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Rechargeable batteries paired with sodium metal anodes are considered to be one of the most promising high-energy and low-cost energy-storage systems. However, the use of highly reactive sodium metal and the formation of sodium dendrites during battery operation have caused safety concerns, especially when highly flammable liquid electrolytes are used. Here we design and develop solvent-free solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) based on a perfluoropolyether-terminated polyethylene oxide (PEO)-based block copolymer for safe and stable all-solid-state sodium metal batteries. Compared with traditional PEO SPEs, our results suggest that block copolymer design allows for the formation of self-assembled nanostructures leading to high storage modulus at elevated temperatures with the PEO domains providing transport channels even at high salt concentration (ethylene oxide/sodium = 8/2). Moreover, it is demonstrated that the incorporation of perfluoropolyether segments enhances the Na

Background Research impact is an emerging measure of research achievement alongside traditional academic outputs such as publications. We present the results of applying the Framework to Assess the Impact from Translational health research (FAIT) to the Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) in Stroke Rehabilitation and Brain Recovery (CRE-Stroke, 2014–2019) and report on the feasibility and lessons from the application of FAIT to a CRE rather than a discrete research project. Methods Data were gathered via online surveys, in-depth interviews, document analysis and review of relevant websites/databases to report on the three major FAIT methods: the modified Payback Framework, an assessment of costs against monetized consequences, and a narrative account of the impact generated from CRE-Stroke activities. FAIT was applied during the last 4 years of CRE-Stroke operation. Results With an economic investment of AU$ 3.9 million over 5 years, CRE-Stroke delivered a return on investment that included AU$ 18.8 million in leveraged grants, fellowships and consultancies. Collectively, CRE-Stroke members produced 354 publications that were accessed 470,000 times and cited over 7220 times. CRE-Stroke supported 26 PhDs, 39 postdocs and seven novice clinician researchers. There were 59 capacity-building events benefiting 744 individuals including policy-makers and consumers. CRE-Stroke created research infrastructure (including a research register of stroke survivors and a brain biobank), and its global leadership produced international consensus recommendations to influence the stroke research landscape worldwide. Members contributed to the Australian Living Stroke Guidelines: four researchers’ outputs were directly referenced. Based only on the consequences that could be monetized, CRE-Stroke returned AU$ 4.82 for every dollar invested in the CRE. Conclusion This case example in the developing field of impact assessment illustrates how researchers can use evidence to demonstrate and report the impact of and returns on research investment. The prospective application of FAIT by a dedicated research impact team demonstrated impact in broad categories of knowledge-gain, capacity-building, new infrastructure, input to policy and economic benefits. The methods can be used by other research teams to provide comprehensive evidence to governments and other research funders about what has been generated from their research investment but requires dedicated resources to complete.

BackgroundFrom 2014 to 2019, the Centre for Research Excellence in Integrated Quality Improvement (CRE-IQI) was evaluated as an innovation platform focusing on continuous quality improvement in Indigenous Australian primary healthcare. Although social network analysis (SNA) is a recognized method for evaluating the functioning, collaboration and effectiveness of innovation platforms, applied research is limited. This study applies SNA to evaluate the CRE-IQI’s functioning as an innovation platform.MethodsTwo surveys (2017, 2019) were conducted using social survey and network methods. Survey items covered respondent characteristics, their perceptions of the CRE-IQI’s performance, and its impact and sociometric relationships. Members’ relationship information was captured for the CRE-IQI at three time points, namely start (retrospectively), midpoint and final year, on three network types (knew, shared information, collaborated). SNA software was used to compute standard network metrics including diameter, density and centrality, and to develop visualizations. Survey and network results were addressed in a workshop held by members to develop improvement strategies.ResultsThe response rate was 80% in 2017 and 65% in 2019 (n = 49 and 47, respectively). Between 2017 and 2019, respondents’ mean ratings of the CRE-IQI’s functioning and achievements in meeting its goals were sustained. They perceived the CRE-IQI as multidisciplinary, having effective management and governance, and incorporating Indigenous research leadership, representation and ways of working. Respondents recognized high levels of trust amongst members, rated “good communication and coordination with participants” highly, and “facilitating collaboration” as the CRE’s most strongly recognized achievement. In collaboration and information-sharing networks, average path length remained low in 2017 and 2019, indicating good small-world network properties for relaying information. On average, respondents shared information and collaborated with more CRE members in 2017 than 2019. However, in both 2017 and 2019 there were new collaborations and information-sharing outside of direct collaborations. CRE-IQI outcomes included: evidence generation; knowledge transfer and skills development in quality improvement; research capacity-building, career development; mentoring; grant support; development of new projects; health service support; and policy impact.ConclusionsThis study shows the utility of network analysis in evaluating the functioning, and collaboration, at the individual, organizational and health system levels, of an innovation platform, and adds to our understanding of factors enabling successful innovation platforms.

Carbon materials such as graphene are of potential use in the development of electronic devices because of properties such as high mechanical strength and electrical and thermal conductivity. However, technical challenges, including difficulties in generating and modulating bandgaps, have limited the application of such materials. Here we show that the bandgaps of bilayers of two-dimensional C3N can be engineered by controlling the stacking order or applying an electric field. AA′ stacked C3N bilayers are found to have a smaller bandgap (0.30 eV) than AB′ stacked bilayers (0.89 eV), and both bandgaps are lower than that of monolayer C3N (1.23 eV). The larger bandgap reduction observed in AA′ stacked bilayers, compared with AB′ stacked bilayers, is attributed to the greater pz-orbital overlap. By applying an electric field of ~1.4 V nm−1, a bandgap modulation of around 0.6 eV can be achieved in the AB′ structure. We also show that the C3N bilayers can offer controllable on/off ratios, high carrier mobilities and photoelectric detection capabilities. The bandgaps of bilayers of two-dimensional C3N can be modulated by controlling the stacking order of the layers or by applying an electric field.

Historic declines in oyster populations have resulted in diminished production of ecosystem services and habitat function in many estuaries. Due to the important role of oysters in ecosystem function, scientists and resource managers have employed oyster reef restoration to mitigate declines, recover essential ecosystem services, and better habitat function. Yet, there are knowledge gaps regarding the impact of restoration efforts on ecologically valuable mid-trophic level organisms inhabiting these systems. To address this knowledge gap, here we quantify macroinvertebrate species abundance, community diversity, and composition on experimental restored oyster reefs before and after restoration, and from live (positive control) and dead (negative control) reefs in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida. Species diversity and composition on restored reefs shifted towards states similar to live (positive control) reefs within 12 months of restoration. Recovery of species abundance occurred within 18 months of restoration. The results presented herein quantify the effect of restoration on resident macroinvertebrates and provide timelines of recovery for each attribute of these communities. Further, this study presents an actionable and transferable framework for identifying effective single-species metrics of restoration success across ecosystems. The application of this framework will provide managers and researchers with tools to improve the efficiency and efficacy of post-restoration monitoring. By doing so, this study contributes significantly to the improvement of broader restoration practices in an era of unprecedented habitat loss.

Service activities are critical in the pursuit of a more equitable and inclusive academic environment. We must ensure that the efforts required by these activities are properly recognized through rebalancing the academic workload, such that service is not provided at the expense of career progression.

“Big data” approaches in the form of large-scale human genomic studies have led to striking advances in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) genetics. Similar to many other psychiatric syndromes, advances in genotyping technology, allowing for inexpensive genome-wide assays, has confirmed the contribution of polygenic inheritance involving common alleles of small effect, a handful of which have now been definitively identified. However, the past decade of gene discovery in ASD has been most notable for the application, in large family-based cohorts, of high-density microarray studies of submicroscopic chromosomal structure as well as high-throughput DNA sequencing—leading to the identification of an increasingly long list of risk regions and genes disrupted by rare, de novo germline mutations of large effect. This genomic architecture offers particular advantages for the illumination of biological mechanisms but also presents distinctive challenges. While the tremendous locus heterogeneity and functional pleiotropy associated with the more than 100 identified ASD-risk genes and regions is daunting, a growing armamentarium of comprehensive, large, foundational -omics databases, across species and capturing developmental trajectories, are increasingly contributing to a deeper understanding of ASD pathology.

Many irrigation strategies have been proposed in olive orchards to overcome both increasing water scarcity and competition for water with other sectors of society. However, threshold values of stomatal conductance (gs) and stem water potential (Ψstem) for use in designing deficit irrigation strategies have not yet been adequately defined. Thus, an experiment was conducted to determine gs and Ψstem thresholds for water stress in a super-intensive olive orchard (cv. Arbequina) located in Pencahue Valley (Maule Region, Chile) over three consecutive growing seasons. The experimental design was completely randomized with four irrigation treatments. The stem water potential (Ψstem) of the T1 treatment was maintained between − 1.4 and − 2.2 MPa, while the T2, T3, and T4 treatments did not receive irrigation from fruit set until they reached a Ψstem threshold of approximately − 3.5, − 5.0, and − 6.0 MPa, respectively. Stomatal conductance (gs), transpiration (Tl), net CO2 assimilation (An), and stem water potential (Ψstem) were measured fortnightly at midday. A significant nonlinear correlation between An and gs was used to establish different levels of water stress. Water stress was considered to be mild or absent when the gs values were greater than 0.18 mol m−2 s−1, whereas water stress was estimated to increase from moderate to severe as gs decreased significantly below 0.18 mol m−2 s−1. Similarly, water stress using Ψstem was determined to be mild or absent above − 2.0 MPa. Such categorizations should provide valuable information for maintaining trees well-watered in critical phenological phases. Fil: Ahumada Orellana, L.. Universidad de Talca; Chile Fil: Ortega Farías, S.. Universidad de Talca; Chile Fil: Poblete Echeverría, C.. Stellenbosch University; Sudáfrica Fil: Searles, Peter Stoughton. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia Tecnológica de La Rioja. - Universidad Nacional de La Rioja. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia Tecnológica de La Rioja. - Universidad Nacional de Catamarca. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia Tecnológica de La Rioja. - Secretaría de Industria y Minería. Servicio Geológico Minero Argentino. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia Tecnológica de La Rioja. - Provincia de La Rioja. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia Tecnológica de La Rioja; Argentina

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) are widely studied for their ability to confine light, produce sharp resonances for sensing applications and serve as avenues for lasing action with topological characteristics. Primarily, the formation of BICs in periodic photonic band gap structures are driven by symmetry incompatibility; structural manipulation or variation of incidence angle from incoming light. In this work, we report two modalities for driving the formation of BICs in terahertz metasurfaces. At normal incidence, we experimentally confirm polarization driven symmetry-protected BICs by the variation of the linear polarization state of light. In addition, we demonstrate through strong coupling of two radiative modes the formation of capacitively-driven Freidrich-Wintgen BICs, exotic modes which occur in off-Γ points not accessible by symmetry-protected BICs. The capacitance-mediated strong coupling at 0° polarization is verified to have a normalized coupling strength ratio of 4.17% obtained by the Jaynes-Cummings model. Furthermore, when the polarization angle is varied from 0° to 90° (0° ≤ ϕ

Nitrogen-doped graphene (NG) has attracted increasing attention because its properties are significantly different to pristine graphene, making it useful for various applications in physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. However, the NGs that can currently be fabricated using most experimental methods always have low N concentrations and a mixture of N dopants, which limits the desirable physical and chemical properties. In this work, first principles calculations combined with the local particle-swarm optimization algorithm method were applied to explore possible stable structures of 2D carbon nitrides (C1−xNx) with various C/N ratios. It is predicted that C1−xNx structures with low N-doping concentration contain both graphitic and pyridinic N based on their calculated formation energies, which explains the experimentally observed coexistence of graphitic and pyridinic N in NG. However, pyridinic N is predominant in C1−xNx when the N concentration is above 0.25. In addition, C1−xNx structures with low N-doping concentration were found to have considerably lower formation energies than those with a high N concentration, which means synthesized NGs with low N-doping concentration are favorable. Moreover, we found the restrictions of mixed doping and low N concentration can be circumvented by using different C and N feedstocks, and by growing NG at lower temperatures.

Background ‘Physical Activity 4 Everyone’ (PA4E1) was an efficacious multi-component school-based physical activity (PA) program targeting adolescents. PA4E1 has seven PA practices. It is essential to scale-up, evaluate effectiveness and assess implementation of such programs. Therefore, the aim is to assess the impact of implementation support on school practice uptake of the PA4E1 program at 12 and 24 months. Methods A cluster randomised controlled trial, utilising a type III hybrid implementation-effectiveness design, was conducted in 49 randomly selected disadvantaged Australian Government and Catholic secondary schools. A blinded statistician randomly allocated schools to a usual practice control (n = 25) or the PA4E1 program group (n = 24), with the latter receiving seven implementation support strategies to support school PA practice uptake of the seven practices retained from the efficacy trial. The primary outcome was the proportion of schools adopting at least four of the seven practices, assessed via telephone surveys with Head Physical Education Teachers and analysed using exact logistic regression modelling. This paper reports the 12-month outcomes. Results Schools were recruited from May to November 2017. At baseline, no schools implemented four of the seven practices. At 12 months significantly more schools in the program group had implemented four of the seven practices (16/24, 66.7%) than the control group (1/25, 4%) (OR = 33.0[4.15–1556.4], p p 80%). Conclusions Through the application of multiple implementation support strategies, secondary schools were able to overcome commonly known barriers to implement evidence based school PA practices. As such practices have been shown to result in an increase in adolescent PA and improvements in weight status, policy makers and practitioners responsible for advocating PA in schools should consider this implementation approach more broadly when working with schools. Follow-up is required to determine whether practice implementation is sustained. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12617000681358 registered 12th May 2017.

BackgroundA priority area in the field of substance dependence treatment is reducing the rates of relapse. Previous research has demonstrated that telephone delivered continuing care interventions are both clinically and cost effective when delivered as a component of outpatient treatment. This protocol describes a NSW Health funded study that assesses the effectiveness of delivering a telephone delivered continuing care intervention for people leaving residential substance treatment in Australia.Methods/designAll participants will be attending residential alcohol and other drug treatment provided by The Salvation Army or We Help Ourselves. The study will be conducted as a randomised controlled trial, where participants will be randomised to one of three treatment arms. The treatment arms will be: (i) 12-session continuing care telephone intervention; (ii) 4-session continuing care telephone intervention, or (iii) continuing care plan only. Baseline assessment batteries and development of the participants’ continuing care plan will be completed prior to participants being randomised to a treatment condition. Research staff blind to the treatment condition will complete follow-up assessments with participants at 3-months and 6-months after they have been discharged from their residential service.DiscussionThis study will provide comprehensive data on the effect of delivering the continuing care intervention for people exiting residential alcohol and other drug treatment. If shown to be effective, this intervention can be disseminated to improve the rates of relapse among people leaving residential alcohol and other drug treatment.Trial registrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12618001231235. Registered on 23rd July 2018.https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=375621&isReview=true

The implementation of targeted therapies for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) has been challenging because of the complex mutational patterns within and across patients as well as a dearth of pharmacologic agents for most mutational events. Here we report initial findings from the Beat AML programme on a cohort of 672 tumour specimens collected from 562 patients. We assessed these specimens using whole-exome sequencing, RNA sequencing and analyses of ex vivo drug sensitivity. Our data reveal mutational events that have not previously been detected in AML. We show that the response to drugs is associated with mutational status, including instances of drug sensitivity that are specific to combinatorial mutational events. Integration with RNA sequencing also revealed gene expression signatures, which predict a role for specific gene networks in the drug response. Collectively, we have generated a dataset—accessible through the Beat AML data viewer (Vizome)—that can be leveraged to address clinical, genomic, transcriptomic and functional analyses of the biology of AML. Analyses of samples from patients with acute myeloid leukaemia reveal that drug response is associated with mutational status and gene expression; the generated dataset provides a basis for future clinical and functional studies of this disease.