922017 research outputs found
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Stitches and patches: The Franciscan habit in an engraving by Lucas Vorsterman
No full textAn early seventeenth century engraving by Lucas Vorsterman held by the National Gallery of Victoria and catalogued as the ‘Death of Saint Francis’ depicts the saint in a habit which shows clear wear and repair: there are frayed edges at the ends of the sleeves and several patches have been added. Focusing on Vorsterman’s engraving, this article explores the importance ascribed to the making and mending of the Franciscan habit - and the ways in which this could be indicated in prints from the late sixteenth to mid seventeenth century - with particular reference to the value placed on stitching
Practitioners’ views about effective mental health and well-being support for post-16 students attending special school
No full textFairness-Aware Data Integration
No full textMachine learning can be applied in applications that take decisions that impact people’s lives. Such techniques have the potential to make decision making more objective, but there also is a risk that the decisions can discriminate against certain groups as a result of bias in the underlying data. Reducing bias, or promoting fairness, has been a focus of significant investigation in machine learning, for example based on pre-processing the training data, changing the learning algorithm, or post-processing the results of the learning. However, prior to these activities, data integration discovers and integrates the data that is used for training, and data integration processes have the potential to produce data that leads to biased conclusions. In this paper, we propose an approach that generates schema mappings in ways that take into account: (i) properties that are intrinsic to mapping results that may give rise to bias in analyses; and (ii) bias observed in classifiers trained on the results of different sets of mappings. The approach explores a space of different ways of integrating the data, using a tabu search algorithm, guided by bias-aware objective functions that represent different types of bias.The resulting approach is evaluated using Adult Census and German Credit datasets, to explore the extent to which and the circumstances in which the approach can increase the fairness of the results of the data integration process
THE ROLE OF AGE IN DELAYS TO RHEUMATOLOGICAL CARE IN JUVENILE IDIOPATHIC ARTHRITIS
No full textObjective: To investigate the relationship between age and symptom duration at initial presentation to paediatric rheumatology for JIA. Methods: In children and young people (CYP) enrolled in the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study pre-March 2018, an association between age at presentation (<5, 5-11 and >11 years) and symptom duration was tested via multivariable linear regression.Results: In 1577 CYP, 5-11 year olds took 3.2 months longer and >11 year olds 6.9 months longer to reach paediatric rheumatology than <5 year olds. Conclusion: Adolescents take longer to reach paediatric rheumatology, potentially impacting their longer-term outcomes given the window of opportunity for JIA. <br/
CAST: Learning both Geometric and Texture Style Transfers for Effective Caricature Generation
No full textGiven a photo of a subject, ability to generate a caricature image that captures distinct characteristics of the subject but with certain exaggeration of their prominent features is of fundamental importance to image processing and facial recognition. There are two main challenges in this task: shape exaggeration and style transfer. The former morphs and exaggerates key facial features of the subject, while the latter generates caricature images in a certain artistic style. In this paper, we propose a CAricature Style Transfer (CAST) framework for caricature generation. There are two modules in the proposed framework. The first is a geometric warping module. Different from the existing style transfer methods, we incorporate the Whitening and Coloring Transformation (WCT) in the geometric style transfer. The WCT is learned on photo and caricature landmarks or the caricature landmark space of a specific artist and is capable of transforming input photo landmarks to caricature landmarks. The second module is a texture style rendering module. We propose a new style transfer method by considering a semantic region-aligned style transfer via affinity constraint. Given a reference caricature image as the style reference, this module is capable of transferring styles between the same or similar semantic regions in caricatures and photos. Furthermore, it can transfer visual attributes of the reference caricatures (such as mouth shape and expressions) to the output caricatures. Experiments have shown desirable effects of the proposed method in transferring both the geometric and artistic texture styles of caricatures. Both qualitative and quantitative results show that the CAST framework is more effective compared than the state-of-the-art caricature generation methods
Tuning porosity of coal-derived activated carbons for CO2 adsorption
No full textA simple method was developed to tune the porosity of coal-derived activated carbons (ACs), which provided a model adsorbent system to investigate the volumetric CO2 adsorption performance. Specifically, the method involved the variation of the activation temperature in a K2CO3 induced chemical activation process which could yield ACs with defined microporous (<2 nm, including ultra-microporous <1 nm) and meso-micro-porous structures. CO2 adsorption isotherms revealed that the microporous AC has the highest measured CO2 adsorption capacity (6.0 mmol·g–1 at 0 °C and 4.1 mmol·g–1 at 25 °C), whilst ultra-microporous AC with a high packing density exhibited the highest normalized capacity with respect to packing volume (1.8 mmol·cm−3 at 0 °C and 1.3 mmol·cm–3 at 25 °C), which is significant. Both experimental correlation analysis and molecular dynamics simulation demonstrated that (i) volumetric CO2 adsorption capacity is directly proportional to the ultra-micropore volume, and (ii) an increase in micropore sizes is beneficial to improve the volumetric capacity, but may lead a low CO2 adsorption density and thus low pore space utilization efficiency. The adsorption experiments on the ACs established the criterion for designing CO2 adsorbents with high volumetric adsorption capacity.Keywords coal-derived activated carbons, porosity, CO2 adsorption, molecular dynamics<br/
A Perspective on Welding Technology Challenges in the Nuclear Sector
No full textThis article describes three areas that, in the opinion of the author, should be priorities for development in the nuclear sector. The application of electron-beam (or laser in vacuo) welding to pressure vessel fabrication; the optimisation of filler metal compositions for multipass steel welds; and the pre-fabrication of dissimilar metal transition pieces are each highlighted and discussed. While conceived with the nuclear sector in mind, these priority areas are relevant more generally to the welding of pressure vessels, piping and similar structures. The intention is to stimulate ideas, to provoke debate, and to encourage the welding community to rise to the challenges that must be overcome as we transition to a low-carbon future
Investigating Characteristics of Idiopathic Inflammatory Myopathy Flares Using Daily Symptom Data Collected Via a Smartphone App
No full textObjectivesTo use daily data collected via a smartphone app for characterisation of patient-reported and “symptom-based” (using an a priori definition) flares in an adult idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) cohort.MethodsUK adults with an IIM answered patient-reported outcome measurements (PROMs) daily via a smartphone app during a 91 day study. Daily symptom PROMs addressed global activity, overall pain, myalgia, fatigue, and weakness (0-100 visual analogue scale). Patient-reported flares were recorded via a weekly app question. “Symptom-based” flares were defined via an a priori definition based on increase of daily symptom data from the previous four day mean.ResultsTwenty participants (65% female) participated. Patient-reported flares occurred on a median of five weeks (IQR 3, 7) per participant, out of a possible 13. The mean of each symptom score was significantly higher in flare weeks, compared to non-flare weeks (e.g. mean flare week myalgia score 34/100, vs 21/100 during non-flare week, t-test p-value <0.01).Fatigue accounted for the most symptom-based flares (incidence-rate 23/100 person-days [95% CI 19, 27]), and myalgia the fewest (incidence rate 13/100 person-days [95% CI 11, 16]). Symptom-based flares typically resolved after three days, although fatigue-predominant flares lasted two days. The majority (69%) of patient-reported flare weeks coincided with at least one symptom-based flare.ConclusionsIIM flares are frequent and associated with increased symptom scores. This study has demonstrated the ability to identify and characterise patient-reported and symptom-based flares (based on an a priori definition), using daily app-collected data
Scaling CO2 Convection in Confined Aquifers: Effects of Dispersion, Permeability Anisotropy and Geochemistry
No full textRecovering the second moment of the strain distribution from neutron Bragg edge data
No full textPoint by point strain scanning is often used to map the residual stress (strain) in engineering materials and components. However, the gauge volume and hence spatial resolution is limited by the beam defining apertures and can be anisotropic for very low and high diffraction (scattering) angles. Alternatively, wavelength resolved neutron transmission imaging has a potential to retrieve information tomographically about residual strain induced within materials through measurement in transmission of Bragg edges – crystallographic fingerprints whose locations and shapes depend on microstructure and strain distribution. In such a case the spatial resolution is determined by the geometrical blurring of the measurement setup and the detector point spread function. Mathematically, reconstruction of strain tensor field is described by the longitudinal ray transform; this transform has a non-trivial null-space, making direct inversion impossible. A combination of the longitudinal ray transform with physical constraints was used to reconstruct strain tensor fields in convex objects. To relax physical constraints and generalise reconstruction, a recently introduced concept of histogram tomography can be employed. Histogram tomography relies on our ability to resolve the distribution of strain in the beam direction, as we discuss in the paper. More specifically, Bragg edge strain tomography requires extraction of the second moment (variance about zero) of the strain distribution which has not yet been demonstrated in practice. In this paper we verify experimentally that the second moment can be reliably measured for a previously well characterised aluminium ring and plug sample. We compare experimental measurements against numerical calculation and further support our conclusions by rigorous uncertainty quantification of the estimated mean and variance of the strain distribution