Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

BACKGROUND: In recent years, a growing number of methods for synthesising qualitative research have emerged, particularly in relation to health-related research. There is a need for both researchers and commissioners to be able to distinguish between these methods and to select which method is the most appropriate to their situation. DISCUSSION: A number of methodological and conceptual links between these methods were identified and explored, while contrasting epistemological positions explained differences in approaches to issues such as quality assessment and extent of iteration. Methods broadly fall into 'realist' or 'idealist' epistemologies, which partly accounts for these differences. SUMMARY: Methods for qualitative synthesis vary across a range of dimensions. Commissioners of qualitative syntheses might wish to consider the kind of product they want and select their method - or type of method - accordingly.

The methodology presented within this work is a result of years of interactions between many junior and senior X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) users operating within the CasaXPS spectral processing and interpretation program framework. In particular, discussions arising from a series of workshops have been a significant source for developing the overall XPS data processing concept and are the motivation for creating this work. These workshops organized by the Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel (IMN), Nantes gather both experienced and novice users of XPS for a week of discourse in conceptual experiment design and the resulting data processing. However, the framework constructed and utilized within these workshops encouraged the dissemination of knowledge beyond XPS data analysis and emphasized the importance of a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach to surface analysis problem-solving. The material presented here embodies data treatment originating from data made available to the first CNRS Thematic Workshop presented at Roscoff 2013. The methodology described here has evolved over the subsequent workshops in 2016 and 2019 and currently represents the philosophy used in CasaXPS spectral data processing paradigm.

The principles behind the interface to continuous domain spatial models in the RINLA software package for R are described. The integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) approach proposed by Rue, Martino, and Chopin (2009) is a computationally effective alternative to MCMC for Bayesian inference. INLA is designed for latent Gaussian models, a very wide and flexible class of models ranging from (generalized) linear mixed to spatial and spatio-temporal models. Combined with the stochastic partial differential equation approach (SPDE, Lindgren, Rue, and Lindström 2011), one can accommodate all kinds of geographically referenced data, including areal and geostatistical ones, as well as spatial point process data. The implementation interface covers stationary spatial models, non-stationary spatial models, and also spatio-temporal models, and is applicable in epidemiology, ecology, environmental risk assessment, as well as general geostatistics.

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We report that normal incidence transmission of circularly polarized waves through the lossy anisotropic planar chiral structure is asymmetric in the opposite direction. The new effect is fundamentally distinct from conventional gyrotropy of bulk chiral media and the Faraday effect, where the eigenstates are a pair of counterrotating elliptical states, while the eigenstates of the lossy anisotropic planar chiral structure are two corotating elliptical polarizations.

A comprehensive analysis of literature pertaining to surface texture metrology for metal additive manufacturing has been performed. This review paper structures the results of this analysis into sections that address specific areas of interest: industrial domain; additive manufacturing processes and materials; types of surface investigated; surface measurement technology and surface texture characterisation. Each section reports on how frequently specific techniques, processes or materials have been utilised and discusses how and why they are employed. Based on these results, possible optimisation of methods and reporting is suggested and the areas that may have significant potential for future research are highlighted.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the commonest primary malignant cancer of the liver in the world. Given that the burden of chronic liver disease is expected to rise owing to increasing rates of alcoholism, hepatitis B and C prevalence and obesity-related fatty liver disease, it is expected that the incidence of HCC will also increase in the foreseeable future. This article summarizes the international epidemiology, the risk factors and the pathogenesis of HCC, including the roles of viral hepatitis, toxins, such as alcohol and aflatoxin, and insulin resistance.

BACKGROUND: Immune infiltration of breast tumours is associated with clinical outcome. However, past work has not accounted for the diversity of functionally distinct cell types that make up the immune response. The aim of this study was to determine whether differences in the cellular composition of the immune infiltrate in breast tumours influence survival and treatment response, and whether these effects differ by molecular subtype. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We applied an established computational approach (CIBERSORT) to bulk gene expression profiles of almost 11,000 tumours to infer the proportions of 22 subsets of immune cells. We investigated associations between each cell type and survival and response to chemotherapy, modelling cellular proportions as quartiles. We found that tumours with little or no immune infiltration were associated with different survival patterns according to oestrogen receptor (ER) status. In ER-negative disease, tumours lacking immune infiltration were associated with the poorest prognosis, whereas in ER-positive disease, they were associated with intermediate prognosis. Of the cell subsets investigated, T regulatory cells and M0 and M2 macrophages emerged as the most strongly associated with poor outcome, regardless of ER status. Among ER-negative tumours, CD8+ T cells (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.89, 95% CI 0.80-0.98; p = 0.02) and activated memory T cells (HR 0.88, 95% CI 0.80-0.97; p = 0.01) were associated with favourable outcome. T follicular helper cells (odds ratio [OR] = 1.34, 95% CI 1.14-1.57; p < 0.001) and memory B cells (OR = 1.18, 95% CI 1.0-1.39; p = 0.04) were associated with pathological complete response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in ER-negative disease, suggesting a role for humoral immunity in mediating response to cytotoxic therapy. Unsupervised clustering analysis using immune cell proportions revealed eight subgroups of tumours, largely defined by the balance between M0, M1, and M2 macrophages, with distinct survival patterns by ER status and associations with patient age at diagnosis. The main limitations of this study are the use of diverse platforms for measuring gene expression, including some not previously used with CIBERSORT, and the combined analysis of different forms of follow-up across studies. CONCLUSIONS: Large differences in the cellular composition of the immune infiltrate in breast tumours appear to exist, and these differences are likely to be important determinants of both prognosis and response to treatment. In particular, macrophages emerge as a possible target for novel therapies. Detailed analysis of the cellular immune response in tumours has the potential to enhance clinical prediction and to identify candidates for immunotherapy.

Tumors exhibit genomic and phenotypic heterogeneity, which has prognostic significance and may influence response to therapy. Imaging can quantify the spatial variation in architecture and function of individual tumors through quantifying basic biophysical parameters such as CT density or MRI signal relaxation rate; through measurements of blood flow, hypoxia, metabolism, cell death, and other phenotypic features; and through mapping the spatial distribution of biochemical pathways and cell signaling networks using PET, MRI, and other emerging molecular imaging techniques. These methods can establish whether one tumor is more or less heterogeneous than another and can identify subregions with differing biology. In this article, we review the image analysis methods currently used to quantify spatial heterogeneity within tumors. We discuss how analysis of intratumor heterogeneity can provide benefit over more simple biomarkers such as tumor size and average function. We consider how imaging methods can be integrated with genomic and pathology data, instead of being developed in isolation. Finally, we identify the challenges that must be overcome before measurements of intratumoral heterogeneity can be used routinely to guide patient care.

We report experimental evidence that electromagnetic coupling between physically separated planar metal patterns located in parallel planes provides for extremely strong polarization rotatory power if one pattern is twisted with respect to the other, creating a chiral object. In terms of a rotary power per sample thickness equal to one wavelength, the bilayered structure rotates 5 orders of magnitude stronger than a gyrotropic crystal of quartz in the visible spectrum.

It is shown for the first time that liquid crystal behavior can be induced through halogen bonding. Thus, mixing the nonmesomorphic components 4-alkoxystilbazole with pentafluoroiodobenzene leads to a 1:1 halogen-bonded complex whose integrity is shown by X-ray single-crystal analysis and which shows thermotropic smectic A and nematic phases.

OBJECTIVE: Diffusion-weighted MRI is increasingly applied in the body. It has been recognized for some time, on the basis of scientific experiments and studies in the brain, that the calculation of apparent diffusion coefficient by simple monoexponential relationship between MRI signal and b value does not fully account for tissue behavior. However, appreciation of this fact in body diffusion MRI is relatively new, because technologic advancements have only recently enabled high-quality body diffusion-weighted images to be acquired using multiple b values. There is now increasing interest in the radiologic community to apply more sophisticated analytic approaches, such as those based on the principles of intravoxel incoherent motion, which allows quantitative parameters that reflect tissue microcapillary perfusion and tissue diffusivity to be derived. CONCLUSION: In this review, we discuss the principles of intravoxel incoherent motion as applied to body diffusion-weighted MRI. The evidence for the technique in measuring tissue perfusion is presented and the emerging clinical utility surveyed. The requisites and challenges of quantitative evaluation beyond simple monoexponential relationships are highlighted.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Imminent Scientific Data Deluge Scientific Metadata, Information and Knowledge Data Grids and Digital Libraries Open Archives and Scholarly Publishing Digital Preservation and Data Curation Concluding Remarks Acknowledgements References

Laser Powder Bed Fusion process is regarded as the most versatile metal additive manufacturing process, which has been proven to manufacture near net shape up to 99.9% relative density, with geometrically complex and high-performance metallic parts at reduced time. Steels and iron-based alloys are the most predominant engineering materials used for structural and sub-structural applications. Availability of steels in more than 3500 grades with their wide range of properties including high strength, corrosion resistance, good ductility, low cost, recyclability etc., have put them in forefront of other metallic materials. However, LPBF process of steels and iron-based alloys have not been completely established in industrial applications due to: (i) limited insight available in regards to the processing conditions, (ii) lack of specific materials standards, and (iii) inadequate knowledge to correlate the process parameters and other technical obstacles such as dimensional accuracy from a design model to actual component, part variability, limited feedstock materials, manual post-processing and etc. Continued efforts have been made to address these issues. This review aims to provide an overview of steels and iron-based alloys used in LPBF process by summarizing their key process parameters, describing thermophysical phenomena that is strongly linked to the phase transformation and microstructure evolution during solidification, highlighting metallurgical defects and their potential control methods, along with the impact of various post-process treatments; all of this have a direct impact on the mechanical performance. Finally, a summary of LPBF processed steels and iron-based alloys with functional properties and their application perspectives are presented. This review can provide a foundation of knowledge on LPBF process of steels by identifying missing information from the existing literature.

In this article, we present an account of the state of the art in acoustic scene classification (ASC), the task of classifying environments from the sounds they produce. Starting from a historical review of previous research in this area, we define a general framework for ASC and present different implementations of its components. We then describe a range of different algorithms submitted for a data challenge that was held to provide a general and fair benchmark for ASC techniques. The data set recorded for this purpose is presented along with the performance metrics that are used to evaluate the algorithms and statistical significance tests to compare the submitted methods.

Abstract Many microscopic investigations of materials may benefit from the recording of multiple successive images. This can include techniques common to several types of microscopy such as frame averaging to improve signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) or time series to study dynamic processes or more specific applications. In the scanning transmission electron microscope, this might include focal series for optical sectioning or aberration measurement, beam damage studies or camera-length series to study the effects of strain; whilst in the scanning tunnelling microscope, this might include bias-voltage series to probe local electronic structure. Whatever the application, such investigations must begin with the careful alignment of these data stacks, an operation that is not always trivial. In addition, the presence of low-frequency scanning distortions can introduce intra-image shifts to the data. Here, we describe an improved automated method of performing non-rigid registration customised for the challenges unique to scanned microscope data specifically addressing the issues of low-SNR data, images containing a large proportion of crystalline material and/or local features of interest such as dislocations or edges. Careful attention has been paid to artefact testing of the non-rigid registration method used, and the importance of this registration for the quantitative interpretation of feature intensities and positions is evaluated.

Marital status and living arrangements, along with changes in these in mid-life and older ages, have implications for an individual's health and mortality. Literature on health and mortality by marital status has consistently identified that unmarried individuals generally report poorer health and have a higher mortality risk than their married counterparts, with men being particularly affected in this respect. With evidence of increasing changes in partnership and living arrangements in older ages, with rising divorce amongst younger cohorts offsetting the lower risk of widowhood, it is important to consider the implications of such changes for health in later life. Within research which has examined changes in marital status and living arrangements in later life a key distinction has been between work using cross-sectional data and that which has used longitudinal data. In this context, two key debates have been the focus of research; firstly, research pointing to a possible selection of less healthy individuals into singlehood, separation or divorce, while the second debate relates to the extent to which an individual's transitions earlier in the life course in terms of marital status and living arrangements have a differential impact on their health and mortality compared with transitions over shorter time periods. After reviewing the relevant literature, this paper argues that in order to fully account for changes in living arrangements as a determinant of health and mortality transitions, future research will increasingly need to consider a longer perspective and take into account transitions in living arrangements throughout an individual's life course rather than simply focussing at one stage of the life course.

The introduction of a mobile and polarized organic moiety as a cation in 3D lead-iodide perovskites brings fascinating optoelectronic properties to these materials. The extent and the time scales of the orientational mobility of the organic cation and the molecular mechanism behind its motion remain unclear, with different experimental and computational approaches providing very different qualitative and quantitative description of the molecular dynamics. Here we use ultrafast 2D vibrational spectroscopy of methylammonium (MA) lead iodide to directly resolve the rotation of the organic cations within the MAPbI3 lattice. Our results reveal two characteristic time constants of motion. Using ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, we identify these as a fast (∼300 fs) "wobbling-in-a-cone" motion around the crystal axis and a relatively slow (∼3 ps) jump-like reorientation of the molecular dipole with respect to the iodide lattice. The observed dynamics are essential for understanding the electronic properties of perovskite materials.

Reaction of FeCl2 and H4DSBDC (2,5-disulfhydrylbenzene-1,4-dicarboxylic acid) leads to the formation of Fe2(DSBDC), an analogue of M2(DOBDC) (MOF-74, DOBDC(4-) = 2,5-dihydroxybenzene-1,4-dicarboxylate). The bulk electrical conductivity values of both Fe2(DSBDC) and Fe2(DOBDC) are ∼6 orders of magnitude higher than those of the Mn(2+) analogues, Mn2(DEBDC) (E = O, S). Because the metals are of the same formal oxidation state, the increase in conductivity is attributed to the loosely bound Fe(2+) β-spin electron. These results provide important insight for the rational design of conductive metal-organic frameworks, highlighting in particular the advantages of iron for synthesizing such materials.