Multiple disadvantages: class, social capital, and well-being of ethnic minority groups in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused untold damage to the socio-economic lives of people all over the world. Research has also demonstrated great inequality in the pandemic experience. In the UK as in many other countries, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and in working-class positions have suffered disproportionately more than the majority group and those in salariat positions in terms of income loss, financial difficulty, and vulnerability to infection. Yet little is known about how people coped in the daily lives and tried to maintain their well-being during the most difficult days of the pandemic through social capital. Methods: In this paper, we draw data from the COVID-19 Survey in Five National Longitudinal Studies to address these questions. The survey covered the period from May 2020 to February 2021, the height of the pandemic in the UK. It contains numerous questions on contact, help and support among family, friends, community members, socio-political trust, and physical and mental health. We conceptualise three types of social capital and one type of overall well-being and we construct latent variables from categorical indicator variables. We analyse the ethnic and socio-economic determinants of the three types of social capital and their impacts on well-being. Results: Our analysis shows that social capital plays very important roles on well-being, and that ethnic minority groups, particularly those of Pakistani/Bangladeshi and Black heritages, faced multiple disadvantages: their poorer socio-economic positions prevented them from gaining similar levels of social capital to those of the white group. However, for people with the same levels of social capital, the effects on well-being are generally similar. Discussion: Socio-economic (class) inequality is the root cause for ethnic differences in social capital which in turn affects people’s well-being.</p

System optimization of an all-silicon IQ modulator : achieving 100 Gbaud dual polarization 32QAM

We experimentally demonstrate the highest, to the best of our knowledge, reported net rate in a SiP IQ modulator. At 100 Gbaud 32QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), and assuming 20% FEC (forward error correction) overhead, we achieved a dual polarization net rate of 833 Gb/s. This record was achieved by adapting digital signal processing to the challenging pattern dependent distortion encountered in the nonlinear and bandwidth limited regime. First the Mach Zehnder modulator (MZM) operating point (trading off modulation efficiency and 3 dB bandwidth) and linear compensation (electrical and optical) are jointly optimized. Next, the key application of nonlinear preand post-compensation are explored. We show that nonlinear processing at the transmitter, in our case an iterative learning control (ILC) method, is essential as post-processing alone could not achieve reliable communications at 100 Gbaud. Nonlinear post-compensation algorithms pushed the performance under the FEC threshold with the introduction of structured intersymbol interference in post processing and a simple one-step maximum likelihood sequence detector. We provide detailed descriptions of our methodology and results

Modeling Multi-wavelength Pulse Profiles of Millisecond Pulsar PSR B1821-24

PSR B1821$-$24 is a solitary millisecond pulsar (MSP) which radiates multi-wavelength pulsed photons. It has complex radio, X-ray and $\gamma$-ray pulse profiles with distinct peak phase-separations that challenge the traditional caustic emission models. Using the single-pole annular gap model with suitable magnetic inclination angle ($\alpha=40^\circ$) and viewing angle ($\zeta=75^\circ$), we managed to reproduce its pulse profiles of three wavebands. It is found that the middle radio peak is originated from the core gap region at high altitudes, and the other two radio peaks are originated from the annular gap region at relatively low altitudes. Two peaks of both X-ray and $\gamma$-ray wavebands are fundamentally originated from annular gap region, while the $\gamma$-ray emission generated from the core gap region contributes somewhat to the first $\gamma$-ray peak. Precisely reproducing the multi-wavelength pulse profiles of PSR B1821$-$24 enables us to understand emission regions of distinct wavebands and justify pulsar emission models.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Learning Disentangled Feature Representation for Hybrid-distorted Image Restoration

Hybrid-distorted image restoration (HD-IR) is dedicated to restore real distorted image that is degraded by multiple distortions. Existing HD-IR approaches usually ignore the inherent interference among hybrid distortions which compromises the restoration performance. To decompose such interference, we introduce the concept of Disentangled Feature Learning to achieve the feature-level divide-and-conquer of hybrid distortions. Specifically, we propose the feature disentanglement module (FDM) to distribute feature representations of different distortions into different channels by revising gain-control-based normalization. We also propose a feature aggregation module (FAM) with channel-wise attention to adaptively filter out the distortion representations and aggregate useful content information from different channels for the construction of raw image. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified by visualizing the correlation matrix of features and channel responses of different distortions. Extensive experimental results also prove superior performance of our approach compared with the latest HD-IR schemes.Comment: Accepted by ECCV202

Study on Differences in the Pathology, T Cell Subsets and Gene Expression in Susceptible and Non-Susceptible Hosts Infected with Schistosoma japonicum

More than 40 kinds of mammals in China are known to be naturally infected with Schistosoma japonicum (S. japonicum); Microtus fortis (M. fortis), a species of vole, is the only mammal in which the schistosomes cannot mature or cause significant pathogenic changes. In the current study, we compared the differences in pathology by Hematoxylin-eosin staining and in changes in the T cell subsets with flow cytometry as well as gene expression using genome oligonucleotide microarrays in the lung and liver, before challenge and 10 days post-infection with schistosomes in a S. japonicum-susceptible mouse model of infection, a non-susceptible rat model and the non-permissive host, M. fortis. The results demonstrated that S. japonicum promoted a more intensive immune response and more pathological lesions in M. fortis and rats than in mice. Hematoxylin-eosin staining revealed that the immune effector cells involved were mainly eosinophilic granulocytes supplemented with heterophilic granulocytes and macrophages. The analysis of splenic T cell subsets showed that CD4+ T cell subsets and the CD4+/CD8+ ratio were increased, while the CD8+ T cell subsets decreased remarkably in rats; whereas the CD8+ T cell subsets were increased, but the CD4+/CD8+ ratio was decreased significantly in mice. The analysis of the pattern of gene expression suggested that some immune-associated genes and apoptosis-inducing genes up-regulated, while some development-associated genes were down-regulated in the infected M. fortis compared to the uninfected controls; the three different hosts have different response mechanisms to schistosome infection. The results of this study will be helpful for identifying the key molecules in the immune response to S. japonicum in M. fortis and for understanding more about the underlying mechanism of the response, as well as for elucidating the interaction between S. japonicum and its hosts

Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Spray-Formed H13 Steel Tooling

This paper presents results on the microstructure and hardness of spray-formed H13 (Fe-0.40C-5.00Cr-1.10V-1.30Mo (wt%)) tooling. There is very low porosity in both as-spray formed samples and aged samples. The microstructure in the as-spray-formed sample is characterized by primary carbides, acicular lower bainite, and a small amount of martensite and of retained austenite. Spray formed and aged tooling H13 has higher hardness values than those of H13 in conventional tooling. The experimental results of microstructures and hardness are rationalized on the basis of numerical analysis of cooling during processing of spray-formed tooling