Review of Engaging Education: Developing Emotional Literacy, Equity and Co-education. Brian Matthews. (Book Review)

The book is only about a fraction of its title Engaging Education. His section on ‘engaging the emotions’ sums this up: whereas the book is largely about engaging the emotions positively, the definition of ‘Engaging’ is more far reaching: “that pupils should be involved in their learning; be active and absorbed and not just passive recipients of a set curriculum. Additionally, they should feel engaged in the processes of education and have some input into creating their own agendas for learning” (p.2). Exploring the full impact of this statement across the curriculum really needs a different book

Structure of vaccinia virus thymidine kinase in complex with dTTP: insights for drug design

BACKGROUND: Development of countermeasures to bioterrorist threats such as those posed by the smallpox virus (variola), include vaccination and drug development. Selective activation of nucleoside analogues by virus-encoded thymidine (dThd) kinases (TK) represents one of the most successful strategies for antiviral chemotherapy as demonstrated for anti-herpes drugs. Vaccinia virus TK is a close orthologue of variola TK but also shares a relatively high sequence identity to human type 2 TK (hTK), thus achieving drug selectivity relative to the host enzyme is challenging. RESULTS: In order to identify any differences compared to hTK that may be exploitable in drug design, we have determined the crystal structure of VVTK, in complex with thymidine 5'-triphosphate (dTTP). Although most of the active site residues are conserved between hTK and VVTK, we observe a difference in conformation of residues Asp-43 and Arg-45. The equivalent residues in hTK hydrogen bond to dTTP, whereas in subunit D of VVTK, Asp-43 and Arg-45 adopt a different conformation preventing interaction with this nucleotide. Asp-43 and Arg-45 are present in a flexible loop, which is disordered in subunits A, B and C. The observed difference in conformation and flexibility may also explain the ability of VVTK to phosphorylate (South)-methanocarbathymine whereas, in contrast, no substrate activity with hTK is reported for this compound. CONCLUSION: The difference in conformation for Asp-43 and Arg-45 could thus be used in drug design to generate VVTK/Variola TK-selective nucleoside analogue substrates and/or inhibitors that have lower affinity for hTK

Structure of Staphylococcus aureus cytidine monophosphate kinase in complex with cytidine 5′-monophosphate

The crystal structure of S. aureus cytidine monophosphate kinase in complex with cytidine 5′-monophosphate has been determined

Structure of the PII signal transduction protein of Neisseria meningitidis at 1.85 Å resolution

The structure of the PII signal transduction protein of N. meningitidis at 1.85 Å resolution is described

Error motion trajectory-driven diagnostics of kinematic and non-kinematic machine tool faults

Error motion trajectory data are routinely collected on multi-axis machine tools to assess their operational state. There is a wealth of literature devoted to advances in modelling, identification and correction using such data, as well as the collection and processing of alternative data streams for the purpose of machine tool condition monitoring. Until recently, there has been minimal focus on combining these two related fields. This paper presents a general approach to identifying both kinematic and non-kinematic faults in error motion trajectory data, by framing the issue as a generic pattern recognition problem. Because of the typically-sparse nature of datasets in this domain – due to their infrequent, offline collection procedures – the foundation of the approach involves training on a purely simulated dataset, which defines the theoretical fault-states observable in the trajectories. Ensemble methods are investigated and shown to improve the generalisation ability when predicting on experimental data. Machine tools often have unique ‘signatures’ which can significantly-affect their error motion trajectories, which are largely repeatable, but specific to the individual machine. As such, experimentally-obtained data will not necessarily be easily defined in a theoretical simulation. A transfer learning approach is introduced to incorporate experimentally-obtained error motion trajectories into classifiers which were trained primarily on a simulation domain. The approach was shown to significantly improve experimental test set performance, whilst also maintaining all theoretical information learned in the initial, simulation-only training phase. The ultimate approach represents a viable and powerful automated classifier for error motion trajectory data, which can encode theoretical fault-states with efficacy whilst also remain adaptable to machine-specific signatures

A field study of team working in a new human supervisory control system

This paper presents a case study of an investigation into team behaviour in an energy distribution company. The main aim was to investigate the impact of major changes in the company on system performance, comprising human and technical elements. A socio-technical systems approach was adopted. There were main differences between the teams investigated in the study: the time of year each control room was studied (i.e. summer or winter),the stage of development each team was in (i.e. 10 months), and the team structure (i.e. hierarchical or heterarchical). In all other respects the control rooms were the same: employing the same technology and within the same organization. The main findings were: the teams studied in the winter months were engaged in more `planning’ and `awareness’ type of activities than those studies in the summer months. Newer teams seem to be engaged in more sharing of information than older teams, which maybe indicative of the development process. One of the hierarchical teams was engaged in more `system-driven’ activities than the heterarchical team studied at the same time of year. Finally, in general, the heterarchical team perceived a greater degree of team working culture than its hierarchical counterparts. This applied research project confirms findings from laboratory research and emphasizes the importance of involving ergonomics in the design of team working in human supervisory control