The Utilization of Sports for Peace and Unity in Society

There are many ongoing conflicts in the world. Many methods to end these conflicts have been attempted with various levels of success. A United Nations study in 2003 determined that sports should be increasingly used as a method to bring about peace in the world. This finding can be supported when looking at the ways sports united divided nations and, at times, brought unity among nations. Along with this, sports have seen a dramatic rise in popularity due to the revolution of technology and the rise of media. As the media and technology continue to develop, sports will continue to grow alongside them as worldwide phenomena. Thus, sport should be used by nations and communities as a strong, reliable option to resolve conflicts and bring about peace and unity

Convex Integration Arising in the Modelling of Shape-Memory Alloys: Some Remarks on Rigidity, Flexibility and Some Numerical Implementations

We study convex integration solutions in the context of the modelling of shape-memory alloys. The purpose of the article is two-fold, treating both rigidity and flexibility properties: Firstly, we relate the maximal regularity of convex integration solutions to the presence of lower bounds in variational models with surface energy. Hence, variational models with surface energy could be viewed as a selection mechanism allowing for or excluding convex integration solutions. Secondly, we present the first numerical implementations of convex integration schemes for the model problem of the geometrically linearised two-dimensional hexagonal-to-rhombic phase transformation. We discuss and compare the two algorithms from [RZZ16] and [RZZ17].Comment: 35 pages, 14 figure

ModDrop: adaptive multi-modal gesture recognition

We present a method for gesture detection and localisation based on multi-scale and multi-modal deep learning. Each visual modality captures spatial information at a particular spatial scale (such as motion of the upper body or a hand), and the whole system operates at three temporal scales. Key to our technique is a training strategy which exploits: i) careful initialization of individual modalities; and ii) gradual fusion involving random dropping of separate channels (dubbed ModDrop) for learning cross-modality correlations while preserving uniqueness of each modality-specific representation. We present experiments on the ChaLearn 2014 Looking at People Challenge gesture recognition track, in which we placed first out of 17 teams. Fusing multiple modalities at several spatial and temporal scales leads to a significant increase in recognition rates, allowing the model to compensate for errors of the individual classifiers as well as noise in the separate channels. Futhermore, the proposed ModDrop training technique ensures robustness of the classifier to missing signals in one or several channels to produce meaningful predictions from any number of available modalities. In addition, we demonstrate the applicability of the proposed fusion scheme to modalities of arbitrary nature by experiments on the same dataset augmented with audio.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Mathematical Modelling of Turning Delays in Swarm Robotics

We investigate the effect of turning delays on the behaviour of groups of differential wheeled robots and show that the group-level behaviour can be described by a transport equation with a suitably incorporated delay. The results of our mathematical analysis are supported by numerical simulations and experiments with e-puck robots. The experimental quantity we compare to our revised model is the mean time for robots to find the target area in an unknown environment. The transport equation with delay better predicts the mean time to find the target than the standard transport equation without delay.Comment: Submitted to the IMA Journal of Applied Mathematic

Spin-Photon Entangling Diode

We propose a semiconductor device that can electrically generate entangled electron spin-photon states, providing a building block for entanglement of distant spins. The device consists of a p-i-n diode structure that incorporates a coupled double quantum dot. We show that electronic control of the diode bias and local gating allow for the generation of single photons that are entangled with a robust quantum memory based on the electron spins. Practical performance of this approach to controlled spin-photon entanglement is analyzed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; figures update

Potential of Klebsiella pneumoniae Phage Depolymerases as Antimicrobial Agents.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a pathogenic Gram-negative bacterium which is prevalent in hospitals and infects immune-compromised individuals. It primarily causes pneumonia but also infects the urinary system and the liver. Due to overuse and misuse of antibiotics, multidrug resistant strains have arisen that threaten the effectiveness of last-line antibiotics. One of the most prevalent being sequence type (ST)258 strains which mainly impacts Europe and North America. Bacteriophage (phage) are viruses that infect bacteria and are currently under scrutiny as antimicrobial agents to increase the efficacy of antibiotics against resistant pathogens or take over entirely against those that no longer can be treated by antibiotics. They produce depolymerase enzymes to hydrolyse the capsular polysaccharide of the bacterium allowing the phage to contact the bacterial cell surface. In this study seven phage which infect ST258 have been isolated and eight putative depolymerase genes identified. The aim of this study is the expression of these proteins and the characterizing and comparison of their efficacy at treating four K. pneumoniae isolates. One ‘high’ and one ‘low’ biofilm producer from each group, of the serotypes KL106 and KL107 within the multi locus sequence type (MSLT) group ST258 and comparison of the depolymerases to the whole virion. The production and isolation of these depolymerases was not achieved in this study, but the efficacy of the whole virion was tested in both planktonic and biofilm assays. KP5 was the only 8 phage to show the ability to reduce biofilm growth in its host after 24h and to infect all hosts in the planktonic assay. Future work should include the production and characterization of the depolymerase enzymes. Then the most appropriate could be used in a cocktail or in conjunction with antibiotics and tested in vitro and in vivo

Expression Analysis and Target Validation of Genes Encoding Cement Proteins in Amblyomma americanum Tick Saliva

Without feeding success, ticks can neither cause damage nor transmit disease agents to their hosts. From this perspective a deeper understanding of tick feeding physiology has been advocated. Hard ticks such as Amblyomma americanum are adapted to complete feeding over several days. A combination of key biological adaptations allows the tick to complete feeding without the host detecting the presence of the tick. One of these adaptations is the deposition of the tick cement cone, which glues tick mouthparts into the host’s skin tissue and prevents the host from grooming off the tick. Thus, understanding the molecular basis of how the tick cement cone is formed and deposited could lead to the discovery of important targets for development of methods against tick feeding and transmission of disease agents. One of the lines of research in the lab is to understand tick cement formation and deposition through discovery of the protein composition of the tick cement cone. Prior to this thesis research, a colleague in the lab utilized LC-MS/MS sequencing to identify 85 proteins in tick cement that was recovered from manually detached adult Amblyomma americanum ticks. This thesis determined the functional roles of glycine-rich proteins (n=13) of the 85 tick cement proteins in A. americanum tick feeding. This was motivated by published chemical analysis studies that demonstrated that the majority of proteins in the tick cement cone are characterized by high content of glycine amino acid residues. Data in this thesis research indicates that abundance of encoding mRNA of the glycine-rich proteins increase with blood meal feeding with majority of these proteins being associated with tick feeding events through five days feeding. Of significant interest, the transcription of some of the encoding mRNAs coincided with the developmental period when ticks attained appetence, implying that these could represent the tick's molecular preparation to start feeding. Additionally, RNAi silencing of some of the encoding mRNAs affected tick attachment onto host skin as indicated by apparent inflammation and subsequent bleeding around tick attachment sites. In conclusion, this thesis has contributed to our understanding of the molecular basis of tick cement physiology