Low-speed wind tunnel investigation of the static stability and control characteristics of an advanced turboprop configuration with the propellers placed over the tail

An exploratory wind tunnel investigation was performed in the 30 x 60 foot wind tunnel to determine the low speed static stability and control characteristics into the deep stall regime of an advanced turboprop aircraft with the propellers located over the horizontal tail. By this arrangement, the horizontal tail could potentially provide acoustic shielding to reduce the high community noise caused by the propeller blades. The current configuration was a generic turboprop model equipped with 1 foot diameter single rotating eight bladed propellers that were designed for efficient cruise operation at a Mach number of 0.8. The data presented is static force data. The effects of power on the configuration characteristics were generally favorable. An arrangement with the propellers rotating with the outboard blades moving down was found to have significantly higher installed thrust than an arrangement with the propellers rotating with the inboard blades moving down. The primary unfavorable effect was a large pitch trim change which occurred with power, but the trim change could be minimized with a proper configuration design

Regional Working in the East of England: Using the UK National Standards for Public Involvement

Plain English summary: Involving patients and members of the public to help shape and carry out research is recommended in health research in the United Kingdom (UK). There are a number of regional networks of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) groups, which support the collaboration between researchers, patients and public members. We are a group of researchers, patients and public members who came together via a PPI regional network in the East of England to collaborate on a research study about the extent of feedback from researchers to PPI contributors.The aim of this paper is to use the recently developed UK National Standards for Public Involvement to structure our thinking about what worked well and what did not, within our recently completed study. We believe this paper is one of the first to use the National Standards to structure a retrospective reflection on PPI within a study.Our findings showed that there are benefits of regional working, including easier access to public members and bringing together researchers, public members and those who run PPI groups for research collaboration. The main challenges included involvement of people before studies are funded and working across organisations with different payment processes.The National Standards for Public Involvement has provided a useful framework to consider how best to involve patients and members of the public in research and could be a helpful structure to reflect on successes and challenges in individual projects and also regional, national or international comparisons of PPI in research. Abstract: Background Regional networks of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) organisations, including academic institutions, health and social care services, charities, patient and public groups and individuals, can play an important part in carrying out health research. In the UK, recommendations by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) encourage the use of regional, collaborative networks with shared resources and training. Methods The newly developed UK National Standards for Public Involvement were used as a framework for a retrospective reflection of PPI within a recently completed research study which focused on feedback from researchers to PPI contributors. PPI contributors, those running PPI groups (PPI leads) and researchers involved in the study have contributed to this reflection by completing evaluation forms throughout the research alongside notes of meetings and co-authors' final reflections. Results Results revealed a number of successes where the regional network was particularly useful in bringing together PPI contributors, those who lead PPI groups and researchers. The regional network helped researchers to get in touch with patients and members of the public. Challenges included involving people before funding and bureaucratic and financial barriers when working across different organisations in the region. The importance of working together in flexible, informal ways was key and on-going support for the PPI contributors was vital for continued involvement, including emotional support not just monetary. The first four National Standards of inclusive opportunities, working together, support and learning and communications were particularly useful as means of structuring our reflections. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is one of the first research studies to use the UK National Standards for Public Involvement as a framework to identify what worked well and the challenges of PPI processes. It is suggested that as more reflective papers are published and the National Standards are more widely used in the UK, many lessons can be learnt and shared on how to improve our Patient and Public Involvement within research studies. Evaluations or reflections such as these can further enhance our understanding of PPI with implications for regional, national and international comparisons.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Development of a real-time qPCR assay for quantification of covert baculovirus infections in a major African crop pest

Many pathogens and parasites are present in host individuals and populations without any obvious signs of disease. This is particularly true for baculoviruses infecting lepidopteran hosts, where studies have shown that covert persistent viral infections are almost ubiquitous in many species. To date, the infection intensity of covert viruses has rarely been quantified. In this study, we investigated the dynamics of a covert baculovirus infection within the lepidopteran crop pest Spodoptera exempta. A real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) procedure using a 5' nuclease hydrolysis (TaqMan) probe was developed for specific detection and quantification of Spodoptera exempta nucleopolyhedrovirus (SpexNPV). The qPCR assay indicated that covert baculovirus dynamics varied considerably over the course of the host life-cycle, with infection load peaking in early larval instars and being lowest in adults and final-instar larvae. Adult dissections indicated that, contrary to expectation, viral load aggregation was highest in the head, wings and legs, and lowest in the thorax and abdomen. The data presented here have broad implications relating to our understanding of transmission patterns of baculoviruses and the role of covert infections in host-pathogen dynamics

Factors Influencing Depression and Anxiety among Black Sexual Minority Men

The primary aim of this study was to examine the relationships between depression and anxiety, and ethnic and sexual identity development, and discrimination and harassment (DH) among Black sexual minority men. Additional aims were to determine whether an interaction effect existed between ethnic and sexual identity and whether coping skills level moderated these relationships. Using an observational cross-sectional design, 54 participants recruited through snowball sampling completed self-administered online surveys. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was used. Sixty-four percent of the variance in depression scores and 53% of the variance in anxiety scores were explained by DH and internalized homonegativity together. Thirty percent of the sample had scale scores indicating likelihood of depression and anxiety. Experience of DH and internalized homonegativity explained a large portion of the variability in depression and anxiety among Black sexual minority men. The study showed high prevalence of mental distress among this sample

Guidance for Researchers: Feedback : Patient and Public Involvement (PPI): Feedback from Researchers to PPI Contributors

© 2018 The Author(s). This an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Linear stochastic dynamics with nonlinear fractal properties

Stochastic processes with multiplicative noise have been studied independently in several different contexts over the past decades. We focus on the regime, found for a generic set of control parameters, in which stochastic processes with multiplicative noise produce intermittency of a special kind, characterized by a power law probability density distribution. We present a review of applications on population dynamics, epidemics, finance and insurance applications with relation to ARCH(1) process, immigration and investment portfolios and the internet. We highlight the common physical mechanism and summarize the main known results. The distribution and statistical properties of the duration of intermittent bursts are also characterized in details.Comment: 26 pages, Physica A (in press

Correction to: Abstracts from the NIHR INVOLVE Conference 2017.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s40900-017-0075-x.]

The role of patient and public involvement leads in facilitating feedback: "invisible work".

BACKGROUND: Health research in the UK requires patients, those with lived experience and members of the public to be involved in designing and shaping research: many of them have reported that their comments and suggestions are not always acknowledged, and they do not know if their input has been used or is useful. The benefits of feedback from researchers not only create motivation for further involvement but aids learning and development, as well as recording impact. The aims of this study were to improve the feedback experience of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) contributors. Co-produced feedback processes were designed and implemented in order to change feedback from researchers to PPI contributors in six PPI groups in England. METHODS: An explanatory mixed methods sequential study design was utilised with a comparative questionnaire survey (administered 20 months apart), interviews and a focus group with PPI leads, researchers and PPI contributors. Patient and Public Involvement contributors were involved from initial idea, study design, data analysis through to dissemination. RESULTS: Co-designed feedback processes were introduced in five of the six PPI groups and there was an overall increase in the frequency of feedback over the period studied. The enablers and barriers to implementing feedback processes were identified, which included the importance of wider institutional level support. PPI leads need to have dedicated time and acknowledge feedback as part of their role. The importance of individual feedback processes designed by, and for each PPI group, rather than a generic one, was also identified as key to successful implementation. CONCLUSION: The role of the PPI lead is an important facilitator in improving feedback but can easily be overlooked and has been described as invisible. PPI leads can perform an essential bridging role between researchers and members of the public. This study has shown that PPI feedback processes can be implemented if they are part of embedded PPI with explicit expectations, facilitated by a dedicated PPI lead role with sufficient support and resources. The findings have implications beyond this particular study, particularly for those involved in undertaking and funding health and social care research

The Maximal Subgroups and the Complexity of the Flow Semigroup of Finite (Di)graphs

Preprint of an article first published online in International Journal of Algebra and Computation, September 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218196717500412. © 2017 Copyright World Scientific Publishing Company. http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/ijac. Accepted Manuscript version is under embargo. Embargo end date: 26 September 2018.The flow semigroup, introduced by John Rhodes, is an invariant for digraphs and a complete invariant for graphs. We refine and prove Rhodes's conjecture on the structure of the maximal groups in the flow semigroup for finite, antisymmetric, strongly connected graphs. Building on this result, we investigate and fully describe the structure and actions of the maximal subgroups of the flow semigroup acting on all but k points for all finite digraphs and graphs for all k >=1. A linear algorithm is presented to determine these so-called 'defect k groups' for any finite (di)graph. Finally, we prove that the complexity of the flow semigroup of a 2-vertex connected (and strongly connected di)graph with n vertices is n- 2, completely confirming Rhodes's conjecture for such (di)graphs.Peer reviewe