Manifolds, patterns and transitions in a creative life

Using sculpture and drawing as my primary methods of investigation, this research explores ways of shifting the emphasis of my creative visual arts practice from object to process whilst still maintaining a primacy of material outcomes. My motivation was to locate ways of developing a sustained practice shaped as much by new works, as by a creative flow between works. I imagined a practice where a logic of structure within discrete forms and a logic of the broader practice might be developed as mutually informed processes. Using basic structural components of multiple wooden curves and linear modes of deployment – in both sculptures and drawings – I have identified both emergence theory and the image of rhizomic growth (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) as theoretically integral to this imagining of a creative practice, both in terms of critiquing and developing works. Whilst I adopt a formalist approach for this exegesis, the emergence and rhizome models allow it to work as a critique of movement, of becoming and changing, rather than merely a formalism of static structure. In these models, therefore, I have identified a formal approach that can be applied not only to objects, but to practice over time. The thorough reading and application of these ontological models (emergence and rhizome) to visual arts practice, in terms of processes, objects and changes, is the primary contribution of this thesis. The works that form the major component of the research develop, reflect and embody these notions of movement and change

Wonder and method

In this paper, my aim is to address the twin concerns raised in this session - models of practice and geographies or spaces of practice - through regarding a selection of works and processes that have arisen from my recent research. Setting up this discussion, I first present a short critique of the idea of models of creative practice, recognising possible problems with the attempt to generalise or abstract its complexities. Working through a series of portraits of my working environment, I will draw from Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis as a way of understanding an art practice both spatially and temporally, suggesting that changes and adjustments can occur through attending to both intuitions and observations of the complex of rhythmic layers constantly at play in any event. Reflecting on my recent studio practice I explore these rhythms through the evocation of a twin axis: the horizontal and the vertical and the arcs of difference or change that occur between them, in both spatial and temporal senses. What this analysis suggests is the idea that understanding does not only emerge from the construction of general principles, derived from observation of the particular, but that the study of rhythms allows us to maintain the primacy of the particular. This makes it well suited to a study of creative methods and objects, since it is to the encounter with and expression of the particular that art practices, most certainly my own, are frequently directed

Contracted Site

Traditionally the notion of drawing in-situ has suggested the physical presence of the artist in the environment under scrutiny. The assumption here of enhanced connectivity, however, is hasty in light of the idea that situation implies a relative spatial value determined by the interplay of subject and location, where the possibility of not being “in-situ” is problematic. The fact that traditional drawing in-situ, such as the representation of land as landscape, requires a framing of the world out there implies a distance between the perceived object and the drawing surface. Rather than suggesting that some drawing is situated and other sorts of drawing are not, however, I argue that situation or site is variously extended and contracted depending on the nature of mediation between surface and environment. The suggestion here is that site is not so much a precondition as a performative function, developed in the act of drawing and always implicating the drawing surface. In my discussion I first evoke an experience of drawing where site is incrementally reeled in, to finally be seen as something in the making. I then focus on specific works by Toba Khedoori and Cameron Robbins where the drawing surface testifies to its own emergence as site. As well, in using my own recent drawing practice as a case study, I argue that the geography of site is delimited neither by horizon nor the boundaries of the paper. Rather, I propose that site and drawing surface coincide in variously contracted and extended ways

Rapid switching in a dual-frequency hybrid aligned nematic liquid crystal cell

Copyright © 2005 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters 87 (2005) and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/87/021106/1We report the optical characterization of a dual-frequency hybrid aligned nematic (HAN) liquid crystal cell driven between two states using a multiple-frequency sinusoidal pulse. The complex dynamic director structure formed during the fast switching process is resolved in unprecedented detail on a submillisecond time scale. The results reveal backflow effects and a total switching time that is substantially faster than that achievable with conventional HAN cells

Real-Time Non-Invasive Imaging and Detection of Spreading Depolarizations through EEG: An Ultra-Light Explainable Deep Learning Approach

A core aim of neurocritical care is to prevent secondary brain injury. Spreading depolarizations (SDs) have been identified as an important independent cause of secondary brain injury. SDs are usually detected using invasive electrocorticography recorded at high sampling frequency. Recent pilot studies suggest a possible utility of scalp electrodes generated electroencephalogram (EEG) for non-invasive SD detection. However, noise and attenuation of EEG signals makes this detection task extremely challenging. Previous methods focus on detecting temporal power change of EEG over a fixed high-density map of scalp electrodes, which is not always clinically feasible. Having a specialized spectrogram as an input to the automatic SD detection model, this study is the first to transform SD identification problem from a detection task on a 1-D time-series wave to a task on a sequential 2-D rendered imaging. This study presented a novel ultra-light-weight multi-modal deep-learning network to fuse EEG spectrogram imaging and temporal power vectors to enhance SD identification accuracy over each single electrode, allowing flexible EEG map and paving the way for SD detection on ultra-low-density EEG with variable electrode positioning. Our proposed model has an ultra-fast processing speed (<0.3 sec). Compared to the conventional methods (2 hours), this is a huge advancement towards early SD detection and to facilitate instant brain injury prognosis. Seeing SDs with a new dimension - frequency on spectrograms, we demonstrated that such additional dimension could improve SD detection accuracy, providing preliminary evidence to support the hypothesis that SDs may show implicit features over the frequency profile

Clostridium perfringens α-toxin interaction with red cells and model membranes.

The effects of Clostridium perfringens α-toxin on host cells have previously been studied extensively but the biophysical processes associated with toxicity are poorly understood. The work reported here shows that the initial interaction between the toxin and lipid membrane leads to measurable changes in the physical properties and morphology of the membrane. A Langmuir monolayer technique was used to assess the response of different lipid species to toxin. Sphingomyelin and unsaturated phosphatidylcholine showed the highest susceptibility to toxin lypolitic action, with a two stage response to the toxin (an initial, rapid hydrolysis stage followed by the insertion and/or reorganisation of material in the monolayer). Fluorescence confocal microscopy on unsaturated phosphatidylcholine vesicles shows that the toxin initially aggregates at discrete sites followed by the formation of localised "droplets" accumulating the hydrolysis products. This process is accompanied by local increases in the membrane dipole potential by about 50 (±42) mV. In contrast, red blood cells incubated with the toxin suffered a decrease of the membrane dipole potential by 50 (±40) mV in areas of high toxin activity (equivalent to a change in electric field strength of 10(7) V m(-1)) which is sufficient to affect the functioning of the cell membrane. Changes in erythrocyte morphology caused by the toxin are presented, and the early stages of interaction between toxin and membrane are characterised using thermal shape fluctuation analysis of red cells which revealed two distinct regimes of membrane-toxin interaction.Royal Society University Research Fellowshi

Cohort profile: Working age adults accessing secondary mental healthcare services in South London (UK) and benefits – A data linkage of electronic mental healthcare records and benefits data

Objectives To present an overview of a cohort of working age adults accessing secondary mental healthcare services and benefits related to unemployment, sickness, disability, or income support and describe the different benefit types received across diagnostic and sociodemographic groups. Methods Using a novel data linkage containing electronic secondary mental health care records from the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust and benefits data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), we present descriptive statistics on a cohort of working age adults. The data window covers the period January 2007-June 2020. Results We identified n=150,348 patients of working age (18-65 years), who had attended SLaM secondary mental health care services, 78.3% of which had received a benefit relating to unemployment, sickness, disability, or income support. Of this group, 68% had a recorded primary psychiatric diagnosis. We found that a much higher percentage of those with a primary psychiatric diagnosis received more than one benefit (69.4%) compared to those who had not received a primary psychiatric diagnosis (30.6%). Conclusions We showed types of benefits received among working age adults accessing secondary mental health care services. This cohort will be further examined to explore trajectories of mental health care and benefit receipt and provide evidence that will help to inform both DWP policies and mental health care delivery

Healthy eating and lifestyle in pregnancy (HELP): a cluster randomised trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a weight management intervention for pregnant women with obesity on weight at 12 months postpartum

Objective: To assess whether a weight management intervention for pregnant women with obesity was effective in reducing body mass index (BMI) 12 months after giving birth. Methods: Pragmatic, cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) with embedded cost-effectiveness analysis. 598 women with a BMI of ≥30 kg/m2 (between 12 and 20 weeks gestation) were recruited from 20 secondary care maternity units in England and Wales. BMI at 12 months postpartum was the primary outcome. A range of clinical and behavioural secondary outcomes were examined. Interventions: Women attending maternity units randomised to intervention were invited to a weekly weight management group, which combined expertise from a commercial weight loss programme with clinical advice from midwives. Both intervention and control participants received usual care and leaflets on diet and physical activity in pregnancy. Results: Mean (SD) BMI at 12 months postpartum was 36.0 kg/m2 (5.2) in the control group, and 37.5 kg/m2 (6.7) in the intervention group. After adjustment for baseline BMI, the intervention effect was −0.02 (95% CI −0.04 to 0.01). The intervention group had an improved healthy eating score (3.08, 95% CI 0.16 to 6.00, p < 0.04), improved fibre score (3.22, 1.07 to 5.37, p < 0.01) and lower levels of risky drinking at 12 months postpartum compared to the control group (OR 0.45, 0.27 to 0.74, p < 0.002). The net incremental monetary benefit was not statistically significantly different between arms, although the probability of the intervention being cost-effective was above 60%, at policy-relevant thresholds. Conclusions: There was no significant difference between groups on the primary outcome of BMI at 12 months. Analyses of secondary outcomes indicated improved healthy eating and lower levels of risky drinking. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN25260464

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication