Machine learning for determining lateral flow device results for testing of SARS-CoV-2 infection in asymptomatic populations

Rapid antigen tests, in the form of lateral flow devices (LFD) allow testing of a large population for SARS-CoV-2. To reduce the variability seen in device interpretation, we show the design and testing of an AI algorithm based on machine learning. The machine learning (ML) algorithm is trained on a combination of artificially hybridised LFDs and LFD data linked to RT-qPCR result. Participants are recruited from assisted test sites (ATS) and health care workers undertaking self-testing and images analysed using the ML algorithm. A panel of trained clinicians are used to resolve discrepancies. In total, 115,316 images are returned. In the ATS sub study, sensitivity increased from 92.08% to 97.6% and specificity from 99.85% to 99.99%. In the self-read sub-study, sensitivity increased from 16.00% to 100%, and specificity from 99.15% to 99.40%. An ML-based classifier of LFD results outperforms human reads in asymptomatic testing sites and self-reading

Audio-description reloaded : an analysis of visual scenes in 2012 and Hero

This article explores whether the so-called new "cinema of attractions", with its supposed focus on visual effects to the detriment of storytelling, requires a specific approach to audio-description (AD). After some thoughts on film narrative in this type of cinema and the way in which it incorporates special effects, selected scenes with AD from two feature films, 2012 (directed by Emmerich) and Hero (directed by Zhang Yimou), are analysed. 2012 is a disaster movie aiming to thrill the audience with action. Hero is an equally visual movie but its imagery has an aesthetic purpose. The analysis investigates how space, time and action are treated in the films and the ADs, and how the information is presented in terms of focalization, timing and phrasing. The results suggest that effect-driven narratives require carefully timed and phrased ADs that devote much attention to the prosody of the AD script, its interaction with sounds and the use of metapho

Negotiating sustainability across scales: Community organizing in the Outer Hebrides

This paper represents voices of community organizers on Barra, a small island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Although, arguably Barra is geographically and socio-politically located in the peripheries of Scotland, Britain and Europe, the island has been a center of North Atlantic maritime trade networks for centuries. In the current phase of Europeanization and devolution of powers within the United Kingdom, the community finds itself in the position of having to attend to multiple scales: the European Union, the United Kingdom, Scotland and the island itself with its various interest groups. We draw on ethnographic interviews with community organizers that were elicited for the research project Sustainability on the Edge to illustrate some political challenges and possibilities of such scalar realities. We show that community organizers construct a voice that emphasizes a historical quality of what it means to live on Barra while inflecting this quality with worldly knowledge that enables access to resources from outside the island. Our findings remind us that centers and peripheries are neither fixed categories that could simply be mapped on geographical visualizations nor notions independent of discursive practice