Biomechanics of soft biological tissues and organs, mechanobiology, homeostasis and modelling.

The human body consists of many different soft biological tissues that exhibit diverse microstructures and functions and experience diverse loading conditions. Yet, under many conditions, the mechanical behaviour of these tissues can be described well with similar nonlinearly elastic or inelastic constitutive relations, both in health and some diseases. Such constitutive relations are essential for performing nonlinear stress analyses, which in turn are critical for understanding physiology, pathophysiology and even clinical interventions, including surgery.

Genomic Insights Into Red Squirrels in Scotland Reveal Loss of Heterozygosity Associated With Extreme Founder Effects.

Remnant populations of endangered species often have complex demographic histories associated with human impact. This can present challenges for conservation as populations modified by human activity may require bespoke management. The Eurasian red squirrel, (L.

A Reference Tissue Implementation of Simultaneous Multifactor Bayesian Analysis (SiMBA) of PET Time Activity Curve Data.

PET analysis is conventionally performed as a two-stage process of quantification followed by analysis. We recently introduced SiMBA (Simultaneous Multifactor Bayesian Analysis), a hierarchical model that performs quantification and analysis for all brain regions of all individuals at once, and in so doing improves both the accuracy of parameter estimation as well as inferential efficiency. However until now, SiMBA has only been implemented for the two-tissue compartment model.

Development of a qPCR assay for the quantification of canine autosomal DNA recovered from livestock attacks.

The absence of a standardised method to quantify canine DNA recovered from livestock attacks leaves forensic providers without an important quality control step to help support their decision making. Typically used to normalise the amount of DNA for STR amplification, modern forensic DNA quantification approaches use qPCR of target genes and can also include an Internal Positive Controls (IPC) to determine the presence of PCR inhibitors. The co-amplification of livestock DNA alongside canine DNA has meant that previously developed qPCR methods are not suitable for use so a standardised approach is needed.