research establishes a promising CLAS fabrication approach, integrating sustainable printing with composites. The findings provide a benchmark for future conformal antenna studies and support industry-level advancements in high-integration aerospace antenna systems.
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Artmaking in the outdoor environment: Negotiating experiential and material complexitiesThis practice-based research project uses a new materialist approach to investigate the relationship between the geological, biological and meteorological activities of the outdoor world and the dynamics of a creative arts practice. It asks the question how the relationship between the self and the outdoor environment might manifest in a creative arts practice in the British Peak District. The project has produced a new approach to arts practice based on the development of a mobile artmaking kit made from string, fabric, paper and wood, and in response to the topography and the wind and rain of Bakestonedale Moor. This mobile working kit (MWK) has been used to make site-specific drawings and temporary installations and provide artefacts for indoor exhibition displays. The research understands outdoor environments as an intra-active process (Barad, 2003) and the activity of its material components as a performance. The arts practice produces meaning for the artist and audiences due to the aesthetic changes that MWK installations bring to the environment. Such meaning-making processes are based on an individual’s subjective engagement with the artwork (Dewey, 1994). The emerging practice operates as an epistemic practice that creates and captures knowledge in the experience of the particularity of artmaking events, and such knowledge also accumulates in ‘techniques’ (Spatz, 2015) regarding the use of the MWK. The development of the arts practice has revealed a range of dynamic relationalities between artmaking materials, the outdoor environment and the artist. Such relationalities are exemplified by the connection between emerging material properties in moments of creative experimentation and their implementation in the design and outdoor use of the MWK modules. My engagement with many outdoor artmaking situations prompted the formulation of a number of experiential schemas as a way of describing the experience of the outdoor world, for example the relationality of distance versus proximity. It has also led me to understand the outdoor environment and its plants, rocks, valleys, hills and animals as a material complexity that is similar to the material complexity within artmaking. Considering both, the outdoor processes and actions of artmaking, as a performance, led to the conclusion that this arts practice operates as a form of non-verbal, gestural transaction between the self and the other.
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How can UK public health initiatives support each other to improve the maintenance of physical activity? Evidence from a cross-sectional survey of runners who move from Couch-to-5k to parkrunPhysical activity improves physical and mental well-being and reduces mortality risk. However, only a quarter of adults globally meet recommended physical activity levels for health. Two common initiatives in the UK are Couch-to-5k (an app-assisted 9-week walk/run programme) and parkrun (a free, weekly, timed 5-km walk/run). It is not known how these initiatives are linked, how Couch-to-5k parkrunners compare to parkrunners, and the extent to which this influences their parkrun performance. The aims were to compare the characteristics and motives and to compare physical activity levels, parkrun performance and the impact of parkrun between Couch-to-5k parkrunners and parkrunners. Three thousand two hundred and ninety six Couch-to-5k parkrunners were compared to 55,923 parkrunners to explore age, sex, ethnicity, employment status, neighbourhood deprivation, motives, physical activity levels, parkrun performance and the impact of parkrun. Couch-to-5k parkrunners were slightly older, more likely to be female and work part-time, but similar in ethnicity, and neighbourhood deprivation compared with other parkrunners. Couch-to-5k parkrunners had different motives for participation and reported high levels of physical activity at registration, which remained to the point of survey completion. This group had slower parkrun times but, when registered for a year, completed a similar number of runs (11) per year. Larger proportions of Couch-to-5k parkrunners perceived positive impacts compared with other parkrunners and 65% of Couch-to-5k parkrunners reported improvements to their lifestyle. parkrun appears to be an effective pathway for those on the Couch-to-5k programme, and the promising positive association between the two initiatives may be effective in assisting previously inactive participants to take part in weekly physical activity.
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What are the roots of the nation’s poor health and widening health inequalities? Rethinking economic growth for a fairer and healthier futureHealth inequalities are differences in health between groups in society. Despite them being preventable they persist on a grand scale. At the beginning of 2024, the Institute of Health Equity revealed in their report titled: Health Inequalities, Lives Cut Short, that health inequalities caused 1 million early deaths in England over the past decade. While the number of studies on the prevalence of health inequalities in the UK has burgeoned, limited emphasis has been given to exploring the factors contributing to these (widening) health inequalities. In this commentary article I will describe how the Government's relentless pursuit of economic growth and their failure to implement the necessary regulatory policies to mitigate against the insecurity and health effects neoliberal free market capitalism (referred to as capitalism herein) causes in pursuit of innovation, productivity and growth (economic dynamism) is one key driver underpinning this social injustice. I contend that if the priority really is to tackle health inequalities and ensure health for all then there is an imperative need to move beyond regulation alone to mitigate the worst effects of capitalist production; the goal of the economy has to change to fully restore the balance between economic growth and public health.
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A comparison of methods to predict ovulation day, menstrual cycle characteristics and variability in professional female soccer playersThis study aimed to compare three methods of predicting ovulation day: (1) a positive urinary luteinising hormone test (LH), (2) a sustained rise in salivary progesterone above critical difference (SP), and (3) a countback regression equation (CB), to determine variability in the menstrual cycle (MC) lengths and reproductive hormone concentrations of professional female soccer players. Eight players provided daily morning saliva samples for three consecutive cycles. Samples were analysed for oestradiol and progesterone concentrations. Each MC was separated into the follicular (FP) and luteal (LP) phases relative to the day of ovulation, using the three different methods. MC length ranged from 24 to 32 days (28.3 ± 2.4 days); intra‐assay coefficient of variation (7.5%) exceeded inter‐assay coefficient of variation (4.6%). Ovulation estimated using SP (15.4 ± 3.0 days) occurred later than LH (13.3 ± 2.0 days) (P = 0.017). The CB method (14.1 ± 1.8 days) did not differ from SP (P = 0.102) or LH (P = 0.262). Oestradiol and progesterone levels varied significantly between sub‐phases (P < 0.001). Inter‐variability surpassed intra‐variability for both hormones. Differences in methods for predicting ovulation indicate the need for standardised protocols. Individual variation in MC length and hormone concentrations challenges the narrative for group‐level MC recommendations, emphasising the need for individualised hormone monitoring across multiple cycles.