Undergraduate student expectations of university in the United Kingdom: What really matters to them?

Students spend 12 to 14 years in school settings learning in what could be considered a carefully controlled and structured environment. Higher education may not offer the same landscape to students and it appears that many enter with unrealistic conceptions of what is expected of them and are faced with different approaches to aspects of teaching, learning and assessment. This qualitative study explores the perceptions of second-year and final-year students in relation to their expectations whilst studying at university. Focus groups were used across two programmes in one university faculty to ascertain student expectations and what they perceived as important. From the thematic analysis, four areas were highlighted by the students as key to the transition into university these were directed time, non-directed time, support and relationships. Overall these students where positive about the university experience and the levels of support offered to them, particularly noting that working in peer learning groups (PLGs) was beneficial. Issues were raised around the timetabling of face-to-face contact time and the value of the experience and this is an area that needs further research as is understanding the complexity of the students’ lives outside of the institution

Adverse prognostic and predictive significance of low DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs) expression in early-stage breast cancers

Background: DNA-dependent protein kinase catalytic subunit (DNA-PKcs), a serine threonine kinase belonging to the PIKK family (phosphoinositide 3-kinase-like-family of protein kinase), is a critical component of the non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway required for the repair of DNA double strand breaks. DNA-PKcs may be involved in breast cancer pathogenesis. Methods: We evaluated clinicopathological significance of DNA-PKcs protein expression in 1161 tumours and DNA-PKcs mRNA expression in 1950 tumours. We correlated DNA-PKcs to other markers of aggressive phenotypes, DNA repair, apoptosis and cell cycle regulation. Results: Low DNA-PKcs protein expression was associated with higher tumour grade, higher mitotic index, tumour de-differentiation and tumour type (ps<0.05). Absence of BRCA1, low XRCC1/SMUG1/APE1/Polβ were also more likely in low DNA-PKcs expressing tumours (ps<0.05). Low DNA-PKcs protein expression was significantly associated with worse breast cancer specific survival (BCCS) in univariate and multivariate analysis (ps<0.01). At the mRNA level, low DNA-PKcs was associated with PAM50.Her2 and PAM50.LumA molecular phenotypes (ps<0.01) and poor BCSS. In patients with ER positive tumours who received endocrine therapy, low DNA-PKcs (protein and mRNA) was associated with poor survival. In ER negative patients, low DNA-PKcs mRNA remains significantly associated with adverse outcome. Conclusions: Our study suggests that low DNA-PKcs expression may have prognostic and predictive significance in breast cancers

Systems of education governance and cultures of justice in Ireland, Scotland and Pakistan

This chapter compares the issue of cultures of justice in the systems of education governance in three education systems: Ireland, Scotland and Pakistan. The focus for the comparison are the current policies which shape the regulation of education. These policies were reviewed to identify key issues relating to social justice and equality, decision-making and accountability. From the analysis of each system, three central issues were identified: firstly, the improvement of a state education system; secondly, the degree of decentralisation and centralisation in governance structures and thirdly, the expectations placed on school leaders. The chapter concludes by discussing the tensions between the drive for system improvement and opportunities for school leaders to build strategies to address issues of inequality in schools

Pre-natal and post-natal exposure to respiratory infection and atopic diseases development: a historical cohort study

BACKGROUND: According to the hygiene hypothesis, infections in early life protect from allergic diseases. However, in earlier studies surrogate measures of infection rather than clinical infections were associated with decreased frequencies of atopic diseases. Exposure to infection indicating sub-clinical infection rather than clinical infection might protect from atopic diseases. Objective: to investigate whether exposure to acute respiratory infections within pregnancy and the first year of life is associated with atopic conditions at age 5–14 years and to explore when within pregnancy and the first year of life this exposure is most likely to be protective. METHODS: Historical cohort study: Population level data on acute respiratory infections from the routine reporting system of the former German Democratic Republic were linked with individual data from consecutive surveys on atopic diseases in the same region (n = 4672). Statistical analyses included multivariate logistic regression analysis and polynomial distributed lag models. RESULTS: High exposure to acute respiratory infection between pregnancy and age one year was associated with overall reduced odds of asthma, eczema, hay fever, atopic sensitization and total IgE. Exposure in the first 9 months of life showed the most pronounced effect. Adjusted odds ratio's for asthma, hay fever, inhalant sensitization and total IgE were statistical significantly reduced up to around half. CONCLUSION: Exposure to respiratory infection (most likely indicating sub-clinical infection) within pregnancy and the first year of life may be protective in atopic diseases development. The post-natal period thereby seems to be particularly important

DeepGANnel: Synthesis of fully annotated single molecule patch-clamp data using generative adversarial networks.

Development of automated analysis tools for "single ion channel" recording is hampered by the lack of available training data. For machine learning based tools, very large training sets are necessary with sample-by-sample point labelled data (e.g., 1 sample point every 100microsecond). In an experimental context, such data are labelled with human supervision, and whilst this is feasible for simple experimental analysis, it is infeasible to generate the enormous datasets that would be necessary for a big data approach using hand crafting. In this work we aimed to develop methods to generate simulated ion channel data that is free from assumptions and prior knowledge of noise and underlying hidden Markov models. We successfully leverage generative adversarial networks (GANs) to build an end-to-end pipeline for generating an unlimited amount of labelled training data from a small, annotated ion channel "seed" record, and this needs no prior knowledge of theoretical dynamical ion channel properties. Our method utilises 2D CNNs to maintain the synchronised temporal relationship between the raw and idealised record. We demonstrate the applicability of the method with 5 different data sources and show authenticity with t-SNE and UMAP projection comparisons between real and synthetic data. The model would be easily extendable to other time series data requiring parallel labelling, such as labelled ECG signals or raw nanopore sequencing data

HAGE (DDX43) is a biomarker for poor prognosis and a predictor of chemotherapy response in breast cancer

Background: HAGE protein is a known immunogenic cancer-specific antigen. Methods: The biological, prognostic and predictive values of HAGE expression was studied using immunohistochemistry in three cohorts of patients with BC (n=2147): early primary (EP-BC; n=1676); primary oestrogen receptor-negative (PER-BC; n=275) treated with adjuvant anthracycline-combination therapies (Adjuvant-ACT); and primary locally advanced disease (PLA-BC) who received neo-adjuvant anthracycline-combination therapies (Neo-adjuvant-ACT; n=196). The relationship between HAGE expression and the tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in matched prechemotherapy and postchemotherapy samples were investigated. Results: Eight percent of patients with EP-BC exhibited high HAGE expression (HAGEþ) and was associated with aggressive clinico-pathological features (Ps<0.01). Furthermore, HAGEþexpression was associated with poor prognosis in both univariate and multivariate analysis (Ps<0.001). Patients with HAGE+ did not benefit from hormonal therapy in high-risk ER-positive disease. HAGE+ and TILs were found to be independent predictors for pathological complete response to neoadjuvant-ACT; P<0.001. A statistically significant loss of HAGE expression following neoadjuvant-ACT was found (P=0.000001), and progression-free survival was worse in those patients who had HAGE+ residual disease (P=0.0003). Conclusions: This is the first report to show HAGE to be a potential prognostic marker and a predictor of response to ACT in patients with BC

Four patients with a history of acute exacerbations of COPD: implementing the CHEST/Canadian Thoracic Society guidelines for preventing exacerbations

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