Task 19 : software architecture

This document will cover the software architecture of the current WebPA system in use at Loughborough University. Within the document, the definition of the term software architecture is covered, as it has various meanings dependant on which angle is taken. The architecture description language is also identified. This will be used in the rest of the document to aid in the understanding of the different software architectures described. In order for the reader to understand this document they will need to have some familiarity with the concept of software architecture. Time has been taken to explain the concept and the main areas of software architecture that will be covered within this document. In order to read and understand the diagrams used to describe the software architecture it is useful for the reader to understand the main elements of UML. The constructs of UML will not be examined and are beyond the scope of this document. However, all efforts have been made to explain the diagrams to the user

Task 20 : The SOA approach

Within this document the SOA will be examined and explained in the context of the WebPA project. The first definition will be what SOA represents. From this discussion of the basic principles will be covered with regard to the guiding principles surrounding SOA to the specific architecture principles. From this point the available SOA technologies are identified and examined. The overall advantages and disadvantages of the system can be found in Appendix 2 – A Comparison of Web Service Technologies. One of the most important aspect of SOA to the WebPA project are the existing frameworks and specifications that can be utilised. This encompasses the relevancy of some of the ELF projects to WebPA. This document also covers the other considerations that must be taken into account with regard to SOA. Finally the document is concluded and the recommendations for the project are made. Through out the document a high number of acronyms and abbreviations are used. In most instances within the body of the document where an acronym is used it is explained at that point. However, to ensure that the reader can understand all acronyms a glossary is included in Appendix 1 – Glossary

Exploring the role of metals and senescence in cutaneous wound repair

Acute wound healing involves a tightly regulated cascade of cellular signalling and functional events. Deterioration at any stage of this sophisticated system can lead to healing impairment and chronic, non-healing wounds. Chronic wounds, which are prevalent in the elderly and diabetic, are a global socioeconomic burden and remain a major area of clinical unmet need. Improved understanding of the cellular and molecular aetiology of chronic wounds is essential to develop new therapies. The aim of this work was to explore the role of cellular senescence and the metallome in governing normal and pathological wound repair. Novel data presented in this thesis show increased senescence in both aged and diabetic wounds, while biologically-important metals, such as calcium, were reduced. Transcriptional profiling of wounds strongly linked the transcriptome, metallome and senescence. A direct role for senescence in pathological healing was mechanistically demonstrated in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo. Crucially, pharmacological inhibition of the explicated senescence receptor, Cxcr2, accelerated diabetic wound healing in vivo. Collectively, these data reveal a hitherto unappreciated role for Cxcr2 in mediating cellular senescence during pathological skin repair. Global profiling of the wound metallome highlighted significant changes in wound iron levels during late-stage healing. In vitro studies uncovered a new role for iron in mediating extracellular matrix deposition during wound remodelling, while reduced iron levels in diabetic wounds correlated with impaired ECM deposition. In summary, temporospatial metallome profiling identified multiple defects in metal-linked cellular processes in the pathological wound environment. Taken together, the research platform delivered in this work will provide an unprecedented opportunity to further interrogate transcriptional and functional relationships between cellular senescence and the metallome in wound repair. Indeed, this research may underpin the development of novel, efficacious metal-targeted therapies for chronic healing wounds in the future

Introduction to WebPA

This document is an in-depth look at why WebPA should be used to help in the peer assessment of students, by students, for group working. Both the history and current development of the project, as well as the reasons why WebPA should be adopted are covered. To help develop a better understanding of the WebPA system, a look at the different sections of the system are included. All of the areas than an academic would use are introduced and the terms and concepts used in the system are explained. The scoring algorithm is also broken down and explained for the current version of WebPA running at Loughborough. This has been included to try and help explain the full system and how it works

Accessibility report

This report describes the conformance of the WebPA System with respect to current accessibility guidelines. This report covers a brief background to the evaluation, the elements of the WebPA system being evaluated. There is information on the reviewer and the process for review. A lot of the background to this evaluation has been covered in the ‘Accessibility Planning and Preparation’ documentation. This report concludes with the results of the testing, and the recommendations for the improvement of the systems accessibility. All of the testing documents are provided in the Appendices Test Reports, along with screen shots of the screens covered

Should uterus transplants be publicly funded?

Since 2000, eleven human uterine transplantation procedures (UTx) have been performed across Europe and Asia. Five of these have, to date, resulted in pregnancy and four live births have now been recorded. The most significant obstacles to the availability of UTx are presently scientific and technical, relating to the safety and efficacy of the procedure itself. However, if and when such obstacles are overcome, the most likely barriers to its availability will be social and financial in nature, relating in particular to the ability and willingness of patients, insurers, or the state to pay. Thus, publicly funded healthcare systems such as the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) will eventually have to decide whether UTx should be funded. With this in mind, we seek to provide an answer to the question of whether there exist any compelling reasons for the state not to fund UTx. The paper proceeds as follows. It assumes, at least for the sake of argument, that UTx will become sufficiently safe and cost-effective to be a candidate for funding and then asks, given that, what objections to funding there might be. Three main arguments are considered and ultimately rejected as providing insufficient reason to withhold funding for UTx. The first two are broad in their scope and offer an opportunity to reflect on wider issues about funding for infertility treatment in general. The third is narrower in scope and could, in certain forms, apply to UTx but not other assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The first argument suggests that UTx should not be publicly funded because doing so would be inconsistent with governments’ obligations to prevent climate change and environmental pollution. The second claims that UTx does not treat a disorder and is not medically necessary. Finally, the third asserts that funding for UTx should be denied because of the availability of alternatives such as adoption and surrogacy

Ethical and Policy Issues Raised by Uterus Transplants

Introduction: In 2014, Brännström and colleagues reported the first human live birth following uterine transplantation (UTx). Research into this treatment for absolute uterine factor infertility has since grown with clinical trials currently taking place across centers in at least thirteen countries worldwide. Sources of data: This review summarizes and critiques the academic literature on ethical and policy issues raised by UTx. Areas of agreement: There is general agreement on the importance of risk reduction and, in principle, to the sharing and maintenance of patient data on an international registry. Areas of controversy: There are numerous areas of controversy ranging from whether it is ethically justified to carry out uterus transplants at all (considering the associated health risks) to how deceased donor organs for transplant should be allocated. This review focuses on three key issues: the choice between deceased and living donors, ensuring valid consent to the procedure and access to treatment. Growing points; UTx is presently a novel and rare procedure but is likely to become more commonplace in the foreseeable future, given the large number of surgical teams working on it worldwide. Areas timely for developing research: Uterus transplantation requires us to re-examine fundamental questions about the ethical and social value of gestation. If eventually extended to transgender women or even to men, it may also require us to reconceptualize what it is to be a ‘father’ or to be a ‘mother’, and the definition of these terms in law

Efficient binocular stereo correspondence matching with 1-D Max-Trees

Extraction of depth from images is of great importance for various computer vision applications. Methods based on convolutional neural networks are very accurate but have high computation requirements, which can be achieved with GPUs. However, GPUs are difficult to use on devices with low power requirements like robots and embedded systems. In this light, we propose a stereo matching method appropriate for applications in which limited computational and energy resources are available. The algorithm is based on a hierarchical representation of image pairs which is used to restrict disparity search range. We propose a cost function that takes into account region contextual information and a cost aggregation method that preserves disparity borders. We tested the proposed method on the Middlebury and KITTI benchmark data sets and on the TrimBot2020 synthetic data. We achieved accuracy and time efficiency results that show that the method is suitable to be deployed on embedded and robotics systems

Human ex vivo wound model and whole-mount staining approach to accurately evaluate skin repair

© 2021 JoVE Creative Commons. Chronic non-healing wounds, which primarily affect the elderly and diabetic, are a significant area of clinical unmet need. Unfortunately, current chronic wound treatments are inadequate, while available pre-clinical models poorly predict the clinical efficacy of new therapies. Here we describe a high throughput, pre-clinical model to assess multiple aspects of the human skin repair response. Partial thickness wounds were created in human ex vivo skin and cultured across a healing time course. Skin wound biopsies were collected in fixative for the whole-mount staining procedure. Fixed samples were blocked and incubated in primary antibody, with detection achieved via fluorescently conjugated secondary antibody. Wounds were counterstained and imaged via confocal microscopy before calculating percentage wound closure (re-epithelialization) in each biopsy. Applying this protocol, we reveal that 2 mm excisional wounds created in healthy donor skin are fully re-epithelialized by day 4-5 post-wounding. On the contrary, closure rates of diabetic skin wounds are significantly reduced, accompanied by perturbed barrier reformation. Combining human skin wounding with a novel whole-mount staining approach allows a rapid and reproducible method to quantify ex vivo wound repair. Collectively, this protocol provides a valuable human platform to evaluate the effectiveness of potential wound therapies, transforming pre-clinical testing and validation