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Objective: The provision of rehabilitation services after childhood brain tumour has not been established, despite a recent parliamentary call for urgent action. This service evaluation aimed to determine what specialist paediatric neuro-oncology rehabilitation services were available across the UK at the time of the surveys, and whether the needs of patients and their families were being met.Design: Cross-sectional on-line surveys.Participants: Survey 1: Neuro-oncologist and nurse specialist members of the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG) at Children’s Principle Treatment Centres (PTCs) in the UK; Survey 2: Parents of paediatric neuro-oncology patients belonging to The Brain Tumour Charity (TBTC) Research Involvement Network (RIN). Results: 17 of the 20 (85%) PTCs in the UK and 2 teenagers and young adult cancer units responded to Survey 1, and 17 members of TBTC’s RIN responded to Survey 2. Access to inpatient and outpatient neuro-oncology rehabilitation services after treatment for a CNS tumour varied across regions in the UK. Service users in the RIN identified a need for an established neuro-oncology rehabilitation service for young people, a need for better communication across services and with families, and a need to fill gaps in multidisciplinary teams. Conclusions: The urgent need for specialist paediatric, teenage, and young adult neuro-oncology rehabilitation services in the UK is often unmet, particularly for outpatients. Where services are not provided for those children and young people disadvantaged by the diagnosis of a CNS tumour, in clear breach of current guidelines, remedial action needs to be taken to ensure appropriate and equal access.

Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT) is a non-invasive imaging technique, which has applications in both industrial and clinical settings. In essence, it is capable of reconstructing the electromagnetic parameters of an object from measurements made on its surface. With the exploitation of parallelism, it is possible to achieve high quality inexpensive MIT images for biomedical applications on clinically relevant time scales. In this paper we investigate the performance of different parallel implementations of the forward eddy current problem, which is the main computational component of the inverse problem through which measured voltages are converted into images. We show that a heterogeneous parallel method that exploits multiple CPUs and GPUs can provide a high level of parallel scaling, leading to considerably improved runtimes. We also show how multiple GPUs can be used in conjunction with deal.II, a widely-used open source finite element library.

Pumping tests have been successfully conducted on shallow hand-dug wells in two areas of northwest Ethiopia. The drawdown and recovery data were analysed separately providing consistent results confirming suitability of methods. Hydraulic conductivity estimates ranged from 0.2 to 6.4 m/d (mean = 2.3 m/d, median = 1.6 m/d) in the dry season and ranged from 2.8 to 22.3 m/d (mean = 9.7 m/d, median = 6.5 m/d) in the wet season when the water-table was higher. This difference indicates the importance of excavating wells as deeply as possible to increase the likelihood of intercepting more transmissive (water-bearing) layers. Specific yield estimations have a wider range (0.00001 to 0.32) and are more uncertain though the mean of 0.09 (median of 0.08) is reasonable. Estimates of well yield average 0.5 l/s though this increases to >1 l/s in the wet season; giving opmitism that small-scale irrigation is achievable, therefore, potentially reducing the reliance on rain fed agriculture. These results from weathered basalt regolith add to the sparse available data on shallow groundwater resources in sub-Saharan Africa. Consistency of results from nearby and distant wells indicates homogeneity of shallow aquifer materials giving a high transferability of findings to other areas of Ethiopia. This knowledge of aquifer properties facilitates modelling for estimating impacts of climate variability and change, and for developing sustainable management strategies for shallow groundwater resources.

Infections disturb metabolic homeostasis in many contexts, but the underlying connections are not completely understood. To address this, we use paired genetic and computational screens in Drosophila to identify transcriptional regulators of immunity and pathology and their associated target genes and physiologies. We show that Mef2 is required in the fat body for anabolic function and the immune response. Using genetic and biochemical approaches, we find that MEF2 is phosphorylated at a conserved site in healthy flies and promotes expression of lipogenic and glycogenic enzymes. Upon infection, this phosphorylation is lost, and the activity of MEF2 changes—MEF2 now associates with the TATA binding protein to bind a distinct TATA box sequence and promote antimicrobial peptide expression. The loss of phosphorylated MEF2 contributes to loss of anabolic enzyme expression in Gram-negative bacterial infection. MEF2 is thus a critical transcriptional switch in the adult fat body between metabolism and immunity.