RCUK Business Plan competition

Abstract: Sensory Design & Technology Ltd (SD&T) is seeking investment to develop and sell eScent® jewellery at a retailer in time for Christmas 2 012. The company mission is to enhance the ‘wellbeing’ of women. Women are having children later in life; they want to stay young, feel good and look good for a longer period of time and their spending power is at its greatest between the ages of 35-45. The target market is ‘wellbeing’ which has been on the increase in recent years. It is currently valued at £212 million in the UK and set to rise. There is increased media attention and consumer focus on environmentally friendly ‘eco’ products which are also pushing the growth of this market. This is increased by regulation to ensure product claims are valid due to fake ‘wellbeing’ claims. There are more than 8.5 million people in the UK who survive on as little as four hours of sleep a night. Women particularly find the juggling act of holding down a job and family life extremely challenging. Half of employed mothers reported sleep deprivation causing acute levels of stress and placing tremendous burden on marriages. Products to improve sleep grew by 10 per cent in 2009 and are worth £38 million in the UK. By 2014, sales of such products are expected to reach £45.3 million. This need is met by selling eScent®; scent dispensing jewellery that is solvent-free, reduces anxiety, improves sleep, rejuvenates the mind and is kinder to the skin. The way people use scent today in almost all applications is poorly targeted, inefficient and wasteful. eScent® is for everyday use; it is a high-tech product that is programmed to deliver a ‘wardrobe of fragrances’ to improve ‘wellbeing’, help relax and unwind. eScent® is fabricated from a built-in microfluidic device and delivers a personalised scent therapy experience, focussed solely for the user – day and night. It offers a patented, timed/controlled therapeutic scent dispenser which can also be placed on a bedside table, a child’s car seat or crib. The business model lies in SD&T designing the products, distributed initially by an exclusive launch at a retailer. The secondary market is for SD&T to sell replaceable cartridges as consumable products which are expected to be considerably greater than the primary market. At a later stage, the company will expand further into other market opportunities including medical, mobile phones, consumer products and apparel. The comp any would seek further investment from leading fashion designers to miniaturise eScent® and integrate within buttons to deliver their own signature perfumes. SD&T has an experienced management team with the relevant skills for this business in Fashion, Fragrance, Microfluidics and Biotechnology. The Chairman designate of the company is the former Chairman of the Fragrance Foundation. The company was founded by Dr Jenny Tillotson, a Senior Research Fellow in Fashion at Central Saint Martins and Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Dr Tillotson is acknowledged as a pioneer in the growing science and art of Scentsory Design®; computerised scent-output systems worn on the body for fashion and ‘wellbeing’ applications. She gained commercial experience working for a Wearable Technology company spinout from the MIT Media Lab

Establishment and application of a multiomics systems biology approach for cell culture process development and optimization

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The public and private marginal product of capital

Why doesn't capital flow to developing countries as predicted by the neoclassical model? What are the direction and degree of capital misallocation across nations? We revisit these questions by removing public capital from total capital to achieve a more accurate estimate of the marginal productivity of private capital. We calculate MPK schedules in a large sample of advanced and developing countries. Our main result is that, in terms of the Lucas paradox, private capital is allocated remarkably efficiently across nations. Tentative estimates of the marginal productivity of public capital suggest that the deadweight loss from public capital misallocation across countries can be much larger than the one from private capital

Accelerating inference for stochastic kinetic models

Stochastic kinetic models (SKMs) are increasingly used to account for the inherent stochasticity exhibited by interacting populations of species in areas such as epidemiology, population ecology and systems biology. Species numbers are modelled using a continuous-time stochastic process, and, depending on the application area of interest, this will typically take the form of a Markov jump process or an It\^o diffusion process. Widespread use of these models is typically precluded by their computational complexity. In particular, performing exact fully Bayesian inference in either modelling framework is challenging due to the intractability of the observed data likelihood, necessitating the use of computationally intensive techniques such as particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (particle MCMC). It is proposed to increase the computational and statistical efficiency of this approach by leveraging the tractability of an inexpensive surrogate derived directly from either the jump or diffusion process. The surrogate is used in three ways: in the design of a gradient-based parameter proposal, to construct an appropriate bridge and in the first stage of a delayed-acceptance step. The resulting approach, which exactly targets the posterior of interest, offers substantial gains in efficiency over a standard particle MCMC implementation.Comment: 29 page

Civil society, the domestic realm, history and democracy in South Africa

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Democracy, Popular Precedents, Practice and Culture, 13-15 July, 1994

NASAs Land, Atmosphere near Real-Time Capability for EOS ( LANCE) @10 Years: A Look Back at Its Origins in MODIS Terra

This poster looks back on how the first near real-time (NRT) images from MODIS Terra provided the impetus for the creation of the Land, Atmosphere Near Real-Time Capability for EOS (LANCE) a near real-time (NRT) capability that currently serves low latency products for monitoring air quality, floods, duststorms, snow cover and agriculture, as well as for public education and outreach to users in over 160 countries

University of Waikato radiocarbon dates I

This date list reports on samples submitted by University of Waikato researchers and assayed in the Waikato laboratory mainly between 1979 and 1985. Most dates reported here relate to the deposition of distal airfall tephras in lakes and peats in central and northern North Island, New Zealand. Most of the tephras have been correlated with named eruptive units elsewhere using diagnostic mineralogic and chemical criteria, together with stratigraphic and age relationships.The dates listed in Section 2 were obtained on carbonaceous matter associated with the Hinuera Formation, an extensive low-angle fan of volcanogenic alluvium that was deposited in several phases in the Waikato and Hauraki basins before and during the last stale (isotope stage 2) of the last glaciation. In Section 3, the samples comprise materials associated with peat bog growth or local sedimentation that postdates the deposition of the Hinuera Formation, ie, < ca 15,000 BP. Samples in both Sections 2 and 3 are grouped into series according to geographic location, and, where appropriate, arranged stratigraphically with uppermost samples shown first

Using theory to explore facilitators and barriers to delayed prescribing in Australia: a qualitative study using the Theoretical Domains Framework and the Behaviour Change Wheel

Background: Delayed antibiotic prescribing reduces antibiotic use for acute respiratory infections in trials in general practice, but the uptake in clinical practice is low. The aim of the study was to identify facilitators and barriers to general practitioners' (GPs') use of delayed prescribing and to gain pharmacists' and the public's views about delayed prescribing in Australia. Methods: This study used the Theoretical Domains Framework and the Behaviour Change Wheel to explore facilitators and barriers to delayed prescribing in Australia. Forty-three semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with general practitioners, pharmacists and patients were conducted. Responses were coded into domains of the Theoretical Domains Framework, and specific criteria from the Behaviour Change Wheel were used to identify which domains were relevant to increasing the use of delayed prescribing by GPs. Results: The interviews revealed nine key domains that influence GPs' use of delayed prescribing: knowledge; cognitive and interpersonal skills; memory, attention and decision-making processes; optimism; beliefs about consequences; intentions; goals; emotion; and social influences: GPs knew about delayed prescribing; however, they did not use it consistently, preferring to bring patients back for review and only using it with patients in a highly selective way. Pharmacists would support GPs and the public in delayed prescribing but would fill the prescription if people insisted. The public said they would delay taking their antibiotics if asked by their GP and given the right information on managing symptoms and when to take antibiotics. Conclusions: Using a theory-driven approach, we identified nine key domains that influence GPs' willingness to provide a delayed prescription to patients with an acute respiratory infection presenting to general practice. These data can be used to develop a structured intervention to change this behaviour and thus reduce antibiotic use for acute respiratory infections in general practice

Establishment reality vs maintenance reality: how real is real enough?

Remote and virtual laboratories are increasingly prevalent alternatives to the face-to-face laboratory experience; however, the question of their learning outcomes is yet to be fully investigated. There are many presumptions regarding the effectiveness of these approaches; foremost amongst these assumptions is that the experience must be 'real' to be effective. Embedding reality into a remote or virtual laboratory can be an expensive and time-consuming task. Significant efforts have been expended to create 3D VRML models of laboratory equipment, allowing students to pan, zoom and tilt their perspective as they see fit. Multiple camera angles have been embedded into remote interfaces to provide an increased sense of 'realness'. This paper draws upon the literature in the field to show that the necessary threshold for reality varies depending upon how the students are interacting with the equipment. There is one threshold for when they first interact - the establishment reality - which allows the students to familiarise themselves with the laboratory equipment, and to build their mental model of the experience. There is, however, a second, lower, threshold - the maintenance reality - that is necessary for the students' ongoing operation of the equipment. Students' usage patterns rely upon a limited subset of the available functionality, focusing upon only some aspects of the reality that has been originally established. The two threshold model presented in this paper provides a new insight for the development of virtual laboratories in the future

Managing Sustainable Data Infrastructures: The Gestalt of EOSDIS

EOSDIS epitomizes a System of Systems, whose many varied and distributed parts are integrated into a single, highly functional organized science data system. A distributed architecture was adopted to ensure discipline-specific support for the science data, while also leveraging standards and establishing policies and tools to enable interdisciplinary research, and analysis across multiple scientific instruments. The EOSDIS is composed of system elements such as geographically distributed archive centers used to manage the stewardship of data. The infrastructure consists of underlying capabilities connections that enable the primary system elements to function together. For example, one key infrastructure component is the common metadata repository, which enables discovery of all data within the EOSDIS system. EOSDIS employs processes and standards to ensure partners can work together effectively, and provide coherent services to users