Perspectives on innovation within medium-sized firms in Wales

The Welsh economy is heading towards a post-Brexit future with historically lower levels of productivity continuing to leave the country lagging behind the UK average (Huggins and Williams, 2011; Welsh Government, 2017). An understanding of how new models of innovation are constructed and developed are then particularly important for policy makers and academia in Wales. As noted by Baughan (2015), innovation accounts for 25-50% of labour productivity growth

Activities of organic farmers succeeding in reducing lameness in dairy cows

Sixty-seven organic producers were among 189 dairy farmers completing the “Healthy Feet Project” in the UK. This aimed to reduce lameness in dairy herds by implementing existing knowledge. Participants received input at two levels: monitoring alone, or monitoring with extra support through a single veterinary advisory visit, annual visits from a trained non-veterinary facilitator and materials and contacts to encourage change. On average lameness on organic farms reduced by 12 percentage points over the three year period. On the farms achieving the greatest reduction,the most common changes were improvements to tracks and cubicle comfort, and more frequent footbathing or foot trimming. Practices to improve foot cleanliness, such as more frequent removal of slurry, were less often adopted. Further progress might be achieved by improvements of foot hygiene. Several farms with low lameness that reduced prevalence further improved their handling facilities and treated cows more promptly

Lgr5 stem cells in epithelial self-renewal and cancer of the stmach

The 3rd International Symposium on Carcinogenic Spiral & International Symposium on Tumor Biology in Kanazawa, [DATE]: January 24(Thu)-25(Fri),2013, [Place]:Kanazawa Excel Hotel Tpkyu, Kanazawa, Japan, [Organizers]:Infection/Inflammation-Assisted Acceleration of the Carcinogenic Spiral and its Alteration through Vector Conversion of the Host Response to Tumors / Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, a MEXT Grant-in Aid Projec

Investigating visual strategies during the recognition of static and dynamic facial affect in TBI and control cohorts

bjectives: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) often precipitates socio-emotional problems which impinge on social relationships. Although socio-emotional impairments are debilitating the mechanisms underpinning these are poorly understood. Social interactions are dynamic yet research frequently employs static assessments. We investigated eye scan patterns of TBI and controls viewing static/dynamic facial expressions. Design: Factorial analysis investigated correct response, reaction time, fixation duration/count to areas of interest (eyes, nose and mouth) across six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, sadness and surprise). Methods: 17 TBI participants were recruited from the NHS and age/gender matched controls were recruited using stratified opportunity sampling. Images from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) were presented on a Tobii T120 Eye Tracker screen. Multivariate and correlational methods were used to analyse data. Static Results: Controls displayed greater fixation durations; counts to eyes were more accurate and quicker identifying emotions than TBI participants. The TBI group focused more on the nose compared to controls. Higher scores on the ADFES correlated with quicker responses across all emotions for all participants and positive relationships between empathy, emotion recognition and fixation patterns were revealed. Gaze-patterns for the six emotions differed slightly between the groups although fearful faces induced more/longer fixations and happy faces the least/shortest fixations. Dynamic Results: Controls were more accurate at identifying emotions than the TBI group but no group differences were found for gaze-patterns. Happy faces induced more/longer fixations and sad faces the least/shortest fixations. A positive correlation between correct scores on the ADFES and empathy scores across all emotions for all participants was established. Conclusions: Irregular gaze-patterns could underpin some socio-emotional problems after TBI, highlighting the potential for innovative rehabilitation approaches. Visual strategies underlying the recognition of static/dynamic emotions may differ. The key limitation was the small sample size which will hopefully be rectified in future wor

Developing a typology of the roles public contributors undertake to establish legitimacy: A longitudinal case study of patient and public involvement in a health network

Objective To identify how public contributors established their legitimacy in the functioning of a patient and public involvement programme at a health network. Design A longitudinal case study with three embedded units (projects) involving public contributors. Interviews (n=24), observations (n=27) and documentary data collection occurred over 16 months. Setting The West of England Academic Health Science Network (WEAHSN), 1 of 15 regional AHSNs in England. Participants Interviews were conducted with public contributors (n=5) and professionals (n=19) who were staff from the WEAHSN, its member organisations and its partners. Results Public contributors established their legitimacy by using nine distinct roles: (1) lived experience, as a patient or carer; (2) occupational knowledge, offering job-related expertise; (3) occupational skills, offering aptitude developed through employment; (4) patient advocate, promoting the interests of patients; (5) keeper of the public purse, encouraging wise spending; (6) intuitive public, piloting materials suitable for the general public; (7) fresh-eyed reviewer, critiquing materials; (8) critical friend, critiquing progress and proposing new initiatives and (9) boundary spanner, urging professionals to work across organisations. Individual public contributors occupied many, but not all, of the roles. Conclusions Lived experience is only one of nine distinct public contributor roles. The WEAHSN provided a benign context for the study because in a health network public contributors are one of many parties seeking to establish legitimacy through finding valuable roles. The nine roles can be organised into a typology according to whether the basis for legitimacy lies in: the public contributor's knowledge, skills and experience; citizenship through the aspiration to achieve a broad public good; or being an outsider. The typology shows how public contributors can be involved in work where lived experience appears to lack relevance: strategic decision making; research unconnected to particular conditions; or acute service delivery

On using a digital resources for the study of an ancient text: the case of Herodotus’ <i>Histories</i>

Involving the collaboration of researchers from Classics, Geography and Archaeological Computing, and supported by funding from the AHRC, HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) aims to enrich contemporary discussions of space by developing an innovative methodology for the study of an ancient narrative, Herodotus’s Histories. Using the latest digital technology in combination with close textual study, we investigate the geographical concepts through which Herodotus describes the conflict between Greeks and Persians. Our findings nuance the customary topographical vision of an east versus west polarity by drawing attention to the topological network culture that criss-crosses the two, and develop the means of bringing that world to a mass audience via the internet. In this paper we discuss three main aspects to the project: the data capture of place-names in Herodotus; their visualization and dissemination using the web-mapping technologies of GIS, Google Earth and Timemap; and the interrogation of the relationships that Herodotus draws between different geographical concepts using the digital resources at our disposal. Our concern will be to set out in some detail the digital basis to our methodology and the technologies that we have been exploiting, as well as the problems that we have encountered, in the hope of contributing not only to a more complex picture of space in Herodotus but also to a basis for future digital projects across the Humanities that spatially visualize large text-based corpora. With this in mind we end with a brief discussion of some of the ways in which this study is being developed, with assistance from research grants from the Google Digital Humanities Awards Program and JISC

A Comprehensive Model of the Spatio-Temporal Stem Cell and Tissue Organisation in the Intestinal Crypt

We introduce a novel dynamic model of stem cell and tissue organisation in murine intestinal crypts. Integrating the molecular, cellular and tissue level of description, this model links a broad spectrum of experimental observations encompassing spatially confined cell proliferation, directed cell migration, multiple cell lineage decisions and clonal competition