The origins of radial fracture systems and associated large lava flows on Venus

Magellan images have revealed the existence of systems of radial fractures on venus that are very similar in form to terrestrial dike swarms such as the Mackenzie swarm in Northern Canada. The association of many of the fracture systems with lava flows, calderas, and volcanic edifices further support the idea of a dike emplacement origin. A global survey of the Magellan images has allowed the location of 300 such fracture systems. Two types of fracture systems are defined. A series of models were developed to simulate the emplacement of dikes on Venus. Observations of fracture lengths and widths were then used to constrain the emplacement conditions. The model results show that the great length and relatively large width of the fractures can only be explained if the dikes that produce them were emplaced in high driving pressure (pressure buffered) conditions. Such conditions imply high rates of melt production, which is consistent with the melt being derived directly from a plume head. We have recently modeled the vertical emplacement of a dike from the top of a mantle plume and calculated the eruption rates such a dike would produce on reaching the surface. This modeling shows that eruption rates of approximately 0.1 cu km/hr can readily be generated by such a dike, consistent with the above results. However, the sensitivity of the model to dike width and therefore driving pressure means that eruption rates from dikes emplaced from the base of the crust or the head of a mantle plume could be orders of magnitude higher than this. Clearly, therefore, the model needs to be refined in order to better constrain eruption conditions. However, it is worth noting here that the initial results do show that even for moderate dike widths, eruption rates could be at least on the order of those estimated for terrestrial flood basalts

Supporting Student Nurses By The Educational Use of Self: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Exploration of the Mentor Experience

This thesis reports on a study of the lived experience of clinical nurses as mentors of student nurses in the workplace. Pre-registration nurse education, in which students must spend fifty percent of their time in practice, relies on a partnership between universities and health care providers and, crucially, the availability of practice mentors, able to support and assess practice learning. Within a hermeneutic phenomenological research methodology, twelve nurses described their experiences of mentoring through conversational interviews and event diaries which included ‘rich pictures’. The mixed methods provided openings for participants to talk about the harder-to-access elements of experience and generated multiple layers of rich data. Analysis of the data involved the application of different interpretive lenses: existentials in the care structure of Heidegger’s (1962) Dasein and the four lifeworld existentials (van Manen, 1997). For these respondents, the mentoring experience was rewarding, satisfying, frustrating, and even distressing at times. Being a mentor meant existing in worlds of ‘high stakes’, ‘hope for the nursing profession’ and ‘fragments’, governed by resource constraints, contextual demands and concern for others. Educational purposes dominated their being, revealing an essence, interpretively coined as ‘the educational use of self’, which meant that they were individually and authentically engaged in supporting and assessing learning. This study promotes greater understanding of mentoring practice and workplace learning, which can inform processes of recruitment, preparation and support of both students and mentors. Key insights are that mentors need support to work with complex and often hidden knowledge, including situations involving their intuitions

Young People Creating Belonging: spaces, sounds and sights

Report for ESRC-funded project exploring belonging among 'looked after' young people from across mainland and island Scotland. The project employed innovative visual and audial methods in multiple interviews with participants

Brain Network Connectivity During Language Comprehension: Interacting Linguistic and Perceptual Subsystems.

The dynamic neural processes underlying spoken language comprehension require the real-time integration of general perceptual and specialized linguistic information. We recorded combined electro- and magnetoencephalographic measurements of participants listening to spoken words varying in perceptual and linguistic complexity. Combinatorial linguistic complexity processing was consistently localized to left perisylvian cortices, whereas competition-based perceptual complexity triggered distributed activity over both hemispheres. Functional connectivity showed that linguistically complex words engaged a distributed network of oscillations in the gamma band (20-60 Hz), which only partially overlapped with the network supporting perceptual analysis. Both processes enhanced cross-talk between left temporal regions and bilateral pars orbitalis (BA47). The left-lateralized synchrony between temporal regions and pars opercularis (BA44) was specific to the linguistically complex words, suggesting a specific role of left frontotemporal cross-cortical interactions in morphosyntactic computations. Synchronizations in oscillatory dynamics reveal the transient coupling of functional networks that support specific computational processes in language comprehension.This work was supported by an EPSRC grant to W.M.-W. (EP/F030061/1), an ERC Advanced Grant (Neurolex) to W.M.-W., and by MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (CBU) funding to W.M.-W. (U.1055.04.002.00001.01). Computing resources were provided by the MRC-CBU. Funding to pay the Open Access publication charges for this article was provided by the Advanced Investigator Grant (Neurolex) to W.D.M.-W.This is the final published version which appears at http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhu28

Perceptual Enhancement for Arabic Reading: An Intervention to Support Fluency and Automaticity in Grade One

This study, conducted in the United Arab Emirates, piloted a curriculum to increase early grade reading fluency. A curriculum with enhanced perceptual features, such as font size and spacing was used with grade one students in four schools to detect any significant difference in students’ reading speed and reading accuracy after one year. Three hundred forty-five grade one students participated in the pilot—174 in the intervention group and 171 in the control group (ds= 0.33 0.47). At the end of the year, students in the intervention group read more letters and words correctly on average in one minute (p < .01) and in an entire text (p < .01 for letters; p < .001 for words) than those in the control group. These results suggest that curriculum with perceptual enhancement may be useful in facilitating early Arabic reading fluency

Integrating DNA Methylation and 3D-genome Architecture to Identify Functional Regulatory Sequences in IDH-mutant AML

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a genetically and phenotypically heterogeneous disease. Recurrent mutations in genes involved in epigenetic pathways are common in AML and are thought to contribute to this variability by disrupting epigenetic patterns relative to normal hematopoietic cells. The most well-studied epigenetic modification in AML is DNA methylation. Although methods for studying DNA methylation have improved significantly in the past decade, the landscape of methylation changes in AML and how they relate to chromatin architecture and gene regulation is still not fully understood. This thesis is focused on the DNA methylation phenotype of IDH1 or IDH2 mutations in AML cells and the functional consequences of these changes. IDH1 or IDH2 mutations occur in approximately 20% of AML patients and are associated with altered DNA methylation patterns. The IDH1 and IDH2 genes encode metabolic enzymes that are not normally involved in DNA methylation. However, the mutant forms of IDH1 and IDH2 in AML produce 2-hydroxyglutarate (2HG) that inhibits the TET family of enzymes, which act to remove methylated cytosines on DNA through successive oxidation reactions. Hence, the net effect of IDH mutations is an increase in DNA methylation by inhibiting its removal. Although the specific consequences of this hypermethylation phenotype have been difficult to define, in vivo mouse models have established that IDH mutations contribute to AML development. We used a comprehensive set of whole-genome bisulfite sequencing data from primary AML to characterize AML-associated DNA methylation phenotypes and identify IDH mutation-specific methylation changes in primary AML samples. Such an approach had not yet been taken to understand the direct consequences of IDH mutations, and our study identified a unique hypermethylation signature that is enriched for active enhancer regions in IDH-mutant AML. The differentially methylated regions (DMRs) from this analysis were characterized by active methylation and demethylation turnover, evidenced by an increase in TET-mediated 5-hydroxymethylation, which may account for the unique susceptibility of enhancers to become hypermethylated in the presence of IDH mutations. We then used high-resolution chromatin conformation data to link these IDHmut-specific hypermethylated enhancer DMRs with their cognate gene(s), which we found to be highly expressed in hematopoietic cells. The interactions often coincided with CTCF binding sites that orchestrated chromatin loop formation and formed insulating TAD boundaries. We observed some evidence of disruption of loop formation and boundary insulation in IDH mutant samples compared with CD34+ normal hematopoietic cells, which correlated with decreased target gene expression in a subset of interactions. These results suggest that hypermethylation accumulates at regions that are important for genome organization and in certain cases may affect gene expression in favor of leukemia development. Mechanistic studies of candidate loci were performed to better define the nature of enhancer DMR regulatory interactions. Results from targeted deletion of the DMR in a well-characterized MYC enhancer were consistent with our hypothesis of inherent regulatory activity associated with DMR regions, demonstrating a trend towards decreased MYC expression in DMR KO cell lines compared with WT cells

Utility of routine screening for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency in patients with bronchiectasis

Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) is a cause of bronchiectasis. Guidelines for bronchiectasis from the British Thoracic Society do not recommend to routinely test patients for AATD. In contrast, guidelines for AATD recommend routine screening. This contradiction, in part, results from the lack of data from large studies performing comprehensive screening. We screened 1600 patients with bronchiectasis at two centres in the UK from 2012 to 2016. In total, only eight individuals with AATD were identified representing 0.5% of the overall population. We conclude that routine screening for AATD in bronchiectasis in the UK has a low rate of detection. Further studies are required in different geographical regions, which may have a higher prevalence of AATD.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Language Stimulation Techniques for Three-Year-Old and Four-Year-Old Children: Patterns of Language Development

One in 4 children in America ages 0-5 live in poverty (Federal Statistics, 2012); this group is far more likely to enter school as linguistically disadvantaged and the gap increases as they progress through school. This study investigates the effect of indirect language stimulation techniques on preschool children enrolled in Head Start programs in rural east Texas. The results from this study indicate differing patterns of language development between 3- and 4-year-old children, in response to their teacher’s use of indirect language stimulation techniques in normal day-to-day teaching. Specifically, the intervention using SPEAK techniques had a positive effect on the expressive English language vocabulary development of 4-year-old at-risk preschool children