CERN@school: bringing CERN into the classroom

CERN@school brings technology from CERN into the classroom to aid with the teaching of particle physics. It also aims to inspire the next generation of physicists and engineers by giving participants the opportunity to be part of a national collaboration of students, teachers and academics, analysing data obtained from detectors based on the ground and in space to make new, curiosity-driven discoveries at school. CERN@school is based around the Timepix hybrid silicon pixel detector developed by the Medipix 2 Collaboration, which features a 300 μm thick silicon sensor bump-bonded to a Timepix readout ASIC. This defines a 256-by-256 grid of pixels with a pitch of 55 μm, the data from which can be used to visualise ionising radiation in a very accessible way. Broadly speaking, CERN@school consists of a web portal that allows access to data collected by the Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector (LUCID) experiment in space and the student-operated Timepix detectors on the ground; a number of Timepix detector kits for ground-based experiments, to be made available to schools for both teaching and research purposes; and educational resources for teachers to use with LUCID data and detector kits in the classroom. By providing access to cutting-edge research equipment, raw data from ground and space-based experiments, CERN@school hopes to provide the foundation for a programme that meets the many of the aims and objectives of CERN and the project's supporting academic and industrial partners. The work presented here provides an update on the status of the programme as supported by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. This includes recent results from work with the GridPP Collaboration on using grid resources with schools to run GEANT4 simulations of CERN@school experiments

Applications of SuDS Techniques in Harvesting Stormwater for Landscape Irrigation Purposes:Issues and Considerations

While urbanization and increasing population has put much pressure on natural drainage channels and resulted in increase in flooding, there is increased pressure on available water resources due to climate change, reduction in frequency of rainfall events and drought. The emergence of a sustainable drainage system (SuDS), also known as best management practice (BMP) and low impact development (LID), has changed the management strategy of drainage from conventional to sustainable. SuDS techniques seek to deliver the three cardinal paradigms of sustainable drainage: quantity, quality and amenity and as such, they can offer an additional benefit for applications such as landscape irrigation. Most SuDS techniques have the potential for water storage with minimal or no modifications required. This chapter, while covering the capabilities of SuDS systems, explores SuDS devices such as pervious pavements equipped with excess storage capacity, cisterns and tanks harvesting roofwater, infiltration systems aimed at supporting the growth of urban plants and green roofs with the potential to store water in order to maintain water demanding planting scheme even during dry periods. It also covers systems where SuDS is the main driver to device installation and address issues and considerations surrounding applications of such systems in water harvesting for irrigation

Do Polyps Matter?

Introduction: Endometrial polyps (EP) are common within the gynaecological practice. The aims of this study are to evaluate the risk of premalignant and malignant changes in EP and to determine the predictors of histological outcomes of these lesions.Methods: This is a retrospective study conducted over a 12-year period between January 2000 and 2012. Data were retrieved from patients’ and theatre records. The histopathology reports of all cases were retrieved. All cases with confirmed EP at hysteroscopy were identified.Results: There were a total of 397 cases. Age range was between 24 and 89 years, median age at presentation was 54 years. Histology outcomes were classified into benign, premalignant (hyperplasia with atypia) and malignant. Age greater 60 years was strongly associated with abnormal histology i.e. premalignant and malignant changes in polyps (OR 2.174 [CI 1.645-2.874], p<0.001) Menopausal status showed a strong link with abnormal histology (OR 1.599 [CI 1.388- 1.842], p<0.001). These patients were about one and a half times more likely to have abnormal histology in the event of a polyp. The results are similar with premalignant histology (OR 1.610 [CI 1.394- 1.860], p<0.001).Results for patients presenting with postmenopausal bleeding were also positive. They were more likely to have abnormal histology compared to patients with other symptoms (OR1.776 [CI 1.516-2.079], p<0.001). Postmenopausal bleeding is also strongly associated with premalignancy (OR 1.782 [CI 1.515- 2.096], p<0.001). The use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or tamoxifen was not associated with abnormal histology (p= 0.114 and p=0.668 respectively) or premalignancy (p= 0.138 and p= 0.764 respectively).Polyps greater than 15mm were not associated with abnormal histology (OR 1.313 [CI 0.932-1.850], p= 0.143) or premalignancy (OR 1.292 [CI 0.896-1.864], p= 0.196).Conclusion: There is a strong link between patients’ age and menopausal status with abnormal or premalignant histology. Postmenopausal bleeding is also an important predictor of abnormal or premalignant changes at histology

Life satisfaction and musculoskeletal complaints in a population seeking osteopathy care: consecutive sample of 611 patients.

BackgroundLife satisfaction is a component of the subjective well-being construct. Research consistently suggests that life satisfaction is associated with enhanced social benefits and improved health outcomes. However, its relationship to musculoskeletal health outcomes is underexplored. This study evaluates the life satisfaction of a patient population presenting with musculoskeletal complaints, and the relationship of life satisfaction with other health demographics and behaviours.MethodThe study used a consecutive sampling design. Patients attending the Victoria University Osteopathy Clinic (Melbourne, Australia) were invited to complete the PROMIS® General Life Satisfaction scale (GLSS) along with questions related to health demographics and behaviours.ResultsThe GLSS T-score was not significantly different for gender, being born outside of Australia, speaking English at home, or complaint chronicity.ConclusionsLife satisfaction did not appear to be related to a range of health and demographic variables in the current musculoskeletal pain cohort. The PROMIS® General Life Satisfaction scale could prove useful to explore the relationship between life satisfaction and treatment outcomes for musculoskeletal complaints

Acceptability of placebo multiparticulate formulations in children and adults

Patient acceptability is an important consideration in the design of medicines for children. The aim of this study was to investigate acceptability of multiparticulates in healthy children and adults. A randomised, single-blind acceptability testing was performed involving 71 children (4-12 years) and 61 adults (18-37 years). Each participant received three 500 mg samples of microcrystalline cellulose pellets administered on a medicine spoon with water at 5-10 minutes intervals. Acceptability was measured based on voluntary intake of the samples, facial expressions, ratings on hedonic scales and reported willingness to take multiparticulates everyday as a medicine. Multiparticulates were voluntarily swallowed by 92% of children and 100% of adults. However, palatability issues were identified, with emphasis on textural aspects. Grittiness perception received negative ratings on hedonic scales by 60% of children and 51% of adults. Researcher observations revealed that 72% of children and 42% of adults displayed negative facial expressions towards the samples. Children reported their willingness to take multiparticulates as a medicine in 30% of the cases, compared to 74% in adults. This study demonstrates that multiparticulates may be a suitable formulation platform for children and adults, although palatability concerns have been highlighted. Additional work is required to define acceptability criteria and to standardise methodologies

The Potential Impact of Nuclear Conflict on Ocean Acidification

We demonstrate that the global cooling resulting from a range of nuclear conflict scenarios would temporarily increase the pH in the surface ocean by up to 0.06 units over a 5-year period, briefly alleviating the decline in pH associated with ocean acidification. Conversely, the global cooling dissolves atmospheric carbon into the upper ocean, driving a 0.1 to 0.3 unit decrease in the aragonite saturation state (Ωarag) that persists for ∼10 years. The peak anomaly in pH occurs 2 years post conflict, while the Ωarag anomaly peaks 4- to 5-years post conflict. The decrease in Ωarag would exacerbate a primary threat of ocean acidification: the inability of marine calcifying organisms to maintain their shells/skeletons in a corrosive environment. Our results are based on sensitivity simulations conducted with a state-of-the-art Earth system model integrated under various black carbon (soot) external forcings. Our findings suggest that regional nuclear conflict may have ramifications for global ocean acidification

Scoping Potential Routes to UK Civil Unrest via the Food System: Results of a Structured Expert Elicitation

We report the results of a structured expert elicitation to identify the most likely types of potential food system disruption scenarios for the UK, focusing on routes to civil unrest. We take a backcasting approach by defining as an end-point a societal event in which 1 in 2000 people have been injured in the UK, which 40% of experts rated as “Possible (20–50%)”, “More likely than not (50–80%)” or “Very likely (>80%)” over the coming decade. Over a timeframe of 50 years, this increased to 80% of experts. The experts considered two food system scenarios and ranked their plausibility of contributing to the given societal scenario. For a timescale of 10 years, the majority identified a food distribution problem as the most likely. Over a timescale of 50 years, the experts were more evenly split between the two scenarios, but over half thought the most likely route to civil unrest would be a lack of total food in the UK. However, the experts stressed that the various causes of food system disruption are interconnected and can create cascading risks, highlighting the importance of a systems approach. We encourage food system stakeholders to use these results in their risk planning and recommend future work to support prevention, preparedness, response and recovery planning

Four-dimensional Cone Beam CT Reconstruction and Enhancement using a Temporal Non-Local Means Method

Four-dimensional Cone Beam Computed Tomography (4D-CBCT) has been developed to provide respiratory phase resolved volumetric imaging in image guided radiation therapy (IGRT). Inadequate number of projections in each phase bin results in low quality 4D-CBCT images with obvious streaking artifacts. In this work, we propose two novel 4D-CBCT algorithms: an iterative reconstruction algorithm and an enhancement algorithm, utilizing a temporal nonlocal means (TNLM) method. We define a TNLM energy term for a given set of 4D-CBCT images. Minimization of this term favors those 4D-CBCT images such that any anatomical features at one spatial point at one phase can be found in a nearby spatial point at neighboring phases. 4D-CBCT reconstruction is achieved by minimizing a total energy containing a data fidelity term and the TNLM energy term. As for the image enhancement, 4D-CBCT images generated by the FDK algorithm are enhanced by minimizing the TNLM function while keeping the enhanced images close to the FDK results. A forward-backward splitting algorithm and a Gauss-Jacobi iteration method are employed to solve the problems. The algorithms are implemented on GPU to achieve a high computational efficiency. The reconstruction algorithm and the enhancement algorithm generate visually similar 4D-CBCT images, both better than the FDK results. Quantitative evaluations indicate that, compared with the FDK results, our reconstruction method improves contrast-to-noise-ratio (CNR) by a factor of 2.56~3.13 and our enhancement method increases the CNR by 2.75~3.33 times. The enhancement method also removes over 80% of the streak artifacts from the FDK results. The total computation time is ~460 sec for the reconstruction algorithm and ~610 sec for the enhancement algorithm on an NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU card.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Does Amazon forest leaf phenology mediate transpiration seasonality and hence, ecoclimate teleconnections?

Abstract OOS 11-5