AN ESSENTIAL UNTAPPED WATER SUPPLYThe overall project proposal is to produce a demonstration and commercial trials prototype of a residential and commercial premises atmospheric water extracting device that turns the ambient humidity that is prevalent in the air that we breath into water. Particularly for drought or arid conditions and focussed for use at the point of need. This invention creates a much needed water supply from a source that wasn't obvious before. We need specialist engineering support to answer the challenges of matching air flow, humidity and power requirements for the amount of water produced.

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), otherwise known as prion diseases, are fatal degenerative brain diseases involving conversion from the normal alpha helical PrP protein to the beta-pleated sheet PrPsc isoform. Current epidemiological and research evidence suggests that the risk of PrPsc transmission from TSE patients to other humans may be very low; nevertheless, TSE agents constitute a serious bio-medical hazard and the current concern of blood borne infection is increasing the perceived risk. A proven route of infection involves contaminated surgical instruments, particularly those in contact with neural tissues. As such, prions are a significant concern to the life sciences, veterinary and medical professions, and there is an urgent need for safely removing and deactivating them on a range of surfaces. Although government agencies, WHO and other institutions have distributed some guidance for safe working and prevention of infection, these guidelines are not compulsory and are not harmonised globally. In the UK, guidelines recommending relatively strict standards for decontamination of medical instruments have been proposed by the ACDP, SEAC and Department of Health. Resistance of PrPsc to sterilisation cleaning has raised concerns about decontaminating surgical instruments such as endoscopes that usually involves a preliminary treatment, rinsing, actual disinfection, final rinsing and storage. PrPsc destruction requires prolonged autoclaving, which is only possible at the present time with the most recent rigid endoscopes. Indeed, there are general concerns about the efficacy of autoclaving, chemical disinfectants and the temperatures and contact times required. Many decontamination studies carried out thus far have involved solutions or suspensions of PrPsc agent and may not reflect the behaviour of surface-bound infectivity. In one notable study, Zobeley et al. used Scrapie mouse brain homogenate bound to stainless steel to show that PrPsc was not removed after repeated washing with phosphate buffered saline; moreover, there was a 30-fold reduction in prion after treating with 10% formaldehyde solution for one hour. The prion contaminated steel still caused infection when introduced into normal mouse brain. The majority of labs rely on detection of PrPsc on surfaces by swabbing the surface or immersion of small areas in detergent before quantification using Proteinase K pre-treatment (to eliminate PrP) and Western blots. This approach is relatively insensitive and may underestimate the amount of prion present if the antibody-binding epitopes have been modified by the decontamination or preparation procedures used. However, Prof Keevil's group at Southampton have developed a patented procedure for the rapid, sensitive detection of general contamination of medical instruments and specific PrPsc attachment, in situ, before and after cleaning. Their epifluorescence microscopy approach, coupled with episcopic differential interference contrast microscopy to visualise highly curved or serrated surfaces, permits detection of sub-micron, sub-picogram amounts of amyloid plaque on surfaces. Studies using ME7 infected mice show that some detergent or enzyme solutions can give good but not complete removal of brain material containing PrPsc dried on stainless steel. The biochemical methods developed at STERIS, Southampton and CEA Saclay, France have identified interesting chemical solutions to prion decontamination. Currently this research uses a modification of the stainless steel microwire inoculation into mouse brain technique to demonstrate infectivity. It is proposed to complement the work on prion visualization and decontamination by investigating the use of neuroblastoma and stem cell models at Southampton to rapidly assess the infectivity of contaminated steel surfaces following decontamination procedures. The student will be seconded to CEA Saclay to compare cell culture with the live model assay

A fundamental problem in the way business process modelling (BPM) is carried out today is the lack of explicit and systematic reuse of previously developed models. Although all business processes possess unique characteristics, they also do share many common properties making it possible to classify business processes into generally recognised patterns of organisational behaviour. Patterns, or general solutions to recurring problems, have become a widely accepted architectural technique in software engineering, however their use in business process modelling is quite limited. Given the documented benefits that patterns have produced in software engineering (for example, increased productivity and acceleration of the learning curve), it can be assumed that their adoption in BPM could yield similar advantages. However, the systematic adoption of patterns in BPM cannot be a simple transposition of the experience acquired by the design patterns community in software engineering. This is due to some essential differences between business modelling and software design. While the latter involves the representation of an engineered artefact (i.e., software), the former concerns the representation of behaviour of a real world system (i.e., the business organisation) that grows in an emergent manner. Therefore, while software design patterns are normally based on engineering experience, the discovery of generalised business behaviour should be preferably conducted in a more empirical manner via the analysis of organisational process data in all its forms. Empiricism is currently not the basis for the discovery of patterns for BPM and no systematic methodology for collecting and analysing process models of business organisations currently exists. This project aims at developing such a methodology. Moreover, given the real world nature of organisations, ontology is adopted as the principal driver of the methodology so as to interpret business process data, discover recurrent behaviour and model the generalised patterns found. This project is called Empirical Modelling of Business Process Patterns with Ontologies (EMBO). The assumption underpinning the project is that business organisations will be capable of more flexibly adapting themselves to changing operational practices thanks to the generalised nature and semantic expressiveness of ontology-based business process patterns.

The project “STEMitUP (Instilling interest for STEM entrepreneurship to young people across Europe) was designed to stimulate entrepreneurship and encourage STEM uptake by making STEM-related courses fun and interesting for students aged 4-15. It was also designed to plant “seeds of interest” that could grow into rewarding STEM entrepreneurship careers. Adding an entrepreneurial layer to STEM education helps young people to apply scientific and mathematical to solve real-world problems, to think creatively and to benefit their communities. STEMitUP developed a range of gender-sensitive activities to promote scientific and entrepreneurial thinking, which are now available for download on the project website:https://www.stemitup.euThe project achieved this through its fusion of STEM, Entrepreneurship and gender-sensitive Education, and the development of a state-of-the-art professional development training programme, targeting pre-service and in-service teachers. It implemented the innovative activities of STEMitUP at European level through cooperation between universities, science museums, NGOs, SMEs and their European networks.The project has also produced state-of-the-art reports on STEM entrepreneurship, which is a neglected, trans-disciplinary area in European education. These are also available from the website.All the objectives of the project were achieved, as follows:1)STEMitUP improved teacher training in the area of STEM entrepreneurship by providing materials and workshops.
2)STEMitUP developed students’ skills related to STEM entrepreneurship subjects, through workshops and a science fair.
3)STEMitUP promoted the increased participation of girls and other groups of learners at special risk of exclusion from scientific and entrepreneurial studies and careers, by adopting an inclusive STEM entrepreneurship education model.
4)STEMitUP encouraged sharing of experiences from all partners across Europe to identify best practices for the incorporation of ideas related to science, technology and entrepreneurship in STEM classrooms and in teacher education;
5)STEMitUP fostered a mutually beneficial relationship between research communities in STEM entrepreneurship subjects, teacher networks and local education systems for the on-going advancement of the disciplines;6)STEMitUP facilitated the widespread dissemination and sustainability of resources and innovative pedagogical approaches to the wider EU community and internationally, through its website https://www.stemitup.eu,The main activities of the project included:1)
Mapping of best practices at national, European and international level;
2)Development of STEMitUP activities for teachers and students;
3)Development of pedagogical material related to STEMitUP activities;
4)Definition of a methodological framework for “fun” as a founding element of work;
5)Organisation of training events for teachers to create the conditions for the implementation of STEMitUP activities; 6)Organisation of multiplier events to widely disseminate project activities;. Report FormThe potential impact of STEMitUP will depend on long-term trends in entrepreneurship education in general, and the interaction between entrepreneurship and other trends in STEM education, such as inquiry-based learning. We identified some of these trends in two of the main documents resulting from the project: IO1, the national state of the art report and IO2, the consolidated report on STEM entrepreneurship in Europe.In order to provide robust evidence of impact, the project would, however, need to collect data for a considerable length of time after the end of its official funding period, which is not possible under the current arrangements.Areas where the project has achieved potential impact included:
•Increased motivation for students towards STEM-related and entrepreneurship subjects;
•Increased awareness by students of the relevance and functionality of STEM entrepreneurship, leading to a probable increase in the number of students taking up academic studies and careers related to STEM disciplines.•Improved problem-solving and critical thinking skills, reasoning, and literacy, both to facilitate science education and to increase the scientific literacy of citizens;
•Greater implementation of inquiry-based teaching methods and related interdisciplinary approaches by teachers;
•Engagement of students in STEM entrepreneurship from an early age;
•Increased interest of parents and the general public in science and technology •Increased number of women in STEM-related studies;•
Enhanced STEM entrepreneurship levels, leading, in the long term to reduced youth unemployment, while boosting job creation and growth;
•Increased number of STEM startups due to improved innovation capacity.