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Local authorities, the UK government and the European Commission have benefitted from the widespread application of new molecular methodologies, developed in 2005 and applied by the University of Reading's Vertebrate Pests Unit (VPU) to identify and quantify anticoagulant rodenticide resistance in rodent populations. Rodents are a major global pest that consumes our food, causes contamination with urine and faeces, damages structures through gnawing, transmits diseases, and impacts on species of conservation concern. Due to historical success and recent regulatory restrictions, anticoagulant rodenticides are the most common control method for these pests. However, physiological resistance to anticoagulants is now widespread and the VPU has been involved in mapping this resistance and identifying the genetic basis for the resistance. Their research has led to new methodologies to identify anticoagulant resistance that have been adopted by the global plant science industry and to new guidance in treating resistant populations that has been adopted by the European biocides industry.
This case study describes the development, application and commercialisation of an open source tool, BSMBench that enables supercomputer vendors and computing centres to benchmark their system's performance. It comprehensively informs the design and testing of new computing architectures well beyond other benchmarking tools on the market, such as Linpack.
The significance of our code is that, unlike other benchmarking tools, it interpolates from a communication- to a computation-dominated regime simply by varying the (physics) parameters in the code, thus providing a perfect benchmark suite to test the response of modern multi-CPU systems along this axis. The impact of this work has great reach: a start-up company, BSMbench Ltd, has been founded to develop and commercialise the software; adopters have included IBM - one of the giants of the supercomputer world (where it uncovered errors in their compilers); it has been deployed by Fujitsu to validate its systems, by HPC Wales, a multi-site, commercially focussed national computer centre and by Transtec, an HPC company employing over 150 staff; and tutorial articles about BSMBench have appeared in magazines such as Linux Format.
This software tool spawned from our research into "Beyond the Standard Model" (BSM) physics which aims to understand the Higgs mechanism in particle physics at a fundamental level. This involved simulating quantum field theories using bespoke code on some of the fastest supercomputers on the planet.
Research at Lancaster led to a novel approach to detect the source of cases of campylobacteriosis (a bacterial foodborne disease). The application of this method to data from New Zealand pin- pointed that New-Zealand's high rate of cases was linked to the eating of contaminated poultry. These results were a key part of the evidence used by New Zealand's Food Safety Authority to introduce a new code of practice for the poultry industry. The impact of this code of practice has been a halving of the number of reported cases of campylobacteriosis in New Zealand (from around 16,000 cases in 2006 to less than 7,000 in 2008). With notification rates estimated as 1 in 10, this corresponds to around 90,000 fewer actual cases per year. The saving for the New Zealand economy during the REF census period has been independently estimated as between £100M and £150M.
Research carried out by the Department of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen into the nature and extent of communal division in societies emerging from conflict — particularly in Northern Ireland — has directly benefitted policy makers and community leaders through personal briefings and exposure on influential electronic media. The research findings have also benefitted action groups, peace practitioners, churches and other civil society groups in Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka and elsewhere through workshops and training materials; and they have raised awareness and understanding and stimulated debate through the purposeful use of online media outlets.
Research undertaken at the Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities(CIDD), has significantly impacted upon:
Over a decade's research by Introna and Hayes has investigated the biases inherent in automated systems. As part of this research they showed that the design and use of plagiarism detection systems (PDS), used by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) worldwide, may be unfair due to their embedded values and assumptions. A series of reports, workshops and supporting resources, using these insights, have transformed writing support and teaching practices at no less than 32 HEIs nationally and internationally, affecting lecturers, support staff and student union representatives. As a result, at least 10 HEIs have developed less punitive policy frameworks and taken a more developmental approach, leading to a much fairer treatment of plagiarism cases.
In a series of training studies on children between the ages of 5 and 12 years, a research team at the Department of Psychology successfully demonstrated that substantial improvements in roadside decision-making and behaviour can be achieved in children as young as 5 years. Based on their findings, the team developed and evaluated a training intervention (Kerbcraft) aimed at improving children's pedestrian skills through practical roadside activities which was formally adopted by the UK government. Since 2008, the majority of 5-7 year old children in the UK have received formal pedestrian skills training using Kerbcraft either in its full or adapted form. Kerbcraft now plays a key role in the UK Government's road safety strategy and has been cited as an example of best practice by the World Health Organisation and safety agencies across Europe, the US, Australia and in developing countries such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
Founded in York in 1996, the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) has transformed how archaeological research is communicated in the UK, and impacted digital archiving throughout the world. Without the ADS, much of the fragile digital data (often the primary record of sites now destroyed) would have been lost. Instead, they are freely available to all. This impact extends across national heritage agencies, local government, commercial archaeology, and the public. Our resources are widely used with over two million page requests per month; almost half from beyond the HE sector. A recent study has concluded that the ADS is worth £5m per annum to the UK economy (Beagrie & Houghton 2013). The ADS has helped shape the digital preservation policy of English Heritage and informed practice in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany.
This case study describes the creation and use of advanced simulation technology by international mining corporations to optimise high value metal recovery. The technology involved the development of advanced novel computational methods and software tools to model industrial scale heap leach processes for large scale industrial application at major mining operations. This focus on the development of optimised operational strategies has produced considerable economic benefits measured in the $multi-millions to industrial sponsors, including $58 million dollars in additional revenue for one multi-national corporation over one year following the adoption of engineered heaps based upon the advanced simulation tools from Swansea.
Edinburgh Designs Ltd., (EDL) was spun-out to exploit ERPE research from the original Wave Power Group. With six staff and an annual turnover approaching £2M EDL has supplied the equipment and control systems for wave tanks in 19 countries including the world's largest computer-controlled wave test facility, the US Navy Manoeuvring and Station Keeping Tank. They are currently completing the world's first circular tank, combining waves with currents in any relative direction, which is operated by the 6 person company, "FloWave" EDL, still run by the founding staff, it is the world-leading supplier of wave-making technology for scientific and recreational facilities.