A mixed method evaluation of a novel targeted health messaging intervention to promote COVID-19 protective behaviours and vaccination among black and South Asian communities living in the UK (The COBHAM study)

Aim: To evaluate an intervention (a film and electronic leaflet) disseminated via text message by general practices to promote COVID-19 preventative behaviours in Black and South Asian communities. Methods: We carried out a before-and-after questionnaire study of attitudes to and implementation of COVID-19 preventative behaviours and qualitative interviews about the intervention with people registered with 26 general practices in England who identified as Black or South Asian. Results: In the 108 people who completed both questionnaires, we found no significant change in attitudes to and implementation of COVID-19 preventative behaviours, although power was too low to detect significant effects. A key qualitative finding was that participants felt they did not ‘belong’ to the group targeted by the intervention. Conclusion: Interventions targeting ethnic minorities in the UK need to acknowledge the heterogeneity of experience and circumstances of the target group so that people feel that the intervention is relevant to them

Realistic object reconstruction under different depths through light field imaging for virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) immerses users in digital environments and is used in various applications. VR content is created using either computer-generated or conventional imaging. However, conventional imaging captures only 2D spatial information, which limits the realism of VR content. Advanced technologies like light field (LF) imaging can overcome this limitation by capturing both 2D spatial and 2D angular information in 4D LF images. This paper proposes a depth reconstruction model through LF imaging to aid in creating realistic VR content. Comprehensive calibrations are performed, including adjustments for camera parameters, depth calibration, and field of view (FOV) estimation. Aberration corrections, like distortion and vignetting effect correction, are conducted to enhance the quality of the reconstruction. To achieve realistic scene reconstruction, experiments were conducted by setting up a scenario with multiple objects positioned at three different depths. Quality assessments were carried out to evaluate the reconstruction quality across these varying depths. The results demonstrate that depth reconstruction quality improves with the proposed method. It also indicates that the model reduces LF image size and processing time. The depth images reconstructed by the proposed model have the potential to generate realistic VR content and can also facilitate the integration of refocusing capabilities within VR environments

Modern triple resonance protein NMR backbone assignment, using AlphaFold and unlabelling to drive chemical shifts assignment in proteins

NMR is a powerful technique to study the structure, dynamics and interactions of proteins. However, to obtain atomic resolution data, NMR signals must first be correlated with specific chemical groups – a problem called assignment. The software AlphaFold has shown to be a great advancement in modern-day science. Until now, structural analysis of proteins had been bottlenecked by months/ years’ worth of slower techniques that were traditionally used to determine a protein structure In this project we have designed and applied a semi-automated assignment program called SNAPS (Simple NMR Assignment using Predicted Shifts). This allows the user to go from a set of NMR spectra of a protein with a known 3D AlphaFold or X-ray crystallography structure to a fully assigned chemical shifts of the backbone resonances. In addition, unlabelling experimental data can be incorporated into the use of the program to generate more reliable assignment data by helping the program along in the mapping of the amino acids for assignment by providing places in the assignment where the amino acid it is known. The program was largely written by Dr Alex Heyam from the university of Leeds but testing scripts and well as a NEF importer was written to ensure the program was user-friendly and ensured rigid, fool-proof datasets being imported for backbone assignment. The program also underwent large-scale testing on roughly 150 proteins with known 3D crystal structures as well as 15N unlabelleing data being implemented to improve assignment. AlphaFold structures could also be implemented for use in the program also. Assignment was as good as 86-88% dependent upon parameters, with the unlabelling being slightly more effective with assignment (for PDB crystal structures)

Does learning more about others impact liking them? Replication and extension Registered Report of Norton et al.’s (2007) lure of ambiguity (Registered report)

Norton et al., 2007, demonstrated a counterintuitive phenomenon that knowing other people better and/or having more information about them is associated with decreased liking. They summarized it as ambiguity leads to liking, whereas familiarity can breed contempt. In a Registered Report with a US Prolific undergraduate student sample (N = 801), we directly replicated Studies 1a, 1b and 2 and conceptually replicated Studies 3 and 4 from Norton et al., 2007. Extending their research, we also proposed that curiosity provides an alternative path to liking, hypothesizing that curiosity mediates the relationship between knowledge and liking. Overall, we found weak support for the original findings. Consistent with the original article, participants believed they would like someone who they knew more about (original: h = 0.52–0.70; replication: h = 0.55–0.75) and that knowledge positively predicts liking (original: h = 0.21–0.45; replication: h = 0.57–0.76). However, we found no indication of the number of traits known influencing liking (original: r = −0.43 to −0.005; replication: r = −0.05 to 0.06) or perceived similarity to the target (d = 0.00), for a mediating effect of perceived similarity, for a dissimilarity cascade effect, or for changes in liking or perceived similarity as a factor of learning more about the target. In our extensions, we found support for a positive relationship between curiosity and liking (r = 0.62–0.70), but not for knowledge and curiosity (r = −0.06 to 0.05). Overall, our findings suggest that learning more about others may not influence perceptions of liking, similarity or curiosity towards them. Materials, data and code are available on https://osf.io/j6tqr/. This Registered Report has been officially endorsed by Peer Community in Registered Reports: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100947

Flush: A Biography. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf

The Cambridge Edition of Virginia Woolf's 1931 fictional biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel. Includes extensive introduction, explanatory notes, textual notes and textual apparatus, unpublished drafts and Atlantic Monthly magazine version of the text

Ring the changes: the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor in Kent

Since the discovery of a monumental wall painting of Saint Edward the Confessor enacting the so-called Legend of the Ring on the south wall of the Thomas Becket Chapel, Saint Mary's Church, Faversham, Kent in 1851, little has been done to evaluate its style and composition, nor its meaning for the patron, Robert Dod and his community. Depicting the most famous of Saint Edward's miracles and dating to c. 1307, this Gothic painting depicts King Edward presenting his royal ring to Saint John the Evangelist who is disguised as a pilgrim. The pictorial use of this miracle was somewhat "commonplace" amongst the radius of Westminster Abbey and the court of King Henry III. However, because of scant evidence otherwise, scholarship has often determined that this image, and Edward's cult, was confined to Henry's court and Westminster Abbey, and/or that interest in Saint Edward waned after Henry's death in 1272, albeit with a brief revival during the reign of Richard II. This fourteenth century painting in a parish church in Kent, therefore, challenges these assumptions and has presented an opportunity to shed new light on the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor. In 1874 another monumental painting was discovered in the same chapel: That of a life-sized martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket that was coeval to Saint Edward's and positioned directly opposite it. This is a seemingly "unusual" pairing: A saint king opposite an archbishop murdered by royal knights allegedly on the orders of Henry II. Evidence is presented here for the first time to show that the cults of Saint Edward and Becket were commingled in Kent with a focus on Canterbury Cathedral, Saint Mary's Church, Faversham and the Maison Dieu at Ospringe. Structured across five chapters, this thesis aims to offer fresh perspectives on the enduring popularity of the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor - highlighting East Kent as an additional cult centre - while also exploring its intersections with the cult of Saint Thomas Becket and contributing to broader understandings of the cult of saints

Ideology and creativity: poststructuralism, abundant difference, and plastic production

The central problem that I address in my thesis is how to define the relationship between ideology and creativity without either reducing them to an opposition or making one subordinate to the other. In the revival of ideology studies, ideology is either conceptualised as the limit to creativity, or creativity is merely a tool of ideology. What is missing is an examination of the paradoxical relationship between ideology and creativity. Creativity is used to critique ideology, ideology is used to dampen creativity, to be creative is to be ideological, and ideologies are creative. To explain this paradoxical relationship, I centre my analysis on the rejection of the concept of ideology by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. The pair are critical of the concept of ideology because it is premised on a will to truth and a distortion of meaning. I identify three strands of contemporary political theory that reject Foucault and Deleuze’s claims about ideology: the ontological, praxis, and poststructuralist critiques of ideology. These critiques concur with Foucault and Deleuze that ideology cannot simply be the distortion of true meaning. Instead, they conceptualise ideology as that which produces incomplete meaning. However, these critiques are flawed as they still rely on the argument that ideology distorts meaning. I thus go on to develop a new concept of ideology that does not conceptualise ideology as the distortion of meaning or, consequently, rely on a will to truth. I argue that the ideological produces meaning, where differences are organised in such a way that they are understood as non-different. This is necessarily creative, as ideological production is a novel transformation of meaning. By reading Foucault and Deleuze together with Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity, I theorise production as comprised of the relationship between the forces of power, desire, the ideological, and creativity. The plastic relationship between positive ideological and creative forces produces meaning. I subsequently theorise ideological production as a site of normative critique grounded in the contingency of meaning. Thus, I utilise the ideology-creativity paradox to conceptualise ideology as a tool to critically evaluate politics without relying on a will to truth or a distortion of meaning

Interactions of Two-Dimensionally Confined Electrons with an Adjacent Magnetic Monopole

An electron in the presence of a magnetic monopole cannot form a bound state to the monopole in three dimensions. All states formed are scattering and follow a geodesic trajectory on the surface of a cone. In this thesis I show that confining the electron to two dimensions and placing the monopole above or below said plane allows for bound states to be formed. Classically, utilising Lagrangian mechanics, these are fully bound never forming scattering states without an influx of energy. Quantum mechanically (Solutions to Schrödinger time independent equation) and semi-classically (Bohr- Sommerfeld quantisation, WKB approximation), these states are quasi-bound with finite lifetimes before turning into a scattering state. The minimum charge that can bind an electron to a magnetic monopole is approximately the same strength as 16 Dirac monopoles. The lifetimes of these scattering states is dependent on the electron's energy eigenvalue, the strength of the magnetic monopole, and the distance the monopole is from the plane. Magnetic monopoles can be detected using a SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) measuring the quantised jumps in magnetic flux. In this thesis I ask: can they be detected using the Hall effect? With the electrons bound to a plane permeated by the non-uniform magnetic field produced by a magnetic monopole; what will the Hall voltage look like across the plane, and can it be measured? Magnetohydrodynamics is utilised to model the flow of an electron gas by treating it as a fluid that interacts with both magnetic and electrical fields. A single Dirac monopole produces a peak in Hall voltage across the modelled Hall sensor of the order 10−6V. For a monopole found in spin-ice, which is about 1/8000 the magnetic charge of a single Dirac monopole, this voltage is considerably less

Comparison of unique Dong Tao chickens from Vietnam and Thailand: genetic background and differences for resource management

Background Rare Dong Tao (DT) chickens are a unique and highly productive poultry breed introduced from Vietnam to Thailand ~ 30 years ago. It has a very peculiar appearance, including enormously enlarged feet with reddish scales, and considered local and culturally significant to both countries. Their adaptability and distinct genetic traits have attracted global interest, underscoring their potential for breeding programs and a need for their thorough genetic makeup assessment. Objective To assess the genetic diversity and differentiation within the Dong Tao chicken breed, comparing two populations introduced in Thailand with a native population in Vietnam. Methods Three Dong Tao chicken populations from Thailand and Vietnam—along with 54 other indigenous, local chicken, and red junglefowl populations from Thailand, were analyzed using 28 microsatellite markers. Result High genetic variability and low inbreeding levels were observed in these populations, indicating their effective management despite historical bottlenecks. Genetic similarities between DT-U and DT-HY and indigenous breeds, as well as the closer alignment of DT-L with red junglefowl, highlighted existing introgression and adaptation processes. Two markers, MCW0098 and MCW0216, showed a variation pattern due to potential impact of directional selection, possibly driven by environmental adaptation pressures. These findings emphasize the importance of DT chickens as genetic resources for breeding programs that focus on climate resilience and productivity enhancement. Conclusion Dong Tao chicken shared genetic similarities with indigenous and local chicken breeds, and red junglefowl, with potential influence of directional selection driven by environmental adaptation pressures

Elucidating the mode of action of Occidiofungin - a current first in class antifungal

Fungal infections are responsible for an approximate 1.5 million deaths annually, with there being no licensed vaccines or vaccines currently in clinical study for fungal disease. This combined with the increasing resistance to the current antifungals in clinical use, highlights an ever increasing need for new antifungal research. My research aims to elucidate the mode of action of a current first in class antifungal known as Occidiofungin. This antifungal is currently undergoing clinical trials and has shown potent broad spectrum activity in the treatment of pathogenic yeast. My aim was to determine the mechanism that this drug uses in order to kill fungal cells. Previous research suggested that Occidiofungin may target the Actin cytoskeleton and as Actin is essential to cell function this may represent a plausible mode of action. I employed a range of techniques to investigate whether Occidiofungin inhibits the function of Actin and whether recognised Actin-related modes of cell death were activated. My findings suggest that Actin is not targeted but rather Occidiofungin induces necrosis in cells in a gradual manner. This finding was strengthened by observations that a fluorescent tagged Occidiofungin (Alkyne Occidiofungin) was not internalised but accumulated at the outer surface of the yeast cell. The fungal specificity of Occidiofungin was also investigated through the use of haemolysis assays and the Galleria mellonella infection model. This pre-clinical data suggested that Occidiofungin is indeed fungal specific and so is a promising candidate for use as a future therapeutic. Future research will determine the fungal specific target of Occidiofungin that is responsible for the induction of necrosis which may in turn lead to the expansion of this class of antifungal. If targeting the fungal cell wall, upon recognition of the target component, this would have broad applications both in the knowledge of the drug and proof that is has fungal specificity, it could also indicate a novel site that could be used in drug design and development