A period of calm in Scottish seas: a comprehensive study of ΔR values for the northern British Isles coast and the consequent implications for archaeology and oceanography

The Marine Radiocarbon Reservoir Effect (MRE) is a 14C age offset between contemporaneous marine- and terrestrially-derived carbon. In Northern Hemisphere surface waters it is of the order of 400 years but temporal and spatial deviations, known as ΔR, occur. This study provides a comprehensive dataset of 21 ΔR and MRE values for the east coast of Scotland and 21 recalculated values for the west coast of Scotland and Ireland, for the period c. 3500 BC to 1450 AD. They are presented as mean, site-specific ΔR and MRE values, together with their associated uncertainties, calculated as standard errors for predicted values. The ΔR values range from -320 ± 35 to +150 ± 28 14C years and show no spatial or temporal trends. The MRE values range from 59 ± 40 to 531 ± 26, show an almost identical distribution pattern to the ΔR values and again show no spatial or temporal trends. Results show that ΔR values calculated for a single site using statistically indistinguishable groups of terrestrial and marine radiocarbon age measurements can produce variability of up to 225 14C years. ΔR is an important factor in the accurate calibration of samples containing marine-derived carbon for archaeological interpretation but is often also used as an indicator of changes in 14C specific activity of the oceans, and therefore a proxy for changes in ocean circulation and/or climate. Using the methods outlined in this paper, it is apparent that ΔR values for the northern part of the British Isles have been relatively stable, within our ability to quantify non-random variation in the data. The fact that significant climatic shifts have been recorded during this time, yet these are not visible in the ΔR data, presents a cautionary tale regarding the use of ΔR to infer large-scale oceanographic or climatic changes. Upon the exclusion of 5 outliers from the 42 values, the remaining ΔR values are statistically indistinguishable from one another and range from -142 ± 61 to +40 ± 47 14C years. 34 of these values are from Scottish archaeological sites and can be combined to produce a mean value for Scotland of -47 ± 52 14C years for the period 3500 BC to 1450 AD, to be used only in the absence of site- and period-specific data

Adsorbents for the sequestration of the Pimelea toxin, simplexin

Pimelea poisoning affects cattle grazing arid rangelands of Australia, has no known remedy and significant outbreaks can cost the industry $50 million per annum. Poisoning is attributable to consumption of native Pimelea plants containing the toxin simplexin. Charcoal, bentonite and other adsorbents are currently used by the livestock industry to mitigate the effects of mycotoxins. The efficacy of such adsorbents to mitigate Pimelea poisoning warrants investigation. Through a series of in vitro experiments, different adsorbents were evaluated for their effectiveness to bind simplexin using a simple single concentration, dispersive adsorbent rapid screening method. Initial experiments were conducted in a rumen fluid based medium, with increasing quantities of each adsorbent: sodium bentonite (Trufeed®, Sibelco Australia), biochar (Nutralick®Australia) and Elitox® (Impextraco, Belgium). Data showed the unbound concentration of simplexin decreased with increasing quantities of each adsorbent tested. Sodium bentonite performed best, removing ~95% simplexin at 12 mg/mL. A second experiment using a single amount of adsorbent included two additional adsorbents: calcium bentonite (Bentonite Resources, Australia) and a synthetic adsorbent (Waters, USA). The concentration of simplexin remaining in the solution after 1 h, the amount able to be desorbed off the adsorbent-toxin matrix with replacement fresh fluid, and the amount remaining bound to the adsorbent were measured. All samples containing an adsorbent were statistically different compared to the blank (p < 0.05), indicating some binding activity. Future work will explore the binding mechanisms and behaviour of the toxin-adsorbent complex in the lower gastrointestinal tract

Care home readiness: a rapid review and consensus workshops on how organisational context affects care home engagement with health care innovation

Summary The NHS Five-Year Forward view recognises that the NHS needs to do more to support older people living with frailty in care homes. This paper presents the findings from a rapid review and consensus events that explored how organisational context affects uptake of healthcare innovation in long term care settings. Care home managers and front line staff, care home researchers, NHS commissioners and NHS practitioners participated in the workshops. The review found that uptake is likely to be better when contextual factors are addressed. Leadership and care home culture were important but there was a limited consensus about how to identify this or, for example, what kind of leadership made a difference. A few studies highlighted the importance of making sure that the priorities of care home and health care practitioners were aligned and establishing that care home staff had the resources and time to implement the change. Workshop participants agreed that the different contextual factors discussed in the literature were important and resonated with their experience. NHS services and practitioners had not however, structured their work with care homes to take these factors into account. Also discussed was the need to consider if NHS services understood how to work with care homes. In deciding how and when to allocate resources to care homes to support new initiatives, the NHS needs to consider carefully the organisational contexts and assess them appropriately. Based on the combined findings we suggest ten key questions for commissioners and service providers working with care home providers. Ideally these questions can be used prior to working with care homes. They can also help to structure reviews of uptake of innovations to enhance health in care homes. 1. Does this intervention align with care home priorities? Or are there other potential interventions that care homes identify as more pressing? 2. What evidence is there of senior management interest and enthusiasm for this intervention at organisation & unit level? Are they willing and able on a daily basis to take a leadership role in supporting the proposed change? 3. Do care home staff have enough “slack and flexibility” to accommodate the change into their current workload, is this recognised as core to their work? 4. How is change discussed (formally and informally) in the care home setting? Who needs to be involved in decision-making about what is being proposed and how it is implemented? 5. What are the recent changes or health related projects this care home has been involved with? 6. Is there a champion in both the care home and in the linked NHS service with protected time to help facilitate change? 7. What are the pre-existing working relationships between NHS services and care home staff and networks of care and support around the care home? ( e.g. GPs, visiting specialists, links with local hospital) 8. Could the intervention appear judgemental by signalling in a negative way that the care home needs to change? 9. How well do existing care home training programmes and work schedules fit with what is proposed? 10. Will care home staff have to collect and enter new data or is it held in existing systems? The report concludes by suggesting some strategies that might support how NHS practitioners and care home staff address their capacity and readiness to work together

OvMark: a user-friendly system for the identification of prognostic biomarkers in publically available ovarian cancer gene expression datasets

Background: Ovarian cancer has the lowest survival rate of all gynaecologic cancers and is characterised by a lack of early symptoms and frequent late stage diagnosis. There is a paucity of robust molecular markers that are independent of and complementary to clinical parameters such as disease stage and tumour grade. METHODS: We have developed a user-friendly, web-based system to evaluate the association of genes/miRNAs with outcome in ovarian cancer. The OvMark algorithm combines data from multiple microarray platforms (including probesets targeting miRNAs) and correlates them with clinical parameters (e.g. tumour grade, stage) and outcomes (disease free survival (DFS), overall survival). In total, OvMark combines 14 datasets from 7 different array platforms measuring the expression of ~17,000 genes and 341 miRNAs across 2,129 ovarian cancer samples. RESULTS: To demonstrate the utility of the system we confirmed the prognostic ability of 14 genes and 2 miRNAs known to play a role in ovarian cancer. Of these genes, CXCL12 was the most significant predictor of DFS (HR = 1.42, p-value = 2.42x10-6). Surprisingly, those genes found to have the greatest correlation with outcome have not been heavily studied in ovarian cancer, or in some cases in any cancer. For instance, the three genes with the greatest association with survival are SNAI3, VWA3A and DNAH12. CONCLUSIONS/IMPACT: OvMark is a powerful tool for examining putative gene/miRNA prognostic biomarkers in ovarian cancer (available at http://glados.ucd.ie/OvMark/index.html). The impact of this tool will be in the preliminary assessment of putative biomarkers in ovarian cancer, particularly for research groups with limited bioinformatics facilities

Brewing of filter coffee

We report progress on mathematical modelling of coffee grounds in a drip filter coffee machine. The report focuses on the evolution of the shape of the bed of coffee grounds during extraction with some work also carried out on the chemistry of extraction. This work was sponsored by Philips who are interested in understanding an observed correlation between the final shape of the coffee grounds and the quality of the coffee. We used experimental data gathered by Philips and ourselves to identify regimes in the coffee brewing process and relevant regions of parameter space. Our work makes it clear that a number of separate processes define the shape of the coffee bed depending on the values of the parameters involved e.g. the size of the grains and the speed of fluid flow during extraction. We began work on constructing mathematical models of the redistribution of the coffee grounds specialised to each region and on a model of extraction. A variety of analytic and numerical tools were used. Furthermore our research has progressed far enough to allow us to begin to exploit connections between this problem and other areas of science, in particular the areas of sedimentology and geomorphology, where the processes we have observed in coffee brewing have been studied

Compact Hyperbolic Extra Dimensions: Branes, Kaluza-Klein Modes and Cosmology

We reconsider theories with low gravitational (or string) scale M_* where Newton's constant is generated via new large-volume spatial dimensions, while Standard Model states are localized to a 3-brane. Utilizing compact hyperbolic manifolds (CHM's) we show that the spectrum of Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes is radically altered. This allows an early universe cosmology with normal evolution up to substantial temperatures, and completely negates the constraints on M_* arising from astrophysics. Furthermore, an exponential hierarchy between the usual Planck scale and the true fundamental scale of physics can emerge with only order unity coefficients. The linear size of the internal space remains small. The proposal has striking testable signatures.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Near-infrared [Fe II] emission from supernova remnants and the supernova rate of starburst galaxies

In an effort to better calibrate the supernova rate of starburst galaxies as determined from near-IR [Fe II] features, we report on a [Fe II] 1.644 microns line-imaging survey of a sample of 42 optically-selected SNRs in M33. A wide range of [Fe II] luminosities are observed within our sample (from less than 6 to 695 L_sun). Our data suggest that the bright [Fe II] SNRs are entering the radiative phase and that the density of the local ISM largely controls the amount of [Fe II] emission. We derive the following relation between the [Fe II] 1.644 microns line luminosity of radiative SNRs and the electronic density of the postshock gas, n_e: L_[Fe II] (L_sun) ~ 1.1 n_e (cm^-3). We also find a correlation in our data between L_[Fe II] and the metallicity of the shock-heated gas, but the physical interpretation of this result remains inconclusive, as our data also show a correlation between the metallicity and n_e. The dramatically higher level of [Fe II] emission from SNRs in the central regions of starburst galaxies is most likely due to their dense environments, although metallicity effects might also be important. The typical [Fe II]-emitting lifetime of a SNR in the central regions of starburst galaxies is found to be of the order of 10^4 yr. On the basis of these results, we provide a new empirical relation allowing the determination of the current supernova rate of starburst galaxies from their integrated near-IR [Fe II] luminosity.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

On religion and cultural policy: notes on the Roman Catholic Church

This paper argues that religious institutions have largely been neglected within the study of cultural policy. This is attributed to the inherently secular tendency of most modern social sciences. Despite the predominance of the ‘secularisation paradigm’, the paper notes that religion continues to promote powerful attachments and denunciations. Arguments between the ‘new atheists’, in particular, Richard Dawkins, and their opponents are discussed, as is Habermas’s conciliatory encounter with Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). The paper then moves to a consideration of the Roman Catholic Church as an agent of cultural policy, whose overriding aim is the promotion of ‘Christian consciousness’. Discussion focuses on the contested meanings of this, with reference to (1) the deliberations of Vatican II and (2) the exercise of theological and cultural authority by the Pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). It is argued that these doctrinal disputes intersect with secular notions of social and cultural policy and warrant attention outside the specialist realm of theological discourse