Aberystwyth University Research Articles

New approaches to improving the student experience at Aberystwyth University libraries: from library surveys to cognitive mapping

PurposeThe findings are based on experience at Aberystwyth Universities libraries using surveys and user experience (UX) activities to identify and understand user requirements.Design/methodology/approachThis paper was initially conceived and developed as a presentation for the LibPMC Conference in July 2023. It is included in this special conference issue for this conference.FindingsThere are challenges to successful integration of UX into user engagement processes across the library and IT services. To improve shared analysis and collaborative ideas generation we developed an interactive data dashboard.Originality/valueThe research is based on practical approaches to improving our understanding of student use and requirements at Aberystwyth University libraries. It explores mechanisms used to collect findings from all areas of UX, including library surveys, focus groups and UX activities to be able to analyse and share all student experience data – to be able to analyse themes and generate ideas and actions for development.

New Chaotic Reality: Creative Writing Workshops for Long COVID Patients.

In a widely cited 2017 study, Robinson et al. (2017) found that 'emotionally expressive' writing makes physical wounds heal faster when compared to writing that did not engage the emotions. The Writing Long COVID project at Aberystwyth University engaged similar territory in a recent pilot study. Participants' writing activities explored how literary production can affect a person's experience of this new chronic condition, as well as contribute to our understanding of its symptoms. In this short essay, I show how we designed a course of short-duration online workshops that increased accessibility for people with Long COVID-related fatigue. I also argue that future Long COVID creative activities should let their timing, venue, content, and structure be influenced by the preferences of the Long COVID patient. The preliminary study suggests that the traditional parameters of the writing workshop, including its duration, could deter participation in potentially beneficial creative activities.

The 18th International Twin Congress, and a Look at Twin Research in Wales/Twin Research Reviews: Temperamental Similarities and Twin Relations; Maximizing Twin Designs; Rare Tubal Ectopic Pregnancy; Twins' Academic Self-Concept Formation/In the Media: Identical Infant Twins Reunited; Birth of Identical-Fraternal Quadruplets; Identical Twin Comedians; 'Twice in a Lifetime': Meeting an Unrelated Look-Alike; Twins in the Tour de France.

The 18th International Society for Twin Studies convention took place between June 15-17, 2023, in Budapest, Hungary. A selective sampling of highlights from the meeting are presented. This is followed by a brief overview of ongoing twin research at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales and some twin treasures in the National Library. Next, reviews of timely research that examine temperamental similarities and twin relations, the maximization of twin research designs, a rare ectopic twin pregnancy, and twins' academic self-concept formation are presented. The final section covers stories appearing in various media sources that are informative, enlightening, and interesting, namely a reunion of identical infant twins, the birth of identical-fraternal quadruplets, identical twin comedians, meeting an unrelated look-alike, and twins in the Tour de France.

Wide-ranging programme for extensively managed livestock conference.

The APHA Centre of Expertise for Extensively Managed Livestock conference was held on 24 November 2022 at Aberystwyth University. The varied programme of talks attracted delegates from across the UK and Ireland, including vets, farmers, academics, researchers and other stakeholders.

Obituary Christopher Harding (1951–2021)

Chris Harding, as he called himself, was a researcher, writer, teacher, reviewer, and academic strategist, long-affiliated with Aberystwyth University, and most recently Emeritus Professor of Law there. He was a teacher and researcher at Aberystwyth since the 1970s, and a Professor of Law since 1995. He was the author of several books, academic papers, reviews, reports, and other pieces on legal, criminological, and historical subjects.

UK to review purchase of graphene firm

Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK’s secretary of state for business, energy, and industrial strategy, has put on hold the purchase of Perpetuus Group, a UK graphene maker, because of national security concerns. Kwarteng has ordered the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to investigate Taurus International, the would-be buyer of Perpetuus, and any companies associated with Zhongfu Zhou, Perpetuus’s chief nanotechnology scientist, who boasts on his LinkedIn profile of strong links with academia and industry in China. Kwarteng has until Feb. 7, 2022, to decide whether to allow the deal. In addition to his role at Perpetuus, Zhou is managing director of China’s Inner Mongolia Industrial Research Institute for Composite Materials. Until 2020 he was a research professor in the physics department at Aberystwyth University in Wales. He obtained his undergraduate degree and his PhD in the physical chemistry of metallurgy at the University of Science and Technology Beijing. Taurus describes itself

Cellular agriculture in the UK: a review.

This review details the core activity in cellular agriculture conducted in the UK at the end of 2019, based upon a literature review by, and community contacts of the authors. Cellular agriculture is an emergent field in which agricultural products-most typically animal-derived agricultural products-are produced through processes operating at the cellular level, as opposed to (typically farm-based) processes operating at the whole organism level. Figurehead example technologies include meat, leather and milk products manufactured from a cellular level. Cellular agriculture can be divided into two forms: 'tissue-engineering based cellular agriculture' and 'fermentation-based cellular agriculture'. Products under development in this category are typically valued for their environmental, ethical, and sometimes health and safety advantages over the animal-derived versions. There are university laboratories actively pursuing research on meat products through cellular agriculture at the universities of Bath, Newcastle, Aberystwyth, and Aston University in Birmingham. A cellular agriculture approach to producing leather is being pursued at the University of Manchester, and work seeking to produce a palm oil substitute is being conducted at the University of Bath. The UK cellular agriculture companies working in the meat space are Higher Steaks, Cellular Agriculture Ltd, CellulaRevolution, Multus Media and Biomimetic Solutions. UK private investors include CPT Capital, Agronomics Ltd, Atomico, Backed VCs, and Breakoff Capital. The UK also has a strong portfolio of social science research into diverse aspects of cellular agriculture, with at least ten separate projects being pursued over the previous decade. Three analyses of the environmental impact of potential cellular agriculture systems have been conducted in the UK. The first dedicated third-sector group in this sector in the UK is Cultivate (who produced this report) followed by Cellular Agriculture UK. International groups New Harvest and the Good Food Institute also have a UK presence.

Rapid detection of Galba truncatula in water sources on pasture-land using loop-mediated isothermal amplification for control of trematode infections

BackgroundFascioliasis caused by the trematodes Fasciola hepatica and F. gigantica, is a global neglected zoonotic disease estimated to cost the livestock industry over €2.5 billion annually. Farm management measures and sustainable use of anthelmintics can, in principle, effectively control trematode infection in livestock and reduce the rate of developing anthelmintic resistance. Previously, we designed an environmental DNA (eDNA) assay to identify a common trematode intermediate host, the freshwater snail Galba truncatula, in water sources to measure specific trematode infection risk areas on pasture-land. To improve this procedure, we now report a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay to identify G. truncatula eDNA.MethodsA LAMP assay was designed and optimised (e.g. temperature, time duration and primer concentration) to identify G. truncatula DNA. The ability of the LAMP assay to target G. truncatula DNA was identified, and LAMP assay limit of detection was investigated in comparison to conventional PCR. In the field, 48 water samples were collected from stream, ditch and water pool habitats in four locations at two Aberystwyth University farms over a seven week period to investigate the applicability of the LAMP assay for use on eDNA samples, in comparison to conventional PCR.ResultsThe LAMP assay delivered detectable results in 30 min at 63 °C. The assay discriminated between G. truncatula DNA and non-target DNA, presenting a level of DNA detection comparable to conventional PCR. No significant difference was found between the ability of the LAMP and PCR assay to identify G. truncatula eDNA in water samples. Kappa coefficient analysis revealed a moderate level of agreement between LAMP and PCR assays.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that the LAMP assay can detect G. truncatula eDNA in a simple and rapid manner. The LAMP assay may become a valuable tool to determine optimum pasture management for trematode parasite control.

Brian Turnbull Robson, 1939–2020

Brian Turnbull Robson, 1939–2020

Vets Cymru CPD Event

After a hugely successful debut event last year, the BSAVA and the Wales Veterinary Science Centre (WVSC) are joining forces again to bring the Vets Cymru 2-day event back to Aberystwyth University on 26–27 June 2020.

Genome-Wide Association Studies and Genomic Selection in Pearl Millet: Advances and Prospects.

Pearl millet is a climate-resilient, drought-tolerant crop capable of growing in marginal environments of arid and semi-arid regions globally. Pearl millet is a staple food for more than 90 million people living in poverty and can address the triple burden of malnutrition substantially. It remained a neglected crop until the turn of the 21st century, and much emphasis has been placed since then on the development of various genetic and genomic resources for whole-genome scan studies, such as the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and genomic selection (GS). This was facilitated by the advent of sequencing-based genotyping, such as genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), RAD-sequencing, and whole-genome re-sequencing (WGRS) in pearl millet. To carry out GWAS and GS, a world association mapping panel called the Pearl Millet inbred Germplasm Association Panel (PMiGAP) was developed at ICRISAT in partnership with Aberystwyth University. This panel consisted of germplasm lines, landraces, and breeding lines from 27 countries and was re-sequenced using the WGRS approach. It has a repository of circa 29 million genome-wide SNPs. PMiGAP has been used to map traits related to drought tolerance, grain Fe and Zn content, nitrogen use efficiency, components of endosperm starch, grain yield, etc. Genomic selection in pearl millet was jump-started recently by WGRS, RAD, and tGBS (tunable genotyping-by-sequencing) approaches for the PMiGAP and hybrid parental lines. Using multi-environment phenotyping of various training populations, initial attempts have been made to develop genomic selection models. This mini review discusses advances and prospects in GWAS and GS for pearl millet.

Introduction: Taiwan, Public Diplomacy, and the World Health Assembly

This is an introduction by the guest editor to the topical section on ‘Taiwan, Public Diplomacy, and the World Health Assembly’ of this issue of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. The selected four papers, after a double-blind peer review process, were initially presented at a workshop entitled ‘Public Diplomacy and Taiwan's Campaign to Join the wha’, organised by the Global Communications Research Centre, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 28 March 2018.

Cellular agriculture in the UK: a review

This review details the core activity in cellular agriculture conducted in the UK at the end of 2019, based upon a literature review by, and community contacts of the authors. Cellular agriculture is an emergent field in which agricultural products—most typically animal-derived agricultural products—are produced through processes operating at the cellular level, as opposed to (typically farm-based) processes operating at the whole organism level. Figurehead example technologies include meat, leather and milk products manufactured from a cellular level. Cellular agriculture can be divided into two forms: ‘tissue-based cellular agriculture’ and ‘fermentation-based cellular agriculture’. Products under development in this category are typically valued for their environmental, ethical, and sometimes health and safety advantages over the animal-derived versions. There are university laboratories actively pursuing research on meat products through cellular agriculture at the universities of Bath, Newcastle, Aberystwyth, and Aston University in Birmingham. A cellular agriculture approach to producing leather is being pursued at the University of Manchester, and work seeking to produce a palm oil substitute is being conducted at the University of Bath. The UK cellular agriculture companies working in the meat space are Higher Steaks, Cellular Agriculture Ltd, CellulaRevolution, Multus Media and Biomimetic Solutions. UK private investors include CPT Capital, Agronomics Ltd, Atomico, Backed VCs, and Breakoff Capital. The UK also has a strong portfolio of social science research into diverse aspects of cellular agriculture, with at least ten separate projects being pursued over the previous decade. Three analyses of the environmental impact of potential cellular agriculture systems have been conducted in the UK. The first dedicated third-sector group in this sector in the UK is Cultivate (who produced this report) followed by Cellular Agriculture UK. International groups New Harvest and the Good Food Institute also have a UK presence.

Book Review: Clausewitz on Small War Christopher Daase and James W. Davis (eds) and Rebooting Clausewitz: On War in the 21st Century Christopher Coker

R. Gerald Hughes is Reader in Military History and Director of the Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (2014); and Britain, Germany and the Cold War: The Search for a European Detente, 1949-1967 (2007). A reviews editor of Intelligence and National Security, Hughes is the author of a number of book chapters and articles (including, most recently, ‘“Fear has large eyes”: The History of Intelligence in the Soviet Union’ in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies; and ‘Between Man and Nature: The Enduring Wisdom of Sir Halford J. Mackinder’ in the Journal of Strategic Studies). He has also edited, or co-edited, a number of scholarly volumes. These include The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal (2016); Intelligence and International Security: New Perspectives and Agendas (2011); Intelligence, Crises and Security: Prospects and Retrospects (2008); and Exploring Intelligence Archives: Enquiries into the Secret State (2008). R. Gerald Hughes is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The Savage Dawn Peptide: an antibiotic woven from 12th century Welsh poetry

Bacterial antibiotic resistance is widely regarded to be one of the most pressing threats facing humanity. Finding new antibiotics is a vital research area and can now be supported by a vast reservoir of readily available ‘omic data on the back of the explosion of low cost sequencing technologies. Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs): endogenous peptides that provide a fast and effective means of defence against pathogens as part of the innate immune response. The detection of AMPs in metagenomic data is a tantalising low-hanging fruit for computational biologists. Large reservoirs of existing sequences exist and are well annotated and understood. Post-computational wet-lab work is relatively cheap with spot synthesis of peptides cheaply available from a wide array of third party companies. A well organised screening program can screen 100 s of prospects a day against model bacterial organisms to test for activity and is one of the few areas of biological science that can scale to meet the data output from computational prediction toolkits. AMPLY, an in-house tool designed at Aberystwyth University, supported by Life Science Wales and working in collaboration with Tika Diagnostics at St. George’s Hospital (London) and Queen’s University (Belfast) is part of a next wave of computational drug discovery platforms and is already uncovering a treasure trove of novel AMPs in diverse microbial environments. However, AMPLY’s abilities extend beyond the analysis of ‘omic data alone and its predictive modelling has extracted a therapeutically viable novel AMP built from a string of ancient Welsh poetry.

Failure, Trauma, and the Theatre of Negativity: the New Tragic in Contemporary Theatre and Performance

In this article, Alex Mangold identifies failure as a defining element of tragedy and argues that traditional understandings of the genre have been too narrow. Here, he asserts that tragic failure contributes to a tragic ‘mode’ that transcends genre definitions and, instead, extends to all kinds of contemporary theatre and performance. Examining a wide range of performance examples, including work from Sophocles to Sarah Kane, Forced Entertainment, Sasha Waltz, and Orlan, he argues that tragic failure, as it has come to be realized in examples of postdramatic writing and in site-specific or dance-based performance, is presented as an option, a dramatic choice, an outcome or part of an overall denial of dramatic form. The true power of the new tragic consequently lies in its ability to foster social change and a more ethical stance toward social dystopias. Alex Mangold lectures in the Department of Modern Languages at Aberystwyth University. He is co-editor (with Broderick Chow) of Žižek and Performance (Palgrave, 2014) and has published articles and chapters on the work of Sarah Kane and Howard Barker.

Live Form, Women, Ceramics, and Community

Moira Vincentelli, Emeritus Professor of Art History and Consultant Curator of Ceramics, Aberystwyth University, has written extensively on gender and ceramics. Her published works include Women an...

Students on Tech – an innovative partnership

'Students on Tech' is an innovative partnership between students and the E-learning Group at Aberystwyth University. A talk on the project was jointly presented by one of the students and the staff member who led the project at the Jisc Change Agents Network conference, University of Exeter, 20-21 April 2017. The case study offers a model for partnership with students for effective change. Our aims were to listen to the student voice to improve technology-enhanced learning (TEL) provision and raise the profile of good teaching.The E-learning Group had carried out a TEL Learning Experience Survey in 2010 and again in 2013 (Gwella Team, 2011). For this project, we hoped to gain an even deeper understanding of student needs and behaviour. We wanted to make our Blackboard site easier to use and to help staff understand better: students’ needs; how students are using technology; what technology helps them.

Qualitative Methods in Psychology Conference, Aberystwyth University, Wales, 5-7 July 2017

Whilst there is no QMiP conference this year, the 2017 QMiP conference took place at Aberystwyth University in Wales in July. Below we have reviews from four postgraduate students who attended the conference last year. Each of these students are at varying stages of their research and this section explores and highlights some of the different experiences that these students were exposed to throughout the 2017 QMiP conference.

Owen Morris Jonathan

Owen Morris Jonathan was born in Bodedern, Anglesey, to Owen Arthur and Hanna Esther Jonathan. His mother’s family were Anglesey farmers, but he was brought up in Tywyn, Merionethshire, where...