Fact Sheet: Engaging the Media: Promoting your work to the media

Attracting the attention of media organisations can be challenging. Deciding how best to 'pitch' your work and through which medium can be challenging. This fact sheet will arm you with tips and tools to improve your chances of securing media coverage. Be confident and direct about your research - making it clear to the journalist how it can be of benefit to the newspaper/TV/radio/on-line audience. This will improve the media's perception of you

Fact Sheet: Engaging the Media: Being interviewed

Health and medical research is one of the most widely reported sources of news. At some point in your primary health care research career, you are likely to be invited to take part in a media interview. This will be a vital opportunity to publicise your research specialty area and your latest research findings. All researchers can benefit from preparation; the media is reactive and unpredictable and you never know when your interview opportunity may arise. Whether you are preparing to be interviewed for print, online, radio or television media, this fact sheet will be a useful guide

Fact Sheet: Engaging the Media: Writing a succinct media release

Media releases offer the opportunity to promote and publicise details about your work to the media. When written well media releases will highlight key messages about your work, be immediately interesting and eye-catching to the journalist. This fact sheet highlights what to consider when writing a media release

Fact Sheet: Conference works: getting the most out of conferences

Conferences provide the opportunity to keep up with new developments, present ideas, meet people who inspire you to think or work differently, foster communication and form new relationships (Collins, 2000). In this fact sheet, we outline ways you can enhance the experience of attending conferences. These suggestions have been collected from conference evaluations, discussions with delegates at a number of conferences, and personal experiences

Fact Sheet: Conducting effective skill building workshops

Workshops that build both research and clinical skills are popular learning events in primary health care. They are cost effective compared with individual training activities and provide a means of connecting the material to be learned to the leaders' context, as well as providing opportunities for group interaction

Fact Sheet: Multimedia conference presentations

Designing a great multimedia presentation is an art in itself. We have put together a few guidelines you might like to keep in mind when you are creating your next presentation. You will find the following tips most relevant for 10 minute conference presentations. The step-by-step points are specific to Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

The sustainable materials roadmap

Over the past 150 years, our ability to produce and transform engineered materials has been responsible for our current high standards of living, especially in developed economies. However, we must carefully think of the effects our addiction to creating and using materials at this fast rate will have on the future generations. The way we currently make and use materials detrimentally affects the planet Earth, creating many severe environmental problems. It affects the next generations by putting in danger the future of the economy, energy, and climate. We are at the point where something must drastically change, and it must change now. We must create more sustainable materials alternatives using natural raw materials and inspiration from nature while making sure not to deplete important resources, i.e. in competition with the food chain supply. We must use less materials, eliminate the use of toxic materials and create a circular materials economy where reuse and recycle are priorities. We must develop sustainable methods for materials recycling and encourage design for disassembly. We must look across the whole materials life cycle from raw resources till end of life and apply thorough life cycle assessments (LCAs) based on reliable and relevant data to quantify sustainability. We need to seriously start thinking of where our future materials will come from and how could we track them, given that we are confronted with resource scarcity and geographical constrains. This is particularly important for the development of new and sustainable energy technologies, key to our transition to net zero. Currently 'critical materials' are central components of sustainable energy systems because they are the best performing. A few examples include the permanent magnets based on rare earth metals (Dy, Nd, Pr) used in wind turbines, Li and Co in Li-ion batteries, Pt and Ir in fuel cells and electrolysers, Si in solar cells just to mention a few. These materials are classified as 'critical' by the European Union and Department of Energy. Except in sustainable energy, materials are also key components in packaging, construction, and textile industry along with many other industrial sectors. This roadmap authored by prominent researchers working across disciplines in the very important field of sustainable materials is intended to highlight the outstanding issues that must be addressed and provide an insight into the pathways towards solving them adopted by the sustainable materials community. In compiling this roadmap, we hope to aid the development of the wider sustainable materials research community, providing a guide for academia, industry, government, and funding agencies in this critically important and rapidly developing research space which is key to future sustainability.journal articl

Host candidate gene polymorphisms and clearance of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum parasites

Resistance to anti-malarial drugs is a widespread problem for control programmes for this devastating disease. Molecular tests are available for many anti-malarial drugs and are useful tools for the surveillance of drug resistance. However, the correlation of treatment outcome and molecular tests with particular parasite markers is not perfect, due in part to individuals who are able to clear genotypically drug-resistant parasites. This study aimed to identify molecular markers in the human genome that correlate with the clearance of malaria parasites after drug treatment, despite the drug resistance profile of the protozoan as predicted by molecular approaches