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Que(e)rying methodologies for research on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) domestic abuse
No full textImproved Peripheral Intravenous Catheter Maintenance by In-Line Mechanical Pulse
Get PDFThe World Health Organization (WHO) has identified infections associated with peripheral intravenous catheters (PIVCs) as a major health burden affecting patients across countries and income status categories, meriting particular attention from care providers and researchers. As many as 70% of inpatients worldwide require PIVC placement, making it one of the most commonly performed invasive procedures in current medical practice. WHO guidelines for preventing PIVC-related infections, including bloodstream infections, focus on maintaining optimal achievable local sterility of PIVCs. The closely related complication of PIVC infiltration has attracted a great deal of research and technological focus to mitigate tissue damage due to fluid or vesicant medication delivery through infiltrated PIVCs. In this study, we report a novel approach to anti-bacterial therapy in PIVCs based on applying a low-force pulse to the fluidic system encompassing a PIVC. A 60-beats-per-minute pulse was introduced by periodic compression of the intravenous tubing upstream from the PIVC, resulting in a fluid displacement of 1–3 mm through the PIVC and into the downstream vein. In the presence of a bacterial inoculum, this pulsatility prevented bacterial growth in PIVCs, as evidenced by near-elimination of colony formation in cultured PIVC flush effluent. The introduction of pulsatility also allowed for identifying PIVC infiltration or malplacement in an ex vivo model, as infiltrated or malplaced PIVCs did not permit pulse propagation. A computationally economical digital signal processing methodology for pulse analysis was employed, providing a statistically based “two-factor authentication” of PIVC non-infiltrated status. We believe the simple intervention described in this study has the potential to reduce PIVC-associated infections and improve the early detection of PIVC infiltration, thereby improving the quality of PIVC therapy
Lattice geometry-dependent magnon modes and harmonic generation in Permalloy antidot waveguides
Get PDFGaussian-Mixture Latent Flow for Stochastic 3D Human Motion Prediction
No full textStochastic human motion prediction aims to forecast future motion distributions. Although recent studies have achieved strong performance in terms of accuracy and diversity, they often overlook plausibility (e.g., resulting in physically un-realistic predictions) and uncertainty quantification, both of which are essential for real-world applications and downstream tasks. To address these issues, we propose a latent flow-based model equipped with a data-driven Gaus-sian mixture prior that more effectively disentangles diverse human behaviors than conventional single-modal priors. This prior is derived from patterns in the training data without requiring additional annotations. Furthermore , the fully invertible nature of our model enables natural uncertainty quantification through tractable likelihood computation. Experiments on the Human3.6M and AMASS datasets demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance in both accuracy and plausibility
Spatial modeling of forest-savanna bistability: impacts of fire dynamics and timescale separation
Get PDFForest-savanna bistability – the hypothesis that forests and savannas exist as alternative stable states in the tropics – and its implications are key challenges for mathematical modelers and ecologists in the context of ongoing climate change. To generate new insights into this problem, we present a spatial Markov jump process model of savanna forest fires that integrates key ecological processes, including seed dispersal, fire spread, and non-linear vegetation flammability. In contrast to many models of forest-savanna bistability, we explicitly model both fire dynamics and vegetation regrowth in a mathematically tractable framework. This approach bridges the gap between slow-timescale vegetation models and highly resolved fire dynamics, shedding light on the influence of short-term and transient processes on vegetation cover. In our spatial stochastic model, bistability arises from periodic fires that maintain low forest cover, whereas dense forest areas inhibit fire spread and preserve high tree density. The deterministic mean-field approximation of the model similarly predicts bistability, but deviates quantitatively from the fully spatial model, especially in terms of its transient dynamics. These results also underscore the critical role of timescale separation between fire and vegetation processes in shaping ecosystem structure and resilience
Echoes of Right-Wing Populism in Annual Reports of Polish Listed State-Controlled Companies
Get PDFThis study examines how right-wing populism has influenced narrative disclosures in annual reports of top Polish Listed State-Controlled Companies (LSCCs) after 2015. Drawing on the populist syndrome model, we explore how pressures stemming from populist rulers are reflected in annual reporting narratives. Our analysis reveals four intersecting narratives that echo populist rhetoric. We interpret these disclosures as organisational responses by insiders, organisations structurally and symbolically tied to the populist rulers. Our findings demonstrate that companies adapt selectively, seeking to manage the contradictions associated with growing socio-political polarisation. We analyse these responses as manifestations of corporate populism, where LSCCs symbolically align and commit resources to support initiatives and populists’ interpretations of reality. The study contributes to accounting literature by broadening our understanding of the impact of contemporary populism on corporate disclosures, mobilising the populist syndrome model in the Central and Eastern European context, offering insights for practitioners navigating politically charged environments
DDS-NAS: Dynamic Data Selection within Neural Architecture Search via On-line Hard Example Mining applied to Image Classification
Get PDFClade distillation for genome-wide association studies
Get PDFTesting inferred haplotype genealogies for association with phenotypes has been a longstanding goal in human genetics given their potential to detect association signals driven by allelic heterogeneity—when multiple causal variants modulate a phenotype—in both coding and noncoding regions. Recent scalable methods for inferring locus-specific genealogical trees along the genome, or representations thereof, have made substantial progress towards this goal; however, the problem of testing these trees for association with phenotypes has remained unsolved due to the growth in the number of clades with increasing sample size. To address this issue, we introduce several practical improvements to the kalis ancestry inference engine, including a general optimal checkpointing algorithm for decoding hidden Markov models, thereby enabling efficient genome-wide analyses. We then propose LOCATER, a powerful new procedure based on the recently proposed Stable Distillation framework, to test local tree representations for trait association. Although LOCATER is demonstrated here in conjunction with kalis, it may be used for testing output from any ancestry inference engine, regardless of whether such engines return discrete tree structures, relatedness matrices, or some combination of the two at each locus. Using simulated quantitative phenotypes, our results indicate that LOCATER achieves substantial power gains over traditional single marker testing, ARG-Needle, and window-based testing in cases of allelic heterogeneity, while also improving causal region localization. These findings suggest that genealogy-based association testing will be a fruitful approach for gene discovery, especially for signals driven by multiple ultra-rare variants
Supporting families and building relationships: evaluation of a home and sleep safety equipment scheme for impoverished communities.
No full textObjectivesSleep safety and home safety resources allow families to care for babies and young children, preventing injuries and child death, adverse outcomes that are strongly linked to poverty and social deprivation. Parenthood involves unexpected costs and greater levels of unmet need for safety resources occur in low-income families. We evaluate a local authority scheme which enabled professionals in County Durham to apply for necessary safety equipment on behalf of eligible families.Study designA holistic review of the first year of the operation of the Start For Life Fund (SFLF) scheme.MethodsA mixed method approach was used comprising: 1) a descriptive analysis of the application data submitted by professionals; 2) an online survey to capture the views and experiences of staff who had and had not used the scheme; 3) semi structured interviews with staff applicants and recipient families.Results679 families (988 children) were supported during the first operational year, average cost £407 per family (£280/child). Three-quarters of children (72.3 %) were under three; over a third (35.7 %) were pre-birth to 1-year. Staff from seven services and over 20 job roles made applications for families with financial, relationship, housing, domestic violence, and disability-related needs, most from areas with high deprivation scores. 256 staff across 8 service areas submitted survey responses, 39 % of whom had used the scheme which was viewed extremely positively. Interviews with 13 staff and 7 families evidenced how children, families and practitioners benefitted. Recipients reported reduced stress and anxiety about child safety and increased parental confidence.ConclusionsBy providing families with the sleep and home safety equipment they can't afford the SFLF gives parents the opportunity to change behaviours and reduce the risk to babies and children from unintentional injury and death. It helps to improve working relationships between practitioners and families, reduces parental experiences of anxiety, and risk to staff of moral injury. Taking steps to reduce unexpected infant death and child unintentional injury is crucial for families in absolute and relative poverty. Other local authorities could emulate this scheme
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