Social Enterprise Investment Fund evaluation - phase one: scoping, review and methodology development.

The £100m Social Enterprise Investment Fund (SEIF) aims to stimulate and increase the numbers of Social Enterprises (SEs) that are involved in the delivery of health and social care services via grants, loans and equity investments. The SEIF seeks to generate sufficient returns on its investments to become self-sustaining over the initial fund period (2007-2011). The evaluation of the SEIF aims to: - assess the effectiveness of the Fund in supporting SEs; - identify the impact of the SEIF including some evidence of the types of social benefits produced through the activities of SEs; and - identify lessons and make recommendations for the future improvement of the SEIF and the role of SEs in the delivery of health and social care services. The objectives of this component of the research have been to: - explore stakeholder expectations for SEIF and establish a common view of how the success of SEIF should be measured, and the mechanisms through which the SEIF is expected to achieve its outcomes; - refine the study design in the light of the programme theories which have surfaced

Parameter inference in mechanistic models of cellular regulation and signalling pathways using gradient matching

A challenging problem in systems biology is parameter inference in mechanistic models of signalling pathways. In the present article, we investigate an approach based on gradient matching and nonparametric Bayesian modelling with Gaussian processes. We evaluate the method on two biological systems, related to the regulation of PIF4/5 in Arabidopsis thaliana, and the JAK/STAT signal transduction pathway

Low loss Ge-on-Si waveguides operating in the 8–14 µm atmospheric transmission window

Germanium-on-silicon waveguides were modeled, fabricated and characterized at wavelengths ranging from 7.5 to 11 µm. Measured waveguide losses are below 5 dB/cm for both TE and TM polarization and reach values of ∼ 1 dB/cm for ≥ 10 µm wavelengths for the TE polarization. This work demonstrates experimentally for the first time that Ge-on-Si is a viable waveguide platform for sensing in the molecular fingerprint spectral region. Detailed modeling and analysis is presented to identify the various loss contributions, showing that with practical techniques losses below 1 dB/cm could be achieved across the full measurement range

Gestational and lactational exposure of rats to xenoestrogens results in reduced testicular size and sperm production

EHP is a publication of the U.S. government. Publication of EHP lies in the public domain and is therefore without copyright. Research articles from EHP may be used freely; however, articles from the News section of EHP may contain photographs or figures copyrighted by other commercial organizations and individuals that may not be used without obtaining prior approval from both the EHP editors and the holder of the copyright. Use of any materials published in EHP should be acknowledged (for example, "Reproduced with permission from Environmental Health Perspectives") and a reference provided for the article from which the material was reproduced.This study assessed whether exposure of male rats to two estrogenic, environmental chemicals, 4-octylphenol (OP) and butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP) during gestation or during the first 21 days of postnatal life, affected testicular size or spermatogenesis in adulthood (90-95 days of age). Chemicals were administered via the drinking water or concentrations of 10-1000 micrograms/l (OP) or 1000 micrograms/l (BBP), diethylstilbestrol (DES; 100 micrograms/l) and an octylphenol polyethoxylate (OPP; 1000 micrograms/l), which is a weak estrogen or nonestrogenic in vitro, were administered as presumptive positive and negative controls, respectively. Controls received the vehicle (ethanol) in tap water. In study 1, rats were treated from days 1-22 after births in studies 2 and 3, the mothers were treated for approximately 8-9 weeks, spanning a 2-week period before mating throughout gestation and 22 days after giving birth. With the exception of DES, treatment generally had no major adverse effect or body weight: in most instances, treated animals were heavier than controls at day 22 and at days 90-95. Exposure to OP, OPP, or BBP at a concentration of 1000 micrograms/1 resulted in a small (5-13%) but significant (p < 0.01 or p < 0.0001) reduction in mean testicular size in studies 2 and 3, an effect that was still evident when testicular weight was expressed relative to body, weight or kidney weight. The effect of OPP is attributed to its metabolism in vivo to OP. DES exposure caused similar reductions in testicular size but also caused reductions in body weight, kidney weight, and litter size. Ventral prostate weight was reduced significantly in DES-treated rats and to minor extent in OP-treated rats. Comparable but more minor effects of treatment with DES or OP on testicular size were observed in study 1. None of the treatments had any adverse effect on testicular morphology or on the cross-sectional area of the lumen or seminiferous epithelium at stages VII-VIII of the spermatogenic cycle, but DES, OP, and BBP caused reductions of 10-21% (p < 0.05 to p < 0.001) in daily sperm production. Humans are exposed to phthalates, such as BBP, and to alkylphenol polyethoxylates, such as OP, but to what extent is unknown. More detailed studies are warranted to assess the possible risk to the development of the human testis from exposure to these and other environmental estrogens

The cumulative carbon budget and its implications

The cumulative impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on climate has potentially profound economic and policy implications. It implies that the long-term climate change mitigation challenge should be reframed as a stock problem, while the overwhelming majority of climate policies continue to focus on the flow of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2030 or 2050. An obstacle, however, to the use of a cumulative carbon budget in policy is uncertainty in the size of this budget consistent with any specific temperature-based goal such as limiting warming to 2°C. This arises from uncertainty in the climate response to CO2 emissions, which is relatively tractable, and uncertainty in future warming due to non-CO2 drivers, which is less so. We argue these uncertainties are best addressed through policies that recognize the need to reduce net global CO2 emissions to zero to stabilize global temperatures but adapt automatically to evolving climate change. Adaptive policies would fit well within the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

The potential risk of communication media in conveying critical information in the aircraft maintenance organisation : A case study

Thank you to Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Aviation Technology and University of Aberdeen, Scotland for the strong support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD