Building research capacity in Education: evidence from recent initiatives in England, Scotland and Wales.

There is a pressing need to build research capacity in Education across the UK to combat the effects of the ageing research population and the increasing polarisation between research-intensive institutions and the remainder of the field. This paper draws data from three evaluations of recent initiatives across the UK to explore the necessary conditions for effectively building research capacity. Technicist and situated learning models are explored in relation to the immediate and longer term professional development of the research workforce, and we identify that central to the effectiveness of this professional learning is: (1) interpersonal support from more experienced colleagues; and (2) institutional support for research engagement, primarily in the provision of time and an infrastructure which can support research activity. We conclude that the development of, and engagement with, inter-institutional, inter-project communities is imperative to this process

Genuine Personality Recognition from Highly Constrained Face Images

People are able to accurately estimate personality traits, merely on the basis of \u201cpassport\u201d-style neutral faces and, thus, cues must exist that allow for such estimation. However, up to date, there has been little progress in identifying the form and location of these cues. In this paper we address the problem of inferring true personality traits in highly constrained images using state of art machine learning techniques, in particular, deep networks and class activation maps analysis. The novelty of our work consists in that, differently from the vast majority of the current and past approaches (that refer to the problem of consensus personality rating prediction) we predict the genuine personality based on highly constrained images: the target\u2019s are self ratings on a validated personality inventory and we restrict to passport-like photos, in which so-called controllable cues are minimized. Our results show that self-reported personality traits can be accurately evaluated from facial features. A preliminar analysis on the features activation maps shows promising results for a deeper understanding on relevant facial cues for traits estimation

Explosive Nucleosynthesis: What we learned and what we still do not understand

This review touches on historical aspects, going back to the early days of nuclear astrophysics, initiated by B$^2$FH and Cameron, discusses (i) the required nuclear input from reaction rates and decay properties up to the nuclear equation of state, continues (ii) with the tools to perform nucleosynthesis calculations and (iii) early parametrized nucleosynthesis studies, before (iv) reliable stellar models became available for the late stages of stellar evolution. It passes then through (v) explosive environments from core-collapse supernovae to explosive events in binary systems (including type Ia supernovae and compact binary mergers), and finally (vi) discusses the role of all these nucleosynthesis production sites in the evolution of galaxies. The focus is put on the comparison of early ideas and present, very recent, understanding.Comment: 11 pages, to appear in Springer Proceedings in Physics (Proc. of Intl. Conf. "Nuclei in the Cosmos XV", LNGS Assergi, Italy, June 2018

Prediction of peptide and protein propensity for amyloid formation

Understanding which peptides and proteins have the potential to undergo amyloid formation and what driving forces are responsible for amyloid-like fiber formation and stabilization remains limited. This is mainly because proteins that can undergo structural changes, which lead to amyloid formation, are quite diverse and share no obvious sequence or structural homology, despite the structural similarity found in the fibrils. To address these issues, a novel approach based on recursive feature selection and feed-forward neural networks was undertaken to identify key features highly correlated with the self-assembly problem. This approach allowed the identification of seven physicochemical and biochemical properties of the amino acids highly associated with the self-assembly of peptides and proteins into amyloid-like fibrils (normalized frequency of β-sheet, normalized frequency of β-sheet from LG, weights for β-sheet at the window position of 1, isoelectric point, atom-based hydrophobic moment, helix termination parameter at position j+1 and ΔGº values for peptides extrapolated in 0 M urea). Moreover, these features enabled the development of a new predictor (available at http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/appnn/index.html) capable of accurately and reliably predicting the amyloidogenic propensity from the polypeptide sequence alone with a prediction accuracy of 84.9 % against an external validation dataset of sequences with experimental in vitro, evidence of amyloid formation

Telomeric expression sites are highly conserved in trypanosoma brucei

Subtelomeric regions are often under-represented in genome sequences of eukaryotes. One of the best known examples of the use of telomere proximity for adaptive purposes are the bloodstream expression sites (BESs) of the African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei. To enhance our understanding of BES structure and function in host adaptation and immune evasion, the BES repertoire from the Lister 427 strain of T. brucei were independently tagged and sequenced. BESs are polymorphic in size and structure but reveal a surprisingly conserved architecture in the context of extensive recombination. Very small BESs do exist and many functioning BESs do not contain the full complement of expression site associated genes (ESAGs). The consequences of duplicated or missing ESAGs, including ESAG9, a newly named ESAG12, and additional variant surface glycoprotein genes (VSGs) were evaluated by functional assays after BESs were tagged with a drug-resistance gene. Phylogenetic analysis of constituent ESAG families suggests that BESs are sequence mosaics and that extensive recombination has shaped the evolution of the BES repertoire. This work opens important perspectives in understanding the molecular mechanisms of antigenic variation, a widely used strategy for immune evasion in pathogens, and telomere biology

Enoximone echocardiography: a novel test to evaluate left ventricular contractile reserve in patients with heart failure on chronic beta-blocker therapy

BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that an extensive contractile reserve identified recognised by means of dobutamine stress echocardiography may predict a better prognosis in patients with severe left ventricular dysfunction at rest. However, the clinical use of dobutamine stress echocardiography may be limited in patients with chronic heart failure by the substantial proportion of such patients treated with beta-blockers, since the inotropic response to adrenergic stimulation is known to be attenuated in patients receiving beta-adrenoceptor blockers. Enoximone is a positive inotropic agent that inhibits cyclic adenosine monophosphate-specific phosphosdiesterase. We therefore tested the hypothesis that enoximone may be an alternative to dobutamine in evaluating left ventricular contractile reserve in patients with systolic dysfunction on chronic beta-blocker therapy. METHODS: We studied 26 patients (21 males and five females) with a mean age of 58 ± 10 years: 11 were not receiving beta-blockers (noBB group); 15 were receiving carvedilol at a mean dose of 34 mg/day (BB group). Dobutamine was infused at doses of 5 and 10 micrograms/kg/min, and enoximone at a dose of 1.5 mg/kg. RESULTS: The ejection fraction in the noBB group increased by 9% with dobutamine and 8.73% with enoximone (p = 0.86); in the BB group, it increased by 6% with dobutamine and 8.94% with enoximone (p = 0.03). Regional peak systolic velocities were evaluated by means of tissue Doppler imaging in four basal and four medium level segments. In the noBB group, they increased more with dobutamine than with enoximone in three of the eight segments; no significant differences were found in the BB group. Dobutamine induced non-sustained ventricular tachycardia in three patients and supraventricular tachycardia in one, whereas enoximone did not induce any repetitive arrhythmias. CONCLUSIONS: Enoximone might be preferable to low-dose dobutamine for evaluating left ventricular contractile reserve in chronically beta-blocked heart failure patients as it is slightly more potent and has a better safety profile

Monoubiquitination of syntaxin 3 leads to retrieval from the basolateral plasma membrane and facilitates cargo recruitment to exosomes

Syntaxin 3 (Stx3), a SNARE protein located and functioning at the apical plasma membrane of epithelial cells, is required for epithelial polarity. A fraction of Stx3 is localized to late endosomes/lysosomes, although how it traffics there and its function in these organelles is unknown. Here we report that Stx3 undergoes monoubiquitination in a conserved polybasic domain. Stx3 present at the basolateral—but not the apical—plasma membrane is rapidly endocytosed, targeted to endosomes, internalized into intraluminal vesicles (ILVs), and excreted in exosomes. A nonubiquitinatable mutant of Stx3 (Stx3-5R) fails to enter this pathway and leads to the inability of the apical exosomal cargo protein GPRC5B to enter the ILV/exosomal pathway. This suggests that ubiquitination of Stx3 leads to removal from the basolateral membrane to achieve apical polarity, that Stx3 plays a role in the recruitment of cargo to exosomes, and that the Stx3-5R mutant acts as a dominant-negative inhibitor. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) acquires its membrane in an intracellular compartment and we show that Stx3-5R strongly reduces the number of excreted infectious viral particles. Altogether these results suggest that Stx3 functions in the transport of specific proteins to apical exosomes and that HCMV exploits this pathway for virion excretion

Understanding economic evidence for the prevention and treatment of atopic eczema

Background Atopic eczema is an inflammatory skin condition, with a similar impact on health-related quality-of-life as other chronic diseases. Increasing pressures on resources within the NHS increase the importance of having good economic evidence to inform their allocation. This paper aims to educate dermatologists about economic methods with illustration to currently available economic evidence on eczema. Methods/design The type and role of different types of economic evidence is illustrated by evidence found in a systematic literature search conducted across 12 online databases published until 22nd May 2017. Primary empirical studies either reporting the results of a cost of illness study or evaluating the cost, utility or full economic evaluation of interventions for preventing or treating eczema were included. Two reviewers independently assessed studies for eligibility and performed data abstraction, with disagreements resolved by a third reviewer. Evidence tables of results were produced for narrative discussion. The reporting quality of economic evaluations was assessed. Results 78 studies (described in 80 papers) were deemed eligible. 33 (42%) were judged to be economic evaluations, 12 (15%) cost analyses, 6 (8%) utility analyses, 26 (34%) cost-of-illness studies and 1 feasibility study (1%). The calcineurin inhibitors: tacrolimus and pimecrolimus, as well as barrier creams had most economic evidence available. Partially hydrolysed infant formula was the most commonly evaluated prevention. Conclusions The current level of economic evidence for interventions aimed at preventing and treating eczema is limited compared to that available for clinical outcomes suggesting that greater collaboration between clinicians and economists might be beneficial