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Scenario planning and the medical humanities: envisioning the futures of health and healthcare
Get PDFA Thing in the Weave of Things: SONAMB’s NEURAL MATERIALS and Sonic Materialism in the age of artificial intelligence
Get PDFNEURAL MATERIALS (2024) is a live AV show created by SONAMB (Vicky Clarke). The project represents a collaboration between Vicky Clarke, visual artist Sean Clarke, and industry partner Bela, a company specialising in hardware with interactive sensors for music-making. The AV show utilises a new performance system incorporating a hybrid set-up in combination with both a sound sculpture and the output of a machine learning model trained on a ‘post-industrial’ sonic dataset. The dataset renders in sound Manchester’s industrial past and present through field recordings of cotton mills, the canal network and the electromagnetic resonances of a newly gentrified city centre. This article analyses NEURAL MATERIALS as musical composition, live AV show and a demonstration of creative audio-generative AI, linking the work to scholarly and compositional legacies of Sonic Materialism and musique concrète. By combining documentation analysis and performance analysis, I interrogate how sound’s indexical properties are transformed via machine learning (ML) processes, questioning whether machines are able to evoke a sense of space or heritage. Ultimately, I contend that such audio-generative systems have the capacity to reshape our perception of industrial histories, technologies and future sonic realities, indexing sociohistorical cues that are reactivated at the point of listening
The influence of expectation and experience on auditory perception
Get PDFListeners exploit statistical regularities in the environment to guide auditory attention. This thesis investigates how expectations based on stimulus frequency and spatial location influence auditory perception across species and tasks. The first two chapters focus on the probe signal effect, using paradigms in which frequency is orthogonal to the task. Humans and ferrets completed a tone-in-noise detection task, while a separate duration discrimination task was conducted in ferrets. Both tasks manipulated the probability of target frequencies. The results show that whether expected or unexpected frequencies are prioritised varies by species and task design. In some conditions, ferrets showed improved performance for low-probability probe tones, consistent with deviance detection, while in others they showed higher accuracy for expected tones. Some human results diverged from previous findings using two-alternative forced-choice designs, suggesting that task structure can shape attentional biases. Together, these findings indicate that frequency-based expectations influence behaviour, but that this influence is not uniform across tasks or species.The third chapter examines spatial attention in mice using a vertical oddball paradigm combined with pupillometry and ear tracking. In addition to deviance detection, mice showed greater pupil dilations for sounds from above, suggesting a threat detection mechanism that was still present after pinnae removal. A subsequent go/no-go task showed that mice, contrary to popular belief, have strong vertical localisation abilities. After altering spectral cues by pinnae manipulation, mice could quickly relearn localisation to the level before manipulation.Overall, the results demonstrate that expectations guide auditory attention in both frequency and spatial domains, but that the form and direction of this bias depend on species, task demands, and stimulus context. Together, these behavioural paradigms establish a foundation for future physiological investigations into neural mechanisms of statistics-driven and spatial auditory attention across species
Weak sequential stability of solutions to a nonisothermal kinetic model for incompressible dilute polymeric fluids
No full textThe paper is concerned with the mathematical analysis of a class of thermodynamically consistent kinetic models for nonisothermal flows of dilute polymeric fluids, based on the identification of energy storage mechanisms and entropy production mechanisms in the fluid under consideration. The model involves a system of nonlinear partial differential equations coupling the unsteady incompressible temperature-dependent Navier--Stokes equations to a temperature-dependent generalization of the classical Fokker--Planck equation and an evolution equation for the absolute temperature. Sequences of smooth solutions to the initial-boundary-value problem, satisfying the available bounds that are uniform with respect to the given data of the model, are shown to converge to a global-in-time large-data weak solution that satisfies an energy inequality, where the absolute temperature satisfies a renormalized variational inequality, implying weak sequential stability of the mathematical model
Data-driven core collapse supernova multilateration with first neutrino events
No full textA Galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is likely to be observed in neutrino detectors around the world minutes to hours before the electromagnetic radiation arrives. The SNEWS2.0 network of neutrino and dark matter detectors aims to use the relative arrival times of the neutrinos at the different experiments to point back to the supernova so as to facilitate follow-up observation. One of the simplest methods to estimate the CCSN direction is to use the first neutrino events detected through the inverse beta decay (IBD) process, v̄ep → e+n. We will consider neutrino detectors sensitive to IBD interactions with low backgrounds. The difference in signal arrival times between a large and a small detector will be biased, however, with the first event at the smaller detector, on average, arriving later than that at the larger detector. This bias can be mitigated by using these first events in a data-driven approach without recourse to simulations or models. The resulting method requires, at minimum, only the times of the first events at most detectors, along with a longer time series of events from one larger detector to act as a reference lightcurve. In this article, we demonstrate this method and its uncertainty estimate using pairs of detectors of different sizes and with different supernova distances. Finally, we use this method to calculate probability skymaps using four detectors currently in operation (Super-Kamiokande, JUNO, LVD, and SNO+) and show that the calculated probabilities yield appropriate confidence intervals for all supernova directions. The area of the 68\% confidence interval varies by distance and direction, but is expected to be a few thousand square degrees. The resulting skymaps should be useful for the multi-messenger community as a rapid, initial pointing to follow up on the SNEWS2.0 Galactic CCSN neutrino alert
Monitoring landslide disturbances using distributed acoustic sensing under extreme weather conditions
Get PDFExtreme weather significantly challenges the effective and timely monitoring of landslide disasters. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) offers unique capabilities for monitoring slope failures during extreme weather events such as typhoons by transforming pre-deployed optical fiber cables into high-resolution vibration-acoustic sensor arrays. This study documents sudden shifts in landslide disturbance signals during a super typhoon’s passage using DAS with 1 Hz downsampled modulated signals. By leveraging multi-domain analysis (time-frequency-space), we identify landslide disturbance micro-deformation signatures, revealing interconnected spatial responses and dynamic patterns. We introduce a spatiotemporal indicator evaluation framework to monitor landslide occurrence and evolution under extreme weather conditions. The monitoring of landslide occurrence correlates well with post-disaster incident records and meteorological data. These results demonstrate that DAS systems can enhance early detection and high-resolution monitoring of landslide disasters under extreme weather conditions, highlighting the potential for comprehensive natural disaster management
When Stress Meets Support: How AI Learning Support Shapes the Link Between Stress Mindset and School Burnout
Get PDFPAXIS: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Dose-Finding Phase 2 Study (Part 1) Followed by an Open-Label Period (Part 2) to Assess the Efficacy and Safety of Pacritinib in Patients with VEXAS Syndrome
Get PDFWhen Central Tolerance Fails: Thymic Malignancies at the Intersection of Cancer Immunity and Autoimmunity
Get PDFThymic malignancies are rare cancers arising from thymic epithelial cells and are characterized by a highly diverse clinical phenotype, substantial histologic and morphologic heterogeneity, and frequent associations with autoimmune syndromes. Although the clinical, immunological, and cytoarchitectural changes associated with thymomas have been increasingly elucidated in the contemporary literature, very few studies have interrogated the direct role of tumor staging and histological grading in shaping autoimmunity burden and infection risk. In this narrative review, we synthesize contemporary clinical, immunological, and morphologic evidence linking thymic architecture and selection defects to the spectrum of paraneoplastic autoimmunity (MG, pure red cell aplasia, Good’s syndrome) and to infectious vulnerability. We further appraise emerging therapeutic strategies, including immune checkpoint inhibition and adoptive cellular approaches, through a patient-stratified lens, emphasizing efficacy signals, immune-related adverse events, and practical considerations for selection and monitoring. We conclude by highlighting priorities for future investigation, including refining autoantibody signatures; mapping thymic microenvironments that drive tolerance failure, and prospectively evaluating stratified immunotherapeutic regimens that balance benefit with immune-mediated risk
Frame analysis of European human rights: the construction of realities surrounding migration, climate change, and authoritarianism by the Council of Europe
Get PDFSince its establishment in 1949, the Council of Europe (CoE) has not only played a crucial role in the development of ‘European’ human rights law, but also in the construction of an image of Europe associated with human rights. The exact meaning(s) and politics of the notion of ‘Europe’ omnipresent in the works of all organs of the CoE, and how it shapes the imagination and practice of human rights remain understudied. The Symposium introduced by this article attempts to fill this gap by leveraging frame analysis. It asks how Europe is framed in human rights and in turn how human rights are framed in Europe and with what discursive and legal consequences by focusing its attention on three themes: authoritarianism, migration, and climate change. This introduction brings together insights on how these three themes are framed by the CoE, paying particular attention to the shifts therein that seek to reconcile the contradictions between its image of Europe and its member states’ policies and practices. It also includes a general introduction to frame analysis and identifies some common themes on the functioning of frames and framing that lay the groundwork for future use of frame analysis in the context of European human rights law