Psychotextiles and their interaction with the human brain

This work crosses the boundaries between design and technology, and it focuses on pattern design, its relationship with neuroscience and how new SMART products can be developed from this interaction. What we see in our environment has significant influence on our emotion and behaviour. A simple shape and form is able to impact on our emotions. This research has explored the emotional effect evoked by different visual pattern characteristics. Two paired pattern categories were investigated: repeating/non-repeating and weak/intense. Repeating patterns contain regularly repeating elements and have symmetrical and continuous features; in contrast, non-repeating patterns contain irregularly repeating elements and have asymmetrical and discontinuous features. Weak patterns are faint, light and simple compared to intense patterns that are high in contrast, bold and complex. The emotional response to each type of pattern was investigated directly by brain and cardiac activities of twenty subjects by electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) measurements and by self-evaluation; the former is used to measure the brain wave activity, and the ECG to analyse the heart rate changes. These physiological signals were then analysed, interpreted and correlated with people’s self-evaluation of their emotional response to the pattern. It was found that repeating patterns produce a more pleasant sensation than non-repeating patterns, and intense patterns evoke a higher level of excitement than weak patterns. The significant changes in the emotional effects found by changes of pattern and the good correlation of the objective and subjective emotional measurements encouraged the implementation of pattern change by design and production of SMART fabrics. Four knitted fabrics with the ability of switching their pattern appearance from repeating to non-repeating, and from weak to intense have been successfully produced with a purpose made electrochromic composite yarn. The emotional effects of pattern-changing of these fabrics have been further investigated. The notion of influencing human emotion by engineering the pattern design and characteristics of SMART textiles is established and these fabrics are named Psychotextiles. Finally the event-related potential (ERP) investigation of the visual brain (no thinking, or memory) revealed that there may be an influence on human emotional effects in less than 1 second from the time of seeing the object; a time sufficiently short for these to be little analysis within the brain

Keyframe image processing of semantic 3D point clouds based on deep learning

With the rapid development of web technologies and the popularity of smartphones, users are uploading and sharing a large number of images every day. Therefore, it is a very important issue nowadays to enable users to discover exactly the information they need in the vast amount of data and to make it possible to integrate their large amount of image material efficiently. However, traditional content-based image retrieval techniques are based on images, and there is a “semantic gap” between this and people's understanding of images. To address this “semantic gap,” a keyframe image processing method for 3D point clouds is proposed, and based on this, a U-Net-based binary data stream semantic segmentation network is established for keyframe image processing of 3D point clouds in combination with deep learning techniques

Pathways to optimising antibiotic use in rural China:Identifying key determinants in community and clinical settings, a mixed methods study protocol

Paul I. Kadetz - ORCID: 0000-0002-2824-1856 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2824-1856Item not available in this repository.Introduction This study aims to investigate patterns of antibiotic treatment-seeking, describe current levels of and drivers for antibiotic use for common infections (respiratory tract and urinary tract infections) and test the feasibility of determining the prevalence and epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in rural areas of Anhui province, in order to identify potential interventions to promote antibiotic stewardship and reduce the burden of AMR in China. Methods and analysis We will conduct direct observations, structured and semistructured interviews in retail pharmacies, village clinics and township health centres to investigate treatment-seeking and antibiotic use. Clinical isolates from 1550 sputum, throat swab and urine samples taken from consenting patients at village and township health centres will be analysed to identify bacterial pathogens and ascertain antibiotic susceptibilities. Healthcare records will be surveyed for a subsample of those recruited to the study to assess their completeness and accuracy. Ethics and dissemination The full research protocol has been reviewed and approved by the Biomedical Ethics Committee of Anhui Medical University (reference number: 20170271). Participation of patients and doctors is voluntary and written informed consent is sought from all participants. Findings from the study will be disseminated through academic routes including peerreviewed publications and conference presentations, via tailored research summaries for health professionals, health service managers and policymakers and through an end of project impact workshop with local and regional stakeholders to identify key messages and priorities for action.This work was supported by the Newton Fund (UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)) under the UK-China AMR Partnership Initiative, grant number MR/P00756/1. RMK, CC, MH and IO all acknowledge support from the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Evaluation of Interventions at the University of Bristol.http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-0278199pubpub

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data