Terraforming "Beautiful China": Island Building and Lunar Exploration in the Making of the Chinese State

Chinese terraforming projects in the South China Sea have been condemned as geopolitically and ecologically destabilising. Following years of escalating construction and tourism initiatives, China pivoted in January 2019 by announcing ecosystem restoration efforts on several terraformed islands. Days later, the Chinese National Space Agency made the first soft landing on the far side of the moon, carrying with it a micro-ecosystem of living seeds and insect eggs. The micro-ecosystem sprouted the first plant on the moon, whose brief lifespan was met with rapt attention by the Chinese public as it disseminated across the national mediascape. This article contends that terraforming efforts in the South China Sea and the Chang’e 4 lunar biosphere project are related material-symbolic instantiations of a uniquely Chinese sociotechnical imaginary. Prevailing interpretations of Chinese island-building, outer space ventures and ecological civilisation tend to construe Beijing’s intentions as primarily antagonistic. These accounts are useful yet insufficient for comprehending China’s terraforming projects on Earth and beyond. The authors instead refigure terraformation as an imaginative, material and bio-geophysical process enacted in the globalising pursuit of new Chinese horizons

Healthy Minds: A child and adolescent mental health research project: What are the mental health needs of Bradford's Pakistani Muslim children and young people and how can they be addressed?

This report was commissioned by the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (MDC) Directorate of Social Services; the aims and objectives are presented in section two, but simply stated the research seeks to determine the mental health needs of Bradford’s Pakistani Muslim children and young people and, based on the findings, recommend ways in which those needs can be addressed. It is important to mention here that the research was commissioned following a Joint Planning Team recommendation that noted a lack of information around the mental health needs of Bradford’s ‘Asian’ population. A population that makes up a sizeable component of Bradford and yet whose children and young people are significantly under represented in Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). In recognition of the complexity of cultural, religious, language, geographical regions of origin and socio- economic experience encompassed in the term ‘Asian’ (Patel K, 2000) the decision was taken to concentrate on the Pakistani Muslim community, which is the largest minority ethnic group in Bradford. This introduction will, therefore, through narrative and through a review of the relevant literature, seek to prepare the ground for the views of the professionals, young people, children, parents, carers and community members that follow this chapter. It will paint a broad demographic picture of the UK’s and Bradford’s Pakistani Muslim population; bearing in mind the universal environmental, family and child risk factors as identified by the Health Advisory Service (HAS. 1995) identifying those specific to the Pakistani Muslim population in the Bradford Metropolitan District; and discussing the impact of the findings, negative and positive, on the mental health and mental health needs of the children and young people of this population

An evaluation of power transfer functions for HDR video compression

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging enables the full range of light in a scene to be captured, transmitted and displayed. However, uncompressed 32-bit HDR is four times larger than traditional low dynamic range (LDR) imagery. If HDR is to fulfil its potential for use in live broadcasts and interactive remote gaming, fast, efficient compression is necessary for HDR video to be manageable on existing communications infrastructure. A number of methods have been put forward for HDR video compression. However, these can be relatively complex and frequently require the use of multiple video streams. In this paper, we propose the use of a straightforward Power Transfer Function (PTF) as a practical, computationally fast, HDR video compression solution. The use of PTF is presented and evaluated against four other HDR video compression methods. An objective evaluation shows that PTF exhibits improved quality at a range of bit-rates and, due to its straightforward nature, is highly suited for real-time HDR video applications

A blood atlas of COVID-19 defines hallmarks of disease severity and specificity.

Treatment of severe COVID-19 is currently limited by clinical heterogeneity and incomplete description of specific immune biomarkers. We present here a comprehensive multi-omic blood atlas for patients with varying COVID-19 severity in an integrated comparison with influenza and sepsis patients versus healthy volunteers. We identify immune signatures and correlates of host response. Hallmarks of disease severity involved cells, their inflammatory mediators and networks, including progenitor cells and specific myeloid and lymphocyte subsets, features of the immune repertoire, acute phase response, metabolism, and coagulation. Persisting immune activation involving AP-1/p38MAPK was a specific feature of COVID-19. The plasma proteome enabled sub-phenotyping into patient clusters, predictive of severity and outcome. Systems-based integrative analyses including tensor and matrix decomposition of all modalities revealed feature groupings linked with severity and specificity compared to influenza and sepsis. Our approach and blood atlas will support future drug development, clinical trial design, and personalized medicine approaches for COVID-19

Circular Ultrasound Compounding by Designed Matrix Weighting

Spatial compounding is an imaging technique that aims to improve image contrast by combining partially decorrelated images acquired at different angles or positions. In conventional spatial compounding, data sets are combined with equal weighting. Here, we describe an alternative method of reconstruction using algorithms which weight the data based on a “quality” matrix. The quality matrix is derived from beam-forming characteristics. For each data set, the reliability of the data is assumed to vary spatially. By compounding the data based on the quality matrix, a complete image is formed. Here, we describe the construction of a rotational translation stage and tissue-mimicking phantoms that are used in conjunction with a commercial medical ultrasound machine to test our reconstruction algorithms. The new algorithms were found to increase the contrast-to-speckle ratio of simulated cysts and tumors by 61% from raw data, and to significantly increase edge definition of small embedded targets. The new method shows promise as a computationally efficient method of improving contrast and resolution in ultrasound images. The method should be particularly useful in breast imaging, where images from multiple angles can be acquired without interference from bone or air

An investigation into the effectiveness of organisational change management processes for implementing race equality post the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000

The subject of this research is institutional racism and how it can be addressed as an organisational change process post the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. The research was carried out using a range of methods within an over-arching constructivist approach to grounded theory in a single site case study. The case study was the Royal College of Psychiatrists which provided the researcher with full access to its organisational change programme for race equality. During the five year period of this programme the researcher was a participant observer and was able to use this role to make an in depth study of the organisational change processes. The constructivist grounded theory approach has been used with both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis to construct new theory about organisational change and institutional racism. This is an under-developed area of research and there are no examples in the literature of a similar study of this depth and duration. Soft Systems Methodology was used as a sense making tool by which the College's change programme was evaluated. The methodology reveals significant gaps between desirable and culturally feasible change. These gaps arise because standard approaches to organisational change based on systems thinking fail to address the discursive effects of institutional racism. The new contribution to knowledge provided by this research includes the identification of four dimensions of change by which institutional racism can be operationalised: organisational structure, professional boundary, group difference and personal agency. These dimensions of change are used to construct new theory about the discursive effects of institutional racism. The research concludes with the development of a new approach to organisational change based on these insights. This approach takes the professional field as the prime unit of change and uses communicative action as a means of overcoming the discursive effects of institutional racism

The problem with reproductive freedom:Procreation beyond procreators’ interests

Reproductive freedom plays a pivotal role in debates on the ethics of procreation. This moral principle protects people’s interests in procreative matters and allows them discretion over whether to have children, the number of children they have and, to a certain extent, the type of children they have. Reproductive freedom’s theoretical and political emphasis on people’s autonomy and well-being is grounded in an individual-centred framework for discussing the ethics of procreation. It protects procreators’ interests and significantly reduces the permissible grounds for interference by third parties. In this article I show that procreative decisions have far-reaching effects on the composition and size of the population. The upshot of considering these effects allows for the appreciation of the inadequacy of a framework that solely considers individual (i.e. procreators’) interests to discuss the ethics of procreation. To address such inadequacy, I assess costs and benefits of past and present proposals to reflect on procreation in such a way as to consider its far-reaching effects. I conclude by arguing that reproductive freedom should be defended as an imperfect but instrumentally necessary tool. This framing would enable those participating in debates on the ethics of procreative decisions to work towards an ethical framework that accounts for the cumulative effects of these decisions