Suchergebnisse

Novel research-inspired outreach activities allow scientists and members of the public to engage in a conversation, increasing the public's understanding and interest in scientific research. This paper reviews outreach and public engagement initiatives undertaken by researchers from the University of Southampton's Optical Engineering and Quantum Photonics Group during a 5-year research program grant entitled Building Large Optical Quantum States. The activities have been supported by a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council program grant and institutional, national and international professional organizations. The paper discusses activities and hand-outs that have been developed to increase the visibility and public understanding of integrated-photonics fabrication and testing facilities, including a cleanroom-based process for the design and fabrication of quantum outreach chips. More than 1,000 of these chips have been distributed to children, parents and government officials in public events and the activities have contributed towards the authors' research group receiving the 2017 South East England Physics Network Highly Commended Award for Best Research Group. This paper also discusses the impact of these activities and lessons learned.

Despite an urgent need to protect information in computer systems critical to business and government, the inadequacy of many security products combined with overmarketing and overstated claims leaves information managers with nowhere to turn. Cyber security education is needed to provide a population of individuals who can make sound choices for the operation and acquisition of information protection. A prerequisite is an adequate population of educators. We describe workshops intended to help educators new to the area of Information Assurance. The multiple objectives are: to identify key foundational topics to educators, to teach lessons learned regarding topics difficult to convey to students, and to create a sense of community among Information Assurance educators. ; This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DUE-0210762 ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Some pathogens sustain transmission in multiple different host species, but how this epidemiologically important feat is achieved remains enigmatic. Sarcoptes scabiei is among the most host generalist and successful of mammalian parasites. We synthesize pathogen and host traits that mediate sustained transmission and present cases illustrating three transmission mechanisms (direct, indirect, and combined). The pathogen traits that explain the success of S. scabiei include immune response modulation, on-host movement capacity, off-host seeking behaviors, and environmental persistence. Sociality and host density appear to be key for hosts in which direct transmission dominates, whereas in solitary hosts, the use of shared environments is important for indirect transmission. In social den-using species, combined direct and indirect transmission appears likely. Empirical research rarely considers the mechanisms enabling S. scabiei to become endemic in host species-more often focusing on outbreaks. Our review may illuminate parasites' adaptation strategies to sustain transmission through varied mechanisms across host species. ; Australian Research CouncilAustralian Research Council [LP180101251]; Tasmanian Government Honours Scholarship in Wildlife Conservation by Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water, and Environment ; Published version ; We thank Chris Burridge and Geoff While for feedback and assessment of an early draft. This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Link Project grant (no. LP180101251) to SC and the Tasmanian Government Honours Scholarship in Wildlife Conservation awarded to EB by the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water, and Environment. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US government. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

Traditional schizophrenia pharmacotherapy remains a subjective trial and error process involving administration, titration and switching of drugs multiple times until an adequate response is achieved. Despite this time-consuming and costly process, not all patients show an adequate response to treatment. As a consequence, relapse is a common occurrence and early intervention is hampered. Here, we have attempted to identify candidate blood biomarkers associated with drug response in 121 initially antipsychotic-free recent-onset schizophrenia patients treated with widely-used antipsychotics, namely olanzapine (n=40), quetiapine (n=23), risperidone (n=30) and a mixture of these drugs (n=28). Patients were recruited and investigated as two separate cohorts to allow biomarker validation. Data analysis showed the most significant relationship between pre-treatment levels of heart-type fatty acid binding protein (H-FABP) and response to olanzapine (p=0.008, F=8.6, β=70.4 in the discovery cohort and p=0.003, F=15.2, β=24.4 in the validation cohort, adjusted for relevant confounding variables). In a functional follow-up analysis of this finding, we tested an independent cohort of 10 patients treated with olanzapine and found that baseline levels of plasma H-FABP and expression of the binding partner for H-FABP, fatty acid translocase (CD36), on monocytes predicted the reduction of psychotic symptoms (p=0.040, F=6.0, β=116.3 and p=0.012, F=11.9, β=-0.0054, respectively). We also identified a set of serum molecules changed after treatment with antipsychotic medication, in particular olanzapine. These molecules are predominantly involved in cellular development and metabolism. Taken together, our findings suggest an association between biomarkers involved in fatty acid metabolism and response to olanzapine, while other proteins may serve as surrogate markers associated with drug efficacy and side effects. ; This work was supported by the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI); the European Union FP7 SchizDX research ...

A high assurance architecture is described for the protection of distributed multilevel secure computing environments from malicious code and other attacks. Component security services and mechanisms extend and inter-operate with commodity PCs, commodity client software, applications, trusted components, and legacy single level networks, providing new capabilities for composing secure, distributed multilevel security. This architecture results from the realization that unless a secure system offers users comfortable and familiar interfaces for handling routine information, it will fail due to lack of user acceptability. Computer systems critical to business and government, the inadequacy of many security products combined with overmarketing and overstated claims leaves information managers with nowhere to turn. Cyber security education is needed to provide a population of individuals who can make sound choices for the operation and acquisition of information protection. A prerequisite is an adequate population of educators. We describe workshops intended to help educators new to the area of Information Assurance. The multiple objectives are: to identify key foundational topics to educators, to teach lessons learned regarding topics difficult to convey to students, and to create a sense of community among Information Assurance educators. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Public health workforce development efforts during the past 50 years have evolved from a focus on enumerating workers to comprehensive strategies that address workforce size and composition, training, recruitment and retention, effectiveness, and expected competencies in public health practice. We provide new perspectives on the public health workforce, using data from the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey, the largest nationally representative survey of the governmental public health workforce in the United States. Five major thematic areas are explored: workforce diversity in a changing demographic environment; challenges of an aging workforce, including impending retirements and the need for succession planning; workers' salaries and challenges of recruiting new staff; the growth of undergraduate public health education and what this means for the future public health workforce; and workers' awareness and perceptions of national trends in the field. We discussed implications for policy and practice.