Tuateawa

The Tuateawa project seeks to inform ecological understanding using analyses of soundscapes. Sound recordings are made in specific locations near Tuateawa in the Coromandel peninsula. This area is being monitored for the eradication of pests such as possums, stoats and rats. The research looks at how the soundscapes change over time, in particular: how is bird life affected by the presence of introduced noxious pests? And, how does human activity influence natural behaviours? The project is a form of documentary capturing detailed sound recordings every season for three or more years. The sound data is analysed for noticeable shifts in frequency and loudness, and output as various visual abstractions, the first of which is an audio visual work for LCD screens and speakers at Ramp Gallery 7-11 December 2020. The intended audience is intermediate age children to get them thinking about how these soundscapes might be understood and focused on through a less ‘scientific’ medium

Tuateawa: A study in soundscape ecology

Ramp Gallery 7-11 Dec 2020 A multimedia work by Kent Macpherson Rhys Jones & Paul Nelson The Tuateawa project seeks to inform Ecological Understanding using Analyses of Soundscapes. Sound recordings are made in specific locations near Tuateawa in the Coromandel peninsula. This area is being monitored for the eradication of pests such as possums, stoats and rats. The work looks at how the soundscapes change over time. In particular, How is bird life affected by the presence of introduced noxious pests? How does human activity influence natural behaviours. The project is a form of documentary capturing detailed sound recordings every season for three or more years. The sound data is analysed for any noticeable shifts in frequency and loudness, then output as various visual abstractions, the first of which is an audio visual work for LCD screens and speakers at Ramp Gallery 7-11 December 2020. The intended audience is intermediate age children to get them thinking about how these soundscapes might be understood and focused on through a less ‘scientific’ mediu

On the Structure of Style Space for Documents

We identify three aspects of style pertaining to documents. The first of these we call literary style and it includes the word and sentence constructions and choice of illustrations traditionally associated with authorship. The second we call informative style and it includes formatting and iconic choices that convey additional information such as the document\u27s genre or corporate identity. The third aspect of style covers the degrees of freedom remaining for the author and is used to convey the author\u27s intent. Literary style is the realm of academic scholarship and discourse and is beyond the scope of the present article. But corporate and intent style can be quantified by measuring many different attributes. For example, density of text, colorfulness of images, regularity of positioning of images, diversity of font and typeface, all contribute to the document\u27s overall style. Indeed, we have identified more than 150 different value functions, each of which can be measured, and each of which can contribute to a document\u27s overall stylistic appearance. Measurement of these value functions effectively places a document as a point in a style space. But the 150 value functions are not independent. A heuristic approach is described for investigating the possibility of finding basis vectors for intent space

Lichen biomonitoring to assess spatial variability, potential sources and human health risks of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and airborne metal concentrations in Manchester (UK)

Airborne metals and organic pollutants are linked to severe human health impacts, i.e. affecting the nervous system and being associated with cancer. Airborne metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in urban environments are derived from diverse sources, including combustion and industrial and vehicular emissions, posing a threat to air quality and subsequently human health. A lichen biomonitoring approach was used to assess spatial variability of airborne metals and PAHs, identify potential pollution sources and assess human health risks across the City of Manchester (UK). Metal concentrations recorded in lichen samples were highest within the city centre area and along the major road network, and lichen PAH profiles were dominated by 4-ring PAHs (189.82 ng g−1 in Xanthoria parietina), with 5- and 6-ring PAHs also contributing to the overall PAH profile. Cluster analysis and pollution index factor (PIF) calculations for lichen-derived metal concentrations suggested deteriorated air quality being primarily linked to vehicular emissions. Comparably, PAH diagnostic ratios identified vehicular sources as a primary cause of PAH pollution across Manchester. However, local more complex sources (e.g. industrial emissions) were further identified. Human health risk assessment found a “moderate” risk for adults and children by airborne potential harmful element (PHEs) concentrations, whereas PAH exposure in Manchester is potentially linked to 1455 (ILCR = 1.45 × 10−3) cancer cases (in 1,000,000). Findings of this study indicate that an easy-to-use lichen biomonitoring approach can aid to identify hotspots of impaired air quality and potential human health impacts by airborne metals and PAHs across an urban environment, particularly at locations that are not continuously covered by (non-)automated air quality measurement programmes. Graphical Abstract: (Figure presented.

The influence of formulation and manufacturing process parameters on the characteristics of lyophilized orally disintegrating tablets

Gelatin is a principal excipient used as a binder in the formulation of lyophilized orally disintegrating tablets. The current study focuses on exploiting the physicochemical properties of gelatin by varying formulation parameters to determine their influence on orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) characteristics. Process parameters, namely pH and ionic strength of the formulations, and ball milling were investigated to observe their effects on excipient characteristics and tablet formation. The properties and characteristics of the formulations and tablets which were investigated included: glass transition temperature, wettability, porosity, mechanical properties, disintegration time, morphology of the internal structure of the freeze-dried tablets, and drug dissolution. The results from the pH study revealed that adjusting the pH of the formulation away from the isoelectric point of gelatin, resulted in an improvement in tablet disintegration time possibly due to increase in gelatin swelling resulting in greater tablet porosity. The results from the ionic strength study revealed that the inclusion of sodium chloride influenced tablet porosity, tablet morphology and the glass transition temperature of the formulations. Data from the milling study showed that milling the excipients influenced formulation characteristics, namely wettability and powder porosity. The study concludes that alterations of simple parameters such as pH and salt concentration have a significant influence on formulation of ODT

ICML Exploration & Exploitation challenge: Keep it simple!

International audienceRecommendation has become a key feature in the economy of a lot of companies (online shopping, search engines...). There is a lot of work going on regarding recommender systems and there is still a lot to do to improve them. Indeed nowadays in many companies most of the job is done by hand. Moreover even when a supposedly smart recommender system is designed, it is hard to evaluate it without using real audience which obviously involves economic issues. The ICML Exploration & Exploitation challenge is an attempt to make people propose efficient recommendation techniques and particularly focuses on limited computational resources. The challenge also proposes a framework to address the problem of evaluating a recommendation algorithm with real data. We took part in this challenge and achieved the best performances; this paper aims at reporting on this achievement; we also discuss the evaluation process and propose a better one for future challenges of the same kind

Optineurin links myosin VI to the Golgi complex and is involved in Golgi organization and exocytosis.

Myosin VI plays a role in the maintenance of Golgi morphology and in exocytosis. In a yeast 2-hybrid screen we identified optineurin as a binding partner for myosin VI at the Golgi complex and confirmed this interaction in a range of protein interaction studies. Both proteins colocalize at the Golgi complex and in vesicles at the plasma membrane. When optineurin is depleted from cells using RNA interference, myosin VI is lost from the Golgi complex, the Golgi is fragmented and exocytosis of vesicular stomatitis virus G-protein to the plasma membrane is dramatically reduced. Two further binding partners for optineurin have been identified: huntingtin and Rab8. We show that myosin VI and Rab8 colocalize around the Golgi complex and in vesicles at the plasma membrane and overexpression of constitutively active Rab8-Q67L recruits myosin VI onto Rab8-positive structures. These results show that optineurin links myosin VI to the Golgi complex and plays a central role in Golgi ribbon formation and exocytosis