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Drones for safety and security surveillance systems (D4S): The case of mega sporting events
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonUnmanned aerial vehicle (UAV/drone) use is rapidly expanding across diverse civil applications, including real-time tracking, wireless coverage provision, sensing, search and rescue missions, goods delivery, safety and surveillance, security, and safety inspections of engineering structures. Smart UAVs herald the next technological advancement in UAV technology, offering new possibilities in numerous applications, particularly in reducing risks and costs for civil infrastructure. Civilians can readily purchase commercial UAVs from online platforms or retail stores. Drones hold significant potential in significantly improving safety and security operations across various sectors, including large-scale affairs like mega sporting events, provided there is a framework to govern their safe and effective deployment. The key to the success of these applications lies in equipping them with the necessary sensors and software to provide sufficient evidence of their contribution and enhance situational awareness (SitAW). However, drone deployment in Qatar is lagging for various reasons.
The aim of this work was to explore, through a comprehensive analysis, the potential for integrating drone technology into the civilian safety and security (S&S) sector, with an additional aim of identifying challenges faced in deploying drones in Qatar. In seeking to achieve this aim the study proposes a framework to address the operationalisation gap and serve as a roadmap for different stakeholders to enable the successful, safe, accountable, and sustainable development of drone applications. The framework, based on an analysis of data gathered from previous guidelines for unmanned aerial system operations and the identification of challenges facing drone deployment in Qatar, was evaluated using semi-structured interviews with key stakeholder participants (n=27) from a range of occupations that include firefighting, military aviation, interior security, the police, oil and gas, civil aviation, research and higher education, and the Qatar World Cup Security Committee.
The results of the study indicate that the proposed framework, which encompasses a SitAW model that can guide S&S professionals and other stakeholders in integrating drones as key contributors to their operations, is ready to be put into operation by policymakers. A further and unique contribution is the critical importance of recognising the role of drones in enhancing SitAw for dynamic decision-making (DD-M) in various sectors and operational contexts. Fundamentally, the proposed framework addresses the problem of low drone adoption in Qatar and elsewhere by guiding policymakers and other stakeholders in the safe and effective deployment of drones in shared airspaces
Can Immersive Training Complement On-Road Cycle Training for Children? Two Intervention Studies in Urban and Rural UK Communities
Get PDFData availability:
We have provided the Mendeley Data doi, and we have uploaded additional files with the manuscript.Supplementary data are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140525000684?via%3Dihub#appsec1 .Introduction:
Cyclists are frequent casualties in road traffic collisions; failure to look is a contributory factor. Recent research shows that immersive training may improve children's performance, including their observational skills, when cycling on roads. However, robust data in this regard are scarce.
Methods:
In two related studies, we collected data from 95 children aged 9–11 years across two different UK locations – a cycling-supportive city and a rural town – to ascertain the effects of immersive cycle training on their cycling attitudes and confidence, their situation awareness, and on-road performance. In the urban study we employed a traditional control group design (immersive intervention vs. control); in the rural study, we compared two immersive interventions (with verbal prompts vs. without). At pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 4–6 weeks later (retention), the children reported their attitudes and confidence and completed video-based situation awareness tests (SATs) and on-road cycling assessments (ORCAs). Changes in parental confidence and attitudes were also recorded.
Findings:
In both studies, ORCA performance improved pre-to-post-intervention, irrespective of group. SATs scores did not improve but were somewhat correlated with ORCA performance. Although the children's cycling attitudes did not change, their confidence increased post-intervention. Parents' confidence in their child's ability to cycle increased significantly from pre-intervention to follow-up, after watching POV footage recorded during their child's retention phase ORCA.
Conclusions:
The contribution of immersive training to young children's on-road cycling ability is indeterminate. We tentatively suggest that a combination of independent on-road, immersive, and video-based cycling experiences may improve this ability and consequently increase parental confidence.These studies were part-funded by The Road Safety Trust via a Strategic Priority Grant (grant number 302_0_23), for which a related report is available here: https://www.roadsafetytrust.org.uk/small-grants-awarded/bikeability-trust
Who eats seaweed? Barriers and motivations in Japan versus the United Kingdom
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Full replication data, code and bilingual (English and Japanese) versions of the survey questions are available from the Harvard Dataverse, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LXCCIG.Seaweed is widely recognised as a nutritious and sustainable food, yet its adoption varies markedly across cultures. This paper examines consumer acceptance of seaweed in the United Kingdom and Japan using national survey data. Japan offers a context with a long-standing tradition of seaweed consumption, while the UK represents a country where seaweed remains largely unfamiliar in everyday diets. By comparing these contrasting cases, we identify how social, cultural and psychological factors shape attitudes toward this environmentally and nutritionally beneficial food. We explore four dimensions of seaweed perception: current consumption, ease of access, willingness to eat it in future and perceived health benefits. The results reveal strong cross-cultural differences, with education, political orientation, and trust in institutions emerging as key predictors, but with distinct patterns across countries. In the UK, consumption is higher among ethnic minorities and the university-educated, while in Japan, it is more common among women and those on the political right. Although pro-environmental attitudes are often assumed to drive seaweed uptake, our findings suggest that behavioural change is shaped by a broader set of factors. By comparing two culturally distinct markets, the study offers insights that may inform efforts to promote sustainable eating practices in other regions.This research is funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS, grant reference JPJSJRP 20211704) and the UK Research and Innovation's Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI-ESRC, grant reference ES/W011913/1)
Investigating the accuracy of smartphone photogrammetry for remote 3D scanning transtibial amputees.
Get PDFCapturing limb shape for amputees is critical in the fabrication and delivery of comfortable prosthetic limbs. Smartphone Photogrammetry offers a cheaper and more accessible alternative to digital shape capture than traditional handheld 3D scanners, opening possibilities for remote, or in home scanning. In this study we aimed to evaluate the accuracy of smartphone photogrammetry using a technique designed for in home scanning, comparing performance to an Einscan H2. The results indicated that photogrammetry was suitable accurate for scanning static limb targets (>95% volumetric accuracy), but was not accurate enough for direct amputee scanning (63.4% larger volumes). Whilst this technique was not sufficiently accurate for clinical use, the amputee surrogate trials did show increased accuracy, indicating the method shows promise and should be developed further, with a particular focus on home environment compatible techniques.This work was supported by Brunel University London BRIEF funding. The funders had not role in dictating the study design or outcome
<sup>h</sup>InGeTox: a human-based in vitro platform to evaluate lentivirus/host interactions that contribute to genotoxicity
No full textData availability:
Raw data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.Supplementary information is available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41434-025-00550-9#Sec39 .Lentivirus vectors are effective for treatment of genetic disease. However, safety associated with vector related genotoxicity is of concern and currently available models are not reliably predictive of safety in humans. We have developed hInGeTox as the first human in vitro platform that uses induced pluripotent stem cells and their hepatocyte like cell derivatives to better understand vector-host interactions that relate vectors to their potential genotoxicity. Using lentiviral vectors carrying the eGFP expression cassette under SFFV promoter activity, that only differ by their LTR and SIN configuration, we characterised vector host interactions potentially implicated in genotoxicity. To do this, lentiviral infected cells were subjected to an array of assays and data from these was used for multi-omics analyses of vector effects on cells at early and late harvest time points. Data on the integration sites of lentiviral vectors in cancer genes and differential expression levels of these genes, showed that both vector configurations are capable of activating cancer genes. Through IS tracking in bulk infected cell populations, we also saw an increase in the viral sequence count in cancer genes present over time which were differentially regulated. RNASeq also showed each vector had potential to generate fusion transcripts with the human genome suggestive of gene splicing or vector mediated readthrough from the internal SFFV promoter. Initially, after infection, both vector configurations were associated with differential expression of genes associated cytokine production, however, after culturing over time there were differences in differential expression in cells infected by each LV. This was marked in particular by the expression of genes involved in the response to DNA damage in cells transduced by the SIN vector, suggesting effects likely to prevent tumour development, in contrast to the expression of genes involved in methylation, characteristic of tumour development, in cells transduced by the LTR vector. Both sets of lentiviral infected cells were also found associated with differential expression of MECOM and LMO2 genes known to be associated with clonal dominance, supporting their potential genotoxicity. Alignment of transcriptomic signatures from iPSC and HLC infected cultures with known cancer gene signatures showed the LTR vector with a higher cancer score than the SIN vector over time in iPSC and also in HLC, which further suggests higher genotoxic potential by the LTR configuration lentivirus. By application of hInGeTox to cells infected with LV at the pre-clinical stage of development, we hope that hInGeTox can act as a useful pre-clinical tool to identify lentivirus-host interactions that may be considered contributory to genotoxicity to improve safer lentiviral vector design for gene therapy.This work was funded by an NC3Rs CRACK IT Challenge 21: InMutagene award, sponsored by GSK and Novartis
Risk of stroke associated with risperidone in dementia with and without comorbid cardiovascular disease: a population-based matched cohort study
Get PDFData availability:
The data that support the findings of this study are available from CPRD. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for this study.Analytic code availability:
Analytic code and codes used to define dementia diagnosis and study variables are available at https://github.com/Exeter-Diabetes/DementiaRisperidonePaper/tree/main.Supplementary materials are available online at: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2025.10419 [and below].Background:
Agitation and aggression occur in up to half of people living with dementia over the course of the disease. Although non-pharmacological interventions are used as first-line treatment strategies, antipsychotics may be indicated in severe cases. A major adverse effect of antipsychotics in dementia is stroke; the mechanism of action of atypical antipsychotic risperidone has been linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) biological pathways in preclinical studies.
Aims:
To evaluate the risk of stroke associated with risperidone across different patient subgroups defined by stroke and CVD history.
Method:
Anonymised primary care data from the UK-based Clinical Practice Research Datalink were used to identify individuals diagnosed with dementia after the age of 65 years between 2004 and 2023. Risk of stroke over 1 year was compared between individuals initiating risperidone and propensity-score-matched controls across subgroups with and without history of stroke and any CVD.
Results:
In the overall cohort (28 403 risperidone users and 136 324 mtatched controls), risperidone was associated with increased risk of stroke (adjusted hazard ratio: 1.28; 95% CI: 1.20–1.37). In the risperidone user group, the incidence rate of stroke was substantially higher in those with a prior history of stroke (incidence rate: 222 per 1000 person-years) and CVD (incidence rate: 94.1 per 1000 person-years) than in the overall cohort (incidence rate: 53.3 per 1000 person-years). Relative risks related to risperidone were similar across all CVD and stroke subgroup comparisons (hazard ratios between 1.23 and 1.44).
Conclusions:
People with dementia with a prior history of CVD are at a significant increased risk of stroke, and risperidone further exacerbates this risk. Moreover, risperidone increases risk of stroke in patients without a prior history of CVD. This quantification of stroke risk across subgroups with and without history of CVD may help with communication of risk and aid more judicious prescribing.This study/project is funded by the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme (NIHR204390). C.M. is part-funded by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. J.M.D. is supported by a Wellcome Trust Early Career award (227070/Z/23/Z). We also acknowledge support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Exeter Biomedical Research Centre
Automated Prediction of Gamburtsev Subglacial Lakes in East Antarctica With Optimized Stacking Ensemble Learning
Get PDFThe development in machine learning (ML) technology has brought new horizons for the prediction of subglacial lakes (SLs) using radio-echo sounding (RES) data, offering fresh perspectives toward the automated identification of SLs. Nonetheless, the inherent data imbalance across various classes within the dataset presents significant analytical challenges. To address this limitation, the artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization algorithm is introduced to automatically predict SLs in Gamburtsev Province in East Antarctica, using an optimized stacking ensemble learning approach. The proposed method predicts SLs by using five representative features selected through importance and correlation analyses of eight features derived from RES data. The experimental outcomes demonstrate the superiority of this method in overcoming the significant imbalance of RES data, successfully identifying known lakes in the validation dataset. Furthermore, this study summarizes an inventory of SLs across the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains in East Antarctica, and a total of 55 new candidate SLs with lengths ranging from 108 to 38130 m have been predicted using our novel method. The source code is publicly available at https://github.com/vivian-ma97/ABC-Stacking-for-Subglacial-Lakes10.13039/501100012166-National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Number: 2021YFB3900105);
10.13039/501100012226-Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities;
University of Kansas, NSF (Grant Number: 0424589);
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Operation IceBridge (Grant Number: NNX16AH54G)
System modelling and improvement of radio over fiber of the internet of things through quantum entanglement
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe first part of the contribution that is made by this thesis is to expand on
how new paradigms of fire detection in the IoT environment have been created.
Clarifying how it had intended the physical distribution of the Remote Antenna
Unit (DRAU) architecture. These observations show how the architectures of
distributed RAUs protocols of BRAUS in IoT-RoF are expanded to new selection
metrics. Under distance two performance measures have been considered
and they include number of RAUs and fiber optic attenuation, path loss factor.
Following the simulation and numerical analysis of the presented desirable protocols
the obtained results indicate that the outage probability minimization of the
desirable protocols is less than the work [18]by 65% On the equal basis, bandwidth
efficiency of the desirable protocols is found to be higher than recent works
34%. The second contribution of this thesis is the proposed A new quantum MAC
protocol has been designed and implemented here in this thesis and named as
Quantum Entanglement-based MAC protocol, abbreviated as QE-MAC. Four entangled
states are used to form the control packets of MAC classical protocol and
the transmitted data on the classical channel. ACK, RTS and CTS control packets
are not employed here but state transitions are used instead. This approach
has some benefits in that it minimizes the delay and collision issues conventionally
associated with control packets and in result boosts the performance of the networks.
The delay, duty cycle, and power consumptions of the proposed QE-MAC
protocol are defined and calculated as follows: For this reason, all of these reduce
the proposed approach delay and power consumption by 35% compared to the
related work in the literature. The third contribution of this thesis is the analysis
of the performance of the Radio-over Fiber (RoF) with energy harvesting (EH)
of cooperative communication technique. The influence of small, large-scale fading,
and large-scale fading is analyzed by using mathematical modeling. For the
Radio-over Fiber (RoF) with energy harvesting (EH) of cooperative communication
technique, we use outage probability as our performance measure. Last but not the least, the results depict that cooperative communication enhances the
capacity of the system than the direct traditional communication with energy
harvesting by 22%. The fourth contribution brings the ICHC-RoF into the field
for the first time. The Outage probability mathematical model is described next:
Furthermore, an analysis of the throughput performance of the offers’ proposed
protocol is also derived mathematically. Theoretical calculations reveal that the
proposed ICHC-RoF system has superior performance and enhancements of 35%
from simulations
Optimization of the Quality of Reclaimed Water from Urban Wastewater Treatment in Arid Region: A Zero Liquid Discharge Pilot Study Using Membrane and Thermal Technologies
Get PDFData Availability Statement:
The authors affirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are accessible and provided within the article.With water availability being one of the world’s major challenges, this study aims to propose a Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) system for treating saline effluents from an urban wastewater treatment plant (UWWTP), thereby supplementing into the existing water cycle. The system, which employs membrane (nanofiltration and reverse osmosis) and thermal technologies (multi-effect distillation evaporator and vacuum crystallizer), has been installed and operated in Cyprus at Larnaca’s WWTP, for the desalination of the tertiary treated water, producing high-quality reclaimed water. The nanofiltration (NF) unit at the plant operated with an inflow concentration ranging from 2500 to 3000 ppm. The performance of the installed NF90-4040 membranes was evaluated based on permeability and flux. Among two NF operation series, the second—operating at 75–85% recovery and 2500 mg/L TDS—showed improved membrane performance, with stable permeability (7.32 × 10^−10 to 7.77 × 10^−10 m·s^−1·Pa^−1) and flux (6.34 × 10^−4 to 6.67 × 10^−4 m/s). The optimal NF operating rate was 75% recovery, which achieved high divalent ion rejection (more than 99.5%). The reverse osmosis (RO) unit operated in a two-pass configuration, achieving water recoveries of 90–94% in the first pass and 76–84% in the second. This setup resulted in high rejection rates of approximately 99.99% for all major ions (Cl−, Na+, Ca2+, and Mg2+), reducing the permeate total dissolved solids (TDS) to below 35 mg/L. The installed multi-effect distillation (MED) unit operated under vacuum and under various inflow and steady-state conditions, achieving over 60% water recovery and producing high-quality distillate water (TDS < 12 mg/L). The vacuum crystallizer (VC) further concentrated the MED concentrate stream (MEDC) and the NF concentrate stream (NFC) flows, resulting in distilled water and recovered salts. The MEDC process produced salts with a purity of up to 81% NaCl., while the NFC stream produced mixed salts containing approximately 46% calcium salts (mainly as sulfates and chlorides), 13% magnesium salts (mainly as sulfates and chlorides), and 38% sodium salts. Overall, the ZLD system consumed 12 kWh/m3, with thermal units accounting for around 86% of this usage. The RO unit proved to be the most energy-efficient component, contributing 71% of the total water recovery.This research was funded by the European Commission within the framework of the WATER-MINING project (project under grant agreement No. 869474)
Supercritical CO2 power cycle control strategies: A review
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No data was used for the research described in the article.In recent years, the supercritical Carbon Dioxide (sCO2) cycle has been considered a future advanced technology for power conversion because of its distinctive characteristics, such as compactness, high efficiency and flexibility in handling different heat sources. So far, most studies on sCO2 cycles have focused on thermodynamics and dynamic modelling, with much less attention given to control systems. Effective control strategies are crucial for optimising performance and ensuring safety. This paper aims to address the gap in the existing literature through providing a detailed review of the control strategies for sCO2 power cycles, including basic control strategies for startup/shutdown and off-design performance, combined control strategies, and advanced control strategies. The review shows that the combined control strategies approach and control strategies with AI/data-driven techniques are promising approaches, but further research is needed to understand their long-term effectiveness and how well they adapt to different operating conditions. The sCO2 cycle could also work better if it used advanced control strategies currently proven in other systems, such as fuzzy PID, model predictive control, and fuzzy neural network adaptive controllers. These methods, proven effective in managing complex systems like micro gas turbines, may offer significant improvements for sCO2 cycle performance.This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding Guarantee Scheme [Grant number EP/X04131X/1] as part of a collaboration with ISOP project [Grant Agreement No. 101073266] funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
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