Antibodies for immunolabeling by light and electron microscopy : not for the faint hearted

Reliable antibodies represent crucial tools in the arsenal of the cell biologist and using them to localize antigens for immunocytochemistry is one of their most important applications. However, antibody-antigen interactions are much more complex and unpredictable than suggested by the old 'lock and key' analogy, and the goal of trying to prove that an antibody is specific is far more difficult than is generally appreciated. Here, we discuss the problems associated with the very complicated issue of trying to establish that an antibody (and the results obtained with it) is specific for the immunolabeling approaches used in light or electron microscopy. We discuss the increasing awareness that significant numbers of commercial antibodies are often not up to the quality required. We provide guidelines for choosing and testing antibodies in immuno-EM. Finally, we describe how quantitative EM methods can be used to identify reproducible patterns of antibody labeling and also extract specific labeling distributions.Peer reviewe

‘The Greatest Bubble in History’: Stock Prices during the British Railway Mania

Although the British Railway Mania has been described as one of the greatest bubbles in history, it has been largely neglected by academics. This paper attempts to redress this neglect by creating a daily stock price index for the 1843-50 period and by assessing the contribution of the many newly-created railways to the bubble-like pattern in stock prices. The paper then examines whether this bubble-like pattern was due to an increase in the stochastic discount factor arising from an increase in the probability of large-scale adoption of railway technology. We find little evidence to support this hypothesis.bubbles, financial crises, Railway Mania

Perspectives on innovation within medium-sized firms in Wales

The Welsh economy is heading towards a post-Brexit future with historically lower levels of productivity continuing to leave the country lagging behind the UK average (Huggins and Williams, 2011; Welsh Government, 2017). An understanding of how new models of innovation are constructed and developed are then particularly important for policy makers and academia in Wales. As noted by Baughan (2015), innovation accounts for 25-50% of labour productivity growth

'Learning Styles' and 'Approaches to Studying' in Sports-Related Programmes: Relationships to Academic Achievement and Implications for Successful Learning, Teaching and Assessment: Project Report Summary

There are relatively few recent investigations that have addressed the issues of preferred learning styles and approaches to studying in sports-related disciplines such as: Sports Studies; Sports and Exercise Science; Coaching Science; Sport and Leisure Management and Outdoor Recreation Management. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine student learning across a range of sport-related programmes at a UK University College. It applied tools from two related, but different, educational research paradigms: approaches to learning and learning styles analysis. Thus, these differing means of researching student learning were tested against the same student group. Results were compared to students’ perceptions of their own developing autonomy of learning and achieved grades; insights were generated into the particular learning approaches and styles of sports students; and tentative recommendations are made on the implications of the findings for higher education teachers seeking to promote improvements in the learning of sports subjects

An analysis of question processing of English and Chinese for the NTCIR 5 cross-language question answering task

An important element in question answering systems is the analysis and interpretation of questions. Using the NTCIR 5 Cross-Language Question Answering (CLQA) question test set we demonstrate that the accuracy of deep question analysis is dependent on the quantity and suitability of the available linguistic resources. We further demonstrate that applying question analysis tools developed on monolingual training materials to questions translated Chinese-English and English-Chinese using machine translation produces much reduced effectiveness in interpretation of the question. This latter result indicates that question analysis for CLQA should primarily be conducted in the question language prior to translation

Designing and Delivering a Curriculum for Data Science Education across Europe

Data is currently being produced at an incredible rate globally, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the Web, and stoked by social media, sensors, and mobile devices. However, as the amount of available data continues to increase, so does the demand for professionals who have the necessary skills to manage and manipulate this data. This paper presents the European Data Science Academy (EDSA), an initiative for bridging the data science skills gap across Europe and training a new generation of world-leading data scientists. The EDSA project has established a rigorous process and a set of best practices for the production and delivery of curricula for data science. Additionally, the project’s efforts are dedicated to linking the demand for data science skills with the supply of learning resources that offer these skills

Potential for natural flood management and land management practices to mitigate flooding in upland catchments

PhD ThesisThere is an increasing uptake of Natural Flood Management (NFM) and land use management (LUM) schemes to tackle excessive, rapid runoff in rural catchments. At the local scale, there is a growing knowledge base regarding the impacts of NFM and LUM. However, evidence and understanding of how these local impacts manifest at a larger catchment scale is less well understood. There are many types of model that have been used for investigating NFM and LUM impacts at larger scales (>10 km2), ranging from the comparatively simple lumped conceptual approaches to more complex, physically-based, distributed models. How best to represent NFM and LUM impacts in models is ambiguous. This thesis presents research into impact modelling of flood mitigation measures from the hillslope to the catchment scale, using the lumped FEH rainfall-runoff model and a novel physicallybased, distributed model, Juke. A Flood Impact Modelling (FIM) methodology is proposed for rapid impact assessment using the FEH approach; FEH hydrographs are generated for sub-catchments and routed to the outlet. The impact of changes in timing and runoff generation in specific sub-catchments on the downstream hydrograph can be investigated to inform catchment planning. The Juke methodology is designed to make best use of field observations and existing GIS datasets for parameterising the runoff and routing components. Juke uses some of the knowledge embedded in the FEH approach regarding the timing and runoff generation and applies it spatially. Juke is capable of emulating the FEH, but also allows consideration of spatial changes in LUM. Two catchments in the north of England have been instrumented to characterise the rainfall-runoff behaviour and understand what causes the largest flood events, where NFM and LUM have taken place. This knowledge informs the LUM and NFM scenarios explored as well as for model parametrisation. Results from the lumped FEH modelling suggest that the mitigation of flood flow by managing the volume and timing of fast runoff will have the greatest impact on floods caused by short duration, high intensity rainfall events. The Juke modelling also suggests that the impact of NFM and LUM is likely to be minimal (<10 % flood peak reduction for 12 % coverage of riparian woodland) and depends on the duration and intensity of rainfall events and the internal synchronisation of the component sub-catchments. The flood peaks for some events ii may increase due to the effects of timing and synchronisation of flows from the landscape elements. The outcomes of this thesis recommends flood managers make field observations to better understand the causes of flooding within a catchment. Schemes using NFM and LUM are likely to be most beneficial for comparatively small catchments (<10 km2) that suffer from frequent flooding from short duration, high intensity rainfall.combination of Defra, through the Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) and the Environment Agency (EA: Great Ayton Flood mitigation

Exploring the maintenance of plumage polymorphism in the Black Sparrowhawk

Animals often display striking variation with respect to their phenotype. Intraspecific and interspecific variation in body colour represents one of the most well studied forms of phenotypic variation. For decades evolutionary biologists have been fascinated by the mechanisms that maintain colour variation in species and traditional explanations for this diversity of colour in nature often invoke an interaction between selection for conspicuous signals and natural selection for crypsis. Colour polymorphic species have frequently been used to explore the evolutionary processes that lead to colour variation in species. Geographic variation in colour morph ratios also occurs frequently in polymorphic species and is often considered an ideal model system to examine the interplay of gene flow and local adaptation in populations. This thesis aims to explore the role and maintenance of plumage colour polymorphism in a raptor, the black sparrowhawk. The black sparrowhawk exhibits discrete colour polymorphism, with adults occurring as either white or dark morphs. Within South Africa, the species has undergone a recent range expansion, successfully colonising the Cape Peninsula in the Western Cape. As winter breeders, black sparrowhawks in South Africa now experience two contrasting climatic regimes; dry winters in their historical north-eastern range, and wet winters in the recently colonised Western Cape region. Within this newly colonised region, the dark morph occurs in greatest frequency. Across South Africa, the species displays clinal variation, with the frequency of dark morphs declining from > 75 % in the far south-west on the Cape Peninsula, to < 20 % in the north-east of the country. Two contrasting hypotheses have been proposed for the high frequency of dark morph birds in the Cape Peninsula population; (1) that colour variation is non-adaptive and is simply due to a chance founder effect and strong genetic drift and (2) this is reflective of local adaptation and that irrespective of the founding morph ratios, dark morphs have a selective advantage in this newly colonised environment with its novel winter rainfall regime. The main aims of this study were to determine the (i) ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that influence the maintenance of colour polymorphism in the species and (ii) to establish explanations for the unusually high proportion of dark morphs on the Cape Peninsula. In this thesis I have used a range of ecological and genetic approaches to explore both neutral and adaptationist explanations for the high frequency of dark morphs in my study population. Data from the mitochondrial control region was used to examine the distribution of genetic diversity in several geographic populations of black sparrowhawks across South Africa, allowing the exploration of trait divergence under neutrality. Using a phylogeographic framework, genetic variation was used to (i) quantify the extent to which population structure and gene flow may influence the observed pattern of colour morphs in the focal study population on the Cape Peninsula, and (ii) explore how selection and gene flow may interact to explain the patterns of morph frequencies in my study system. I found very low genetic differentiation between sample sites across South Africa suggesting that substantial gene flow occurs among populations, supporting the hypothesis that selection, and thus local adaptation, is the primary force maintaining colour variation on the Peninsula