­­­­Using evidence when planning for trial recruitment : An international perspective from time-poor trialists

Funding: This study was funded by the Chief Scientist Office of Scotland’s Health Improvement, Protection and Services Research Committee (project reference HIPS/16/07 - https://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/outputs/cso-funded-research/hips16/). HRG was supported by a scholarship from Aberdeen Development Trust which funded her PhD fees and stipend, KG was supported by an MRC Methodology Research Fellowship (MR/L01193X/1), and ST was supported by core funding from the University of Aberdeen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Soluble pre-fibrillar tau and β-amyloid species emerge in early human Alzheimer’s disease and track disease progression and cognitive decline

Acknowledgments We would like to gratefully acknowledge all donors and their families for the tissue provided for this study. Human tissue samples were supplied by the Brains for Dementia Research programme, jointly funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, the Alzheimer’s Society and the Medical Research Council, and sourced from the MRC London Neurodegenerative Diseases Brain Bank, the Manchester Brain Bank, the South West Dementia Brain Bank (SWDBB), the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource and the Oxford Brain Bank. The Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource and Oxford Brain Bank are also supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Units. The South West Dementia Brain Bank (SWDBB) receives additional support from BRACE (Bristol Research into Alzheimer’s and Care of the Elderly). Alz-50, CP13, MC-1 and PHF-1 antibodies were gifted from Dr. Peter Davies and brain lystates from BACE1−/−mice were obtained from Prof Mike Ashford. The work presented here was funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK (Grant refs: ARUKPPG2014A-21 and ARUK-NSG2015-1 to BP and DK and NIH/NIA grants NIH/NINDS R01 NS082730 and R01 AG044372 to NK)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The James Webb Space Telescope

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) continues its inside look at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) with this Mercury feature by two scientists who have been intimately involved in the project for many years. JWST Senior Project Scientist John Mather described the early history of the project in issue 110 of Astronomy Beat; he provides a detailed current statusreport on the project in Astronomy Beat 111 (May 14, 2013)

Expertise utilization in project teams: a status-based account of process and performance

Why do some teams fail to use their members’ knowledge effectively, even after they have correctly identified each other’s expertise? Whereas the prevailing assumption in much of the micro-sociology and small groups literature suggests that teams will automatically defer to members who are believed to be experts, I argue that certain circumstances make team members unwilling or unable to use each other’s expertise – even after they have accurately determined who knows what. In particular, my dissertation integrates micro-sociology (status characteristics theory) and small groups research to develop theory about how status dynamics in teams affect team-level expertise recognition and utilization processes and the resulting performance implications. I propose both team factors (shared representations) and task factors (performance pressure) that moderate the relationship between expertise recognition and utilization, and I identify mechanisms through which these factors either hinder or facilitate the process. I refine and test my theory with a multi-method field study across two professional service firms, including six longitudinal case studies of project teams, multi-point surveys of 104 accounting and consulting teams (500+ team members), interviews and surveys with the teams’ managing partners and their actual clients, and archival data. My dissertation advances theory in two major ways. First, I demonstrate that teams do not automatically defer to their resident experts, and I identify conditions under which status dynamics will interfere with effective team-level expertise utilization. This finding has important theoretical implications for both status characteristics theory and for small groups research, and my dissertation develops and tests theory to begin explaining why this process breaks down. Second, by relating group expertise processes to client-rated performance, my research brings a novel perspective to the study of inter-firm relations. Whereas existing literature has shown that high levels of human capital help to maintain positive client relations, I show that the appropriate utilization of team members’ expertise contributes significantly to this outcome, over and above the mere presence of knowledge

Non-randomised evaluations of strategies to increase participant retention in randomised controlled trials:a systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Mathematical Tasks and the Student

Mathematics Education has at its core a conception of the mathematical performances that represent the aspirations of the mathematics classroom and curriculum. These performances are constituted through teacher and student participation in the activities stimulated by mathematical tasks selected by the teacher for the realization of an instructional purpose. In this nexus of activity, intention, interpretation and consequence, the mathematical task occupies a central place. This Research Forum provides an opportunity to explore and reflect upon the role that mathematical tasks play in the achievement of the goals of the international mathematics education community. Further, consistent with current curricular and theoretical priorities, the agency, attributes and activities of the student are foregrounded in the discussion of the instructional use of mathematical tasks. The contributors to this Research Forum represent a wide variety of theoretical perspectives and report research undertaken in different school systems and different cultures. These different perspectives offer a useful exploration of the theme: Mathematical Tasks and the Student

A good use of time? : Providing evidence for how effort is invested in primary and secondary outcome data collection in trials

BACKGROUND: Data collection is a substantial part of trial workload for participants and staff alike. How these hours of work are spent is important because stakeholders are more interested in some outcomes than others. The ORINOCO study compared the time spent collecting primary outcome data to the time spent collecting secondary outcome data in a cohort of trials. METHODS: We searched PubMed for phase III trials indexed between 2015 and 2019. From these, we randomly selected 120 trials evaluating a therapeutic intervention plus an additional random selection of 20 trials evaluating a public health intervention. We also added eligible trials from a cohort of 189 trials in rheumatology that had used the same core outcome set. We then obtained the time taken to collect primary and secondary outcomes in each trial. We used a hierarchy of methods that included data in trial reports, contacting the trial team and approaching individuals with experience of using the identified outcome measures. We calculated the primary to secondary data collection time ratio and notional data collection cost for each included trial. RESULTS: We included 161 trials (120 phase III; 21 core outcome set; 20 public health), which together collected 230 primary and 688 secondary outcomes. Full primary and secondary timing data were obtained for 134 trials (100 phase III; 17 core outcome set; 17 public health). The median time spent on primaries was 56.1 h (range: 0.0-10,746.7, IQR: 226.89) and the median time spent on secondaries was 190.7 hours (range: 0.0-1,356,832.9, IQR: 617.6). The median primary to secondary data collection time ratio was 1.0:3.0 (i.e. for every minute spent on primary outcomes, 3.0 were spent on secondaries). The ratio varied by trial type: phase III trials were 1.0:3.1, core outcome set 1.0:3.4 and public health trials 1.0:2.2. The median notional overall data collection cost was £8015.73 (range: £52.90-£31,899,140.70, IQR: £20,096.64). CONCLUSIONS: Depending on trial type, between two and three times as much time is spent collecting secondary outcome data than collecting primary outcome data. Trial teams should explicitly consider how long it will take to collect the data for an outcome and decide whether that time is worth it given importance of the outcome to the trial.Peer reviewe

Patterns of genomic and phenomic diversity in wine and table grapes.

Grapes are one of the most economically and culturally important crops worldwide, and they have been bred for both winemaking and fresh consumption. Here we evaluate patterns of diversity across 33 phenotypes collected over a 17-year period from 580 table and wine grape accessions that belong to one of the world's largest grape gene banks, the grape germplasm collection of the United States Department of Agriculture. We find that phenological events throughout the growing season are correlated, and quantify the marked difference in size between table and wine grapes. By pairing publicly available historical phenotype data with genome-wide polymorphism data, we identify large effect loci controlling traits that have been targeted during domestication and breeding, including hermaphroditism, lighter skin pigmentation and muscat aroma. Breeding for larger berries in table grapes was traditionally concentrated in geographic regions where Islam predominates and alcohol was prohibited, whereas wine grapes retained the ancestral smaller size that is more desirable for winemaking in predominantly Christian regions. We uncover a novel locus with a suggestive association with berry size that harbors a signature of positive selection for larger berries. Our results suggest that religious rules concerning alcohol consumption have had a marked impact on patterns of phenomic and genomic diversity in grapes

An international core outcome set for evaluating interventions to improve informed consent to clinical trials : the ELICIT Study

Funding: KG was supported by an MRC Methodology Research Fellowship (MR/L01193X/1). The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the MRC. PRW was funded by the MRC North West Hub for Trials Methodology Research (MR/K025635/1) and the MRC/NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership (MR/S014357/1). The Health Services Research Unit is core-funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates (CZU/3/3). Acknowledgements: The ELICIT Study team would like to thank Cynthia Fraser for help with developing and running the search strategies for the literature review, the DelphiManager team for all their support and guidance on the use of the Delphi platform, Health Services Research Unit Patient Involvement Group critical review of the Delphi questionnaire before dissemination, Heather Bagley for further comments on the Delphi questionnaire and also for dissemination of the survey information and link to a range of patient facing organisations, and to Beverley Smith for her assistance in organising the consensus meeting. We would also like to thank all participants of the study (including interview participants, Delphi respondents, and consensus meeting members) and organisations who disseminated the survey. Data Sharing: Data from the systematic review and Delphi survey phases of work are available from the corresponding author on request.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A protocol for a systematic review of non-randomised evaluations of strategies to increase participant retention to randomised controlled trials

This work is part of AE’s PhD which is funded by the University of Aberdeen Elphinstone Scholarship. The Health Services Research Unit, University of Aberdeen receives core funding from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Governoment Health Directorates. The funder had no role in the protocol development.Peer reviewedPublisher PD