Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

Nanofiber fabrication in a temperature and humidity controlled environment for improved fibre consistency

To fabricate nanofibers with reproducible characteristics, an important demand for many applications, the effect of controlled atmospheric conditions on resulting electrospun cellulose acetate (CA) nanofibers was evaluated for temperature ranging 17.5 - 35°C and relative humidity ranging 20% - 70%. With the potential application of nanofibers in many industries, especially membrane and filter fabrication, their reproducible production must be established to ensure commercially viability.
Cellulose acetate (CA) solution (0.2 g/ml) in a solvent mixture of acetone/DMF/ethanol (2:2:1) was electrospun into nonwoven fibre mesh with the fibre diameter ranging from 150nm to 1µm.
The resulting nanofibers were observed and analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), showing a correlation of reducing average fibre diameter with increasing atmospheric temperature. A less pronounced correlation was seen with changes in relative humidity regarding fibre diameter, though it was shown that increased humidity reduced the effect of fibre beading yielding a more consistent, and therefore better quality of fibre fabrication.
Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies observed lower melt enthalpies for finer CA nanofibers in the first heating cycle confirming the results gained from SEM analysis. From the conditions that were explored in this study the temperature and humidity that gave the most suitable fibre mats for a membrane purpose were 25.0°C and 50%RH due to the highest level of fibre diameter uniformity, the lowest level of beading while maintaining a low fibre diameter for increased surface area and increased pore size homogeneity. This study has highlighted the requirement to control the atmospheric conditions during the electrospinning process in order to fabricate reproducible fibre mats

A Discrete Event Simulation model to evaluate the treatment pathways of patients with Cataract in the United Kingdom

Background The number of people affected by cataract in the United Kingdom (UK) is growing rapidly due to ageing population. As the only way to treat cataract is through surgery, there is a high demand for this type of surgery and figures indicate that it is the most performed type of surgery in the UK. The National Health Service (NHS), which provides free of charge care in the UK, is under huge financial pressure due to budget austerity in the last decade. As the number of people affected by the disease is expected to grow significantly in coming years, the aim of this study is to evaluate whether the introduction of new processes and medical technologies will enable cataract services to cope with the demand within the NHS funding constraints. Methods We developed a Discrete Event Simulation model representing the cataract services pathways at Leicester Royal Infirmary Hospital. The model was inputted with data from national and local sources as well as from a surgery demand forecasting model developed in the study. The model was verified and validated with the participation of the cataract services clinical and management teams. Results Four scenarios involving increased number of surgeries per half-day surgery theatre slot were simulated. Results indicate that the total number of surgeries per year could be increased by 40% at no extra cost. However, the rate of improvement decreases for increased number of surgeries per half-day surgery theatre slot due to a higher number of cancelled surgeries. Productivity is expected to improve as the total number of doctors and nurses hours will increase by 5 and 12% respectively. However, non-human resources such as pre-surgery rooms and post-surgery recovery chairs are under-utilized across all scenarios. Conclusions Using new processes and medical technologies for cataract surgery is a promising way to deal with the expected higher demand especially as this could be achieved with limited impact on costs. Non-human resources capacity need to be evenly levelled across the surgery pathway to improve their utilisation. The performance of cataract services could be improved by better communication with and proactive management of patients.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The Interplay Between GUT and Flavour Symmetries in a Pati-Salam x S4 Model

Both Grand Unified symmetries and discrete flavour symmetries are appealing ways to describe apparent structures in the gauge and flavour sectors of the Standard Model. Both symmetries put constraints on the high energy behaviour of the theory. This can give rise to unexpected interplay when building models that possess both symmetries. We investigate on the possibility to combine a Pati-Salam model with the discrete flavour symmetry $S_4$ that gives rise to quark-lepton complementarity. Under appropriate assumptions at the GUT scale, the model reproduces fermion masses and mixings both in the quark and in the lepton sectors. We show that in particular the Higgs sector and the running Yukawa couplings are strongly affected by the combined constraints of the Grand Unified and family symmetries. This in turn reduces the phenomenologically viable parameter space, with high energy mass scales confined to a small region and some parameters in the neutrino sector slightly unnatural. In the allowed regions, we can reproduce the quark masses and the CKM matrix. In the lepton sector, we reproduce the charged lepton masses, including bottom-tau unification and the Georgi-Jarlskog relation as well as the two known angles of the PMNS matrix. The neutrino mass spectrum can present a normal or an inverse hierarchy, and only allowing the neutrino parameters to spread into a range of values between $\lambda^{-2}$ and $\lambda^2$, with $\lambda\simeq0.2$. Finally, our model suggests that the reactor mixing angle is close to its current experimental bound.Comment: 62 pages, 4 figures; references added, version accepted for publication in JHE

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Realizing the promise of population biobanks: a new model for translation

The promise of science lies in expectations of its benefits to societies and is matched by expectations of the realisation of the significant public investment in that science. In this paper, we undertake a methodological analysis of the science of biobanking and a sociological analysis of translational research in relation to biobanking. Part of global and local endeavours to translate raw biomedical evidence into practice, biobanks aim to provide a platform for generating new scientific knowledge to inform development of new policies, systems and interventions to enhance the public’s health. Effectively translating scientific knowledge into routine practice, however, involves more than good science. Although biobanks undoubtedly provide a fundamental resource for both clinical and public health practice, their potentiating ontology—that their outputs are perpetually a promise of scientific knowledge generation—renders translation rather less straightforward than drug discovery and treatment implementation. Biobanking science, therefore, provides a perfect counterpoint against which to test the bounds of translational research. We argue that translational research is a contextual and cumulative process: one that is necessarily dynamic and interactive and involves multiple actors. We propose a new multidimensional model of translational research which enables us to imagine a new paradigm: one that takes us from bench to bedside to backyard and beyond, that is, attentive to the social and political context of translational science, and is cognisant of all the players in that process be they researchers, health professionals, policy makers, industry representatives, members of the public or research participants, amongst others