324139 research outputs found
Sort by
Acute Plasmodium yoelii 17XNL Infection During BCG Vaccination Limits T Cell Responses and Mycobacterial Growth Inhibition
Get PDFTuberculosis and malaria overlap in many sub‐Saharan African countries where Bacillus Calmette Guérin (BCG) vaccination is routinely administered. The aim of this study was to determine whether the timing of BCG vaccination in relation to a malaria infection has implications for BCG vaccine efficacy. Mice were intradermally vaccinated with BCG either 4 weeks before infection with blood‐stage Plasmodium yoelii 17XNL, at 13 days post‐infection (during an acute blood‐stage malaria infection) or 21 days post‐infection (after clearance of P. yoelii 17XNL infection). Ex vivo control of mycobacterial growth by splenocytes was used as a surrogate of protective efficacy, and PPD‐specific T‐cell responses were quantified by flow cytometry. No differences in mycobacterial growth control were detected between BCG vaccinated mice and groups receiving vaccination prior to or after clearance of P. yoelii 17XNL infection. Poorer control of mycobacterial growth was observed following BCG vaccination administered during an acute malarial infection compared to BCG vaccination only or BCG vaccination after blood‐stage malaria infection, and mycobacterial growth negatively correlated with the magnitude of total cytokine production from PPD‐specific CD4+ T cells (p < 0.0001). Delayed BCG vaccination beyond the neonatal period may increase the risk of concurrent malarial infections with the potential to reduce BCG efficacy in children in malaria‐endemic areas
Better pay, clearer guidance: Investing in the working conditions of artificial intelligence data workers
Get PDFThe production of artificial intelligence (AI) requires human labour, with tasks ranging from well-paid engineering work to often-outsourced data work. This commentary explores the economic and policy implications of improving working conditions for AI data workers, specifically focusing on the impact of clearer task instructions and increased pay for data annotators. It contrasts rule-based and standard-based approaches to task instructions, revealing evidence-based practices for increasing accuracy in annotation and lowering task difficulty for annotators. AI developers have an economic incentive to invest in these areas as better annotation can lead to higher quality AI systems. The findings have broader implications for AI policy beyond the fairness of labour standards in the AI economy. Testing the design of annotation instructions is crucial for the development of annotation standards as a prerequisite for scientific review and effective human oversight of AI systems in protection of ethical values and fundamental rights
On emphasis and exegesis: pied-piping, word order, and focus in Ancient Hebrew
Get PDFPied-piping occurs when a syntactic constituent is moved to the front of a clause for a particular purpose, and other constituents are moved along with it - not because they too are targets of the purpose of movement, but because they are part of the same larger constituent. Pied-piping occurs frequently in ancient Hebrew, including in questions and in focus-fronting. This essay explores the latter, with an aim to showing that pied-piping impacts how we read and interpret the text when focus-fronting is involved. Interpreters must consider which part of a focus-fronted phrase (including, potentially, the entire phrase) is in focus, rather than taking for granted that the entire phrase is in focus
Results from the Pan-STARRS search for kilonovae: contamination by massive stellar outbursts
Get PDFWe present results from the Pan-STARRS optical search for kilonovae without the aid of gravitational wave and gamma-ray burst triggers. The search was conducted from 2019 October 26 to 2022 December 15. During this time, we reported 29 740 transients observed by Pan-STARRS to the IAU Transient Name Server. Of these, 175 were Pan-STARRS credited discoveries that had a host galaxy within 200 Mpc and had discovery absolute magnitudes . A subset of 11 transients was plausibly identified as kilonova candidates by our kilonova prediction algorithm. Through a combination of historical forced photometry, extensive follow-up, and aggregating observations from multiple sky surveys, we eliminated all as kilonova candidates. Rapidly evolving outbursts from massive stars (likely to be Luminous Blue Variable eruptions) accounted for 55 per cent of the subset’s contaminating sources. We estimate the rate of such eruptions using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System 100 Mpc volume-limited survey data. As these outbursts appear to be significant contaminants in kilonova searches, we estimate contaminating numbers when searching gravitational wave skymaps produced by the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra science collaboration during the Rubin era. The Legacy Survey of Space and time, reaching limiting magnitudes of , could detect 2–6 massive stellar outbursts per 500 deg within a 4-d observing window, within the skymaps and volumes typical for binary neutron star mergers projected for Ligo-Virgo-Kagra Observing run 5. We conclude that while they may be a contaminant, they can be photometrically identified
Moving beyond the horizon: Sudanese identity, travelling, and geographies of knowledge
No full textThis Thesis is an invitation to engage with the coloniality of Sudanese identity and invocations of identity beyond it. I depart with a decolonial commitment to Maria Lugones’ (1987) notions of playfulness and travelling to unsettle coloniality in identity formation, to afford the possibility of multiple ways of being in the world, and to engage between different geographies of knowledge. The Thesis therefore constitutes its own geography of knowledge, in which the Reader, through its flexible structure, ‘travels’ to different epistemes. I therefore mobilise praxes from decolonial studies to reimagine Sudanese identity beyond this colonial framework through more playful forms of writing. The importance of employing different writing registers lies in how they engender alternative understandings of experiencing the world. In the genealogy/literature review, I illustrate that the coloniality of Sudanese identity is founded upon the overrepresentation of Islamo-Arabism and a denial of blackness. I argue that this is constituted by a logic of separability, the internalisation of regional, religious, colonial, and racial geographies, disembodied identities, and the elision of lived experiences. I then move to alternative invocations of identity, taking them as both epistemic responses to, and forms of delinking from, coloniality. Through a close reading of the writings of Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, and original interviews with members of the Republican Brotherhood, I argue that the Republican Brothers invoke a spiritually grounded understanding of identity that simultaneously straddles colonial and decolonial epistemes. I demonstrate how Islamic, African, and Decolonial geographies can be deployed together through a series of shared epistemological objectives to elucidate the complexity of spiritual geographies and geographies of Sudanese identity. In a series of conversations with ‘members’ of the diaspora, I build upon these insights in my second empirical chapter where I show how Islam, decolonial feminism, and the reclamation of blackness, are formative in the ways Sudanese women navigate diasporic settings in London and Oxford. I look at Sudanese identity as fluid and evolving across time and place. Through the intermingling between country of origin and diaspora, spatial geographies are destabilised as the notion of being Sudanese changes across space. Finally, in the last empirical chapter, I use autoethnography, and rememory as decolonial methods in engaging with Rashid Diab’s art, showing how embodied and sensorial aspects of identity provide insights in cultural geography, specifically the relationship between affect, environment, the senses, and embodiment in understanding Sudanese identity as a composite of affective and sensorial experiences. In summary, Sudanese identity remains multiplicitous beyond coloniality. It is constituted by the reclamation of blackness, and (de-/re-)territorialised, spiritual, Islamic, feminist, playful, agential, embodied, and mnemonic experiences. This Thesis crucially demonstrates how dominant understandings of Sudanese identity, through the overrepresentation of Islamo-Arabism and denial of blackness, have contributed to the enclosure of Sudanese ideational futures. In turn, as a playful commitment to possibility- making, the Thesis opens the discourse on Sudanese identity to myriad possibilities grounded on lived experience
Prospective evaluation of 92 protein biomarkers for early detection of endometrial cancer
Get PDFThe human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) remains the best available endometrial cancer (EC) biomarker; however, its discrimination between cases and cancer‐free individuals is limited and might be improved when combined with other protein markers. We evaluated the discrimination capacity of 92 proteins as potential early detection biomarkers for EC in nested case–control studies in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) (63 cases, 123 controls) and Janus (75 cases, 146 controls) cohorts, evaluating blood samples taken ≤2 years prior to diagnosis. Proteins were measured with the Olink Target 96 Oncology II panel assays. Areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) were calculated using logistic regression. The discrimination between cases and controls of top‐performing proteins was modest (EPIC: HE4, CA125, CAIX, and S100A4; Janus: HE4, CA125, FURIN, CXCL13, and IL6; AUC range: 0.65 [S100A4], 0.76 [HE4, EPIC] within 0 to <12 months of blood collection) and decreased as the time between blood draw and cancer diagnosis increased (12–24 months AUC range: 0.49 [S100A4], 0.69 [CA125, Janus]). The combination of these other markers with HE4 did not improve discrimination. HE4 and other candidate proteins had limited discrimination between EC cases and controls and hence do not appear to be useful for early detection of this disease in women at average population risk
First-principles Measurement of Ion and Electron Energization in Collisionless Accretion Flows
Get PDFWe present the largest 3D particle-in-cell shearing-box simulations of turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability, for the first time employing the realistic proton-to-electron mass ratio. We investigate the energy partition between relativistically hot electrons and subrelativistic ions in turbulent accreting plasma, a regime relevant to collisionless, radiatively inefficient accretion flows around supermassive black holes such as those targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope. We provide a simple empirical formula to describe the measured heating ratio between ions and electrons, which can be used for more accurate global modeling of accretion flows with standard fluid approaches such as general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics
Using AI to assess corporate climate transition disclosures
Get PDFCompany transition plans toward a low-carbon economy are key for effective capital allocation and risk management. This paper proposes a set of 64 indicators to comprehensively assess transition plans and develops a Large Language Model-based tool to automate the assessment of company disclosures. We evaluate our tool with experts from 26 institutions, including financial regulators, investors, and non-governmental organizations. We apply the tool to the sustainability reports from carbon-intensive Climate Action 100+ companies. Our results show that companies tend to disclose more information related to target setting (talk), but less information related to the concrete implementation of strategies (walk). In addition, companies that disclose more information tend to have lower emissions. Our results highlight the need for increased scrutiny of companies’ efforts and potential greenwashing risks. The complexity of transition activities presents a major challenge for comprehensive large-scale assessments. As shown in this paper, novel and flexible approaches using Large Language Models can serve as a remedy
Enhancement Strategies of Calcium Looping Technology and CaO‐Based Sorbents for Carbon Capture
Get PDFAs global warming intensifies and energy resources deplete, carbon capture and sustainable energy conversion technologies gain increasing importance. Among these, calcium looping (CaL) technology has demonstrated promising cost‐effectiveness and ease of integration with other systems. However, severe sintering of CaO‐based sorbents occurs during cyclic carbonation and calcination, resulting in a significant decrease in CO2 capture capacity and stability. This paper reviews enhancement strategies in aggregate for synthetic CaO‐based sorbents over the past 10 years, compiling a tabular dataset of 1042 reported materials, to compare the effects of synthesis methods and operation conditions on decay rate and CO2 capture capacity. Sol‐gel, combustion, and template synthesis methods are recommended for producing high porosity CaO‐based sorbents. The calcium precursors and organic acids used during synthesis, and addition of dopants, also play important roles in affecting the sorbent performance. This paper also examines the relationship between material synthesis, operation conditions, and performance of CaO‐based sorbents to determine the feasibility of applying machine learning technology in materials development. This paper also discusses several possible artificial intelligence strategies with potential for designing innovative CaO‐based sorbents suitable for long‐term industrial applications, with the XGBoost model providing promising predictive capacity, particularly when working with relatively small, tabular, datasets