Addressing the needs of international postgraduate students: the role of social capital

Self-evidently, international students are likely to have considerable informational and social needs when coming to study in the UK. This paper reports the findings of a small study of such needs among international postgraduate students in the School of Health Sciences. It was an interview study, with twelve students participating. Though the study was designed to support the creation of an online resource, the findings suggest that meeting those needs satisfactorily requires a multi-faceted approach. Both face-to-face and online processes are needed to help students to develop the social capital necessary to success in undertaking the course, getting to know the university, and adjusting to life in England

Sensitisation waves in a bidomain fire-diffuse-fire model of intracellular Ca²⁺ dynamics

We present a bidomain threshold model of intracellular calcium (Ca²⁺) dynamics in which, as suggested by recent experiments, the cytosolic threshold for Ca²⁺ liberation is modulated by the Ca²⁺ concentration in the releasing compartment. We explicitly construct stationary fronts and determine their stability using an Evans function approach. Our results show that a biologically motivated choice of a dynamic threshold, as opposed to a constant threshold, can pin stationary fronts that would otherwise be unstable. This illustrates a novel mechanism to stabilise pinned interfaces in continuous excitable systems. Our framework also allows us to compute travelling pulse solutions in closed form and systematically probe the wave speed as a function of physiologically important parameters. We find that the existence of travelling wave solutions depends on the time scale of the threshold dynamics, and that facilitating release by lowering the cytosolic threshold increases the wave speed. The construction of the Evans function for a travelling pulse shows that of the co-existing fast and slow solutions the slow one is always unstable

Addiction through the Ages: a review of the development of concepts and ideas about addiction in European countries since the nineteenth century and the role of international organisations in the process

The work on addiction through the ages proceeded through 4 interlinked studies: The emergence of concepts of addiction across Europe at the national level, 1860-1980 The framing of the alcohol question at the international alcohol conferences The role of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and its expert committees in defining addiction from the 1940s to the early twenty first century The role of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) in defining concepts of addiction The long view of addiction concepts at the country level over time points to continuities and changes across countries. They have also played a significant role in international organisations, the pre World War Two alcohol conferences and the World Health Organisation (WHO) after that war. The European level through the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction has also come into the picture in more recent times with discussion of a different set of concepts. Although a degree of stability has been achieved around addiction concepts, these still encapsulate a variety of meanings which translate into different treatment and policy approaches and traditions within Europe. By understanding the history of such concepts and how and why they came in and out of use, we can better understand addiction terminology and substance use policy today

A multiscale hybrid model for pro-angiogenic calcium signals in a vascular endothelial cell

Cytosolic calcium machinery is one of the principal signaling mechanisms by which endothelial cells (ECs) respond to external stimuli during several biological processes, including vascular progression in both physiological and pathological conditions. Low concentrations of angiogenic factors (such as VEGF) activate in fact complex pathways involving, among others, second messengers arachidonic acid (AA) and nitric oxide (NO), which in turn control the activity of plasma membrane calcium channels. The subsequent increase in the intracellular level of the ion regulates fundamental biophysical properties of ECs (such as elasticity, intrinsic motility, and chemical strength), enhancing their migratory capacity. Previously, a number of continuous models have represented cytosolic calcium dynamics, while EC migration in angiogenesis has been separately approached with discrete, lattice-based techniques. These two components are here integrated and interfaced to provide a multiscale and hybrid Cellular Potts Model (CPM), where the phenomenology of a motile EC is realistically mediated by its calcium-dependent subcellular events. The model, based on a realistic 3-D cell morphology with a nuclear and a cytosolic region, is set with known biochemical and electrophysiological data. In particular, the resulting simulations are able to reproduce and describe the polarization process, typical of stimulated vascular cells, in various experimental conditions.Moreover, by analyzing the mutual interactions between multilevel biochemical and biomechanical aspects, our study investigates ways to inhibit cell migration: such strategies have in fact the potential to result in pharmacological interventions useful to disrupt malignant vascular progressio

Cognitive appraisal of environmental stimuli induces emotion-like states in fish

The occurrence of emotions in non-human animals has been the focus of debate over the years. Recently, an interest in expanding this debate to non-tetrapod vertebrates and to invertebrates has emerged. Within vertebrates, the study of emotion in teleosts is particularly interesting since they represent a divergent evolutionary radiation from that of tetrapods, and thus they provide an insight into the evolution of the biological mechanisms of emotion. We report that Sea Bream exposed to stimuli that vary according to valence (positive, negative) and salience (predictable, unpredictable) exhibit different behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular states. Since according to the dimensional theory of emotion valence and salience define a two-dimensional affective space, our data can be interpreted as evidence for the occurrence of distinctive affective states in fish corresponding to each the four quadrants of the core affective space. Moreover, the fact that the same stimuli presented in a predictable vs. unpredictable way elicited different behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular states, suggests that stimulus appraisal by the individual, rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the stimulus, has triggered the observed responses. Therefore, our data supports the occurrence of emotion-like states in fish that are regulated by the individual's perception of environmental stimuli.European Commission [265957 Copewell]; Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/80029/2011, SFRH/BPD/72952/2010]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Search for Free Decay of Negative Pions in Water and Light Materials

We report on a search for the free decay component of pi- stopped in water and light materials. A non-zero value of this would be an indication of anomalous nu_e contamination to the nu_e and nu_mu_bar production at stopped-pion neutrino facilities. No free decay component of pi- was observed in water, Beryllium, and Aluminum, for which upper limits were established at 8.2E-4, 3.2E-3, and 7.7E-3, respectively

Effects of national housing quality standards on hospital emergency admissions: a quasi-experiment using data-linkage

Background National housing quality standards are now being applied throughout the UK. The Welsh Government has introduced the Welsh Housing Quality Standards. A housing improvement programme in Wales has been delivered through one local authority to bring 9500 homes up to standard. Homes received multiple elements, including new kitchens, bathrooms, windows and doors, boilers, insulation, and wiring, through an 8 year rolling work programme. The study aimed to determine the impacts of the different housing improvements on hospital emergency admissions for residents over 60 years of age. Methods Intervention homes (council homes that received at least one element of work) were data linked to individual health records of residents. Counts of admissions for respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, and for falls and burns, were obtained retrospectively for each individual in a dynamic housing cohort (Jan 1, 2005, to March 31, 2015). The criterion for the intervention cohort was for someone to have lived in any one of the 9500 intervention homes for at least 3 months within the intervention period. Counts were captured for up to 123 consecutive months for 7054 individuals in the intervention cohort and analysed in a multilevel approach to account for repeated observations for individuals, nested within geographical areas. Negative binomial regression models were constructed to determine the effect on emergency admissions for those living in homes compliant for each element of work compared with those living in homes that were non-compliant at that time. We adjusted for background trends in the regional general population, and for other confounding factors. Findings For residents 60 years old and over there was a reduction in admissions for people with compliant boilers (rate ratio 0·71, 95% CI 0·67–0·76), loft insulation (0·87, 0·80–0·95), wall insulation (0·74, 0·69–0·80), and windows and doors (0·56, 0·52–0·61) compared with those living in homes that were non-compliant for those work elements. Interpretation Improving housing to national standards reduces the number of emergency admissions to hospital for older residents. Strengths of the data-linkage approach included the retrospective collection of complete baseline and follow-up data using routine data for a long-term intervention, and large scale regional adjustment

Wave nucleation rate in excitable systems in the low noise limit

Motivated by recent experiments on intracellular calcium dynamics, we study the general issue of fluctuation-induced nucleation of waves in excitable media. We utilize a stochastic Fitzhugh-Nagumo model for this study, a spatially-extended non-potential pair of equations driven by thermal (i.e. white) noise. The nucleation rate is determined by finding the most probable escape path via minimization of an action related to the deviation of the fields from their deterministic trajectories. Our results pave the way both for studies of more realistic models of calcium dynamics as well as of nucleation phenomena in other non-equilibrium pattern-forming processes