Ontogenetic development in Late Pennsylvanian crinoid columnals and pluricolumnals

14 p., 4 pl., 4 fig.Supplement available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1808/3843http://paleo.ku.edu/contributions.htm

The wee country that rOAred : measuring, supporting and building trust in open access in Scotland through institutional repositories

The 2021 CWTS Leiden rankings show 24 UK institutions in the global Top 10 by percentage of Open Access publications and 25% of those institutions are in Scotland. This presentation will focus on the experience of some of these Scottish institutions and the growth of their institutional repository services as a demonstration of a wider national commitment to Open Access. It will also highlight the growth in Open Access demonstrated by the CWTS rankings and Scotland?s Open Access journey from 2004 to today. This will be done through brief case studies which showcase the experience and expertise of these institutions and the support of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL). It will also highlight the opportunities for national collaboration at a Scottish and UK level set against the context of updated UK open access funder policy and a national assessment exercise (REF2021) which was committed to Open Access.PostprintPublisher PDFPeer reviewe

The wee country that roared : supporting Open Access in Scotland through institutional repositories

The 2019 CWTS Leiden statistics show 3 Scottish institutions in the Top 10 and 4 in the top 15 in Open Access. This presentation will focus on brief case studies of Scottish institutions and the growth of their institutional repository services as a demonstration of a wider national commitment to Open Access. It will also highlight Scotland’s Open Access journey from 2004 to today through the experience and expertise of these institutions and the support of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL). This journey will include the conditions of their local environments, key drivers and a mix of approaches for success, choice of platform(s) and the challenges, at an institutional level in embedding open repositories. These case studies taken together will demonstrate the drive to ensure Scotland’s research is “Open for All” and further enable the global impact for research undertaken in Scottish institutions

Supplement to Echinodermata Articles 8-10

Supplement to Serial Numbers 45-47, Echinodermata, Articles 8-1

Morphological features of crinoid columns

30 p., 4 pl., 5 fig.Supplement available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1808/3843http://paleo.ku.edu/contributions.htm

The wee country that rOAred : measuring, supporting and building trust in open access in Scotland through institutional repositories

The 2021 CWTS Leiden rankings show 24 UK institutions in the global Top 10 by percentage of Open Access publications and 25% of those institutions are in Scotland. i This presentation will focus on the experience of some of these Scottish institutions and the growth of their institutional repository services as a demonstration of a wider national commitment to Open Access. It will also highlight the growth in Open Access demonstrated by the CWTS rankings and Scotland’s Open Access journey from 2004 to today. This will be done through brief case studies which showcase the experience and expertise of these institutions and the support of the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL). It will also highlight the opportunities for national collaboration at a Scottish and UK level set against the context of updated UK open access funder policy and a national assessment exercise (REF2021) which was committed to Open Access

The use of communal rearing of families and DNA pooling in aquaculture genomic selection schemes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Traditional family-based aquaculture breeding programs, in which families are kept separately until individual tagging and most traits are measured on the sibs of the candidates, are costly and require a high level of reproductive control. The most widely used alternative is a selection scheme, where families are reared communally and the candidates are selected based on their own individual measurements of the traits under selection. However, in the latter selection schemes, inclusion of new traits depends on the availability of non-invasive techniques to measure the traits on selection candidates. This is a severe limitation of these schemes, especially for disease resistance and fillet quality traits.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Here, we present a new selection scheme, which was validated using computer simulations comprising 100 families, among which 1, 10 or 100 were reared communally in groups. Pooling of the DNA from 2000, 20000 or 50000 test individuals with the highest and lowest phenotypes was used to estimate 500, 5000 or 10000 marker effects. One thousand or 2000 out of 20000 candidates were preselected for a growth-like trait. These pre-selected candidates were genotyped, and they were selected on their genome-wide breeding values for a trait that could not be measured on the candidates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A high accuracy of selection, i.e. 0.60-0.88 was obtained with 20000-50000 test individuals but it was reduced when only 2000 test individuals were used. This shows the importance of having large numbers of phenotypic records to accurately estimate marker effects. The accuracy of selection decreased with increasing numbers of families per group.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This new selection scheme combines communal rearing of families, pre-selection of candidates, DNA pooling and genomic selection and makes multi-trait selection possible in aquaculture selection schemes without keeping families separately until individual tagging is possible. The new scheme can also be used for other farmed species, for which the cost of genotyping test individuals may be high, e.g. if trait heritability is low.</p

A Realistic Roadmap to Formation Flying Space Interferometry

The ultimate astronomical observatory would be a formation flying space interferometer, combining sensitivity and stability with high angular resolution. The smallSat revolution offers a new and maturing prototyping platform for space interferometry and we put forward a realistic plan for achieving first stellar fringes in space by 2030

Investigation of hospital discharge cases and SARS-CoV-2 introduction into Lothian care homes

Background The first epidemic wave of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Scotland resulted in high case numbers and mortality in care homes. In Lothian, over one-third of care homes reported an outbreak, while there was limited testing of hospital patients discharged to care homes. Aim To investigate patients discharged from hospitals as a source of SARS-CoV-2 introduction into care homes during the first epidemic wave. Methods A clinical review was performed for all patients discharges from hospitals to care homes from 1st March 2020 to 31st May 2020. Episodes were ruled out based on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) test history, clinical assessment at discharge, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data and an infectious period of 14 days. Clinical samples were processed for WGS, and consensus genomes generated were used for analysis using Cluster Investigation and Virus Epidemiological Tool software. Patient timelines were obtained using electronic hospital records. Findings In total, 787 patients discharged from hospitals to care homes were identified. Of these, 776 (99%) were ruled out for subsequent introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into care homes. However, for 10 episodes, the results were inconclusive as there was low genomic diversity in consensus genomes or no sequencing data were available. Only one discharge episode had a genomic, time and location link to positive cases during hospital admission, leading to 10 positive cases in their care home. Conclusion The majority of patients discharged from hospitals were ruled out for introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into care homes, highlighting the importance of screening all new admissions when faced with a novel emerging virus and no available vaccine

SARS-CoV-2 Omicron is an immune escape variant with an altered cell entry pathway

Vaccines based on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 are a cornerstone of the public health response to COVID-19. The emergence of hypermutated, increasingly transmissible variants of concern (VOCs) threaten this strategy. Omicron (B.1.1.529), the fifth VOC to be described, harbours multiple amino acid mutations in spike, half of which lie within the receptor-binding domain. Here we demonstrate substantial evasion of neutralization by Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants in vitro using sera from individuals vaccinated with ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273. These data were mirrored by a substantial reduction in real-world vaccine effectiveness that was partially restored by booster vaccination. The Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 did not induce cell syncytia in vitro and favoured a TMPRSS2-independent endosomal entry pathway, these phenotypes mapping to distinct regions of the spike protein. Impaired cell fusion was determined by the receptor-binding domain, while endosomal entry mapped to the S2 domain. Such marked changes in antigenicity and replicative biology may underlie the rapid global spread and altered pathogenicity of the Omicron variant