'No research is insignificant': implementing a Students-as-Researchers Festival

There are increasing demands for Higher Education (HE) students to play a role in research-active communities and, similarly, for College Based Higher Education (CBHE) lecturers to develop their research practices. A cross-consortium Student Research Festival was designed to create a collaborative 'community of discovery' (Coffield and Williamson, 2011) and enable final year students to disseminate their research studies to a wider audience. The Festival drew on current HE pedagogies to build an open communicative space in which the three dimensions of practice architecture (Kemmis et.al., 2014) were embodied. The Festival was evaluated through a Collaborative Action Research project in order to establish how the sharing of research contributed to the participants' identity as researchers. Data were analysed using the a priori categories afforded by the practice architecture framework. Valuable insights emerged into the students' conception of research, as detached from the 'real' world and belonging to the privileged few. These views were challenged by the experience of the Festival, which narrowed the gap between student and researcher and unsettled existing roles. Recommendations include widening the scope of the Festival to include other stakeholders and embedding further research building opportunities in the undergraduate curriculum

Multi-spatial-mode effects in squeezed-light-enhanced interferometric gravitational wave detectors

Proposed near-future upgrades of the current advanced interferometric gravitational wave detectors include the usage of frequency dependent squeezed light to reduce the current sensitivity-limiting quantum noise. We quantify and describe the degradation effects that spatial mode-mismatches between optical resonators have on the squeezed field. These mode-mismatches can to first order be described by scattering of light into second-order Gaussian modes. As a demonstration of principle, we also show that squeezing the second-order Hermite-Gaussian modes $\mathrm{HG}_{02}$ and $\mathrm{HG}_{20}$, in addition to the fundamental mode, has the potential to increase the robustness to spatial mode-mismatches. This scheme, however, requires independently optimized squeeze angles for each squeezed spatial mode, which would be challenging to realise in practise.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figure

Automatic Sociophonetics:Exploring corpora using a forensic accent recognition system

This paper demonstrates how the Y-ACCDIST system, the York ACCDIST-based automatic accent recognition system [Brown (2015). Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Glasgow, UK], can be used to inspect sociophonetic corpora as a preliminary “screening” tool. Although Y-ACCDIST's intended application is to assist with forensic casework, the system can also be exploited in sociophonetic research to begin unpacking variation. Using a subset of the PEBL (Panjabi-English in Bradford and Leicester) corpus, the outputs of Y-ACCDIST are explored, which, it is argued, efficiently and objectively assess speaker similarities across different linguistic varieties. The ways these outputs corroborate with a phonetic analysis of the data are also discovered. First, Y-ACCDIST is used to classify speakers from the corpus based on language background and region. A Y-ACCDIST cluster analysis is then implemented, which groups speakers in ways consistent with more localised networks, providing a means of identifying potential communities of practice. Additionally, the results of a Y-ACCDIST feature selection task that indicates which specific phonemes are most valuable in distinguishing between speaker groups are presented. How Y-ACCDIST outputs can be used to reinforce more traditional sociophonetic analyses and support qualitative interpretations of the data is demonstrated

The early evolution of the H-free process

The H-free process, for some fixed graph H, is the random graph process defined by starting with an empty graph on n vertices and then adding edges one at a time, chosen uniformly at random subject to the constraint that no H subgraph is formed. Let G be the random maximal H-free graph obtained at the end of the process. When H is strictly 2-balanced, we show that for some c>0, with high probability as $n \to \infty$, the minimum degree in G is at least $cn^{1-(v_H-2)/(e_H-1)}(\log n)^{1/(e_H-1)}$. This gives new lower bounds for the Tur\'an numbers of certain bipartite graphs, such as the complete bipartite graphs $K_{r,r}$ with $r \ge 5$. When H is a complete graph $K_s$ with $s \ge 5$ we show that for some C>0, with high probability the independence number of G is at most $Cn^{2/(s+1)}(\log n)^{1-1/(e_H-1)}$. This gives new lower bounds for Ramsey numbers R(s,t) for fixed $s \ge 5$ and t large. We also obtain new bounds for the independence number of G for other graphs H, including the case when H is a cycle. Our proofs use the differential equations method for random graph processes to analyse the evolution of the process, and give further information about the structure of the graphs obtained, including asymptotic formulae for a broad class of subgraph extension variables.Comment: 36 page

Promoting a Patient-Centered Understanding of Safety in Acute Mental Health Wards: A User-Centered Design Approach to Develop a Real-Time Digital Monitoring Tool

Background: Acute mental health services report high levels of safety incidents that involve both patients and staff. The potential for patients to be involved in interventions to improve safety within a mental health setting is acknowledged, and there is a need for interventions that proactively seek the patient perspective of safety. Digital technologies may offer opportunities to address this need. Objective: This research sought to design and develop a digital real-time monitoring tool (WardSonar) to collect and collate daily information from patients in acute mental health wards about their perceptions of safety. We present the design and development process and underpinning logic model and programme theory. Methods: The first stage involved a synthesis of the findings from a systematic review and evidence scan, interviews with patients (n=8) and health professionals (n=17), and stakeholder engagement. Cycles of design activities and discussion followed with patients, staff, and stakeholder groups, to design and develop the prototype tool. Results: We drew on patient safety theory and the concepts of contagion and milieu. The data synthesis, design, and development process resulted in three prototype components of the digital monitoring tool (WardSonar): (1) a patient recording interface that asks patients to input their perceptions into a tablet computer, to assess how the ward feels and whether the direction is changing, that is, “getting worse” or “getting better”; (2) a staff dashboard and functionality to interrogate the data at different levels; and (3) a public-facing ward interface. The technology is available as open-source code. Conclusions: Recent patient safety policy and research priorities encourage innovative approaches to measuring and monitoring safety. We developed a digital real-time monitoring tool to collect information from patients in acute mental health wards about perceived safety, to support staff to respond and intervene to changes in the clinical environment more proactively

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

MHCII glycosylation modulates Bacteroides fragilis carbohydrate antigen presentation

N-linked glycans on class II MHC molecules are required for the presentation of glycoantigens, but not peptide antigens

Epstein–Barr virus latent membrane protein 1 trans-activates miR-155 transcription through the NF-κB pathway

The Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)-encoded latent membrane protein-1 (LMP1), a functional homologue of the tumor necrosis factor receptor family, substantially contributes to EBV's oncogenic potential by activating nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB). miR-155 is an oncogenic miRNA critical for B-cell maturation and immunoglobulin production in response to antigen. We report that miR-155 expression is much higher in EBV-immortalized B cells than in EBV-negative B cells. LMP1, but not LMP2, up-regulated the expression of miR-155, when transfected in EBV-negative B cells. We analyzed two putative NF-κB binding sites in the miR-155 promoter; both sites recruited NF-κB complex, in nuclear extract from EBV-immortalized cells. The exogenous expression of LMP1, in EBV-negative background, is temporally correlated to induction of p65 with binding on both NF-κB sites and with miR-155 overexpression. The induction of p65 binding together with increased RNA polymerase II binding, confirms that LMP1-mediated activation of miR-155 occurs transcriptionally. In reporter assays, miR-155 promoter lacking NF-κB binding sites was no longer activated by LMP1 expression and an intact AP1 site is needed to attain maximum activation. Finally, we demonstrate that LMP1-mediated activation of miR-155 in an EBV-negative background correlates with reduction of protein PU.1, which is a possible miR target

Evolutionary games on graphs

Game theory is one of the key paradigms behind many scientific disciplines from biology to behavioral sciences to economics. In its evolutionary form and especially when the interacting agents are linked in a specific social network the underlying solution concepts and methods are very similar to those applied in non-equilibrium statistical physics. This review gives a tutorial-type overview of the field for physicists. The first three sections introduce the necessary background in classical and evolutionary game theory from the basic definitions to the most important results. The fourth section surveys the topological complications implied by non-mean-field-type social network structures in general. The last three sections discuss in detail the dynamic behavior of three prominent classes of models: the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Rock-Scissors-Paper game, and Competing Associations. The major theme of the review is in what sense and how the graph structure of interactions can modify and enrich the picture of long term behavioral patterns emerging in evolutionary games.Comment: Review, final version, 133 pages, 65 figure