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Recent advances in bioimaging, biochemistry, and bioinformatics have facilitated the development of personalized and precision medicine. Theranostics, combining imaging modalities and therapeutic agents, have garnered a lot of attention in this context, owing to their potential to monitor and control treatment for individual patients. A promising strategy to achieve this goal involves the development of therapy guided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI has a high degree of soft tissue contrast, low invasiveness, high depth of penetration and good spatial resolution. MRI‐guided therapy could thus allow precise and time‐resolved assessment of disease conditions and therapeutic progression. This article will give a brief introduction to the principles of MRI, and describe recently developed strategies to produce MRI‐guided therapies. A number of theranostics based on T1, T2, or chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI have been explored to track the route of drug carriers in vivo and image diseased tissue so as to enhance bioavailability, overcome complex delivery barriers, and assess therapeutic responses. In addition, the integration of thermal therapy and MRI imaging offers a strategy to noninvasively identify target areas, plan treatment, and provide real‐time assessment of the efficacy of tumor ablation. We also discuss advances in intelligent nanoparticles combining small molecule drugs, thermal treatment and multimodal imaging, arguing that these multifunctional agents can further improve therapeutic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional structures of segregation typically entrench social inequality and sustain wider patterns of intergroup conflict and discrimination. However, initiatives to dismantle such structures may provoke resistance. Executive proposals to dismantle Northern Ireland's peace walls by 2023 provide a compelling case study of the nature of such resistance and may thus provide important clues about how it might be overcome. Drawing on a field survey conducted in north Belfast (n = 488), this research explored the role of physical proximity, realistic and symbolic threat, and past experiences of positive and negative cross‐community contact on Catholic and Protestant residents' support for removing the walls. Structural equation modelling suggested that both forms of contact and proximity were significantly related to such support and that these relationships were partially mediated by realistic threat. It also suggested that positive contact moderated the effects of proximity. That is, for residents who had more frequent positive interactions with members of the other community, proximity to a peace wall had a weaker relationship with resistance to their removal than residents who had less frequent contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the global population urbanizes, dramatic changes are expected in city lighting and the urban form, which may threaten the functioning of urban ecosystems and the services they deliver. However, little is known about the ecological impact of lighting in different urban contexts. Movement is an important ecological process that can be disrupted by artificial lighting. We explored the impact of lighting on gap crossing for Pipistrellus pipistrellus, a species of bat (Chiroptera) common within UK cities. We aimed to determine whether the probability of crossing gaps in tree cover varied with crossing distance and lighting level, through stratified field surveys. We then used the resulting data on barrier thresholds to model the landscape resistance due to lighting across an entire city and explored the potential impact of scenarios for future changes to street lighting. The level of illumination required to create a barrier effect reduced as crossing distance increased. For those gaps where crossing was recorded, bats selected the darker parts of gaps. Heavily built parts of the case study city were associated with large and brightly lit gaps, and spatial models indicate movement would be highly restricted in these areas. Under a scenario for brighter street lighting, the area of accessible land cover was further reduced in heavily built parts of the city. We believe that this is the first study to demonstrate how lighting may create resistance to species movement throughout an entire city. That connectivity in urban areas is being disrupted for a relatively common species raises questions about the impacts on less tolerant groups and the resilience of bat communities in urban centres. However, this mechanistic approach raises the possibility that some ecological function could be restored in these areas through the strategic dimming of lighting and narrowing of gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A low native membrane permeability and ineffective access to the cellular cytosol, together with aggressive proteolytic degradation, often severely hampers the practical application of any therapeutic protein or antibody. Through engineering the charging profile of mesoporous silica nanoparticles, cellular uptake and subsequent subcellular distribution can be controlled. We show herein that programmed cell death can subsequently be induced across a population of cancer cells with remarkable efficacy on conjugating a specific caspase-cascade-activating cytochrome to such cytosol-accessing particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen science projects encourage the general public to participate in scientific research. Participants can contribute large volumes of data over broad spatial and temporal frames; however, the challenge is to generate data of sufficient quality to be useable in scientific research. Most observations made by citizen-scientists can be independently verified by 'experts'. However, verification is more problematic when the phenomena being recorded are short-lived. This article uses a GIS methodology to verify the quality of contrail observations made by the general public as part of the OPAL Climate Survey. We verify observations using datasets derived from a variety of different sources (experts, models and amateur enthusiasts) with different spatial and temporal properties which reflect the complex 3D nature of the atmosphere. Our results suggest that ∼70% of citizen observations are plausible, based on favorable atmospheric conditions and the presence or absence of aircraft; a finding which is in keeping with other, more conventional citizen science projects. However, questions remain as to why the quality of the citizen-based observations was so high. Given the lack of supporting data on observers, it is impossible to determine whether the dataset was generated by the activities of many participants or a small but dedicated number of individual observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method is presented for conditional analysis of spatial and temporal (1961–2007) variations in rainfall under different synoptic situations and different geographic sub-regions, using Cumbria in NW England as a study area. A daily synoptic typing scheme, the Lamb Weather Catalogue, was applied to identify rainfall under three different weather types: south-westerly (SW), westerly (W) and cyclonic (C). Topographic descriptors developed using GIS were used to classify rain gauges into six geographic sub-regions: coastal, windward-lowland, windward-upland, leeward-upland, leeward-lowland, secondary upland. Examining temporal rainfall trends associated with different weather types, in different geographic sub-regions, reveals useful information on changes in rainfall processes. The total rainfall under SW and W weather types is increasing, particularly in upland regions. The increase in SW rainfall is driven by more frequent wet-days, whereas the increase in W rainfall is driven by increases in both wet-day frequency and yield per wet-day. The rainfall under C weather types is decreasing. Combining GIS and synoptic climatology gives insights into rainfall processes under a changing climate. The conditional analysis method can be applied at both local and regional scales, and its success is largely due to the ability of GIS to integrate, visualise, and efficiently model spatial data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns over the potential negative health effects from exposure to air pollution have led to interest in assessing personal exposure and finding ways to reduce it. As journey-time exposure accounts for a disproportionately high amount of an individual's total exposure, this article assesses the potential to apply least-cost techniques within a GIS in order to identify paths of lower journey-time exposure. The methodology adopted uses pollution surfaces for PM10 and CO generated by the dispersion model ADMS, with an analysis mask derived from OS MasterMap to create a least-cost surface. Actual routes taken by a cohort of 11–13 year old children on their journeys to school are used to compare observed journey time exposure with the exposure along alternative routes generated using the least-cost path function. While the least-cost approach proved to be successful in defining low exposure routes the ability to scale up this approach is constrained by the amount of editing required to successfully create an analysis mask from OS MasterMap data. Such alternative routes have the potential to assist in promoting safer environmental choices, however, their likelihood of adoption is dependant on a number of social and environmental influences which affect an individual's route choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review: 165 refs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]