Rapid iododeboronation with and without gold catalysis: application to radiolabelling of arenes

Radiopharmaceuticals incorporating radioactive iodine in combination with SPECT imaging play a key role in nuclear medicine, with applications in drug development and disease diagnosis. Despite this importance, there are relatively few general methods for incorporating radioiodine into small molecules. Here we describe a rapid, air- and moisture-stable ipso-iododeboronation procedure using NIS, in the non-toxic and green solvent dimethyl carbonate. The fast reaction and mild conditions of the gold-catalysed method led to the development of a highly efficient process for radiolabelling of arenes, which constitutes the first example of an application of homogenous gold catalysis to selective radiosynthesis. This has been exemplified with an effective synthesis of radiolabelled meta-[125I]iodobenzylguanidine, a radiopharmaceutical used for the imaging and therapy of human norepinephrine transporter-expressing tumours

Network traffic analysis for threats detection in the Internet of Things

As the prevalence of the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to increase, cyber criminals are quick to exploit the security gaps that many devices are inherently designed with. Users cannot be expected to tackle this threat alone, and many current solutions available for network monitoring are simply not accessible or can be difficult to implement for the average user, which is a gap that needs to be addressed. This article presents an effective signature-based solution to monitor, analyze, and detect potentially malicious traffic for IoT ecosystems in the typical home network environment by utilizing passive network sniffing techniques and a cloud application to monitor anomalous activity. The proposed solution focuses on two attack and propagation vectors leveraged by the infamous Mirai botnet, namely DNS and Telnet. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the proposed solution can detect 98.35 percent of malicious DNS traffic and 99.33 percent of Telnet traffic for an overall detection accuracy of 98.84 percent

Exploring the functionalisation of the thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidinedione core: late stage access to highly substituted 5-carboxamide-6-aryl scaffolds

The thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidinedione core is found as a component in a range of pharmaceutically active compounds, however, synthetic approaches to these scaffolds rely on access to functionalised, highly substituted thiophenes. Here we describe a new approach for the preparation of 5-carboxamide-6-aryl analogues that involves a two-step synthesis of the thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidinedione core from a readily available mercaptouracil derivative. Thio-alkylation with ethyl 3-bromopyruvate, followed by cyclisation and dehydration mediated by polyphosphoric acid allowed the scalable synthesis of the thieno[2,3-d] pyrimidinedione unit. The late-stage functionalisation of this core motif via bromination of the thiophene ring and a subsequent Suzuki-Miyaura reaction as the key steps permitted access to a novel library of 5-carboxamide-6-aryl analogues. The physicochemical properties of these compounds were determined, generating an insight into the potential bioavailability of these scaffolds. Based on these results, a selection of the novel 5-carboxamide-6-aryl analogues were tested as lactate uptake inhibitors of monocarboxylate transporters 1, 2 and 4 in Xenopus oocytes

Network Traffic Analysis for Threats Detection in the Internet of Things

As the prevalence of the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to increase, cyber criminals are quick to exploit the security gaps that many devices are inherently designed with. Whilst users can not be expected to tackle this threat alone, many current solutions available for network monitoring are simply not accessible or can be difficult to implement for the average user and is a gap that needs to be addressed. This paper presents an effective signature-based solution to monitor, analyse and detect potentially malicious traffic for IoT ecosystems in the typical home network environment by utilising passive network sniffing techniques and a cloud-application to monitor anomalous activity. The proposed solution focuses on two attack and propagation vectors leveraged by the infamous Mirai botnet, namely DNS and Telnet. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the proposed solution can detect 98.35% of malicious DNS traffic and 99.33% of Telnet traffic respectively; for an overall detection accuracy of 98.84%

Social trajectories or disrupted identities? : Changing and competing models of teacher professionalism under New Labour

Since the 1988 Education Reform Act, the teacher’s role in England has changed in many ways, a process which intensified under New Labour after 1997. Conceptions of teacher professionalism have become more structured and formalized, often heavily influenced by government policy objectives. Career paths have become more diverse and specialised. In this article, three post-1997 professional roles are given consideration as examples of these new specialised career paths: Higher Level Teaching Assistants, Teach First trainees and Advanced Skills Teachers. The article goes on to examine such developments within teaching, using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to inform the analysis, as well as Bernstein’s theories of knowledge and identity. The article concludes that there has been considerable specialization and subsequent fragmentation of roles within the teaching profession, as part of workforce remodelling initiatives. However, there is still further scope for developing a greater sense of professional cohesion through social activism initiatives, such as the children's agenda. This may produce more stable professional identities in the future as the role of teachers within the wider children’s workforce is clarified

Family Medicine needs assessment: Studying the clinical work of general practitioners in Ethiopia

Background and Objective: Some universities in sub-Saharan Africa have initiated Family Medicine (FM) residency programs. This study was conducted by FM colleagues at Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethiopia and the University of Toronto, Canada to inform the FM residency curriculum at AAU. It was designed to determine the clinical problems that family physicians in Ethiopia may encounter.Methods: We used a mixed methods approach: Modified time-motion study and brief interviews. We observed 46 general practitioners (GPs) across ten sites in Ethiopia. Trained observers recorded time-motion data while GPs conducted their daily work. This data was supplemented by brief interviews with the GPs.Findings: Clinical encounters occupied 82% of GP work. The common symptoms were digestive-abdominal pain (21% visits), respiratory-cough (16%), and general-fever and chills (16%). The common diagnoses were infectious (22% visits), genitourinary (12%), circulatory (10%), and endocrine (10%). Challenges identified were lack of clinical resources (57% of GPs), difficulties in communication (48%) and excessive workload (33%). Most common requests were for information technology (78%) and HIV (46%) training.Conclusion: The profile of common symptoms and diagnoses indicated the competencies family physicians in the regions should have. This information will be used to develop an appropriate FM curriculum at AAU

Quantifying effects of long-range transport of NO2 over Delhi using back trajectories and satellite data

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Exposure to air pollution is a leading public health risk factor in India, especially over densely populated Delhi and the surrounding Indo-Gangetic Plain. During the post-monsoon seasons, the prevailing north-westerly winds are known to influence aerosol pollution events in Delhi by advecting pollutants from agricultural fires as well as from local sources. Here we investigate the year-round impact of meteorology on gaseous nitrogen oxides (NOxCombining double low lineNO+NO2). We use bottom-up NOx emission inventories (anthropogenic and fire) and high-resolution satellite measurement based tropospheric column NO2 (TCNO2) data, from S5P aboard TROPOMI, alongside a back-trajectory model (ROTRAJ) to investigate the balance of local and external sources influencing air pollution changes in Delhi, with a focus on different emissions sectors. Our analysis shows that accumulated emissions (i.e. integrated along the trajectory path, allowing for chemical loss) are highest under westerly, north-westerly and northerly flow during pre-monsoon (February-May) and post-monsoon (October-February) seasons. According to this analysis, during the pre-monsoon season, the highest accumulated satellite TCNO2 trajectories come from the east and north-west of Delhi. TCNO2 is elevated within Delhi and the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) to the east of city. The accumulated NOx emission trajectories indicate that the transport and industry sectors together account for more than 80% of the total accumulated emissions, which are dominated by local sources (>70%) under easterly winds and north-westerly winds. The high accumulated emissions estimated during the pre-monsoon season under north-westerly wind directions are likely to be driven by high NOx emissions locally and in nearby regions (since NOx lifetime is reduced and the boundary layer is relatively deeper in this season). During the post-monsoon season the highest accumulated satellite TCNO2 trajectories are advected from Punjab and Haryana, where satellite TCNO2 is elevated, indicating the potential for the long-range transport of agricultural burning emissions to Delhi. However, accumulated NOx emissions indicate local (70%) emissions from the transport sector are the largest contributor to the total accumulated emissions. High local emissions, coupled with a relatively long NOx atmospheric lifetime and shallow boundary layer, aid the build-up of emissions locally and along the trajectory path. This indicates the possibility that fire emissions datasets may not capture emissions from agricultural waste burning in the north-west sufficiently to accurately quantify their influence on Delhi air quality (AQ). Analysis of daily ground-based NO2 observations indicates that high-pollution episodes (>90th percentile) occur predominantly in the post-monsoon season, and more than 75% of high-pollution events are primarily caused by local sources. But there is also a considerable influence from non-local (30%) emissions from the transport sector during the post-monsoon season. Overall, we find that in the post-monsoon season, there is substantial accumulation of high local NOx emissions from the transport sector (70% of total emissions, 70% local), alongside the import of NOx pollution into Delhi (30% non-local). This work indicates that both high local NOx emissions from the transport sector and the advection of highly polluted air originating from outside Delhi are of concern for the population. As a result, air quality mitigation strategies need to be adopted not only in Delhi but in the surrounding regions to successfully control this issue. In addition, our analysis suggests that the largest benefits to Delhi NOx air quality would be seen with targeted reductions in emissions from the transport and agricultural waste burning sectors, particularly during the post-monsoon season.Peer reviewe

Systemic Racism and Health Disparities: A Statement from Editors of Family Medicine Journals

The year 2020 has been marked by historic protests across the United States and the globe sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black people. The protests heightened awareness of racism as a public health crisis and triggered an antiracism movement. The editors of several North American family medicine publications have come together to address this call to action and share resources on racism across our readerships.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163331/1/Final Statement on Systemic Racism- with acknowledgements.pdf-1Description of Final Statement on Systemic Racism- with acknowledgements.pdf : Main ArticleSEL

The end of the beginning? Taking forward local democratic renewal in the post-referendum North East.

This article draws upon the author’s commissioned research on the nature of regional governance following the 2004 Referendum in the North East on elected regional assemblies. The article aimed to both capture these views and to assess how the ‘No vote in the referendum has impacted on subsequent developments in sub-national governance. The article provides both an empirical overview of recent developments and engages with the wider conceptual debates on democratic renewal. The arguments covered in this output are aimed at both academic and practitioner audiences, and have been also disseminated at regional and national conferences

Investigation of the summer 2018 European ozone air pollution episodes using novel satellite data and modelling

In the summer of 2018, Europe experienced an intense heat wave which coincided with several persistent large-scale ozone (O3) pollution episodes. Novel satellite data of lower tropospheric column O3 from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on the MetOp satellite showed substantial enhancements in 2018 relative to other years since 2012. Surface observations also showed ozone enhancements across large regions of continental Europe in summer 2018 compared to 2017. Enhancements to surface temperature and the O3 precursor gases carbon monoxide and methanol in 2018 were co-retrieved from MetOp observations by the same scheme. This analysis was supported by the TOMCAT chemistry transport model (CTM) to investigate processes driving the observed O3 enhancements. Through several targeted sensitivity experiments we show that meteorological processes, and emissions to a secondary order, were important for controlling the elevated O3 concentrations at the surface. However, mid-tropospheric (~500 hPa) O3 enhancements were dominated by meteorological processes. We find that contributions from stratospheric O3 intrusions ranged between 15&ndash;40 %. Analysis of back trajectories indicates that the import of O3-enriched air masses into Europe originated over the North Atlantic substantially increasing O3 in the 500 hPa layer during summer 2018.</p