The Drinfel'd twisted XYZ model

We construct a factorizing Drinfel'd twist for a face type model equivalent to the XYZ model. Completely symmetric expressions for the operators of the monodromy matrix are obtained.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, second preprint no. added, reference [14] added, typos correcte

Using a synthesis of the research literature related to the aetiology of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis to provide ideas on future directions for success

This review is atypical by design. It has used a synthesis of the available literature relating to the aetiology of AIS to draw attention to the lack of progress in this area despite intensive research for more than 100 years. The review has argued that if progress is to be made in this area then significant changes in approach to the problem must be made. Such changes have been outlined and major areas of potential focus identified with the intention of creating debate and discussion. There is no doubt that people are working hard in this area of research but this review has deliberately attempted to question its achievements and future directions

Reference Distorted Prices

I show that when consumers (mis)perceive prices relative to reference prices, budgets turn out to be soft, prices tend to be lower and the average quality of goods sold decreases. These observations provide explanations for decentralized purchase decisions, for people being happy with a purchase even when they have paid their evaluation, and for why trade might affect high quality local firms 'unfairly'

Electrical behaviour, characteristics and properties of anodic aluminium oxide films coloured by nickel electrodeposition

Porous anodic films on 1050 aluminium substrate were coloured by AC electrodeposition of nickel. Several experiments were performed at different deposition voltages and nickel concentrations in the electrolyte in order to correlate the applied electrical power to the electrical behaviour, as well as the characteristics and properties of the coatings. The content of nickel inside the coatings reached 1.67 g/m2, depending on the experimental conditions. According to the applied AC voltage in comparison with the threshold voltage Ut, the coating either acted only as a capacitor when U\Ut and, when U[Ut, the behaviour during the anodic and cathodic parts of the power sine wave was different. In particular, due to the semi-conducting characteristics of the barrier layer, additional oxidation of the aluminium substrate occurred during the anodic part of the electrical signal, whilst metal deposition (and solvent reduction) occurred during the cathodic part; these mechanisms correspond to the blocked and pass directions of the barrier layer/electrolyte junction, respectively

Fast Protection-Domain Crossing in the CHERI Capability-System Architecture

Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI) supplement the conventional memory management unit (MMU) with instruction-set architecture (ISA) extensions that implement a capability system model in the address space. CHERI can also underpin a hardware-software object-capability model for scalable application compartmentalization that can mitigate broader classes of attack. This article describes ISA additions to CHERI that support fast protection-domain switching, not only in terms of low cycle count, but also efficient memory sharing with mutual distrust. The authors propose ISA support for sealed capabilities, hardware-assisted checking during protection-domain switching, a lightweight capability flow-control model, and fast register clearing, while retaining the flexibility of a software-defined protection-domain transition model. They validate this approach through a full-system experimental design, including ISA extensions, a field-programmable gate array prototype (implemented in Bluespec SystemVerilog), and a software stack including an OS (based on FreeBSD), compiler (based on LLVM), software compartmentalization model, and open-source applications.This work is part of the CTSRD and MRC2 projects sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), under contracts FA8750-10-C-0237 and FA8750-11-C-0249. We also acknowledge the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) REMS Programme Grant [EP/K008528/1], the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account [EP/K503757/1], EPSRC/ARM iCASE studentship [13220009], Microsoft studentship [MRS2011-031], the Isaac Newton Trust, the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), Thales E-Security, and Google, Inc.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version of the article can be found at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7723791

Confirmation of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia variants, ARID5B and IKZF1, and interaction with parental environmental exposures.

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have established association of ARID5B and IKZF1 variants with childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Epidemiological studies suggest that environmental factors alone appear to make a relatively minor contribution to disease risk. The polygenic nature of childhood ALL predisposition together with the timing of environmental triggers may hold vital clues for disease etiology. This study presents results from an Australian GWAS of childhood ALL cases (n = 358) and population controls (n = 1192). Furthermore, we utilised family trio (n = 204) genotypes to extend our investigation to gene-environment interaction of significant loci with parental exposures before conception, and child's sex and age. Thirteen SNPs achieved genome wide significance in the population based case/control analysis; ten annotated to ARID5B and three to IKZF1. The most significant SNPs in these regions were ARID5B rs4245595 (OR 1.63, CI 1.38-1.93, P = 2.13×10(-9)), and IKZF1 rs1110701 (OR 1.69, CI 1.42-2.02, p = 7.26×10(-9)). There was evidence of gene-environment interaction for risk genotype at IKZF1, whereby an apparently stronger genetic effect was observed if the mother took folic acid or if the father did not smoke prior to pregnancy (respective interaction P-values: 0.04, 0.05). There were no interactions of risk genotypes with age or sex (P-values >0.2). Our results evidence that interaction of genetic variants and environmental exposures may further alter risk of childhood ALL however, investigation in a larger population is required. If interaction of folic acid supplementation and IKZF1 variants holds, it may be useful to quantify folate levels prior to initiating use of folic acid supplements

INTEnsive care bundle with blood pressure reduction in acute cerebral hemorrhage trial (INTERACT3): study protocol for a pragmatic stepped-wedge cluster-randomized controlled trial

Background: Early intensive blood pressure (BP) lowering remains the most promising treatment for acute intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), despite discordant results between clinical trials and potential variation in the treatment effects by approach to control BP. As the third in a series of clinical trials on this topic, the INTEnsive care bundle with blood pressure Reduction in Acute Cerebral hemorrhage Trial (INTERACT3) aims to determine the effectiveness of a goal-directed care bundle protocol of early physiological control (intensive BP lowering, glycemic control, and pyrexia treatment) and reversal of anticoagulation, in acute ICH. Methods: INTERACT3 is a pragmatic, international, multicenter, stepped-wedge (4 phases/3 steps), cluster-randomized controlled trial to determine the effectiveness of a multifaceted care package in adult (age ≥ 18 years) patients (target 8360) with acute ICH (< 6 h of onset) recruited from 110 hospitals (average of 19 consecutive patients per phase) in low- and middle-income countries. After a control phase, each hospital implements the intervention (intensive BP lowering, target systolic < 140 mmHg; glucose control, target 6.1–7.8 mmol/L and 7.8–10.0 mmol/L in those without and with diabetes mellitus, respectively; anti-pyrexia treatment to target body temperature ≤ 37.5 °C; and reversal of anticoagulation, target international normalized ratio < 1.5 within 1 h). Information will be obtained on demographic and baseline clinical characteristics, in-hospital management, and 7-day outcomes. Central trained blinded assessors will conduct telephone interviews to assess physical function and health-related quality of life at 6 months. The primary outcome is the modified Rankin scale (mRS) at 6 months analyzed using ordinal logistic regression. The sample size of 8360 subjects provides 90% power (α = 0.05) to detect a 5.6% absolute improvement (shift) in the primary outcome of the intervention versus control standard care, with various assumptions. Discussion: As the largest clinical trial in acute ICH, INTERACT3 is on schedule to provide an assessment of the effectiveness of a widely applicable goal-directed care bundle for a serious condition in which a clearly proven treatment has yet to be established. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03209258. Registered on 1 July 2017. Chinese Trial Registry ChiCTR-IOC-17011787. Registered on 28 June 201

Social prescribing in cardiology : rediscovering the nature of and within us

Personalised care is integral to the delivery of the NHSE Long Term Plan. Enabling choice and supporting patients to make decisions predicated on what matters to them, rather than what is the matter with them, is a fundamental part of the NHS vision. Social prescribing uses nonmedical, asset based, salutogenic approaches to promote this personalised paradigm, and places the patient central to decision making. We discuss how Personalised care can be used to help people with Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) using socially prescribed ‘nature-based’ interventions to support the prehabilitation and rehabilitation of patients with CVD. The concept of Personalised care outlined and the significance of salutogenic principles as complementary approach to the pathogenic model is discussed. We argue that this seemingly novel approach to using nature-based interventions can help promote wellbeing for people with CVD as part of the wider personalised agenda

Alcohol affects neuronal substrates of response inhibition but not of perceptual processing of stimuli signalling a stop response

Alcohol impairs inhibitory control, including the ability to terminate an initiated action. While there is increasing knowledge about neural mechanisms involved in response inhibition, the level at which alcohol impairs such mechanisms remains poorly understood. Thirty-nine healthy social drinkers received either 0.4g/kg or 0.8g/kg of alcohol, or placebo, and performed two variants of a Visual Stop-signal task during acquisition of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. The two task variants differed only in their instructions: in the classic variant (VSST), participants inhibited their response to a “Go-stimulus” when it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. In the control variant (VSST_C), participants responded to the “Go-stimulus” even if it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. Comparison of successful Stop-trials (Sstop)>Go, and unsuccessful Stop-trials (Ustop)>Sstop between the three beverage groups enabled the identification of alcohol effects on functional neural circuits supporting inhibitory behaviour and error processing. Alcohol impaired inhibitory control as measured by the Stop-signal reaction time, but did not affect other aspects of VSST performance, nor performance on the VSST_C. The low alcohol dose evoked changes in neural activity within prefrontal, temporal, occipital and motor cortices. The high alcohol dose evoked changes in activity in areas affected by the low dose but importantly induced changes in activity within subcortical centres including the globus pallidus and thalamus. Alcohol did not affect neural correlates of perceptual processing of infrequent cues, as revealed by conjunction analyses of VSST and VSST_C tasks. Alcohol ingestion compromises the inhibitory control of action by modulating cortical regions supporting attentional, sensorimotor and action-planning processes. At higher doses the impact of alcohol also extends to affect subcortical nodes of fronto-basal ganglia- thalamo-cortical motor circuits. In contrast, alcohol appears to have little impact on the early visual processing of infrequent perceptual cues. These observations clarify clinically-important effects of alcohol on behaviour