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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.
The performance of absolute distance measuring systems has been improved in terms of accuracy, traceability, reliability and cost through the introduction of new methodology arising from research at the University of Oxford. This has brought commercial benefit to a German company making measurement systems, through the creation of a new product line. New capabilities for measurement have been delivered to a first customer in Germany. The research has also resulted in the establishment of new activity at the National Physical Laboratory, and influenced UK and European technology roadmaps for future manufacturing.
Dr Alexandros Paraskevas has demonstrated the benefits of implementing academic research and `scientific rigour' into global business practices. His conceptual approach to risk and crisis management has become highly acclaimed within the hospitality industry and has strengthened practices in a turbulent business environment. His research pioneered an effective partnership between the Oxford School of Hospitality Management and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), resulting in the Group developing new risk management practices, enhancing its effectiveness in managing risks, saving costs and gaining worldwide recognition as industry leader in the field. These practices are continuously shared with the broader H&T industry through appropriate fora and dissemination platforms.
The Beazley Archive Online Database enables large and diverse audiences to access and understand ancient art through Oxford research. It allows users around the world to ask and answer their own research questions and to learn about ancient imagery. It is principally dedicated to the study of ancient Athenian figure-decorated pottery and ancient/neo-classical engraved gems. It makes available hundreds of thousands of pictures and information-fields which can be browsed and searched in a variety of ways, according to the level and requirements of the user. The Database is the foremost academic tool for the study of ancient Greek pottery, but its demonstrable impact extends far beyond academia, to an international audience of students, educators, museums, businesses, and private researchers.
OxCal is the most popular software package world-wide for calibrating and analysing dates within the carbon dating process, enabling the accurate dating of objects from the past. The brainchild of Prof. Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), OxCal is based on chronologies refined by the use of Bayesian statistical methods, and provides users with access to high-quality calibration of chronological data, now the basis for global chronologies. It is available online and free to download, and has played a highly significant role in establishing the ORAU as one of the pre-eminent international radiocarbon dating facilities. Funded by the NERC, and used widely within professional archaeology as well as other disciplines, OxCal has also played a key role in research projects (within Oxford and beyond) brought to the attention of the general public by the media.
Research in Multi-spectral Imaging (MSI) of manuscripts by researchers in the University of Oxford's Faculty of Classics has led to advances in imaging technology. A series of initiatives by Dr Dirk Obbink that captured images through MSI technology have led to the decipherment of new texts that have made a substantial mark in the public sector. Equity spinout of this technology has resulted in the entry in the market of the first portable multispectral scanning unit in flat-bed desktop format. The scanner, which uses innovative patented LED technology at different levels of the light spectrum, was developed under funding from ISIS, Oxford University's technology transfer division.
Karl Gerth's work on the role of Chinese consumers in the global economy, and on ways in which Chinese consumerism may create more environmental and policy problems than it solves, has had a significant influence on business leaders seeking to position themselves in the Chinese market, as well as on public discourse around the `rise of China'. Gerth has extended the range and quality of the evidence on the interconnected and wide-ranging ramifications of the shift within China toward a market economy over the past thirty years, and has improved understanding of this phenomenon in ways which have enabled British business to compete more effectively in China.
The largest investment banks in London each have thousands of servers largely devoted to Monte Carlo simulations, and to quantify their risks and satisfy regulatory demands they need to be able to calculate huge numbers of sensitivities (defined below) known collectively as "Greeks". An adjoint technique developed by Professor Mike Giles in 2006 greatly reduced the computational complexity of these calculations. The technique is used extensively by Credit Suisse and other major banks, reducing their computing costs and energy consumption. It has also led to the Numerical Algorithms Group developing new software to support the banks in exploiting this new adjoint approach to computing sensitivities.
The University of Southampton's distinguished body of work on the design of technology for gamma-ray detection and imaging has informed new counter-terrorism practices. Technological advances arising from the research have been crucial to delivering significant benefits in the fields of homeland security and nuclear safety — the latter particularly in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. A spin-out company, Symetrica, currently employs 26 people in the UK and the USA, has a forecast turnover of more than £10 million for 2013-14 and has been recognised as an example of best practice. It is a technological leader in the field of radioactive isotope identification.
Ultra-precise Bragg grating writing-technology, invented in the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), has led to impacts in the areas of security, safety, detection of bio-hazards and the underpinning laser technology currently being pursued for clean energy generation for future energy security. This case study highlights two aspects of the technology namely: planar-based for optical microchip sensors in areas such as portable detection of biohazards, which has resulted in the spin-out Stratophase, and fibre-based, inside the US National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest laser system, based in California, built for fusion-energy research, which has ORC fabricated fibre Bragg gratings within its laser amplifier chains. These ultra-high precision laser-written engineered gratings have enabled important advances in biosecurity, management of environmental hazards and clean energy research.