Stay-At-Home Motor Rehabilitation: Optimizing Spatiotemporal Learning on Low-Cost Capacitive Sensor Arrays

Repeated, consistent, and precise gesture performance is a key part of recovery for stroke and other motor-impaired patients. Close professional supervision to these exercises is also essential to ensure proper neuromotor repair, which consumes a large amount of medical resources. Gesture recognition systems are emerging as stay-at-home solutions to this problem, but the best solutions are expensive, and the inexpensive solutions are not universal enough to tackle patient-to-patient variability. While many methods have been studied and implemented, the gesture recognition system designer does not have a strategy to effectively predict the right method to fit the needs of a patient. This thesis establishes such a strategy by outlining the strengths and weaknesses of several spatiotemporal learning architectures combined with deep learning, specifically when low-cost, low-resolution capacitive sensor arrays are used. This is done by testing the immunity and robustness of those architectures to the type of variability that is common among stroke patients, investigating select hyperparameters and their impact on the architectures’ training progressions, and comparing test performance in different applications and scenarios. The models analyzed here are trained on a mixture of high-quality, healthy gestures and personalized, imperfectly performed gestures using a low-cost recognition system

Habitat mediates coevolved but not novel species interactions

This work was supported by the British Ecological Society (SR20/1285).Ongoing recovery of native predators has the potential to alter species interactions, with community and ecosystem wide implications. We estimated the co-occurrence of three species of conservation and management interest from a multi-species citizen science camera trap survey. We demonstrate fundamental differences in novel and coevolved predator–prey interactions that are mediated by habitat. Specifically, we demonstrate that anthropogenic habitat modification had no influence on the expansion of the recovering native pine marten in Ireland, nor does it affect the predator's suppressive influence on an invasive prey species, the grey squirrel. By contrast, the direction of the interaction between the pine marten and a native prey species, the red squirrel, is dependent on habitat. Pine martens had a positive influence on red squirrel occurrence at a landscape scale, especially in native broadleaf woodlands. However, in areas dominated by non-native conifer plantations, the pine marten reduced red squirrel occurrence. These findings suggest that following the recovery of a native predator, the benefits of competitive release are spatially structured and habitat-specific. The potential for past and future landscape modification to alter established interactions between predators and prey has global implications in the context of the ongoing recovery of predator populations in human-modified landscapes.PostprintPeer reviewe

A small country with big ambitions: does this include the gifted?

Scotland is a small country with an education system whose roots lie within an inclusive and egalitarian approach to the education of young people. Subsequent legislation, policies, and curriculum frameworks have been influenced by this, and also by the international move toward equitable, inclusive, and quality lifelong learning for all. Supporting those who are highly able/gifted and talented against such a backdrop offers both opportunities and challenges. In this qualitative study, the Global Principles for Professional Learning in Gifted Education are used to interrogate recent key legislation; the current curriculum framework, Curriculum for Excellence, and the National Framework for Inclusion; to ascertain the extent to which this inclusive approach, on paper, affords in-class and school-based support for gifted and talented/highly able learners. The results indicate that the legislative and policy frameworks coalesce with the Global Principles. While legislation does not change practice, it does influence and shape practice, and so can be used as a springboard for developing dynamic, culturally appropriate opportunities for Scotland’s gifted young people

Spatio-temporal variation in European starling reproductive success at multiple small spatial scales

Funding Information This work received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, Fair Isle Bird Observatory Trust and the Royal Society. Acknowledgments We thank Jessica Walkup, Jeroen Minderman, and many volunteers for help with data collection; Deryk and Hollie Shaw and Fair Isle Bird Observatory staff for help and support; Xavier Lambin and Justin Travis for comments on the manuscript and NERC (DB); and Fair Isle Bird Observatory Trust (DB) and the Royal Society (JMR) for funding.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Synthesis and reactivity of 4-oxo-5-trimethylsilanyl derived α-amino acids

A Lewis-acid promoted one-carbon homologation of an aspartic acid semialdehyde with trimethylsilyldiazomethane has led to the efficient synthesis of two silicon-containing α-amino acids. The use of trimethylaluminium or catalytic tin(II) chloride gave novel 4-oxo-5-trimethylsilanyl derived amino acids in yields of 71–88%. An investigation into the reactivity of these highly functional α-amino acids showed that selective cleavage of the C–Si bond could be achieved under mild basic conditions to give a protected derivative of the naturally occurring amino acid, 4-oxo-l-norvaline. Alternatively, Peterson olefination with aryl or alkyl aldehydes resulted in the formation of E-enone derived α-amino acids

Synthesis of the isoquinoline alkaloid, crispine C

The first total synthesis of the isoquinoline alkaloid, crispine C is described in seven steps using a Henry reaction and the Pictet–Gams variant of the Bischler–Napieralski reaction to effect the key transformations

The impact of inter‐flood duration on non‐cohesive sediment bed stability

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Limited field and flume data suggests that both uniform and graded beds appear to progressively stabilize when subjected to inter-flood flows as characterized by the absence of active bedload transport. Previous work has shown that the degree of bed stabilization scales with duration of inter-flood flow, however, the sensitivity of this response to bed surface grain size distribution has not been explored. This article presents the first detailed comparison of the dependence of graded bed stability on inter-flood flow duration. Sixty discrete experiments, including repetitions, were undertaken using three grain size distributions of identical D50 (4.8 mm); near-uniform (σg = 1.13), unimodal (σg = 1.63) and bimodal (σg = 2.08). Each bed was conditioned for between 0 (benchmark) and 960 minutes by an antecedent shear stress below the entrainment threshold of the bed (τ*c50). The degree of bed stabilization was determined by measuring changes to critical entrainment thresholds and bedload flux characteristics. Results show that (i) increasing inter-flood duration from 0 to 960 minutes increases the average threshold shear stress of the D50 by up to 18%; (ii) bedload transport rates were reduced by up to 90% as inter-flood duration increased from 0 to 960 minutes; (iii) the rate of response to changes in inter-flood duration in both critical shear stress and bedload transport rate is non-linear and is inversely proportional to antecedent duration; (iv) there is a grade dependent response to changes in critical shear stress where the magnitude of response in uniform beds is up to twice that of the graded beds; and (v) there is a grade dependent response to changes in bedload transport rate where the bimodal bed is most responsive in terms of the magnitude of change. These advances underpin the development of more accurate predictions of both entrainment thresholds and bedload flux timing and magnitude, as well as having implications for the management of environmental flow design. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Establishing HZ43 A, Sirius B, and RX J185635-3754 as soft X-ray standards: a cross-calibration between the Chandra LETG+HRC-S, the EUVE spectrometer, and the ROSAT PSPC

The absolute calibration of space-borne instruments in the soft X-ray regime rests strongly on model spectra of hot white dwarfs. We analyze the Chandra LETG+HRC-S observations of the white dwarfs HZ43 A and Sirius B and of the neutron star RX J185635-3754 in order to resolve current uncertainties in the soft X-ray spectral fluxes and photospheric parameters of the three stars. We have obtained improved parameters for which fit the observations from the optical to the soft X-ray regime. Our approach allows us to quote their absolute spectral fluxes at selected wavelengths which may aid the calibration of other space-borne instruments.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Near-infrared spectroscopy of powerful compact steep-spectrum radio sources

We have obtained near-infrared spectroscopy of a small sample of powerful Compact Steep-Spectrum (CSS) radio sources mainly, but not exclusively, from the 3CR sample. We find no differences between the distributions in the equivalent width and luminosity of the [OIII] 5007A line for our sample and other larger, presumably older, high-redshift 3C objects, suggesting that the underlying quasar luminosity remains roughly constant as quasars age. We also find a possible broad line in 3C241, adding to recent evidence for broad lines in some radio galaxies.Comment: Accepted by MNRA