- Date:
- 2009-2011
- Themes:
- Virtual Communities and Social Systems, Web Science
- Funding:
- JISC
The aim of the project is to build a framework for the integration of basic science and clinical research to manage research lifecycles and allow for integration of scientific approaches throughout these lifecycles into the everyday work practice of the consortia that manage translational clinical research. The project will take the CORE VRE and embed it into a National centre for surgical excellence, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH). The VRE will integrate both with the institutional systems and research life cycle, and with the national systems such as the National Health Service (NHS). It is our aim to integrate the CORE VRE with myExperiment to provide a set of services at RNOH to cover the four main areas of the research cycle, namely: the monitoring and governance of trials (experiment research administration); the trial protocols (experiment workflows); the publishing, dissemination and discussion on the results of trials in a repository; and the discovery of information from the repository and other resources. For this community, there are three tightly coupled areas of focus: research, clinical practice, and education (in the form of continuing professional development and training of the next generation of surgeons). In this project, our user community will be heavily involved in co-designing and codeployment of the tool set, and in particular the front end of the workbench will be user focused. The tools will need to be available to staff anywhere with the organisation, as clinicians need to be able to enter the data during clinics and directors of research need to be able to monitor the trials. This will bring with it a number of inter-operability issues, as we move data between the VRE, the hospital systems (NHS) and the institutional systems. To aid the understanding of the how the system will be used, we outline a typical ââ¬Ëresearch cycleââ¬â¢ that includes the practice of a clinical specialist in orthopaedics (who may also be a Higher surgical trainee) and a basic scientist. The purpose of this is to identify time essential information provision and interaction with pervasive technologies. For new researchers one of the most difficult tasks is to learn good practice or find related experiments to learn how to instantiate the protocols; in many organisations it is often easier to repeat an experiment than to find the results of a similar previous experiment. In this abstracted model of the research lifecycle, we have split up the cycle into four main research activities. In each of these activities the different issues and stakeholders are addressed. The wider community nationally is represented by the Musculoskeletal network of Greater London, NHS, e-science, Surgical and VRE communities. It is through the Musculoskeletal network of Greater London that we will be able to co-ordinate knowledge and demonstrations to advise the community and for continuity. This project will impact on the wider academic community in the UK, initially through dissemination via organisations such as BriteNet (Tissue Engineering), The British Orthopaedic Association, British Orthopaedic Research Society, and the British Elbow and Shoulder Society as the groups tied into the consortia development.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- David De Roure
- Lester Gilbert
- sg01v
- Alejandra Saucedo
- pz2g12
Partner
- Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore
Associated research group
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2009-2009
- Theme:
- Virtual Communities and Social Systems
- Funding:
- National Institute for Health Research
IBS affects 10ââ¬â22% of the UK population, with NHS costs over ã200 million a year. Abdominal pain, bloating and altered bowel habit affect quality of life, social functioning and time off work. Current GP treatment relies on a positive diagnosis, reassurance, lifestyle advice and drug therapies, but many suffer ongoing symptoms. A recent Cochrane review highlighted the lack of research evidence for IBS drugs. Neither GPs, nor patients have good evidence to inform prescribing decisions. However, IBS drugs are widely used: NHS costs 2005 of nearly ã10 million for mebeverine and over ã8 million for ispaghula husk. CBT and self-management can be helpful, but poor availability in the NHS restricts its use. Development of web-based CBT could increase access without increased costs. Aims 1) To develop a patient CBT based self-management website for IBS, using material from a previously validated paper-based CBT IBS self-management programme and assess the level of support needed for patients using the website (ie initial 30 minute telephone support session with a nurse or not). 2) To pilot an RCT to assess the effectiveness of the most commonly prescribed medications in UK general practice for IBS: mebeverine (anti-spasmodic) and ispaghula husk (bulking-agent) and of the patient CBT based self-management website.
Primary investigators
- Gary Wills
- Dr Hazel Everitt (Clinical Lecturer in General Practice)
- Prof Rona Moss-Morris (Professor of Health Psychology)
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2009-2009
- Theme:
- Virtual Communities and Social Systems
- Funding:
- National Institute for Health Research
Aims This programme will address the public health need a) to provide evidence for more rationally targeting antibiotics to those most likely to benefit and b) to develop better antibiotic and non-antibiotic strategies. Aims This programme will address the public health need a) to provide evidence for more rationally targeting antibiotics to those most likely to benefit and b) to develop better antibiotic and non-antibiotic strategies. Acute infections are the commonest conditions managed in primary care, and most people still receive an antibiotic despite limited evidence for their effectiveness. The overuse of antibiotics creates a major threat to the public health - antibiotic resistance. To move patient care forward we need to a) understand which patients are likely to suffer adversely when antibiotics are not given b) assess the impact of infections and their treatment on quality of life c) assess the effectiveness of alternative antibiotic prescribing strategies and non antibiotic approaches, and d) develop easily accessible information for patients. ECS Research plans: 5) Trial of tailored self management website. We will develop and then perform a moderate sized trial of a robust, theoretically based, interactive and tailored website to alter antibiotic expectations and use. We will develop a website and perform a trial among a minimum of 2000 patients. (A definitive trial will require several thousand patients). A website has the potential for results to be available rapidly nationally and currently 60% of families have access rising by 5% each year.
Primary investigators
- Gary Wills
- Prof Paul Little (Professor of Primary Care Research)
- Prof Lucy Yardley (Professor of Health Psychology)
Associated research groups
- Learning Societies Lab
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2009-2014
- Theme:
- Grid and Distributed Computing
- Funding:
- EPSRC
The myGrid Consortium is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, internationally leading research group focusing on the challenges of e Science-the use of computational resources that allows scientists around the world to collaborate to produce and analyse the vast amounts of complex data in disciplines as diverse as biology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, music and social science. This platform grant enables the consortium to sustain an internationally leading team of researchers working on the foundations of e-Science.
The consortium delivers e-Laboratory environments in which scientists perform virtual or in silico experiments. The consortium's flagship tools include Taverna, myExperiment and Utopia. Taverna is used to develop the scientific workflows that scientists use to gather and analyse data - these represent the experiments on, for example, the genes and proteins involved in diseases. The myExperiment Virtual Research Environment is social web site software for the social curation and sharing of scientific research objects, including workflows and in silico experiments. UTOPIA is a suite of scientific visualisation and analysis tools that brings together disparate data sources in an easy to use unified interface. Together these enable scientific investigations to be undertaken in a way that enables the scientist to concentrate on the science, a feat that requires basic research in computer science.
These E-Science tools are world leaders with 1000, 900 and 2000 users respectively - Taverna is used in some 350 organisations. Producing these tools necessitates foundational e-Science research in four main areas: the management of the knowledge in such environments; the production and management of the metadata, or descriptions, of the experiments and experimental holdings; the design, use and reuse of in silico experiments; and the exploitation of social networks to enhance e-Science. Explicitly engaging with users supports adoption, and it drives challenging, user-relevant research and development based on observed experience and real need.
The platform grant enables the consortium to retain key staff that help sustain this world leading effort in e-Science and Open Science - they are experts in scientific workflow management, semantic technologies, intelligent middleware and social computing. Crucially it also supports our participation on the international stage, and it allows pump-priming novel and innovative research projects that are the hallmark of the consortium.
Primary investigators
- Carole Goble
- David De Roure
Secondary investigator
- Professor JG Frey
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2008-2011
- Themes:
- Multimedia, Web Science
- Funding:
- Provincia Autonoma di Trento (The Autonomous Province of Trento) (Bando grandi progetti 2006)
The aim of LiveMemories is to scale up content extraction techniques towards very large scale extraction from multimedia sources, setting the scene for a Content Management Platform for Trentino; using this information to support new ways of linking, summarizing and classifying data in a new generation of digital memories which are `aliveââ¬â¢ and user-centered; and to turn the creation of such memories into a communal web activity. Achieving these objectives will make Trento a key player in the new Web Science Initiative, digital memories, and Web 2.0, thanks also to the involvement of Southampton. But LiveMemories is also intended to have a social and cultural impact besides the scientific one: through the collection, analysis and preservation of digital memories of Trentino; by facilitating and encouraging the preservation of such community memories; and the fostering of new forms of community, and enrichment of our cultural and social heritage.
In the digital age, our records of past and present are growing at an unprecedented pace. Huge efforts are under way in order to digitize data now on analogical support; at the same time, low-cost devices to create records in the form of e.g. images, videos, and text are now widespread, such as digital cameras or mobile phones.
This wealth of data, when combined with new technologies for sharing data through platforms such as Flickr, Facebook, or the blogs, open up completely new, huge opportunities of access to memory and of communal participation to its experience.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
- dpd
- Jonathon Stephen Hare
- ads04r
- kmo
- Heather Packer
Partners
- University of Trento
- Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2009-2012
- Themes:
- Multimedia, Knowledge Technologies
- Funding:
- EU (ICT-FP7-231126)
Knowledge and its articulations are strongly influenced by diversity in, e.g., cultural backgrounds, schools of thought, geographical contexts. Judgements, assessments and opinions, which play a crucial role in many areas of democratic societies, including politics and economics, reflect this diversity in perspective and goals. For the information on the Web (including, e.g., news and blogs) diversity - implied by the ever increasing multitude of information providers - is the reason for diverging viewpoints and conflicts. Time and evolution add a further dimension making diversity an intrinsic and unavoidable property of knowledge.
The vision inspiring LivingKnowledge is to consider diversity an asset and to make it traceable, understandable and exploitable, with the goal to improve navigation and search in very large multimodal datasets (e.g., the Web itself). LivingKnowledge will study the effect of diversity and time on opinions and bias, a topic with high potential for social and economic exploitation. We envisage a future where search and navigation tools (e.g., search engines) will automatically classify and organize opinions and bias (about, e.g., global warming or the Olympic games in China) and, therefore, will produce more insightful, better organized, easier-to-understand output.
LivingKnowledge employs interdisciplinary competences from, e.g., philosophy of science, cognitive science, library science and semiotics. The proposed solution is based on the foundational notions of context and its ability to localize meaning, and the notion of facet, as from library science, and its ability to organize knowledge as a set of interoperable components (i.e., facets). The project will construct a very large testbed, integrating many years of Web history and value-added knowledge, state-of-the-art search technology and the results of the project. The testbed will be made available for experimentation, dissemination, and exploitation.
The overall goal of the LivingKnowledge project is to bring a new quality into search and knowledge management technology, which makes search results more concise, complete and contextualised. On a provisional basis, we take as referring to the process of compacting knowledge into digestible elements, completeness as meaning the provision of comprehensive knowledge that reflects the inherent diversity of the data, and contextualisation as indicating everything that allows us to understand and interpret this diversity.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
- dpd
- Jonathon Stephen Hare
- ads04r
- kmo
- Heather Packer
Partners
- University of Trento
- Barcelona Media - Yahoo! Research
- Institute for Social Research and Analysis
- National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications
- European Archive Foundation
- University of Pavia
- Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute
- Leibniz Universität Hannover
- Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2005-2009
- Theme:
- Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-chip
The ability to transport species and handling fluids in microchannels with ease and precision is central concept to the μTAS devices. Much attention has been focused on micropump research, not only for their use in μTAS systems, but also for a large variety of applications such as: aerospace and aircraft engineering, medical, pharmaceutical devices, cosmetics, paints and inks, food and beverage, environmental, energy and fuel, electronics smart devices applications, clinical and analytical lab.
Advances in microelectronics fabrication processes have allowed the miniaturization of mechanical pumps, however non-mechanical pumps have several advantages in handling flow rates in the range of nanolitre or picolitre per minute. In biomedical technology, pumps for handling extremely small fluid amounts become more and more important.
Microsystems for biological analysis routinely use solid-state electrokinetic micropumps which play an important role in microfluidic pumping. AC Electrokinetic micropumps in particular AC electroosmosis pump can be used to pump fluids using planar electrodes which induce electrical forces on the fluid. However, planar electrodes do not provide sufficient back pressure which limits the pumping capability of the micropump.
In this project a new design for the AC electroosmotic is introduced. The new AC electroosmotic desig presents the transition from planar microelectrode arrays to planar with High Aspect Ratio (HAR) pillars in order to increase the conductive surface area for the microchannel. The physical mechanism of AC electrosmosis is the motion of induced Electrical Double Layers on microelectrodes driven into motion by the electric field generated by the electrodes. Since AC-electrosmosis is a surface driven effect, increasing the surface area increases the power coupled into the fluid movement. By taking the channel volume and filling it with conductive pillars, the surface area therefore increases, but the volume remains the same, increasing the drive per unit volume. This will have the effect of increasing the pressure generated by the pump. One possible side effect is that the internal resistance of the pump will rise, reducing the maximum flow rate. However, it is expected that the increase in driving surface area will offset this to a degree.
To explore and realize the proposed pumping principle we benifited from available expertise of Professor Mark. J. Madou who specialises in Bio-MEMS field and microfabrication techniques. Prof. Madou and his team at UC Irvine have been able to construct HAR pillars made out of pyrolyzed SU-8 (conductive polymer). The current planar electrodes are made out of gold and it is desired to make the pillars out of gold as well. However we assume that the pillars made by gold undergo chemical reactions involving dissolution and redeposition. In contrast the pyrolyzed SU-8 pillars will be less conductive than the gold ones but they are perfectly polarisable, which is ideal for AC electroosmosis. was processed.
In this work a novel version of AC-electroosmosis micropump was designed, in a way it incorporates 3D high-aspect-ratio electrodes, the idea behind the implementation of the 3D electrodes is to increase the surface of the electrodes as the AC electroosmosis is a surface driven effect phenomenon. However the fabrication of high-aspect-ratio electrodes is very difficult using standard electroplating techniques. In this work a new technology using Carbon-MEMS technology was adopted. The fabrication process of the new AC-electroosmosis micropump was developed. A good results of the new device has shown a successful functionality and improvement to previous design.
Primary investigators
- har04r
- Nicolas Green
- Hywel Morgan
Secondary investigator
- Prof. Marc Madou
Partner
- University of California Irvine (UCI)
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre
- Date:
- 2008-2012
- Themes:
- Formal Methods, Systems Engineering
- Funding:
- EU
The overall aim of the EC Information and Communication Technologies FP7 DEPLOY Project is to make major advances in engineering methods for dependable systems through the deployment of formal engineering methods. Formal engineering methods enable greater mastery of complexity than found in traditional software engineering processes. It is the central role played by mechanically-analysed formal models throughout the system development flow that enables mastery of complexity.
As well as leading to big improvements in system dependability, greater mastery of complexity also leads to greater productivity by reducing the expensive test-debug-rework cycle and by facilitating increased reuse of software.
The work of the project is being driven by the tasks of achieving and evaluating industrial take-up, initially by DEPLOY's industrial partners, of DEPLOY's methods and tools, together with the necessary further research on methods and tools.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- mrp
- Colin Snook
Associated research group
- Dependable Systems & Software Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-2008
- Theme:
- Agent Based Computing
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2006-
- Theme:
- Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks
To develop a narrow-band RF-based Time-of-Flight (TOF) locationing system with sub-meter positioning resolution which can be used to location nodes within wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This will enable accurate locationing without the requirement of wired infrastructure and synchronisation between devices. Further development will involve the adaption of these techniques to relative locationing algorithms.
Primary investigator
- bt05r
Secondary investigators
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering