Bridging the gap of screening and scale up in CHO, hybridoma, HEK293 and other cell lines: Single use optimum growth flasks 30mL-5L flasks with transfer caps, and ports

Optimum Growth FlasksTM (patented) are a break through design to shake flasks, and the first in 100+ years. By using Optimum Growth FlasksTM users are able to grow 15mLs-3L of Cell Culture with the same scalability. The Optimum Growth FlasksTM have replaced disposable Fernbach Flasks and also small Wave® Bags (5L & 10L) in the larger sizes as production vessels. The Optimum Growth Flasks TM also give high viability cultures with a great use of space as shown by our data in CHO, Hybridoma, HEK293 and other Cell Lines. We have made a series of Transfer Caps (patented) available in all sizes allowing for the flasks to be used as seed culture for transfer to larger Optimum Growth FlasksTM , Cell Bags and Bioreactors. For cell line development we have introduced new Sampling Valves, and Transfer-Feed valves that allow for no unscrewing of caps for manipulations for Cell Development, and a carrier system for making it easier handling. We will show how to better grow to Higher Density, with high viability, and good product quality for the proteins and antibodies of interest

Automated Transit Networks (ATN): A Review of the State of the Industry and Prospects for the Future, MTI Report 12-31

The concept of Automated Transit Networks (ATN) - in which fully automated vehicles on exclusive, grade-separated guideways provide on-demand, primarily non-stop, origin-to-destination service over an area network – has been around since the 1950s. However, only a few systems are in current operation around the world. ATN does not appear “on the radar” of urban planners, transit professionals, or policy makers when it comes to designing solutions for current transit problems in urban areas. This study explains ATN technology, setting it in the larger context of Automated Guideway Transit (AGT); looks at the current status of ATN suppliers, the status of the ATN industry, and the prospects of a U.S.-based ATN industry; summarizes and organizes proceedings from the seven Podcar City conferences that have been held since 2006; documents the U.S./Sweden Memorandum of Understanding on Sustainable Transport; discusses how ATN could expand the coverage of existing transit systems; explains the opportunities and challenges in planning and funding ATN systems and approaches for procuring ATN systems; and concludes with a summary of the existing challenges and opportunities for ATN technology. The study is intended to be an informative tool for planners, urban designers, and those involved in public policy, especially for urban transit, to provide a reference for history and background on ATN, and to use for policy development and research

Bootstrap-Optimised Regularised Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography

Supporting data and MATLAB code for the paper: A. J. Reader and S. Ellis, "Bootstrap-Optimised Regularised Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography," in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (2020) DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2019.2956878 Instructions for use (tested on MATLAB R2017a): - unzip the file bootstrap_optimised_PET_image_reconstruction.zip Dependencies - add the utils directory to your path before running the scripts. Figures - there is a directory for each figure, not including those figures which do not contain experimental results. Each directory contains a .m script file and a .mat data file. Running the .m file produces the figure roughly as it appears in the manuscript. Independent exploration of the data can be performed if desired. Sample code - Running the example.m file will perform example 2D reconstructions with MLEM, bootstrap optimised guided quadratic MAPEM, and bootstrap optimised unweighted quadratic MAPEM. The reconstruction code is contained in the @reconClass folder. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [EP/M020142/1]; and the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Medical Engineering [WT 203148/Z/16/Z]

Bliss's New England : identity, interdependence and isolation

Never before have the life and works of Arthur Bliss (1891-1975) been subjected to an extended critical examination. Such neglect has resulted in the persistent misrepresentation and oversimplification of his stylistic development: here, Bliss is reassessed through a tightly-wrought chronological narrative, interwoven with key elements of social and cultural history. Some musical commentary is offered, and this invariably centres on Bliss's abstract works, which shed the greatest light on his evolving style and intentions. Some biographical elements III this thesis are entirely original: for example, a lengthy survey of Bliss's military service during the First World War has been constructed from his unpublished war diaries and letters, all of which are kept with other historical source material at the Bliss Archive, Cambridge University Library. Most emphasis is then placed upon the interwar years, when Bliss was at his most creatively productive. A final biographical chapter demonstrates that, although Bliss's output was prodigious in the last thirty years of his life, he failed almost entirely in that time to engage with contemporary audiences. Throughout his life, Bliss remained detached from the predominant musical establishment and its associated pastoral trends, yet he attempted - with modest success - to enter the cultural mainstream during the interwar years. The received two-period classification of Bliss's music is therefore challenged and rejected, and a new three-period scheme is proposed in the final chapter, drawing upon evidence concerning Bliss's relationship with his audience: consequently, much is revealed of Bliss's changing intentions and motivations. Bliss experienced lengthy periods of cultural isolation, while his most enduring music was composed at times of greatest social integration. His relationship with national identity in the light of two world wars becomes crucial in this context, as does his changing interactions with urban and rural contexts: it is this interdependence, and others, which defined a British 'identity', if present at all, during the twentieth century

Analysis of Problem Tokens to Rank Factors Impacting Quality in VoIP Applications

User-perceived quality-of-experience (QoE) in internet telephony systems is commonly evaluated using subjective ratings computed as a Mean Opinion Score (MOS). In such systems, while user MOS can be tracked on an ongoing basis, it does not give insight into which factors of a call induced any perceived degradation in QoE -- it does not tell us what caused a user to have a sub-optimal experience. For effective planning of product improvements, we are interested in understanding the impact of each of these degrading factors, allowing the estimation of the return (i.e., the improvement in user QoE) for a given investment. To obtain such insights, we advocate the use of an end-of-call "problem token questionnaire" (PTQ) which probes the user about common call quality issues (e.g., distorted audio or frozen video) which they may have experienced. In this paper, we show the efficacy of this questionnaire using data gathered from over 700,000 end-of-call surveys gathered from Skype (a large commercial VoIP application). We present a method to rank call quality and reliability issues and address the challenge of isolating independent factors impacting the QoE. Finally, we present representative examples of how these problem tokens have proven to be useful in practice

Trust-Region-Free Policy Optimization for Stochastic Policies

Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) is an iterative method that simultaneously maximizes a surrogate objective and enforces a trust region constraint over consecutive policies in each iteration. The combination of the surrogate objective maximization and the trust region enforcement has been shown to be crucial to guarantee a monotonic policy improvement. However, solving a trust-region-constrained optimization problem can be computationally intensive as it requires many steps of conjugate gradient and a large number of on-policy samples. In this paper, we show that the trust region constraint over policies can be safely substituted by a trust-region-free constraint without compromising the underlying monotonic improvement guarantee. The key idea is to generalize the surrogate objective used in TRPO in a way that a monotonic improvement guarantee still emerges as a result of constraining the maximum advantage-weighted ratio between policies. This new constraint outlines a conservative mechanism for iterative policy optimization and sheds light on practical ways to optimize the generalized surrogate objective. We show that the new constraint can be effectively enforced by being conservative when optimizing the generalized objective function in practice. We call the resulting algorithm Trust-REgion-Free Policy Optimization (TREFree) as it is free of any explicit trust region constraints. Empirical results show that TREFree outperforms TRPO and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) in terms of policy performance and sample efficiency.Comment: RLDM 202

"Virtual shear box" experiments of stress and slip cycling within a subduction interface mélange

What role does the progressive geometric evolution of subduction-related mélange shear zones play in the development of strain transients? We use a “virtual shear box” experiment, based on outcrop-scale observations from an ancient exhumed subduction interface – the Chrystalls Beach Complex (CBC), New Zealand – to constrain numerical models of slip processes within a meters-thick shear zone. The CBC is dominated by large, competent clasts surrounded by interconnected weak matrix. Under constant slip velocity boundary conditions, models of the CBC produce stress cycling behavior, accompanied by mixed brittle-viscous deformation. This occurs as a consequence of the reorganization of competent clasts, and the progressive development and breakdown of stress bridges as clasts mutually obstruct one another. Under constant shear stress boundary conditions, the models show periods of relative inactivity punctuated by aseismic episodic slip at rapid rates (meters per year). Such a process may contribute to the development of strain transients such as slow slip