The impact of short duration, high intensity exercise on cardiac troponin release.

The aim of this study was to assess the appearance of cardiac troponins (cTnI and/or cTnT) after a short bout (30 s) of 'all-out' intense exercise and to determine the stability of any exercise-related cTnI release in response to repeated bouts of high intensity exercise separated by 7 days recovery. Eighteen apparently healthy, physically active, male university students completed two all-out 30 s cycle sprint, separated by 7 days. cTnI, blood lactate and catecholamine concentrations were measured before, immediately after and 24 h after each bout. Cycle performance, heart rate and blood pressure responses to exercise were also recorded. Cycle performance was modestly elevated in the second trial [6·5% increase in peak power output (PPO)]; there was no difference in the cardiovascular, lactate or catecholamine response to the two cycle trials. cTnI was not significantly elevated from baseline through recovery (Trial 1: 0·06 ± 0·04 ng ml(-1) , 0·05 ± 0·04 ng ml(-1) , 0·03 ± 0·02 ng ml(-1) ; Trial 2: 0·02 ± 0·04 ng ml(-1) , 0·04 ± 0·03 ng ml(-1) , 0·05 ± 0·06 ng ml(-1) ) in either trial. Very small within subject changes were not significantly correlated between the two trials (r = 0·06; P>0·05). Subsequently, short duration, high intensity exercise does not elicit a clinically relevant response in cTnI and any small alterations likely reflect the underlying biological variability of cTnI measurement within the participants

‘The dawn of affluence’: British living standards 1900-1960: a report on the Sussex Teacher-Scholar programme

Between 2010 and 2013 the University of Sussex hosted the ESRC-funded project entitled ‘The Living Standards of Working Households in Britain, 1904-1960’ (RES-062-23-2054). The aim of the project was to transcribe and analyse large-scale government surveys administered in the first half of the twentieth century. The aim of the knowledge transfer component of the project was to facilitate the teaching of new research on British living standards in UK schools. The knowledge transfer component of the project was undertaken in partnership with The National Archives. The National Archives had experience of running a number of ‘teacher scholar’ programmes. A ‘teacher scholar’ could be defined as a teacher who becomes expert on a particular topic through academic activities, such as attending lectures, reading, and examining primary ‘evidence’ (such as documents, statistics, landmarks etc), and then uses this knowledge to inform the lessons they write. The lessons developed by the teacher scholars would be shared with other teachers who did not attend the programme by being made available to download online. The Sussex project team worked with Andrew Payne, Head of Education and Outreach at TNA, and Ben Walsh, teacher, author and senior GCSE history examiner, to develop a teacher-scholar programme on the subject of modern British living standards. Dr Samantha Shave was responsible for liaison between the TNA and Sussex teams and wrote this report about the Programme at the end of the project in 2013, in order to capture the development of the programme, what happened on the programme and how it worked. This report hopes to serve as inspiration for academics in the humanities and social sciences who are planning or embarking on knowledge transfer and impact projects

Poverty, gender and life-cycle under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834 [Samantha Williams, 2011]

Poverty, Gender and Life-Cycle under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834. Samantha Williams. Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2011, ISBN: 9780861933143; 204pp.; Price: £50.0

Hybridism: a practice-led investigation

Keele University PhD Thesi

Interfacial Interactions and Dynamic Adhesion of Synthetic and Living Colloids in Flow

This thesis focuses on the interactions between flowing particles and a surface, where hydrodynamics couples with chemical interactions in order to modify the way they come into play. First this thesis shows how electrostatic chemical heterogeneities on a flowing particle affect the interactions with a wall, using a highly tunable electrostatically heterogenous system produced by adsorbing small amounts of cationic polyelectrolytes onto silica particles in suspension and studying their behavior in flow over the fixed surface. By comparing this behavior to a system with equivalent chemical heterogeneity on a channel wall it was shown that the rotation of a particle will produce a lower attempt frequency, resulting in chemical heterogeneity being less effective on a flowing particle then on a fixed surface. This establishes the importance of hydrodynamics in the chemical interactions of flowing colloids. Next this work shows how swimming of Escherichia coli increases both the frequency of bacteria encountering a surface and the durations of the resulting engagements, in an unconfined flowing environment, due to hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria and surfaces. This swimming effect was decoupled from the effect of flagella interactions. It was found that the presence of flagella, when not active, producing steric kicks, increasing the escape frequency and as a result reducing surface engagements length. Expansion of this work showed that the effects caused by morphological differences between bacteria strains can be significantly reduced by altering the mechanical properties of a surface coating. Finally, this thesis shows that rod shaped particles are able to diffuse through a concentration boundary layer and adhere to surfaces at a rate faster than possible with spherical particles, due to hydrodynamic interactions between the non-spherical particles and the surrounding fluid. Current literature contains a wide variety of experiential results and mathematical predictions for the behavior of rods in flow but the lack of consistent systems with well-studied spherical controls has led to many discrepancies in their results. This thesis addresses these apparent discrepancies using model rod-shaped silica particle suspensions and spherical controls. Overall, this thesis probes the effects of three hydrodynamic effects on interactions between particles and surfaces in the presence of flow

A Clinico-Pathologic Study of Botulism in Ring-Necked Pheasants

Toxins were produced from 6 strains of Cl. Botulinum, 2 of which killed pheasants. Inoculated birds were observed and a description of the progression of signs of the disease is given. Juvenile pheasants were inoculated with Types A and C toxin intramuscularly and were given the toxin orally. These birds were observed and their clinical signs noted. Adult pheasants were inoculated with toxoid prepared from type C toxin and commercial toxoid; injections were repeated in 21 days. Fourteen days following the final injection, the birds were challenged with toxin. Those protected with toxoid survived, while those receiving saline succumbed. Gross necropsy findings, bacteriologic and histopathologic examinations on all birds were negative

SimilarityLab:Molecular similarity for sar exploration and target prediction on the web

Exploration of chemical space around hit, experimental, and known active compounds is an important step in the early stages of drug discovery. In academia, where access to chemical synthesis efforts is restricted in comparison to the pharma-industry, hits from primary screens are typically followed up through purchase and testing of similar compounds, before further funding is sought to begin medicinal chemistry efforts. Rapid exploration of druglike similars and structure–activity relationship profiles can be achieved through our new webservice SimilarityLab. In addition to searching for commercially available molecules similar to a query compound, SimilarityLab also enables the search of compounds with recorded activities, generating consensus counts of activities, which enables target and off-target prediction. In contrast to other online offerings utilizing the USRCAT similarity measure, SimilarityLab’s set of commercially available small molecules is consistently updated, currently containing over 12.7 million unique small molecules, and not relying on published databases which may be many years out of date. This ensures researchers have access to up-to-date chemistries and synthetic processes enabling greater diversity and access to a wider area of commercial chemical space. All source code is available in the SimilarityLab source repository

CLAffinity:A software tool for identification of optimum ligand affinity for competition-based primary screens

[Image: see text] A simplistic assumption in setting up a competition assay is that a low affinity labeled ligand can be more easily displaced from a target protein than a high affinity ligand, which in turn produces a more sensitive assay. An often-cited paper correctly rallies against this assumption and recommends the use of the highest affinity ligand available for experiments aiming to determine competitive inhibitor affinities. However, we have noted this advice being applied incorrectly to competition-based primary screens where the goal is optimum assay sensitivity, enabling a clear yes/no binding determination for even low affinity interactions. The published advice only applies to secondary, confirmatory assays intended for accurate affinity determination of primary screening hits. We demonstrate that using very high affinity ligands in competition-based primary screening can lead to reduced assay sensitivity and, ultimately, the discarding of potentially valuable active compounds. We build on techniques developed in our PyBindingCurve software for a mechanistic understanding of complex biological interaction systems, developing the “CLAffinity tool” for simulating competition experiments using protein, ligand, and inhibitor concentrations common to drug screening campaigns. CLAffinity reveals optimum labeled ligand affinity ranges based on assay parameters, rather than general rules to optimize assay sensitivity. We provide the open source CLAffinity software toolset to carry out assay simulations and a video summarizing key findings to aid in understanding, along with a simple lookup table allowing identification of optimal dynamic ranges for competition-based primary screens. The application of our freely available software and lookup tables will lead to the consistent creation of more performant competition-based primary screens identifying valuable hit compounds, particularly for difficult targets