Final Year Induction - Re-engagement and Re-motivation

This paper considers design education in practice and reports on a new experience undertaken at ?? University (?U) with final year BA/BSc Product Design students. Increasingly, students returning to the final year of the programme have struggled in recent years to both develop credible final year project proposals and also re-engage with academic life and meet the expectations held of them at Honours level. Therefore, the final year project team took the decision to implement a new strategy for the start of the final year in September 2011. The students returned to University a week early and undertook an intensive, week long, programme that was specifically designed to: a) Engage them fully with a return to academic life and set expectations of final year b) Expose them to a wide range of opportunities to seek meaningful problems that would benefit from a product based solution. This paper expands upon the structure of the week and the activities that were undertaken by students and also provides feedback on the experience from the perspective of both academic staff and students. The paper concludes with a detailed evaluation of the experience and what has been learnt. However, the experience has been deemed to be a success by both staff and students and planning for a similar experience next year has already begun, along with a plan to roll out the principles to all design courses within the Framework

Coal-derived rates of atmospheric dust deposition during the Permian

Despite widespread evidence for atmospheric dust deposition prior to the Quaternary, quantitative rate data remains sparse. As dust influences both climate and biological productivity, the absence of quantitative dust data limits the comprehensiveness of models of pre-Quaternary climate and biogeochemical cycles. Here, we propose that inorganic matter contained in coal primarily records atmospheric dust deposition. To test this, we use the average concentration of inorganic matter in Permian coal to map global patterns and deposition rates of atmospheric dust over Pangea. The dust accumulation rate is calculated assuming Permian peat carbon accumulation rates in temperate climates were similar to Holocene rates and accounting for the loss of carbon during coalification. Coal-derived rates vary from 0.02 to 25 g m− 2 year− 1, values that fall within the present-day global range. A well-constrained East–West pattern of dust deposition corresponding to expected palaeoclimate gradients extends across Gondwana with maximum dust deposition rates occurring close to arid regions. A similar pattern is partially defined over the northern hemisphere. Patterns are consistent with the presence of two large global dust plumes centred on the tropics. The spatial patterns of dust deposition were also compared to dust cycle simulations for the Permian made with the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3). Key differences between the simulations and the coal data are the lack of evidence for an Antarctic dust source, higher than expected dust deposition over N and S China and greater dust deposition rates over Western Gondwana. This new coal-based dust accumulation rate data expands the pre-Neogene quantitative record of atmospheric dust and can help to inform and validate models of global circulation and biogeochemical cycles over the past 350 Myr

The VALTIVE1 study protocol: a study for the validation of Tie2 as the first tumour vascular response biomarker for VEGF inhibitors

Background: Anti-angiogenic, VEGF inhibitors (VEGFi) increase progression-free survival (PFS) and, in some cases, overall survival in many solid tumours. However, their use has been compromised by a lack of informative biomarkers. We have shown that plasma Tie2 is the first tumour vascular response biomarker for VEGFi in ovarian, colorectal and gall bladder cancer: If plasma Tie2 concentrations do not change after 9 weeks of treatment with a VEGFi, the patient does not benefit, whereas a confirmed reduction of at least 10% plasma Tie2 defines a vascular response with a hazard ratio (HR) for PFS of 0.56. The aim of the VALTIVE1 study is to validate the utility of plasma Tie2 as a vascular response biomarker and to optimise the Tie2-definition of vascular response so that the subsequent randomised discontinuation VALTIVE2 study can be powered optimally. Methods: VALTIVE1 is a multi-centre, single arm, non-interventional biomarker study, with a sample size of 205 participants (176 bevacizumab-treated participants + 29 participants receiving bevacizumab and olaparib/PARPi), who are 16 years or older, have FIGO stage IIIc/IV ovarian cancer on treatment with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy and bevacizumab. Their blood plasma samples will be collected before, during, and after treatment and the concentration of Tie2 will be determined. The primary objective is to define the PFS difference between Tie2-defined vascular responders and Tie2-defined vascular non-responders in patients receiving bevacizumab for high-risk Ovarian Cancer. Secondary objectives include defining the relationship between Tie2-defined vascular progression and disease progression assessed according to RECIST 1.1 criteria and assessing the impact of PARPi on the plasma concentration of Tie2 and, therefore, the decision-making utility of Tie2 as a vascular response biomarker for bevacizumab during combined bevacizumab-PARPi maintenance. Discussion: There is an urgent need to establish a test that tells patients and their doctors when VEGFi are working and when they stop working. The data generated from this study will be used to design a second trial aiming to prove conclusively the value of the Tie2 test. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04523116. Registered on 21 Aug 2020