Bursaries, writing grants and fellowships: a strategy to develop research capacity in primary health care

BACKGROUND: General practitioners and other primary health care professionals are often the first point of contact for patients requiring health care. Identifying, understanding and linking current evidence to best practice can be challenging and requires at least a basic understanding of research principles and methodologies. However, not all primary health care professionals are trained in research or have research experience. With the aim of enhancing research skills and developing a research culture in primary health care, University Departments of General Practice and Rural Health have been supported since 2000 by the Australian Government funded 'Primary Health Care Research Evaluation and Development (PHCRED) Strategy'. A small grant funding scheme to support primary health care practitioners was implemented through the PHCRED program at Flinders University in South Australia between 2002 and 2005. The scheme incorporated academic mentors and three types of funding support: bursaries, writing grants and research fellowships. This article describes outcomes of the funding scheme and contributes to the debate surrounding the effectiveness of funding schemes as a means of building research capacity. METHODS: Funding recipients who had completed their research were invited to participate in a semi-structured 40-minute telephone interview. Feedback was sought on acquisition of research skills, publication outcomes, development of research capacity, confidence and interest in research, and perception of research. Data were also collected on demographics, research topics, and time needed to complete planned activities. RESULTS: The funding scheme supported 24 bursaries, 11 writing grants, and three research fellows. Nearly half (47%) of all grant recipients were allied health professionals, followed by general practitioners (21%). The majority (70%) were novice and early career researchers. Eighty-nine percent of the grant recipients were interviewed. Capacity, confidence, and level of research skills in ten core areas were generally considered to have improved as a result of the award. More than half (53%) had presented their research and 32% had published or submitted an article in a peer-reviewed journal. CONCLUSION: A small grant and mentoring scheme through a University Department can effectively enhance research skills, confidence, output, and interest in research of primary health care practitioners

Tunneling Electrical Connection to the Interior of Metal Organic Frameworks

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are typically poor electrical conductors, which limits their uses in sensors, fuel cells, batteries, and other applications that require electrically conductive, high surface area materials. Although metal nanoclusters (NCs) are often added to MOFs, the electrical properties of these hybrid materials have not yet been explored. Here, we show that adding NCs to a MOF not only imparts moderate electrical conductivity to an otherwise insulating material but also renders it photoconductive, with conductivity increasing by up to 4 orders of magnitude upon light irradiation. Because charge transport occurs via tunneling between spatially separated NCs that occupy a small percent of the MOFs volume, the pores remain largely open and accessible. While these phenomena are more pronounced in single-MOF crystals (here, Rb-CD-MOFs), they are also observed in films of smaller MOF crystallites (MIL-53). Additionally, we show that in the photoconductive MOFs, the effective diffusion coefficients of electrons can match the typical values of small molecules diffusing through MOFs; this property can open new vistas for the development of MOF electrodes and, in a wider context, of electroactive and light-harvesting MOFs128291sciescopu

Geometric curvature controls the chemical patchiness and self-assembly of nanoparticles

When organic molecules are tethered onto non-spherical nanoparticles, their chemical properties depend on the particles' local curvature and shape. Based on this observation, we show here that it is possible to engineer chemical patchiness across the surface of a non-spherical nanoparticle using a single chemical species. In particular, when acidic ligands are used, regions of the particle surface with different curvature become charged at different pH values of the surrounding solution. This interplay between particle shape and local electrostatics allows for fine control over nanoscale self-assembly leading to structures with varying degrees of complexity. These structures range from particle cross-stacks to open-lattice crystals, the latter with pore sizes on the order of tens of nanometres, that is, at the lower synthetic limits of metallic mesoporous materials