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Recyclable base-triggered ‘debond-on-demand’ aliphatic polyurethane adhesives: engineering adhesion for use in inkjet formulations
Get PDFWhile strong polymeric adhesives are widely valued, their removal can present a significant challenge where substrate recycling is concerned. Recent advancements in “debond-on-demand” adhesives have shown promising enhancements in adhesive strength and debondability. However, they often face a choice between increased adhesive strength or the rate and degree of debonding. Here we report using a rapidly base degradable chain-extender within a series of polyurethanes which possess tailorable adhesive characteristics. These chain-extended polyurethanes (CEPUs) possess high shear strength (8.20 MPa) which upon exposure to base solutions depolymerise (up to 88% loss in Mn) facilitating up to 92% loss in shear strength after only 30 min. Formulation of the CEPUs into inks suitable for continuous inkjet (CIJ) printing produced defined images which upon treatment with base solutions could be removed from the substrate. Having been engineered for circularity, the parent CEPUs can be recycled postdegradation into daughter CEPUs, maintaining their depolymerizable and “debond-on-demand” properties. This work highlights how commercially available starting materials can be utilized to generate highly tailorable polymeric adhesives and inkjet binders capable of rapid depolymerization, ultimately providing an industrially attractive system to increase the recyclability and sustainability of waste materials
Understanding the historical changes and future projections of summer heatwaves over China under climate change
Get PDFHeatwaves (HWs) are weather events characterized by extreme hot surface air
temperature anomalies that persist for several days. This thesis aims to understand the drivers
and physical processes of HW changes over different parts of China during the recent
decades and their projected changes in the future at different global warming levels (GWLs).
In the recent decades (1995-2020), Compound (hot in day and night) and Nighttime
HWs across China and Daytime HWs over central China have increased significantly
compared with the period 1961-1994, which is mainly due to increases in seasonal mean
warming. The increases of HW properties are predominantly explained by external forcing
changes in which greenhouse gas changes play a dominant role and aerosol changes lead to
a weak increase (decrease) over Northern (Southern) China.
Climate model projections point to a future in which China faces an increased
frequency, enhanced intensity and extended duration of Compound HWs. Overall, seasonal
mean warming dominates HW property changes and it is related to an increase of downward
longwave radiation and increase of shortwave radiation (under SSP5-8.5) over eastern China.
Shortwave radiation changes tend to play a weaker role for surface warming under SSP3-
7.0 than under SSP5-8.5, due to greater aerosol changes under SSP3-7.0. Moreover, there is
a considerable model spread in the projected HW property changes with the water vapor
feedback and shortwave cloud radiative effect being two important factors.
During summer 2022, a record-breaking heatwave occurred over eastern China. The
anthropogenic influences and the likely future changes of a similar event are assessed using
climate model simulations. Anthropogenic forcings have increased likelihood of the 2022-
like summer heatwave event by about 3 times relative to the world with natural forcings.
Climate model projections show that the likelihood of such an extreme event over eastern
China increases exponentially with increasing GWL
Satire, instruction and useful knowledge in eighteenth-century Britain: the enlightenment mock arts
No full textThis book a long line of commentaries on ‘how-to’ knowledge and mechanical expertise in British poems, essays and novels of the eighteenth century. Its modes were not, however, directly instrumental, or straightforwardly didactic, as the modern historiography of industrial revolution expects. Invariably its framing was satirical, critical, and oblique. The ‘mock arts’ studied in this book dwelt half in the realm of encyclopaedic explication, and half in the tacit dimension of manual finesse. Eighteenth-century satirists submitted to a general paradox: that the nature of human skilfulness obliged them to write in an indirect and unpractical way about the practical world. Their explorations of mechanical expertise produced little in the way of straightforward description of the mechanical trades. They wrote instead a long and peculiar line of books that took apart the very idea of an instructional literature: the Enlightenment Mock Arts
Lifestyle psychiatry: a conceptual framework for application in mental healthcare and support
No full textLifestyle-related behaviours—such as sedentary behaviour, physical inactivity, poor nutrition, disrupted sleep and substance use—are increasingly recognised as important factors in the onset and persistence of mental illness. Evidence for the efficacy and cost-efficiency of lifestyle interventions in mental health is growing, and such approaches are now embedded in international guidelines and endorsed by major health organisations and associations as ‘lifestyle psychiatry’. Nevertheless, despite this progress, these interventions remain underused in mental healthcare and support. One contributing factor is the lack of a shared conceptual understanding of ‘lifestyle psychiatry’, which risks fragmented practice, inconsistency in research and uncertainty around its role in policy, care and support. This paper presents a conceptual framework for lifestyle psychiatry, developed through an iterative, collaborative process involving 43 contributors across 15 countries, representing clinical, academic, policy and lived experience expertise. The framework defines core domains, outlines key challenges to behaviour change specific to mental health populations and emphasises multilevel and equity-oriented approaches. It aligns with person-centred and recovery-oriented care and serves as a shared reference point for practical application and future development. With this, we aim to support the structured, context-sensitive integration of lifestyle psychiatry into mental healthcare and support
Sexual violence and literary art
No full textA study of the two terms in the book's title with chapters on Shakespeare's Lucrece, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Richardson's Clarissa, Shelley's The Cenci, Hardy's poetry, Tess and The Well-Beloved, Larkin's 'Deceptions' and Nabokov's Lolita. There is an introduction, and a final chapter on the composition of my 'There Again', plus an appendix of seven poems and an interview
Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain
Get PDFOur sensory systems work together to generate a cohesive experience of the world around us. Watching others being touched activates brain areas representing our own sense of touch: the visual system recruits touch-related computations to simulate bodily consequences of visual inputs1. One long-standing question is how the brain implements this interface between visual and somatosensory representations 2. To address this question, we developed a model to simultaneously map somatosensory body part tuning and visual field tuning throughout the brain. Applying our model to ongoing co-activations during rest resulted in detailed maps of the body part tuning in the brain’s endogenous somatotopic network. During movie-watching, somatotopic tuning explains responses throughout the entire dorsolateral visual system, revealing an array of somatotopic body maps that tile the cortical surface. The body-position tuning of these maps aligns with visual tuning, predicting both preferences for visual field locations and visual-category preferences for body parts. These results reveal a mode of brain organization in which aligned visual-somatosensory topographic maps connect visual and bodily reference frames. This cross-modal interface is ideally situated to translate raw sensory impressions into more abstract formats useful for action, social cognition, and semantic processin
Livestock husbandry in Islamic Cártama, Málaga, Spain: the micro and bioarchaeology of an open-air Fumier sequence
Get PDFMultidisciplinary micro- and bioarchaeological analyses of late medieval deposits from suburban Cártama, Málaga, Spain, have, for the first time, confidently identified open air fumier deposits, which are supported by preliminary analysis of the faunal assemblage. This demonstrates that Andalusi livestock husbandry practices included periodically burning animal dung within corrals and pens, which is a long-standing practice in the Mediterranean region also observed in prehistoric transhumance. These techniques have commonly been applied to prehistoric fumier or pastoral sites and now demonstrate the importance of expanding micro- and bioarchaeological work to fumier sequences from other periods. This research from Cártama offers a window into the so-called medieval “Green Revolution” associated with Arab migrations and highlights the necessity of identifying in situ penning deposits on archaeological sites and of applying high resolution analyses to examine them. The analyses reveal data on animal feeds, including pearl millet ( Pennisetum glaucum ) and sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor ) which are rare in the Iberian Peninsula at this time, the use of plant resources in livestock husbandry, and the preparation of fertiliser, which are central to understanding farming practices in Al-Andalus
Damage to and destruction of the natural environment: terraforming warfare in Gaza and accountability for ecocentric crimes
Get PDFThis contribution considers the significant and well-recorded environmental destruction in Gaza, following Israel’s full-scale military operations that started in October 2023. It is argued that, in the absence of ecocentric legal frameworks, war crimes law and international humanitarian law (IHL) more generally provide appropriate avenues for the protection of the environment and to close the accountability gap. In doing so, it argues that despite the lack of ecocentric crimes in the international criminal justice system, the humanitarian imperative, and anthropocentric crimes (including core international crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes) could be used as the tools to hold to account those responsible for environmental harm in the context of terraforming warfare, a concept which best describes situations of utter infrastructural and environmental destruction and topographic change with long-term, systemic consequences. The war crimes framework is analysed, and a way forward is proposed. The article argues that the humanitarian norm, foundational to IHL and war crimes law, informs both state and individual liability for the violation of primary rules, which include the protection of the natural environment in times of war
Cyclodextrins and crown ethers as solubility enhancers for haloperidol and retinol: from physicochemical studies to biological and toxicological evaluations
No full textCyclodextrins (CDs) and crown ethers (CEs) are widely recognized as host
molecules being able to form inclusion complexes with various guest chemical
molecules or metal ions, thereby enhancing their physicochemical properties.
In this study, CDs and CEs were evaluated as solubility enhancers for
haloperidol (HAL) and retinol (RE), with an emphasis on their effects on
solubility, stability, permeability, and in vivo biological activity. For HAL,
inclusion complexes were prepared by α-CD, β-CD, hydroxypropyl-β-CD (HP-β-CD), methyl-β-CD (ME-β-CD), and γ-CD, and characterized using Job’s
plots, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), differential scanning calorimetry
(DSC), and powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD). α-CD, ME-β-CD, and HP-β-CD
significantly (p＜0.05) increased HAL aqueous solubility through the formation
of 1:1 inclusion complexes, while γ-CD had no effect and β-CD provided only
modest enhancement. Pharmacological activity in planaria revealed that HAL
induced reduced mobility (mimicking catalepsy) in mammals, whereas the
presence of CDs lessened this mobility-reducing outcome, indicating altered
bioavailability. Separately, 18-crown-6 and 12-crown-4 were used to prepare
HAL/CE complexes by incubation. Both CEs improved HAL solubility several
hundred-fold relative to pristine HAL, with 18-crown-6 further enhancing HAL
permeation across cellulose membranes in Franz-type diffusion cells. The
complexes displayed 1:1 stoichiometry, and CE toxicity was evaluated in
planaria, Galleria mellonella larvae, and cell cultures. For RE, solubility studies
with CDs and CEs (10–50 mg/mL) showed that CEs decreased solubility,
whereas HP-β-CD and ME-β-CD markedly enhanced it via host–guest
complexation. Photostability testing under 3550 lux natural light for 144 h
demonstrated that HP-β-CD retained 51% of RE content, while RE/ME-β-CD
complexes significantly (p ＜ 0.05) promoted tail regeneration in planaria
compared to pure RE or control conditions. Collectively, these findings
demonstrate that CDs and CEs can selectively enhance solubility, permeability,
and stability of poorly soluble compounds, modulate in vivo pharmacological
activity, and that planaria provides a simple, biologically relevant platform for
early-stage screening of neuroactive and bioactive formulations
Development and application of Machine Learning classification methods: optimal feature identification and prediction of antimicrobial peptides and other soft matter systems
Get PDFThe research in this thesis integrates the complementary strengths of five machine
learning (ML) methods, namely logistic regression (LR), elastic net logistic regression
(ENET), support vector machines (SVM), random forests (RF), and neural networks
(NN), to simultaneously optimize predictive accuracy and refine variable selection in
binary classification tasks. Predictive performance of the ensemble with these five
base predictors is evaluated and the impacts of heterogeneity in predictive accuracy
and dependency between base predictors are quantified. A novel ensemble prediction
and feature selection method based on the majority vote approach, denoted as MV-FS
(majority vote-feature selection), is developed to mitigate the limitations of individual
predictors and so ensure robust performance across diverse datasets. Theoretical
and simulation evaluations of the proposed methodology provide insights into how
variations in the model performance and inter-model relationships influence overall
effectiveness, which in turn can be used to ensure generalisation and stability, even
in challenging classification scenarios.
To validate its practical effectiveness, the ensemble is applied to study two distinct
cases in the biological and soft matter areas. In the first case, the MV-FS method is
employed to explore the relationship between the physicochemical features of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and their antibacterial activities, a task of significant importance in drug discovery due to the growing need for novel antibiotics. In this regard,
ML has emerged as a powerful tool for predicting peptide sequences with enhanced
antimicrobial activity and selectivity, revolutionizing the way researchers approach
the development of novel antimicrobial agents. By extending existing ML methods
via incorporating scientific knowledge of physicochemical and structural characteristics of AMPs with a data-driven ensemble approach, the MV-FS method is able to
deepen confidence in identifying the key physicochemical features governing antimicrobial activity and predict regions in the physicochemical descriptor space with high
probabilities to find active AMPs.
In the second case, the ensemble is preliminarily tested for predicting the conformational transitions of single charged polymer chains, which can help understand the
structural variations of biomacromolecules in different environments and the association behaviours of synthesised polymers for developing novel functional materials.
Using molecular dynamics simulation results as training datasets, the conformational
regimes predicted by the ensemble method agree well with theoretical expectations,
indicating the strong potential of ML methods in predicting the structural properties
of macromolecules, especially in regimes where brute force simulations are computationally very costly.
Overall, the research presented in this thesis not only advances the state-of-the-art in
ensemble learning for binary classification but also provides a scalable and adaptable
framework that can be extended to other domains. By combining interpretability,
robustness, and high predictive accuracy, the proposed methodology offers a powerful
tool for researchers and practitioners seeking to address classification problems with
high precision and reliability