Railway track component condition monitoring using optical fibre Bragg grating sensors

The use of optical fibre Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensors to monitor the condition of safety critical rail components is investigated. Fishplates, switchblades and stretcher bars on the Stagecoach Supertram tramway in Sheffield in the UK have been instrumented with arrays of FBG sensors. The dynamic strain signatures induced by the passage of a tram over the instrumented components have been analysed to identify features indicative of changes in the condition of the components

Dog Burials Associated with Human Burials in the West Indies during the Early Pre-Columbian Ceramic Age (500 BC-600 AD)

Across the Caribbean, the widespread presence of canine remains at archaeological sites from the Saladoid period raises questions about the role of “man’s best friend.” Dog (Canis familiaris) remains have been found located in both refuse middens and burials adjacent to human graves in a number of sites in the French Antilles and Barbuda, West Indies. This paper will critically examine dog remains and discuss the varied duality of the dog’s role in the Saladoid world: from food source to lifelong companion. The importance of dogs within Amerindian sites from Saint Martin, the Guadeloupe archipelago, Martinique and Barbuda will be explored from a zooarchaeological perspective, concluding with a critical discussion of changes in cultural patterns, as seen through the decline in dog remains during the Troumassoid and Suazoid period at the sites in the French Antilles. Résumé Sépultures de chiens associées à des sépultures humaines dans les Petites Antilles à l’Âge du Néoindien ancien (500 av. – 600 ap. J.-C.). Dans les Antilles, la présence généralisée de restes de chiens sur les sites de la période céramique ancienne Saladoïde soulève des questions sur le rôle de ce « meilleur ami de l’homme ». En effet, des chiens (Canis familiaris) ont été trouvés aussi bien dans des zones de rejets, qu’enterrés aux côtés de sépultures humaines dans un certain nombre de sites des Petites Antilles. Ce document examinera ces restes de chiens de façon critique et décrira les morphologies particulières des chiens des sites amérindiens de l’île de Saint-Martin, l\u27archipel de la Guadeloupe, la Martinique et de l’île de Barbuda, dans une perspective archéozoologique. Une discussion critique portera sur l\u27évolution des changements des modèles culturels, comme celui de la chute drastique des chiens enterrés pendant les périodes archéologiques plus tardives, Troumassoïde et Suazoïde, des sites des Antilles françaises. Enfin, la discussion portera sur la dualité du rôle du chien dans le monde Saladoïde, à la fois source de nourriture et compagnon de vie

A study of professional awareness using immersive virtual reality: the responses of general practitioners to child safeguarding concerns

The art of picking up signs that a child may be suffering from abuse at home is one of those skills that cannot easily be taught, given its dependence on a range of non-cognitive abilities. It is also difficult to study, given the number of factors that may interfere with this skill in a real-life, professional setting. An immersive virtual reality environment provides a way round these difficulties. In this study, we recruited 64 general practitioners (GPs), with different levels of experience. Would this level of experience have any impact on general practitioners’ ability to pick up child-safeguarding concerns? Would more experienced GPs find it easier to pick up subtle (rather than obvious) signs of child-safeguarding concerns? Our main measurement was the quality of the note left by the GP at the end of the virtual consultation: we had a panel of 10 (all experienced in safeguarding) rate the note according to the extent to which they were able to identify and take the necessary steps required in relation to the child safeguarding concerns. While the level of professional experience was not shown to make any difference to a GP’s ability to pick up those concerns, the parent’s level of aggressive behavior toward the child did. We also manipulated the level of cognitive load (reflected in a complex presentation of the patient’s medical condition): while cognitive load did have some impact upon GPs in the “obvious cue” condition (parent behaving particularly aggressively), this effect fell short of significance. Furthermore, our results also suggest that GPs who are less stressed, less neurotic, more agreeable and extroverted tend to be better at raising potential child abuse issues in their notes. These results not only point at the considerable potential of virtual reality as a training tool, they also highlight fruitful avenues for further research, as well as potential strategies to support GP’s in their dealing with highly sensitive, emotionally charged situations

Molecular dynamics simulations and in silico peptide ligand screening of the Elk-1 ETS domain

Background: The Elk-1 transcription factor is a member of a group of proteins called ternary complex factors, which serve as a paradigm for gene regulation in response to extracellular signals. Its deregulation has been linked to multiple human diseases including the development of tumours. The work herein aims to inform the design of potential peptidomimetic compounds that can inhibit the formation of the Elk-1 dimer, which is key to Elk-1 stability. We have conducted molecular dynamics simulations of the Elk-1 ETS domain followed by virtual screening. Results: We show the ETS dimerisation site undergoes conformational reorganisation at the a1b1 loop. Through exhaustive screening of di- and tri-peptide libraries against a collection of ETS domain conformations representing the dynamics of the loop, we identified a series of potential binders for the Elk-1 dimer interface. The di-peptides showed no particular preference toward the binding site; however, the tri-peptides made specific interactions with residues: Glu17, Gln18 and Arg49 that are pivotal to the dimer interface. Conclusions: We have shown molecular dynamics simulations can be combined with virtual peptide screening to obtain an exhaustive docking protocol that incorporates dynamic fluctuations in a receptor. Based on our findings, we suggest experimental binding studies to be performed on the 12 SILE ranked tri-peptides as possible compounds for the design of inhibitors of Elk-1 dimerisation. It would also be reasonable to consider the score ranked tri-peptides as a comparative test to establish whether peptide size is a determinant factor of binding to the ETS domain

Genetic Markers of Adult Obesity Risk Are Associated with Greater Early Infancy Weight Gain and Growth

Background: Genome-wide studies have identified several common genetic variants that are robustly associated with adult obesity risk. Exploration of these genotype associations in children may provide insights into the timing of weight changes leading to adult obesity.Methods and Findings: Children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort were genotyped for ten genetic variants previously associated with adult BMI. Eight variants that showed individual associations with childhood BMI (in/near: FTO, MC4R, TMEM18, GNPDA2, KCTD15, NEGR1, BDNF, and ETV5) were used to derive an "obesity-risk-allele score'' comprising the total number of risk alleles (range: 2-15 alleles) in each child with complete genotype data (n = 7,146). Repeated measurements of weight, length/height, and body mass index from birth to age 11 years were expressed as standard deviation scores (SDS). Early infancy was defined as birth to age 6 weeks, and early infancy failure to thrive was defined as weight gain between below the 5th centile, adjusted for birth weight. The obesity-risk-allele score showed little association with birth weight (regression coefficient: 0.01 SDS per allele; 95% CI 0.00-0.02), but had an apparently much larger positive effect on early infancy weight gain (0.119 SDS/allele/year; 0.023-0.216) than on subsequent childhood weight gain (0.004 SDS/allele/year; 0.004-0.005). The obesity-risk-allele score was also positively associated with early infancy length gain (0.158 SDS/allele/year; 0.032-0.284) and with reduced risk of early infancy failure to thrive (odds ratio = 0.92 per allele; 0.86-0.98; p = 0.009).Conclusions: The use of robust genetic markers identified greater early infancy gains in weight and length as being on the pathway to adult obesity risk in a contemporary birth cohort

Big data, qualitative style:A breadth‑and‑depth method for working with large amounts of secondary qualitative data

Archival storage of data sets from qualitative studies presents opportunities for combining small-scale data sets for reuse/secondary analysis. In this paper, we outline our approach to combining multiple qualitative data sets and explain why working with a corpus of 'big qual' data is a worthwhile endeavour. We present a new approach that iteratively combines recursive surface thematic mapping and in-depth interpretive work. Our breadth-and-depth method involves a series of steps: 1) surveying archived data sets to create a new assemblage of data; 2) recursive surface thematic mapping in dialogue with 3) preliminary ‘test pit’ analysis, remapping and repetition of preliminary analysis; and 4) in-depth analysis of the type that is familiar to most qualitative researchers. In so doing, we show how qualitative researchers can conduct ‘big qual’ analysis while retaining the distinctive order of knowledge about social processes that is the hallmark of rigorous qualitative research, with its integrity of attention to nuanced context and detail