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Young people as researchers and change-makers in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK : Report from a study funded by the Nuffield Foundation
No full textThe research offers evidence from young people about the importance of local neighbourhoods in their lives, what supports and what challenges them to flourish and what needs to change to
enable them to live meaningful lives. It offers new and practical insights about how young people can be included as co-researchers and change-makers in research and policymaking
about their lives in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in England. It sets out a methodology and methods for researching with young people, bringing their voices into dialogue with decision-makers to ensure that young people’s experiences and perspectives are considered in national and regional policymaking
Fusion of 12C+28Si at deep sub-barrier energies
Get PDFThe sub-barrier fusion hindrance phenomenon is systematically observed in heavy-ion systems, but its evidence for light-mass cases of astrophysical interest, like C+C, C+O and O+O, is controversial. Their low-energy behaviour may be clarified by studying slightly heavier systems, so to extrapolate their trend to the lighter cases. In this work, fusion of 12C + 28Si has been measured down to deep sub-barrier energies, using 28Si beams from the XTU Tandem accelerator of LNL on thin 12C targets. Two different set-ups were employed: 1) the fusion-evaporation residues were identified by a detector telescope following an electrostatic beam separator, and 2) coincidences between the γ -ray array AGATA and segmented silicon detectors DSSD were performed, where the evaporated light charged particles were identified by pulse shape analysis. Fusion cross sections have been obtained in the wide range σ ≈ 150 mb – 42 nb. Coupled-channel (CC) calculations using a Woods-Saxon potential reproduce the data above ≃ 0.1 mb. Below that, hindrance shows up and the CC results overestimate the cross sections which get close to the one-dimensional potential tunnelling limit. This suggests that the coupling strengths gradually vanish, as predicted by the adiabatic model. The hindrance threshold follows a recently updated phenomenological systematics
Applying NovaGenesis: A service-oriented, self-organizing, and programmable IoT architecture for LoRa and Wi-Fi-based environmental monitoring
Get PDFThis work integrates NovaGenesis (NG), a clean-slate IoT architecture, with LoRa technology within low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN), extending previous efforts on NG connectivity with Wi-Fi. The research aims to update the embedded version of NG and develop devices for seamless LoRa and Wi-Fi IoT operation. It evaluates NG’s performance on LoRa and Wi-Fi, focusing on throughput, delay, and packet loss. Despite LPWAN limitations, the results show that the NG deployment is feasible, validating its self-organizing IoT life cycle to maintain service continuity between an ESP-32 and a data client. Performance meets the needs of IoT applications in agribusiness, logistics, and smart monitoring. In addition, a 24-hour environmental monitoring experiment was conducted in Santa Rita do Sapucaí(SRS), Minas Gerais, Brazil, where a commercial weather station was modified to integrate NG, allowing accurate collection of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind conditions, solar radiation and UV index. The results met expected diurnal patterns in SRS, proving the reliability and precision of the sensors and communication infrastructure. This solution overcomes common IETF IoT stack limitations in devices naming, information provenance, entities identification, programmability via digital twins, programmability, services and devices self-organization, and trust formation, offering a robust platform for varied IoT scenarios in LPWAN environments. These are the key benefits of applying NovaGenesis for LoRa and Wi-Fi-based environmental monitoring
Expanding the mutagenic code: Characterising the Ethylnitrosourea (ENU) mutational spectrum in Arabidopsis and barley
No full textClear, Compelling Arguments: Rethinking the Foundations of Frontier AI Safety Cases
Get PDFThis paper contributes to the nascent debate around safety cases for frontier AI sys- tems. Safety cases are structured, defensible arguments that a system is acceptably safe to deploy in a given context. Historically, they have been used in safety-critical industries, such as aerospace, nuclear or automotive. As a result, safety cases for frontier AI have risen in prominence, both in the safety policies of leading frontier developers and in international research agendas proposed by leaders in generative AI, such as the Singapore Consensus on Global AI Safety Research Priorities and the International AI Safety Report. This paper appraises this work. We note that research conducted within the alignment community which draws explicitly on lessons from the assurance community has significant limitations. We therefore aim to rethink existing approaches to alignment safety cases. We offer lessons from existing methodologies within safety assurance and outline the limitations involved in the alignment community’s current approach. Building on this foundation, we present a case study for a safety case focused on Deceptive Alignment and CBRN capabilities, drawing on existing, theoretical safety case “sketches” created by the alignment safety case community. Overall, we contribute holistic insights from the field of safety assurance via rigorous theory and methodologies that have been applied in safety-critical contexts. We do so in order to create a better foundational framework for robust, defensible and useful safety case methodologies which can help to assure the safety of frontier AI systems
Mad honey mimicking acute coronary syndrome
Get PDFA 56-year-old Nepalese man presented to the hospital with syncope, bradycardia, and hypotension. Throughout his admission, he was hemodynamically unstable, with associated electrocardiographic changes and fluctuations in consciousness. This followed the unintentional overdose of the traditional medicine “mad honey” containing grayanotoxins with hallucinogenic properties. Following treatment with an anticholinergic infusion, he made a full recovery within 48 hours. This case underlines the importance of considering atypical causes for presentations such as bradycardia and hypotension, especially in patients from cultures where mad honey usage is common, and highlights the potential adverse events of this traditional medicine to be life-threatening
Efficacy of influenza vaccines and its relationship with immunological surrogate endpoints: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trial
Get PDFBackground Vaccine efficacy may vary due to influenza strain types, their similarity, and vaccine type. The relationship between immunological surrogate endpoints and vaccine efficacy remains unclear, requiring further investigation to optimize vaccination strategies. Objective This systematic review aims to address two key issues. First, to evaluate the vaccine efficacy stratified by vaccine types and virus strains. Second, to explore the quantitative relationship between immunological surrogate endpoints and vaccine efficacy. Data sources We searched PubMed, Embase, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases. Study eligibility criteria, patients, and interventions We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published on 16 July 2024, that evaluated the efficacy of influenza vaccines against laboratory-confirmed influenza. Phase I/II clinical trials, abstracts, reviews, unregistered trials, duplicate studies, and studies lacking original data or efficacy results were excluded. Methods This systematic review evaluates influenza vaccine efficacy and immunogenicity, including RCTs with outcomes like geometric mean titre (GMT), seroprotection, and seroconversion rates. Data were extracted from multiple databases and assessed using Cochrane and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) frameworks. Results Twenty-six RCTs (104 931 participants) were included. Pooled vaccine efficacy against laboratory-confirmed influenza was 48.48% (95% CI, 41.9–54.29), with significant heterogeneity (I2 = 70.1%; p < 0.0001). Inactivated influenza vaccines had the highest vaccine efficacy (54.70%). Among different strains, the vaccine efficacy against H1N1 was the highest, reaching 59.38% (95% CI, 24.60–78.12). We found a significant nonlinear relationship between standardized mean difference (SMD) in hemagglutination antibody titre (HAI) concentration and vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infections, but with low explanatory power, and seroconversion rates, seroprotection rates, and fold increase in GMT were strongly associated with viral attack rates with Medium explanatory power (p < 0.05 for all), with explanatory values of 0.5038, 0.464, and 0.286, respectively. Discussion This systematic review highlights that influenza vaccines provide moderate protection, whereas the inactivated influenza vaccine demonstrates higher efficacy. Seroconversion, seroprotection rates, and fold increase in GMT offer limited but valuable insights into vaccine performance. Annual vaccination is crucial for controlling both similar and dissimilar influenza strains
Equality, diversity and inclusion strategies of NIHR biomedical research centres and clinical research facilities across England: a qualitative content analysis
Get PDFObjectives The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has 20 Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) and 28 Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs) that work with NHS organisations and universities to translate cutting-edge research into new interventions. As mandated by NIHR, all BRCs/CRFs have an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy which details how they will implement EDI through their practices, research and organisational systems. This UK-based study aimed to conduct a pilot qualitative analysis of EDI strategies to compare all 20 NIHR BRCs/CRFs, identify common priorities and improve inclusion across research infrastructures. The analysis was presented at the first in-person seminar for NIHR EDI professionals (Birmingham, October 2024).
Design Qualitative content analysis of publicly available EDI strategy documents.
Setting 48 research infrastructures (20 BRCs and 28 CRFs).
Methods EDI strategies were collated into NVivo and Microsoft Excel where inductive coding and content analysis was executed for objectives, action plans and success measures. Both quantitative and qualitative content analyses were conducted to analyse the prevalence of categories and similarities or differences between them. Logic models were developed to map the process of implementing EDI for each main category generated.
Results The most common main category across objectives was ‘Cultural change in workplaces’ for BRCs and ‘Leadership, governance and policy’ for CRFs. For action plans, codes for ‘Collaborations and Networks’ and ‘Research development and delivery’ were most prevalent for BRCs—for CRFs, it was ‘Workforce culture change’ and ‘Research development and delivery’. Success measures for both BRCs and CRFs most often related to ‘Summary reports, feedback, audits and monitoring’. Differences between BRCs and CRFs reflected their organisational roles and strategic maturity, with BRCs tending to have more comprehensive, measurable strategies.
Conclusions This study provides the first systematic analysis of EDI strategies across all NIHR BRCs and CRFs, offering a comprehensive mapping of how EDI priorities are articulated and operationalised across objectives, action plans and success measures. While both infrastructures align with NIHR’s inclusion goals, BRCs generally showed more strategic maturity than CRFs. As the analysis was based solely on publicly available strategy documents, it could not determine the extent to which any strategy had been implemented in practice. Future research is needed to examine implementation and impact. The contribution of this work lies in demonstrating systematically and for the first time the ways in which EDI commitments are framed across NIHR infrastructures and their varying levels of depth and maturity. Our findings support the development of more measurable EDI frameworks and highlight opportunities to strengthen inclusion across NIHR-funded research infrastructures
The politics of “political violence”: terrorism, violence and the political
Get PDFThe relationship between “terrorism” and “politics” is ambiguous and contested. While “terrorism” is almost universally defined as “political” violence, the “terrorism” label is also generating a de-politicisation of the “terrorists” by silencing the underlying causes of their violence and portraying the “terrorists” as “madmen”. As such, “terrorism” seems to both confirm and contest the “political” nature of violence. In this article, I explore how “terrorism” and “politics” co-constitute each other in the act of describing violence. Using the case of colonial Indochina and the labelling of the anti-colonial resistance movement as “terrorist”, I trace the ways in which “terrorism” forges the politically ab/normal. Rather than being purely excluded from politics, the “terrorists” are associated with three categories of abnormal politics: a “savage” form of politics, where violence takes the place of politics itself; a self-interested and opportunistic form of “politics”; and a “diseased” politics that has gone too far beyond the rational. To support these claims, I engage in an in-depth analysis of primary archives from the period. I follow recent interventions showing the long colonial genealogy of “terrorism” by focusing on an under-studied colonial context in order to reveal how “terrorism” shapes the space of the political
A qualitative study to inform the development of a new quality of life measure for surgery for prolapse, incontinence and mesh complications
Get PDFBackground: The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence in the United Kingdom have recommended the development of a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) specific to surgery for pelvic organ prolapse (POP), stress urinary incontinence (SUI), and complications of pelvic mesh surgery (MC).Aims: To identify all aspects of quality of life (QoL) that may be impacted by surgery for POP, SUI and MC, to inform the development of a new PROM.Method: Thirty-one patients who had undergone surgery for POP, SUI and MC (ranging from 5 years ago) were purposively recruited from various National Health Service (NHS) Trusts, as well as community support groups for the conditions. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken over the phone or via video-conferencing software, and a framework approach was employed to analyse the data. A Patient and Public Involvement group, comprising seven women who had undergone surgery for POP, SUI and/or MC, were consulted on various aspects of the study.Findings: We identified nine themes for potential inclusion in the PROM. The themes are short-term impacts of surgery; long-term impacts on pre-surgery symptoms; pain and/or discomfort; impact on daily activities; social and leisure activities; emotional wellbeing; sexual activity; personal relationships; and work/education. While some participants showed improvements in these areas following surgery, it was also evident that for some, issues persisted, worsened, or developed post-surgery. Those in the sample who had previous surgery involving mesh reported worse QoL outcomes overall.Conclusion: The impact of surgery for POP, SUI and MC on QoL is multidimensional and complex. It is recommended that a future PROM encompasses the potential for improvement of symptoms, the failure of surgery to improve symptoms, the development of new symptoms after surgery, and the consequential positive and negative impacts of surgery on activity, roles, psychological well-being and ultimately QoL, in both the short and long term
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