Tolkien and Dogs, Just Dogs: in Metaphor and Simile

Examines dogs in Tolkien’s fiction; not just the actual dogs that appear in a wide range of his works, but also the use of dog-imagery in simile, metaphor, and character description, particularly the complex pattern of references and allusions Tolkien uses in the depictions of Sam, Gollum, and Wormtongue

Tolkien\u27s Linguistic Application of the Seventh Deadly Sin: Lust

A look at how Tolkien developed the concept of the sin of lust in Middle-earth, giving it his own unique but linguistically-based interpretation as an intensifier of other sins, rather than using its more common, purely sexual, modern interpretation

What does global mean temperature tell us about local climate?

The subject of climate feedbacks focuses attention on global mean surface air temperature (GMST) as the key metric of climate change. But what does knowledge of past and future GMST tell us about the climate of specific regions? In the context of the ongoing UNFCCC process, this is an important question for policy-makers as well as for scientists. The answer depends on many factors, including the mechanisms causing changes, the timescale of the changes, and the variables and regions of interest. This paper provides a review and analysis of the relationship between changes in GMST and changes in local climate, first in observational records and then in a range of climate model simulations, which are used to interpret the observations. The focus is on decadal timescales, which are of particular interest in relation to recent and near-future anthropogenic climate change. It is shown that GMST primarily provides information about forced responses, but that understanding and quantifying internal variability is essential to projecting climate and climate impacts on regional-to-local scales. The relationship between local forced responses and GMST is often linear but may be nonlinear, and can be greatly complicated by competition between different forcing factors. Climate projections are limited not only by uncertainties in the signal of climate change but also by uncertainties in the characteristics of real-world internal variability. Finally, it is shown that the relationship between GMST and local climate provides a simple approach to climate change detection, and a useful guide to attribution studies

The Effects of Multiple Exemplar Instruction on the Induction of Naming in Older Children and Young Adults Diagnosed with Autism

The current project included both conceptual and empirical findings in the field of naming. Conceptually, naming appears to be a generic term that describes several sub-components. The current research focused on one of these sub-components, Full Incidental Naming (FIN), defined as the emergence of untaught listener behaviour and untaught speaker behaviour following an incidental language experience or a match-to-sample (MTS) procedure. Empirically, the initial purpose of the current research was to test the effectiveness of Multiple Exemplar Instruction (MEI) to induce FIN in older children and young adults diagnosed with autism. Because the results of the initial experiments were not as expected, some variations to the experimental procedures were implemented. An analysis of the results of the initial experiments raised additional questions about the measurement of FIN. A series of nine experiments were conducted: six with older children and young adults diagnosed with autism, and three with neuro-typical fully verbal adults. The three experiments with adults focused on the measurement of FIN and the results of these experiments determined the experimental procedure utilised in later experiments. This adaptation to the experimental procedure included conducting an additional MTS session prior to each test for FIN. The results showed that MEI did not reliably induce FIN in older children and young adults diagnosed with autism. Instead, the repetition of the test for FIN, with an additional MTS procedure prior to each test, potentially led to the inducement of FIN. Recommendations are made for future research based on these findings

Development of food photographs for use with children aged 18 months to 16 years:comparison against weighed food diaries – The Young Person’s Food Atlas (UK)

Traditional dietary assessment methods, used in the UK, such as weighed food diaries impose a large participant burden, often resulting in difficulty recruiting representative samples and underreporting of energy intakes. One approach to reducing the burden placed on the participant is to use portion size assessment tools to obtain an estimate of the amount of food consumed, removing the need to weigh all foods. An age range specific food atlas was developed for use in assessing children’s dietary intakes. The foods selected and portion sizes depicted were derived from intakes recorded during the UK National Diet and Nutrition Surveys of children aged 1.5 to 16 years. Estimates of food portion sizes using the food atlas were compared against 4-day weighed intakes along with in-school / nursery observations, by the research team. Interviews were conducted with parents the day after completion of the diary, and for children aged 4 to 16 years, also with the child. Mean estimates of portion size consumed were within 7% of the weight of food recorded in the weighed food diary. The limits of agreement were wide indicating high variability of estimates at the individual level but the precision increased with increasing age. For children 11 years and over, agreement with weighed food diaries, was as good as that of their parents in terms of total weight of food consumed and of intake of energy and key nutrients. The age appropriate food photographs offer an alternative to weighed intakes for dietary assessment with children

Modelling bispecific monoclonal antibody interaction with two cell membrane targets indicates the importance of surface diffusion

We have developed a mathematical framework for describing a bispecific monoclonal antibody interaction with two independent membrane-bound targets that are expressed on the same cell surface. The bispecific antibody in solution binds either of the two targets first, and then cross-links with the second one whilst on the cell surface, subject to rate-limiting lateral diffusion step within the lifetime of the monovalently engaged antibody-antigen complex. At experimental densities, only a small fraction of the free targets is expected to lie within the reach of the antibody binding sites at any time. Using ordinary differential equation and Monte Carlo simulation-based models, we validated this approach against an independently published anti-CD4/CD70 DuetMab experimental data set. As a result of dimensional reduction, the cell surface reaction is expected to be so rapid that, in agreement with the experimental data, no monovalently bound bispecific antibody binary complexes accumulate until cross-linking is complete. The dissociation of the bispecific antibody from the ternary cross-linked complex is expected to be significantly slower than that from either of the monovalently bound variants. We estimate that the effective affinity of the bivalently bound bispecific antibody is enhanced for about four orders of magnitude over that of the monovalently bound species. This avidity enhancement allows for the highly specific binding of anti-CD4/CD70 DuetMab to the cells that are positive for both target antigens over those that express only one or the other We suggest that the lateral diffusion of target antigens in the cell membrane also plays a key role in the avidity effect of natural antibodies and other bivalent ligands in their interactions with their respective cell surface receptors

A comparative study of water perfusion catheters and microtip transducer catheters for urethral pressure measurements

The aim of this study was to compare the maximum urethral closure pressure (MUCP) measures with two different techniques: water perfused catheter and microtip transducer catheters with respect to reproducibility and comparability for urethral pressure measurements. Eighteen women with stress urinary incontinence had repeat static urethral pressure profilometry on a different day using a dual microtip transducer and water perfused catheter (Brown and Wickham). The investigators were blinded to the results of the other. The microtip measurements were taken in the 45° upright sitting position with the patient at rest at a bladder capacity of 250ml using an 8 Fr Gaeltec® double microtip transducer withdrawn at 1mm/s, and the transducer was orientated in the three o'clock position. Three different measures were taken for each patient. Three water perfusion measurements were performed with the patient at rest in the 45° upright position at a bladder capacity of 250ml using an 8 Fr BARD dual lumen catheter withdrawn at 1mm/s. The mean water perfusion MUCP measure was 26.1cm H20, significantly lower than the mean microtip measure of 35.7cm H20. The correlation coefficient comparing each water perfusion measurement with the other water perfusion measures in the same patient was excellent, at 0.95 (p = 0.01). Correlation coefficient comparing each microtip measure with the other microtip measure in the same patient was also good, ranging from 0.70 to 0.80. This study confirms that both water perfusion catheters and microtip transducers have excellent or very good reproducibility with an acceptable intraindividual variation for both method

Using early extremes to place the 2022 UK heat waves into historical context

As global surface temperatures continue to rise, both the duration and the intensity of heat waves across most land areas are expected to increase. The 2022 European summer broke a number of temperature records where a new record daily maximum temperature of 40.3°C was reached on 19th July making it the hottest July heat wave event in the UK. This paper aims to detect and analyse historical heat wave events, particularly prior to 1927 and compare these with recent events, particularly, 2022, which featured four summer heat wave events in the UK. This allows us to understand how noteworthy historical extremes are in comparison to those in recent decades, to place modern events into historical context, and to extend the sample of extreme events. Summer heat wave events have been detected between 1878 and 2022 from long station data in the UK. Heat wave extent, duration, and intensity have been analysed to compare past heat waves to the recent 2022 heat waves. For each of the summer months at least one of the top 10 most intense events between 1878 and 2022 occurred in the earliest third of the dataset (before 1927) emphasising the value of analysing early heat events. In all detected events, the anomalous UK heat was part of large-scale European extreme heat when examining 20th-century reanalysis data, associated with a high-pressure system. The 2022 July event resembles in pattern of warming and circulation some earlier events, for example, in 1925. While there is a clear trend in the monthly data and the overall frequency of anomalously hot days, heat wave activity on daily scales even in the period 1878 and 1926 is considerable and in some cases comparable to modern heat wave events in the UK. The most intense events detected led to societal impacts based on UK newspaper articles from the period including impacts on the agricultural sector, health impacts, and travel disruptions, broadly comparable to impacts from recent events