Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely

Software performance of the ATLAS track reconstruction for LHC run 3

Charged particle reconstruction in the presence of many simultaneous proton–proton (pp) collisions in the LHC is a challenging task for the ATLAS experiment’s reconstruction software due to the combinatorial complexity. This paper describes the major changes made to adapt the software to reconstruct high-activity collisions with an average of 50 or more simultaneous pp interactions per bunch crossing (pileup) promptly using the available computing resources. The performance of the key components of the track reconstruction chain and its dependence on pile-up are evaluated, and the improvement achieved compared to the previous software version is quantified. For events with an average of 60 pp collisions per bunch crossing, the updated track reconstruction is twice as fast as the previous version, without significant reduction in reconstruction efficiency and while reducing the rate of combinatorial fake tracks by more than a factor two

Single-electron capture by Cl2+(4S, 2D, 2P) from rare-gas targets

Translational-energy spectroscopy (TES) of Cl2+ and Cl+ ions together with state-selected single-electron capture (SEC) reactions of 6 keV Cl2+ ions from rare-gas targets (except He) have been carried out using a novel translational-energy spectrometer. Experimentally observed transitions in the TES of both ions indicate that, in addition to the 4S ground state, the Cl2+ incident ion beam contained the excited states 2D and 2P. No excited states were observed in the incident Cl+ ions but, following collisions with He atoms, the 1S excited state is populated. The use of TES to identify the excited states within the incident ion beam allows more reliable assignments of the observed reaction channels in the SEC spectra

Blended leadership: employee perspectives on effective leadership in the UK further education sector

This article explores employee perspectives on effective leader ship in UK Further Education (FE). Studies on leader ship effectiveness typically seek either to specify the individual qualities of ‘heroic’ leaders or, increasingly, to highlight the collective nature of ‘post-heroic’ leader ship. While these discourses are frequently seen as dichotomous and competing, our research found that FE employees often value practices that combine elements of both. They tended to prefer subtle and versatile practices that we term ‘blended leader ship’; an approach that values, for example, both delegation and direction, both proximity and distance and both internal and external engagement. Drawing on other studies which indicate that paradoxical blends of apparently irreconcilable opposites might form the basis for effective leader ship, the article considers the implications of this analysis for the study of Higher Education (HE). It concludes by highlighting the potential value of more dialectical approaches to the theory and practice of leadership

Relative efficiency assessments using Data Envelopment Analysis An application to data on rates' departments

An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at 27. Ann. Conf. of the Operational Research Society, Durham (GB), 10-13 Sep 1985Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:87/07301(Relative) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Relative efficiency assessments using Data Envelopment Analysis An application to data on rates' departments

An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at 27. Ann. Conf. of the Operational Research Society, Durham (GB), 10-13 Sep 1985Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:87/07301(Relative) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo