Dangerous Driving, Deterrence, Disqualification and a missed opportunity to address Destructive Behaviour: the new Sentencing Guidelines for Motoring Offences

[Opening paragraph] On 28 June 2022, sections 86 and 87 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 came intoforce, raising the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving (CDDD)1 and causingdeath by careless driving whilst under the influence of drink or drugs (CDCDUI)2 from 14 years to lifeimprisonment, and creating a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving.3 This changefollowed years of campaigning from victim and road safety groups and was welcomed by them, butinitially caused some problems in the Crown Court given that existing guidelines4 provided guidancebased on the previous maximum.5  On 15 June 2023 the Sentencing Council published its newguideline, on which it had consulted up until October 2022, and it came into effect on 1 July 2023.</p

Data Temperature Informed Streaming for Optimising Large-Scale Multi-Tiered Storage

Data temperature is a response to the ever-growing amount of data. These data have to be stored, but they have been observed that only a small portion of the data are accessed more frequently at any one time. This leads to the concept of hot and cold data. Cold data can be migrated away from high-performance nodes to free up performance for higher priority data. Existing studies classify hot and cold data primarily on the basis of data age and usage frequency. We present this as a limitation in the current implementation of data temperature. This is due to the fact that age automatically assumes that all new data have priority and that usage is purely reactive. We propose new variables and conditions that influence smarter decision-making on what are hot or cold data and allow greater user control over data location and their movement. We identify new metadata variables and user-defined variables to extend the current data temperature value. We further establish rules and conditions for limiting unnecessary movement of the data, which helps to prevent wasted input output (I/O) costs. We also propose a hybrid algorithm that combines existing variables and new variables and conditions into a single data temperature. The proposed system provides higher accuracy, increases performance, and gives greater user control for optimal positioning of data within multi-tiered storage solutions

Sidekli et al beta-defensin copy number estimates for cattle

Data from Sidekli et al publication. A complete list of estimated diploid copy numbers for beta-defensin genes in cattle from both digital droplet PCR analysis and sequence read depth of aligned short-read whole genomes.</p

Wellbeing in the Higher Education Sector: A qualitative study of staff perceptions in UK universities

The Higher Education (HE) sector is beset with mental ill-health, stress and burnout, negatively impacting staff productivity and retention. These challenges are due to a reduction in financial support for HE coupled with a growing number of students and increased workloads, as evidenced by recent strike actions in the UK. While research on mental ill-health in HE is extensive, our understanding of wellbeing in higher education is limited. Yet understanding wellbeing in the workplace can foster positive experiences and resilience, counteracting more negative experiences. This paper presents findings from 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews with employees (academic and professional staff) in UK universities to understand staff perceptions of wellbeing and the impact of the HE context. Five themes were identified: (1) factors contributing to staff wellbeing, such as colleague support; (2) fragility and duality of staff wellbeing, on how wellbeing can be damaged as well as its changing nature; (3) the dichotomy of collegial peer and organizational support, on university and staff actions toward wellbeing; (4) outsider from within, on an experienced lack of belonging; and (5) creativity and growth, on opportunities for staff development. Gaps in our understanding of Black, Asian, Minority, and Ethnic staff experiences were also identified. Implications for bolstering wellbeing in practice and future research are discussed.</p

Visible-Light-Driven Decarboxylative Coupling of 2<i>H</i>-Indazoles with α-Keto Acids without Photocatalysts and Oxidants

An efficient synthesis of functionalized 3-acyl-2H-indazoles via visible-light-induced self-catalyzed energy transfer was developed. This method utilized a self-catalyzed energy transfer process between 2H-indazoles and α-keto acids, offering advantages like absence of photosensitizers, metal catalysts, and strong oxidants, broad substrate compatibility, and operational simplicity under mild conditions

A Comprehensive Perspective on Intracranial Pressure Monitoring and Individualized Management in Neurocritical Care: Results of a Survey with Global Experts

Background Numerous trials have addressed intracranial pressure (ICP) management in neurocritical care. However, identifying its harmful thresholds and controlling ICP remain challenging in terms of improving outcomes. Evidence suggests that an individualized approach is necessary for establishing tolerance limits for ICP, incorporating factors such as ICP waveform (ICPW) or pulse morphology along with additional data provided by other invasive (e.g., brain oximetry) and noninvasive monitoring (NIM) methods (e.g., transcranial Doppler, optic nerve sheath diameter ultrasound, and pupillometry). This study aims to assess current ICP monitoring practices among experienced clinicians and explore whether guidelines should incorporate ancillary parameters from NIM and ICPW in future updates. Methods We conducted a survey among experienced professionals involved in researching and managing patients with severe injury across low-middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs). We sought their insights on ICP monitoring, particularly focusing on the impact of NIM and ICPW in various clinical scenarios. Results From October to December 2023, 109 professionals from the Americas and Europe participated in the survey, evenly distributed between LMIC and HIC. When ICP ranged from 22 to 25 mm Hg, 62.3% of respondents were open to considering additional information, such as ICPW and other monitoring techniques, before adjusting therapy intensity levels. Moreover, 77% of respondents were inclined to reassess patients with ICP in the 18–22 mm Hg range, potentially escalating therapy intensity levels with the support of ICPW and NIM. Differences emerged between LMIC and HIC participants, with more LMIC respondents preferring arterial blood pressure transducer leveling at the heart and endorsing the use of NIM techniques and ICPW as ancillary information. Conclusions Experienced clinicians tend to personalize ICP management, emphasizing the importance of considering various monitoring techniques. ICPW and noninvasive techniques, particularly in LMIC settings, warrant further exploration and could potentially enhance individualized patient care. The study suggests updating guidelines to include these additional components for a more personalized approach to ICP management.</p

Combatting illegal trade in animal products by rapid onsite DNA sequencing

The illegal wildlife trade is a major threat to the survival of numerous species. A key challenge in combatting this trade is the difficulty in recognising protected species, particularly once processed. Traditionally, DNA-based species identification requires sending a sample to a laboratory where it is processed using expensive and bulky pieces of equipment, and the results are returned some time thereafter (days to weeks). It is therefore ill-suited to places lacking laboratory infrastructure. However, advances in sequencing technologies means that this process can now be carried out on-site. This project aimed to develop cheap and simple methods for DNA extraction, amplification, and sequencing using Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION device. Primers were designed for four mitochondrial minibarcodes (cytochrome oxidase c subunit I, cytochrome b, 16S and 12S ribosomal RNA) to be as ‘universal’ as possible. The developed methods were successfully tested across 83 known vertebrate species and a wide range of sample types (hairs, feathers, blood, etc.), as well as more complex sample types including mixtures of both known and unknown compositions. The methods were also tested during a blind test at Twycross Zoo, and then in a molecular biology laboratory at the National University of Mongolia, Mongolia. The minibarcode tetraplex used proved robust to the presence of numts (nuclear mitochondrial DNA insertions), incomplete reference sequence data, and the limited intra-specific variation previously captured within available reference data. Additionally, new reference sequence data were generated by taking advantage of nanopore’s long-read sequencing capability to obtain whole mitochondrial genome sequences for an Altai marmot, a Siberian marmot, and a Daurian hedgehog, as well as the whole genome of a snow leopard. In the latter case, the genome was assessed for numt integration given frequent DNA-based misidentifications due to the co- or preferential amplification of numt sequences instead of the mitochondrial target barcode.</p

Alternative binders to simplify the recycling of lithium-ion batteries

Binders are a vital component in the structure and function of battery electrodes. They do, however, have implications for the lifetime and recyclability or lithium ion batteries. This project identified several alternative binders that could simplify battery disassembly during end-of-life processing. Primarily anode binders were investigated, and it was found that water-miscible biopolymers, sodium alginate and gelatin, allowed complete delamination of the electrode active material from the current collector using lowpowered ultrasound with water in 5 seconds. Modification of these polymers, with a deep eutectic solvent made from choline chloride and glycerol, also allowed for the enhancement of key properties such as the thermal stability, adhesive strength and, in the case of sodium alginate, the electrochemical stability of the cells at high cycling rates. Other polymer systems were also tested as binders to try and optimise other key characteristics of the anodes, such as the use of polyaniline and sodium alginate to form a polymer blend. Anodes created using these polymer blends found that the conductivity increased with polyaniline content, but other factors such as a poorer adhesive strength was observed. Alternative extracellular adhesives and pack designs were also discussed, where a novel pack structure using a zigzag conformation of the cells joined together with pressure sensitive adhesives such as glue dots. This was shown to significantly reduce disassembly time and create a simplified dismantling procedure that could be easier to automate, increasing the economic viability of battery disassembly versus conventional end-of-life processes like shredding. This study included an environmental impact study comparing battery disassembly steps when alternative adhesives were used in both electrode binders and extracellular adhesives. These were then compared to commercial standards. This showed a 200% reduction in the global warming potential of the overall recycling process highlighting the importance of design for recycle for LIBs benefits, in terms of performance, economic viability of disassembly and environmental impact.</p

SAR Target Incremental Recognition based on Features with Strong Separability

With the rapid development of deep learning technology, many SAR target recognition algorithms based on convolutional neural networks have achieved exceptional performance on various datasets. However, conventional neural networks are repeatedly iterated on a fixed dataset until convergence, and once they learn new tasks, a large amount of previously learned knowledge is forgotten, leading to a significant decline in performance on old tasks. This paper presents an incremental learning method based on strong separability features (SSF-IL) to address the model’s forgetting of previously learned knowledge. The SSF-IL employs both intra-class and inter-class scatter to compute the feature separability loss, in order to enhance the linear separability of features during incremental learning. In the process of learning new classes, an intra-class clustering loss is proposed to replace the conventional knowledge distillation. This loss function constrains the old class features to cluster around the saved class centers, maintaining the separability among the old class features. Finally, a classifier bias correction method based on boundary features is designed to reinforce the classifier’s decision boundary and reduce classification errors. SAR target incremental recognition experiments are conducted on the MSTAR dataset, and the results are compared with several existing incremental learning algorithms to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.</p

Development of a core outcome set for pharmacist interventions in chronic kidney disease (COSP-KD): a protocol for e-Delphi consensus study

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