Simulated single-layer forest canopies delay Northern Hemisphere snowmelt

Single-layer vegetation schemes in modern land surface models have been found to overestimate diurnal cycles in longwave radiation beneath forest canopies. This study introduces an empirical correction, based on forest stand-scale simulations, which reduces diurnal cycles of sub-canopy longwave radiation. The correction is subsequently implemented in land-only simulations of the Community Land Model version 4.5 (CLM4.5) in order to assess the impact on snow cover. Nighttime underestimations of sub-canopy longwave radiation outweigh daytime overestimations, which leads to underestimated averages over the snow cover season. As a result, snow temperatures are underestimated and snowmelt is delayed in CLM4.5 across evergreen boreal forests. Comparison with global observations confirms this delay and its reduction by correction of sub-canopy longwave radiation. Increasing insolation and day length change the impact of overestimated diurnal cycles on daily average subcanopy longwave radiation throughout the snowmelt season. Consequently, delay of snowmelt in land-only simulations is more substantial where snowmelt occurs early

Chronic Environmental Stress and the Temporal Course of Depression and Panic Disorder: A Trait-State-Occasion Modeling Approach

Both acute stressful life events and ongoing strains are thought to confer vulnerability to emotional disorders. Unremitting stressful conditions may be particularly pathogenic, but prior research has struggled to delimit chronic versus transient stressful experiences. We aimed to isolate stable stressors-theorized to be indicators of a latent stress proneness trait-and to examine their effects on the temporal course of depression and panic disorder. We recruited 677 patients diagnosed with an emotional disorder and administered interviews for psychopathology and life stress 3 times over 12-month intervals. Trait-state-occasion modeling revealed that 74% of the variance in life stress was stable over the follow-up period. These stable stressors were associated with a more refractory course of depression and, to a smaller degree, panic disorder over time. In addition, neither gender nor participation in cognitive-behavioral therapy affected the persistence of environmental stress over the study time frame. We discuss implications of these findings for explaining depression recurrence, improving psychological interventions for emotional disorders, and the measurement and evaluation of stress proneness

An illustrated newspaper publication of the 'Gunfighter' cut-up poem.

An illustrated newspaper publication of the 'Gunfighter' cut-up poem. The poem was created from overheard conversations and other randomly selected text and used the narrative of the collage'Gunfighter' as its basis, vis. the ability to transform or re-imagine everyday objects to suit an internal narrative or scenario much as children do. The newspaper has been shown at various artists book fairs such as BABE Arnolfini Bristol, EINA Barcelona, DAD Dover and "All inked up' UCA Canterbury. Collage and the effects of serendipity and chance are an important process that facilitates my ongoing collaboration with Chris Rutter. link 'Gunfighter' projec

Poetry and movement

Invited to lead a two day workshop ‘Poetry and Movement’ project for Film and Animation BA and MA students at Bauhaus University in Weimar. Final performances were derived from various workshops including cut-up poetry, experimental drawing and improvisations with various electronic Noise-makers and Theremins that we brought with us

Light Dial 3 - performance

Performance of Light Dial 3 with Collectress. Part of collaboration with Rambert Dance Company and choreographer Miguel Altunaga. The third evolution of the Light Dial collaboration was performed at the Leaf Hall in Eastbourne. This is an associate venue for Devonshire Collective. A new score was created by Collectress and the performance changed to suit the location. We used 4 overhead projectors to provide visuals created by us and the capacity audience in response to various questions or tasks, combining our images created for the making of the costumes with the audiences’ work

'Light Dial 1' – an investigation into collaborative creative methodologies with musicians/composers 'Collectress', dancer/ choreographer Miguel Altunaga and Rambert Contemporary Dance and artists Chris Rutter and Evelyn Bennett

'Light Dial 1' was part of the 'Rambert New Choreography Platform 2016' and was an exploration of the collaborative creative processes of musicians/composers 'Collectress', dancer/choreographer Miguel Altunaga from Rambert and artistic duo Rutter and Bennett. Through improvisation and workshop driven practices, musical compositions and choreography were developed for a new performance that explored the disciplinary boundaries of musician, dancer/performer, choreographer and artist. The project tested the limits and constraints of the body as a continuously ‘live’ object, in order to explore improvisation (and ‘liveness’) against inherent restrictions of bodily movement, form and sound in relation to pattern. The group worked with a number of approaches to develop the project: using play and experimental doing as a form of making and thinking (i.e. a practice-based approach); sharing ways of improvising and finding collaboration in approaches to improvisation. exploring ways of creating motifs within dance, sound and image; sharing methodologies inherent to each discipline that relate to the bodies physicality; testing and expanding on ways of presenting experiments through dance, performance, composition, sound, object, pattern and costume. Wearable sculptural costumes were developed for the 5 members of Collectress and 2 Rambert dancers. These were informed by ideas about the nature of individuality and 'collectiveness' among the performers and how this might reflect the conflicting requirements for cohesion and discipline as well as the spontaneity and improvisation required of the performers in the development and performance of the work. Imagery from drawing and activity sessions at the Rambert building were used as the basis for the textile design. The construction process of the pieces also reflected an improvisational and reactive approach to making 3d forms. The piece was performed on 2 nights at the Rambert Building as part of their experimental programme. A blog was created tracking the development process of the costumes and collaboration process. A second version, 'Light Dial 2', was performed at the 2017 UCA conference 'Digital/Material: Developments in Printed Textiles' incorporating film projections, an adapted score and choreography and audience participation in the creation of new imagery for textile designs using overhead projectors in real time

Severely Photosensitive Psoriasis: A Phenotypically Defined Patient Subset

A subset of patients with chronic plaque psoriasis exhibits severely photosensitive psoriasis (PP) with a pronounced seasonal pattern, but the pathomechanism is not understood. We performed two related studies; first, a detailed clinical characterization of PP, and second, a controlled investigation exploring the underlying pathomechanisms through the assessment of disease onset after photoprovocation. Patients with PP (n=20) showed striking female predominance (19F:1M), very low mean age of psoriasis onset (11 years, range 2–24), family history of psoriasis (13/20), a strong HLA–Cw*0602 association (16/17), and a rapid abnormal clinical response to broadband UVA, comprising erythema±scaling plaques (17/20). Subsequently, patients with PP (n=10), non-PP (n=9), and healthy volunteers (n=11) were challenged with low-dose broadband UVA on 3 consecutive days, and serial biopsies were taken after 6hours to 7 days and from unchallenged skin. Histological changes consistent with early psoriasis occurred in 4 of 10 PP patients, but in neither of the control groups, with significant dermal infiltration by neutrophils, CD4+, CD8+, and CD45RO+ cells at 24h, accompanied by acanthosis. Thus, a phenotypically distinct subset of psoriasis has been characterized. In contrast with earlier assumptions, UV can provoke psoriasiform features rapidly de novo; a role for memory effector T cells is supported in the early phase

NAISR: A 3D Neural Additive Model for Interpretable Shape Representation

Deep implicit functions (DIFs) have emerged as a powerful paradigm for many computer vision tasks such as 3D shape reconstruction, generation, registration, completion, editing, and understanding. However, given a set of 3D shapes with associated covariates there is at present no shape representation method which allows to precisely represent the shapes while capturing the individual dependencies on each covariate. Such a method would be of high utility to researchers to discover knowledge hidden in a population of shapes. We propose a 3D Neural Additive Model for Interpretable Shape Representation (NAISR) which describes individual shapes by deforming a shape atlas in accordance to the effect of disentangled covariates. Our approach captures shape population trends and allows for patient-specific predictions through shape transfer. NAISR is the first approach to combine the benefits of deep implicit shape representations with an atlas deforming according to specified covariates. Although our driving problem is the construction of an airway atlas, NAISR is a general approach for modeling, representing, and investigating shape populations. We evaluate NAISR with respect to shape reconstruction, shape disentanglement, shape evolution, and shape transfer for the pediatric upper airway. Our experiments demonstrate that NAISR achieves competitive shape reconstruction performance while retaining interpretability.Comment: 20 page

Measuring physical activity-related environmental factors: reliability and predictive validity of the European environmental questionnaire ALPHA

BACKGROUND: A questionnaire to assess physical activity related environmental factors in the European population (a 49-item and an 11-item version) was created as part of the framework of the EU-funded project "Instruments for Assessing Levels of PHysical Activity and fitness (ALPHA)". This paper reports on the development and assessment of the questionnaire's test-retest stability, predictive validity, and applicability to European adults. METHODS: The first pilot test was conducted in Belgium, France and the UK. In total 190 adults completed both forms of the ALPHA questionnaire twice with a one-week interval. Physical activity was concurrently measured (i) by administration of the long version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) by interview and (ii) by accelerometry (Actigraph device). After adaptations, the second field test took place in Belgium, the UK and Austria; 166 adults completed the adapted questionnaire at two time points, with minimum one-week interval. In both field studies intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and proportion of agreement were computed to assess the stability of the two test scores. Predictive validity was examined in the first field test by correlating the results of the questionnaires with physical activity data from accelerometry and long IPAQ-last 7 days. RESULTS: The reliability scores of the ALPHA questionnaire were moderate-to good in the first field testing (ICC range 0.66 - 0.86) and good in the second field testing (ICC range 0.71 - 0.87). The proportion of agreement for the ALPHA short increased significantly from the first (range 50 - 83%) to the second field testing (range 85 - 95%). Environmental scales from both versions of the ALPHA questionnaire were significantly associated with self-reported minutes of transport-related walking, and objectively measured low intensity physical activity levels, particularly in women. Both versions were easily administered with an average completion time of six minutes for the 49-item version and less than two minutes for the short version. CONCLUSION: The ALPHA questionnaire is an instrument to measure environmental perceptions in relation to physical activity. It appears to have good reliability and predictive validity. The questionnaire is now available to other researchers to investigate its usefulness and applicability across Europe

Characterising risk of non-steroidal-anti-inflammatory drug related acute kidney injury: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly prescribed for pain and inflammation. NSAID complications include acute kidney injury (AKI), causing burden to patients and health services through increased morbidity, mortality, and hospital admissions. AIM: To measure the extent of NSAID prescribing in an adult population, the degree to which patients with potential higher risk of AKI were exposed to NSAIDs, and to quantify their risk of AKI. DESIGN & SETTING: Retrospective 2-year closed-cohort study. METHOD: A retrospective cohort of adults was identified from a pseudonymised electronic primary care database in Hampshire, UK. The cohort had clinical information, prescribing data, and complete GP- and hospital-ordered biochemistry data. NSAID exposure (minimum one prescription in a 2-month period) was categorised as never, intermittent, and continuous, and first AKI using the national AKI e-alert algorithm. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to explore NSAID prescribing patterns and AKI risk. RESULTS: The baseline population was 702 265. NSAID prescription fell from 19 364 (2.8%) to 16 251 (2.4%) over 2 years. NSAID prescribing was positively associated with older age, female sex, greater socioeconomic deprivation, and certain comorbidities (diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis) and negatively with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and heart failure. Among those prescribed NSAIDs, AKI was associated with older age, greater deprivation, chronic kidney disease (CKD), CVD, heart failure, diabetes, and hypertension. CONCLUSION: Despite generally good prescribing practice, NSAID prescribing was identified in some people at higher risk of AKI (for example, patients with CKD and older) for whom medication review and NSAID deprescribing should be considered