Publications by authors named "J S Beech"

Background: Although increasing numbers of appointments are being provided, public satisfaction with access to UK general practice is declining. Previous attempts to improve access have not been systematically collated.

Aim: We aimed to identify interventions to improve access to general practice in the UK, to organise these interventions into thematic categories, and to identify which aspects of access are targeted.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The biotechnological potential of Rieske Oxygenases (ROs) and their cognate reductases remains unmet, in part because these systems can be functionally short-lived. Here, we describe a set of experiments aimed at identifying both the functional and structural stability limitations of ROs, using terephthalate (TPA) dioxygenase (from Comamonas strain E6) as a model system. Successful expression and purification of a cofactor-complete, histidine-tagged TPA dioxygenase and reductase protein system requires induction with the Escherichia coli host at stationary phase as well as a chaperone inducing cold-shock and supplementation with additional iron, sulfur, and flavin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Dominant conceptualisations of access to health care are limited, framed in terms of speed and supply. The Candidacy Framework offers a more comprehensive approach, identifying diverse influences on how access is accomplished.

Aim: To characterise how the Candidacy Framework can explain access to general practice - an increasingly fraught area of public debate and policy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rieske oxygenases (ROs) are a diverse metalloenzyme class with growing potential in bioconversion and synthetic applications. We postulated that ROs are nonetheless underutilized because they are unstable. Terephthalate dioxygenase (TPA PDB ID 7Q05) is a structurally characterized heterohexameric αβ RO that, with its cognate reductase (TPA), catalyzes the first intracellular step of bacterial polyethylene terephthalate plastic bioconversion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We introduce the concept photophysical image analysis (PIA) and an associated pipeline for unsupervised probabilistic image thresholding for images recorded by electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD) cameras. We base our approach on a closed-form analytic expression for the characteristic function (Fourier-transform of the probability mass function) for the image counts recorded in an EMCCD camera, which takes into account both stochasticity in the arrival of photons at the imaging camera and subsequent noise induced by the detection system of the camera. The only assumption in our method is that the background photon arrival to the imaging system is described by a stationary Poisson process (we make no assumption about the photon statistics for the signal).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF