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Unlinkability and history preserving bisimilarity
No full textAn ever-increasing number of critical infrastructures rely heavily on the assumption that security protocols satisfy a wealth of requirements. Hence, the importance of certifying e.g., privacy properties using methods that are better at detecting attacks can hardly be overstated. This paper scrutinises the “unlinkability” privacy property using relations equating behaviours that cannot be distinguished by attackers. Starting from the observation that some reasonable design choice can lead to formalisms missing attacks, we draw attention to a classical concurrent semantics accounting for relationship between past events, and show that there are concurrency-aware semantics that can discover attacks on all protocols we consider. More precisely, we focus on protocols where trace equivalence is known to miss attacks that are observable using branching-time equivalences. We consider the impact of three dimensions: design decisions made by the programmer specifying an unlinkability problem (style), semantics respecting choices during execution (branching-time), and semantics sensitive to concurrency (non-interleaving), and discover that reasonable styles miss attacks unless we give attackers enough power to observe choices and concurrency. Our main contribution is to draw attention to how a popular concurrent semantics – history-preserving bisimilarity – when defined for the non-interleaving applied π-calculus, can discover attacks on all protocols we consider, regardless of the choice of style. Furthermore, we can describe all such attacks using a novel modal logic that is hence suitable to formally certify attacks on privacy properties. This study highlights the threats posed by relying exclusively on tools implementing coarser semantics for protocol verification, and justifies in a very precise sense why security practitioners should account for history between past events to build reliable tools
T follicular helper cells transiently unlock a plasticity state in germinal centre B cells during the humoral immune response
Get PDFDuring the germinal centre (GC) reaction, mature B cells undergo rapid and reversible phenotypic shifts that are essential for adaptive immunity. Here we report that GC B cells, unlike other mature B cells, transiently acquire a unique epigenetic plasticity, demonstrated by their enhanced capacity to reprogram to induced pluripotent stem cells. This plasticity depends on T follicular helper (T ) cells and is not due to increased proliferation or MYC activation. Instead, it involves weakening of B-cell identity and derepression of stem and progenitor programs driven by NF-κB and other T -derived signals. Thus, physiological GC plasticity is tightly constrained by the affinity maturation process of positive selection. Loss of histone 1, a chromatin compaction regulator restricting the accessibility of embryonic stem cell programs, further enhances GC plasticity by bypassing this gatekeeping mechanism. Importantly, patients with B-cell lymphoma enriched for GC plasticity signatures had worse outcomes, suggesting that this mechanism may also contribute to lymphomagenesis. [Abstract copyright: © 2025. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
From policy ambition to classroom practice : health education in China’s physical education and health curriculum reform
Get PDFBackground: Recent reforms in physical education and health (PEH) increasingly speak the language of holistic health, prevention, and wellbeing. In China, these holistic ambitions have been sharpened through Healthy China 2030. The 2022 PEH curriculum reform reflects this policy moment, formally elevating health education as a core learning area. Yet PEH has long been shaped by healthism, where health is understood primarily as an individual responsibility. What remains less clear is how the holistic policy vision is interpreted, produced, and lived out in everyday practice. Purpose: This study examined how health education is understood and enacted within China’s new PEH curriculum, focusing on how teacher educators and in-service teachers interpret the health learning area and how these interpretations shape classroom practice. Methods: This study used conversational inquiry to explore participants’ perspectives and experiences through thirteen semi-structured interviews with PEH teacher educators and secondary school PEH teachers in Shanghai. Interview data were analysed using concept and structural coding, supported by analytic memo writing, and deductive theoretical analysis using healthism. Findings: Three interrelated findings emerged. First, teacher educators strongly endorsed the curriculum’s alignment with Healthy China 2030, framing PEH as a vehicle for early intervention. Second, despite policy ambition, health education remained marginalised in practice due to gaps in teacher preparation, entrenched professional identities, limited time, and scarce resources. Third, teachers adapted the curriculum in pragmatic ways, reducing health education to manageable reminders and risk-avoidance practices. Through these stages, health was gradually redefined through individual responsibility, motivation, and self-management – shifting away from the policy intent. Conclusion: The PEH curriculum was reshaped as it moved through interpretation, preparation, and practice. Holistic health was not sustained but displaced by healthism, narrowing what health education could become. These findings highlight the limits of curriculum reform when underlying assumptions about health remain unexamined. Impact statement: This study shows how healthism can settle in as ‘common sense’, shaping policy intentions and classroom practice alike, even within reforms framed as holistic. It suggests that meaningful change in health education requires attention not just to the content added to the curriculum, but to how health itself is imagined and lived in schools
On action rate admissibility criteria
Get PDFWe formulate new admissibility criteria for initial value problems motivated by the least action principle. These are applied to a two-dimensional Riemann initial value problem for the isentropic compressible Euler fluid flow. It is shown that the criterion prefers the 2-shock solution to solutions obtained by convex integration by Chiodaroli and Kreml or to the hybrid solutions recently constructed by Markfelder and Pellhammer
How Far Away is the UK from Fiscal Sustainability?
Get PDFIf you have been anywhere near the discussions about UK fiscal sustainability, the numbers look grim. Ever since the OBR first published its long-term projections in 2011, it has been clear that the ageing of the population – despite being obviously welcome news – will put significant pressure on the public finances. Health spending in particular is likely to drive spending up considerably, and without further increases in revenues, successive deficits would build up debt at an exponential and unsustainable rate. The OBR’s latest projections have debt growing to over 270% of GDP
Leishmaniasis vaccine research : current status and new directions
No full textLeishmaniasis is a neglected parasitic disease responsible for significant morbidity and mortality. Currently, there is no vaccine approved for clinical use. Therefore controlling infections in infected individuals depends on interventions to prevent infected female sand flies from biting humans, treatment of clinical infections or alternative treatment methods. This review focuses on the types of vaccine developed to control leishmaniasis and which vaccines have made it through to clinical trials. It also discusses the role CRISPR technology may play in improving vaccine candidates design
Ti-metalation of chitosan films by VPM, MPI and PEALD processes : An avenue to antiseptic scaffolds and functional biopolymers
Get PDFThis study investigates the impact of different Atomic Layer Deposition techniques on the Ti-metalation of chitosan (CS) for biomedical applications. Three methods – vapour phase metalation (VPM), multiplied pulsed vapour phase infiltration (MPI), and O₂ Plasma Enhanced ALD (PEALD) – were employed using Tetrakis(dimethylamino)titanium as the precursor. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed varying degrees of titanium chemisorption and Ti–O bond formation, highlighting the role of water in influencing the structure and properties of the resulting Ti–CS films. X-ray diffraction analysis showed significant structural changes depending on the deposition method. VPM reduced crystallite size and overall crystallinity, particularly in hydrated and anhydrous CS phases. In contrast, MPI and PEALD treatments favoured growth in the regular crystalline phase, with MPI showing the greatest enhancement, indicating a stronger phase transformation induced by water. These structural variations directly influenced the films’ semiconductor behaviour, as evidenced by changes in optical band gaps across the samples. Contact angle and surface energy analyses revealed increased hydrophobicity and lower water affinity in MPI films, while PEALD-treated surfaces exhibited the highest wettability and apparent surface energy, attributed to Ti–OH enrichment and plasma-induced rehydration. Water was used as the probe liquid due to its biomedical relevance and sensitivity to surface polarity. The Ti–CS films exhibited semiconductor characteristics, with varying optical band gaps observed. PEALD films demonstrated the highest C2C12 cell confluence, attributed to improved wettability, conductivity, and purity of Ti species. Antibacterial activity was observed across all Ti–CS films, with VPM exhibiting the highest efficacy against Helicobacter pylori and Escherichia coli. These findings highlight the potential of tailoring Ti–CS film properties through ALD techniques for various medical applications, including antiseptic coatings, tissue engineering scaffolds, and intelligent implants
An expert’s view on the application of TIM technology in the development of oral drug products
Get PDFThe TIM models tiny-TIM and TIM-1 enable a physiologically relevant in vitro simulation of drug product performance in the upper human gastrointestinal tract under various intake conditions. These systems are considered to be among the most biorelevant oral in vitro models commercially available on the market. This White Paper has been written by a group of experienced users of the TIM systems and shall provide an independent and comprehensive review of the various applications of these systems in the field of pharmaceutical development, as well as current limitations of the systems and how to address them. Recent improvements in the function of the TIM systems, as well as in the use of the data generated, have expanded the application of TIM systems beyond the prediction of food effects and the support of formulation development. For instance, the incorporation of intraluminal concentration and bioaccessibility profiles into in silico models can significantly improve clinical PK predictions and thereby inform decision-making in drug product development in many ways. This work provides an overview of the TIM systems in preclinical and clinical drug product development, supported by selected case studies of various applications. Furthermore, regulatory aspects, the contribution to reducing animal experimentation (3R), and options for future improvement of the TIM systems are highlighted
Assessing fair effort-sharing of Paris-compliant mitigation futures in transport
No full textGlobally, the transport sector accounts for 15% of annual CO2 emissions, with land transport comprising the vast majority, making mitigation in this sub-sector critical to achieving the Paris Agreement. This article applies five established effort-sharing approaches to allocate the remaining global land transport carbon budget across countries in alignment with 1.5C and 2C scenarios that prioritize sustainable and equitable development. The results serve as transparent, scientific and comparable evidence for countries and civil society to evaluate the fairness and significance of mitigation commitments against. For most developed countries, even if domestic emissions reductions achieved an established practical maximum rate of 5% annually, this would remain insufficient to meet their allocated fair mitigation burden. Fulfilling these fair burdens, which exceed domestic capacity, will necessitate vastly scaled-up international support for mitigation in less-developed countries which have rights to larger shares of the remaining global carbon budget. Without universally accepted effort-sharing mechanisms, countries’ self-determined equity interpretations will likely favour their least stringent allocations. Our results indicate this would result in potential global carbon budget overshoot of 489% in the 1.5C scenario, or 123% in the 2C scenario, rendering land transport’s adherence to equitable, Paris-compliant scenarios unattainable
Self-adaptive stabilization and quality boost for electron beams from all-optical plasma wakefield accelerators
Get PDFShot-to-shot fluctuations in electron beams from laser wakefield accelerators present a significant challenge for applications. Here, we show that instead of using such fluctuating beams directly, employing them to drive a plasma photocathode-based wakefield refinement stage can produce sec-ondary electron beams with higher quality, and greater stability. Our simulation-based analysis reveals that drive beam jitters are partially compensated by both the insensitivity of beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration, and the decoupled physics of plasma photocathode injection. While beam-driven, dephasing-free plasma wakefield acceleration mitigates energy and energy spread fluc-tuations, intrinsically synchronized plasma photocathode injection compensates charge and current jitters of incoming electron beams, and provides a simultaneous quality boost. Our findings suggest that plasma photocathodes could be ideal injectors for hybrid laser-plasma wakefield accelerators, and nurture prospects for demanding applications such as free-electron lasers
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