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Industrial Decarbonisation Frontiers Report: Policy and Governance
No full textIndustrial production is responsible for approximately20% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.Until recently, cutting emissions from heavy industryreceived relatively little attention compared with othersectors such as electricity generation and transport.This is in part because it was seen as a ‘hard-to-abate’sector due to the technical and policy challengesinvolved. However, this situation changed with theUNFCCC Paris Agreement in 2015 and the publicationof the 1.5°C report by the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change. These events helped to drive anincrease in climate policy ambition, with the adoption ofnet zero targets in many countries. The net zero agendahas made it clear that sectors such as industry mustnow decarbonise rapidly, within the UK and abroad
Red-light-induced cysteine modifications suitable for protein labeling
No full textThe naturally low abundance of cysteine in proteins, combined with its propensity to undergo thiol–ene reactions, makes it a preferred amino acid for various bioconjugations. However, most of these methods rely on the use of UV radiation, radical initiators, or heavy-metal-based photocatalysts, which limits their applicability in complex biological environments. Herein, we report a photocatalyzed thiol–ene radical reaction that overcomes these limitations by employing a porphyrin-based photocatalyst and low-energy red light. This method operates under mild reaction conditions and can be expanded to a cysteinyl desulfurization reaction. As this approach proceeds in aqueous media and facilitates selective transformations of both simple free cysteine and cysteine residues within complex protein, it significantly expands the existing toolbox for cysteine bioconjugation
Wilson loops and spherical branes
No full textWe study 1/2-BPS Wilson loop operators in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on d-dimensional spheres. Their vacuum expectation values can be computed at large N through supersymmetric localisation. The holographic duals are given by back-reacted spherical D-branes. For d≠4, the resulting theories are non-conformal and correspondingly, the dual geometries do not possess an asymptotic AdS region. The main aim of this work is to compute the holographic Wilson loops by evaluating the partition function of a probe fundamental string and M2-brane in the dual geometry, focusing on the next-to-leading order. Along the way, we highlight a variety of issues related to the presence of a non-constant dilaton. In particular, the structure of the divergences of the one-loop partition functions takes a non-universal form in contrast to examples available in the literature. We devise a general framework to treat the divergences, successfully match the sub-leading scaling with λ and N, and provide a first step towards obtaining the numerical prefactor
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Mechanical Stereochemistry
No full textSince the earliest report of their discussion over a century ago, interlocked molecular structures have developed from theoretical oddities to readily accessible structures. While the apparent synthetic challenge they originally presented has since been overcome thanks to the development of template approaches, the understanding of stereochemistry that can arise in such systems remained vague until recently.The first chapter of this thesis introduces the concept and consequences of mechanical bonding, followed by discussion of both how language to describe, and strategies to prepare mechanically interlocked molecules have developed. The stereochemistry that can arise in interlocked molecules is then discussed in detail, as well as advances in the selective synthesis of mechanically stereogenic molecules. The second chapter describes the synthesis of mechanically axially chiral catenanes by a co-conformational auxiliary strategy and also the identification and synthesis of a rotaxane bearing the analogous stereogenic unit. The third chapter describes the investigation into how facial selectivity can arise in mechanical bond formation towards mechanically axially chiral rotaxanes and mechanical geometric isomers. Their diastereoselective synthesis was optimised and was able to be extended to the direct enantioselective synthesis of a mechanically axially chiral rotaxane. Finally, the fourth chapter describes the diastereoselective synthesis of rotaxanes containing a previously overlooked form of mechanical geometric isomerism and also analyses stereochemistry in rotaxanes and catenanes to establish that this is the final mechanical stereogenic unit to be identified.<br/
Investigations into the application of generative deep learning to aerodynamic shape parameterisation
No full textThe design of aerodynamic shapes consists of two distinct processes: the selection of a design candidate and corresponding representation of that shape, and the subsequent performance analysis of that candidate against a set of pre-defined criteria. Both aspects of this procedure can be cumbersome, with increases in efficiency and speed an enduring goal for designers. Recent advances in computational power, alongside an abundance of data, have led to researchers turning to data-driven methods in artificial intelligence and deep learning in their search for incremental gains within the design optimisation pipeline. Convolutional deep learning architectures in particular have shown very promising results in image processing across a range of applications, which together with the increasing availability of imaging and scan data of designed parts may offer image-based alternatives to existing tools within the design pipeline. Possibilities include shape parameterisation and dimensionality reduction utilising generative frameworks, low-fidelity performance analysis in the form of deep-learning-based surrogate models, or a combination of the two as an inverse design solution. This thesis explores the utility of generative deep learning models - both adversarial and auto-encoding in nature - as a parameterisation tool for the design and optimisation of aerodynamic shapes. In addition to model selection, a key component of image-based learning is the selection of an appropriate representation of the given geometry. As such, the viability of a selection of spatially-informed shape representation approaches are also investigated in this work. The thesis begins with a review and exploration of the two-dimensional design case - in particular in the context of aerofoil design - before proceeding to the three-dimensional problem where the potential for performance improvements is greater. Relative to alternative deep learning approaches the presented image-based methods show strong performance, and in addition are readily scalable to higher resolutions, more challenging geometries and the incorporation of flow field data
DIEC-ViT: discriminative information enhanced contrastive vision transformer for the identification of plant diseases in complex environments
No full textRecently, vision transformer (ViT)-based methods have made breakthroughs on plant disease recognition tasks and have surpassed convolutional neural network (CNN)-based methods. They are now considered the state-of-the-art for such methods. However, ViT-based methods usually encode and decode images through global modeling, which introduces a large amount of noise information when dealing with plant disease images in complex environments. In addition, plant disease images in complex environments have significant intra- and inter-class differences, further limiting the performance of ViT-based methods. To address the above limitations, we propose the discriminative information enhanced contrastive vision transformer, in short DIEC-ViT, for plant disease recognition in complex environments. DIEC-ViT contains two key modules, namely, the discriminative information enhancement (DIE) module and the contrastive learning (CL) module. Specifically, the DIE module enhances the perception of discriminative regions of the ViT and suppresses complex backgrounds by counting multi-head self-attention for multi-levels of class tokens. To cope with the problem of intra- and inter-class differences in plant disease images, the CL module is introduced into the ViT to optimize the feature space by reducing the distance between positive pairs and increasing the distance between negative pairs. Extensive experiments verify the effectiveness of the two modules. In addition, DEIC-ViT outperforms state-of-the-art methods with three field plant disease datasets. The obtained results indicate the potential of our approach to drive further development of ViT in the field of plant disease monitoring.</p
Integrated interactome, proteomic and functional analyses reveal molecular pathways driving L1TD1-induced aggressiveness in CNS embryonal tumor cells
No full textL1TD1 is a pluripotency factor required for embryonic stem cell self-renewal; its expression has also been detected in solid tumors, including embryonal tumors of the central nervous system (CNS). Previously, we showed that L1TD1 expression correlates with metastasis formation and shorter overall survival of medulloblastoma patients. Here, we used affinity purification coupled to mass spectrometry to map the L1TD1 interactome, and global proteomics to assess proteins differentially regulated by L1TD1 expression in patient-derived embryonal CNS tumor cell lines. We identified novel L1TD1 interactors and differentially expressed proteins related to cell proliferation, death and motility. Finally, we demonstrated that L1TD1-overexpressing tumor cells have distinct cell morphology with enhanced filopodial formation, higher cell motility, greater proliferation capability, and reduced sensitivity to cisplatin treatment.</p
Associations of markers of inflammatory dtatus and adiposity with bone phenotype at age 60-64 years: findings from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development
No full textThis study investigated associations between markers of inflammatory status and adiposity (interleukin-6 [IL-6], adiponectin and leptin) and measures of bone phenotype and fractures. The Medical Research Council (MRC) National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) is a British birth cohort study. Participants (born during the same week in 1946) with complete data on DXA and pQCT parameters, markers of inflammatory status and adiposity, and potential confounders (498 men and 474 women) were included in cross-sectional analyses. At age 60–64 years, bone phenotype was assessed by DXA and pQCT. Fractures were self-reported at ages 60–64 and 68–70 years. Multiple linear regression was used to determine associations of IL-6, adiponectin and leptin with bone phenotype (adjusted for fat and lean mass and lifestyle confounders). Standard deviation (SD) differences in outcomes per SD increases in exposures were estimated. Higher IL-6 levels were associated with lower total volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD) (− 0.10[− 0.19, 0.00]) in men, and higher areal BMD (aBMD) at the spine (0.12[0.03, 0.22]) and whole body (0.11[0.01, 0.20]) in women. Higher levels of adiponectin were associated with lower aBMD and trabecular vBMD. In women, higher leptin levels were associated with higher cortical vBMD (0.11[0.02, 0.20]). Higher adiponectin was associated with moderately increased odds of having a fragility fracture during adulthood in women (OR 1.16 [95% CI 0.94, 1.43, p = 0.18]). Our results highlight non-mechanical associations between markers of inflammatory status and adiposity with BMD and, in women, fractures. Ensuring inflammaging is minimised may be important in healthy bone ageing
Enabling autonomous navigation: adaptive multi-source risk quantification in maritime transportation
No full textCurrent studies on maritime navigation risks often overlook interactions between ships, dynamic surroundings, and static environmental factors, limiting insights into navigation safety in complex scenarios. This research presents an innovative methodology to quantify and integrate multi-source heterogeneous navigation risks, enabling a comprehensive assessment of overall risk levels. The framework comprises four components. First, a spatiotemporal risk monitoring domain model, developed using historical AIS data, incorporates risk monitoring and forbidden domains, enabling precise localisation and timing of risk evaluation. Second, heterogeneous navigation risk evaluation functions, addressing dynamic target and static environment risks, capture ships’ varying sensitivities to diverse risk sources. Third, risk quantification methods evaluate dynamic risks from temporal and spatial perspectives while categorising static risks into three types. Finally, an adaptive fusion method hierarchically aggregates multi-source risk data into a unified profile, reflecting navigators’ risk perception. Real-world AIS data validate the framework, constructing spatiotemporal risk models for three ship types and analysing navigation scenarios such as crossing, overtaking, and multi-ship encounters. Results demonstrate the framework's capability to enhance precision in navigation risk assessment, providing actionable insights and robust support for autonomous navigation and intelligent maritime systems. This methodology offers a promising tool for advancing safety in complex maritime environments.</p
Hearing the twilight of an empire: A soundscape study of Dianshizhai Pictorial and late 19th Century Sino-Western cultural exchanges, 1884-1898
No full textIn the twilight of the late Qing dynasty in the 19th century, an essential chapter of Chinese music history was enshrouded in silence due to the scarcity of textual materials, and it became obscure due to the absence of visual documentation. Among the salient resources unearthed is the Dianshizhai Pictorial, initiated by Ernest Major, a British merchant and editor, during his tenure in Shanghai. This periodical, pioneering the pictorial genre in China from 1884 to 1898, emerged as a pivotal influence in the Late Qing epoch, offering rich insights for historical musicology research. This investigation further incorporates a synthesis of visual and auditory data, notably Berthold Laufer’s Collection of Chinese recordings from Shanghai and Peking, circa 1901-1902, postulated as the earliest instances of Chinese sound recording. The aim of my PhD thesis is to reconstruct an overlooked chapter in the late 19th-century Chinese musical narrative. Positioned at the confluence of music iconography, philology, historiography, and ethnomusicology, this study endeavors to unravel the complexities of Sino-Western musical interrelations and their enduring influence on subsequent intercultural exchanges. This study sits at the crossroads of music iconography, philology, historiography and ethnomusicology. Finally, this study will discuss the intersection between Sino-Western music cultures and its inspiration to later generations of cross-cultural material
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