Manchester Metropolitan University

About: Manchester Metropolitan University is a education organization based out in Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5435 authors who have published 16202 publications receiving 442561 citations. The organization is also known as: Manchester Polytechnic & MMU.

Lung function and microbiota diversity in cystic fibrosis

Abstract: Chronic infection and concomitant airway inflammation is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for people living with cystic fibrosis (CF). Although chronic infection in CF is undeniably polymicrobial, involving a lung microbiota, infection surveillance and control approaches remain underpinned by classical aerobic culture-based microbiology. How to use microbiomics to direct clinical management of CF airway infections remains a crucial challenge. A pivotal step towards leveraging microbiome approaches in CF clinical care is to understand the ecology of the CF lung microbiome and identify ecological patterns of CF microbiota across a wide spectrum of lung disease. Assessing sputum samples from 299 patients attending 13 CF centres in Europe and the USA, we determined whether the emerging relationship of decreasing microbiota diversity with worsening lung function could be considered a generalised pattern of CF lung microbiota and explored its potential as an informative indicator of lung disease state in CF. We tested and found decreasing microbiota diversity with a reduction in lung function to be a significant ecological pattern. Moreover, the loss of diversity was accompanied by an increase in microbiota dominance. Subsequently, we stratified patients into lung disease categories of increasing disease severity to further investigate relationships between microbiota characteristics and lung function, and the factors contributing to microbiota variance. Core taxa group composition became highly conserved within the severe disease category, while the rarer satellite taxa underpinned the high variability observed in the microbiota diversity. Further, the lung microbiota of individual patient were increasingly dominated by recognised CF pathogens as lung function decreased. Conversely, other bacteria, especially obligate anaerobes, increasingly dominated in those with better lung function. Ordination analyses revealed lung function and antibiotics to be main explanators of compositional variance in the microbiota and the core and satellite taxa. Biogeography was found to influence acquisition of the rarer satellite taxa. Our findings demonstrate that microbiota diversity and dominance, as well as the identity of the dominant bacterial species, in combination with measures of lung function, can be used as informative indicators of disease state in CF.

The natural physical alternative to cognitive theories of motor behaviour: An invitation for interdisciplinary research in sports science?

Abstract: This review examines the viability of the natural physical alternative to traditional cognitive modelling of the sport performer. It is concluded that the natural physical perspective offers an attractive framework for the study of movement control and co‐ordination in sport, but, at present, does not seem capable of superseding cognitive explanations. As a consequence of the nature of the questions they are asking, natural physical theorists offer a significant avenue for interdisciplinary research in sports science. Significant differences in the philosophy underpinning both theoretical views are acknowledged, but growing support for an integrated approach to motor control is highlighted. A major task for sports scientists may be to verify empirically the nature of an integrated model of the sport performer.

Enterprise and entrepreneurship in English higher education: 2010 and beyond

Abstract: Purpose – This article aims to report the results of a complete survey of enterprise education in all higher education institutions (HEIs) in England, undertaken in 2010 by the Institute for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (ISBE) on behalf of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE). The survey builds on prior work undertaken by the NCGE in England in 2006 and in 2007.Design/methodology/approach – The survey aimed to establish a complete picture of curricular and extra‐curricular enterprise and entrepreneurship education. The survey uses a similar structure to the previous survey, enabling comparison to be made with enterprise provision over the 2006‐2010 period, as well as with the 2008 European survey of entrepreneurship in HE.Findings – The results provide a stock‐take of enterprise education provision in participating HEIs and highlight the connections in institutional strategies between enterprise education, incubation/new venture support, graduate employability, innovation and aca...