Aston University Research Articles

Shaking the foundations

At the beginning of 2015 the United Kingdom’s first private medical school will open at the University of Buckingham, and this potentially represents a tectonic shift in medical education. The 66 students set to embark on this course will have to independently fund the £35 000 (€43 700; $54 800) a year tuition fees, and they will not receive any subsidy from the government for their studies. Similar courses at the University of Central Lancashire and Aston University are set to follow in 2015 and 2017. An immediate concern from some quarters is that these unprecedented fees will only attract students with …

Embedded use of iPads to enhance student engagement and retention in technical education

This paper focusses on attracting and retaining young people into technical disciplines. It introduces a new model of technical education from age 14 that the UK Government initiated in 2008. A concept of University led Technical Colleges (UTCs) for 14-19 year olds. These state supported schools, sponsored by a University, have technical curricula, technologically enabled learning environments and strong engagement with employers. As new schools they have been able to recruit outstanding staff that are conversant with the use of technology to enhance learning and all students have their own iPads. The Aston University Engineering Academy opened in September 2012 and a recent survey of staff, students and parents has provided both qualitative and quantitative data on the benefits to motivation and learning of these embedded iPads. The devices have also had advantages for the management of data on student achievement from a leadership, teaching staff and parental view point.

Sport and Post-Apartheid South Africa: Revisiting The Race Game

Book Review| July 01 2014 Sport and Post-Apartheid South Africa: Revisiting The Race Game Chris Bolsmann Chris Bolsmann School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2014) 41 (2): 331–338. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.41.2.331 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Chris Bolsmann; Sport and Post-Apartheid South Africa: Revisiting The Race Game. Journal of Sport History 1 January 2014; 41 (2): 331–338. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.41.2.331 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Sport History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2014 University of Illinois Press2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Ubiquitous Context-Awareness and Wireless Sensor Networks

1 Humanitas College, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea 2Department of Computer Science, The University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870290, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0290, USA 3Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taipei University, No. 151 University Road, San Shia District, New Taipei City 23741, Taiwan 4 School of Engineering & Applied Science, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK

Molecular mechanisms and therapeutic implications of the carbon monoxide/hmox1 and the hydrogen sulfide/CSE pathways in the prevention of pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction

The exact aetiology of preeclampsia is unknown, but there is a good association with an imbalance in angiogenic growth factors and abnormal placentation (Ahmad and Ahmed, 2004). The incidence of preeclampsia is reduced by a third in smokers, but not in snuff users. Soluble Flt-1 (sFlt-1) and soluble endoglin (sEng) are increased prior to the clinical onset of preeclampsia. Animals exposed to high circulating levels of sFlt-1 and sEng elicit severe preeclampsia-like symptoms. Smokers have reduced circulating sFlt-1 and cigarette smoke extract decreases sFlt-1 release from placental villous explants. An anti-inflammatory enzyme, heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and its metabolite carbon monoxide (CO), inhibit sFlt-1 and sEng release. Women with preeclampsia exhale less CO than women with normal pregnancies and HO expression decreases as the severity of preeclampsia increases. In contrast, sFlt-1 levels increase with increasing severity. More importantly, chorionic villous sampling from women at eleven weeks gestation shows that HO-1 mRNA expression is decreased in women who go on to develop preeclampsia. Collectively, these facts provide compelling evidence to support the proposition that the pathogenesis of preeclampsia is largely due to loss of HO activity. This results in an increase in inflammation and excessive elevation of the two key anti-angiogenic factors responsible for the clinical signs of preeclampsia. The identification of a protective role for HO-1 in pregnancy, offers HO/CO pathway as a target for the treatment of preeclampsia. The cardiovascular drugs, statins, stimulate HO-1 expression and inhibit sFlt-1 release in vivo and in vitro, suggesting statins have the potential to ameliorate preeclampsia. The StAmP trial is underway to address this and if positive, its outcome will lead to the very first therapeutic intervention to prolong affected pregnancies. Hydrogen sulphide (H2S), a gaseous messenger produced mainly by cystathionineY-lyase (CSE), is pro-angiogenic vasodilator (Yang et al., 2008; Papapetropoulos et al., 2009). We hypothesized that a reduction in CSE activity may alter the angiogenic balance in pregnancy and induce abnormal placentation and maternal hypertension. Plasma levels of H2S were significantly decreased in preeclamptic women (p<-0.01), which was associated with reduced CSE message and protein expression in human placenta as determined by real - time PCR and immunohistochemistry. Inhibition of CSE activity by DL-propargylglycine (PAG) in first trimester (8-12weeks gestation) human placental explants had reduced placenta growth factor (PIGF) production as assessed by ELISA and inhibited trophoblast invasion in vitro. Endothelial CSE knockdown by siRNA transfection increased the endogenous release of soluble fms-Like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt-1) and soluble endoglin, (sEng) from human umbilical vein endothelial cells while adenoviral-mediated CSE overexpression inhibited their release. Administration of PAG to pregnant mice induced hypertension, liver damage, and promoted abnormal labyrinth vascularisation in the placenta and decreased fetal growth. Finally, a slow releasing, H2S-generating compound, GYY4137, inhibited circulating sFlt-1 and sEng levels and restored fetal growth that was compromised by PAG-treatment demonstrating that the effect of CSE inhibitor was due to inhibition of H2S production. These results imply that endogenous H2S is required for healthy placental vasculature and a decrease in of CSE/ H2S activity may contribute to the pathogenesis of preeclampsia. This work was supported by grants from the Medical Research Council (G0601295 and G0700288) and Aston University StrategicFunds.

Prolonged length of hospital stay in Far-East Asian and Afro-Caribbean patients with cardiomyopathy

patients with cardiomyopathy Ben Green , Nicholas D. Gollop , Mudassar Baig , Hardeep Uppal , Suresh Chandran , Rahul Potluri d,⁎ a Department of Medicine, Leeds General Infirmary, Leeds, UK b Department of Medicine, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norwich, UK c Department of Cardiology, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Blackpool, UK d ACALM Study Unit in collaboration with Aston Medical School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK e Department of Acute Medicine, North Western Deanery, Manchester, UK

Bilateral visual outcomes and service utilization of patients treated for 3 years with ranibizumab for neovascular age-related macular degeneration.

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to describe bilateral visual outcomes and the effect of incomplete follow-up after 3 years of ranibizumab therapy for neovascular age-related macular degeneration. Secondarily, the demands on service provision over a 3-year period were described.MethodsData on visual acuity, hospital visits, and injections were collected over 36 months on consecutive patients commencing treatment over a 9-month period. Visual outcome was determined for 1) all patients, using last observation carried forward for missed visits due to early discontinuation and 2) only those patients completing full 36-month follow-up.ResultsOver 3 years, 120 patients cumulatively attended hospital for 1,823 noninjection visits and 1,365 injection visits. A visual acuity loss of <15 letters (L) was experienced by 78.2% of patients. For all patients (n=120), there was a mean loss of 1.68 L using last observation carried forward for missing values. Excluding five patients who died and 30 who discontinued follow-up, mean gain was 1.47 L. In bilateral cases, final acuity was on average 9 L better in second eyes compared to first eyes. Also, 91% of better-seeing eyes continued to be the better-seeing eye.ConclusionWe have demonstrated our approach to describing the long-term service provision and visual outcomes of ranibizumab therapy for neovascular age-related macular degeneration in a consecutive cohort of patients. Although there was a heavy burden with very frequent injections and clinic visits, patients can expect a good level of visual stability and a very high chance of maintaining their better-seeing eye for up to 3 years.

Application of constraints to formal verification and artificial intelligence

We are excited to present the AMAI special issue on Application of Constraints to Formal Verification and Artificial Intelligence. The issue contains three papers: In the first paper, entitled Establishing Flight Software Reliability: Testing, Model Checking, Constraint-Solving, Monitoring and Learning, Alex Groce from Oregon State University, Klaus Havelund, Gerard Holzmann, and Rajeev Joshi from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Ru-Gang Xu from the University of California at Los Angeles discuss the application of a range of techniques to the verification of missioncritical flight software at JPL. They present insights on the combination of random testing, model checking, constraint-solving, monitoring, and finite-state machine learning, in addition to static code analysis for the efficient verification of properties of a flash file system and other software for space missions. In the second paper, entitled Polynomial Function Intervals for Floating-Point Software Verification, Jan Duracz from Halmstad University in Sweden and Michal Konecny from Aston University in the U.K. present a new method for verification of numerical software, supporting a substantially more expressive language for specifications than other publicly available automated tools. Their experiments indicate that the additional expressivity does not come at a performance cost when comparing the results with those obtained with other publicly available state-of-the-art provers. They also include a scalability study of their algorithm when proving tight functional specifications of progressively larger randomly generated programs. In the third paper, entitled Tradeoffs in the Complexity of Backdoors to Satisfiability: Dynamic Sub-Solvers and Learning During Search, Bistra Dilkina from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Carla P. Gomes from Cornell University, and Ashish Sabharwal from IBM study the potential to capture succinctly hidden problem structure in Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problems using different notions of backdoors—a set of key variables, such

Academic Writing Workshops: Impact of Attendance on Performance

The purpose of this study is to explore if academic writing workshops contribute to students’ learning and performance in assessment. Academic writing workshops provide an opportunity to discuss specific learning areas and promote student engagement. The results of an assessed essay for a group of 65 first-year Mathematics students at Aston University, UK show that academic writing workshops have an association with students’ academic performance. An Independent Samples T-test was conducted to compare the mean performance of the students based on their attendance of academic writing workshops. The analyses reveal that students who attended 2-5 academic writing workhops had a far much better performance (mean: 58.60%) in comparison to students who attended 0-1 workshop (mean: 46.37%). In addition, the analyses show a statistically significant difference in the mean performance of students who attended and of students who did not attend an academic workshop specifically relating to the assessment.

The American Pancreatic Association/Hirshberg Foundation Symposium Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Seed Grant Program

The Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research was founded by Agi Hirshberg in 1997, following her husband Ronald Hirshberg’s 8-month, 7-day battle with the disease. (http://www.pancreatic.org/). At the time, the Hirshberg family viewed pancreatic cancer as the ‘‘unknown enemy’’ (http:// www.pancreatic.org/site/c.htJYJ8MPIwE/b.8276835/k.66CB/ Agi_Hirshbergs_Story.htm). In the years since Ronald Hirshberg’s death, Agi Hirshberg has made it her mission to unmask the unknown for others facing the same enemy. When patients present with a new diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, most are already in an advanced stage of the disease. Pancreatic cancer is resistant to most chemotherapeutic agents and radiotherapy. These factors combine to make pancreatic cancer a highly lethal disease, and according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) 2013 estimates, pancreatic cancer was diagnosed in approximately 45,220 US citizens, and some 38,460 died of the disease. 1 The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975Y2009, shows that overall cancer death rates continued to decline in the United States among both men and women, among all major racial and ethnic groups, and for all of the many common cancer sites, including lung, colon and rectum, female breast, and prostate. However, this trend does not hold true for pancreatic cancer. The report demonstrates that death rates continued to increase during the latest time period (2000 through 2009) for pancreatic cancer. 2 Only about 23% of patients with cancer of the pancreas will still be living 1 year after diagnosis, and only about 4% will survive 5 years. Even for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that has not spread to other organs or systems, the overall 5-year survival rate approaches only 15%. The Hirshberg Foundation’s vision is to advance pancreatic cancer research and provide information, resources, and support to pancreatic cancer patients and their families. The mission of the Foundation is as follows: & To find a cure for pancreatic cancer in honor of Ron Hirshberg and the thousands of people who are diagnosed with this disease each year. & To create a premier Pancreatic Cancer Center where all needs of pancreatic cancer patients can be met in one location with the most advanced treatment options. & To be recognized as a patient support reference source for

Emperor Claudius' neuropsychiatric presentation: from tics to behavioral symptoms.

Emperor Claudius' neuropsychiatric presentation: from tics to behavioral symptoms.

Is Feedback a Waste of Time? The Students’ Perspective

While it is commonly recognised that tutor feedback is central to student learning, a number of scholars and practitioners in higher education hold that tutor feedback is a waste of time because students are only interested in grades. Based on the results of a survey on 206 students at Aston University, this study finds that students are receptive to tutor feedback and act on it. It also discovers that the quality of tutor feedback and the guidance on how to use tutor feedback students have received significantly encourages them to act on it and enhances their learning in general. These findings have two significant implications. First, instead of assuming that students are indifferent to their feedback and, consequently, failing to give them sufficient feedback, tutors should take time and make the effort to offer them useful feedback. Second, to increase student reactions to their feedback, they should give students advice on how to use it.

Early Years 2013

In September, eye once again took its annual conference to the Lakeside Conference Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. This year's event, in association with Practical Pre-School magazine and Practical Pre-School Books, focused on the importance of exploring child development through the early years.

Reconsidering the Role of the Welfare State Within the German Democratic Republic’s Political System

Welfare state policy in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was distinctly different from that in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The rationale for welfare provision in the GDR was not provision for the sick and elderly, but the political goal of regime stabilization through welfare measures. This article reconsiders the role of welfare state policy and shows how it fulfilled several different roles within the system, and how this determined the shape of the GDR’s welfare state. The article begins with a brief historical overview, outlines developments from 1971 onwards, and reviews problems and successes in East German welfare policy. In the end, the shortcomings of the GDR’s planned economy became the biggest obstacle preventing it from achieving its goal of regime stabilization. Most of the research findings presented here are based on archival sources; this includes petitions and complaints from citizens, known as Eingaben, correspondence from SED functionaries and confidential reports on public opinion from the Ministry of State Security. The article is based on the broader research conducted for a PhD dissertation at Aston University, Birmingham and two papers containing the general thoughts of this article.

Should weather and climate prediction models be deterministic or stochastic?

Should weather and climate prediction models be deterministic or stochastic?

Answer to the Letter to the Editor of Zafar Ahmad et al. concerning “Antibiotic treatment in patients with chronic low back pain and vertebral bone edema (Modic type 1 changes): a double-blind randomized controlled trial of efficacy” by Albert HB et al., Eur Spine J (2013) 22:697–707

Thank you for your comments; we are happy that our papers have stimulated scientific discussions in the world of back science. Your question as to which drug to use is a very important and crucial question. You find it, “odd that we used co-amoxiclav to treat the infection, when clavulanic acid has little disc penetration. Amoxicillin would have been more logical, as it has a narrower spectrum, and is known to be effective against Propionibacterium acnes, although it too has poor penetration of the intervertebral disc” The answer is twofold. First, three independent international experts in infectious diseases were presented with the bacterial culture results of Stirling’s study [1] and all three recommended Amoxicillin-clavulanate. Second, we agree with you that clavulanic acid is most probably superfluous, but at the time of the planning of the study we were not able to obtain pure Amoxicillin. We therefore had no choice but to use co-amoxiclav. In the question regarding penetration, your reference 7 our Ref. [2] did find levels of both amoxicillin and clavulanic acid in the discs. The paper concludes that these antibiotics do not penetrate into discs as well as gentamicin, but we believe that levels of amoxicillin achieved would be effective against P. acnes. We based this view on an earlier study by Housden and Sullivan [3] that showed that augmentin (Amoxicillin-clavulanate) does penetrate discs, although to a limited extent. In making our choice of antibiotics we needed safe oral agents. Although we were aware that gentamicin penetrates discs well, it would not have been suitable for the study and not for P. acnes (an anaerobic organism). Similarly injectable cephalosporins (the accepted choice for prophylaxis in spinal surgery) would not have been suitable for the study where extended periods of oral delivery were needed. We agree that in the perfect study we could have taken skin swabs during surgery, but we relied on the efficacious skin cleansing techniques (2 % chlorhexidine in 70 % isopropanol) that have been developed at Aston University where this cleansing technique has shown in thesis by Crosby [4] to be more significantly more efficacious than other skin cleansing techniques in both superficial and deep incisional infections. This was confirmed by the main clinical trial that was carried out in USA comparing chloraprep with aqueous chlorhexidine and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010 [5]. These techniques were used in both Stirling’s study and ours. We therefore consider the risk of contamination to be minimal.

Answer to the letter to the editor of A. Sotto et al. concerning “Antibiotic treatment in patients with chronic low back pain and vertebral bone edema (Modic type 1 changes): a double-blind randomized controlled trial of efficacy” by Albert HB et al., Eur Spine J (2013) 22:697–707

Thank you for your comments; we are happy that our papers have stimulated scientific discussions in the world of back science. Your question as to which drug to use is a very important and crucial question. You find it, “odd that we used co-amoxiclav to treat the infection, when clavulanic acid has little disc penetration. Amoxicillin would have been more logical, as it has a narrower spectrum, and is known to be effective against Propionibacterium acnes, although it too has poor penetration of the intervertebral disc” The answer is twofold. First, three independent international experts in infectious diseases were presented with the bacterial culture results of Stirling’s study [1] and all three recommended Amoxicillin-clavulanate. Second, we agree with you that clavulanic acid is most probably superfluous, but at the time of the planning of the study we were not able to obtain pure Amoxicillin. We therefore had no choice but to use co-amoxiclav. In the question regarding penetration, your reference 7 our Ref. [2] did find levels of both amoxicillin and clavulanic acid in the discs. The paper concludes that these antibiotics do not penetrate into discs as well as gentamicin, but we believe that levels of amoxicillin achieved would be effective against P. acnes. We based this view on an earlier study by Housden and Sullivan [3] that showed that augmentin (Amoxicillin-clavulanate) does penetrate discs, although to a limited extent. In making our choice of antibiotics we needed safe oral agents. Although we were aware that gentamicin penetrates discs well, it would not have been suitable for the study and not for P. acnes (an anaerobic organism). Similarly injectable cephalosporins (the accepted choice for prophylaxis in spinal surgery) would not have been suitable for the study where extended periods of oral delivery were needed. We agree that in the perfect study we could have taken skin swabs during surgery, but we relied on the efficacious skin cleansing techniques (2 % chlorhexidine in 70 % isopropanol) that have been developed at Aston University where this cleansing technique has shown in thesis by Crosby [4] to be more significantly more efficacious than other skin cleansing techniques in both superficial and deep incisional infections. This was confirmed by the main clinical trial that was carried out in USA comparing chloraprep with aqueous chlorhexidine and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2010 [5]. These techniques were used in both Stirling’s study and ours. We therefore consider the risk of contamination to be minimal.

In sickness and in health: Coregulation of spousal caregivers' and dementia patients' cortisol levels, relationship quality and health outcomes

Figure 1. Four Profiles of Diurnal Cortisol: Caregiver (CG) and Patient (PT) Patterns Ian Maidment, Carolyn Chew-Graham, Andrea Hilton, Judy Scully, Chris Fox, Shirley Nurock, Barbara Woodward-Carlton, Susan Heap, Fiona Poland, Aston University, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom; Keele University, Keele, England, United Kingdom; Hull University, Hull, England, United Kingdom; University of East Anglia Medical School, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom; Alzheimer’s Society, London, England, United Kingdom; UEA, Norwich, England, United Kingdom. Contact e-mail: i.maidment@aston.ac.uk

Meeting report: British Society for Research on Ageing (BSRA) annual scientific meeting 2012, Aston University, Birmingham, 3rd to 4th July 2012

The focus of the British Society for Research on Ageing (BSRA) annual scientific meeting 2012 was aging mechanisms and mitigants. The themes covered included epigenetics, stem cells and regeneration, aging pathways and molecules, the aging bladder and bowel, as well as updates from the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme. The topics incorporated new directions for staple aging research in caloric restriction (CR), inflammation, immunesenescence, neurodegeneration, homeostasis and stress resistance, as well as newer research areas such as bioengineering of tissues, including the internal anal sphincter and thymus.

Focus on Authors

Focus on Authors