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Enhancing Wildfire Resilience: A Comprehensive Approach for the Wildland-Urban Interface and Infrastructure
Get PDFPresented at EGU General Assembly 2025, Session Session NH7.2, Wednesday, 30 April 2025.As wildfires increase both in frequency and intensity due to climate change, there is a pressing need to address the complex interactions between urban expansion and natural ecosystems. The paper explores the development of a novel framework aimed at enhancing resilience against wildfires, particularly focusing on the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) and associated infrastructures. The approach proposes an integration of forest, spatial, and physical resilience strategies, leveraging advanced simulation modeling and real-time data to optimize wildfire preparedness and response. While traditional wildfire management has often treated these elements in isolation, the proposed framework emphasizes a holistic strategy that encompasses not just the immediate but also the extended socio-ecological impacts of wildfires. By utilizing cutting-edge technologies including geospatial analysis and artificial intelligence, the framework aims to enhance predictive capabilities and streamline evacuation processes, thus safeguarding both human and environmental health. The implementation of this integrated system is designed to support the infrastructure's inherent resilience features, promoting sustainable urban planning and development. This contribution to wildfire resilience research underscores the critical need for comprehensive planning and collaborative efforts across disciplines, aiming to create a robust buffer against the evolving threat of wildfires in susceptible regions
Novel memory phenotype Tfh cells arise without overt antigen stimulation and are important for adaptive immune responses against viral infection
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonPathogen-induced memory Tfh cells exert a Tfh effector response during reinfection, regulating the generation of high-affinity antibodies. Here, we define novel memory-phenotype Tfh cells which are generated from naïve T cells under homeostatic conditions. These MP Tfh cells are phenotypically and functionally similar to pathogen-induced Tfh cells. MP Tfh cells can be defined by Tfh cell specific markers, CXCR5, BCL6, and PD-1, and markers of pathogen-induced long lived Tfh cells, FR4. T-bethigh MP T cells exert an innate-like Th1 response against viral infections. The transcription factor EGR2 is a repressor of T-bet function, and we found that MP Tfh cells are distinct from T-bethigh MP T cells but express EGR2 highly. Previously, we found Egr2 is required for MP T cell homeostasis and inflammation. Here, we observed that, in Egr2/3-/- CD4+ MP T cells, MP Tfh cell development is impaired. FR4+ EGR2 + MP T cells upregulate genes related to homeostatic proliferation, Tfh cell development and metabolic pathways of pathogen-induced memory Tfh cells. MP Tfh cells can exert an adaptive function by regulating B cell-mediated IgG production in vitro whereas MP Tfr cells are involved in suppressing MP Tfh cell function, thereby preventing excessive inflammation. In vivo, MP Tfh cells support germinal centre formation and induce neutralising antibody production after infection with vaccinia virus. Thus, MP Tfh cells with similar characteristics to pathogen-induced memory Tfh cells are developed in absence of environmental antigens and to date are the only CD4+ MP T cell subset associated with an adaptive immune response against viral infection.Medical Research Council UK and Barts charity. Jinfang Zhu, NIAID, NIH, USA for AmCyan-T-bet mice
Phenylacetic acid mediates Acinetobacter baumannii entry into a viable but non-culturable state
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RNA-seq data have been deposited at the National Centre for Biotechnology Information Gene Expression Omnibus public database with the accession number GSE229096.Author Notes:
Two supplementary figures and three supplementary tables are available with the online version of this article at: https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001650 .Desiccation tolerance is central to the pathogenic success of the opportunistic pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii, allowing its survival on hospital surfaces in the absence of water and nutrients for months at a time, compromising surface decontamination and aiding cross-contamination between staff and patients. Despite the importance of desiccation tolerance, the regulation underpinning this behaviour remains largely elusive. In this work, transcriptomic analyses of desiccated cells revealed phenylacetic acid (PAA) catabolism as an essential mediator of desiccation tolerance. We subsequently demonstrate that deletion of the paa operon abolished the clonogenicity of desiccated cells. Strikingly, these A. baumannii cells remained viable by entering the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state, a means to survive extreme stressors like antibiotic exposure. Furthermore, we uncover that PAA catabolism is necessary to mediate PAA-driven biofilm regulation. These findings highlight PAA catabolism as a modulator of biofilm formation and a key pathway for entry into the VBNC state in response to desiccation. This reveals PAA catabolism as a target for novel infection prevention strategies.R.R.M. and R.D. are supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council New Investigator Award (BB/V007823/1, UKRI1911) and a Medical Research Council Grant (MR/Y001354/1). R.R.M. is also supported by the Academy of Medical Sciences/the Wellcome Trust/the Government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy/the British Heart Foundation/Diabetes UK Springboard Award (SBF006∖1040)
Effects and mechanisms of reactive nanoparticles and triethanolamine on the properties of limestone calcined clay cement
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Master of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe large-scale production of cement worldwide contributes to 6-8% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Among supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), limestone and calcined clay are abundant and widely available yet remain underutilised. Limestone Calcined Clay Cement (LC3) enables up to 60% clinker replacement, achieving approximately 40% lower CO2 emissions compared with ordinary Portland cement (OPC).
LC3 containing 40% calcined kaolinite develops higher strength than OPC from 7 days onwards. However, LC3 shows lower early-age strength and a slower rate of strength gain compared with OPC. To address this limitation, this thesis focuses on enhancing the early strength of LC3 through the incorporation of nanomaterials and triethanolamine (TEA). In addition, the effects of nano-SiO2 (NS) and calcined clay content on the durability and rheological properties of LC3 are also investigated.
Chapter 4 mainly investigates the effects of nano-Al2O3 (NA) and nano-SiO2 (NS) on the hydration and mechanical properties of LC3. Gypsum optimisation is carried out first with a moderate dosage of 2% by weight, yielding the highest cumulative heat release. Results suggest that NA exhibits both pozzolanic and nucleation effects, whereas nano-TiO2 (NT) functions only as a nucleation site. However, the beneficial contribution of NA is largely restricted to the very early stages of hydration (within the first day) and even leads to reduced strength in LC3 at later ages. When NS is incorporated into LC3, it is observed to accelerate hydration, reduce workability, and enhance strength at all ages, with particularly significant gains at early ages. Furthermore, this chapter examines the influence of calcined clay (Cc) content on LC3 hydration. A higher Cc content enhances the pozzolanic reaction and improves compressive strength across all curing ages. While increasing Cc raises the total porosity of LC3, it simultaneously refines the pore structure by increasing the proportion of fine pores, despite a concurrent rise in large pores.
Chapter 5 evaluates how NS and Cc influence the sulfate resistance of the LC3 system. The incorporation of NS improves dimensional stability during sulfate exposure, as evidenced by reduced relative mass and length changes. While NS has minimal influence on ettringite formation under standard curing, it significantly inhibits ettringite generation when the system is subjected to sulfate attack.
Increasing the Cc content also enhances sulfate resistance, reflected in lower mass and length variations. Under standard curing, LC3 mixes with Cc achieve higher long-term strength than those without Cc. However, in Na2SO4 solution, only the blend containing 30% Cc shows a clear early age strength improvement, and the long-term strength benefit remains limited.
Sulfate exposure promotes the formation of mono-carboaluminate (Mc), but its overall content decreases as Cc levels rise. Although adding Cc increases ettringite formation across all blends, its influence differs between curing conditions: under standard curing, higher Cc has little effect on ettringite content, whereas under sulfate attack, it distinctly suppresses ettringite formation. Chapter 6 studies the effects of nano-SiO2 (NS) on the rheological behaviour of the LC3 system. Results reveal that increasing NS dosage leads to higher plastic viscosity as well as greater static and dynamic yield stress. Similarly, extending the resting time increases viscosity and both yield stresses (static and dynamic). All mixes exhibit a gradual decrease in phase angle over time, indicating a transition from viscous (fluid-like) to elastic (solid-like) behaviour. Chapter 7 explores the individual and synergistic effects of NS and TEA on the hydration and hardened properties of the LC3 system. The findings show that NS primarily enhances the hydration of the silicate phase, whereas TEA regulates the timing of the silicate peak. For the aluminate peak, both NS and TEA advance its occurrence, with NS exerting a stronger influence. Either additive alone increases the intensity of the aluminate peak, while their combination produces an even stronger synergistic effect. TEA enhances LC3 strength at all ages, whereas NS contributes mainly to early age strength. The synergy of NS and TEA produces more pronounced improvements than either additive alone. Furthermore, TEA primarily alters pore size distribution rather than total porosity, driving a shift from larger to finer pores. The synergistic blend of NS and TEA achieves the most favourable pore size distribution
EnVisionVR: A Scene Interpretation Tool for Visual Accessibility in Virtual Reality
Get PDFA preprint version is available at arXiv:2502.03564v1 [cs.HC], https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03564 . It has not been certified by peer review.Effective visual accessibility in Virtual Reality (VR) is crucial for Blind and Low Vision (BLV) users. However, designing visual accessibility systems is challenging due to the complexity of 3D VR environments and the need for techniques that can be easily retrofitted into existing applications. While prior work has studied how to enhance or translate visual information, the advancement of Vision Language Models (VLMs) provides an exciting opportunity to advance the scene interpretation capability of current systems. This paper presents EnVisionVR, an accessibility tool for VR scene interpretation. Through a formative study of usability barriers, we confirmed the lack of visual accessibility features as a key barrier for BLV users of VR content and applications. In response, we used our findings from the formative study to inform the design and development of EnVisionVR, a novel visual accessibility system leveraging a VLM, voice input and multimodal feedback for scene interpretation and virtual object interaction in VR. An evaluation with 12 BLV users demonstrated that EnVisionVR significantly improved their ability to locate virtual objects, effectively supporting scene understanding and object interaction.Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council grant ref: EP/S027637/1 (Inclusive Immersion);
Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council grant ref: EP/W025698/1 (Towards an Equitable Social VR);
Cambridge Trust;
China Scholarship Counci
Performance of heavy-flavour jet identification in Lorentz-boosted topologies in proton-proton collisions at √ = 13 TeV
Get PDFData Availability Statement: Release and preservation of data used by the CMS Collaboration as the basis for publications is guided by the CMS data preservation, re-use, and open access policy (https://doi.org/10.7483/OPENDATA.CMS.1BNU.8V1W).Code Availability Statement. The CMS core software is publicly available on GitHub (https://github.com/cms-sw/cmssw).A version of the article is available at arXiv:2510.10228v2 [physics.ins-det] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10228). Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/BTV-22-001 (CMS Public Pages). Report number: CMS-BTV-22-001, CERN-EP-2025-161. Journal reference: JINST 20 (2025) P11006. Submission history: From: The CMS Collaboration: [v1] Sat, 11 Oct 2025 14:04:45 UTC (2,321 KB); [v2] Thu, 13 Nov 2025 14:18:10 UTC (2,357 KB).Measurements in the highly Lorentz-boosted regime provoke increased interest in probing the Higgs boson properties and in searching for particles beyond the standard model at the LHC. In the CMS Collaboration, various boosted-object tagging algorithms, designed to identify hadronic jets originating from a massive particle decaying to bb̅ or cc̅, have been developed and deployed across a range of physics analyses. This paper highlights their performance on simulated events, and summarizes novel calibration techniques using proton-proton collision data collected at √ = 13 TeV during the 2016–2018 LHC data-taking period. Three dedicated methods are used for the calibration in multijet events, leveraging either machine learning techniques, the presence of muons within energetic boosted jets, or the reconstruction of hadronically decaying high-energy Z bosons. The calibration results, obtained through a combination of these approaches, are presented and discussed.SCOAP³
Operation and performance of the CMS silicon strip tracker with proton-proton collisions at the CERN LHC
Get PDFA version of the article is available at (https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17195). Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/TRK-20-002 (CMS Public Pages). Report number: CMS-TRK-20-002, CERN-EP-2025-03. Journal reference: JINST 20 (2025) P08027. Submission history: From: The CMS Collaboration: [v1] Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:47:11 UTC (6,110 KB); [v2] Mon, 25 Aug 2025 12:01:49 UTC (6,146 KB).Data Availability Statement. This article has associated data in a data repository. Release and preservation of data used by the CMS Collaboration as the basis for publications is guided by the CMS data preservation, re-use and open access policy (https://doi.org/10.7483/OPENDATA.CMS.1BNU.8V1W).Code Availability Statement. This article has associated code in a code repository. The CMS core software is publicly available on GitHub (https://github.com/cms-sw/cmssw).Salient aspects of the commissioning, calibration, and performance of the CMS silicon strip tracker are discussed, drawing on experience during operation with proton-proton collisions delivered by the CERN LHC. The data were obtained with a variety of luminosities. The operating temperature of the strip tracker was changed several times during this period and results are shown as a function of temperature in several cases. Details of the system performance are presented, including occupancy, signal-to-noise ratio, Lorentz angle, and single-hit spatial resolution. Saturation effects in the APV25 readout chip preamplifier observed during early Run 2 are presented, showing the effect on various observables and the subsequent remedy. Studies of radiation effects on the strip tracker are presented both for the optical readout links and the silicon sensors. The observed effects are compared to simulation, where available, and they generally agree well with expectations.SCOAP³
Search for dark matter production in association with a single top quark in proton-proton collisions at √ = 13 TeV
Get PDFA version of the article is available at arXiv:2503.20033v2 [hep-ex] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20033). Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/SUS-23-004 (CMS Public Pages). Report number: CMS-SUS-23-004, CERN-EP-2025-025. Journal reference: JHEP 09 (2025) 141. Submission history: From: The CMS Collaboration: [v1] Tue, 25 Mar 2025 19:28:43 UTC (1,645 KB); [v2] Thu, 2 Oct 2025 15:25:36 UTC (1,649 KB).Data Availability Statement: This article has no associated data or the data will not be deposited. Release and preservation of data used by the CMS Collaboration as the basis for publications is guided by the CMS data preservation, re-use and open access policy (https://doi.org/10.7483/OPENDATA.CMS.1BNU.8V1W).Code Availability Statement: This article has no associated code or the code will not be deposited. The CMS core software is publicly available on GitHub (https://github.com/cms-sw/cmssw).A search for the production of a single top quark in association with invisible particles is performed using proton-proton collision data collected with the CMS detector at the LHC at √ = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb⁻¹. In this search, a flavor-changing neutral current produces a single top quark or antiquark and an invisible state nonresonantly. The invisible state consists of a hypothetical spin-1 particle acting as a new mediator and decaying to two spin-1/2 dark matter candidates. The analysis searches for events in which the top quark or antiquark decays hadronically. No significant excess of events compatible with that signature is observed. Exclusion limits at 95% confidence level are placed on the masses of the spin-1 mediator and the dark matter candidates, and are compared to constraints from the dark matter relic density measurements. In a vector (axial-vector) coupling scenario, masses of the spin-1 mediator are excluded up to 1.85 (1.85) TeV with an expectation of 2.0 (2.0) TeV, whereas masses of the dark matter candidates are excluded up to 0.75 (0.55) TeV with an expectation of 0.85 (0.65) TeV.SCOAP³
Can blockchain revolutionize meat production? Addressing transparency, trust, and compliance in conventional and cultured meat
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Data will be made available on request.Background:
The demand for safe and sustainable meat production is increasing, necessitating innovative solutions for food safety, transparency, and regulatory compliance. Blockchain technology has emerged as a potential tool to address these challenges, particularly in the conventional meat sector. However, its application in the cultured meat industry remains underexplored, raising questions about its effectiveness in enhancing trust, traceability, and regulatory adherence in this emerging sector.
Scope and approach:
This study conducts a scoping review following the PRISMA protocol to examine the role of blockchain in both conventional and cultured meat industries. The review was based on searches conducted in June 2024 using two major databases— Scopus and Web of Science —and focused on peer-reviewed literature related to blockchain applications in meat production. The search covered publications up to mid-2024 and targeted titles, abstracts, and keywords using terms such as "blockchain", "meat supply chain," and "cultured meat". After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 14 relevant empirical studies were selected for full-text analysis.
Key findings and conclusions:
Findings indicate that blockchain significantly improves traceability and trust, particularly in ensuring product authenticity and safety. It facilitates regulatory compliance by enabling stakeholder collaboration and maintaining auditable data trails. Internet of Things integration further enhances monitoring capabilities. However, challenges such as data interoperability, high implementation costs, and the absence of standardized protocols hinder broader adoption. Overcoming these barriers is crucial to unlocking blockchain's full potential. Future research should focus on blockchain integration strategies, consumer perceptions, and regulatory frameworks to support its adoption in cultured meat production
Jiangfeng Wang, Keming Yu and Rong Jiang's contribution to the Discussion of ‘Augmented balancing weights as linear regression’ by Bruns-Smith et al
No full textDiscussion Paper Contribution.This is an interesting and well-executed paper that makes a substantial contribution to the literature on semiparametric causal inference, elegantly bridging the seemingly distinct fields of balancing weights and regression adjustment. ...The research was supported by grants from National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFA1013502), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U23A2064; 12031005; 12531013), Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant Nos. LY24A010004) and the Teacher Professional Development Program for Domestic Visiting Scholars (FX2023017)
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