A rapid and low-cost novel biosensor for the detection of early-stage chronic kidney disease

There is an unmet medical need for the effective detection of early-stage kidney disease as many current techniques lack the accuracy to detect it early on. Therefore, most patients are diagnosed at a later phase when irreversible kidney damage has already been done. Blood tests typically detect serum creatinine however this can be unreliable and require laboratory and trained personnel. Within this thesis a metal oxide gas sensor has been developed to detect the volatile organic compound (VOC) trimethylamine (TMA), known to be elevated in early disease stages, via patients expired breath. Aerosol assisted chemical vapour deposition (AACVD) was chosen for its simplicity and ability to produce thin reproducible films without vacuum. Consequently molybdenum oxide (MoO3) thin films were successfully deposited by AACVD and used for the sensing of TMA. Films were further modified with cerium and gold to increase the sensitivity and performance of the sensors, and a variety of characterisation techniques were used such as scanning electron microscopy with coupled energy dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to explore the crystallinity and properties of the optimised sensor films. The sensor was then evaluated successfully using simulated kidney disease patient breath in order to test its feasibility in practice. Finally, initial studies into the use of silicon carbide-tungsten core fibres were investigated as a potential for a next generation self-heating integrated substrate for molybdenum oxide sensors and the detection of TMA gas

Made corrections: a prison-based street art intervention for young offenders

This paper describes a prison-based street art intervention that took place at a Lithuanian institution for young offenders. During the first stage of the project, existing historical graffiti and murals on the prison walls were uncovered and documented. The second stage of the project involved working with the young offenders to co-produce a series of collaborative large-scale works within the prison walls, some of which incorporated elements of these earlier murals as a form of living heritage. The final stage of the project reproduced a selection of this work outside on the walls of the local city. Future work will involve a more formal evaluation of the impact of the intervention on the young offenders, the prison staff, and the local community

Ambiguity and insurance: capital requirements andpremiums

Many insurance contracts are contingent on events such as hurricanes, terrorist attacks or political upheavals, whose probabilities are ambiguous. This paper offers a theory to underpin the large body of empirical evidence showing that higher premiums are charged under ambiguity. We model a (re)insurer who maximises profit subject to a survival constraint that is sensitive to the range of estimates of the probability of ruin, as well as the insurer’s attitude towards this ambiguity. We characterise when one book of insurance is more ambiguous than another and general circumstances in which a more ambiguous book requires at least as large a capital holding. We subsequently derive several explicit formulae for the price of insurance contracts under ambiguity, each of which identifies the extra ambiguity load

On the Use of XML in Medical Imaging Web-Based Applications

The rapid growth of digital technology in medical fields over recent years has increased the need for applications able to manage patient medical records, imaging data, and chart information. Web-based applications are implemented with the purpose to link digital databases, storage and transmission protocols, management of large volumes of data and security concepts, allowing the possibility to read, analyze, and even diagnose remotely from the medical center where the information was acquired. The objective of this paper is to analyze the use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) language in web-based applications that aid in diagnosis or treatment of patients, considering how this protocol allows indexing and exchanging the huge amount of information associated with each medical case. The purpose of this paper is to point out the main advantages and drawbacks of the XML technology in order to provide key ideas for future web-based applicationsPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Sonic presence and spectral technology

We describe a series of experiments in artistic research, each investigating and illustrating aspects of presence phenomena. In each, we utilise digital technologies to invert the prevailing academic approach to presence, with the intention not to teleport a person to another place but to draw attention to unseen phenomena in physical spaces, specifically through the use of sound. Our work is grounded in theories of experience, mediation and context, and we follow a methodology merging artistic strategies with computational thinking. This paper serves to introduce aspects of presence theory into our existing conceptual model in order to develop it further, and to conversely contribute an alternative perspective to the presence research community

Inside the Decentralised Casino : A Longitudinal Study of Actual Cryptocurrency Gambling Transactions

Decentralised gambling applications are a new way for people to gamble online. Decentralised gambling applications are distinguished from traditional online casinos in that players use cryptocurrency as a stake. Also, rather than being stored on a single centralised server, decentralised gambling applications are stored on a cryptocurrency's blockchain. Previous work in the player behaviour tracking literature has examined the spending profiles of gamblers on traditional online casinos. However, similar work has not taken place in the decentralised gambling domain. The profile of gamblers on decentralised gambling applications are therefore unknown. This paper explores 2,232,741 transactions from 24,234 unique addresses to three such applications operating atop the Ethereum cryptocurrency network over 583 days. We present spending profiles across these applications, providing the first detailed summary of spending behaviours in this technologically advanced domain. We find that the typical player spends approximately $110 equivalent across a median of 6 bets in a single day, although heavily involved bettors spend approximately$100,000 equivalent over a median of 644 bets across 35 days. Our findings suggest that the average decentralised gambling application player spends less than in other online casinos overall, but that the most heavily involved players in this new domain spend substantially more. This study also demonstrates the use of these applications as a research platform, specifically for large scale longitudinal in-vivo data analysis

In vitro secretion of human chorionic gonadotrophin by bladder tumour cells.

Human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) and alphafetoprotein (AFP) were measured in culture media from a panel of 29 cell lines including 9 bladder carcinomas, 5 'normal' bladder epithelia, 10 germ cell tumours, and 5 miscellaneous tumours and 'normal' cell lines. In 7 of the 9 bladder carcinomas and 4 of the 5 'normal' bladder epithelia, the media contained hCG at levels ranging from between 34 and 3,600 IU l(-1). All other cell lines, including the 10 germ cell tumour lines gave negative results for hCG. These findings indicate that in vitro secretion of hCG is a common feature of normal and neoplastic bladder transitional epithelia, and support the hypothesis that parts of the genito-urinary epithelium have a potential for hCG production