The relationship between the systemic inflammatory response, tumour proliferative activity, T-lymphocytic and macrophage infiltration, microvessel density and survival in patients with primary operable breast cancer

The significance of the inter-relationship between tumour and host local/systemic inflammatory responses in primary operable invasive breast cancer is limited. The inter-relationship between the systemic inflammatory response (pre-operative white cell count, C-reactive protein and albumin concentrations), standard clinicopathological factors, tumour T-lymphocytic (CD4+ and CD8+) and macrophage (CD68+) infiltration, proliferative (Ki-67) index and microvessel density (CD34+) was examined using immunohistochemistry and slide-counting techniques, and their prognostic values were examined in 168 patients with potentially curative resection of early-stage invasive breast cancer. Increased tumour grade and proliferative activity were associated with greater tumour T-lymphocyte (P<0.05) and macrophage (P<0.05) infiltration and microvessel density (P<0.01). The median follow-up of survivors was 72 months. During this period, 31 patients died; 18 died of their cancer. On univariate analysis, increased lymph-node involvement (P<0.01), negative hormonal receptor (P<0.10), lower albumin concentrations (P<0.01), increased tumour proliferation (P<0.05), increased tumour microvessel density (P<0.05), the extent of locoregional control (P<0.0001) and limited systemic treatment (Pless than or equal to0.01) were associated with cancer-specific survival. On multivariate analysis of these significant covariates, albumin (HR 4.77, 95% CI 1.35–16.85, P=0.015), locoregional treatment (HR 3.64, 95% CI 1.04–12.72, P=0.043) and systemic treatment (HR 2.29, 95% CI 1.23–4.27, P=0.009) were significant independent predictors of cancer-specific survival. Among tumour-based inflammatory factors, only tumour microvessel density (P<0.05) was independently associated with poorer cancer-specific survival. The host inflammatory responses are closely associated with poor tumour differentiation, proliferation and malignant disease progression in breast cancer

Open a GLAM lab

Defining a GLAM Lab: A Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Lab is a place for experimenting with digital collections and data. It is where researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, educators and the interested public can collaborate with an engaged group of partners to create new collections, tools, and services that will help transform the future ways in which knowledge and culture are disseminated. The exchanges and experimentation in a Lab are open, iterative and shared widely. This book describes why and how to open a GLAM Lab and encourages participation in a movement that can transform organisations and the communities they partner with. Building a GLAM Lab: Building a GLAM Lab involves defining its core values to guide future work, fostering a culture that is open, transparent, generous, collaborative, creative, inclusive, bold, ethical, accessible and encourages a mindset of exploration. The Lab should be grounded in user-centred and participatory design processes and its staff should be able to clearly communicate what the Lab is about. It's important to think big but start small and establish quick wins to get up and running. GLAM Lab teams: There are recommendations for the qualities and skills to look for in Labs teams, how to go about finding allies within and outside the institution, and ideas on how to create a nurturing environment for teams to thrive in. Labs teams have no optimal size or composition, and its team members can come from all walks of life. Teams need a healthy culture to ensure a well-functioning Lab which might be augmented intermittently by fellows, interns or researchers-inresidence. For a Lab to have lasting impact it must be integrated into the parent organisation and have the support of staff at all levels. User communities: GLAM Labs will need to engage and connect with potential users and partners. This means rethinking these relationships to help establish clear and targeted messages for specific communities. In turn, this enables Labs to adjust their tools, services and collections to establish deeper partnerships based on co-creation, and open and equal dialogue. Rethinking collections and Data: The book discusses the digital collections which are an integral part of Labs. It provides insights on how to share the collections as data, and how to identify, assess, describe, access, and reuse the collections. In addition, there is information about messy and curated data, digitisation, metadata, rights and preservation. Transformation: Experimentation is the critical core of the Lab's process. Insights about how to transform tools into operational services are demonstrated. It shows that experimentation can prepare the organisational culture and services for transformation. There is an examination of funding and the advantages and disadvantages of various models through discussion of the different mechanisms and options that an organisation can apply to Lab set-ups. Funding and Sustainability: We share insights on how to plan for a Lab's sustainability as well as a step-by-step guide for when an organisation is retiring or decommissioning a Lab. Labs have a pivotal role in the transformation of GLAMs and the book highlights the critical importance of Labs in changing the future of digital cultural heritage.Funded by UCL Qatar (Mmember of Qatar Foundation) and Qatar University Library. There has also been support from the British Library Labs, and the Library of Congress Labs

Engaging Undergraduates in Science Research: Not Just About Faculty Willingness.

Despite the many benefits of involving undergraduates in research and the growing number of undergraduate research programs, few scholars have investigated the factors that affect faculty members' decisions to involve undergraduates in their research projects. We investigated the individual factors and institutional contexts that predict faculty members' likelihood of engaging undergraduates in their research project(s). Using data from the Higher Education Research Institute's 2007-2008 Faculty Survey, we employ hierarchical generalized linear modeling to analyze data from 4,832 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty across 194 institutions to examine how organizational citizenship behavior theory and social exchange theory relate to mentoring students in research. Key findings show that faculty who work in the life sciences and those who receive government funding for their research are more likely to involve undergraduates in their research project(s). In addition, faculty at liberal arts or historically Black colleges are significantly more likely to involve undergraduate students in research. Implications for advancing undergraduate research opportunities are discussed

Atmospheric electricity influencing biogeochemical processes in soils and sediments

The Earth’s subsurface represents a complex electrochemical environment that contains many electro-active chemical compounds that are relevant for a wide array of biologically driven ecosystem processes. Concentrations of many of these electro-active compounds within Earth’s subsurface environments fluctuate during the day and over seasons. This has been observed for surface waters, sediments and continental soils. This variability can affect particularly small, relatively immobile organisms living in these environments. While various drivers have been identified, a comprehensive understanding of the causes and consequences of spatio-temporal variability in subsurface electrochemistry is still lacking. Here we propose that variations in atmospheric electricity (AE) can influence the electrochemical environments of soils, water bodies and their sediments, with implications that are likely relevant for a wide range of organisms and ecosystem processes. We tested this hypothesis in field and laboratory case studies. Based on measurements of subsurface redox conditions in soils and sediment, we found evidence for both local and global variation in AE with corresponding patterns in subsurface redox conditions. In the laboratory, bacterial respiratory responses, electron transport activity and H2S production were observed to be causally linked to changes in atmospheric cation concentrations. We argue that such patterns are part of an overlooked phenomenon. This recognition widens our conceptual understanding of chemical and biological processes in the Earth’s subsurface and their interactions with the atmosphere and the physical environment

Interventions to reduce the time to diagnosis of brain tumours

BACKGROUND: Brain tumours are recognised as one of the most difficult cancers to diagnose because presenting symptoms, such as headache, cognitive symptoms, and seizures, may be more commonly attributable to other, more benign conditions. Interventions to reduce the time to diagnosis of brain tumours include national awareness initiatives, expedited pathways, and protocols to diagnose brain tumours, based on a person's presenting symptoms and signs; and interventions to reduce waiting times for brain imaging pathways. If such interventions reduce the time to diagnosis, it may make it less likely that people experience clinical deterioration, and different treatment options may be available. OBJECTIVES: To systematically evaluate evidence on the effectiveness of interventions that may influence: symptomatic participants to present early (shortening the patient interval), thresholds for primary care referral (shortening the primary care interval), and time to imaging diagnosis (shortening the secondary care interval and diagnostic interval). To produce a brief economic commentary, summarising the economic evaluations relevant to these interventions. SEARCH METHODS: For evidence on effectiveness, we searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and Embase from January 2000 to January 2020; Clinicaltrials.gov to May 2020, and conference proceedings from 2014 to 2018. For economic evidence, we searched the UK National Health Services Economic Evaluation Database from 2000 to December 2014. SELECTION CRITERIA: We planned to include studies evaluating any active intervention that may influence the diagnostic pathway, e.g. clinical guidelines, direct access imaging, public health campaigns, educational initiatives, and other interventions that might lead to early identification of primary brain tumours. We planned to include randomised and non-randomised comparative studies. Included studies would include people of any age, with a presentation that might suggest a brain tumour. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors independently assessed titles identified by the search strategy, and the full texts of potentially eligible studies. We resolved discrepancies through discussion or, if required, by consulting another review author. MAIN RESULTS: We did not identify any studies for inclusion in this review. We excluded 115 studies. The main reason for exclusion of potentially eligible intervention studies was their study design, due to a lack of control groups. We found no economic evidence to inform a brief economic commentary on this topic. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: In this version of the review, we did not identify any studies that met the review inclusion criteria for either effectiveness or cost-effectiveness. Therefore, there is no evidence from good quality studies on the best strategies to reduce the time to diagnosis of brain tumours, despite the prioritisation of research on early diagnosis by the James Lind Alliance in 2015. This review highlights the need for research in this area

Industry cognitive distance in alliances and firm innovation performance

This paper focuses on the role of industry cognitive distance in innovation alliances on firm innovation performance. Drawing from the literature on technological cognitive distance in alliances, we elaborate on the role of industry cognitive distance between partners and its impact on managerial attention to investigate the role of numbers of alliances of low (intra‐industry) and high (inter‐industry) industry cognitive distance on firm innovation performance. Intra‐industry alliances offer lower opportunities for innovation compared to inter‐industry alliances and are less demanding on firm management due to higher cognitive similarity between partners from the same industry. We propose that trade‐offs between innovation opportunities and management efforts result in an inverted U and a U‐shaped relationship between the number of intra‐ and inter‐industry alliances and innovation performance, respectively. We find support for both hypotheses in the context of the UK bio‐pharmaceutical sector

Bottom up ethics - neuroenhancement in education and employment

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern

Independent Risk Factors for Injury in Pre-School Children: Three Population-Based Nested Case-Control Studies Using Routine Primary Care Data

Background: Injuries in childhood are largely preventable yet an estimated 2,400 children die every day because of injury and violence. Despite this, the factors that contribute to injury occurrence have not been quantified at the population scale using primary care data. We used The Health Improvement Network (THIN) database to identify risk factors for thermal injury, fractures and poisoning in pre-school children in order to inform the optimal delivery of preventative strategies. Methods: We used a matched, nested case-control study design. Cases were children under 5 with a first medically recorded injury, comprising 3,649 thermal injury cases, 4,050 fracture cases and 2,193 poisoning cases, matched on general practice to 94,620 control children. Results: Younger maternal age and higher birth order increased the odds of all injuries. Children’s age of highest injury risk varied by injury type; compared with children under 1 year, thermal injuries were highest in those age 1-2 (OR = 2.43, 95%CI 2.23–2.65), poisonings in those age 2-3 (OR = 7.32, 95%CI 6.26–8.58) and fractures in those age 3-5 (OR = 3.80, 95%CI 3.42–4.23). Increasing deprivation was an important modifiable risk factor for poisonings and thermal injuries (tests for trend p#0.001) as were hazardous/harmful alcohol consumption by a household adult (OR = 1.73, 95%CI 1.26–2.38 and OR = 1.39, 95%CI 1.07–1.81 respectively) and maternal diagnosis of depression (OR = 1.45, 95%CI 1.24–1.70 and OR = 1.16, 95%CI 1.02–1.32 respectively). Fracture was not associated with these factors, however, not living in single-adult household reduced the odds of fracture (OR = 0.88, 95%CI 0.82–0.95). Conclusions: Maternal depression, hazardous/harmful adult alcohol consumption and socioeconomic deprivation represent important modifiable risk factors for thermal injury and poisoning but not fractures in preschool children. Since these risk factors can be ascertained from routine primary care records, pre-school children’s frequent visits to primary care present an opportunity to reduce injury risk by implementing effective preventative interventions from existing national guidelines

Integrating Entrepreneurship into the Design Classroom: Case Studies from the Developing World

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. Developing countries are more and more committed to building a knowledge-based economy as a means to diversify from their current resource-based economy. The current focus of many governments is on technology with real insights on creative economy and arts. In this context, universities are seen as a key partner of the government. This article presents the results of two innovative case studies of professors working in the College of Art and Design collaborating with a professor in the College of Business to integrate the concepts of entrepreneurship into their interior design courses. This was done through designing space for entrepreneurial projects and by the students acting as entrepreneurs themselves with an external client. This dual model of training combines (1) learning processes about the habits and the needs of entrepreneurs and (2) learning by acting as an entrepreneur. Such methods demonstrate the role of universities to provide a proper theoretical background for students and to foster entrepreneurial behaviors through arts entrepreneurship education. Furthermore, the central role of professors to introduce innovative teaching methods to combine entrepreneurship and the creative economy into non-business courses is an important finding in these case studies