904 research outputs found
The World of UCL
From its foundation in 1826, UCL embraced a progressive and pioneering spirit. It was the first university in England to admit students regardless of religion and made higher education affordable and accessible to a much broader section of society. It was also effectively the first university to welcome women on equal terms with men. From the outset UCL showed a commitment to innovative ideas and new methods of teaching and research.
This book charts the history of UCL from 1826 through to the present day, highlighting its many contributions to society in Britain and around the world. It covers the expansion of the university through the growth in student numbers and institutional mergers. It documents shifts in governance throughout the years and the changing social and economic context in which UCL operated, including challenging periods of reconstruction after two World Wars.
Today UCL is one of the powerhouses of research and teaching, and a truly global university. It is currently seventh in the QS World University Rankings. This completely revised and updated edition features a new chapter based on interviews with key individuals at UCL. It comes at a time of ambitious development for UCL with the establishment of an entirely new campus in East London, UCL East, and Provost Michael Arthurâs âUCL 2034â strategy which aims to secure the universityâs long-term future and commits UCL to delivering global impact
Using video in childbirth research: Ethical approval challenges
© The Author(s) 2015. Background: Conducting video-research in birth settings raises challenges for ethics review boards to view birthing women and research-midwives as capable, autonomous decision-makers. Aim: This study aimed to gain an understanding of how the ethical approval process was experienced and to chronicle the perceived risks and benefits. Research design: The Birth Unit Design project was a 2012 Australian ethnographic study that used video recording to investigate the physical design features in the hospital birthing space that might influence both verbal and non-verbal communication and the experiences of childbearing women, midwives and supporters. Participants and research context: Six women, 11 midwives and 11 childbirth supporters were filmed during the womenâs labours in hospital birth units and interviewed 6 weeks later. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by an Australian Health Research Ethics Committee after a protracted process of negotiation. Findings: The ethics committee was influenced by a traditional view of research as based on scientific experiments resulting in a poor understanding of video-ethnographic research, a paradigmatic view of the politics and practicalities of modern childbirth processes, a desire to protect institutions from litigation, and what we perceived as a paternalistic approach towards protecting participants, one that was at odds with our aim to facilitate situations in which women could make flexible, autonomous decisions about how they might engage with the research process. Discussion: The perceived need for protection was overly burdensome and against the wishes of the participants themselves; ultimately, this limited the capacity of the study to improve care for women and babies. Conclusion: Recommendations are offered for those involved in ethical approval processes for qualitative research in childbirth settings. The complexity of issues within childbirth settings, as in most modern healthcare settings, should be analysed using a variety of research approaches, beyond efficacy-style randomised controlled trials, to expand and improve practice-based results
Methodological insights from a study using video-ethnography to conduct interdisciplinary research in the study of birth unit design
© eContent Management Pty Ltd. Little is known about how the physical design of a birthing unit can influence the experiences of labour and birth for women, their supporters and midwives. We proposed that an interdisciplinary approach (disciplines of midwifery, architecture, design, communication and public health) was likely to be the most effective way to better understand the complexities and interactions of design, behaviour, communication and experiences. In this methodological paper we aim to provide a roadmap that other researchers may find helpful when considering the use of video as a data collection technique, especially in the study of the powerful and intimate setting of childbirth. The paper also outlines our process for engaging both researchers and participants in reviewing video footage with the aim to contribute multiple perspectives to the analysis process
InterProScan: protein domains identifier
InterProScan [E. M. Zdobnov and R. Apweiler (2001) Bioinformatics, 17, 847â848] is a tool that combines different protein signature recognition methods from the InterPro [N. J. Mulder, R. Apweiler, T. K. Attwood, A. Bairoch, A. Bateman, D. Binns, P. Bradley, P. Bork, P. Bucher, L. Cerutti et al. (2005) Nucleic Acids Res., 33, D201âD205] consortium member databases into one resource. At the time of writing there are 10 distinct publicly available databases in the application. Protein as well as DNA sequences can be analysed. A web-based version is accessible for academic and commercial organizations from the EBI (). In addition, a standalone Perl version and a SOAP Web Service [J. Snell, D. Tidwell and P. Kulchenko (2001) Programming Web Services with SOAP, 1st edn. O'Reilly Publishers, Sebastopol, CA, ] are also available to the users. Various output formats are supported and include text tables, XML documents, as well as various graphs to help interpret the results
Symmetry relation for multifractal spectra at random critical points
Random critical points are generically characterized by multifractal
properties. In the field of Anderson localization, Mirlin, Fyodorov,
Mildenberger and Evers [Phys. Rev. Lett 97, 046803 (2006)] have proposed that
the singularity spectrum of eigenfunctions satisfies the exact
symmetry at any Anderson transition. In the
present paper, we analyse the physical origin of this symmetry in relation with
the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation relations of large deviation functions that
are well-known in the field of non-equilibrium dynamics: the multifractal
spectrum of the disordered model corresponds to the large deviation function of
the rescaling exponent along a renormalization trajectory
in the effective time . We conclude that the symmetry discovered on
the specific example of Anderson transitions should actually be satisfied at
many other random critical points after an appropriate translation. For
many-body random phase transitions, where the critical properties are usually
analyzed in terms of the multifractal spectrum and of the moments
exponents X(N) of two-point correlation function [A. Ludwig, Nucl. Phys. B330,
639 (1990)], the symmetry becomes , or equivalently
for the anomalous parts .
We present numerical tests in favor of this symmetry for the 2D random
state Potts model with various .Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, v2=final versio
The source of Dalradian detritus in the Buchan Block, NE Scotland: Application of new tools to detrital datasets
Detrital zircons from four samples of upper Dalradian metasedimentary rocks from the Buchan Block in the NE Grampian Highlands of Scotland were analysed by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to establish their UâPb age and trace element composition. The analysed grains (magmatic cores) mainly yield concordant ages ranging from Neoproterozoic to Eoarchaean. Kernel density plots of the data show pronounced peaks in the late Mesoproterozoic, Palaeoproterozoic and Neoarchaean eras. The data are indistinguishable from detrital zircon age spectra from Dalradian rocks elsewhere, an interpretation supported by application of a non-parametric multidimensional scaling algorithm, and are consistent with a Laurentian source. Similar to existing studies from other Dalradian rocks, the age spectra from the Buchan Block reveal an increase in the relative proportion of older detritus with time, suggesting derivation from late Mesoproterozoic (Grenville) then Palaeoproterozoic orogens before widespread exposure and denudation of their Archaean basement rocks. Application of a novel approach to estimate the most likely time of radiogenic-Pb loss indicates that some detrital zircon grains were affected by element mobility around 470â450 Ma as a result of Grampian orogenesis
Diffusion in multiscale spacetimes
We study diffusion processes in anomalous spacetimes regarded as models of
quantum geometry. Several types of diffusion equation and their solutions are
presented and the associated stochastic processes are identified. These results
are partly based on the literature in probability and percolation theory but
their physical interpretation here is different since they apply to quantum
spacetime itself. The case of multiscale (in particular, multifractal)
spacetimes is then considered through a number of examples and the most general
spectral-dimension profile of multifractional spaces is constructed.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures. v2: discussion improved, typos corrected,
references adde
Universal Fluctuations in Correlated Systems
The probability density function (PDF) of a global measure in a large class
of highly correlated systems has been suggested to be of the same functional
form. Here, we identify the analytical form of the PDF of one such measure, the
order parameter in the low temperature phase of the 2D-XY model. We demonstrate
that this function describes the fluctuations of global quantities in other
correlated, equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems. These include a coupled
rotor model, Ising and percolation models, models of forest fires, sand-piles,
avalanches and granular media in a self organized critical state. We discuss
the relationship with both Gaussian and extremal statistics.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
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