Getting science to the citizen : 'food addiction' at the British Science Festival as a case study of interactive public engagement with high profile scientific controversy

Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

Proof Relevant Corecursive Resolution

Resolution lies at the foundation of both logic programming and type class context reduction in functional languages. Terminating derivations by resolution have well-defined inductive meaning, whereas some non-terminating derivations can be understood coinductively. Cycle detection is a popular method to capture a small subset of such derivations. We show that in fact cycle detection is a restricted form of coinductive proof, in which the atomic formula forming the cycle plays the role of coinductive hypothesis. This paper introduces a heuristic method for obtaining richer coinductive hypotheses in the form of Horn formulas. Our approach subsumes cycle detection and gives coinductive meaning to a larger class of derivations. For this purpose we extend resolution with Horn formula resolvents and corecursive evidence generation. We illustrate our method on non-terminating type class resolution problems.Comment: 23 pages, with appendices in FLOPS 201

Lessons to be learned from test evaluations during the Covid-19 pandemic:RSS Working Group’s Report on Diagnostic Tests

The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic raised challenges for everyday life. Development of new diagnostic tests was necessary, but under such enormous pressure risking inadequate evaluation. Against a background of concern about standards applied to the evaluation of in vitro diagnostic tests (IVDs), clear statistical thinking was needed on the principles of diagnostic testing in general, and their application in a pandemic. Therefore, in July 2020, the Royal Statistical Society convened a Working Group of six biostatisticians to review the statistical evidence needed to ensure the performance of new tests, especially IVDs for infectious diseases—for regulators, decision-makers, and the public. The Working Group’s review was undertaken when the Covid-19 pandemic shone an unforgiving light on current processes for evaluating and regulating IVDs for infectious diseases. The report’s findings apply more broadly than to the pandemic and IVDs, to diagnostic test evaluations in general. A section of the report focussed on lessons learned during the pandemic and aimed to contribute to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s examination of the response to, and impact of, the Covid-19 pandemic to learn lessons for the future. The review made 22 recommendations on what matters for study design, transparency, and regulation

Lessons to be learned from test evaluations during the Covid-19 pandemic:RSS Working Group’s Report on Diagnostic Tests

The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic raised challenges for everyday life. Development of new diagnostic tests was necessary, but under such enormous pressure risking inadequate evaluation. Against a background of concern about standards applied to the evaluation of in vitro diagnostic tests (IVDs), clear statistical thinking was needed on the principles of diagnostic testing in general, and their application in a pandemic. Therefore, in July 2020, the Royal Statistical Society convened a Working Group of six biostatisticians to review the statistical evidence needed to ensure the performance of new tests, especially IVDs for infectious diseases—for regulators, decision-makers, and the public. The Working Group’s review was undertaken when the Covid-19 pandemic shone an unforgiving light on current processes for evaluating and regulating IVDs for infectious diseases. The report’s findings apply more broadly than to the pandemic and IVDs, to diagnostic test evaluations in general. A section of the report focussed on lessons learned during the pandemic and aimed to contribute to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry’s examination of the response to, and impact of, the Covid-19 pandemic to learn lessons for the future. The review made 22 recommendations on what matters for study design, transparency, and regulation

Modelling hepatitis C infection acquired from blood transfusions in the UK between 1970 and 1991 for the Infected Blood Inquiry

The Statistics Expert Group was convened at the request of the Infected Blood Inquiry to provide estimates of the number of infections and deaths from blood-borne infections including hepatitis B virus, human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis C virus (HCV) and variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, as a direct result of contaminated blood and blood products administered in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). In the absence of databases of HCV infections and related deaths for all nations of the UK, a statistical model was required to estimate the number of infections and subsequent deaths from HCV acquired from blood transfusions from January 1970 to August 1991. We present this statistical model in detail alongside the results of its application to each of the four nations in the UK. We estimated that 26 800 people (95% uncertainty interval 21 300–38 800) throughout the UK were chronically infected with HCV because of contaminated blood transfusions between January 1970 and August 1991. The number of deaths up to the end of 2019 that occurred as a result of this chronic infection is estimated to be 1820 (95% uncertainty interval 650–3320)

Emotional Sentence Annotation Helps Predict Fiction Genre

Fiction, a prime form of entertainment, has evolved into multiple genres which one can broadly attribute to different forms of stories. In this paper, we examine the hypothesis that works of fiction can be characterised by the emotions they portray. To investigate this hypothesis, we use the work of fictions in the Project Gutenberg and we attribute basic emotional content to each individual sentence using Ekman’s model. A time-smoothed version of the emotional content for each basic emotion is used to train extremely randomized trees. We show through 10-fold Cross-Validation that the emotional content of each work of fiction can help identify each genre with significantly higher probability than random. We also show that the most important differentiator between genre novels is fear

The Curious Adventure of the Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays

These lectures discuss the mysteries involving the production and extragalactic propagation of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays and suggested possible solutions.Comment: Lectures given at the D. Chalonge Euroschool, Erice, Italy, November 2000, 25 pages, 7 ps figs., expanded revision with color fig.

A Method for Serial Tissue Processing and Parallel Analysis of Aberrant Crypt Morphology, Mucin Depletion, and Beta-Catenin Staining in an Experimental Model of Colon Carcinogenesis

The use of architectural and morphological characteristics of cells for establishing prognostic indicators by which individual pathologies are assigned grade and stage is a well-accepted practice. Advances in automated micro- and macroscopic image acquisition and digital image analysis have created new opportunities in the field of prognostic assessment; but, one area in experimental pathology, animal models for colon cancer, has not taken advantage of these opportunities. This situation is primarily due to the methods available to evaluate the colon of the rodent for the presence of premalignant and malignant pathologies. We report a new method for the excision and processing of the entire colon of the rat and illustrate how this procedure permitted the quantitative assessment of aberrant crypt foci (ACF), a premalignant colon pathology, for characteristics consistent with progression to malignancy. ACF were detected by methylene blue staining and subjected to quantitative morphometric analysis. Colons were then restained with high iron diamine–alcian blue for assessment of mucin depletion using an image overlay to associate morphometric data with mucin depletion. The subsequent evaluation of ACF for beta-catenin staining is also demonstrated. The methods described are particularly relevant to the screening of compounds for cancer chemopreventive activity

Watch and Learn: Seeing Is Better than Doing when Acquiring Consecutive Motor Tasks

During motor adaptation learning, consecutive physical practice of two different tasks compromises the retention of the first. However, there is evidence that observational practice, while still effectively aiding acquisition, will not lead to interference and hence prove to be a better practice method. Observers and Actors practised in a clockwise (Task A) followed by a counterclockwise (Task B) visually rotated environment, and retention was immediately assessed. An Observe-all and Act-all group were compared to two groups who both physically practised Task A, but then only observed (ObsB) or did not see or practice Task B (NoB). The two observer groups and the NoB control group better retained Task A than Actors, although importantly only the observer groups learnt Task B. RT data and explicit awareness of the rotation suggested that the observers had acquired their respective tasks in a more strategic manner than Actor and Control groups. We conclude that observational practice benefits learning of multiple tasks more than physical practice due to the lack of updating of implicit, internal models for aiming in the former