Student-adult mentoring relationships : experiences from a Scottish school-based programme

The project on which this paper is based was funded by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), now incorporated as part of the FHI Development 360 LLC (FHI 360) in Washington, DC, USA.Peer reviewedPostprin

Introduction to the Special Issue: The AgentLink III Technical Forums

This article introduces the special issue of ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems devoted to research papers arising from the three Technical Forum Group meetings held in 2004 and 2005 that were organized and sponsored by the European FP6 Coordination Action AgentLink III

Direct, physically-motivated derivation of the contagion condition for spreading processes on generalized random networks

For a broad range single-seed contagion processes acting on generalized random networks, we derive a unifying analytic expression for the possibility of global spreading events in a straightforward, physically intuitive fashion. Our reasoning lays bare a direct mechanical understanding of an archetypal spreading phenomena that is not evident in circuitous extant mathematical approaches.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

Exact solutions for social and biological contagion models on mixed directed and undirected, degree-correlated random networks

We derive analytic expressions for the possibility, probability, and expected size of global spreading events starting from a single infected seed for a broad collection of contagion processes acting on random networks with both directed and undirected edges and arbitrary degree-degree correlations. Our work extends previous theoretical developments for the undirected case, and we provide numerical support for our findings by investigating an example class of networks for which we are able to obtain closed-form expressions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Xenoestrogens: assessing the predictability of mixture effects.

Recently there has been growing concern over the increasing incidence of endocrine related disorders in both humans and wildlife. This has prompted researchers to speculate about a common underlying environmental cause. A large number of natural and synthetic chemicals have been shown to interact with the estrogen receptor, and it is believed that these xenoestrogens are the agents responsible. We are constantly exposed to many such agents, however, the study of interactions between these chemicals within biological systems has often been hampered by the application of unsuitable models of mixture action. In this study we have employed, for the first time, the well-validated models of concentration addition and independent action to analyse xenoestrogen mixture effects in the MCF-7 cell proliferation assay and the yeast estrogen screen. Both models yield excellent predictions of mixture action in our test systems, and indicate that the xenoestrogens o,p'-DDT, p,p'-DDT, p,p'-DDE and (3-HCH act additively in the MCF-7 assay. Similarly, we observe that interactions between o,p'-DDT, 4-octylphenol, 4-nonylphenol and genistein are additive in the yeast estrogen screen. Assuming that additivity holds true in vivo, we have attempted to estimate the human exposure to xenoestrogens which would be required to significantly modulate the activity of estradiol. Our calculations indicate that at current levels of exposure these chemicals could pose a risk to human health. Although this estimate is by no means conclusive, we feel that a large step forward has been made in understanding xenoestrogen mixture effects

Wheat glutenin subunits and dough elasticity: findings of the EUROWHEAT project

Detailed studies of wheat glutenin subunits have provided novel details of their molecular structures and interactions which allow the development of a model to explain their role in determining the visco-elastic properties of gluten and dough. The construction and analysis of near-isogenic and transgenic lines expressing novel subunit combinations or increased amounts of specific subunits allows differences in gluten properties to be related to the structures and properties of individual subunits, with potential benefits for the production of cultivars with improved properties for food processing or novel end user

Development of a voltage‐tuneable RF coil to enable double resonance experiments with Fast Field‐Cycling MRI

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A varactor-tuned RF coil for nuclear quadrupole double resonance with Fast Field-Cycling MRI

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