Implementing health research through academic and clinical partnerships : a realistic evaluation of the Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC)

Background: The English National Health Service has made a major investment in nine partnerships between higher education institutions and local health services called Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC). They have been funded to increase capacity and capability to produce and implement research through sustained interactions between academics and health services. CLAHRCs provide a natural ‘test bed’ for exploring questions about research implementation within a partnership model of delivery. This protocol describes an externally funded evaluation that focuses on implementation mechanisms and processes within three CLAHRCs. It seeks to uncover what works, for whom, how, and in what circumstances. Design and methods: This study is a longitudinal three-phase, multi-method realistic evaluation, which deliberately aims to explore the boundaries around knowledge use in context. The evaluation funder wishes to see it conducted for the process of learning, not for judging performance. The study is underpinned by a conceptual framework that combines the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services and Knowledge to Action frameworks to reflect the complexities of implementation. Three participating CLARHCS will provide indepth comparative case studies of research implementation using multiple data collection methods including interviews, observation, documents, and publicly available data to test and refine hypotheses over four rounds of data collection. We will test the wider applicability of emerging findings with a wider community using an interpretative forum. Discussion: The idea that collaboration between academics and services might lead to more applicable health research that is actually used in practice is theoretically and intuitively appealing; however the evidence for it is limited. Our evaluation is designed to capture the processes and impacts of collaborative approaches for implementing research, and therefore should contribute to the evidence base about an increasingly popular (e.g., Mode two, integrated knowledge transfer, interactive research), but poorly understood approach to knowledge translation. Additionally we hope to develop approaches for evaluating implementation processes and impacts particularly with respect to integrated stakeholder involvement

A Microcosm of the Biomedical Research Experience for Upper-level Undergraduates

The skill set required of biomedical researchers continues to grow and evolve as biology matures as a natural science. Science necessitates creative yet critical thinking, persuasive communication skills, purposeful use of time, and adeptness at the laboratory bench. Teaching these skills can be effectively accomplished in an inquiry-based, active-learning environment at a primarily undergraduate institution. Cell Biology Techniques, an upper-level cell biology laboratory course at St. John Fisher College, features two independent projects that take advantage of the biology of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a premier yet simple model organism. First, students perform a miniature epigenetic screen for novel phenotypes using RNA interference. The results of this screen combined with literature research direct students toward a singe gene that they attempt to subclone in the second project. The biology of the chosen gene/protein also becomes an individualized focal point with respect to the content of the laboratory. Progress toward course goals is evaluated using written, oral, and group-produced assignments, including a concept map. Pre- and postassessment indicates a significant increase in the understanding of broad concepts in cell biological research

Identification and Structural Characterization of a New Three-Finger Toxin Hemachatoxin from Hemachatus haemachatus Venom

10.1371/journal.pone.0048112PLoS ONE710

Model Order Reduction in Fluid Dynamics: Challenges and Perspectives

This chapter reviews techniques of model reduction of fluid dynamics systems. Fluid systems are known to be difficult to reduce efficiently due to several reasons. First of all, they exhibit strong nonlinearities — which are mainly related either to nonlinear convection terms and/or some geometric variability — that often cannot be treated by simple linearization. Additional difficulties arise when attempting model reduction of unsteady flows, especially when long-term transient behavior needs to be accurately predicted using reduced order models and more complex features, such as turbulence or multiphysics phenomena, have to be taken into consideration. We first discuss some general principles that apply to many parametric model order reduction problems, then we apply them on steady and unsteady viscous flows modelled by the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. We address questions of inf-sup stability, certification through error estimation, computational issues and — in the unsteady case — long-time stability of the reduced model. Moreover, we provide an extensive list of literature references

Characterization on physical, mechanical and morphological properties of Indian wheat crop

The absence of scalable and economically viable alternatives for managing residues coupled with shorter planting window and growing labour shortages and energy prices requires a sustainable solution for the crop residue management in northern India. As per “Need of the Hour”, the present research work focused on physical, mechanical, and morphological characterizations of wheat, which will help in further design of the low-cost straw combine. For this purpose, two varieties of wheat (HD-2967 and WH-1105) were used for the present study, as these are the prevalent varieties of Haryana state. The straw specimens were collected at harvesting period from a farmer’s field, which is located at a longitude of 75.64 and latitude of 29.15. The physical characterization of the crops was conducted on the basis of diameter, length, and thickness of nodes of straws. In contrast, the mechanical characterizations was performed by calculating the tensile and shear strength of the straws. The morphological analysis was performed by using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The energy dispersive spectroscopy was performed to analyse the presence of constituting elements of straw. The statistical analysis showed that moisture content in the straw had a significant effect on tensile strength and shear strength

Projection Based Model Reduction for Optimal Design of the Time-Dependent Stokes System

The optimal design of structures and systems described by partial differential equations (PDEs) often gives rise to large-scale optimization problems, in particular if the underlying system of PDEs represents a multi-scale, multi-physics problem. Therefore, reduced order modeling techniques such as balanced truncation model reduction, proper orthogonal decomposition, or reduced basis methods are used to significantly decrease the computational complexity while maintaining the desired accuracy of the approximation. In particular, we are interested in such shape optimization problems where the design issue is restricted to a relatively small portion of the computational domain. In this case, it appears to be natural to rely on a full order model only in that specific part of the domain and to use a reduced order model elsewhere. A convenient methodology to realize this idea consists in a suitable combination of domain decomposition techniques and balanced truncation model reduction. We will consider such an approach for shape optimization problems associated with the time-dependent Stokes system and derive explicit error bounds for the modeling error. As an application in life sciences, we will be concerned with the optimal design of capillary barriers as part of a network of microchannels and reservoirs on microfluidic biochips that are used in clinical diagnostics, pharmacology, and forensics for high-throughput screening and hybridization in genomics and protein profiling in proteomics