Stripe & dusk: a weekend odyssey

I love to take in and create playful fantasy, tales set in wild and fantastic worlds peopled by wild and fantastic characters - dragons and dinosaurs, knights and robots, stars and penguins. My novella is the story of a quest set in a colourful and wondrous fantasy universe. Along the journey's tumultuous trajectory fantasy tropes and protocols are encountered, subverted, teased at, appropriated, and renovated, in order to create something both original and familiar all at once. I am happy to acknowledge and salute the influences of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Walter Moers and Manuela Draeger

Superplot3d: an open source GUI tool for 3d trajectory visualisation and elementary processing

When acquiring simple three-dimensional (3d) trajectory data it is common to accumulate large coordinate data sets. In order to examine integrity and consistency of object tracking, it is often necessary to rapidly visualise these data. Ordinarily, to achieve this the user must either execute 3d plotting functions in a numerical computing environment or manually inspect data in two dimensions, plotting each individual axis. Superplot3d is an open source MATLAB script which takes tab delineated Cartesian data points in the form x, y, z and time and generates an instant visualization of the object’s trajectory in free-rotational three dimensions. Whole trajectories may be instantly presented, allowing for rapid inspection. Executable from the MATLAB command line (or deployable as a compiled standalone application) superplot3d also provides simple GUI controls to obtain rudimentary trajectory information, allow specific visualization of trajectory sections and perform elementary processing. Superplot3d thus provides a framework for non-programmers and programmers alike, to recreate recently acquired 3d object trajectories in rotatable 3d space. It is intended, via the use of a preference driven menu to be flexible and work with output from multiple tracking software systems. Source code and accompanying GUIDE .fig files are provided for deployment and further development

The Pathogenesis and Clinical Management of Dengue

Dengue is an arboviral disease that exerts a significant public health burden on the tropical world. Currently there is no available vaccine or specific therapeutic. My reviews show that our understanding of dengue pathogenesis, transmission dynamics and optimal case management is incomplete. The work presented in this thesis is a compilation of expert reviews/perspectives and primary research that addresses some of these knowledge gaps. Understanding dengue pathogenesis and in particular, risk factors for progression to severe dengue, is an important priority to reduce morbidity and mortality, especially in young children. Genetic variants of the MICB and PLCE genes have been shown to be associated with severe dengue. I tested the hypothesis that these variants are also associated with less severe dengue infection and with higher early viraemia levels in two studies involving the genotyping of 3961 and 2742 dengue cases respectively. My studies showed that these genetic variants are associated with less severe but clinically apparent dengue infection but showed no evidence of an association with higher viraemia levels. The functional basis of these susceptibility mutations remains unclear. Dengue transmission dynamics are shaped by the prevalence of the permissive vectors, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. My research hypothesis was that susceptibility and transmission of dengue might differ between the two species. I conducted a clinical study that compared the susceptibility of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus to both initial and disseminated dengue after direct blood feeding experiments on viraemic patients. This work showed that both mosquito types were equally susceptible to initial infection with dengue but that Ae. albopictus was less likely to develop salivary infection, and, thus, an infectious phenotype. These results have important implications for the development of dengue transmission models, especially in areas of dengue emergence where the influence of Ae. albopictus is thought to be greatest. In addition, the results confirm the central importance of patient plasma viraemia in causing successful DENV transmission, suggesting that reducing this through the use of antivirals could potentially reduce transmission. Clinical management of dengue patients remains an enormous challenge. Statins are rational candidate drugs for dengue because of their previously identified positive influence on vascular endothelial function. I conducted a clinical trial of lovastatin therapy in adult dengue patients. The trial showed that lovastatin was safe and well tolerated in dengue patients but it did not show any positive effects on the kinetics of viraemia or on any of the pre-specified clinical or laboratory features. I conducted a survey of platelet management in 20 countries and found a wide variety of approaches to the use of platelets in dengue underscoring the need for prospective clinical trials to inform evidence in this area. To reduce the large sample size normally required for the development of dengue therapeutics, I considered the use of a human dengue infection model in dengue drug development. This model has the potential to a game-changer in drug development and in the design of future trials

Bergmann's body size rule operates in facultatively endothermic insects: evidence from a complex of cryptic bumblebee species

According to Bergmann’s rule we expect species with larger body size to inhabit locations with a cooler climate, where they may be well adapted to conserve heat and resist starvation. This rule is generally applied to endotherms. In contrast, body size in ectothermic invertebrates has been suggested to follow the reverse ecogeographic trend: these converse Bergmann’s patterns may be driven by the ecological constraints of shorter season length and lower food availability in cooler high latitude locations. Such patterns are particularly common in large insects due to their longer development times. As large and facultatively endothermic insects, bumblebees could thus be expected to follow either trend. In this investigation, we studied body size of three bumblebee species over a large spatial area and investigated whether interspecific trends in body size correspond to differences in their distribution consistent with either Bergmann’s or a converse Bergmann’s rule. We examined the body size of queens, males and workers of the Bombus lucorum complex of cryptic bumblebee species from across the whole of Great Britain. We found interspecific differences in body size corresponding to Bergmann’s rule: queens and males of the more northerly distributed, cool-adapted, species were largest. In contrast, the mean body size of the worker caste did not vary between the three species. These differences in body size may have evolved under selection pressures for thermoregulation or starvation resistance. We suggest that this case study in facultatively endothermic insects may help clarify the selection pressures governing Bergmann rule trends more generally

The neonicotinoid insecticide thiacloprid impacts upon bumblebee colony development under field conditions

The impacts of pesticides, and in particular of neonicotinoids, on bee health remain much debated. Many studies describing negative effects have been criticised as the experimental protocol did not perfectly simulate real-life field scenarios. Here, we placed free-flying bumblebee colonies next to raspberry crops that were either untreated or treated with the neonicotinoid thiacloprid as part of normal farming practice. Colonies were exposed to the raspberry crops for a two week period before being relocated to either a flower-rich or flower-poor site. Overall, exposed colonies were more likely to die prematurely, and those that survived reached a lower final weight and produced 46% fewer reproductives than colonies placed at control farms. The impact was more marked at the flower-rich site (all colonies performed poorly at the flower poor site). Analysis of nectar and pollen stores from bumblebee colonies placed at the same raspberry farms revealed thiacloprid residues of up to 771ppb in pollen and up to 561ppb in nectar. The image of thiacloprid as a relatively benign neonicotinoid should now be questioned

Automatic classification of ICA components from infant EEG using MARA.

Automated systems for identifying and removing non-neural ICA components are growing in popularity among EEG researchers of adult populations. Infant EEG data differs in many ways from adult EEG data, but there exists almost no specific system for automated classification of source components from paediatric populations. Here, we adapt one of the most popular systems for adult ICA component classification for use with infant EEG data. Our adapted classifier significantly outperformed the original adult classifier on samples of naturalistic free play EEG data recorded from 10 to 12-month-old infants, achieving agreement rates with the manual classification of over 75% across two validation studies (n = 44, n = 25). Additionally, we examined both classifiers' ability to remove stereotyped ocular artifact from a basic visual processing ERP dataset compared to manual ICA data cleaning. Here, the new classifier performed on level with expert manual cleaning and was again significantly better than the adult classifier at removing artifact whilst retaining a greater amount of genuine neural signal operationalised through comparing ERP activations in time and space. Our new system (iMARA) offers developmental EEG researchers a flexible tool for automatic identification and removal of artifactual ICA components

A mixed malaria infection: is Plasmodium vivax good for you?

We describe a case of mixed malaria infection in a returning traveller. We suggest that our patient had a chronic infection with Plasmodium vivax, which reduced the severity of an acute infection with P. falciparum-an example of cross-species immunity