Corporate parenting in the classroom

This speech by Bruce Adamson, Children and Young People's Commissioner was delivered at the CELCIS Conference: 'Corporate Parenting in the Classroom' in March 2018. It sets out the relevant human rights framework and emphasises the international duties placed upon the State to uphold the rights of care experienced children and young people. Mr Adamson reflects on his recent experience at Care Day 2018 and highlights the voices of care experienced young people. The right to education to develop children and young people to their fullest and the support that needs to be put in place for children, young people and teachers to be able to focus on education. The Commissioner explains the role of his office in promoting and safeguarding rights, holding government to account, his particular remit for care experienced children and young people and his office’s collaborative work with corporate parents. He concludes with the crucial role of those who work in education to empower and support children and young people to defend their rights and the rights of others

Does Precuing a Target Location Narrow the Distribution of Attention?

Whether the distribution of attention in the visual field declines from the focal point as monotonically decreasing gradient or as Mexican-hat-like distribution is still an open question, with some evidences supporting the former (e.g., Eriksen & Yeh, 1985) and other evidences supporting the latter (e.g., Müller, Mollenhauer, Rösler, & Kleinschmidt, 2005). Our research group presented experiments at Midwestern Psychological Association last year that examined the effects of perceptual load, cue-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and set size on the distribution of attention. In the low-load condition, a strong quadratic trend was observed in the compatible flanker RTs, yielding a large flanker effect for the smallest target-flanker separation, smaller effects at intermediate separations, and a recovery of flanker effects at the widest separation. With the high load, a linear trend was observed, with flanker interference declining across distance from the target. The result of the low-load condition was compatible with accounts of a suppressive annulus around the focus of attention. The present poster extends the previously reported data set by introducing new data and a new analysis based upon extraction of local minima and maxima from each individual’s flanker interference functions. From the perspective of the selective tuning model of Tsotsos et al. (1995), pre-cuing the target location should allow time for visual attention to focus more narrowly on the target location. Therefore, it should be expected that the distance, in degrees of visual angle, between the local maximum and local minimum of each flanker interference function should decrease with cue-target SOA

High critical currents for dendrite penetration and voiding in potassium metal anode solid-state batteries

Potassium metal anode solid-state cells with a K-beta”-alumina ceramic electrolyte are found to have relatively high critical currents for dendrite penetration on charge of approximately 4.8 mA/cm2, and voiding on discharge of approximately 2.0 mA/cm2, at 20 °C under 2.5 MPa stack-pressure. These values are higher than generally reported in the literature under comparable conditions for Li and Na metal anode solid-state batteries. The higher values for potassium are attributed to its lower yield strength and its readiness to creep under relatively low stack-pressures. The high critical currents of potassium anode solid-state batteries help to confirm the importance of the metal anode mechanical properties in the mechanisms of dendrite penetration and voiding.</p

The effect of volume change and stack pressure on solid‐state battery cathodes

Solid-state lithium batteries may provide increased energy density and improved safety compared with Li-ion technology. However, in a solid-state composite cathode, mechanical degradation due to repeated cathode volume changes during cycling may occur, which may be partially mitigated by applying a significant, but often impractical, uniaxial stack pressure. Herein, we compare the behavior of composite electrodes based on Li4Ti5O12 (LTO) (negligible volume change) and Nb2O5 (+4% expansion) cycled at different stack pressures. The initial LTO capacity and retention are not affected by pressure but for Nb2O5, they are significantly lower when a stack pressure of &lt;2 MPa is applied, due to inter-particle cracking and solid-solid contact loss because of cyclic volume changes. This work confirms the importance of cathode mechanical stability and the stack pressures for long-term cyclability for solid-state batteries. This suggests that low volume-change cathode materials or a proper buffer layer are required for solid-state batteries, especially at low stack pressures

Fermilab Main Injector Collimation Systems: Design, Commissioning and Operation

The Fermilab Main Injector is moving toward providing 400 kW of 120 GeV proton beams using slip stacking injection of eleven Booster batches. Loss of 5% of the beam at or near injection energy results in 1.5 kW of beam loss. A collimation system has been implemented to localize this loss with the design emphasis on beam not captured in the accelerating RF buckets. More than 95% of these losses are captured in the collimation region. We will report on the construction, commissioning and operation of this collimation system. Commissioning studies and loss measurement tools will be discussed. Residual radiation monitoring of the Main Injector machine components will be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of these efforts

High-frequency failure of combination antiretroviral therapy in paediatric HIV infection is associated with unmet maternal needs causing maternal non-adherence

Background Early combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) reduces the size of the viral reservoir in paediatric and adult HIV infection. Very early-treated children may have higher cure/remission potential. Methods In an observational study of 151 in utero (IU)-infected infants in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, whose treatment adhered strictly to national guidelines, 76 infants diagnosed via point-of-care (PoC) testing initiated cART at a median of 26 h (IQR 18–38) and 75 infants diagnosed via standard-of-care (SoC) laboratory-based testing initiated cART at 10 days (IQR 8–13). We analysed mortality, time to suppression of viraemia, and maintenance of aviraemia over the first 2 years of life. Findings Baseline plasma viral loads were low (median 8000 copies per mL), with 12% of infants having undetectable viraemia pre-cART initiation. However, barely one-third (37%) of children achieved suppression of viraemia by 6 months that was maintained to >12 months. 24% had died or were lost to follow up by 6 months. Infant mortality was 9.3%. The high-frequency virological failure in IU-infected infants was associated not with transmitted or acquired drug-resistant mutations but with cART non-adherence (plasma cART undetectable/subtherapeutic, p<0.0001) and with concurrent maternal cART failure (OR 15.0, 95%CI 5.6–39.6; p<0.0001). High-frequency virological failure was observed in PoC- and SoC-tested groups of children. Interpretation The success of early infant testing and cART initiation strategies is severely limited by subsequent cART non-adherence in HIV-infected children. Although there are practical challenges to administering paediatric cART formulations, these are overcome by mothers who themselves are cART-adherent. These findings point to the ongoing obligation to address the unmet needs of the mothers. Eliminating the particular barriers preventing adequate treatment for these vulnerable women and infants need to be prioritised in order to achieve durable suppression of viraemia on cART, let alone HIV cure/remission, in HIV-infected children

Clostridium perfringens epsilon toxin increases the small intestinal permeability in mice and rats

Epsilon toxin is a potent neurotoxin produced by Clostridium perfringens types B and D, an anaerobic bacterium that causes enterotoxaemia in ruminants. In the affected animal, it causes oedema of the lungs and brain by damaging the endothelial cells, inducing physiological and morphological changes. Although it is believed to compromise the intestinal barrier, thus entering the gut vasculature, little is known about the mechanism underlying this process. This study characterizes the effects of epsilon toxin on fluid transport and bioelectrical parameters in the small intestine of mice and rats. The enteropooling and the intestinal loop tests, together with the single-pass perfusion assay and in vitro and ex vivo analysis in Ussing's chamber, were all used in combination with histological and ultrastructural analysis of mice and rat small intestine, challenged with or without C. perfringens epsilon toxin. Luminal epsilon toxin induced a time and concentration dependent intestinal fluid accumulation and fall of the transepithelial resistance. Although no evident histological changes were observed, opening of the mucosa tight junction in combination with apoptotic changes in the lamina propria were seen with transmission electron microscopy. These results indicate that C. perfringens epsilon toxin alters the intestinal permeability, predominantly by opening the mucosa tight junction, increasing its permeability to macromolecules, and inducing further degenerative changes in the lamina propria of the bowel. © 2009 Goldstein et al

FUS pathology defines the majority of tau- and TDP-43-negative frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Through an international consortium, we have collected 37 tau- and TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43)-negative frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) cases, and present here the first comprehensive analysis of these cases in terms of neuropathology, genetics, demographics and clinical data. 92% (34/37) had fused in sarcoma (FUS) protein pathology, indicating that FTLD-FUS is an important FTLD subtype. This FTLD-FUS collection specifically focussed on aFTLD-U cases, one of three recently defined subtypes of FTLD-FUS. The aFTLD-U subtype of FTLD-FUS is characterised clinically by behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and has a particularly young age of onset with a mean of 41 years. Further, this subtype had a high prevalence of psychotic symptoms (36% of cases) and low prevalence of motor symptoms (3% of cases). We did not find FUS mutations in any aFTLD-U case. To date, the only subtype of cases reported to have ubiquitin-positive but tau-, TDP-43- and FUS-negative pathology, termed FTLD-UPS, is the result of charged multivesicular body protein 2B gene (CHMP2B) mutation. We identified three FTLD-UPS cases, which are negative for CHMP2B mutation, suggesting that the full complement of FTLD pathologies is yet to be elucidated