Virtual Research Integration Collaboration: Procedural report

The aim of the project is to build a framework for the integration of basic science and clinical research to manage research lifecycles and allow for integration of scientific approaches throughout these lifecycles into the everyday work practice of the consortia that manage translational clinical research. The project will take the CORE VRE and embed it into a National centre for surgical excellence, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH). The VRE will integrate both with the institutional systems and research life cycle, and with the national systems such as the National Health Service (NHS). It is our aim to integrate the CORE VRE with myExperiment to provide a set of services at RNOH to cover the four main areas of the research cycle, namely: the monitoring and governance of trials (experiment research administration); the trial protocols (experiment workflows); the publishing, dissemination and discussion on the results of trials in a repository; and the discovery of information from the repository and other resources. For this community, there are three tightly coupled areas of focus: research, clinical practice, and education (in the form of continuing professional development and training of the next generation of surgeons). In this project, our user community will be heavily involved in co-designing and codeployment of the tool set, and in particular the front end of the workbench will be user focused. The tools will need to be available to staff anywhere with the organisation, as clinicians need to be able to enter the data during clinics and directors of research need to be able to monitor the trials. This will bring with it a number of inter-operability issues, as we move data between the VRE, the hospital systems (NHS) and the institutional systems. To aid the understanding of the how the system will be used, we outline a typical ‘research cycle’ that includes the practice of a clinical specialist in orthopaedics (who may also be a Higher surgical trainee) and a basic scientist. The purpose of this is to identify time essential information provision and interaction with pervasive technologies. For new researchers one of the most difficult tasks is to learn good practice or find related experiments to learn how to instantiate the protocols; in many organisations it is often easier to repeat an experiment than to find the results of a similar previous experiment. In this abstracted model of the research lifecycle, we have split up the cycle into four main research activities. In each of these activities the different issues and stakeholders are addressed. The wider community nationally is represented by the Musculoskeletal network of Greater London, NHS, e-science, Surgical and VRE communities. It is through the Musculoskeletal network of Greater London that we will be able to co-ordinate knowledge and demonstrations to advise the community and for continuity. This project will impact on the wider academic community in the UK, initially through dissemination via organisations such as BriteNet (Tissue Engineering), The British Orthopaedic Association, British Orthopaedic Research Society, and the British Elbow and Shoulder Society as the groups tied into the consortia development

Dinosaur micro-remains from the Middle Jurassic of Britain

In the Middle Jurassic, Great Britain was situated at ~30° north in an area of shallow seas with surrounding low-lying landmasses. Fluctuations in relative sea level resulted in emergent areas preserving snapshots of the terrestrial fauna in microvertebrate sites throughout southern England. Analysis of the dinosaur material, mostly isolated teeth, has resulted in a much more granular view of the taxa present including clades previously unknown or unconfirmed from this period. I developed machine learning techniques, which combined with morphological-based approaches confirms the presence of at least three maniraptoran taxa in the assemblage: three dromaeosaur morphotypes; a troodontid; and a therizinosaur. These results provide the first quantitative support for the presence of maniraptoran theropods, including the oldest occurrences of troodontids and therizinosaurs worldwide, in the Middle Jurassic and are consistent with predictions made by phylogenetic analyses. There are at least six ornithischian taxa in the assemblage; a distinctive highly-ridged morphotype that cannot be referred with certainty to any known ornithischian taxa and therefore represents a new taxon; a number of small teeth with denticles restricted to the upper third of the crown which represent a hitherto unknown occurrence of heterodontosaurids in the Middle Jurassic of the UK; at least one morphotype of a basal thyreophoran; an indeterminate thyreophoran; a stegosaur, which represents one of the oldest stegosaurs worldwide; and a number of ankylosaur morphotypes which make up the vast majority of the isolated ornithischian teeth seen from these sites. The application of machine learning, when combined with traditional morphological comparisons provides a powerful tool for the qualitative assessment of isolated teeth. This analysis increases the known diversity of Middle Jurassic dinosaur taxa in the UK and the confirmation of early maniraptorans, heterodontosaurids and stegosaurs highlights the importance of incorporating microvertebrate remains into faunal and evolutionary analyses

A comparative study of fuzzy logic controllers for autonomous robots.

This paper presents the results from an experimental comparison of a number of fuzzy logic controllers performing mobile robot navigation. An experiment is described which requires the robot to complete a complex, measurable navigational task. The world's first generalised type-2 fuzzy logic controller is compared to a type-1 and a type-2 interval controller. Visual and statistical analyses show that the generalised type-2 fuzzy controller gives a better performance in consistency and smoothness. The impact of this paper comes primarily from the rigorous use of statistical analysis in mobile robot navigation

Machine learning confirms new records of maniraptoran theropods in Middle Jurassic

Current research suggests that the initial radiation of maniraptoran theropods occurred in the Middle Jurassic, although their fossil record is known almost exclusively from the Cretaceous. However, fossils of Jurassic maniraptorans are scarce, usually consisting solely of isolated teeth, and their identifications are often disputed. Here, we apply different machine learning models, in conjunction with morphological comparisons, to a suite of isolated theropod teeth from Bathonian microvertebrate sites in the UK to determine whether any of these can be confidently assigned to Maniraptora. We generated three independent models developed on a training dataset with a wide range of theropod taxa and broad geographical and temporal coverage. Classification of the Middle Jurassic teeth in our sample against these models and comparison of the morphology indicates the presence of at least three distinct dromaeosaur morphotypes, plus a therizinosaur and troodontid in these assemblages. These new referrals significantly extend the ranges of Therizinosauroidea and Troodontidae by some 27 myr. These results indicate that not only were maniraptorans present in the Middle Jurassic, as predicted by previous phylogenetic analyses, but they had already radiated into a diverse fauna that pre-dated the break-up of Pangaea. This study also demonstrates the power of machine learning to provide quantitative assessments of isolated teeth in providing a robust, testable framework for taxonomic identifications, and highlights the importance of assessing and including evidence from microvertebrate sites in faunal and evolutionary analyses

Catch before a fall – an iPad application for Osteoporosis Risk Assessment

The Virtual Research Integration Collaboration (VRIC) project provides a framework for the integration of basic science and clinical research. It enables the management of research lifecycles by integrating scientific approaches with everyday work practice in a virtual research environment (VRE). “Catch Before a Fall” (CBaF) is a clinical research project using VRIC. CBaF is aimed at calculating patients’ risk factor of developing osteoporosis and of having an osteoporosis related fracture within the next 10 years. Patients’ data are collected through CBaF and stored in data structures that match the VRIC architecture for automatic importing via a script written for that purpose. Data analysis is conducted in VRIC and the conclusion of the research process is followed up within that tool. In this paper, we describe how CBaF was designed to follow the VRIC framework, and discuss the technical development work of the application

Association of metabolic syndrome and change in Unified Parkinson\u27s Disease Rating Scale scores.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the association between metabolic syndrome and the Unified Parkinson\u27s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) scores and, secondarily, the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT). METHODS: This is a secondary analysis of data from 1,022 of 1,741 participants of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Exploratory Clinical Trials in Parkinson Disease Long-Term Study 1, a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of creatine. Participants were categorized as having or not having metabolic syndrome on the basis of modified criteria from the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III. Those who had the same metabolic syndrome status at consecutive annual visits were included. The change in UPDRS and SDMT scores from randomization to 3 years was compared in participants with and without metabolic syndrome. RESULTS: Participants with metabolic syndrome (n = 396) compared to those without (n = 626) were older (mean [SD] 63.9 [8.1] vs 59.9 [9.4] years; p \u3c 0.0001), were more likely to be male (75.3% vs 57.0%; p \u3c 0.0001), and had a higher mean uric acid level (men 5.7 [1.3] vs 5.3 [1.1] mg/dL, women 4.9 [1.3] vs 3.9 [0.9] mg/dL, p \u3c 0.0001). Participants with metabolic syndrome experienced an additional 0.6- (0.2) unit annual increase in total UPDRS (p = 0.02) and 0.5- (0.2) unit increase in motor UPDRS (p = 0.01) scores compared with participants without metabolic syndrome. There was no difference in the change in SDMT scores. CONCLUSIONS: Persons with Parkinson disease meeting modified criteria for metabolic syndrome experienced a greater increase in total UPDRS scores over time, mainly as a result of increases in motor scores, compared to those who did not. Further studies are needed to confirm this finding. CLINICALTRIALSGOV IDENTIFIER: NCT00449865

(S)-(−)-Fluorenylethylchloroformate (FLEC) ; preparation using asymmetric transfer hydrogenation and application to the analysis and resolution of amines

Fluorenylethylchoroformate (FLEC) is a valuable chiral derivatisation reagent that is used for the resolution of a wide variety of chiral amines. Herein, we describe an improved preparation of (S)-(−)-FLEC using an efficient asymmetric catalytic transfer hydrogenation as the key step. We also demonstrate the application of FLEC as a chiral Fmoc equivalent for chiral resolution, with facile deprotection, of tetrahydroquinaldines, and its capacity for inducing regioselective outcomes in nitration reactions