Thermo-Physiological Comfort Assessment of Performance Cooling Fabrics in Medical Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Healthcare workers wear medical PPE during contagious disease outbreaks, but the protective garments often create a microclimate that causes thermo-physiological discomfort in the wearer. To investigate solutions for this problem, we tested inner-layer garments made of 3 cooling fabrics and 1 control fabric with no cooling properties. Eight male participants were recruited. They were asked to fill out a demographics survey; have their physical body dimensions measured; and participate in a 30-min exercise program while wearing a test garment made of each of the selected fabrics under the full ensemble of medical PPE. Critical biofeedback was monitored along with subjective thermal comfort. This study evaluated the cooling effectiveness of the performance fabrics, and identified effective cooling fabrics that could be used in medical PPE applications. This study was conducted in a lab setting, and it will be desirable to verify the study findings with human subjects in real medical fields

Social immunity in the honey bee: do immune-challenged workers enter enforced or self-imposed exile?

Animals living in large colonies are especially vulnerable to infectious pathogens and may therefore have evolved additional defences. Eusocial insects supplement their physiological immune systems with ‘social immunity’, a set of adaptations that impedes the entrance, establishment, and spread of pathogens in the colony. We here find that honey bee workers (Apis mellifera) that had been experimentally immune-challenged with bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) often exited the hive and subsequently died; some individuals were dragged out by other workers, while others appeared to leave voluntarily. In a second experiment, we found that healthy workers treated with surface chemicals from LPS-treated bees were evicted from the hive more often than controls, indicating that immune-challenged bees produce chemical cues or signals that elicit their eviction. Thirdly, we observed pairs of bees under lab conditions, and found that pairs spent more time apart when one member of the pair had received LPS, relative to controls. Our findings suggest that immune-challenged bees altruistically banish themselves, and that workers evict sick individuals which they identify using olfactory cues, putatively because of (kin) selection to limit the spread of pathogens within colonies

TennisSense: a multi-sensory approach to performance analysis in tennis

The TennisSense Project, that is run in collaboration with Tennis Ireland, aims to create the infrastructure required to digitally capture physical, tactical and physiological data from tennis players in order to assist in their coaching and improved performance. This study examined the potential for using Wireless Inertial Monitoring Units (WIMU) to model the biomechanical aspects of the tennis stroke and for developing coaching tools that utilise this information. There is significant evidence in the current literature that the ability to accurately capture and model the accelerations, angular velocities and orientations involved in the tennis stroke could facilitate a major step forward in the application of biomechanics to tennis coachin

Wearable wireless inertial measurement for sports applications

The advent of MEMS inertial sensors has reduced the size, cost and power requirements of 6 Degrees-of-Freedom inertial measurement systems to a level where their use can be considered for wearable wireless monitoring devices. Many applications for such Wearable Wireless Inertial Measurement Units exist in the area of sports and sports science. Such a system would be critical in providing data for the analysis of the kinematic motion data of an athlete - to characterise a player’s technique or track progress and provide accurate, quantitative feedback to player and coach in near real time. A small, lightweight and low power device with the ability to sense the full range of human motion at a high sampling rate is required for such applications. It must also be robust, well sealed and comfortable to wear. Further development and miniaturisation of such devices coupled with progress in energy scavenging may lead to their use in other areas and their near ubiquity, with the potential to be embedded within clothes, buildings, materials, objects and people for health monitoring, location tracking and other purpose

Efficient Simultaneous Deployment of Multiple Lightweight Authenticated Ciphers

Cryptographic protections are ubiquitous in information technology, including the emerging Internet of Things (IoT). As a result of technology migration to a resource-challenged landscape and new threats to cryptographic security, governments and industry are exploring new cryptographic algorithms. While new standards will emerge, however, old standards will not disappear for the time being. It is therefore important to explore platforms where multiple cryptographic deployments can be dynamically interchanged and even share resources. In this research we build on the Development Package for the Applications Programming Interface for Hardware Implementations of Lightweight Cryptography (DP API HW LWC). In this construct, developers design hardware implementations of authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) inside a cryptographic core (CryptoCore) encapsulated by input/output utilities. While CryptoCore is intended for single register-transfer level (RTL) implementations, we install a custom-designed soft core microprocessor inside CryptoCore to run underlying block ciphers, along with a shell to facilitate AEAD processing. Through dynamic loading and execution of block ciphers on the core, we demonstrate a single LWC deployment on an Artix-7 FPGA, capable of executing 3 NIST LWC Standardization Process Round 2 AEAD candidates (COMET-AES, COMET-CHAM and GIFT-COFB) using only 55% of the combined area of separate RTL implementations of the same ciphers

Sansanmycin natural product analogues as potent and selective anti-mycobacterials that inhibit lipid I biosynthesis.

Tuberculosis (TB) is responsible for enormous global morbidity and mortality, and current treatment regimens rely on the use of drugs that have been in use for more than 40 years. Owing to widespread resistance to these therapies, new drugs are desperately needed to control the TB disease burden. Herein, we describe the rapid synthesis of analogues of the sansanmycin uridylpeptide natural products that represent promising new TB drug leads. The compounds exhibit potent and selective inhibition of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the etiological agent of TB, both in vitro and intracellularly. The natural product analogues were also shown to be nanomolar inhibitors of Mtb phospho-MurNAc-pentapeptide translocase, the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of lipid I in mycobacteria. This work lays the foundation for the development of uridylpeptide natural product analogues as new TB drug candidates that operate through the inhibition of peptidoglycan biosynthesis

Blood pressure in frail older adults: associations with cardiovascular outcomes and all-cause mortality

Background: Blood pressure (BP) management in frail older people is challenging. An randomised controlled trial of largely non-frail older people found cardiovascular and mortality benefit with systolic (S) BP target <120 mmHg. However, all-cause mortality by attained BP in routine care in frail adults aged above 75 is unclear. Objectives: To estimate observational associations between baseline BP and mortality/cardiovascular outcomes in a primary-care population aged above 75, stratified by frailty. Methods: Prospective observational analysis using electronic health records (clinical practice research datalink, n = 415,980). We tested BP associations with cardiovascular events and mortality using competing and Cox proportional-hazards models respectively (follow-up ≤10 years), stratified by baseline electronic frailty index (eFI: fit (non-frail), mild, moderate, severe frailty), with sensitivity analyses on co-morbidity, cardiovascular risk and BP trajectory. Results: Risks of cardiovascular outcomes increased with SBPs >150 mmHg. Associations with mortality varied between non-frail <85 and frail 75-84-year-olds and all above 85 years. SBPs above the 130-139-mmHg reference were associated with lower mortality risk, particularly in moderate to severe frailty or above 85 years (e.g. 75-84 years: 150-159 mmHg Hazard Ratio (HR) mortality compared to 130-139: non-frail HR = 0.94, 0.92-0.97; moderate/severe frailty HR = 0.84, 0.77-0.92). SBP <130 mmHg and Diastolic(D)BP <80 mmHg were consistently associated with excess mortality, independent of BP trajectory toward the end of life. Conclusions: In representative primary-care patients aged ≥75, BP <130/80 was associated with excess mortality. Hypertension was not associated with increased mortality at ages above 85 or at ages 75-84 with moderate/severe frailty, perhaps due to complexities of co-existing morbidities. The priority given to aggressive BP reduction in frail older people requires further evaluation.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the Publisher URL to access it via the publisher's site.J.M. is funded by a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Doctoral Research Fellowship DRF-2014-07-177 for this research project. This paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.published version, accepted version (12 month embargo), submitted versio

Catching Element Formation In The Act

Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic photons in nature to address some of the most pressing puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It encompasses a wide range of objects and phenomena: stars, supernovae, novae, neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, nucleosynthesis, the interstellar medium, cosmic rays and relativistic-particle acceleration, and the evolution of galaxies. MeV gamma-rays provide a unique probe of nuclear processes in astronomy, directly measuring radioactive decay, nuclear de-excitation, and positron annihilation. The substantial information carried by gamma-ray photons allows us to see deeper into these objects, the bulk of the power is often emitted at gamma-ray energies, and radioactivity provides a natural physical clock that adds unique information. New science will be driven by time-domain population studies at gamma-ray energies. This science is enabled by next-generation gamma-ray instruments with one to two orders of magnitude better sensitivity, larger sky coverage, and faster cadence than all previous gamma-ray instruments. This transformative capability permits: (a) the accurate identification of the gamma-ray emitting objects and correlations with observations taken at other wavelengths and with other messengers; (b) construction of new gamma-ray maps of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies where extended regions are distinguished from point sources; and (c) considerable serendipitous science of scarce events -- nearby neutron star mergers, for example. Advances in technology push the performance of new gamma-ray instruments to address a wide set of astrophysical questions.Comment: 14 pages including 3 figure

Future Experiences: Sustainable Development and the Global South

The Sustainable Development and the Global South project was jointly conceived by the Innovation School at Glasgow School of Art in partnership with the Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (SFA), and the University of Glasgow. Graduating final year BDes Product Design students from the Innovation School were presented with a challenge-based project to produce a vision of the future based on current trends that relate to Sustainable Development work and the Global South. This project involved working closely with researchers, academics and professionals specialising in human geography, education, health, environment, engineering, cultural practice and community engagement who are part of the Sustainable Futures in Africa Network which includes a Scottish hub, led from the University of Glasgow. Included in the network was a representative from an NGO that builds schools in Malawi, an entrepreneur who runs an ethical clothing company that partners with producers in the Global South, a senior governance officer from the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID), a research network administrator, and international graduate students from Africa based at Scottish institutions. In addition to the SFA, external experts from design studio AndThen and GOODD design consultancy were engaged. The objective of this project was to investigate, in both analytical and speculative ways, future forms and functions of Sustainable Development work in relation to the Global South in ten years from now, to develop future scenarios and design the artefacts, services and the experiences associated with these future visions. On completion of the project and learning experience it was intended that the students would be able to recognise and articulate the impact and sustainability of their design propositions, consider the life-cycle of their proposals and the values these might create for the intended users, communities and contexts. The project was completed in January 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was just beginning its spread around the world. This unprecedented catastrophe reinforced the importance of supporting those most in need – the citizens of developing regions in the Global South. In April 2020, the heads of all the UN’s major agencies issued an open letter warning of the risks the virus posed to the world’s most vulnerable countries. It called on wealthier nations to increase funding and help to tackle issues such as the cessation of aid as a result of cancelled flights and disrupted supply routes. These and many other concerns highlighted during the crisis are among the topics explored in this project, which feels even more relevant and urgent than when it was initiated in the summer of 2019. One of the most significant societal shifts currently taking place within the field of sustainable development work is its transformation from being understood as a process of growth or, at its most benign, poverty alleviation, to one of community empowerment and civic participation. The public’s role is developing beyond once-passive community members and recipients of aid, into stakeholders valued for their local knowledge, lived experiences, participation in development projects, and contribution towards policy-making and decision-making. This new dynamic is changing the traditional North-South relationship and holds the potential to challenge the geopolitical hegemony of International Development. The impetus for this shift is a decolonial, collaborative approach to development, research and practice; increased local empowerment, and sustainable solutions to problems that are co-created in context with those affected by and affecting the issue in question. This project asked students to consider what happens in this global landscape ten years from now where Sustainable Development has evolved to the extent that new forms of work and communities of practice transform how people engage, learn and interact with each other, with stakeholders and with the global community around them. The brief gave students the opportunity to explore the underlying complexities regarding sustainable futures, the post-colonial dynamic between ‘norths’ and ‘souths’, post-capitalism and human agency, to envision a future world context, develop it as an experiential exhibit, and produce the designed products, services and experiences for the people who might live and work within it. The project was divided into two sections: The first was a collaborative stage where groups of students were assigned a specific domain to collectively research one aspect of the project challenge, these domains included; Health, Energy, Mobility, Economies, Education, Societal Structures and Environment. Each of these domains were examined through the lenses of Social, Technological, Economic, Ethical, Educational, Values, Political, Legal and Ecological (STEEEVPLE) and were tailored in use, as appropriate per domain. The groups focused on researching and exploring their specific domain and gathering as much information and understanding while working with the external experts to further their knowledge. This group stage culminated in a series of Future World exhibits which tangibly manifest the cohort’s collective knowledge and collaborative understanding of what the future could look like in 10 years from now, after exploring the possible consequences of current actions. The second stage saw students explore their individual response to the Future World that had been created in the first stage. Each student developed their own response to the research by iteratively creating a design outcome that was appropriate to the subject matter. This culminated in each student producing a designed product, service or system and a visual communication of the future experience which they had created. A visual summary of the journey and stages (Project Journey Map) is included within the repository and outlines the collaborative process of designing and the innovative nature of the project’s pedagogical model. The project aims to reveal and address the emerging possibilities collaboratively created by Sustainable Development professionals and designers interacting and learning from each other, to present preferable futures which reveal socio-ecological innovations in development work with the Global South in the near future. The deposited materials are arranged as follows: Readme files - two readme files relate to stage one and stage two of the project as outlined above. Project Journey Map - gives a visual overview of the pedagogical structure and timeline of the project. Data folders - the data folders for stage one of the project are named by the domains through which each group explored possible futures. The data folders for stage two of the project are named for the individual students who conducted the work

A genetic programming approach to development of clinical prediction models: A case study in symptomatic cardiovascular disease

BACKGROUND:Genetic programming (GP) is an evolutionary computing methodology capable of identifying complex, non-linear patterns in large data sets. Despite the potential advantages of GP over more typical, frequentist statistical approach methods, its applications to survival analyses are rare, at best. The aim of this study was to determine the utility of GP for the automatic development of clinical prediction models. METHODS:We compared GP against the commonly used Cox regression technique in terms of the development and performance of a cardiovascular risk score using data from the SMART study, a prospective cohort study of patients with symptomatic cardiovascular disease. The composite endpoint was cardiovascular death, non-fatal stroke, and myocardial infarction. A total of 3,873 patients aged 19-82 years were enrolled in the study 1996-2006. The cohort was split 70:30 into derivation and validation sets. The derivation set was used for development of both GP and Cox regression models. These models were then used to predict the discrete hazards at t = 1, 3, and 5 years. The predictive ability of both models was evaluated in terms of their risk discrimination and calibration using the validation set. RESULTS:The discrimination of both models was comparable. At time points t = 1, 3, and 5 years the C-index was 0.59, 0.69, 0.64 and 0.66, 0.70, 0.70 for the GP and Cox regression models respectively. At the same time points, the calibration of both models, which was assessed using calibration plots and the generalization of the Hosmer-Lemeshow test statistic, was also comparable, but with the Cox model being better calibrated to the validation data. CONCLUSION:Using empirical data, we demonstrated that a prediction model developed automatically by GP has predictive ability comparable to that of manually tuned Cox regression. The GP model was more complex, but it was developed in a fully automated way and comprised fewer covariates. Furthermore, it did not require the expertise normally needed for its derivation, thereby alleviating the knowledge elicitation bottleneck. Overall, GP demonstrated considerable potential as a method for the automated development of clinical prediction models for diagnostic and prognostic purposes