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Volatiles expelled from subducted plates promote melting of the overlying warm mantle, feeding arc volcanism. However, debates continue over the factors controlling melt generation and transport, and how these determine the placement of volcanoes. To broaden our synoptic view of these fundamental mantle wedge processes, we image seismic attenuation beneath the Lesser Antilles arc, an end-member system that slowly subducts old, tectonized lithosphere. Punctuated anomalies with high ratios of bulk-to-shear attenuation ( Q κ −1 / Q μ −1 > 0.6) and V P / V S (>1.83) lie 40 km above the slab, representing expelled fluids that are retained in a cold boundary layer, transporting fluids toward the back-arc. The strongest attenuation (1000/ Q S ~ 20), characterizing melt in warm mantle, lies beneath the back-arc, revealing how back-arc mantle feeds arc volcanoes. Melt ponds under the upper plate and percolates toward the arc along structures from earlier back-arc spreading, demonstrating how slab dehydration, upper-plate properties, past tectonics, and resulting melt pathways collectively condition volcanism.

The latest generation of radio surveys are now producing sky survey images containing many millions of radio sources. In this context it is highly desirable to understand the performance of radio image source finder (SF) software and to identify an approach that optimises source detection capabilities. We have created Hydra to be an extensible multi-SF and cataloguing tool that can be used to compare and evaluate different SFs. Hydra, which currently includes the SFs Aegean, Caesar, ProFound, PyBDSF, and Selavy, provides for the addition of new SFs through containerisation and configuration files. The SF input RMS noise and island parameters are optimised to a 90\% ''percentage real detections'' threshold (calculated from the difference between detections in the real and inverted images), to enable comparison between SFs. Hydra provides completeness and reliability diagnostics through observed-deep ($\mathcal{D}$) and generated-shallow ($\mathcal{S}$) images, as well as other statistics. In addition, it has a visual inspection tool for comparing residual images through various selection filters, such as S/N bins in completeness or reliability. The tool allows the user to easily compare and evaluate different SFs in order to choose their desired SF, or a combination thereof. This paper is part one of a two part series. In this paper we introduce the Hydra software suite and validate its $\mathcal{D/S}$ metrics using simulated data. The companion paper demonstrates the utility of Hydra by comparing the performance of SFs using both simulated and real images., Comment: Paper accepted for publication in PASA

We present a comparison between the performance of a selection of source finders using a new software tool called Hydra. The companion paper, Paper~I, introduced the Hydra tool and demonstrated its performance using simulated data. Here we apply Hydra to assess the performance of different source finders by analysing real observational data taken from the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) Pilot Survey. EMU is a wide-field radio continuum survey whose primary goal is to make a deep ($20\mu$Jy/beam RMS noise), intermediate angular resolution ($15^{\prime\prime}$), 1\,GHz survey of the entire sky south of $+30^{\circ}$ declination, and expecting to detect and catalogue up to 40 million sources. With the main EMU survey expected to begin in 2022 it is highly desirable to understand the performance of radio image source finder software and to identify an approach that optimises source detection capabilities. Hydra has been developed to refine this process, as well as to deliver a range of metrics and source finding data products from multiple source finders. We present the performance of the five source finders tested here in terms of their completeness and reliability statistics, their flux density and source size measurements, and an exploration of case studies to highlight finder-specific limitations., Comment: Paper accepted for publication in PASA

Background: As direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy is progressively rolled out for patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, careful scrutiny of HCV epidemiology, diagnostic testing, and access to care is crucial to underpin improvements in delivery of treatment, with the ultimate goal of elimination. Methods: We retrospectively studied microbiology records from a large UK teaching hospital in order to compare the performance of HCV screening and diagnostic tests (antibody, antigen and HCV RNA detection). Having described a local cohort of adults with active HCV infection, we investigated the proportion who attended hospital appointments, were prescribed direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy, and cleared HCV RNA following treatment. Results: Over a total time period of 33 months between 2013 and 2016, we tested 38,509 individuals for HCV infection and confirmed a new diagnosis of active HCV infection (HCV-Ag+ and/or HCV RNA+) in 353 (positive rate 0.9%). Our in-house HCV-Ab screening test had a positive predictive value of 87% compared to repeat HCV-Ab testing in a reference laboratory, highlighting the potential for false positives to arise using this test. HCV-Ag had 100% positive predictive value compared to detection of HCV RNA. There was a strong correlation between quantitative HCV-Ag and HCV RNA viral load (p≺0.0001). Among the cases of infection, genotype-1 and genotype-3 predominated, the median age was 37 years, 84% were male, and 36% were in prison. Hepatology review was provided in 39%, and 22% received treatment. Among those who received DAA therapy with 12 weeks of follow-up, 93% achieved a sustained virologic response (SVR12). Conclusions: HCV-Ag performs well as a diagnostic test compared to PCR for HCV RNA. Active HCV infection is over-represented among men and in the prison population. DAA therapy is successful in those who receive it, but a minority of patients with a diagnosis of HCV infection access clinical care. Enhanced efforts are required to provide linkage to clinical care within high risk populations.

After many years of research, the mechanisms that generate a periodic pattern of repeated elements (somites) along the length of the embryonic body axis is still one of the major unresolved problems in developmental biology. Here we present a mathematical formulation of the cell cycle model for somitogenesis proposed in Development 105 (1989), 119-130. Somite precursor cells in the node are asynchronous, and therefore

Using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), we conducted a survey of CO J=1-0 and J=2-1 line emission towards strongly lensed high-redshift dusty star forming galaxies (DSFGs) previously discovered with the South Pole Telescope (SPT). Our sample comprises 17 sources that had CO-based spectroscopic redshifts obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). We detect all sources with known redshifts in either CO J=1-0 or J=2-1. Twelve sources are detected in the 7-mm continuum. The derived CO luminosities imply gas masses in the range (0.5-11)x10^{10} M_sun and gas depletion timescales, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

In 1694, Mary Astell proposed the establishment of Protestant nunneries in England; in 1809, Helena Whitford reiterated the theme; yet, it was Lady Isabella King in 1816 who sought to put this radical idea into effect. A single, Irish, evangelically influenced gentlewoman, a younger daughter of the Earl of Kingston, she established the Ladies’ Association, a ‘conventual’ home for eighteen distressed gentlewomen at Bailbrook House in Bath in 1816, securing support for it from such influential figures as Queen Charlotte, William Wilberforce and Robert Southey. When Bailbrook House was sold in 1821, she relocated the Ladies’ Association to Clifton in Bristol, where its eventual failure in 1835 shattered her vision of establishing a national scheme of conventual homes that would benefit future generations of women.\ud Limited attention has yet been paid by historians to the role elite women played in creating and managing philanthropic institutions in the early nineteenth century, particularly those aimed at assisting other women in an urban setting. Some historians of philanthropy, such as Frank Prochaska, have identified an ‘explosion’ of early nineteenth-century female activity; however, elite women’s charitable contributions have tended to be understood as rural, concentrating on family estates. Kim Reynolds, who has addressed Victorian elite women’s philanthropy in an urban setting, maintains it functioned simply as a strand of elite women’s work.\ud This dissertation draws upon a previously unstudied collection of papers compiled and annotated by Lady Isabella King, which span the existence of the Ladies’ Association, in order to explore the nature of Lady Isabella’s involvement in this philanthropic venture and her understanding of her role. Thus it not only seeks to recover Lady Isabella as an important historical figure in the development of early nineteenth-century philanthropic ventures, something for which she was recognised by her contemporaries, but also to\ud examine the structure of her unique experimental institution and cast some light on the sorts of women who became its residents. By doing so, it provides a case study in the development and practical application of a philanthropic ideal. It examines the ways that Lady Isabella, quite a conventional elite single woman, used her status, her location and her networks to create and maintain the institution for nearly twenty years. It provides a valuable opportunity to examine a number of the problems she faced in establishing and running the institution, given the social and gendered milieu in which she was operating, and the strategies she employed to achieve her ends.\ud I argue that Lady Isabella’s elite status provided her with the wealth and access to influential social circles to make a difference, that her single status added independence to devote time to her cause and while she was initially beset with self-doubts about her competence to author and manage the project, she gradually gained confidence as she developed ways to implement and manage the institution. At the same time the groundbreaking nature of the Ladies’ Association, the consequent public criticism and a growing discordant atmosphere among the residents of the institution lead to its closure in 1835.

To facilitate access to all data and information related to scientific ocean drilling, theIntegrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is developing a web based informationservice (Scientific Earth Drilling Information Service, SEDIS). The three main datacontributors to SEDIS currently are the IODP implementing organizations (IOs) fromthe United States (USIO), Japan (CDEX) and Europe with Canada (ESO). SEDISintegrates the data search of the IO databases by harvesting distributed metadatawithout the necessity to centralize the data storage.Presently SEDIS provides the metadata for data discovery and harvesting as suppliedby the IOs (http://sedis.iodp.org). The access to publications, reports, minutes,citations and post expedition research is also implemented and the content of thedatabase is continuously increasing. An expedition catalog completes the database.The next phase in developing SEDIS will include an advanced data search andvisualization and mapping tools.In the future SEDIS will also be able to include other available scientific drilling datafrom continental or lake drilling. SEDIS is designed to integrate distributed scientificdata via metadata by using international standards for metadata and data exchange andtransfer and uses open source components.

Developments in collision-pumped X-ray lasers using a variety of pumping configurations made possible by the versatile VULCAN glass laser at the Central Laser Facility are described. Optimised pumping configurations for nickel-like ions in the QSS regime has lead to saturated outputs at wavelengths as low as 5.8 nm and CPA technology has enabled travelling wave pumping in the TCE regime to deliver saturated output at 12.0 nm, from nickel-like tin. New directions, stemming from availability of more intense pumps and brighter XRLs are discussed briefly.

In this paper a new particle approach to the study of fluid dynamics is applied to the generation of ocean waves by earthquakes. Major interest is centered on a molecular type compression wave as the key mechanism for producing surface water waves. Computer examples for three basic oceanic topographics are studied. each yielding the breaking of ocean waves into a bay area.

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The subject of this investigation is the development of cells in relation to the general development of the leaf in wheat. At a certain stage in the development of the leaf cells are being generated from an intercalary meristem; this situation was first accurately described by Lehman (1906). Such a development is essentially different from that of the dicotyledonous leaf in which divisions may be randomly distributed over the leaf or may be restricted to groups of marginal initials. In the Gramineae where the leaf is generally lanceolate or filiform there tends to be a localised meristematic zone at the point of insertion of the leaf on the stem or at the point where the lamina is attached to the leaf sheath. This intercalary meristem produces cells which become incorporated into the body of the leaf and which themselves extend the length and area of the leaf. The time over which the meristem is active is restricted and tends to be confined to the phase of early development. At a certain point, activity in the meristem ceases and thereafter continued growth of the leaf is due to the expansion of the cells which have already been formed. When the meristem is active, cells at different parts of the leaf are at different stages of development. In general, cells are at progressively advanced stages of development as distance from the base of the leaf increases. Clearly this situation resembles, in certain respects, the situation in the apical zones of the root and shoot, and it may be possible to study cellular development in the leaf with the techniques that have already been applied to the root and shoot. On the other hand, since the intercalary meristem is only active over a limited period the study requires an analysis of the growth of the leaf as a whole.

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Baby walkers are commonly used items of nursery equipment, but cause more than 3000 injuries each year in the UK. There is currently little evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions in primary care to reduce walker use.To evaluate the effectiveness of an educational package provided by midwives and health visitors to reduce baby walker possession and use.Cluster randomised controlled trial.Sixty-four general practices in Nottingham and North Nottinghamshire, UK.An educational package aimed at discouraging mothers-to-be from obtaining and using a walker was delivered by midwives and health visitors to 1174 mothers-to-be of at least 28 weeks gestation. The control arm received usual care. Primary outcome measures were the possession and use of a walker. Secondary outcome measures included the frequency and duration of walker use, knowledge and attitudes towards walkers, plans to use a walker with future children, recommending a walker to a friend, and use of stair gates and fire guards.Intervention arm participants were significantly less likely to own (odds ratio [OR] = 0.63, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.43 to 0.93) or to use a walker (OR = 0.26, 95% CI = 0.08 to 0.84). They were significantly less likely to plan to use a walker with their next child (OR = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.31 to 0.86) or to agree that walkers keep children safe (OR = 0.35, 95% CI = 0.16 to 0.78). There was some evidence that they were less likely to recommend a walker to a friend (OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.28 to 0.91) or to agree that they help children to walk more quickly (OR = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.29 to 0.95).An educational package delivered by midwives and health visitors was effective in reducing baby walker possession and use. Providers of primary healthcare services should include baby walker education in their injury prevention strategy and child health promotion programme.

Recent progress with the design of the UK's proposed New Light Source facility is presented, together with an update on the current status.