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Utilising Benford's Law in the Validation of Precipitation Datasets
Get PDFThe increasing magnitude and complexity of precipitation datasets necessitate robust and efficient data integrity assessment. This study systematically applies Benford's Law, a mathematical theorem describing leading digit frequencies, as a novel diagnostic tool for precipitation data in the environmental and hydroclimate sciences. We present a reproducible and robust methodology, demonstrating that global monthly precipitation consistently conforms to Benford's Law across diverse data types, including raw observations, gridded products, reanalysis and synthetic simulations. This key finding fundamentally challenges traditional assumptions regarding the influence of data origin on Benford's Law adherence, significantly broadening its applicability. Our findings underscore the importance of underlying quantitative characteristics for successful application: while regional analyses reveal that monthly precipitation data in the United Kingdom and Ireland do not conform to Benford's Law‐based principles, a shift to daily temporal granularity successfully restores conformance, highlighting how temporal resolution can introduce the necessary data properties. This research uniquely positions Benford's Law as a powerful, complementary diagnostic tool capable of detecting subtle data corruptions, as demonstrated through an artificial experiment. Ultimately, this work advances the utility of Benford's Law in climate research, providing a scalable method to enhance the reliability of foundational datasets critical for climate modelling, forecasting and a wide array of hydroclimatological applications
Trajectory, healthcare utilisation and recovery in 3590 individuals with long covid: a 4-year prospective cohort analysis
Get PDFObjective: To characterise long-term trajectory of recovery in individuals with long covid. Design: Prospective cohort. Setting: Single-centre, specialist post-COVID service (London, UK). Participants: Individuals aged ≥18 years with long covid (hospitalised and non-hospitalised) from April 2020 to March 2024. Main outcome measures: Routine, prospectively collected data on symptoms, quality of life (including Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) and EuroQol 5 Dimensions (EQ-5D), return to work status and healthcare utilisation (investigations, outpatient and emergency attendances). The primary outcome was recovery by self-reported >75% of ‘best health’ (EQ-5D Visual Analogue Scale) and was assessed using Cox proportional hazards regression models over 4 years. Linked National Health Service England registry data provided secondary care healthcare utilisation and expenditure. Results: We included 3590 individuals (63.3% female, 73.5% non-hospitalised, median age 50.0 years, 71.9% with ≥2 doses of COVID-19 vaccination), who were followed up for a median of 136 (0–346) days since first assessment and 502 (251–825) days since symptom onset. At first assessment, 33.2% of employed individuals were unable to work. Dominant symptoms were fatigue (78.7%), breathlessness (68.1%) and brain fog (53.5%). 33.4% of individuals recovered to >75% of best health prior to clinic discharge (recovery occurred median 202 (94–468) days from symptom onset). Vaccinated individuals were more likely to recover faster (pre: HR 2.93 (2.00–4.28) and post: HR 1.34 (1.05–1.71) COVID-19 infection), whereas recovery hazard was inversely associated with FAS (HR 0.37 (0.33–0.42)), myalgia (HR 0.59 (0.45–0.76)) and dysautonomic symptoms (HR 0.46 (0.34–0.62)). There was high secondary care healthcare utilisation (both emergency and outpatient care). Annual inpatient and outpatient expenditure was significantly lower in hospitalised individuals while under the service. When compared with the prereferral period, emergency department attendances were reduced in non-hospitalised patients with long covid, but outpatient costs increased. Conclusions: In the largest long covid cohort from a single specialist post-COVID service to date, only one-third of individuals under follow-up achieved satisfactory recovery. Fatigue severity and COVID-19 vaccination at presentation, even after initial COVID-19 infection, was associated with long covid recovery. Ongoing service provision for this and other post-viral conditions is necessary to support care, progress treatment options and provide capacity for future pandemic preparedness. Research and clinical services should emphasise these factors as the strongest predictors of non-recovery
Two constraint compilation methods for lifted planning
No full textWe study planning in a fragment of PDDL with qualitative state-trajectory constraints, capturing safety requirements, task ordering conditions, and intermediate sub-goals commonly found in real-world problems. A prominent approach to tackle such problems is to compile their constraints away, leading to a problem that is supported by state-of-the-art planners. Unfortunately, existing compilers do not scale on problems with a large number of objects and high-arity actions, as they necessitate grounding the problem before compilation. To address this issue, we propose two methods for compiling away constraints without grounding, making them suitable for large-scale planning problems. We prove the correctness of our compilers and outline their worst-case time complexity. Moreover, we present a reproducible empirical evaluation on the domains used in the latest International Planning Competition. Our results demonstrate that our methods are efficient and produce planning specifications that are orders of magnitude more succinct than the ones produced by compilers that ground the domain, while remaining competitive when used for planning with a state-of-the-art planner
Does music support executive functions and affective responses during acute exercise? A systematic review and meta-analysis
Get PDFIntroduction
Maintaining a steady running pace despite physical or mental fatigue often engages executive functions. These functions may contribute to sustaining exercise participation by regulating cognitive and affective responses to the demands of physical exercise. Research on both music and acute exercise independently shows engagement of executive functions and affective responses, with exercise intensities influencing outcomes. However, the combined effects of music and acute exercise on executive functions and affective outcomes remain underexplored.
Methods
Accordingly, this review examines how music may interact with executive functions and affective responses during acute exercise.
Results
Ten studies met the inclusion criteria, with nine providing data for effect size calculations across 21 intervention arms. Narrative synthesis indicated context-dependent patterns between music and acute exercise combinations, particularly at low-to-moderate exercise intensities. Meta-analyses report non-significant effects of music and acute exercise on attention allocation, inhibitory control, and core affect. A meta-regression pooling 18 effect sizes from nine studies suggested that higher exercise intensities and older mean participant age were associated with smaller effects of music and explained a substantial proportion of between-study variance, although residual heterogeneity remained high and these findings should be interpreted cautiously. A descriptive subgroup analysis showed a decreasing pattern across exercise intensities (low:
g
= 3.99; moderate:
g
= 0.99; high:
g
= 0.28), though substantial heterogeneity persisted, and the reported effects do not appear to generalize consistently across studies.
Discussion
The current synthesised evidence appears inconclusive regarding music’s influence on executive functions and affective responses during acute exercise.
Systematic review registration
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD42023465958
No evidence for local H 0 anisotropy from Tully–Fisher or supernova distances
Get PDFClaims of local () anisotropy in the Hubble constant have been made based on direct distance tracers such as Tully–Fisher galaxies and Type Ia supernovae. We revisit these using the CosmicFlows-4 Tully–Fisher W1 subsample, 2MTF and SFI++ Tully–Fisher catalogues, and the Pantheon+ supernova compilation (all restricted to ), including a dipole in either the Tully–Fisher zero-point or the standardized supernova absolute magnitude. Our forward-modelling framework jointly calibrates the distance relation, marginalizes over distances, and accounts for peculiar velocities using a linear-theory reconstruction. We compare the anisotropic and isotropic model using the Bayesian evidence. In the CosmicFlows-4 sample, we infer a zero-point dipole of amplitude mag, or per cent when expressed as a dipole in the Hubble parameter. This is consistent with previous estimates but at higher significance: model comparison yields odds of in favour of including the zero-point dipole. In Pantheon+ we infer zero-point dipole amplitude of mag, or per cent when expressed as a dipole in the Hubble parameter. However, by allowing for a radially varying velocity dipole, we show that the anisotropic zero-point model captures local flow features (or possibly systematics) in the data rather than an actual linearly growing effective bulk flow caused by anisotropy in the zero-point or expansion rate. Crucially, inferring a more general bulk flow curve we find results fully consistent with expectations from the standard cosmological model
Towards photon FLASH radiotherapy
No full textFLASH radiotherapy is a promising treatment modality that employs ultra-high dose rates (>=40 Gy/s) and short delivery times (<1 s) to achieve enhanced normal tissue sparing while maintaining equivalent tumour control compared to conventional radiotherapy. Since most clinical treatments worldwide are delivered with photon beams from linear accelerators, the most feasible route toward widespread clinical adoption of FLASH lies in photon-based implementations. However, the majority of preclinical studies demonstrating normal tissue sparing at ultra-high dose rates have been performed with electron beams. Delivering photon beams to sufficient depths at high rates requires overcoming significant technological challenges in irradiation platform design and dosimetry. Expanding preclinical irradiation capabilities to accommodate beams with varying types and parameters is therefore essential to improve understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms and clinical potential of FLASH. Spatially fractionated radiation therapy (SFRT) represents a paradigm shift in treatment philosophy, intentionally introducing spatial dose heterogeneity within both tumours and normal tissues. Although SFRT has shown clinical promise, achieving effective tumour control with reduced toxicity, its biological mechanisms remain poorly understood. The full potential of SFRT alone, or in combination with other modalities, remains largely unexplored, motivating further preclinical investigation to identify and predict scenarios where enhanced therapeutic outcomes can be achieved. This thesis focuses on the development of a preclinical platform capable of delivering megavoltage (MV) photon beams at ultra-high dose rates, enabling future in vivo FLASH studies. Because the implementation of MV photon FLASH irradiations poses thermo-mechanical challenges to maintain target integrity under increased beam power, this work also compares temperature rise, fatigue lifetime, and photon dose rate production from thin tungsten targets in air using a preclinical electron linear accelerator. It is hypothesised that increasing the beam exit window–target separation, separating target and backer materials, and using air-cooled target configurations can both enable photon FLASH irradiations and reduce target heating to extend operational lifetimes. Using this platform, an in vivo study was conducted to investigate radiation-induced skin toxicity from photon and electron irradiations delivered at comparable doses and dose rates. These results provide insight into how existing electron FLASH data can inform future MV photon applications. This body of work also introduces preclinical setups for SFRT using electron beams delivered at conventional and ultra-high dose rates. These include adaptable collimator systems that allow systematic exploration of spatial fractionation parameters to assess their influence on tumour control and normal tissue toxicity. In a tumour growth assay, the difference between homogeneous and spatially fractionated electron irradiations with partial tumour coverage is demonstrated. Together, the developments outlined in this thesis provide platforms for future preclinical studies aimed at advancing the understanding and combined application of FLASH and SFRT
The ubiquitous ocean: naval conquest, forms of citizenship, and attempted emancipation in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Get PDFWhen Beli loses her virginity to Jack Pujols in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, her idealistic “sense of a journey starting” is subverted through the language of violent naval seafaring, as when, for instance, she is both emotionally and physically enamoured with Pujols “hook, line, and sinker.” This contamination of the intimate sphere with the linguistic framework of maritime circumnavigation is frequently deployed throughout the novel to adulterate the Cabrals’ private lives with allusions to the historical commodification of oceanic conquest and the violent oppressions that these conquests entailed. While the intergenerational trauma of colonial history within Oscar Wao has been widely discussed amongst critics, little has been said about how and why it is frequently rendered through naval language, much of which has roots in weaponry, strategy, commodity, and enslavement tactics traceable to the Middle Passage. This essay builds on Melissa M. Gonzalez’s distinctions between decoloniality and full emancipation, and Donette Francis’s conceptualisation of “sexual citizenship” amongst Caribbean women, to argue that, in reading the Cabrals’ private lives and lineage through the lens of a naval colonial tradition, complete liberation from original New World conquests remains inaccessible, even as Afro-Caribbean descendants seek belonging, citizenship, and safety amidst postcolonial diasporas. Through these new considerations of the novel’s naval and oceanic semantics, this work also illuminates the perennial role of Paul Gilroy’s theoretical Black Atlantic in contemporary literature, as Díaz applies ideas of Black cultures which transcend national boundaries but remain interconnected through a violent, transoceanic historical experience to his fictional rendering of the transatlantic Cabral family lineage
The impact of implicit scalar alternatives on the products of language comprehension: evidence from recognition memory
Get PDFSpeakers often leave parts of their message unarticulated and rely on their comprehenders to make inferences about the intended meaning of their message. One way in which comprehenders can recover a speaker’s implicit meaning is to consider alternatives to what the speaker said. While we know that alternatives are activated and affect initial processing, less is known about how those alternatives ultimately become integrated into comprehenders’ representations of the message in a more long-term durable format. This paper reports two experiments that use a recognition task to probe whether implicit scalar alternatives remain active during an experimental session (Experiment 1) or after a 24-hour delay (Experiment 2). The results show that implicit scalar alternatives seem to be maintained in memory when probed during the experimental session but not after a 24-hour delay. These results suggest that alternatives that are relevant to the discourse are stored in long-term memory but may not be accessible when probing linguistic representations that have been encoded as conceptual meaning representations
Dataset - Drastic field-induced resistivity upturns as signatures of unconventional magnetism in superconducting iron chalcogenides
No full textThese open access data reflect the data collected as part of the manuscript ”Drastic field-induced resistivity upturns as signatures of unconventional magnetism in superconducting iron chalcogenides”, by Z. Zajicek, I. Paulescu, et al, available on the pre-print server at https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.20862, and to appear in Physical Review B (2026). These ASCII data are associated with a detailed transport study as a function of temperature (2 to 300K) under applied pressure both in zero magnetic field and under applied fixed magnetic fields using a 16T Quantum Design PPMS. Electrical transport measurements were performed on two different high-quality FeSe0.96S0.04 single crystals (S1 and S2) using a standard four-probe configuration to determine the longitudinal resistivity, rho_xx, in the conducting (ab) plane. A maximum a.c. current of 1 mA was applied to the sample, and the magnetic field of up to 16T for sample S1 and 15 T for sample S2 is aligned along the c direction and perpendicular to the applied current, thus probing the transverse magnetoresistance. Transport measurements in constant magnetic fields for sample S2 were performed using different field polarities, and the data were symmetrized afterwards to eliminate any effect of mixing resistivity components. Experiments were carried out under applied pressure using a commercially available BeCu pressure cell from Quantum Design up to 20 kbar while slowly cooling and warming to 2 K at a rate of 0.5 K/min. Hysteresis studies were also performed using 0.25 K/min. Daphne 7373 was used as the pressurizing medium, which is hydrostatic up to 22 kbar. The pressure was determined in situ using the superconducting transition temperature of tin at a slow cooling rate of 0.02 K/min. Resistivity was measured as a function of temperature from a fixed pressure and magnetic field, and each raw data name contains information about the estimated pressure value. Temperature dependence transport studies for sample S2 were performed using different magnetic field polarities and the data were symmetrized afterwards to eliminate any effect of mixing resistivity components
Stabilizing time-lagged climate impacts requires net-negative emissions for centuries
Get PDFAbstract
In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed that States must prevent significant harm to the environment, including the climate system. Some of the most critical climate impacts, such as sea level rise (SLR) and permafrost thaw (PFT), will intensify for centuries even under 1.5–2 °C stabilization. In the terms expressed by the ICJ, we argue a duty exists to pursue stabilization of impacts at the lowest attainable levels. 
Using ensembles from a coupled integrated assessment and earth system model emulator, we show that achieving this requires sustained global net-negative CO2 emissions well beyond the 23rd century. Crucially, delayed mitigation does not increase carbon debts as under overshootable temperature-based targets, but instead increases long-term impacts, the likelihood of extreme outcomes, and shifts mitigation burdens further to future generations.
These findings suggest that Paris targets are milestones, not endpoints, and that sustained carbon removal must become a structural element of future climate governance. In the ICJ’s terms, this points to a plausible legal trajectory toward recognizing sustained global carbon removal obligations. Robust frameworks to define and fairly distribute these obligations, both among nations and across generations, are essential yet currently absent from international climate governance.