The purification of mesoscopic graphene flakes via eddy current separation

The exceptional properties of graphene are highly sensitive to impurities, which restrict its applications. Nearly all large-scale production methods fail to sufficiently control the impurities introduced during manufacturing. Given the significant differences in electrical conductivity between graphene and non-graphene impurities, we explored the application of eddy current separation for the purification process of graphene. Through numerical simulations and parametric study, our research investigates the eddy current forces, torques, and motion dynamics experienced by graphene flakes of different layers in an alternating magnetic field. The findings demonstrate that eddy current forces can overcome liquid-phase resistance, enabling controlled directional movement of graphene flakes. At a magnetic field frequency of 45 kHz, graphene flakes with fewer layers show enhanced settling velocities and quicker response times, suggesting a potential for statistically significant separation of graphene from impurities under the influence of the alternating magnetic field. This initial study supports the feasibility of integrating eddy current separation technology into the graphene purification process, providing valuable insights for future research in this field

Effect of short and long-term cadmium exposure on behaviour and cardiac function in Drosophila.

Cadmium is a non-essential heavy metal and environmental pollutant that causes a range of pathologies across different species. In humans, cadmium exposure has recently been directly linked to heart disease. Understanding how long-term cadmium exposure affects cardiac physiology is therefore important. In this work we employed a tractable Drosophila melanogaster model to study the effects of cadmium exposure on behaviour, lifespan and cardiac physiology. Dietary experiments established that cadmium at 10 μM and 100 μM was tolerated for several weeks, whereas doses in the mM range caused lethality within days. It was estimated that 10 μM dietary exposure represented an approximately 60-fold excess of the maximum exposure recommended for humans. Although 10 μM cadmium had no impact on lifespan compared to the control diet, it did cause significant daytime hyperactivity. Direct exposure of the heart to cadmium caused reversible cardiac arrest and disrupted calcium signalling. Compared to controls, 10 μM dietary cadmium had no impact on the rate of cardiac ageing over a six-week period. The higher dose of 100 μM shortened the flies' lifespan but it slowed the rate of cardiac ageing. The findings indicate that Drosophila can be used to model the direct effects of cadmium on cardiomyocyte function and also demonstrate the existence of cardioprotective pathways triggered by dietary cadmium exposure. The data also indicate that cadmium at doses that do not affect lifespan or heart function, do cause daytime hyperactivity. Identifying and the cardioprotective mechanisms and understanding the hyperactivity phenotype in Drosophila may yield important findings of applied relevance to insects in general, as well as humans exposed to cadmium

Ecological impact of single and semi-contiguous artificial rockpool installations on the assemblages and species richness of vertical seawalls

Local improvements to species diversity through the creation of microhabitat features have been adopted as an approach for “Greening Grey Infrastructure” (GGI) in urbanised coastal ecosystems. To confidently implement these enhancements asset managers and engineers need quantitative information on the value of different feature types, densities, and configurations. We compared the biodiversity benefits of horizontal arrays of semi-contiguous 3 and 5 artificial rockpools with single isolated rockpool units and unenhanced sections of seawall. Rockpools were fixed within seawall sections 2 m wide at Mean High Water Neap Tide Level. At low tide, biota was monitored inside the pools, on the side of the pool units, the sea wall adjacent to the rockpools and in sea wall zones above and below the pools. After 36 months, species richness (all zones combined) of seawall sections with five rockpools was up to four times greater than controls and included protected and non-indigenous species. Increased richness was attributable to a higher density of rockpools and not rockpool contiguity. Grazers attracted to areas between and above rockpools modified assemblages that may limit persistence of algae. At one site, recovery of brown algae following disturbance during rockpool installation remained incomplete after 36 months. Benefits of arrays of semi-contiguous pools remain unclear, and deployment of individual rockpools (or similar enhancements) over a larger habitat area, that experience a wider range of conditions, may be at least as valuable. Quantifying species richness per unit size/ area of structure should assist managers and the development of metrics designed to measure ecological benefits in GGI

London taxi drivers exploit neighbourhood boundaries for hierarchical route planning.

Humans show an impressive ability to plan over complex situations and environments. A classic approach to explaining such planning has been tree-search algorithms which search through alternative state sequences for the most efficient path through states. However, this approach fails when the number of states is large due to the time to compute all possible sequences. Hierarchical route planning has been proposed as an alternative, offering a computationally efficient mechanism in which the representation of the environment is segregated into clusters. Current evidence for hierarchical planning comes from experimentally created environments which have clearly defined boundaries and far fewer states than the real-world. To test for real-world hierarchical planning we exploited the capacity of London licensed taxi drivers to use their memory to construct a street by street plan across London, UK (>26,000 streets). The time to recall each successive street name was treated as the response time, with a rapid average of 1.8 s between each street. In support of hierarchical planning we find that the clustered structure of London's regions impacts the response times, with minimal impact of the distance across the street network (as would be predicted by tree-search). We also find that changing direction during the plan (e.g. turning left or right) is associated with delayed response times. Thus, our results provide real-world evidence for how humans structure planning over a very large number of states, and give a measure of human expertise in planning

CD EDITING - Physical exercise habits in people with epilepsy: A survey from Brazilian population

This survey evaluated the Brazilian population's physical exercise habits and compared them with those from two decades ago. In this cross-sectional study, 432 people with epilepsy (PWE) assessed the questionnaire. Of these, 387 (age: 33 ± 10.58, 81.4 % women) completed the questionnaire. Among them, 60.5 % were involved in regular physical activities. Among those who exercise regularly, the majority (96.5 %) exercised between 2 and 5 times weekly and had been physically active for at least two years. Only 23.3 % were prohibited by their doctors from participating in physical activities. Only 10 % reported that seizures occur during exercise, and about half of them (55.8 %) believed that exercise improves or has no effect on seizure frequency. Most (79.06 %) did not or rarely believe exercise can trigger seizures. More than half (57.3 %) were not afraid to have seizures during exercise or were not afraid of injury during exercise due to a seizure (69 %). Most believed exercise improves cognition (80.9 %), depression, and anxiety (93.8 %). We visited this scenario two decades early. In our previous study, only 15 % exercised regularly, while in this survey, 58.4 % routinely exercised. Our findings also align with our initial survey, indicating a low seizure frequency during regular exercise, a belief that physical activity reduces seizure frequency, and a reduction in the fear that exercise might trigger seizures. In conclusion, our results show that after two decades, there have been several improvements in physical and sports activity participation among PWE. Implementing strategies to reduce barriers to exercise for PWE and educating them on the benefits of physical activity can help improve this scenario

A taxometric analysis of developmental prosopagnosia: Evidence for a categorically distinct impairment.

Poor performance on cognitive assessment tasks may indicate a selective 'impairment'. However, it is unclear whether such difficulties separate the individual from the general population qualitatively (i.e., they form a discrete group) or quantitatively (i.e., they represent the lower end of a continuous distribution). Taxometric methods address this question but have rarely been applied to cognitive disorders. This study examined the latent structure of developmental prosopagnosia (DP) - a relatively selective deficit in face recognition that occurs in the absence of neurological injury. Multiple taxometric procedures were applied to dominant diagnostic indices of face recognition ability across two independent datasets. All analyses supported a categorical outcome, even for mild cases of DP, suggesting that it is a qualitatively distinct condition. This finding has significant implications for our understanding of DP given it has traditionally been viewed as a continuous impairment. In particular, existing (arbitrary) diagnostic cut-offs may be too conservative, underestimating prevalence rates and prohibiting big-data approaches to theoretical study. More broadly, these conclusions support application of the taxometric method to many other cognitive processes where weaknesses are predominantly assumed to reside on a continuous distribution

Parafoveal Processing and Transposed-Letter Effects in Developmental Dyslexic Reading.

During reading, adults and children independently parafoveally encode letter identity and letter position information using a flexible letter position encoding mechanism. The current study examined parafoveal encoding of letter position and letter identity for dyslexic children. Eye movements were recorded during a boundary-change paradigm. Parafoveal previews were either an identity preview (e.g., nearly), a transposed-letter preview (e.g., enarly) or a substituted-letter preview (e.g., acarly). Dyslexic readers showed a preview benefit for identity previews, indicating that orthographic information was encoded parafoveally. Furthermore, dyslexic readers benefitted from transposed-letter previews more than substituted-letters previews, demonstrating that letter identity was encoded independently to letter position during parafoveal processing. Although a transposed-letter effect was found for dyslexic readers, they demonstrated a reduced sensitivity to detect transposed-letters in later measures of reading, that is, go-past times, relative to that found for typically developing readers. We conclude that dyslexic readers, with less rich and fully specified lexical representations, have a reduced sensitivity to transpositions of the first two letters of the upcoming word in preview. These findings are compatible with the view that orthographic representations of dyslexic children are not sufficiently specified

Impact of ‘A Walk-Through Dementia’ immersive virtual reality app on care delivered by undergraduate healthcare students: a mixed methods study

Background Virtual reality enables healthcare professionals’ insight into the lived experience of dementia. The ‘A Walk-Through Dementia’ (AWTD) app was implemented in first year undergraduate healthcare students' education. Aim To evaluate students' reaction, learning and influence of the app on clinical practice. Methods The app was used during dementia training sessions. Informed by the Kirkpatrick model for training evaluation, data was obtained (i) on the day through post-training survey (ii) four months after in focus groups. Results Response rate: survey (65%, n=271/414) and focus groups (n=11). Students found the app engaging (83.1%, n=225); reporting deepening dementia understanding (91.9%, n=249). After using the app, students felt they would change their behaviour (77.9%, n=211), approaching care with a more person-centred focus. Conclusion The immersive app improved students' confidence in delivering personalised care. Further research should consider adaptation for students with disabilities and sensory impairments and ensure cultural appropriate content for international relevance

Interactive digital narratives for mental resilience: Understanding the player experience of betwixt

Interactive storytelling has been successfully established in various artistic disciplines, and as the medium matures, we see a variety of forms and applications. Recently the form has been used for production of applications that offer the users various therapeutic elements. Our work exploring the usage and impact of such works presents a user experience (UX) study of a mobile application called Betwixt, designed to support mental resilience. Over a four-week period, recruited participants took part in usability tests and responded to surveys and interviews to answer questions on topics such as: navigation approach and difference in experience, motivation for using an application like Betwixt, and whether they were affected emotionally while using the application. We analysed our results through inductive coding and the retrieval of user analytics. Our key findings, presented in the form of observations, include: reasons why the application’s narrative and interface affected the participants, how the interface can reflect negatively on an otherwise enjoyable narrative, how the interactive element of the application has been the main attraction for most participants no matter their background, and ways in which the application affected the participants emotionally via its conversational style and significant level of user agency in the narrative

Locally Enhanced Flow and Electric Fields Through a Tip Effect for Efficient Flow-Electrode Capacitive Deionization

Low-electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI) is an emerging desalination technology with great potential for removal and/or recycling ions from a range of waters. However, it still suffers from inefficient charge transfer and ion transport kinetics due to weak turbulence and low electric intensity in flow electrodes, both restricted by the current collectors. Herein, a new tip-array current collector (designated as T-CC) was developed to replace the conventional planar current collectors, which intensifies both the charge transfer and ion transport significantly. The effects of tip arrays on flow and electric fields were studied by both computational simulations and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, which revealed the reduction of ion transport barrier, charge transport barrier and internal resistance. With the voltage increased from 1.0 to 1.5 and 2.0 V, the T-CC-based FCDI system (T-FCDI) exhibited average salt removal rates (ASRR) of 0.18, 0.50, and 0.89 μmol cm−2 min−1, respectively, which are 1.82, 2.65, and 2.48 folds higher than that of the conventional serpentine current collectors, and 1.48, 1.67, and 1.49 folds higher than that of the planar current collectors. Meanwhile, with the solid content in flow electrodes increased from 1 to 5 wt%, the ASRR for T-FCDI increased from 0.29 to 0.50 μmol cm−2 min−1, which are 1.70 and 1.67 folds higher than that of the planar current collectors. Additionally, a salt removal efficiency of 99.89% was achieved with T-FCDI and the charge efficiency remained above 95% after 24 h of operation, thus showing its superior long-term stability. (Figure presented.