Vitrification of an intermediate level Magnox sludge waste

A novel iron containing alkali alkaline earth borosilicate glass has been developed that can vitrify up to 30 wt% (dry weight) of a Magnox sludge waste in a homogeneous wasteform at a melting temperature of 1200C. Ce was used as a simulant of the actinide content in the waste. The waste was spiked with 0.5wt% of Cs2O of which 90% was retained in the glass. 60% of the Cl was also retained. Mg content limited the waste loading as loadings in excess of 30wt% led to the formation of forsterite and in some cases CeO2 and MgFe2O4 based spinels. PCT leach testing of the glasses for periods up to 180 days indicated the formation of an amorphous magnesium (alumino-)silicate hydrated layer on the glass surface together with barium rich crystalline precipitates. No Ce was detected in the leachate

Contemporary medical television and crisis in the NHS

This article maps the terrain of contemporary UK medical television, paying particular attention to Call the Midwife as its centrepiece, and situating it in contextual relation to the current crisis in the NHS. It provides a historical overview of UK and US medical television, illustrating how medical television today has been shaped by noteworthy antecedents. It argues that crisis rhetoric surrounding healthcare leading up to the passing of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 has been accompanied by a renaissance in medical television. And that issues, strands and clusters have emerged in forms, registers and modes with noticeable regularity, especially around the value of affective labour, the cultural politics of nostalgia and the neoliberalisation of healthcare

Political computational thinking:policy networks, digital governance and ‘learning to code’

Reflecting political shifts toward both ‘network governance' and ‘digital governance', the idea of ‘learning to code' has become part of a major reform agenda in education policy in England. This article provides a ‘policy network analysis' tracing the governmental, business and civil society actors now operating in policy networks to project learning to code into the reformed programs of study for computing in the National Curriculum in England. The insertion of learning to code into the curriculum provides evidence of how the education policy process is being displaced to cross-sector ‘boundary organizations' such as ‘policy labs' that act as connecting nodes to broker networks across public and private sector borderlines. It also examines how the pedagogies of learning to code are intended to inculcate young people into the material practices and systems of thought associated with computer coding, and to contribute to new forms of ‘digital governance'. These developments are evidence of a ‘reluctant state' deconcentrating its responsibilities, and also of a computational style of political thinking that assumes policy problems can be addressed using the right code. Learning to code is seen as a way of shaping governable citizens that can participate in the dynamics of digital governance

Dilated Convolutions in Neural Networks for Left Atrial Segmentation in 3D Gadolinium Enhanced-MRI

Segmentation of the left atrial chamber and assessing its morphology, are essential for improving our understanding of atrial fibrillation, the most common type of cardiac arrhythmia. Automation of this process in 3D gadolinium enhanced-MRI (GE-MRI) data is desirable, as manual delineation is time-consuming, challenging and observer-dependent. Recently, deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have gained tremendous traction and achieved state-of-the-art results in medical image segmentation. However, it is difficult to incorporate local and global information without using contracting (pooling) layers, which in turn reduces segmentation accuracy for smaller structures. In this paper, we propose a 3D CNN for volumetric segmentation of the left atrial chamber in LGE-MRI. Our network is based on the well known U-Net architecture. We employ a 3D fully convolutional network, with dilated convolutions in the lowest level of the network, and residual connections between encoder blocks to incorporate local and global knowledge. The results show that including global context through the use of dilated convolutions, helps in domain adaptation, and the overall segmentation accuracy is improved in comparison to a 3D U-Net

Automatically Segmenting the Left Atrium from Cardiac Images Using Successive 3D U-Nets and a Contour Loss

International audienceRadiological imaging offers effective measurement of anatomy, which is useful in disease diagnosis and assessment. Previous study has shown that the left atrial wall remodeling can provide information to predict treatment outcome in atrial fibrillation. Nevertheless, the segmentation of the left atrial structures from medical images is still very time-consuming. Current advances in neural network may help creating automatic segmentation models that reduce the workload for clinicians. In this preliminary study, we propose automated, two-stage, three-dimensional U-Nets with convolutional neural network, for the challenging task of left atrial segmentation. Unlike previous two-dimensional image segmentation methods, we use 3D U-Nets to obtain the heart cavity directly in 3D. The dual 3D U-Net structure consists of, a first U-Net to coarsely segment and locate the left atrium, and a second U-Net to accurately segment the left atrium under higher resolution. In addition, we introduce a Contour loss based on additional distance information to adjust the final segmentation. We randomly split the data into training datasets (80 subjects) and validation datasets (20 subjects) to train multiple models, with different augmentation setting. Experiments show that the average Dice coefficients for validation datasets are around 0.91 - 0.92, the sensitivity around 0.90-0.94 and the specificity 0.99. Compared with traditional Dice loss, models trained with Contour loss in general offer smaller Hausdorff distance with similar Dice coefficient, and have less connected components in predictions. Finally, we integrate several trained models in an ensemble prediction to segment testing datasets

Crop Updates 2000 Cereals - part 4

This session covers twelve papers from different authors: BREEDING 1.Response to subsoil acidity of wheat genotypes differing in Al-tolerance, C. Tang, Z. Rengel, E. Diatloff and B. McGann, Soil Science and Plant Nutrition/CLIMA, University of Western Australia 2. Application of molecular markers in Barley Improvement, Mehmet Cakir1, Nick Galwey1 and David Poulsen2, 1Plant Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, 2Queensland Department of Primary Industries, Hermitage Research Station, Queensland 3. Implementation of molecular markers for wheat improvement in the Western Region, M. Carter1, A. Briney1, R. Wilson2, R.H. Potter1 and M.G.K. Jones1, 1Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Murdoch University, 2Crop Industries, Agriculture Western Australia 4. Performance in 1999 of recently released wheat varieties in Western Australia, Robin Wilson, Iain Barclay, Robyn McLean, Dean Diepeveen and Robert Loughman, Agriculture Western Australia ECONOMICS 5. Outlook for prices and implications for rotations, Ross Kingwell1 2, Michael O’Connell1, Simone Blennerhasset1 1Agriculture Western Australia, 2University of Western Australia 6. Price Risk Management and the Western Australian Grain Producer, Benjamin Michael Tiller, Muresk Institute of Agriculture FORECASTING 7. Can we forecast wheat yields in Western Australia, Senthold Asseng1, Holger Meinke2, and Bill Bowden3, 1CSIRO Plant Industry, 2 APSRU/DPI, 3Agriculture Western Australia ON FARM TESTING 8. On-farm testing, the quiet revolution continues, Jeff Russell1, Ivan Lee2 1Agriculture Western Australia, 2 Farmer Kunjin TopCrop group, Corrigin GRAIN STORAGE 9. CD-ROM tool for growers and advisers: Managing on-farm grain storage – effective practices for the delivery of quality assured products, Clare Johnson1, Chris Newman2 1Quality Wheat CRC Ltd, 2Production Resource Protection Services, Agriculture Western Australia 10. The Internet as a tool for managing grain insects, Robert Emery, Romolo Tassone and Ernestos Kostas, Agriculture Western Australia SUMMER CROPS AND WINDBREAK EFFECT ON YIELD 11. Summer crop Update and agronomic considerations, Graeme Ralph, Pioneer Hi-Bred Australia Pty Ltd 12. The effect of tree windbreaks on grain yield in the medium and low rainfall areas in Western Australia, Robert Sudmeyer, David Hall and Harvey Jones, Agriculture Western Australi

Community SARS-CoV-2 Surge and Within-School Transmission

OBJECTIVES: When the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic began, experts raised concerns about in-person instruction in the setting of high levels of community transmission. We describe secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within North Carolina (NC) K-12 school districts during a winter surge to determine if mitigation strategies can hinder within-school transmission. METHODS: From 10/26/2020–02/28/2021, 13 NC school districts participating in the ABC Science Collaborative were open for in-person instruction, adhered to basic mitigation strategies, and tracked community- and school-acquired SARS-CoV-2 cases. Public health officials adjudicated each case. We combined these data with that from August 2020 to evaluate the effect of the SARS-CoV-2 winter surge on infection rates, as well as weekly community- and school-acquired cases. We evaluated the number of secondary cases generated by each primary case, as well as the role of athletic activities in school-acquired cases. RESULTS: More than 100,000 students and staff from 13 school districts attended school in-person; of these, 4,969 community-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections were documented by molecular testing. Through contact tracing, NC local health department staff identified an additional 209 infections among >26,000 school close contacts (secondary attack rate <1%). Most within-school transmissions in high schools (75%) were linked to school-sponsored sports. School-acquired cases slightly increased during the surge; however, within-school transmission rates remained constant, from pre-surge to surge, with approximately 1 school-acquired case for every 20 primary cases. CONCLUSIONS: With adherence to basic mitigation strategies, within-school transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can be interrupted, even during a surge of community infections

Incidence and Secondary Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Schools

BACKGROUND: In an effort to mitigate the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), North Carolina (NC) closed its K–12 public schools to in-person instruction on 03/14/2020. On 07/15/2020, NC’s governor announced schools could open via remote learning or a “hybrid” model that combined in-person and remote instruction. In August 2020, 56 of 115 NC school districts joined the ABC Science Collaborative (ABCs) to implement public health measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission and share lessons learned. We describe secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within participating NC school districts during the first 9 weeks of in-person instruction in the 2020–2021 academic school year. METHODS: From 08/15/2020–10/23/2020, 11 of 56 school districts participating in ABCs were open for in-person instruction for all 9 weeks of the first quarter and agreed to track incidence and secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Local health department staff adjudicated secondary transmission. Superintendents met weekly with ABCs faculty to share lessons learned and develop prevention methods. RESULTS: Over 9 weeks, 11 participating school districts had more than 90,000 students and staff attend school in-person; of these, there were 773 community-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections documented by molecular testing. Through contact tracing, NC health department staff determined an additional 32 infections were acquired within schools. No instances of child-to-adult transmission of SARS-CoV-2 were reported within schools. CONCLUSIONS: In the first 9 weeks of in-person instruction in NC schools, we found extremely limited within-school secondary transmission of SARS-CoV-2, as determined by contact tracing

Governing methods:policy innovation labs, design and data science in the digital governance of education

Policy innovation labs are emerging knowledge actors and technical experts in the governing of education. The article offers a historical and conceptual account of the organisational form of the policy innovation lab. Policy innovation labs are characterised by specific methods and techniques of design, data science, and digitisation in public services such as education. The second half of the article details how labs promote the use of digital data analysis, evidence-based evaluation and &lsquo;design-for-policy&rsquo; techniques as methods for the governing of education. In particular, they promote the &lsquo;computational thinking&rsquo; associated with computer programming as a capacity required by a &lsquo;reluctant state&rsquo; that is increasingly concerned to delegate its responsibilities to digitally enabled citizens with the &lsquo;designerly&rsquo; capacities and technical expertise to &lsquo;code&rsquo; solutions to public and social problems. Policy innovation labs are experimental laboratories trialling new methods within education for administering and governing the future of the state itself

Down-Regulation of Myogenin Can Reverse Terminal Muscle Cell Differentiation

Certain higher vertebrates developed the ability to reverse muscle cell differentiation (dedifferentiation) as an additional mechanism to regenerate muscle. Mammals, on the other hand, show limited ability to reverse muscle cell differentiation. Myogenic Regulatory Factors (MRFs), MyoD, myogenin, Myf5 and Myf6 are basic-helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors essential towards the regulation of myogenesis