Field deployments of a self-contained subsea platform for acoustic monitoring of the environment around marine renewable energy structurea

The drive towards sustainable energy has seen rapid development of marine renewable energy devices, and current efforts are focusing on wave and tidal stream energy. The NERC/DEFRA collaboration FLOWBEC-4D (Flow, Water column & Benthic Ecology 4D) is addressing the lack of knowledge of the environmental and ecological effects of installing and operating large arrays of wave and tidal energy devices. The FLOWBEC sonar platform combines a number of instruments to record information at a range of physical and multi-trophic levels. Data are recorded at a resolution of several measurements per second, for durations of 2 weeks to capture an entire spring-neap tidal cycle. An upward-facing multifrequency Simrad EK60 echosounder (38, 120 and 200 kHz) is synchronized with an upward-facing Imagenex 837B Delta T multibeam sonar (120° × 20° beamwidth, 260 kHz) aligned with the tidal flow. An ADV is used for local current measurements and a fluorometer is used to measure chlorophyll (as a proxy for plankton) and turbidity. The platform is self-contained with no cables or anchors, facilitating rapid deployment and recovery in high-energy sites and flexibility in allowing baseline data to be gathered. Five 2-week deployments were completed in 2012 and 2013 at wave and tidal energy sites, both in the presence and absence of renewable energy structures. These surveys were conducted at the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, UK. Algorithms for noise removal, target detection and target tracking have been written using a combination of LabVIEW, MATLAB and Echoview. Target morphology, behavior and frequency response are used to aid target classification, with concurrent shore-based seabird observations used to ground truth the acoustic data. Using this information, the depth preference and interactions of birds, fish schools and marine mammals with renewable energy structures can be tracked. Seabird and mammal dive profiles, predator-prey interactions a- d the effect of hydrodynamic processes during foraging events throughout the water column can also be analyzed. These datasets offer insights into how fish, seabirds and marine mammals successfully forage within dynamic marine habitats and also whether individuals face collision risks with tidal stream turbines. Measurements from the subsea platform are complemented by 3D hydrodynamic model data and concurrent shore-based marine X-band radar. This range of concurrent fine-scale information across physical and trophic levels will improve our understanding of how the fine-scale physical influence of currents, waves and turbulence at tidal and wave energy sites affect the behavior of marine wildlife, and how tidal and wave energy devices might alter the behavior of such wildlife. Together, the results from these deployments increase our environmental understanding of the physical and ecological effects of installing and operating marine renewable energy devices. These results can be used to guide marine spatial planning, device design, licensing and operation, as individual devices are scaled up to arrays and new sites are considered. The combination of our current technology and analytical approach can help to de-risk the licensing process by providing a higher level of certainty about the behavior of a range of mobile marine species in high energy environments. It is likely that this approach will lead to greater mechanistic understanding of how and why mobile predators use these high energy areas for foraging. If a fuller understanding and quantification can be achieved at single demonstration scales, and these are found to be similar, then the predictive power of the outcomes might lead to a wider strategic approach to monitoring and possibly lead to a reduction in the level of monitoring required at each commercial site

Ibuprofen, paracetamol, and steam for patients with respiratory tract infections in primary care: pragmatic randomised factorial trial

Objective: To assess strategies for advice on analgesia and steam inhalation for respiratory tract infections.Design: Open pragmatic parallel group factorial randomised controlled trial.Setting: Primary care in United Kingdom.Participants: Patients aged ?3 with acute respiratory tract infections.Intervention: 889 patients were randomised with computer generated random numbers in pre-prepared sealed numbered envelopes to components of advice or comparator advice: advice on analgesia (take paracetamol, ibuprofen, or both), dosing of analgesia (take as required v regularly), and steam inhalation (no inhalation v steam inhalation).Outcomes: Primary: mean symptom severity on days 2-4; symptoms rated 0 (no problem) to 7 (as bad as it can be). Secondary: temperature, antibiotic use, reconsultations.Results: Neither advice on dosing nor on steam inhalation was significantly associated with changes in outcomes. Compared with paracetamol, symptom severity was little different with ibuprofen (adjusted difference 0.04, 95% confidence interval ?0.11 to 0.19) or the combination of ibuprofen and paracetamol (0.11, ?0.04 to 0.26). There was no evidence for selective benefit with ibuprofen among most subgroups defined before analysis (presence of otalgia; previous duration of symptoms; temperature >37.5°C; severe symptoms), but there was evidence of reduced symptoms severity benefit in the subgroup with chest infections (ibuprofen ?0.40, ?0.78 to ?0.01; combination ?0.47; ?0.84 to ?0.10), equivalent to almost one in two symptoms rated as a slight rather than a moderately bad problem. Children might also benefit from treatment with ibuprofen (ibuprofen: ?0.47, ?0.76 to ?0.18; combination: ?0.04, ?0.31 to 0.23). Reconsultations with new/unresolved symptoms or complications were documented in 12% of those advised to take paracetamol, 20% of those advised to take ibuprofen (adjusted risk ratio 1.67, 1.12 to 2.38), and 17% of those advised to take the combination (1.49, 0.98 to 2.18). Mild thermal injury with steam was documented for four patients (2%) who returned full diaries, but no reconsultations with scalding were documented.Conclusion: Overall advice to use steam inhalation, or ibuprofen rather than paracetamol, does not help control symptoms in patients with acute respiratory tract infections and must be balanced against the possible progression of symptoms during the next month for a minority of patients. Advice to use ibuprofen might help short term control of symptoms in those with chest infections and in children

Digital proxemics: Designing social and collaborative interaction in virtual environments

Behaviour in virtual environments might be informed by our experiences in physical environments, but virtual environments are not constrained by the same physical, perceptual, or social cues. Instead of replicating the properties of physical spaces, one can create virtual experiences that diverge from reality by dynamically manipulating environmental, aural, and social properties. This paper explores digital proxemics, which describe how we use space in virtual environments and how the presence of others influences our behaviours, interactions, and movements. First, we frame the open challenges of digital proxemics in terms of activity, social signals, audio design, and environment. We explore a subset of these challenges through an evaluation that compares two audio designs and two displays with different social signal affordances: head-mounted display (HMD) versus desktop PC. We use quantitative methods using instrumented tracking to analyse behaviour, demonstrating how personal space, proximity, and attention compare between desktop PC and HMDs

Social VR: A new medium for remote communication and collaboration

We are facing increasingly pressure on reducing travel and working remotely. Tools that support effective remote communication and collaboration are much needed. Social Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging medium, which invites multiple users to join a collaborative virtual environment (VE) and has the potential to support remote communication in a natural and immersive way. We successfully organized a CHI 2020 Social VR workshop virtually on Mozilla Hubs, which invited researchers and practitioners to have a fruitful discussion over user representations and ethics, evaluation methods, and interaction techniques for social VR as an emerging immersive remote communication tool. In this CHI 2021 virtual workshop, we would like to organize it again on Mozilla Hubs, continuing the discussion about proxemics, social cues and VE designs, which were identified as important aspects for social VR communication in our CHI 2020 workshop

The Emergence of Hospital Federations: An Integration of Perspectives from Organizational Theory

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68464/2/10.1177_107755878704400206.pd

Multiwavelength studies of MHD waves in the solar chromosphere: An overview of recent results

The chromosphere is a thin layer of the solar atmosphere that bridges the relatively cool photosphere and the intensely heated transition region and corona. Compressible and incompressible waves propagating through the chromosphere can supply significant amounts of energy to the interface region and corona. In recent years an abundance of high-resolution observations from state-of-the-art facilities have provided new and exciting ways of disentangling the characteristics of oscillatory phenomena propagating through the dynamic chromosphere. Coupled with rapid advancements in magnetohydrodynamic wave theory, we are now in an ideal position to thoroughly investigate the role waves play in supplying energy to sustain chromospheric and coronal heating. Here, we review the recent progress made in characterising, categorising and interpreting oscillations manifesting in the solar chromosphere, with an impetus placed on their intrinsic energetics.Comment: 48 pages, 25 figures, accepted into Space Science Review

Integrated motor drives: state of the art and future trends

With increased need for high power density, high efficiency and high temperature capabilities in Aerospace and Automotive applications, Integrated Motor Drives (IMD) offers a potential solution. However, close physical integration of the converter and the machine may also lead to an increase in components temperature. This requires careful mechanical, structural and thermal analysis; and design of the IMD system. This paper reviews existing IMD technologies and their thermal effects on the IMD system. The effects of the power electronics (PE) position on the IMD system and its respective thermal management concepts are also investigated. The challenges faced in designing and manufacturing of an IMD along with the mechanical and structural impacts of close physical integration is also discussed and potential solutions are provided. Potential converter topologies for an IMD like the Matrix converter, 2-level Bridge, 3-level NPC and Multiphase full bridge converters are also reviewed. Wide band gap devices like SiC and GaN and their packaging in power modules for IMDs are also discussed. Power modules components and packaging technologies are also presented

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Multiwavelength behaviour of the blazar 3C 279: decade-long study from γ-ray to radio

We report the results of decade-long (2008–2018) γ-ray to 1 GHz radio monitoring of the blazar 3C 279, including GASP/WEBT, Fermi and Swift data, as well as polarimetric and spectroscopic data. The X-ray and γ-ray light curves correlate well, with no delay ≳ 3 h, implying general cospatiality of the emission regions. The γ-ray–optical flux–flux relation changes with activity state, ranging from a linear to a more complex dependence. The behaviour of the Stokes parameters at optical and radio wavelengths, including 43 GHz Very Long Baseline Array images, supports either a predominantly helical magnetic field or motion of the radiating plasma along a spiral path. Apparent speeds of emission knots range from 10 to 37c, with the highest values requiring bulk Lorentz factors close to those needed to explain γ-ray variability on very short time-scales. The Mg ii emission line flux in the ‘blue’ and ‘red’ wings correlates with the optical synchrotron continuum flux density, possibly providing a variable source of seed photons for inverse Compton scattering. In the radio bands, we find progressive delays of the most prominent light-curve maxima with decreasing frequency, as expected from the frequency dependence of the τ = 1 surface of synchrotron self-absorption. The global maximum in the 86 GHz light curve becomes less prominent at lower frequencies, while a local maximum, appearing in 2014, strengthens toward decreasing frequencies, becoming pronounced at ∼5 GHz. These tendencies suggest different Doppler boosting of stratified radio-emitting zones in the jet.First author draf