Accelerated discovery of two crystal structure types in a complex inorganic phase field

The discovery of new materials is hampered by the lack of efficient approaches to the exploration of both the large number of possible elemental compositions for such materials, and of the candidate structures at each composition1. For example, the discovery of inorganic extended solid structures has relied on knowledge of crystal chemistry coupled with time-consuming materials synthesis with systematically varied elemental ratios2,3. Computational methods have been developed to guide synthesis by predicting structures at specific compositions4,5,6 and predicting compositions for known crystal structures7,8, with notable successes9,10. However, the challenge of finding qualitatively new, experimentally realizable compounds, with crystal structures where the unit cell and the atom positions within it differ from known structures, remains for compositionally complex systems. Many valuable properties arise from substitution into known crystal structures, but materials discovery using this approach alone risks both missing best-in-class performance and attempting design with incomplete knowledge8,11. Here we report the experimental discovery of two structure types by computational identification of the region of a complex inorganic phase field that contains them. This is achieved by computing probe structures that capture the chemical and structural diversity of the system and whose energies can be ranked against combinations of currently known materials. Subsequent experimental exploration of the lowest-energy regions of the computed phase diagram affords two materials with previously unreported crystal structures featuring unusual structural motifs. This approach will accelerate the systematic discovery of new materials in complex compositional spaces by efficiently guiding synthesis and enhancing the predictive power of the computational tools through expansion of the knowledge base underpinning them

Methods for assessing the regenerative responses of neural tissue

In order to establish novel therapeutic paradigms and advance the field of regenerative medicine, methods for their effective implementation as well as rigorous assessment of outcomes are critical. This is especially evident and challenging in the context of treating complex and devastating neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and ischemic stroke. Stem cell-based approaches offer great promise in addressing these conditions. Here, we demonstrate an approach for identifying factors that mobilize endogenous neural stem cells in the repair and recovery of the central nervous system of rodents, involving site-specific administration of growth factors that activate particular signal transduction pathways, and that allows for the assessment of outcome utilizing magnetic resonance imaging and immunohistochemistry

Factors influencing decision-making by social care and health sector professionals in cases of elder financial abuse

This study aimed to identify the factors that have the greatest influence on UK social care and health sector professionals’ certainty that an older person is being financially abused, their likelihood of intervention, and the type of action most likely to be taken. A factorial survey approach, applying a fractional factorial design, was used. Health and social care professionals (n=152) viewed a single sample of 50 elder financial abuse case vignettes; the vignettes contained seven pieces of information (factors). Following multiple regression analysis, incremental F tests were used to compare the impact of each factor on judgements. Factors that had a significant influence on judgements of certainty that financial abuse was occurring included the older person’s mental capacity and the nature of the financial problem suspected. Mental capacity accounted for more than twice the variance in likelihood of action than the type of financial problem. Participants from social care were more likely to act and chose more actions compared to health sector participants. The results are discussed in relation to a bystander intervention model. The impact of the older person’s mental capacity on decision-making suggests the need for training to ensure action is also taken in cases where older people have full mental capacity and are being abused. Training also needs to highlight the more subtle types of financial abuse, the types that appear not to lead to certainty or action.This research was funded by the UK Cross Council, New Dynamics of Ageing programme (Economic and Social Research Council administered) [Grant No. RES-352-25-0026 to Mary Gilhooly (PI)]

Small corpora and pragmatics

Corpus linguistics is more often than not associated with large-scale collections of spoken or written data, representing genres, varieties or contexts of use. Many of these have been successfully exploited for pragmatics research, producing generalised findings that hold across a range of texts. However, it may be argued that rather than stopping at generalised findings that note the frequency of pragmatic phenomena in large corpora, an important research agenda now foregrounds a focus on small corpora and local pragmatic patterns. This chapter will argue that smaller, carefully collected, context-specific corpora, both spoken and written, are of great import in pragmatics research. Many pragmatic features of language such as deixis or pragmatic markers play a fundamental role in communication, and, in these cases, are linguistically realised in the type of ‘small’ linguistic items that tend to be frequent in all corpora. Therefore, smaller corpora provide a platform for not only establishing the range and frequency of these items but the role of different genres or contexts in characterising their use. We will provide evidence for this in the form of two corpus case studies in order to illustrate how small corpora have created a practical and empirical route for the study of pragmatics, and how this synergy of small corpora and pragmatic research provides rich and contextualised finding