Engaging Opportunities: Connecting young people with contemporary research and researchers

This is the final report for ‘Engaging Opportunities’, an RCUK-funded School-University Partnership between the Open University and the Denbigh Teaching School Alliance. Informed by action research, this four-year project was designed to create structured, strategic, sustainable and equitable mechanisms for effective school-university engagement with research. The report describes an evidence-based strategy designed to embed school-university engagement with research within the University’s strategic planning for research and the operational practices of researchers. Through the early stages of our partnership we noted a lack of suitable planning tools that work for researchers, teachers and students. We therefore introduced a flexible and adaptable framework of four types of activity—open lectures, open dialogues, open inquiry and open creativity—combined with an upstream approach to planning based on a set of six principles. A sub-set of these activities were evaluated through a combination of surveys, interviews and interventions. In conclusion, we argue that institutional and professional cultures can be resistant to the prospect of fully embedding school-university engagement with research in a structured, strategic and sustainable manner, and offer suggestions for how this context could and should be changed

Point-of-Care and Label-Free Detection of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome and Swine Influenza Viruses Using a Microfluidic Device with Photonic Integrated Circuits

[EN] Swine viral diseases challenge the sector's sustainability by affecting productivity and the health and welfare of the animals. The lack of antiviral drugs and/or effective vaccines renders early and reliable diagnosis the basis of viral disease management, underlining the importance of point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. A novel POC diagnostic device utilizing photonic integrated circuits (PICs), microfluidics, and information and communication technologies for the detection of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) and swine influenza A (SIV) was validated using spiked and clinical oral fluid samples. Metrics including sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, precision, positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were calculated to assess the performance of the device. For PRRSV, the device achieved a sensitivity of 83.5%, specificity of 77.8%, and DOR values of 17.66, whereas the values for SIV were 81.8%, 82.2%, and 20.81, respectively. The POC device and PICs can be used for the detection of PRRSV and SIV in the field, paving the way for the introduction of novel technologies in the field of animal POC diagnostics to further optimize livestock biosecurity.This research was funded by the EU's H2020 SWINOSTICS project under the grant agreement ID 771649.Manessis, G.; Frant, M.; Wozniakowski, G.; Nannucci, L.; Bennedetti, M.; Denes, L.; Balka, G.... (2022). Point-of-Care and Label-Free Detection of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome and Swine Influenza Viruses Using a Microfluidic Device with Photonic Integrated Circuits. Viruses. 14(5):1-21. https://doi.org/10.3390/v1405098812114

Replacing natural wetlands with stormwater management facilities: biophysical and perceived social values

Urban expansion replaces wetlands of natural origin with artificial stormwater management facilities. The literature suggests that efforts to mimic natural wetlands in the design of stormwater facilities can expand the provision of ecosystem services. Policy developments seek to capitalize on these improvements, encouraging developers to build stormwater wetlands in place of stormwater ponds; however, few have compared the biophysical values and social perceptions of these created wetlands to those of the natural wetlands they are replacing. We compared four types of wetlands: natural references sites, natural wetlands impacted by agriculture, created stormwater wetlands, and created stormwater ponds. We anticipated that they would exhibit a gradient in biodiversity, ecological integrity, chemical and hydrologic stress. We further anticipated that perceived values would mirror measured biophysical values. We found higher biophysical values associated with wetlands of natural origin (both reference and agriculturally impacted). The biophysical values of stormwater wetlands and stormwater ponds were lower and indistinguishable from one another. The perceived wetland values assessed by the public differed from the observed biophysical values. This has important policy implications, as the public are not likely to perceive the loss of values associated with the replacement of natural wetlands with created stormwater management facilities. We conclude that 1) agriculturally impacted wetlands provide biophysical values equivalent to those of natural wetlands, meaning that land use alone is not a great predictor of wetland value; 2) stormwater wetlands are not a substantive improvement over stormwater ponds, relative to wetlands of natural origin; 3) stormwater wetlands are poor mimics of natural wetlands, likely due to fundamental distinctions in terms of basin morphology, temporal variation in hydrology, ground water connectivity, and landscape position; 4) these drivers are relatively fixed, thus, once constructed, it may not be possible to modify them to improve provision of biophysical values; 5) these fixed drivers are not well perceived by the public and thus public perception may not capture the true value of natural wetlands, including those impacted by agriculture

The Big Read Collaboration between Kingston University, the University of Wolverhampton, Edge Hill University, and the University of the West of Scotland, 2018–2019

This paper outlines the experience of four universities that collaborated on a pre-arrival shared reading project, the Big Read, in 2018/2019. They did so primarily to promote student engagement and retention and also to ease the transition into higher education, particularly for first-generation students, to promote staff connectedness, and to provide a USP (unique selling point) for their institution. The paper covers all the associated processes, from isolating the respective aims of the collaborators to the choosing and sharing of a single agreed title. In analysing the outcomes, recommendations are made for future cross-institutional projects of this kind

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

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

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE