Suchergebnisse

This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 838009 (TSFP) and No 812872 (TADFlife). D.S. acknowledges support from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, the National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX201700164), the Jiangsu Planned Projects for Postdoctoral Research Funds (2018K011A). E.Z.-C. is a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research fellow (SRF∖R1∖201089). The St Andrews team would also like to thank the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2016047) and EPSRC (EP/P010482/1) for financial support. This work was also supported by Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) – multiannual agreement with UC3M ("Excelencia para el Profesorado Universitario" – EPUC3M14) – Fifth regional research plan 2016-2020 and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICINN) through project RTI2018-101020-B-100. X.Z. would like to thank the support from the National Key Research & Development Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFA0714601, 2020YFA0714604), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52130304, 51821002), Suzhou Key Laboratory of Functional Nano & Soft Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology, the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), the 111 Project, Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices. ; The potential of dendrimers exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) as emitters in solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) has to date not yet been realized. This in part is due to a poor understanding of the structure–property relationship in dendrimers where reports of detailed photophysical characterization and mechanism studies are lacking. In this report, using absorption and solvatochromic photoluminescence studies in solution, the origin and character of the lowest excited electronic ...

Invasive meningococcal disease causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide, with serogroup B being one of the predominant serogroups in Australia for many years. The South Australian (SA) State Government recently funded the introduction of a 4CMenB vaccination program for infants, children and adolescents. In addition to protecting against invasive meningococcal disease, emerging evidence suggests the 4CMenB vaccine may also be effective against gonorrhoea due to genetic similarities between Neisseria meningitidis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The proposed project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the SA 4CMenB vaccination program against invasive meningococcal disease and gonorrhoea through a combination of observational studies using routine surveillance and research data. The main methodological approaches involve an interrupted time series regression model, screening, and case-control analyses with different sets of controls to estimate vaccine impact and effectiveness. These analyses are designed to minimize potential biases inherent in all observational studies and to provide critical data on the effectiveness of the 4CMenB vaccine against two diseases of major global public health concern.

INTRODUCTION: Invasive meningococcal disease is uncommon but associated with a high-case fatality rate. Carriage prevalence of the causative bacteria, Neisseria meningitidis, is high in adolescents. A large (n=34 500) cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) to assess the impact of a meningococcal B (MenB) vaccine on meningococcal carriage was implemented in the state of South Australia (SA) for year 10, 11 and 12 senior school students in 2017–2018. This study will assess the impact of MenB vaccine (4CMenB) on carriage prevalence in school leavers in SA, 1 and 2 years after implementation of the cluster RCT in adolescents. Measuring the impact of population programmes on carriage can assist in informing future meningococcal immunisation programmes such as targeted age groups and use of catch-up campaigns. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This repeat cross-sectional study will assess carriage prevalence in 2018 and 2019. All school leavers who attended year 12 in any school in SA in 2018 or 2019 will be invited to participate in this study. An oropharyngeal swab will be taken from each participating student and a risk factor questionnaire completed by the student following informed consent. Students will attend clinics at SA universities, technical colleges, and metropolitan, rural and remote government council clinics. Confirmed vaccination history will allow a comparison in carriage prevalence between vaccinated and unvaccinated school leavers. A sample size of 4096 students per year will provide 80% power to detect a 20% difference in carriage prevalence of disease-causing meningococci (defined as genogroup A, B, C, W, X or Y) between years. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study was approved by the Women's and Children's Health Network Human Research Ethics Committee. Results will be published in international peer review journals and presented at national and international conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT03419533; Pre-results

Introduction Invasive meningococcal disease is uncommon but associated with a high-case fatality rate. Carriage prevalence of the causative bacteria, Neisseria meningitidis, is high in adolescents. A large (n=34 500) cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) to assess the impact of a meningococcal B (MenB) vaccine on meningococcal carriage was implemented in the state of South Australia (SA) for year 10, 11 and 12 senior school students in 2017-2018. This study will assess the impact of MenB vaccine (4CMenB) on carriage prevalence in school leavers in SA, 1 and 2 years after implementation of the cluster RCT in adolescents. Measuring the impact of population programmes on carriage can assist in informing future meningococcal immunisation programmes such as targeted age groups and use of catch-up campaigns. Methods and analysis This repeat cross-sectional study will assess carriage prevalence in 2018 and 2019. All school leavers who attended year 12 in any school in SA in 2018 or 2019 will be invited to participate in this study. An oropharyngeal swab will be taken from each participating student and a risk factor questionnaire completed by the student following informed consent. Students will attend clinics at SA universities, technical colleges, and metropolitan, rural and remote government council clinics. Confirmed vaccination history will allow a comparison in carriage prevalence between vaccinated and unvaccinated school leavers. A sample size of 4096 students per year will provide 80% power to detect a 20% difference in carriage prevalence of disease-causing meningococci (defined as genogroup A, B, C, W, X or Y) between years. Ethics and dissemination The study was approved by the Women's and Children's Health Network Human Research Ethics Committee. Results will be published in international peer review journals and presented at national and international conferences. Trial registration number NCT03419533; Pre-results.

Increasing the accuracy of crop productivity estimates is a key element in planning adaptation strategies to ensure global food security under climate change. Process-based crop models are effective means to project climate impact on crop yield, but have large uncertainty in yield simulations. Here, we show that variations in the mathematical functions currently used to simulate temperature responses of physiological processes in 29 wheat models account for >50% of uncertainty in simulated grain yields for mean growing season temperatures from 14 °C to 33 °C. We derived a set of new temperature response functions that when substituted in four wheat models reduced the error in grain yield simulations across seven global sites with different temperature regimes by 19% to 50% (42% average). We anticipate the improved temperature responses to be a key step to improve modelling of crops under rising temperature and climate change, leading to higher skill of crop yield projections. Process-based modelling of crop growth is an effective way of representing how crop genotype, environment and management interactions affect crop production to aid tactical and strategic decision making1. Process-based crop models are increasingly used to project the impact of climate change on crop yield2. However, current models produce different results, creating large uncertainty in crop yield simulations3. A model inter-comparison study within the Agricultural Model Inter-comparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP)4 of 29 widely used wheat models against field experimental data revealed that there is more uncertainty in simulating grain yields from the different models than from 16 different climate change scenarios3. The greatest uncertainty was in modelling crop responses to temperature3,5. Similar results were found with rice and maize crops6,7. Such uncertainty should be reduced before informing decision making in agriculture and government policy. Here, we show contrasting differences in temperature response functions of key physiological processes adopted in the 29 crop models. We reveal opportunities for improving simulation of temperature response in crop models to reduce the uncertainty in yield simulations. We aim to reassess the scientific assumptions underlying model algorithms and parameterization describing temperature-sensitive physiological processes, using wheat, one of the most important staple crops globally, as an example. We hypothesized that: (1) the difference among models in assumed temperature responses is the largest source of the uncertainty in simulated yields; and (2) the uncertainty in the multi-model ensemble results can be reduced by improving the science for modelling temperature response of physiological processes. Temperature affects crop performance primarily through its impact on (1) the rate of phenological development from seed germination to crop maturity, including the fulfilment of cold requirement (vernalisation); (2) the initiation and expansion of plant organs; (3) photosynthesis and respiration, considered either separately or combined as net biomass growth simulated using radiation use efficiency (RUE)8; and (4) the senescence, sterility or abortion of plant organs. All 29 models simulate these processes, except for sterility and abortion, in response to temperature change. Here, we compare the temperature functions of these four categories of physiological processes built into the 29 wheat models and identify the representative response types. We analyse how different temperature response functions affected simulations of wheat growth compared to observations in a field experiment8,9,10, in which well-fertilized and irrigated wheat grew under contrasting sowing dates and temperature environments (Hot Serial Cereal (HSC) experiment). We further evaluate the impact of the different response types by implementing them in two models (APSIM and SiriusQuality) and analysing their results against the HSC data and an additional global dataset from the International Heat Stress Genotpye Experiment (IHSGE)8 carried out by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). More importantly, we derive, based on newest knowledge and data, a set of new temperature response functions for the key physiological processes of wheat and demonstrate that when substituted in four wheat models the new functions reduced the error in grain yield simulations across seven global sites with different temperature regimes covered by the IHSGE data.