Development of a Pharmacodynamic Model of Murine Malaria

The rational design of antimalarial therapies has historically been compromised by a paucity of pharmacodynamic data contributing to resistance through deployment of suboptimal doses. This thesis demonstrates a modified P. berghei murine malaria model for collecting detailed in vivo pharmacodynamic data and novel in silico mathematical model enabling optimisation of dosing and combination therapy. These models contribute to preclinical knowledge and provide the potential to assist in the development of methods to optimise clinical treatment

Characterizing SWCNT Dispersion in Polymer Composites

The new wave of single wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) infused composites will yield structurally sound multifunctional nanomaterials. The SWCNT network requires thorough dispersion within the polymer matrix in order to maximize the benefits of the nanomaterial. However, before any nanomaterials can be used in aerospace applications a means of quality assurance and quality control must be certified. Quality control certification requires a means of quantification, however, the measurement protocol mandates a method of seeing the dispersion first. We describe here the new tools that we have developed and implemented to first be able to see carbon nanotubes in polymers and second to measure or quantify the dispersion of the nanotubes

Coping with psychological distress during COVID-19: a cautionary note of self-criticalness and personal resilience among healthcare workers

PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in immense pressure on healthcare workers (HCWs) and healthcare systems worldwide. The current multi-centre evaluation sought to explore the association between coping behaviours and levels of psychological distress among HCWs working during the initial onset of COVID-19. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Between April and July 2020 HCWs at three urban hospitals in England were invited to complete an online survey measuring personal and professional characteristics, psychological distress and coping. A principal component analysis (PCA) identified components of coping and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the relationship between components of coping and psychological distress. FINDINGS: A total of 2,254 HCWs participated (77% female, 67% white, 66% in clinical roles). Three components for coping were retained in the PCA analysis: external strategies, internal strategies and self-criticalness/substance use. SEM indicated that internally based coping was associated with lower levels of psychological distress, whereas externally based coping and self-criticalness were associated with greater psychological distress. The final model accounted for 35% of the variance in psychological distress. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This multi-centre evaluation provides unique insight into the level of psychological distress among HCWs during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) and associated coping strategies. Addressing self-criticalness and supporting cognitive-based internal coping strategies among HCWs may protect against prolonged exposure to psychological distress. Findings highlight the importance of developing a culture of professional resilience among this vital workforce as a whole rather than placing pressure on an individual's personal resilience

Factorization, Effective Field Theory, and B-> D^(*) X Decays

In this proceedings I review the soft-collinear effective theory (SCET), an effective theory for energetic particles. I also discuss factorization in exclusive and inclusive B-> D^(*)X decays, and tests which can help distinguish whether factorization is a result of a large energy limit, the large N_c limit, or a combination of the two.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figs, Invited plenary talk at the 5th International Conference on Hyperons, Charm, and Beauty Hadrons, Vancouver, June 200

Polytypic Genetic Programming

Program synthesis via heuristic search often requires a great deal of boilerplate code to adapt program APIs to the search mechanism. In addition, the majority of existing approaches are not type-safe: i.e. they can fail at runtime because the search mechanisms lack the strict type information often available to the compiler. In this article, we describe Polytope, a Scala framework that uses polytypic programming, a relatively recent advance in program abstraction. Polytope requires a minimum of boilerplate code and supports a form of strong-typing in which type rules are automatically enforced by the compiler, even for search operations such as mutation which are applied at run-time. By operating directly on language-native expressions, it provides an embeddable optimization procedure for existing code. We give a tutorial example of the specific polytypic approach we adopt and compare both runtime efficiency and required lines of code against the well-known EpochX GP framework, showing comparable performance in the former and the complete elimination of boilerplate for the latter

Nature tourism and Irish film

This article provides a historical overview and reading of seminal Irish film from the perspective of nature tourism. Within Irish cultural studies, tourism is frequently equated with an overly romantic image of the island, which has been used to sell the country abroad. However, using notions like the tourist gaze and taking on board influential debates around space/place, one can posit a more progressive environmental vision of nature and landscape in our readings of film

Multi-Functional BN-BN Composite

Multifunctional Boron Nitride nanotube-Boron Nitride (BN-BN) nanocomposites for energy transducers, thermal conductors, anti-penetrator/wear resistance coatings, and radiation hardened materials for harsh environments. An all boron-nitride structured BN-BN composite is synthesized. A boron nitride containing precursor is synthesized, then mixed with boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) to produce a composite solution which is used to make green bodies of different forms including, for example, fibers, mats, films, and plates. The green bodies are pyrolized to facilitate transformation into BN-BN composite ceramics. The pyrolysis temperature, pressure, atmosphere and time are controlled to produce a desired BN crystalline structure. The wholly BN structured materials exhibit excellent thermal stability, high thermal conductivity, piezoelectricity as well as enhanced toughness, hardness, and radiation shielding properties. By substituting with other elements into the original structure of the nanotubes and/or matrix, new nanocomposites (i.e., BCN, BCSiN ceramics) which possess excellent hardness, tailored photonic bandgap and photoluminescence, result

Four-nucleon contact interactions from holographic QCD

We calculate the low energy constants of four-nucleon interactions in an effective chiral Lagrangian in holographic QCD. We start with a D4-D8 model to obtain meson-nucleon interactions and then integrate out massive mesons to obtain the four-nucleon interactions in 4D. We end up with two low energy constants at the leading order and seven of them at the next leading order, which is consistent with the effective chiral Lagrangian. The values of the low energy constants are evaluated with the first five Kaluza-Klein resonances.Comment: 28 page

CP Violation and Flavour Mixing in the Standard Model -- 1996 Update

We review and update the constraints on the parameters of the quark flavour mixing matrix $V_{CKM}$ in the standard model and estimate the resulting CP asymmetries in $B$ decays, taking into account recent experimental and theoretical developments. With the updated CKM matrix we present the currently-allowed range of the ratios $|V_{td}/V_{ts}|$ and $|V_{td}/V_{ub}|$, as well as the standard model predictions for the \bsbsbar\ mixing parameter \xs (or, equivalently, \delms) and the quantities $\sin 2\alpha$, $\sin 2\beta$ and $\sin^2\gamma$, which characterize the CP-asymmetries in $B$-decays.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, 9 figures; updated to include latest experimental results on Bs-Bs(bar) mixin

Dispersive Bounds on the Shape of B -> D^(*) l nu Form Factors

Dispersive constraints on the shape of the form factors which describe the exclusive decays B -> D^(*) l nu are derived by fully exploiting spin symmetry in the ground-state doublet of heavy-light mesons. The analysis includes all twenty B^(*) -> D^(*) semileptonic form factors. Heavy-quark symmetry, with both short-distance and 1/m_Q corrections included, is used to provide relations between the form factors near zero recoil. Simple one-parameter functions are derived, which describe the form factors in the semileptonic region with an accuracy of better than 2%. The implications of our results for the determination of |V_cb| are discussed.Comment: 32 pages, 6 figure