2,551 research outputs found
Professor Dr. Peter Munro (8. Januar 1930 – 2. Januar 2009), 1970-1981 Direktor am Kestner-Museum, Hannover. Ein Nachruf
No full textBiographie des Ägyptologen Peter Munro
The PKC, HOG and Ca2+ signalling pathways co-ordinately regulate chitin synthesis in Candida albicans
No full textOpen Access via PMC2649417Peer reviewe
In the eye of the storm: The implications of the Munro Child Protection Review for the future of probation
No full textOn their election the new coalition government appeared to be keen to review and revise child protection policy following the fallout from the Baby Peter case and the consequent crisis in confidence in social work. This article re-examines the underlying motives for this review and then investigates what the implications of the Munro review are for the future of public protection and the probation service generally
Letter from John Munro
No full textLetter form John Munro ( Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism) to Mr> john Birzgalis (President of the Edmonton Latvian Society) with a notice of an award of grant funding for $4,100.00 for the East Coast Latvian Song Festival.1.0 Imanta, 1.1.1 History of Imanta In Albert
Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThe emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in December 2019 led to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the biggest global health crisis of a generation. The most effective means of reducing morbidity and mortality from infection is to prevent transmission of the virus. There are a variety of methods which can prevent or reduce the risk of transmission, each with specific strengths and limitations.This thesis examines a number of different non-pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions which can be deployed to prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Each chapter represents a different part of my research conducted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic across these themes. This includes a literature review which was conducted in real time during the early stages of the pandemic to inform clinicians, policy makers and the public on the evidence surrounding COVID-19 in children, performed with the support of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. This revealed the important and counter-intuitive finding that children played a lesser role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 than had been anticipated on the basis of other respiratory viruses.This work informed my role on the National Institute for Health Research working group on the Transmission of COVID-19 in Schools (ToCS). The ToCS working group developed a protocol for studying the silent transmission of COVID-19 in these settings, which could serve as an “off the shelf” option for deploying a study in the event of a future pandemic.Given the emergency in protecting healthcare workers and the initial shortage of effective personal protective equipment, the Personal Respirator Southampton (PeRSo) was developed and deployed at the University Hospital Southampton. Evaluation of its deployment found it to be the preferred personal protective equipment by healthcare workers due to it feeling safer, being more comfortable and more easy to use than standard airborne precautions.Whilst non-pharmaceutical interventions are most readily deployed in the event of a disease outbreak, they often come with large social and economic costs. Pharmaceutical interventions, and vaccines in particular are the definitive management of large infectious disease outbreaks. Highly effective vaccines were produced for COVID-19, but due to waning immunity and theemergence of variants of concern with immune escape, booster vaccinations were required. The COV-BOOST randomised controlled trial of booster vaccines for COVID-19 found that several heterologous booster vaccines were safe and immunogenic, and that fourth doses were equally safe and well tolerated.Given the emergence of variants of concern and the prospect of future pandemics occurring due to Sarbecoviruses, the development of a vaccine which can cover across a broad range of the Sarbecovirus family would provide more robust protection against SARS-CoV-2 as well as providing protection against future outbreaks. The phase 1, first in human study of pEVAC-PS which contains digitally synthesised antigens to create broad immunity against Sarbecoviruses, was found to be safe and well tolerated at the first three doses trialled. Further study will be needed to determine safety at the highest dose, and to determine immunogenicity.These findings provide important lessons for future pandemics. Rapid evidence gathering and synthesis programmes specific to children should be ready to be deployed. Networks and working groups to coordinate emergency research necessary for children and research with educational environments should be established. Healthcare systems should consider investing in personal respirators for staff, as they can provide stocks which are robust to demand shock. They also provide the highest level of protection, best user experience and are most environmentally and economically efficient. Future vaccine development programmes for disease outbreaks should plan for the needs for booster doses at the outset, and protocols which are ready to be deployed in an emergency should be prepared. Finally, vaccine development needs to be proactive in determining the highest risk groups of pathogens, such as Sarbecoviruses, and trialling vaccines which stimulate more broad protection
What do serious case reviews achieve?
No full textAlthough there had been some earlier public inquiries, the inquiry into the death of 7 year old Maria Colwell in 1973[1] was a critical episode in the history of child protection in the UK. It was this inquiry that led to the formalisation of inter-agency child protection procedures, the establishment of Area Child Protection Committees, and the creation of a child protection register. It also sparked off a long line of public inquiries into serious and fatal maltreatment, more recently superseded by statutory Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) carried out by Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs). The public outcries over the deaths of Victoria Climbié and Peter Connelly highlighted the fact that, in spite of all the time and resource spent on these reviews, the problems of severe child abuse have not gone away. This begs the question of whether we have truly learnt anything from the reviews and whether anything has changed as a result
Multiscale modelling of bacterial and viral sanitisation: A combined molecular dynamics and nuclear magnetic resonance study
No full textThe cell envelope is a pathogen’s first defence against potentially hazardous materials in the immediate environment. Because of this, pathogens evolved to control which chemicals are allowed in and out of the cell selectively. New cell envelope adaptations mean our current sanitisation methods are becoming less effective daily. Lipid compositions, protein mutations, and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria are but a few features that pathogens have developed to help them resist current antimicrobials. Due to the importance of the cell envelope in the survivability of a pathogen, it has become a widespread target of sanitisers, specifically the lipid bilayer or essential proteins. A detailed understanding of these areas is critical if antimicrobial resistance one day renders all of our current methods ineffective. If this were to happen, we must understand why they worked initially, as this will inform our search for the adaptations responsible for resistance. By identifying the areas where these adaptations are found, scientists can engineer new, tailored antimicrobials. These tailored antimicrobials could exploit the properties of the adapted bilayer or new mutations in membrane proteins to induce deformation and disable or destroy them. In this thesis, Chapters 4 and 5 explored the effect of short-chained alcohols and chlorhexidine (CHX) on phospholipid (PL) membranes with and without LPS using a multidisciplinary approach. I found that the application of sanitising alcohols at concentrations as low as 20% had a significant deforming effect on the cell membrane (SaCM) of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), as well as the inner (EcIM) and outer (EcOM) membrane of Escherichia coli (E. coli). Furthermore, the application of short-chain alcohols created disruptions in the headgroup region, which allowed CHX to bind more effectively with PL leaflets. In contrast, this same disruption led to budding in the PL leaflet of the EcOM. I validated the simulation data by performing equivalent nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. In this way, simulations added visual context to changes in the spectra obtained from NMR experiments. These experiments assessed whether the prevalent effects in the simulations were replicated in vitro beyond computationally accessible time scales. Said NMR experiments found that the CHX’s binding position and conformation in molecular dynamics (MD) were consistent with those in vitro. In conjunction, these works showed that although short-chained alcohols only underwent transient interactions with the headgroup-tail interface of membranes, this overall aggregation was essential in the initial phases of membrane sanitisation. Furthermore, this allowed CHX to adopt a "c-shape" binding conformation with its termini embedded in the same interface region. II Multiscale modelling of bacterial and viral sanitisation In chapters 6 and 7, the effect of sanitising agents on proteins and the intricacies of protein protein interaction during SARS-CoV-2 host infection were explored in all-atom (AA) and coarse grain (CG) resolution, respectively. By applying a CG resolution to large cross-linking systems, I was able to simulate these systems for very long timescales. On the other hand, the AA system was simulated for far less time because this provided a significantly greater resolution, enabling me to explore specific interactions in further detail. The dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein were explored in a two-step approach: firstly, by detailing the impact of sanitising alcohols on the ectodomain (ECD) of the S protein in AA detail and secondly, by simulating cross-linking of different-sized S protein and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor clusters. Simulating this area in these separate approaches allowed for assessing structural and conformational stability. In chapter 6, it was found that, similarly to alcohol-membrane systems, despite the transience of interactions, the deformation process was less stochastic than it initially appeared. This hypothesis was first formed when assessing the trends in amino acids, which tended to see more interactions with alcohol in the surrounding solution. These amino acids tended to be large and hydrophobic with charged or polar regions, not dissimilar to the headgroup-tail interface of a membrane. The properties of amino acids that interacted more with short-chain alcohol suggested that similar to the membrane, short-chained alcohols were partitioned into hydrophilic-hydrophobic interface regions. These interactions resulted in an overall rigidifying of the trimer. Simulation of S-ACE2 cross-linking in Chapter 7 found that higher coordination were generally less stable but possible. The S trimer’s conformational restrictions were seen to restrict its ability to bind to multiple receptors. Tilting in the neck region and an observed rigid-body rotation in the receptor binding domain (RBD) meant that the protein was significantly less flexible and placed particular conformational requirements on how these proteins bind. Ultimately, this resulted in high-order binding being substantially less favourable and suggested that this would not occur in vitro due to the energetic penalties incurred by deviation from the low-order cross-linking conformation
Preface to the Special issue of Environmental Fluid Mechanics in Honour of Peter A. Davies
No full textThis special issue of Environmental Fluid Mechanics comprises a set of papers submitted in honour of Peter Davies who retired in 2020 as Professor of Fluid Dynamics at the University of Dundee (UoD), UK, after decades of service to the environmental fluid mechanics community and a founding associate editor of this journal. He spent practically all of his academic faculty career in the Department of Civil Engineering at UoD, where he established an internationally-leading research group in Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, with a focus on density-stratified flows, buoyancy-driven flows, rotating flows, ocean wastewater systems and remote sensing of coastal processes. During his 40 years at UoD, he served twice as Head of Department and contributed extensively to the research strategy and performance of the University
History Wars
No full textIn 1993, Manning Clark came under severe (posthumous) attack in the pages of Quadrant by none other than Peter Ryan, who had published five of the six volumes of Clark's epic A History of Australia. In applying what he called "an overdue axe to a tall poppy", Ryan lambasted the History as “an imposition on Australian credulity” and declared its author a fraud, both as a historian and a person. This unprecedented public assault by a publisher on his best-selling author was a sensation at the time and remains lodged in the public memory. In History Wars, Doug Munro forensically examines the right and wrongs of Ryan’s allegations, concluding that Clark was more sinned against than sinning and that Ryan repeatedly misrepresented the situation. More than just telling a story, Munro places the Ryan-Clark controversy within the context of Australia’s History Wars. This book is an illuminating saga of that ongoing contest.’ — James Curran, University of Sydney ‘The Ryan-Clark controversy … speaks to the place of Manning Clark in Australia’s national imagination. Had Ryan taken his axe to another historian, it’s unlikely that we would be still talking about it 30 years later. But Clark was the author and keeper of Australia’s national story, however imperfect his scholarship and however blinkered that story. Few, if any, historians in the Anglo-American world have occupied the space that Clark occupied by dint of will, force of personality, and felicity of pen.’ — Donald Wright, University of New Brunswic
- …
