September vehicle registrations will soon be upon us – so this is a timely reminder that JCB Finance can finance all makes and models of cars and vehicles and probably save you money in the process.
Remember that you can also claim Pound for Pound tax relief if you are buying a commercial vehicle and have not yet spent all of your Annual Investment Allowance (AIA). The AIA was increased to £500,000 in April of this year. You can still claim the AIA whilst benefiting from spreading the cost of your latest acquisition on a Hire Purchase agreement. Spending the right amount at the right time is vital in order to maximise the potential tax benefits so speak to your accountant or finance director because JCB Finance is not a tax or financial advisor.
Let us quote on your next vehicle finance – it will cost you nothing for the quote but could save you money and maybe even save you tax when purchasing commercial vehicles, new or used. If you would like to obtain a free no-obligation competitive quote please contact Direct Sales Team on 0800 150650 or by email directsales@jcb-finance.co.uk. Alternatively complete our on-line enquiry form.
JCB Finance launch new website
We wanted you to be one of the first to view our new website. We hope you like it!
There are Product Guides to help you through the process of selecting the right finance option for your business; Case Studies from customers who have experienced the great service and competitive rates that we offer which have helped them grow their businesses. There are Current Offers with details of special finance offers on new machines, both JCB and non-JCB; a used Machinery Sales Centre section for used machines (many being Local Authority ex-leased vehicles and plant). The website is very easy to navigate so it is best to start from the Home page – enjoy exploring!
However, figures also showed that whilst the number of unemployed people fell by 132,000 to 2.08 million, average wages (excluding bonuses) only rose by 0.6 per cent—the slowest rise since records began in 2001. Including bonuses, wages saw the first fall since 2009—0.2 per cent.
According to the ONS, average wage rises were affected by an unusually high number of employees deferring bonus payments. This, the ONS said, skewed the year-on-year comparisons.
The Bank of England governor Mark Carney said low average wage inflation was a growing concern for monetary policymakers. He added it was likely to affect the timing of any interest rate decision. Low average wage rises are indicative of “space capacity” in the economy. This is used by the Bank of England to measure how much the UK economy is under-performing.
The number of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants also fell for the 21st month in a row. The figure had fallen by 33,600 to 1.01 million. Furthermore the number of young people out of work also saw a decrease in the three months leading up to the end of June. Figures saw the rate fall by 200,000, the biggest fall since records began in 1992.
The figures are based on the Labour Force Survey. This quarterly report is the largest household survey, in which the ONS speaks to 60,000 households.
The term ‘fields of the cell’ refers to the fact that electrodynamic fields surround every cell and cellular organelle. It includes fields belonging to all charged cell components, i.e ions and polar molecules, as well as those components generated by cell chemistry. This further refers to the modal of cavity resonance, and can also be defined as the sum of all electrodynamic cell activity taking part in intracellular and extracellular processes.
Non-chemical cell signalling is a very important area of research, for here we learn more about how cells communicate and more importantly what they communicate. Here Dr Daniel Fels from the University of Basel explains more…
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM2007) require a cultural change in the management of health and safety by the construction project team, but particular emphasis is placed on the requirements for competence of designers, design co-ordination and communication of design information.
The designer is a fundamental member of the project team and has a significant input throughout the lifecycle of the project, from feasibility design through to construction. CDM2007 makes specific demands on the designer to consider health and safety risks associated with the construction, commissioning, use, maintenance, repair, testing, cleaning, decommissioning and demolition of their designs and attempt to eliminate or reduce those risks by their design decisions.
The Association for Project Safety (APS) and Callsafe Services Limited (Callsafe) believe that the full benefit of CDM2007 can only be achieved by meeting the philosophy implied within CDM2007 that requires that Designers are proactive and fully integrated members of the project team.
This two-day course is designed to provide Designers and Design Risk Managers with the necessary knowledge and confidence in the performance of the task to ensure compliance with the designers’ duties under CDM2007.
The course is highly interactive and includes presentations, notes, syndicated exercises, delegate discussions; and an examination to ensure learning outcomes.
An individual who successfully completes the accredited course in CDM2007 Design Risk Management may claim 3 points (as detailed in the Qualifications and Experience table on the APS website) towards meeting Full Membership of APS.
An individual who meets the above criteria will also be exempt from sitting the Examination for admission to the APS Register of Designers for a period of three months from the date on which APS issues a certificate confirming successful completion of an accredited course.
This course is also recognised by RIBA as CPD for architects.
Intended For
This course is aimed at design team members and managers who wish to ensure effective design risk management and compliance with the CDM2007 designers’ duties to a professional and benchmarked standard as set by APS. The course will also benefit other construction and health and safety professionals with an interest in the values and philosophies of risk reduction by design.
Entry Requirements
Delegates should have a basic understanding of CDM2007, associated construction related legislation and the ways in which construction projects are procured and managed.
The Tutors
The Callsafe tutors are widely experienced in the understanding and practical application of the regulations and are practicing CDM Co-ordinators. They also have extensive experience working for and on behalf of clients, designers, and principal contractors and contractors. All of the tutors are Registered CDM Co-ordinator Members or Fellows of the APS, RFaPS or RMaPS.
Course Objectives:
On completion of the course, delegates should:
understand the designers’ duties under the CDM regulations 2007;
know how to effectively reduce risk by design; and
be familiar and confident in the supply of information and production of evidence.
Course Content:
Design Risk Management and Project Risk Management
Construction Related Health and Safety Legislation
Personal Safety & Professional Responsibility
Role of the Designer in Construction
Design Risk Management Services & Systems
Advising the Client
Demonstrating and Assessing Competence and Resources
Hazard Identification and Working within the Team
Contractor Related Issues and Design During Construction
Designer Input into Information (PCI, CPP & HSF)
Examination
Maximum number of course delegates: 16
Public Courses
This course is offered as a public course, for individuals to book and attend.
Course Cost: £600.00 per delegate, plus VAT (Discounts for multiple bookings)
Currently programmed public courses are:
Wednesday & Thursday, 8 & 9 October 2014 (Staffordshire)
In-house Courses
This course is also offered as an in-house course, where an organisation can book the tutor for the 2 days and the course is presented within the organisation’s own premises, This option can reduce the course cost and the travel/accommodation costs where the organisation has a number of their staff requiring this training.
A lump sum price can be provided for in-house courses.
The power of flexible teamwork is the key to successful research in chemical biology and drug discovery in the work of Professor Colin Suckling at the Department of Pure and
Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Over the past 10 years, research has challenged major problems of human and animal health by exploiting the properties of several classes of heterocyclic compounds that target specific proteins or DNA.
The challenge of cancer has been politically promoted and driven by well-funded, professional charitable fund raisers for decades and great strides have been made in new treatments. However most infectious diseases including antibacterial and antiparasitic diseases have not attracted the same attention. This is now changing with the public recognition of the dangers of bacterial resistance to available antibiotics.
Long before such views became widespread, teams at Strathclyde had been investigating compounds that bind selectively to DNA, collectively known as minor groove binders because of their affinity for the eponymous region of DNA. Collaboration between chemists and microbiologists had led to the identification of a group of compounds that were exceptionally potent in killing Gram positive bacteria such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, both well-known hospital pathogens. A partnership was established with a new, Scottish company, MGB Biopharma, for the preclinical development of one compound; in this partnership, the Strathclyde team provided scientific know-how and advice whilst MGB Biopharma managed and funded the preclinical investigations to internationally accepted standards. This work has now reached the stage at which our most advanced compound has been accepted for clinical trials against C. difficile.
With proof to hand that Strathclyde minor groove binders can have real value in therapy, our teams have turned attention to other opportunities to exploit our collection of new compounds. We’ve expanded studies with colleagues at the University of Glasgow in parasitology (Prof Mike Barrett) to investigate tropical parasitic diseases such as human African trypanosomiasis and animal African trypanosomiasis, both diseases commonly known as sleeping sickness. Compounds have been found that are active against both disease-causing parasites and in the animal case, we’ve progressed to show that one of our compounds is active in an animal model of the disease, a result that strongly encourages further investigation to find a compound optimised for this application. Success in the field of animal sleeping sickness would be a huge economic benefit to sub-Saharan Africa and one well worth pursuing. Another team at Strathclyde (Dr Chris Carter) has shown that there are similar opportunities for the development of a compound to treatment leishmaniasis.
We’ve not ignored cancer. It would not be surprising if compounds that bind to DNA might be useful for treating cancer and indeed others research groups have developed such compounds. In the Strathclyde MGB collection, a small number of compounds that are not antibacterial or antiparasitic have shown up as active against lung cancer, again in an animal model. Many people argue that successful cancer therapy depends upon state of the patient’s immune system, a good immune status leading to successful outcomes. From other teams and other classes of compound working with immunologists from Strathclyde and Glasgow (Profs Billy and Maggie Harnett), we had discovered a class of novel small molecules that are non-toxic and effective immunomodulators, as shown by their ability to treat and prevent arthritis and asthma in animal models. Maybe there’s a new avenue for cancer therapy around the corner by combining our minor groove binders with our immunomodulators.
This is academic science doing one of its jobs and creating a wealth of opportunities. The challenge is to translate them into medicines to treat patients.
OKI is one of the leading business-to-business printer brands and continuously strives to improve the quality of products, applications and services to help increase the efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of businesses and other organisations
As a result, OKI printers and multifunction devices are fast, high performance machines with optimised energy efficiency due to our LED technology. Our products can be delivered as part of a smart Managed Document Solutions programme to help streamline investment and maximise benefits.
Key Market Strategies
Smart Managed Document Services: OKI works with its wide network of managed services partners to deploy strategies that help customers take control over the costs of document output and management, without sacrificing quality. This is of particular benefit to SMBs, but can be of value for all sizes of business and other organisations such as schools and government offices.
OKI has recently developed a new portfolio of smart Managed Document Solutions including Managed Page Services, Managed Print Services and Managed Document Services:
Managed Page Services delivers problem-free printer management which includes an all-inclusive printing plan covering consumables and servicing.
Managed Print Services optimises and manages printing needs to drive productivity and cut costs through the process of evaluation, implementation, management and review.
Managed Document Services analyses, optimises and manages document workflow while reducing costs and improving efficiency. This service delivers savings to make a difference to any size of business.
Environmental Responsibility
As part of the OKI Group’s Charter of Conduct, OKI has made great strides in reducing the environmental impact of every product throughout its lifecycle, from its manufacture to its day-to-day running and eventually its disposal. OKI’s green leaf symbol is found on all products and packaging showing this commitment. The majority of OKI printers and multifunction printers have earned the Energy Star rating by helping to eliminate energy waste.
Features include:
Designs which use less energy to perform regular tasks
Energy-efficient LED technology
Power-save mode when not in use
Duplex printing as standard
Free recycling programme for toners.
Ongoing Innovation
LED technology:
OKI is a pioneer in LED technology having launched the world’s first LED printer in 1981. LED delivers a wide range of advantages including accurate output, superior print quality, a more compact design, fewer moving parts, stable print environment and reduced energy usage. Thanks to LED, organisations can save time and money by printing high-quality documents in-house.
Design strategy:
OKI is committed to an S3 product design strategy:
Simple: Devices are easy to use and clean in design to suit today’s modern office environment.
Solid: They are well-built, robust and reliable.
Smart: They include features to make printing and document management easier.
High definition colour:
The OKI approach combines four key elements to deliver fast, colour output of the utmost quality. These are high definition (HD) LED print-heads, Microfine HD toner, and a single-pass flat paper path and printer control system.
Awards:
OKI’s expanding product range has won a series of high profile UK awards including the Print.IT Editor’s Choice Award, the 2012 Go Green award, PCPro Laser Printer award and the MacWorld ‘Best Professional Printer’ Award.
Location:
Oki Systems UK‘s office is in Egham, Surrey, OKI’s EMEA HQ.
“I always enjoy working with the Adjacent team because they are professional, utterly reliable and talented. I have written several pieces for them on behalf of Buckinghamshire County Council, and they always supply me with a sound brief beforehand. The finished pages invariably look great, and nothing appears to be too much trouble for them whenever we have a request to make of them afterwards, such as inserting a new picture or adding some extra information.”
Steve Cohen, Media Officer, Buckinghamshire County Council
Rajesh Aggarwal, Acting Director in the Division of Business and Institutional Support at the International Trade Centre (ITC) provides insight into the role of SMEs in integrating successful international markets.
SMEs play an important role in every economy, more so in developing and the least developed countries, in terms of employment and income generation. Across the OECD countries, they account for 99% of enterprises and two-thirds of employment. In developing countries various studies estimate SMEs’ share of employment to be even higher. Furthermore, it is the new high growth enterprises – distinguished by their export orientation and innovative capabilities – that play a disproportionately large role in job creation.
A number of factors impede on SMEs’ ability to integrate successfully and sustainably into international markets. “Limited resources and international contacts as well as lack of requisite managerial knowledge about internationalisation have remained critical constraints to SME internationalisation.” 1 Market opportunities and structures are increasingly dominated by global value chains (GVCs) dominated by large firms, which bring in their wake a set of new challenges for SMEs to become sustainable suppliers to these chains. Over a period of time, with evolution of international markets, related market access barriers now typically constitute a mix of NTMs, tariffs, private standards and trade facilitation (border) issues. Increasing the power of ICT products and services on the other hand, have also provided opportunities to SMEs to connect to buyers and suppliers much more directly and effectively.
Enterprise competitiveness is a result of 3 sets of factors: (i) enterprise internal factors including total factor productivity and ability to constantly innovate products, the production process and organisational set-up; (ii) efficiency of the business environment in which it operates; and (iii) linkage capabilities of an enterprise to markets and related buyers (e.g. lead firms in GVCs), to finance including FDI, and to relevant new knowledge, skills and technologies. SMEs need to address this complexity of factors impacting upon enterprise competitiveness, for which they often need support of institutions like the International Trade Centre (ITC).
Integration of SMEs into value chains is greatly facilitated if developing countries have the ability to attract the big firms to invest in production facilities. Low-income developing countries face many challenges in ‘efficiency seeking’ foreign investments. National governments, therefore, need to put in place investment and trade policies as well as accompanying regulations which are conducive to attract ‘efficiency-seeking’ investments.
Trade facilitation has emerged as a major area for reform as it contributes tremendously to enhancing business competitiveness, more so of the small and medium enterprises. The new WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) has given a fillip to policy and regulatory reform in this area by establishing binding obligations to improve customs procedures, transparency and efficiency as well as cooperation amongst border regulatory agencies and private sector.
SMEs often need direct assistance to connect to value chains of large firms. ITC as a neutral joint WTO-UN agency is well poised to play an intermediary role in connecting big corporations with small enterprises and encourage transnational corporations to balance their interests and that of developing countries’ SMEs by fostering sustainable partnerships. For example, micro-producers in marginalised communities in several countries in Africa were connected to international fashion companies and distributors through mentorship of these companies to create high-end products that could find a place on the shelves of fashion stores in Europe. This ‘shared value’ paradigm of large companies, to ensure that SMEs become reliable suppliers and integrate into the value chains of bigger firms is likely to gain significance in future.
SMEs’ quest for internationalisation may not necessarily be tied up with its linkage with domestic presence of large transnational companies due to the emergence of ICT and related advances, such as, digital trade platforms and associated mobile payment systems. These developments have opened up new opportunities for SMEs to connect directly to international suppliers and buyers.
Rationalising business decisions of SMEs
SME managers must have the skills to take rational business decisions, such as, what and how they source, produce and sell with a view to promoting enterprise competitiveness. Skills development programmes which enables business managers to conduct value chain analysis to map their operations to identify opportunities for value addition and efficiencies across the entire value-chain play an important role in transferring such skills to SME managers. Providers of technical assistance target trade support institutions, established by the governments exclusively or in partnership with the private sector, to provide skill building and other relevant export promotion services to SMEs.
They are also ITC’s main national counterparts for capacity building services, which provide two-fold support to these institutions. Namely, organisational strengthening, using good business practices of similar organisations, and technical services strengthening aimed at enhancing the capacity of trade support institutions to provide technical services to its clients, such as market intelligence, quality management (including sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures), and packaging.
1 OECD (2009), “Top Barriers and Drivers to SME Internationalisation”, Report by the OECD Working Party on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, OECD.
Diana Agacy, Blood Transfusion Nurse Practitioner and Phlebotomy Manager at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation gives an overview of the importance of patient safety during blood transfusions.
As a transfusion practitioner, the main aspect of my role is to educate healthcare professionals in safe transfusion practice and the first thing that I was taught by my blood bank manager was that “the safest blood transfusion is the one not given”. This, to me, was an oxymoron. I had worked in oncology and critical care and had seen the benefits of blood transfusions.
Within the transfusion community it has been widely recognised that the biggest risk in transfusion practice is the result of human error – the biggest risk being the wrong blood being transfused to the wrong patient. This usually occurs if the final bedside check prior to transfusion is not carried out as per guidelines. Transfusing the wrong blood type is also associated with errors at the pre-transfusion sample taking stage. This happens when the healthcare professional takes a sample from one patient but then labels it with another patient’s details, wrong blood in tube (WBIT) category in SHOT. This usually occurs because the pre-transfusion sample label is not filled in at the patient’s side, after the patient has been bled. The healthcare professional must always check that the information on the sample label exactly matches the information on the patient’s identification band or has it confirmed verbally by the patient before completing the pre-transfusion sample taking phase of the transfusion process. The general public, however, perceive the greatest risk of a blood transfusion is a blood borne infection.
The quality of the most frequently transfused blood components (red cells, platelets, fresh frozen plasma (FFP) and cryoprecipitate) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are of the highest standard thanks to the Blood Safety and Quality Regulations 2005, both in hospitals and at the point of manufacturing. The evidence from the Serious Hazards of Transfusion Haemovigilance Scheme (SHOT) is proof of this. Approximately 3 million components are issued per year. The figures of major morbidity risk per component are as follows:
Hepatitis B (Public Health Data) 1 in 1.3 million
Hepatitis C 1 in 28 million
HIV 1 in 6.7 million
However, patient safety in relation to blood transfusion has to be appropriate use of blood and, unfortunately, traditional liberal transfusion practice is hard to challenge.
A red cell transfusion is considered appropriate when the patient’s bone marrow is dysfunctional or when there is a severe life-threatening bleed that jeopardises the oxygenation of the vital organs. Red cell transfusions should never be used to treat chronic anaemia unless there are associated symptoms of acute anaemia. Chronic anaemia is a sign of an underlying pathology, it is not a diagnosis. The underlying disease which is causing the anaemia must be diagnosed and treated.
Platelets have their uses but using these outside the recommended guidelines can be detrimental and a waste of a precious resource. The effectiveness of FFP is also being questioned and it is often used incorrectly. These 2 components are used to stop bleeding based on laboratory results done in vitro. The evidence which is emerging implies that these tests do not reflect their true action within the human body and a good bleeding history from a patient is more beneficial to avoid bleeding in elective peri-operative cases. All of the above are addressed in the training and education of doctors; however, it is very difficult to demystify culture.
This is where patient blood management (PBM) is pivotal and it is the task of the transfusion practitioner, backed by the hospital transfusion committee, to educate healthcare professionals in the acute setting about PBM. In the community setting, the challenge is to educate general practitioners about iron preoptimisation before referring a patient for elective surgery. Pre-assessment clinics, regardless of speciality, should not accept patients that do not meet the optimal haemoglobin level for elective surgery. Optimal haemoglobin levels and good surgical techniques reduce the need for postoperative transfusions and length of stay in hospital. This is summarised in the 3 Pillars of Patient Blood Management, available here: www.health.wa.gov.au/bloodmanagement/docs/pbm_pillars
Lastly, the 2 simplest but most effective patient safety measures in blood transfusion lie with the patient and their next of kin. To avoid human errors, patients must take ownership of ensuring that their demographics are correct on the hospital patient administrative system by checking that the information on their identification wristband is correct, if not inform a member of staff immediately, and wear it at all times while in hospital. The ‘Do you know who I am campaign?’, based on 2009 SHOT recommendations, is available here:http://www.pifonline.org.uk/blood-transfusionawareness-campaign-do-you-know-who-i-amlaunches/
Diana Agacy
Blood Transfusion Nurse Practitioner and Phlebotomy Manager
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes, Military Psychologist, and Director at the Veterans and Families Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, highlights the importance of our armed forces being in excellent mental health.
The mental fitness of Britain’s Armed Forces is every bit as important as the physical fitness for which they are rightly renowned and it is vitally important that their mental fitness is maintained to a high level. Our sailors, soldiers and aviators (some 150, 000 of them with, it is planned, a further 30,000 in the reserves) are in reality every bit as prone to mental health difficulties as everyone else in British society, and in some cases, because of the virtue and nature of the occupation that they are engaged in, more so.
Relatively recent research shows that whereas the mental health of the majority of Britain’s servicewomen and men is relatively robust, around one fifth of them suffer some kind of common mental health difficulty. This rate is significantly better than in their civilian equivalents, which one would expect. So what are these common health difficulties? Anxiety disorders – generalised anxiety, panic disorder and phobia, obsessional difficulties and depressive disorders – such as depressive episodes and major depression.
These are the most common. Serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (previously better known as manic depression) are very rare indeed and are not considered conducive to continuing military service.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is rare too, despite what the media might have you believe, and is of course related to the amount, frequency and type of exposure to trauma accumulated by an individual during her or his service. Research has found the level of PTSD to be higher in certain groups – combat troops, the reserves, medics, those who have actually been in combat with the enemy – and where ‘harmony guidelines’ (the recommended maximum number of deployments during any 2 year period) have been exceeded. The current rate of PTSD among British troops is estimated to be somewhere between 4% and 6%.
The other signature problem faced by our armed forces – and this is by no means a new problem but, rather, has been accepted to be more of a cultural legacy, is alcohol abuse, particularly and surprisingly perhaps in serving young women. Drug abuse is, however, almost negligible as a result of the Armed Forces’ zero tolerance and the practice of surprise controlled drug testing entire units at a time. The attitudes of the forces to both of these issues are hardening and compulsory discharge for drug related offences are commonplace.
How then is mental fitness maintained if it is as essential as we said that it was at the beginning of the piece? The answer is that there is a comprehensive mental healthcare system in place for our armed services personnel. This goes all the way through a serviceman or woman’s career, from enlistment to discharge, and at every stage in between. The forces have a cadre of over 100 mental health professionals, uniformed and civilian, whose job it is to assess, treat and return to duty (in most cases) or assist with discharge (in the minority) anyone experiencing mental health difficulties. These mental health teams are part of the Defence Primary Healthcare Service and operate from Departments of Community Mental Health located in every major naval base, Army garrison and RAF station in the UK, Germany and Cyprus, and as field mental health teams in operational bases. If intensive or acute mental health treatment is required, then that is provided by a network of NHS units working alongside the Armed Forces.
Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy
The most common intervention is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This is a NICE (National Institute of Health and Care Excellence) recommended therapy based on the theoretical work of the US psychiatrist, Professor Aaron Beck. The premise behind CBT is that our moods are affected by what we think, and that we can, therefore, learn to control and improve our moods by noticing, and then challenging and modifying successively, our dysfunctional negative thoughts. These negative cognitions are often based on negative schemas and core beliefs, often deriving from early negative experiences, and these can be uncovered and worked with in a similar way.
Training
Over the years in which CBT has been developing, protocols have been developed for every problem: anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD. Therapists learn about CBT in their core training as mental health nurses, clinical or counselling psychologists or psychiatrists but specialise further after initial qualification. The military insist that every newly qualified mental health professional has post qualification training in CBT, but also in EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) – the NICE approved evidence-based treatment for PTSD and adjustment disorder – during their first few years of qualification.
The evidence base
Of all the psychotherapies, CBT, along with EMDR, has been the most intensively researched and has been found to produce significant reduction in symptom scores if delivered according to the protocol together with significant reductions in the rates of risk of relapse. It is a talking therapy, involving sessions where clients learn how to view difficulties in a different way, along with ‘behavioural experiments’ where the likelihood of certain eventualities occurring or not are evaluated in a scientific way, and home-based assignments which the client must complete over the therapy course.
Multidisciplinary teamwork
In most cases, a CBT intervention on its own can be highly effective without the need for any prescribed medication. In other cases, medication is prescribed by service general practitioners on advice of service consultant psychiatrists. All members of the service, together with military social workers, the welfare agencies and the chain of command work together.
The goal of military mental healthcare services – supplemented by training at several points throughout a serviceman or woman’s career – is to restore service personnel to a state of full mental fitness so that they can return to their role and carry out their duties.
Extreme weather events may cause severe damage to our society. Examples include hurricane Sandy in 2012 (the second-costliest hurricane in United States history), European windstorms Lothar and Martin in 1999, and, more recently, the exceptional sequence of floods in southern England in the winter of 2014. Insurance companies need to reserve sufficient capital to cover claims following an extreme weather event. Estimates of expected losses due to catastrophic events crucially depend on the tail width of the probability distribution describing the likelihood of extremes. Hence, understanding the typical tail behaviour of time series generated by climate models is a pressing challenge for the insurance industry and forecasting agencies.
Our research
The Johann Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (JBI), based at the University of Groningen, actively participates in current mathematical research on extreme events. The mission of the JBI is the cross-fertilization by modelling of the disciplines mathematics and computer science both with other sciences and with the outside world.
Prof Henk Broer is an internationally renowned expert in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems. Dr Alef Sterk has worked on the mathematical analysis of climate models. We collaborate with Dr Renato Vitolo, Dr Mark Holland (Exeter), and Dr Pau Rabassa (London) who provide us with expertise on climate modelling and ergodic theory. Prof Carles Simo (University of Barcelona) complements our research with state of the art numerical methods for deterministic systems and background mechanisms. We are embedded in a larger, international network of scientists working on extreme events and its applications to climate science.
Mathematical climate modelling
Mathematical modelling offers a fruitful approach towards an understanding of meteo-climatic extremes. Models for the atmospheric and oceanic circulation are typically derived from first principles, such as Newton’s laws, conservation of energy, global balances, etc. This approach leads to deterministic evolution laws in which the present state of the system completely determines its future.
However, since the seminal work of the mathematician and meteorologist E.N. Lorenz in the 1960s it is well known that even deterministic systems can be very unpredictable: small perturbations in the initial state may lead to large differences in later states, see Figure 1. This phenomenon, which is colloquially known as the butterfly effect, hampers long-term weather forecasts and triggered the development of mathematical research on nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory.
Figure 1: Butterfly shaped attractor which appears in Lorenz’ simplified model for atmospheric convection. Two evolutions starting at nearby initial conditions can separate exponentially fast. This phenomenon hampers long-term weather forecasts and triggered the development of the mathematical theory of nonlinear dynamical systems and chaos.
Our achievements
Our research is strongly interdisciplinary. Our expertise includes nonlinear dynamical systems, extreme value statistics, and climate modelling. This unique combination enables us to tackle both theoretical and applied problems on extreme weather events.
Storm clustering
Intense windstorms are a major cause of damage in Europe. Such meteorological extremes may occur in groups (clusters), such as the December 1999 windstorms Anatol, Lothar, and Martin, which produced total damage exceeding $15 B. Such storm clustering is particularly threatening for insurance companies.
We discovered that clustering tends to be stronger for the more intense windstorms over Europe. We analysed how this is related to the time-varying effect of the large-scale atmospheric flow. Specifically, certain features of the atmospheric dynamics, the so-called teleconnection patterns (such as the North Atlantic Oscillation) are found to induce temporal modulation in the windstorm arrival rate. This may lead to the occasional accumulation of several extremes within relatively short time spans.
Analogous explanations have been provided for the clustering of other meteo-climatic extremes, such as intense tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons) and floods, providing enhanced statistical models for the occurrence of such phenomena.
For more details, see:
R. Vitolo, D.B. Stephenson, I.M. Cook, and K. Mitchell-Wallace. Serial clustering of intense European storms. Meteorologische Zeitschrift 18(4), pp. 411-424, 2009.
P.J. Mumby, R. Vitolo, and D.B. Stephenson. Temporal clustering of tropical cyclones and its ecosystem impacts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10(43), pp. 17626-17630, 2011.
G. Villarini, J.A. Smith, R. Vitolo, and D.B. Stephenson. On the temporal clustering of US floods and its relationship to climate teleconnection patterns. International Journal of Climatology, 33(3), pp. 629-640, 2013.
Estimating the tail index
Classical extreme value theory studies the distribution of large values in time series of independent random variables. Since the early 2000s the theory has been extended to deterministic systems, such as climate models. In this setting the so-called Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distributions can be used to compute the probability of occurrence of future large values of a quantity, such as wind speed or sea surface level, given a sample of past measurements.
To that purpose one must estimate a couple of unknown parameters of the distribution. Of particular importance is the so-called tail index because it determines the tail width of the distribution, and therefore the frequency and intensity of extreme events. Accurate estimates of the tail index are useful for forecasting agencies like the UK MetOffice and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute or reinsurance brokers like Willis Re.
Figure 2: Illustration of the block maximum method. A time series is divided into sufficiently long blocks and over each block the maximum value is computed (red dots). From these block maxima the parameters of an extreme value distribution can be estimated.
Estimates for the tail index are often obtained by the so-called block maximum method, see Figure 2. In this method one divides a time series, either obtained from data or numerical simulations, in sufficiently long blocks. Under the assumption that the block maxima form a random sample drawn from a GEV distribution the parameters can be estimated using standard statistical methods. Recently, we discovered that the tail index is related to the geometry of the evolutions of the underlying dynamical system, such as the fractal dimension of the attractor. This discovery also explains why sometimes prohibitively long time series are needed to obtain accurate estimates.
For more details, see:
M.P. Holland, R. Vitolo, P. Rabassa, A.E. Sterk, and H.W. Broer. Extreme value laws in dynamical systems under physical observables. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena 241(5), pp. 497-513, 2012.
Predictability of extremes
We have studied the finite-time predictability of extreme values, such as convection, energy, and wind speeds, in geophysical models. To that purpose we computed the exponential growth rates (Lyapunov exponents) of nearby trajectories over a finite time interval. In general these growth rates strongly depend on the initial condition, see Figure 3.
Figure 3: The attractor of an atmospheric model. Colours indicate how fast errors in initial conditions can grow, which is a measure of chaos. Black dots indicate initial conditions leading to extreme wind speeds within a fixed time interval. Since these initial conditions have large error growth rates, extreme wind speeds are very unpredictable in this model.
We studied whether initial conditions leading to extremes typically have a larger or smaller error growth rate. We addressed this question using simplified models for the atmospheric circulation. Our results clearly suggest that the predictability of extreme events strongly depends on the type of event. For example, the predictability of extreme wind speeds strongly depends on the geographical location of interest: extreme wind speeds are typically better predictable in valleys than on mountain tops. This conclusion warrants a further in-depth study on how extreme events depend on landscape characteristics.
For more details, see:
A.E. Sterk, M.P. Holland, P. Rabassa, H.W. Broer, and R. Vitolo. Predictability of extreme values in geophysical models. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics 19(5), pp. 529-539, 2012.
Funding our research
Our past research projects have been funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the auspices of Complexity-NET. We are interested in new funding opportunities in order to expand our research activities. New projects will lead to novel mathematical techniques for studying extremes in climate models and data. In addition, funding provides the means to educate junior scientists. There are not many mathematicians trained in the application of extreme value theory to climate models and there is a need to increase this pool.
Contact details
Prof Dr Henk W. Broer
Professor of Dynamical Systems
Johann Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science
Louise Tibbert, President of the PPMA explains the importance of understanding the true costs of providing a good service, and how performance should be managed…
The perception of the public sector is that we do not focus on performance in the same way that perhaps the private sector does. Whilst this may still be true in a minority of councils, the reality is now very different. The double whammy of budget cuts and demography pressures has acted as a significant catalyst for change over the last few years.
The integration of some NHS services with those social care services delivered by councils and commissioned partners to elderly or disabled people, is one example where innovation and customer centric focus is dramatically shifting the approach. Accountability will also sit more with front line workers who will become multi skilled and will be trusted to make the right decisions quickly for the people they support – rather than waiting for a remote manager to give their sanction. Empowerment will be much stronger and so will outcomes for people. This is the holy grail of joined up, preventative and person centric care. Performance is likely to be assessed on the outcomes of the whole system. How many people were admitted or re-admitted to hospital? What is their quality of life? How does this compare to the ‘old’ approach in terms of outcome and costs? How does support for families help create better outcomes for children – to give them a better chance of a prosperous and happy life rather than becoming the next generation of service users?
The way that externally provided services are commissioned is also changing to become more outcome based, whilst not losing the cost imperative. Market shaping through procurement and partnership working is emerging as one way of addressing this need and the performance management of contractors is also changing as a result.
Local councils are run by locally elected councillors who are now held much more to account by the public through the ballot box and through increased transparency of their decision making and spending. Changes to service design and delivery are supported by business cases and delivery is monitored via performance indicators and reporting, so far so good. But they too will need to think about what good performance looks like in a more complex landscape. The shift of Public Health services from the NHS to councils in April 2013 is now enabling a joined up approach centred on preventing later demands on services. So everything from preventing teenage pregnancies, to mental health, to obesity awareness and through to more strategic approaches to housing and planning decisions are designed to have an impact over the longer term. Well-being is a key component now of how strategies are being developed. It is not the job of your local council to make people happy, but they do have role in helping people to make themselves happy.
There is much discussion about workforce productivity and how to achieve this in a service, rather than a production based culture. Approaches like ‘lean’ and an understanding the true costs of providing a service are paramount. But the key to performance is good employee engagement. Most council’s recognise this now and measure and report on employee engagement. A few link it through to measures of organisational performance. Great leadership around the basics like appraisals, is now much more prevalent and programmes to multi skills or re-skill workers are becoming common place. Increasingly pay or ‘contribution’ is also being linked to performance of the organisation, department, team and individual. People are clearer about what is expected of them and of the impact they make to those who use public services. Most people working in the public sector are highly committed and our job is making sure we do not gradually break down that commitment through poor people management practices. Moreover, we need to harness it as a force for good and to leverage all the creativity and compassion that is undeniably there for the taking.
Research has shown that poor standards of care in hospitals or care homes are very much linked to employee engagement levels and culture, as well as how services are designed. Actually involving workers at all levels in the design of services is the way forward – they often have the insight and commitment to high quality services that is needed and will own the new approach. Leadership is also crucial, particularly in modelling the required values and behaviours.
So, great organisational performance is all about people and culture. It is about getting the best from people and supporting them to reach their full potential, whilst allowing them space to make the right decisions. Cross sector integrated working means that a single culture focused on the needs of the service user will be crucial. This is no easy task and will need careful handling by Organisational Development (OD) specialists to help shape ownership, behaviours and outcomes.
At the recent annual PPMA Seminar in Leeds, one speaker, who also happened to be an accountant, stated that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. I couldn’t agree more. Turning the massive challenges in the public sector into opportunities that make a real difference to real people is all about culture and workers – who are real people too.
Senior Research Analyst for Frost & Sullivan Divyaa Ravishankar discusses the growing need for innovative products in the realm of bio-storage applications.
The concept of biobanking has triggered massive interest in the area of long-term sample storage conditions but with a key challenge of maintaining sample integrity. In order to combat this, biobanks are adopting new storage methodologies and solutions that will guarantee better sample quality to the research community.
Globally, sample storage is an outsourced activity by many large pharmaceutical companies. Commercialisation of biobanking activity has forced the providers to adopt tools that are more sophisticated and facilitate sample tracking. Laboratory information management systems (LIMS) prove to be an essential component in facilitating various biorepository models and it is important to understand the workflow involved in each biobank set up; this will aid the adoption of automation at certain levels.
Market Insights
Researchers handling small quantities of samplesare at the risk of getting contaminated. Further,maintaining consistency becomes a huge factor whenlarge quantities of samples are processed. Therefore,automated protocols are replacing manual ones.
Interest in dry-state storing and eliminating freeze-thaw cycles causing unwanted intervention of sample quality has brought many patented automated biobanking storage platforms for -20°C and -80°C with a facility to store samples in both microplates and micro-tube format. Continuous monitoring of samples is ensured even during picking.
The cornerstone of every biorepository lies in the efficiency of its freezer inventory software or the LIMS employed. The key objective is to enable researchers to locate and use biospecimens. Besides tracking the location of the vial of a specific sample, it is important to retrieve the associated additional data such as consent information, demographic information and related regulatory data.
Challenges Associated with Clinical Sample Storage
Primitive methods of storing samples in cryotanks have reported instances of loss of samples, with them either being discarded, owing to the fact that they become unidentifiable, or due to ‘handling errors’. The sample retrieval process would be laborious if performed by humans, with the loss of an ID label leading to sample mix-up.
Given the fact that no 2 biobanks function in a similar way, it is tough to generalise a technology platform that is common for them. A lot of custom work is required to suit the workflow processes of a biobank, and at the same time, funding and financial maintenance of the biobanking infrastructure becomes tougher in the long run.
With time, samples demand more sophisticated methods of storage with clinical samples requiring a highly integrated set up that involves continuous monitoring of temperatures, along with the associated sample information.
An exponential increase in the volume of samples is leading to issues with store capacity and duration, with space to accommodate new samples in the given temperature and conditions posing a huge problem.
Today, the lack of high-quality and clinically annotated samples is seen as a major drawback. There is a need for standardising sample handling and storage protocols globally. Owing to very few standardised quality checking protocols for the pre-analytical phase, there arises a difficulty to compare and share samples, especially when specimen volumes are likely to be high. These issues need to be addressed, as they prove to be a barrier for the development of new treatments.
Many issues associated with the scientific use of biobanking samples are ethical in nature, such as consent, personal integrity, privacy protection, safety of samples and access to data and stored samples. The laws and regulations pertaining to ownership, intellectual property rights and commercialisation discourage the use of resource material. There are also issues pertaining to cross-border shipping of samples, which requires consent from donors. With the sole aim of safeguarding the donor information, biobanking acts in Norway and Sweden allow the analysis of samples but discourage their long-term storage.
Technology Innovations for Clinical Sample Storage
Biobanks seek solutions that are easy, efficient and are able to provide cost-effective sample management. Traditional methods of storage include storing samples in laboratory freezers at -20°C, -80°C and liquid nitrogen, and this process is being largely automated with the help of RFID and the MEMS technology.
On the other hand, the recent trend shows an increasing preference towards room temperature storage. There are firms developing reagents to stabilise the DNA and RNA in order to be able to last long under ambient temperature; this concept has allowed whole blood samples to be shipped and preserved under room temperature for about 3 months. Adapting to room temperature storage can yield benefits such as eliminating the need for freezer units and extra storage space.
Over time, it becomes tough for biobanks and biorepositories to track and retrieve samples when stored at ultra-low temperatures. Traditional methods of storage involve microplates with barcode readers. Retrieval of a single sample from a microplate meant thawing the entire plate, which affects the freeze-thaw cycles of other samples simultaneously. For this purpose, sample storage is being carried out in microtubes and individual vials. Earlier, equipment and robotic arms were designed to handle microplates; now, systems are flexible to cherry pick individual microtubes. Most of the storage systems today provide robotic interfaces inside a chilled atmosphere in order to prevent the disturbance of unused samples.
Conclusions
A totally integrated system of hardware, software and consumable tools would be the way to “smart biobanking”. With many new technologies, biobanks oriented towards the future can retain sample quality/integrity by employing smart and smooth sample handling systems available in the market today.
Adnan Sharif, Consultant Nephrologist at University Hospitals Birmingham discusses kidney transplants and the impact it has on the patient and their quality of life.
Chronic kidney disease affects over 10% of the UK population and can progress to end-.stage kidney disease, requiring renal replacement therapy in the form of either dialysis treatment or transplantation. As of December 2011, there were more than 53,000 patients in the UK on renal replacement therapy with a 4% annual growth. The cost of dialysis ranges between £20,000 to £40,000 per patient per year (depending upon dialysis modality) and the NHS is estimated to be spending 1.5% of its total annual budget on providing renal replacement therapy, despite this representing only 0.05% of the population. The prevalence of renal replacement therapy is expected to rise with the ageing population and increasing rates of risk factors for chronic kidney disease (e.g. diabetes mellitus, hypertension), as well as increasing the survival of patients already on renal replacement therapy. However, despite this increased survival, over a third of patients on renal replacement therapy (especially dialysis) will die within 5 years of developing end-stage kidney disease.
Kidney transplantation is championed as the gold standard treatment for patients with end-stage kidney disease as it has been demonstrated to have superior mortality rates versus dialysis. It also leads to improvements in the quality of life for the majority of patients and represents significant cost savings for the NHS. However, kidney transplant recipients require lifelong specialist care due to the potent antirejection therapy required for the longevity of the transplant, associated with increased risks of cardiovascular disease, infection and cancer, and expert care is essential to achieve a fine balance between the risks and benefits of anti-rejection therapy post kidney transplantation. Kidney specialists who look after patients with end-stage kidney disease make a careful assessment of kidney transplant candidates to determine their suitability for the rigors of transplantation, with meticulous counselling of the likely expectations and outcomes after receiving a kidney transplant. The transplant professional therefore guides patients with end-stage kidney disease to make an informed decision with regards to whether kidney transplantation is the right choice for them.
Due to the disparity between supply and demand for kidneys, the average national wait for a kidney transplant from the deceased-donor national waiting list is 3 years. Living donor kidney transplantation, where loved ones donate one of their healthy kidneys for transplantation, has been on the increase over the last decade and may soon represent half of all kidney transplants performed in the UK. This represents an excellent opportunity for recipients of such kidneys due to a number of benefits; pre-emptive kidney transplantation can occur in a timely fashion with shorter wait, better patient survival and improved long-term kidney allograft survival. The well-being of the donor takes priority in such transplants, with careful assessment of both short- and long-term medical risks. In such cases, the transplant professional will make a decision as to the suitability of any potential donors in line with national guidelines. Although there is no denying the significant emotional benefit associated with donating a kidney to a loved one, the absence of any personal medical benefit means we must follow a rigorous pathway for willing candidates to donate one of their kidneys that is robust, comprehensive and evidence-based. Post living kidney donation, although long-term risks for hypertension, end-stage kidney disease and death are lower compared to similar aged people in the general population, all donors are encouraged to remain under long-term review for surveillance as an additional safety check. This represents the commitment from the NHS to ensure the excellent outcomes associated with living kidney donation are maintained. There are numerous resources available to guide and advise willing donors in the general population, both medical and nonmedical based. Groups and charities advocating living kidney donation, especially altruistic kidney donation to a stranger, have proliferated and are leading major campaigns to promote kidney donation and provide information with regards to the safety and risks associated with kidney donation.
Transplantation is a rapidly evolving field with scientific advances propelling the field further than ever before. It is essential that all staff involved with transplantation are kept abreast of the latest advances, and continued professional development forms an important component of the training and development for all staff involved with transplantation. Organ transplantation is a major medical success story of the last 50 years and the NHS is committed to ensuring every opportunity to offer this life saving treatment to suitable candidates are explored in the context of a safe and equitable framework.
Adnan Sharif
Consultant Nephrologist
University Hospitals Birmingham – NHS Foundation Trust
Oxfordshire County Council has announced it is reviewing whether or not to scrap funding for a number of services, including a domestic abuse helpline.
Oxfordshire County Council’s announcement that it may cut grants that fund a number of services including a domestic abuse helpline has been met with criticism.
In February, the council decided to scrap a £1.5m grant from its budget in order to balance the books to keep homeless hostels open. The grant is divvied up between a number of services throughout the authority, including a domestic abuse helpline.
The domestic abuse helpline is one of many services that will be affected by council austerity measures, if the cuts go ahead. The charity takes more than 350 calls a month from people suffering abuse.
Trish Walsh, manager of charity Reducing the Risk of Domestic Violence, said: “I think it is essential that we maintain the helpline. It is staffed by assessors who know what advice to give and what services are available in the local area. It can be very difficult to get through to the national helpline because it is not manned all the time but this is a local service for local people.
“The most important thing is making sure the victims are safe when they call the helpline and I know useage of the helpline is up. Other counties are maintaining their domestic abuse service.”
The council also put forward a proposed review to establish whether or not local domestic abuse helplines are required.
A2Dominion, who runs the helpline and additional support, is also responsible for homeless hostel Simon House in Oxford. Pam Vasir, group director of supported housing, said: “Our priority is to support the people who are in our care as best we can and, obviously, we have concerns about the impact the cuts may have on our services.
“However, it is not possible to comment on what the impact will be before we know the outcome of the consultation.”
According to the latest statistics, reports of domestic abuse in the county have decreased in the last three years from 2,435 in 2011/12 to 2,290 in 2013/14.
County council spokesman Marcus Mabberley said there would be further public consultation before any changes were made.
The programme forms part of the government’s strategy to improve the conditions of schools between 2015 and 2021. In total, the government has made available £2bn for schools across the country. Coventry hopes to win a portion of this funding to repair and refurbish five primary schools, two secondaries, and five special schools.
The council’s cabinet expects to identify the schools it will put forward in the bid on the 8 July. It is thought the list will comprise of Ernesford Grange, Hearsall, Joseph Cash, Limbrick Wood and Manor Park primary schools; Foxford and Cardinal Newman secondary schools; and Baginton Fields, Corley, Sherbourne Fields, Tiverton and Woodfield special schools.
Coventry already secured money to rebuild or refurbish seven schools in the first round of funding. It is hoped the council will successfully secure more in the second round.
Coventry City Council Cabinet Member for Education Councillor David Kershaw said: “It is absolutely crucial that our young people are taught in the best educational environment possible.
“We were delighted to be able to secure funding for seven schools in the first round of the Priority School Building Programme and I was thrilled when Whitmore Park became the first school nationally to have its work completed at Easter this year. Through a great deal of hard work this school finished on time and to a very high standard.
“We know it will be difficult to get each of the 12 schools we have identified on to the programme with the rest of the country all vying for the same funding, but we will work extremely hard with the headteachers and governors of each school to submit the best application we can.”
The outcome of the bid for funding is expected to be announced by the end of the year, but bid proposals for the programme must be submitted by the 21 July.
Cancer Research UK have today launched a new Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence that will bring together leading researchers from The University of Manchester and London.
Cancer Research UK announced that a new centre to tackle lung cancer will open today [1 July] in Manchester. The centre will be dedicated to the research of lung cancer, the second most common cancer in the UK.
The Centre of Excellence aims to bring individual research hubs together, in the hope of developing a single strategy to advance progress in lung cancer. Cancer Research UK said the centre would make the “UK a true global research leader in this very important disease”.
Manchester is already well-known for its expertise in cancer research, with facilities such as The Christie Hospital heavily involved in clinical trials. Experts in the region will also work closely with researchers based in London, who are working on harnessing the immune system to fight the disease.
The main research focus areas will be basic science; immunology; drug discovery, early detection, and pre-invasive disease; tumour evolution, and heterogeneity; biomarkers; clinical trials; and radiation biology/radiotherapy trials. Recruitment and training of the next generation of lung cancer research specialists will also take place at the centre.
Professor Caroline Dive, Manchester lead from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute based at The University of Manchester, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as Cancer Research UK’s first Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence. By establishing the Centre jointly at Manchester and UCL, we are bringing together internationally renowned expertise across the full spectrum of lung cancer research.”
Professor Ian Jacobs, Vice-President of The University of Manchester, said: “Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death and in Greater Manchester alone, approximately 900 men and 800 women die from the disease every year. We are delighted to be a partner in this important new centre with CRUK and UCL. I hope that it will lead to better ways of early detection and more effective treatment which saves lives.”
Dr Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “For too long lung cancer research has suffered from slow progress, meaning that lung cancer patients have not seen the same impact from research that other cancers have. We’re determined to change this.
“Manchester and London each have their own research strengths. By uniting them, we’re building a new force against the disease. This new Centre of Excellence will speed up the pace of research, unlocking lung cancer’s secrets and offering hope to the many thousands of people diagnosed with the disease every year.”
Christopher L Antos, Group Leader at the DFG-Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden explains how Zebrafish research is a vital tool to help understand organ and appendage regeneration.
Injuries from trauma, ischemia and amputation can result in the permanent loss of an organ and limb function. The regeneration of many vital organs and appendages is a phenomenon that is limited or absent in humans, and this limitation can result in severe incapacitation or mortality. Such outcomes generate a medical need to find strategies to replace tissue loss. These strategies may come from understanding the cell biology and molecular mechanisms that are used by animals which have a significant capacity to regenerate organs and appendages, and there are vertebrates that have the ability to regenerate with such high fidelity that it is impossible to identify the original loss. While it remains unclear why some animals can regenerate specific structures and others cannot, what current research is finding is that many of the molecular mechanisms involved in regeneration are involved in embryonic development and these basic molecular mechanisms are conserved among the species. Thus, it should be possible to partially or completely restore the human endogenous ability to regenerate appendages and organs by providing the missing signals identified through studies of those animals that regenerate.
The processes governing regeneration are very complex. After injury, as for general wound healing, adjacent tissues need to recognise that there is an injury; however, something else takes place in the cells at the wound site that instructs them to do more than heal. Consequently, some cells in the residual tissues need to be instructed to react, and information must be provided to instruct them how to react in a coordinated manner. They then grow new tissue together in a possessive fashion so that one tissue does not overgrow another and that these cells make the appropriate connections (innervations, vascularisation, tendon attachment to bone, muscle attachment to tendon, etc.). These tissues need to know when to stop regenerating once the dimensions of the original structure are reached. Thus, the overarching questions that regeneration research is trying to address are:
– What initiates the regeneration response?
– What controls the coordinated regenerative out growth (despite the high levels of cell proliferation, a tumour never arises)?;
– What tells the cells involved in regeneration to stop regenerating once the new structure has as reach the original dimensions of the lost structure?
– The zebrafish is a powerful animal model to answer these regeneration questions for several reasons:
– This fish has a very extensive capacity to regenerate many of its organs and appendages completely – e.g. heart, retina, pancreas, liver, appendage, etc;
– The internal organs in the fish are similar in theircomposition to human organs;
– The differences in the more subtle aspects in the differences between fish cells and human cells may provide clues about what biological phenomena must take place to allow residual tissues to produce new tissue;
– Two of the primary regeneration strategies (regeneration from stem cells and regeneration from the conversion of differentiated adult tissue cells into progenitor cells) observed in animals can be researched in the fish;
– Zebrafish are easy to maintain and can be bred frequently to produce a large number of progeny. This allows genetic experiments that involve looking for mutant fish that have lost their capacity to regenerate. Finding such mutants and identifying the gene responsible for the defective regeneration response facilitates the identification of the molecular mechanisms involved in regeneration;
– It is fairly easy to produce transgenic fish lines expressing fluorescent proteins to mark different tissue cells and track their behaviour during regeneration, as well as to test how the activation or inhibition of specific genes in specific tissues affect the regeneration process.
Regeneration of the zebrafish caudal fin
Adult zebrafish caudal fin is bilobed structure supported by a skeletal frame of bone rays throughout the fin. Inside the bone rays are peripheral nerves and surrounding them is their vasculature. The pigment cells that make the dark stripes are the melanocytes. Shortly after the loss of the fin lobes the healing process begins. Within 48 hours tissue regeneration begins. Regeneration of fin lobes is complete approximately 28 days after loss.
Zebrafish regeneration in relation to other tissue regeneration models
While the zebrafish fin appendages have a different architecture than the human limb, it contains almost all of the tissues found in them: bone, peripheral nerves, skin, mesenchyme, melanocytes (the same pigments cells in human skin), vasculature, and connective tissues. A second example is the heart, while we humans have a near zero capacity to regenerate heart tissues, the zebrafish can completely regenerate them, including complete loss of the ventricular apex. The ventricular wall not only regenerates the tissues, but, like the fish appendage, it completely regenerates the shape.
Other models for studying vertebrate regeneration are different amphibians (frogs and salamanders), mouse and rat. Amphibians are a good model system for researching the cell biology of regeneration and are starting to be more important for molecular research, but still lag in some of the experimental tools that are already used in the zebrafish. Mammals, including humans, can regenerate certain structures and organs, too. The liver, hair, skin, blood vessels, blood, immune cells are some of the tissues we (mammals) regenerate, and, thus, the regenerative capacity of these tissues are studied in mouse and rat. Why mammals are more limited in the types of tissues that they can regenerate is still unknown. Speculations are postulated such as complexity, size, and environment, but these explanations alone appear not to be the only reasons.
Organ culture research has focused on how to grow individual tissues for human organ replacement therapies, and this research has been successful with specific tissues (skin, eye lens, and mesenchymal stem cells). However, the three-dimensional architectural complexity and the number of different tissue cell types in a single fully functioning innervated, vascularised organ, is a current hurdle in growing complete organs in culture. Because the zebrafish can regenerate compound organs, and appendages to the same three-dimensional structures that completely regain function, zebrafish research can provide answers to a great number of questions concerning the regeneration of three-dimensional multi-tissue organs and appendages, including proper innervations and vascularisation.
Thus, the zebrafish with its regenerative capacity and its experimental tools to study the cell biology, the genetics and the molecular mechanisms allows for the dissecting of the how cells are used and controlled to recreate organ loss and appendage structures. With all the current work, such research should provide answers to what cell activities and molecular factors are needed to promote regeneration of human organs and limbs in the near future.
A leading fishing organisation has called for carbon monoxide (CO) detectors to be fitted to all vessels following the death of two fishermen earlier this year.
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO) has called for carbon monoxide detectors (CO) to be installed on all vessels following the death of two fishermen in Whitby. Mark Arries, 26, and Edward Ide, 21, were found dead onboard the moored vessel, Eschol, in January. The NFFO is now calling for additional measures to be put into place to prevent this happening again.
Chief Executive of the NFFO Barrie Deas said: “We are not normally in the business of adding to the regulatory burden on fishermen, but the minimal cost involved in fitting an alarm and the catastrophic consequences of CO poisoning has persuaded us that an obligation to fit a detector should be included in the new code of practice.”
The NFFO has been working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to follow recommendations from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB). The MAIB report into the tragedy was released this month, and showed the cause of death was CO poisoning. The report noted that the installation of an alarm could have prevented the deaths.
Installing CO alarms on fishing vessels does fall under Health and Safety Work Regulations, which stipulate that risks should be identified and suitable measures taken to reduce the chance of harm. However, the requirement is non-specific.
The NFFO’s Safety and Training Officer Robert Greenwood said: “This is a tragic incident, which unfortunately isn’t as rare as we’d hope it to be. But, one simple change could have avoided it: the installation of a carbon monoxide alarm. The NFFO fully supports the inclusion of a requirement for fitting carbon monoxide detectors in the new codes of practice and we expect it will save lives, instead of the current situation where individuals are punished for ignorance or negligence when it’s already too late.”
Six other cases since 2000 were also highlighted in the MAIB report, which stated that seven people had died as a result of CO poisoning, the majority of whom were fishermen.
Greenwood added: “With fishing already the most dangerous profession in the UK, there is no excuse for not minimising just one of the risks in such a cheap and simple way.”
Changes to the Fishing Vessel Safety folders, which industry body Seafish uses in training courses, have been added to include information on the danger CO fumes. For more information visit: www.safetyfolder.co.uk
More than 500 staff working at Wolverhampton City Council have been granted voluntary redundancy.
Wolverhampton City Council has announced that more than 500 people working for the authority have been approved for voluntary redundancy. The council plans to cut 2,000 jobs—a third of its workforce—over the next two years as part of austerity measures. The council has to find £123m worth of savings by 2018.
The latest figures showed 1,385 people had expressed an interest in taking voluntary redundancy, but 564 people withdrew from the process. A further 216 staff were turned down for a pay off.
Approval has been granted for 527 voluntary redundancy applications already, and a further 78 are pending. The next stage of the process involves the council looking at compulsory redundancies throughout its departments.
Leader of the council, Councillor Roger Lawrence, said: “Some staff have left through compulsory redundancy because we have been re-structuring departments.”
The Labour party blamed job losses on the coalition government, claiming local authorities had been unfairly targeted for funding cuts. However, Wolverhampton’s Cabinet Member for Resources Labour Councillor Andrew Johnson said the council was not yet at the point of making compulsory redundancies.
“We are not at the stage of a compulsory redundancy programme. We cannot rule it out, but it has not happened yet.”
Wolverhampton has already seen tough cuts. Library opening hours have been scaled back and the majority of youth clubs in the city have been closed. Parking charges have also been introduced on Sundays and evenings in the aim of saving money.
