Professionalism and quality in European business courses:utilising research to enhance student learning and promote employability - a pan-European study

This..paper provides a comparative analysis of Quality Management and standards in four European countries, (the UK, Austria, Slovenia and Romania) and in doing so addresses the gap in academic knowledge about how the introduction and implementation of Quality Management Strategies can both facilitate and enhance student learning within Universities

Impact of the national rotavirus vaccination programme on acute gastroenteritis in England and associated costs averted.

BACKGROUND: Introduction of infant oral rotavirus vaccination in the UK in July 2013 has resulted in decreased hospitalisations and Emergency Department (ED) visits for acute gastroenteritis (AGE), for both adults and children. We investigated reductions in AGE incidence seen in primary care in the two years after vaccine introduction, and estimated the healthcare costs averted across healthcare settings in the first year of the vaccination programme. METHODS: We used primary care data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink and age-stratified time-series analyses to derive adjusted incidence rate ratios (IRRa) for AGE in the first two years of the post-vaccination era (July 2013-April 2015) compared to the pre-vaccination era (July 2008-June 2013). We estimated cases averted among children aged <5years in the first year of the vaccination programme by comparing observed numbers of AGE cases in 2013-2014 to numbers predicted from the time-series models. We then estimated the healthcare costs averted for general practice consultations, ED visits and hospitalisations. RESULTS: In general practice, AGE rates in infants (the target group for vaccination) decreased by 15% overall after vaccine introduction (IRRa=0.85; 95%CI=0.76-0.95), and by 41% in the months of historically high rotavirus circulation (IRRa=0.59; 95%CI=0.53-0.66). Rates also decreased in other young children and to a lesser degree in older individuals, indicating herd immunity. Across all three settings (general practice, EDs, and hospitalisations) an estimated 87,376 (95% prediction interval: 62,588-113,561) AGE visits by children aged <5years were averted in 2013-14, associated with an estimated £12.5million (9,209-16,198) reduction in healthcare costs. CONCLUSIONS: The marked decreases in the general practice AGE burden after rotavirus vaccine introduction mirror decreases seen in other UK healthcare settings. Overall, these decreases are associated with substantial averted healthcare costs

Integrated single- and two-photon light sheet microscopy using accelerating beams

The authors thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant EP/J01771/X) and the European Union project FAMOS (FP7 ICT, contract no. 317744) for funding. P.P. acknowledges funding by the Estonian Research Council (grants PUTJD8 and PUT369).We demonstrate the first light sheet microscope using propagation invariant, accelerating Airy beams that operates both in single- and two-photon modes. The use of the Airy beam permits us to develop an ultra compact, high resolution light sheet system without beam scanning. In two-photon mode, an increase in the field of view over the use of a standard Gaussian beam by a factor of six is demonstrated. This implementation for light sheet microscopy opens up new possibilities across a wide range of biomedical applications, especially for the study of neuronal processes.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Eigenvectors in the Superintegrable Model I: sl_2 Generators

In order to calculate correlation functions of the chiral Potts model, one only needs to study the eigenvectors of the superintegrable model. Here we start this study by looking for eigenvectors of the transfer matrix of the periodic tau_2(t)model which commutes with the chiral Potts transfer matrix. We show that the degeneracy of the eigenspace of tau_2(t) in the Q=0 sector is 2^r, with r=(N-1)L/N when the size of the transfer matrix L is a multiple of N. We introduce chiral Potts model operators, different from the more commonly used generators of quantum group U-tilde_q(sl-hat(2)). From these we can form the generators of a loop algebra L(sl(2)). For this algebra, we then use the roots of the Drinfeld polynomial to give new explicit expressions for the generators representing the loop algebra as the direct sum of r copies of the simple algebra sl(2).Comment: LaTeX 2E document, 11 pages, 1 eps figure, using iopart.cls with graphicx and iopams packages. v2: Appended text to title, added acknowledgments and made several minor corrections v3: Added reference, eliminated ambiguity, corrected a few misprint

Identities in the Superintegrable Chiral Potts Model

We present proofs for a number of identities that are needed to study the superintegrable chiral Potts model in the $Q\ne0$ sector.Comment: LaTeX 2E document, using iopart.cls with iopams packages. 11 pages, uses eufb10 and eurm10 fonts. Typeset twice! vs2: Two equations added. vs3: Introduction adde

Redox-neutral organocatalytic Mitsunobu reactions

Nucleophilic substitution reactions of alcohols are amongst the most fundamental and strategically important transformations in organic chemistry. For over half a century these reactions have been achieved using stoichiometric, and often hazardous, reagents to activate the otherwise unreactive alcohols. Here we demonstrate that a specially designed phosphine oxide promotes nucleophilic substitution reactions of primary and secondary alcohols within a redoxneutral catalysis manifold that produces water as the sole by-product. The scope of the catalytic coupling process encompasses a range of acidic pronucleophiles that allow stereospecific construction of carbon-oxygen and carbon-nitrogen bonds

Publishing and sharing multi-dimensional image data with OMERO

Imaging data are used in the life and biomedical sciences to measure the molecular and structural composition and dynamics of cells, tissues, and organisms. Datasets range in size from megabytes to terabytes and usually contain a combination of binary pixel data and metadata that describe the acquisition process and any derived results. The OMERO image data management platform allows users to securely share image datasets according to specific permissions levels: data can be held privately, shared with a set of colleagues, or made available via a public URL. Users control access by assigning data to specific Groups with defined membership and access rights. OMERO’s Permission system supports simple data sharing in a lab, collaborative data analysis, and even teaching environments. OMERO software is open source and released by the OME Consortium at www.openmicroscopy.org

Prevalence of disease related prion protein in anonymous tonsil specimens in Britain: cross sectional opportunistic survey

Objective To establish with improved accuracy the prevalence of disease related prion protein (PrPCJD) in the population of Britain and thereby guide a proportionate public health response to limit the threat of healthcare associated transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)

Maternal migraine and risk of pediatric cancers

Article describes how maternal migraine has been linked to adverse birth outcomes including low birth weight and preterm birth, as well as congenital anomalies in offspring. Authors used logistic regression to estimate the risk of childhood cancers associated with maternal migraine