Creating Space For Thinking Together

The purpose of this afternoon gathering was to celebrate the launch of Community Engagement: A Critical Guide for Practitioners. The event was well attended by a diverse group of practitioners, activists, academics and students, all bearing their own understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing contemporary community engagement, and all willing to listen to the thoughts and views of others. This Guide is a timely resource and makes an excellent contribution to the field of practice; it has the potential to play a major role in helping us unpack the challenge we face to foster the type of community engagement that can help us to address some of the inequalities within our communities. The Guide can be used in its entirety to encourage dialogue and discussion or as stand-alone sessions. As well as being a really useful resource for those working with community groups, it also challenges practitioners to bring a critical lens to the nature of their own practice

Nanoplasmonic Ecosystem Sensors

Rapid advances in design, materials, and fabrication technologies over the past decade have allowed scientists to construct novel sensors to map and investigate the marine environment in new ways. This paper investigates the potential of nanoplasmonic sensors to further improve our understanding of marine ecosystems by providing information on pressing physical, chemical, and biological ocean parameters

Age-related delay in information accrual for faces: Evidence from a parametric, single-trial EEG approach

Background: In this study, we quantified age-related changes in the time-course of face processing by means of an innovative single-trial ERP approach. Unlike analyses used in previous studies, our approach does not rely on peak measurements and can provide a more sensitive measure of processing delays. Young and old adults (mean ages 22 and 70 years) performed a non-speeded discrimination task between two faces. The phase spectrum of these faces was manipulated parametrically to create pictures that ranged between pure noise (0% phase information) and the undistorted signal (100% phase information), with five intermediate steps. Results: Behavioural 75% correct thresholds were on average lower, and maximum accuracy was higher, in younger than older observers. ERPs from each subject were entered into a single-trial general linear regression model to identify variations in neural activity statistically associated with changes in image structure. The earliest age-related ERP differences occurred in the time window of the N170. Older observers had a significantly stronger N170 in response to noise, but this age difference decreased with increasing phase information. Overall, manipulating image phase information had a greater effect on ERPs from younger observers, which was quantified using a hierarchical modelling approach. Importantly, visual activity was modulated by the same stimulus parameters in younger and older subjects. The fit of the model, indexed by R2, was computed at multiple post-stimulus time points. The time-course of the R2 function showed a significantly slower processing in older observers starting around 120 ms after stimulus onset. This age-related delay increased over time to reach a maximum around 190 ms, at which latency younger observers had around 50 ms time lead over older observers. Conclusion: Using a component-free ERP analysis that provides a precise timing of the visual system sensitivity to image structure, the current study demonstrates that older observers accumulate face information more slowly than younger subjects. Additionally, the N170 appears to be less face-sensitive in older observers

Using nanoplasmonic metasurfaces to construct miniaturised marine ecosystem sensors

This thesis investigates the potential for nanoplasmonic sensing technology to improve upon current marine environmental sensors. The significant advantage of this technology lies in its compact size and versatility. To realise the full potential of nanoplasmonic sensors, the possibility of directly measuring as many different essential ocean variables as possible is explored. Chapter one provides the necessary background information on the topics of marine environmental science and nanoplasmonic technology. The required methods used throughout this thesis are detailed in chapter two. The nanoplasmonic sensors in chapter three utilise bulk refractive index sensing to evaluate salinity of artificial and real seawater samples with a sensitivity of 126 nm/refractive index unit. In chapters four and five, with the addition of chemical modifications to the nanoplasmonic sensors, molecular sensing of the major oceanic anions and cations is achieved using a cross reactive sensing technique with an accuracy of 79.4% and 84.2% respectively across a naturally occurring concentration range. The ability to detect subtle changes in complex artificial seawater solutions is accomplished using different combinations of nanoplasmonic metasurfaces in chapter six. These subsets of nanoplasmonic metasurfaces are able to discriminate and identify complex anion and cation solutions with an accuracy of 93.8% and 95.8% respectively. The entire range of nanoplasmonic metasurfaces used throughout this thesis are then combined to be able to identify artificial climate change extreme seawater solutions. This enabled discrimination between seawater solutions with variations in both anions and cations to an accuracy of 92.6%. This array of nanoplasmonic metasurfaces goes on to identify and discriminate between real seawater samples taken from around St Andrews Bay. Using statistical analysis, the different sensor arrays can predict the complex solution with an accuracy above 85.0%. Chapter seven elaborates on the development of a portable nanoplasmonic detection system that can readily measure changes in salt concentration within solutions using a microfluidic channel. This paves the way for a new generation of portable and powerful environmental sensors

Nanoplasmonic ecosystem sensors

Rapid advances in design, materials, and fabrication technologies over the past decade have allowed scientists to construct novel sensors to map and investigate the marine environment in new ways. This paper investigates the potential of nanoplasmonic sensors to further improve our understanding of marine ecosystems by providing information on pressing physical, chemical, and biological ocean parameters.</p

Recent Advances in Stereochemistry Reveal Classification Shortcomings

We contend that the Polytope model utilized by IUPAC to specify stereoisomerism for species MLn with n > 3 should be universally applied. Such application recently led to the synthesis of isolable compounds displaying a new fundamental form of isomerism, akamptisomerism, pertinent to ML2 stereocenters. We review 443807 molecules that could be classified as akamptisomers. Some akamptisomers are described as being “wrong” by existing IUPAC rules, hindering molecular conception. For many classes of medicinal and technology-related molecules, software packages like ChemDraw mostly do not handle akamptisomers correctly, databases such as CAS provide 2D representations inconsistent with those presented in the original publications, and often the akamptisomeric identity of compounds remains unknown. These features hinder both human and machine-learning approaches to chemical design. Further, the existence of previously unrecognized isomeric forms has broad implications for patents and pharmaceutical-registration requirements. Hence, the immediate re-examination of stereochemistry is demanded

Stereodifferentiation and base-pair selectivity in the binding of Δ and Λ cationic lanthanide complexes to [(CG) \u3c inf\u3e 6 ] \u3c inf\u3e 2 , [(AT) \u3c inf\u3e 6 ] \u3c inf\u3e 2 and CT-DNA

Metal- and ligand-based luminescence, absorption and circular dichroism difference spectroscopy signal the extent and nature of binding of enantiopure Δ and Λ cationic lanthanide complexes to [(CG)6]2 and [(AT)6]2