Growing Pains: Getting past the complexities of scaling social impact

In communities across the UK, organisations develop new ideas to improve the lives of those around them. And yet despite growing demand for charity services, concerted attempts to take proven approaches to scale are few and far between, and successful examples are rarer still. This paper aims to bring about a change in tack by proposing a way of assessing the viability of scaling in different contexts

Building open lab hardware to tackle antimicrobial resistance

Microbiological imaging can be lengthy and labour-intensive without expensive lab-automation. Using Open Source hardware and software, Dr Al Edwards’ Biomedical Technology Lab designed a robot to take high-resolution images of experiments capturing changes in colour and fluorescence due to bacterial growth. This affordable solution has increased the Lab’s capability to image and screen samples with higher throughput, accuracy, and more kinetic data. The system is fully customisable to suit any imaging experiment and costs only £600 to build from Open Source resources

Reinvigorating Library Outreach: Books, Blogs, & Newsletters

The Charles C. Sherrod Library at East Tennessee State University serves a student population of roughly 15,000 in addition to a faculty and staff population of around 5,000. In order to effectively reach these populations, the library has developed an outreach strategy which uses Constant Contact for newsletter and other mass email messaging, and Springshare for blog posting. This session will explore the Sherrod Library’s usage of these two services, our best practices, and what has and has not worked for us. In addition, Participants will be given the opportunity to share their own experiences via an online quiz and will leave with ideas to better their own practices

Atomic Layer Deposition of Environmental Barrier Coatings for Preventing Hydrogen Ingress

Hydrogen is an essential element of the energy industry from fuel cells to nuclear reactors and engines. However, its small molecular weight, which makes it attractive for these applications, also allows it to easily diffuse through materials and embrittle them. Hydrogen-induced damage includes increased ductile to brittle transition temperatures, precipitation of hydrides, and decreased interfacial strength between grains due to surface stabilization. Environmental barrier coatings (EBCs) can be used to alleviate hydrogen embrittlement by reducing ingress of the damaging element into susceptible substrates and thereby extend material lifetimes. Barrier material choice, which determines hydrogen diffusivity, and coating method, which determines microstructure and defect type and concentration, are both essential in forming an effective hydrogen EBC. In this work, density functional theory is used to screen high temperature materials to determine those with the largest activation energy and therefore lowest predicted diffusivity resulting in h-BN, c-BN, HfN, ZrN, and WC predicted to perform better than the legacy material, W, for high temperature hydrogen permeation prevention. Properties including diffusing hydrogen charge state, strain energy, and redistribution of electron density were compared to trends in the magnitude of activation energy. In addition, nitrogen vacancy formation energies with respect to gaseous nitrogen and ammonia formation were used to predict nitrogen retention at elevated temperatures. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) was used to deposit coatings of WN (decomposes to W) and BN for thermal testing. ALD uses sequential, self-limited surface reactions to form conformal, pinhole-free coatings that are chemically bonded to the substrate. Because BN was predicted to perform well regardless of crystal structure, it was chosen to compare against W. Coatings from WN and BN were conformal and uniform on the substrate surface. The film growth rate for BN was much faster than that of WN allowing for deposition of thicker barrier coatings of BN on the same time scale. Thermal testing in 6% hydrogen atmosphere up to 1770 K confirmed both the inert character of the BN coating compared to the WN/W coating and the computational predictions of BN as an improved material choice over the legacy material, W.</p

Reading, Writing, and Publishing an Obscene Canon: The Archival Logic of the Secret Museum, c. 1860-c. 1900.

This article investigates how a loose network of Victorian book collectors, bibliographers, self-styled sexual scientists, and pornographers represented the obscene as a multifarious category of print, encompassing a generically, historically, and linguistically varied range of works about (or associated in the public imagination with) sex. By examining this elite network's reading, writing, collection, publishing, and advertising practices, this article demonstrates how diversely arrayed publications can, as a result of interacting historical, ideological, and commercial factors, become imaginatively linked, structuring the ways in which they are published, disseminated, and interpreted by their readers.I would also like to thank the Wellcome Trust, whose funding provided me with time to complete the paper

A renaissance in library metadata? The importance of community collaboration in a digital world

This article summarizes a presentation given by Sarah Bull as part of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) seminar ‘Setting the Standard’ in November 2015. Representing the library community at the wide-ranging seminar, Sarah was tasked with making the topic of library metadata an engaging and informative one for a largely publisher audience. With help from co-author Amanda Quimby, this article is an attempt to achieve the same aim! It covers the importance of library metadata and standards in the supply chain and also reflects on the role of the community in successful standards development and maintenance. Special emphasis is given to the importance of quality in e-book metadata and the need for publisher and library collaboration to improve discovery, usage and the student experience. The article details the University of Birmingham experience of e-book metadata from a workflow perspective to highlight the complex integration issues which remain between content procurement and discovery

Piles of scats for piles of DNA: deriving DNA of lizards from their faeces

Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policySpecies identification and distribution; individual identity and relatedness; population history, structure, and diversity and more can be derived from faecal (scat) DNA. Although there are problems, such as contamination from prey DNA, in deriving donor DNA in this way, non-invasive genetic sampling using scats has a well established role in conservation biology. Using scats from captive and wild Egernia stokesii (Squamata, Scincidae) we evaluated two storage and four DNA extraction methods and assessed the reliability of assessing subsequent genotypes and sequences. Reliable genotypes and sequences were obtained from frozen and dried captive lizard scat DNA extracted using a QIAamp ® DNA Stool Mini Kit and a modified Gentra ®Puregene ® method; yet success rates deteriorated for wild lizard scats. Wild E. stokesii eat more plants than their captive counterparts; DNA extraction may be impeded by plant inhibitors present in scats of wild lizards . Notably, reliable genotypes and sequences were obtained from wild E. stokesii scat DNA extracted using a Qiagen DNeasy ® Plant Mini Kit, a method designed to remove plant inhibitors. Results highlight the opportunity for using scat derived DNA in lizard studies, particularly for species that deposit scats in piles

Seeing the person before the teeth: A realist evaluation of a dental anxiety service in Norway

Patients with a trauma history, whether sexual abuse or torture, or dental phobia, tend to avoid dental services due to severe dental anxiety. Subsequently, they experience poor oral health, lower quality of life, and poorer general health. In Norway, a specific service (torture, abuse, and dental anxiety [TADA]) targets these patients’ dental anxiety through cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) prior to dental restoration. By exploring patients’ experiences with TADA services using a realist evaluation approach, this paper aims to increase our understanding of how this type of service addresses patients’ dental anxiety in terms of its mechanisms and contextual factors. Interviews with TADA patients (n = 15) were analysed through a template analysis driven by context-mechanism-outcome heuristics. The analysis revealed that patients value a dental practitioner who provides a calm and holistic approach, positive judgements and predictability elements that lean towards a person-centred care approach. Provided this, patients felt understood and cared for, their shame was reduced, self-esteem emerged, and control was gained, which led to alleviation of dental anxiety. Therefore, our findings suggest that combining CBT with a person-centred care approach helps alleviate patients’ dental anxiety. This provides insights into how dental services could be executed for these patients.publishedVersio

More than just a dental practitioner: A realist evaluation of a dental anxiety service in Norway

Patients with dental phobia or a history of trauma tend to avoid dental services, which may, over time, lead to poor oral health. In Norway, a specific service targets these patients by providing exposure therapy to treat their fear of attendance and subsequently enable oral restoration. Dental practitioners deliver the exposure therapy, which requires a role change that deviates from their traditional practice. This paper explores how – and under what circumstances – dental practitioners manage this new role of alleviating dental anxiety for patients with a history of trauma or dental phobia. Using a realist evaluation approach, this paper develops theory describing which contexts promote mechanisms that allow practitioners to alleviate dental anxiety for patients with trauma or dental phobia. A multi-method approach, comprising service documents (n = 13) and stakeholder interviews (n = 12), was applied. The data were then analysed through a content analysis and context-mechanism-outcome heuristic tool. Our findings reveal that dental practitioners must adopt roles that enable trust, a safe space, and gradual desensitisation of the patient to their fear triggers. Adopting these roles requires time and resources to develop practitioners' skills – enabling them to adopt an appropriate communication style and exposure pace for each patient.publishedVersio