Coordinating UoS engagement events

This booklet is Coordinating UoS Engagement Events and provides further information and details on ways in which diverse teams across the University can help you to maximise the impact of your public & community engagement activities. Aims of this eBook: • Specifically focuses on how to get started with planning and running an engagement event, with links • Provides guidance and advice on evaluating and documenting your engagement event • Provides information about the training & development and internal funding available • Encourages reflection and self-evaluation throughout the development process • Sign-posts to useful internal and external resources, tools, tips and techniques • Promotes goal setting and development of confidence and capabilit

Getting started with impact

This booklet is Getting Started with Impact and provides further information and details on ways in which to embed real-world impact from the outset of your research projects to ensure maximum benefit to your publics and stakeholders. Aims of this eBook: • Specifically focuses on how to get started with impact, with links to templates • Provides information about the training & development and internal funding available • Encourages reflection and self-evaluation throughout the development process • Sign-posts to useful internal and external resources, tools, tips and techniques • Promotes goal setting and development of confidence and capabilit

Quick start guide to public & community engagement

This booklet is Getting Started with Public & Community Engagement and provides further information and details about the process of public engagement with research. Aims of this eBook: • Specifically focuses on widening engagement (this is largely focussed on the public engagement of research but also touches upon elements of widening participation and enterprise), with useful links and tools • Provides detailed information about the training and development available • Designed to help plan your attendance and participation in appropriate training • Used alongside PDR and Development Plans to identify development opportunities • Support decision making and work in areas of research impact, finding funding for research and in preparation for the REF and KEF processes as well as supporting individual and organisational objectives • Sets out expectations and limitations of the training to help focus time and resource appropriately • Facilitates preparation in advance of attendance and participation • Encourages reflection and self-evaluation throughout the development process • Sign-posts to useful resources, tools, tips and techniques • Promotes goal setting and development of confidence and capabilit

Working with Government and influencing policy

This booklet is Working with Government and Influencing Policy and provides further information and details on ways in which to engage with and influence policy makers and other key stakeholders to maximise the reach and significance of your research impact. Aims of this eBook: • Specifically focuses on how to get started with policy engagement, with links • Provides information about the training & development and internal funding available • Encourages reflection and self-evaluation throughout the development process • Sign-posts to useful internal and external resources, tools, tips and techniques • Promotes goal setting and development of confidence and capabilit

Developing widening engagement activities and events

This booklet is Developing Widening Engagement Activities and Events and provides further information and details about the process and a practical guide to delivering events to connect to and communicate your research. Aims of this eBook: • Specifically focuses on designing, developing and delivering public engagement (PE) in person events and activities, with useful links and tools • Used alongside PDR and Development Plans to identify development opportunities • Supports decision making and work in areas of research impact, finding funding for research and in preparation for the REF and KEF processes as well as supporting individual and organisational objectives • Sets out expectations and limitations of the possibilities to help focus time and resource appropriately • Facilitates preparation in advance of key milestones and PE events in the annual calendar • Encourages reflection and self-evaluation throughout the development process • Sign-posts to useful resources, tools, tips and techniques • Promotes goal setting and development of confidence and capabilit

Direct measurement of antiferromagnetic domain fluctuations

Measurements of magnetic noise emanating from ferromagnets due to domain motion were first carried out nearly 100 years ago and have underpinned much science and technology. Antiferromagnets, which carry no net external magnetic dipole moment, yet have a periodic arrangement of the electron spins extending over macroscopic distances, should also display magnetic noise, but this must be sampled at spatial wavelengths of order several interatomic spacings, rather than the macroscopic scales characteristic of ferromagnets. Here we present the first direct measurement of the fluctuations in the nanometre-scale spin- (charge-) density wave superstructure associated with antiferromagnetism in elemental Chromium. The technique used is X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy, where coherent x-ray diffraction produces a speckle pattern that serves as a "fingerprint" of a particular magnetic domain configuration. The temporal evolution of the patterns corresponds to domain walls advancing and retreating over micron distances. While the domain wall motion is thermally activated at temperatures above 100K, it is not so at lower temperatures, and indeed has a rate which saturates at a finite value - consistent with quantum fluctuations - on cooling below 40K. Our work is important because it provides an important new measurement tool for antiferromagnetic domain engineering as well as revealing a fundamental new fact about spin dynamics in the simplest antiferromagnet.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

A meta-analysis of the effect of antibody therapy for the prevention of severe respiratory syncytial virus infection

Abstract Background The primary objective of this meta-analytic study was to determine the impact of RSV-IGIV and palivizumab on risk of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-related hospitalization. Secondary objectives were to determine if antibody therapy decreases the risk of RSV infection, intensive care admission, mechanical ventilation, and mortality in high risk infant populations. Methods We performed searches of electronic data bases from 1966 to April 2009. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined a priori. Inclusion criteria were as follows: 1) There was randomization between polyclonal or monoclonal antibodies and placebo or no therapy, and 2) Polyclonal or monoclonal antibodies were given as prophylaxis. Results Of the six included studies, three utilized RSV-IGIV (total of 533 randomized to treatment groups) and three utilized palivizumab (total of 1,663 randomized to treatment groups). The absolute risk of hospitalization in the control arms was 12% and overall RR for all 2,196 children who received one of the antibody products was 0.53 (95% CI 0.43, 0.66), P < 0.00001. When looking only at the children who received palivizumab, the RR for hospitalization was 0.50 (95% CI 0.38, 0.66), P < 0.00001. For the children receiving RSV-IGIV, the RR for hospitalization was 0.59 (95% CI 0.42, 0.83, P < 0.002). The use of palivizumab resulted in a significant decrease in admission to the ICU (RR 0.29 (95% CI 0.14, 0.59; P = 0.0007). There was no significant reduction in the risk of mechanical ventilation or mortality with the use of antibody prophylaxis. Infants born at less than 35 weeks gestational age, and those with chronic lung and congenital heart disease all had a significant reduction in the risk of RSV hospitalization with children born under 35 weeks gestational age showing a trend towards the greatest benefit. Conclusion Both palivizumab and RSV-IGIV decrease the incidence of RSV hospitalization and ICU admission and their effect appears to be qualitatively similarly. There was neither a statistically significant reduction in the incidence of mechanical ventilation nor in all cause mortality. This meta-analysis separately quantifies the impact of RSV-IGIV and palivizumab on various measures of severe RSV disease and builds upon a previous study that was only able to examine the pooled effect of all antibody products together

High-speed fixed-target serial virus crystallography

We report a method for serial X-ray crystallography at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), which allows for full use of the current 120-Hz repetition rate of the Linear Coherent Light Source (LCLS). Using a micropatterned silicon chip in combination with the high-speed Roadrunner goniometer for sample delivery, we were able to determine the crystal structures of the picornavirus bovine enterovirus 2 (BEV2) and the cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus type 18 polyhedrin, with total data collection times of less than 14 and 10 min, respectively. Our method requires only micrograms of sample and should therefore broaden the applicability of serial femtosecond crystallography to challenging projects for which only limited sample amounts are available. By synchronizing the sample exchange to the XFEL repetition rate, our method allows for most efficient use of the limited beam time available at XFELs and should enable a substantial increase in sample throughput at these facilities

Spatio-Temporal Credit Assignment in Neuronal Population Learning

In learning from trial and error, animals need to relate behavioral decisions to environmental reinforcement even though it may be difficult to assign credit to a particular decision when outcomes are uncertain or subject to delays. When considering the biophysical basis of learning, the credit-assignment problem is compounded because the behavioral decisions themselves result from the spatio-temporal aggregation of many synaptic releases. We present a model of plasticity induction for reinforcement learning in a population of leaky integrate and fire neurons which is based on a cascade of synaptic memory traces. Each synaptic cascade correlates presynaptic input first with postsynaptic events, next with the behavioral decisions and finally with external reinforcement. For operant conditioning, learning succeeds even when reinforcement is delivered with a delay so large that temporal contiguity between decision and pertinent reward is lost due to intervening decisions which are themselves subject to delayed reinforcement. This shows that the model provides a viable mechanism for temporal credit assignment. Further, learning speeds up with increasing population size, so the plasticity cascade simultaneously addresses the spatial problem of assigning credit to synapses in different population neurons. Simulations on other tasks, such as sequential decision making, serve to contrast the performance of the proposed scheme to that of temporal difference-based learning. We argue that, due to their comparative robustness, synaptic plasticity cascades are attractive basic models of reinforcement learning in the brain

Methods for specifying the target difference in a randomised controlled trial : the Difference ELicitation in TriAls (DELTA) systematic review

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