Excavations and the afterlife of a professional football stadium, Peel Park, Accrington, Lancashire: towards an archaeology of football

Association football is now a multi-billion dollar global industry whose emergence spans the post-medieval to the modern world. With its professional roots in late 19th-century industrial Lancashire, stadiums built for the professionalization of football first appear in frequency in the North of England. While many historians of sport focus on consumerism and ‘topophilia’ (attachment to place) regarding these local football grounds, archaeological research that has been conducted on the spectator experience suggests status differentiation within them. Our excavations at Peel Park confirm this impression while also showing a significant afterlife to this stadium, particularly through children’s play

High-school students' mastery of basic flow-control constructs through the lens of reversibility

High-school students specialising in computing fields need to develop the abstraction skills required to understand and create programs. Novices' difficulties at high-school level, ranging from mastery of the "notional machine"to recognition of a program's purpose, have not been investigated as extensively as at tertiary level. This work explores high-school students' code comprehension by asking to reason about reversing conditional and iteration constructs. A sample of 205 K11 - 13 students from different institutions were asked to engage in a set of "reversibility tasklets". For each code fragment, they need to identify if its computation is reversible and either provide the code to reverse or an example of a value that cannot be reversed. For 4 such items, after extracting the recurrent patterns in students' answers, we have carried out an analysis within the framework of the SOLO taxonomy. Overall, 74% of answers correctly identified if the code was reversible but only 42% could provide the full explanation/code. The rate of relational answers varies from 51% down to 21%, the poorest performance arising for a small array-processing loop (and although 65% of the subjects had correctly identified the loop as reversible). The instruction level did not have a strong impact on performance, indicating such tasks are suitable for K11, when the basic flow-control constructs are usually introduced. In particular, the reversibility concept could be a useful pedagogical instrument both to assess and to help develop students' program comprehension

Exploring the Xylariaceae and its relatives

The Xylariaceae and its relatives rank as one of the best-known members of the Ascomycota. They are now well recognized for their diversity, global distribution, ecological activities and their outstanding novel metabolites with wide ranging bioactivity

Understanding in situ ozone production in the summertime through radical observations and modelling studies during the Clean air for London project (ClearfLo)

Measurements of OH, HO2, RO2i (alkene and aromatic-related RO2) and total RO2 radicals taken during the ClearfLo campaign in central London in the summer of 2012 are presented. A photostationary steady-state calculation of OH which considered measured OH reactivity as the OH sink term and the measured OH sources (of which HO2+ NO reaction and HONO photolysis dominated) compared well with the observed levels of OH. Comparison with calculations from a detailed box model utilising the Master Chemical Mechanism v3.2, however, highlighted a substantial discrepancy between radical observations under lower NOx conditions ([NO] 3 ppbv) the box model increasingly underpredicted total [RO2]. The modelled and observed HO2 were in agreement, however, under elevated NO concentrations ranging from 7 to 15 ppbv. The model uncertainty under low NO conditions leads to more ozone production predicted using modelled peroxy radical concentrations ( ≈ 3 ppbv h-1) versus ozone production from peroxy radicals measured ( ≈ 1 ppbv h-1). Conversely, ozone production derived from the predicted peroxy radicals is up to an order of magnitude lower than from the observed peroxy radicals as [NO] increases beyond 7 ppbv due to the model underprediction of RO2 under these conditions

Impacts of bromine and iodine chemistry on tropospheric OH and HO2 : Comparing observations with box and global model perspectives

The chemistry of the halogen species bromine and iodine has a range of impacts on tropospheric composition, and can affect oxidising capacity in a number of ways. However, recent studies disagree on the overall sign of the impacts of halogens on the oxidising capacity of the troposphere. We present simulations of OH and HO2 radicals for comparison with observations made in the remote tropical ocean boundary layer during the Seasonal Oxidant Study at the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory in 2009. We use both a constrained box model, using detailed chemistry derived from the Master Chemical Mechanism (v3.2), and the three-dimensional global chemistry transport model GEOS-Chem. Both model approaches reproduce the diurnal trends in OH and HO2. Absolute observed concentrations are well reproduced by the box model but are overpredicted by the global model, potentially owing to incomplete consideration of oceanic sourced radical sinks. The two models, however, differ in the impacts of halogen chemistry. In the box model, halogen chemistry acts to increase OH concentrations (by 9.8% at midday at the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory), while the global model exhibits a small increase in OH at the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory (by 0.6% at midday) but overall shows a decrease in the global annual mass-weighted mean OH of 4.5%. These differences reflect the variety of timescales through which the halogens impact the chemical system. On short timescales, photolysis of HOBr and HOI, produced by reactions of HO2 with BrO and IO, respectively, increases the OH concentration. On longer timescales, halogen-catalysed ozone destruction cycles lead to lower primary production of OH radicals through ozone photolysis, and thus to lower OH concentrations. The global model includes more of the longer timescale responses than the constrained box model, and overall the global impact of the longer timescale response (reduced primary production due to lower O3 concentrations) overwhelms the shorter timescale response (enhanced cycling from HO2 to OH), and thus the global OH concentration decreases. The Earth system contains many such responses on a large range of timescales. This work highlights the care that needs to be taken to understand the full impact of any one process on the system as a whole

Dimuon production by protons in Tungsten

The mass spectrum of dimuons produced by 400 GeV/c protons in Tungsten has been measured for masses greater than 7 GeV. A clear resonant signal of 2700 upsilons has been seen. The dependence of dimuon production on xF and pT has been determined for dimuon masses in the range 7.0 to 8.25 GeV as well as for masses in the upsilon region 8.25 to 9.75 GeV.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87470/2/93_1.pd

Establishing Lagrangian connections between observations within air masses crossing the Atlantic during the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation experiment

The ITCT-Lagrangian-2K4 (Intercontinental Transport and Chemical Transformation) experiment was conceived with an aim to quantify the effects of photochemistry and mixing on the transformation of air masses in the free troposphere away from emissions. To this end, attempts were made to intercept and sample air masses several times during their journey across the North Atlantic using four aircraft based in New Hampshire (USA), Faial (Azores) and Creil (France). This article begins by describing forecasts from two Lagrangian models that were used to direct the aircraft into target air masses. A novel technique then identifies Lagrangian matches between flight segments. Two independent searches are conducted: for Lagrangian model matches and for pairs of whole air samples with matching hydrocarbon fingerprints. The information is filtered further by searching for matching hydrocarbon samples that are linked by matching trajectories. The quality of these "coincident matches'' is assessed using temperature, humidity and tracer observations. The technique pulls out five clear Lagrangian cases covering a variety of situations and these are examined in detail. The matching trajectories and hydrocarbon fingerprints are shown, and the downwind minus upwind differences in tracers are discussed

Equation of state and phonon frequency calculations of diamond at high pressures

The pressure-volume relationship and the zone-center optical phonon frequency of cubic diamond at pressures up to 600 GPa have been calculated based on Density Functional Theory within the Local Density Approximation and the Generalized Gradient Approximation. Three different approaches, viz. a pseudopotential method applied in the basis of plane waves, an all-electron method relying on Augmented Plane Waves plus Local Orbitals, and an intermediate approach implemented in the basis of Projector Augmented Waves have been used. All these methods and approximations yield consistent results for the pressure derivative of the bulk modulus and the volume dependence of the mode Grueneisen parameter of diamond. The results are at variance with recent precise measurements up to 140 GPa. Possible implications for the experimental pressure determination based on the ruby luminescence method are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Post-stroke inhibition of induced NADPH oxidase type 4 prevents oxidative stress and neurodegeneration

Ischemic stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide. Only one moderately effective therapy exists, albeit with contraindications that exclude 90% of the patients. This medical need contrasts with a high failure rate of more than 1,000 pre-clinical drug candidates for stroke therapies. Thus, there is a need for translatable mechanisms of neuroprotection and more rigid thresholds of relevance in pre-clinical stroke models. One such candidate mechanism is oxidative stress. However, antioxidant approaches have failed in clinical trials, and the significant sources of oxidative stress in stroke are unknown. We here identify NADPH oxidase type 4 (NOX4) as a major source of oxidative stress and an effective therapeutic target in acute stroke. Upon ischemia, NOX4 was induced in human and mouse brain. Mice deficient in NOX4 (Nox4(-/-)) of either sex, but not those deficient for NOX1 or NOX2, were largely protected from oxidative stress, blood-brain-barrier leakage, and neuronal apoptosis, after both transient and permanent cerebral ischemia. This effect was independent of age, as elderly mice were equally protected. Restoration of oxidative stress reversed the stroke-protective phenotype in Nox4(-/-) mice. Application of the only validated low-molecular-weight pharmacological NADPH oxidase inhibitor, VAS2870, several hours after ischemia was as protective as deleting NOX4. The extent of neuroprotection was exceptional, resulting in significantly improved long-term neurological functions and reduced mortality. NOX4 therefore represents a major source of oxidative stress and novel class of drug target for stroke therapy

Ultra-low DNA input into whole genome methylation assays and detection of oncogenic methylation and copy number variants in circulating tumour DNA

Background: Abnormal CpG methylation in cancer is ubiquitous and generally detected in tumour specimens using a variety of techniques at a resolution encompassing single CpG loci to genome wide coverage. Analysis of samples with very low DNA inputs, such as formalin fixed (FFPE) biopsy specimens from clinical trials or circulating tumour DNA is challenging at the genome-wide level because of lack of available input. We present the results of low input experiments into the Illumina Infinium HD methylation assay on FFPE specimens and ctDNA samples. Methods: For all experiments, the Infinium HD assay for methylation was used. In total, forty-eight FFPE specimens were used at varying concentrations (lowest input 50 ng); eighteen blood derived specimens (lowest input 10 ng) and six matched ctDNA input (lowest input 10 ng)/fresh tumour specimens (lowest input 250 ng) were processed. Downstream analysis was performed in R/Bioconductor for quality control metrics and differential methylation analysis as well as copy number calls. Results: Correlation coefficients for CpG methylation were high at the probe level averaged R2 = 0.99 for blood derived samples and R2 > 0.96 for the FFPE samples. When matched ctDNA/fresh tumour samples were compared, R2 > 0.91 between the two. Results of differential methylation analysis did not vary significantly by DNA input in either the blood or FFPE groups. There were differences seen in the ctDNA group as compared to their paired tumour sample, possibly because of enrichment for tumour material without contaminating normal. Copy number variants observed in the tumour were generally also seen in the paired ctDNA sample with good concordance via DQ plot. Conclusions: The Illumina Infinium HD methylation assay can robustly detect methylation across a range of sample types, including ctDNA, down to an input of 10 ng. It can also reliably detect oncogenic methylation changes and copy number variants in ctDNA. These findings demonstrate that these samples can now be accessed by methylation array technology, allowing analysis of these important sample types