Tampere University

Over the past few years, interest in a Muon Collider as a potential post-LHC machine has grown significantly. By colliding muons, it is possible to achieve both precision and high energy, overcoming the limitations of synchrotron radiation in conventional lepton colliders. However, the very short muon lifetime at rest requires high beam intensity and fast acceleration rates limiting the collider ring dimensions. These limitations lead to several challenges in the design of superconducting magnets, which must generate high magnetic fields in large apertures to provide shielding from the radiation due to muon decay. This work explores the design of combined function magnets, which are essential to address the neutrino flux issue in straight sections by bending the particles during focusing/defocusing stages. The superconducting material selected for these magnets is REBCO, a High Temperature Superconductor (HTS), with operating temperatures ranging from 4.5 K to 20 K. Various configurations of combined function magnets are studied and simulated using a Python code interfaced with the Finite Element Method (FEM) software ANSYS, employing the sector coil approximation. The goal is to identify feasible designs that can accommodate substantial internal shielding while continuing to provide the high fields and gradients demanded by the lattice optics. To validate the manufacturability of such concepts, a preliminary winding test has been performed using Nb<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{3}$</tex-math></inline-formula>Sn in a Canted-Cosine-Theta (CCT) geometry. While REBCO represents the most promising HTS conductor for future high-field applications, Nb<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{3}$</tex-math></inline-formula>Sn remains one of the most mature options for large accelerator magnets, providing a valuable feasibility benchmark.

Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CM) have gained interest as a pharmacological modelbut their immaturity leads to uncertainty regarding translation. We studied the key player in maintaining ionic homeostasis, the Na+/K+-ATPase (NKA), in hiPSC-CM. Atrial and ventricular engineered heart tissues (EHTs) were produced from hiPSC-CMs. For comparison, adult atrial and ventricular tissues were obtained from patients undergoing open heart surgery. We measured NKA gene expression, NKA pump currents (INKA) and ouabain effects on action potentials and contractility. Computational modelling was used to further investigate the direct and indirect impacts of NKA inhibition. The mRNA abundance of the major NKA isoforms was higher in ventricular than atrial cardiomyocytes (adult and hiPSC-CM). Consistently, INKA was also higher in ventricular than in atrial hiPSC-CM and higher in ventricular than in atrial adult cardiomyocytes. Ouabain potency to block INKA did not differ between hiPSC-derived and adult cardiomyocytes. Ouabain shortened plateau phase in EHT and adult tissue. However, lower ouabain concentrations depolarized diastolic potential and depressed force more in EHTs, demonstrating a higher integrated sensitivity to NKA inhibition. Computational modelling indicated that weaker IK1 increases the susceptibility to depolarisation by NKA block. HiPSC-EHTs express NKA with biophysical characteristics and ouabain-sensitivity that are not different from human tissue. Action potential duration responses in EHT reproduces chamber-specific response pattern as seen in human heart. The higher sensitivity of EHTs to depolarize under ouabain-induced block of NKA needs to be considered when employing hiPSC-CM in drug research.

Peanut and tree nut allergies are leading causes of food-induced anaphylaxis in children. We aimed to examine early introduction and allergic characteristics in children with suspected severe peanut and/or tree nut allergy. Children aged 3-16 years with suspected severe peanut and/or tree nut allergy were recruited from Tampere University Hospital, Finland. Eligibility was based on a history of anaphylaxis and/or elevated specific immunoglobulin E (sIgE) to high-risk allergenic components. Data were collected through structured, physician-led interviews with participants and their caregivers. The study included 103 children (mean age 7.2 ± 3.0 years), of whom 47.6% had a history of anaphylaxis. Early nut introduction (< 6 months) did not occur at all among the participants. Additionally, nut introduction before 12 months was rare (< 2%). Peanut and cashew were the most introduced nuts and the most frequent anaphylaxis triggers. Parental food allergy was significantly more common among children without anaphylaxis compared to those with confirmed anaphylaxis (38.5% vs. 18.4%; p = 0.035). Early nut introduction was absent among children with suspected severe nut allergy, regardless of anaphylaxis history. Parental food allergy was more prevalent in children without anaphylaxis, suggesting it is not a reliable predictor of severe allergic reactions.

Neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage correlates with cardiovascular disease risk. However, its relationship with subclinical atherosclerosis from childhood to midlife is not well-defined. We examined whether cumulative neighbourhood disadvantage is associated with carotid artery plaques, a measure of subclinical atherosclerosis. We analysed data from 1998 participants in the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, a cohort followed from childhood (mean age 10.7years in 1980) to adulthood (mean age 48.6years in 2018-2020). Neighbourhood disadvantage was derived from national grid-based socioeconomic data and computed cumulatively across the life course. The number of carotid artery plaques (mean plaque count) was assessed by standardized ultrasound imaging. Multivariable Poisson regression models were used to evaluate the associations. Mediation analyses were used to assessed the role of ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) metrics. Higher cumulative neighbourhood disadvantage from childhood to mid-adulthood was associated with a 1.24-fold increase in mean plaque count for every 1 standard deviation increase in cumulative disadvantage. This relationship persisted after controlling for parental carotid artery plaques, polygenic coronary artery disease risk score, and Framingham risk score. The association was partially explained by ideal CVH metrics, particularly smoking and blood pressure, which collectively accounted for almost half of the association. Long-term exposure to neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage beginning in childhood is associated with subclinical atherosclerosis in midlife, independently of achieved socioeconomic position. These findings highlight the importance of cumulative socioeconomic environments across the life course and suggest that behavioural risk factors may partly explain observed neighbourhood-level associations with atherosclerosis.

• SEIR: skeleton-based method to estimate interaction readiness. • LDC: local dense connection between ST-GC blocks to enrich feature flow. • CSA: cross-stream attention module to fuse joint and bone features globally. • Probabilistic aggregation: to bridge dataset to real-world. Estimating a person’s readiness to engage is a critical prerequisite for achieving natural interactions with machines. In this work, we explore a skeleton-based approach for estimating interaction readiness from human motion. A two-stream spatio-temporal graph convolutional network is applied as backbone. We propose two design changes to the backbone: Local Dense Connection (LDC), which enhances the flow of multi-scale features, and Cross-Stream Attention (CSA) module, allowing it to effectively relate joint and bone features. Rather than classifying actions directly, a probabilistic aggregation strategy is introduced to generate a scalar measure of interaction readiness, which helps the model generalize better to real-world scenes. Experiment on the processed NTU-RGB+D 120 dataset demonstrates the proposed method achieves 82.52% top-1 accuracy, outperforming backbone model. Moreover, experiment on real-world data achieves ROC-AUC = 0.9687 in realistic conditions, indicating the robustness and generalization ability of the proposed method with lightweight parameters (8.30 M). While relatively lightweight, the method offers a practical solution for scenarios that require fast, interpretable estimation such as human–robot interaction settings.

Text-driven 3D scene editing has attracted considerable interest due to its convenience and user-friendliness. However, methods that rely on implicit 3D representations, such as Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), while effective in rendering complex scenes, are hindered by slow processing speeds and limited control over specific regions of the scene. Moreover, existing approaches, including Instruct-NeRF2NeRF and GaussianEditor, which utilize multi-view editing strategies, frequently produce inconsistent results across different views when executing text instructions. This inconsistency can adversely affect the overall performance of the model, complicating the task of balancing the consistency of editing results with editing efficiency. To address these challenges, we propose a novel method termed Single-View to 3D Object Editing via Gaussian Splatting (SVGS), which is a single-view text-driven editing technique based on 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). Specifically, in response to text instructions, we introduce a single-view editing strategy grounded in multi-view diffusion models, which reconstructs 3D scenes by leveraging only those views that yield consistent editing results. Additionally, we employ sparse 3D Gaussian Splatting as the 3D representation, which significantly enhances editing efficiency. We conducted a comparative analysis of SVGS against existing baseline methods across various scene settings, and the results indicate that SVGS outperforms its counterparts in both editing capability and processing speed, representing a significant advancement in 3D editing technology. For further details, please visit our project page at: https://amateurc.github.io/svgs.github.io/ .

Cardiac organ damage (OD) is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. However, limited knowledge exists on cardiac OD in young patients with cryptogenic ischaemic stroke (CIS). To explore prevalence and covariates of cardiac OD in patients with CIS compared to controls participating in the SECRETO study. We analysed data from 427 patients with CIS aged <50 years and 361 age- and sex-matched controls. OD was defined as presence of abnormal left ventricular (LV) geometry (LV hypertrophy or concentric remodelling) or left atrial enlargement (LAE) assessed by echocardiography, using sex-specific threshold values. Compared to controls, patients had higher prevalences of obesity and tobacco smoking, patent foramen ovale (PFO) (52% vs. 25%) and abnormal LV geometry (12% vs. 7%, all p < 0.01), while presence of LAE did not differ. In multivariable analyses, CIS was associated with presence of abnormal LV geometry (odds ratio 1.86 [95% confidence interval 1.09-3.20], p=0.024). In separate multivariable analyses in patients only, obesity was associated with both abnormal LV geometry and LAE (both p < 0.01), and higher systolic blood pressure only with presence of abnormal LV geometry (p < 0.001). No significant association with PFO was found. In young patients with CIS participating in the SECRETO study, abnormal LV geometry was more prevalent compared to age- and sex-matched controls and associated with presence of higher blood pressure and obesity. The results point to the importance of blood pressure and weight control in CIS to prevent progression of cardiac OD and recurrent cardiovascular events.

The Gulf of Bothnia presents notable challenges for offshore wind development due to its metocean and geological conditions. The seabed substrate varies widely, from soft post-glacial sediments to dense glacial tills and mixed outwash deposits, with bedrock locally close to or outcropping at the seabed. These hard soils provide suitable conditions for gravity-based foundations (GBFs), but reliable design requires an understanding of cyclic soil behaviour under loading from wind, waves, and winter ice. This study evaluates the cyclic shear strength of glacial soils using Direct Simple Shear (DSS) contour diagrams derived from established databases and representative load histories from the Baltic and North Seas, with the aim of supporting preliminary GBF design in glacial environments. The influence of key soil properties, such as plasticity, density, and consolidation state, and the effects of partial drainage are assessed. The study also discusses key uncertainties associated with database representativeness, cyclic contour and stress-path selection, and load history generalisation. The results enhance the reliability of early-stage GBF assessments and support the sustainable development of offshore wind infrastructure in the Gulf of Bothnia and similar glaciated seabed conditions. • Cyclic shear strengths obtained from an established DSS database. • Glacial soil behaviour evaluated under offshore storm loading. • Partial drainage shown to enhance cyclic resistance in sands. • Density and fines content strongly influence cyclic response. • Database-based cyclic strengths support early GBF design.

ABSTRACT The paper discusses whether natural phenomena such as epidemics and pandemics of communicable diseases can be interpreted as social pathologies. While providing a positive answer to the question, the manuscript tries to define a set of criteria – a rupture of biological normativity and an evaluation of epidemics’ social impact – that can help to determine in which circumstances such natural phenomena fall under the label of “social pathologies”.

Abstract. Sub-10 nm aerosol particles play a critical role in the atmosphere through their involvement in new particle formation, a key process influencing the availability of cloud condensation nuclei. In recognition of their significance, international observation frameworks such as the Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS) engage in the process of integrating their observations into standardized protocols. ACTRIS aims to enhance the understanding of atmospheric processes, including those related to particle dynamics and their interactions with clouds and climate through harmonized long-term observations. To evaluate the performance of current instrumentation for sub-10 nm particle measurements, as well as the procedures for doing so, in November 2023, the ACTRIS Cluster Calibration Center in Helsinki, Finland, held its first workshop on the intercomparison of instrumentation for sub-10 nm aerosol particle number size distribution measurements. In this workshop, three mobility-based systems (GRIMM PSMPS, TSI 1 nm SMPS and TSI 3938N56) and five activation-based systems (three Airmodus A11s and two Airmodus A12s) were evaluated. The focus lay on assessing their number concentration response and size-dependent detection efficiency – including the determination of the diameter with 50 % detection efficiency – and sizing accuracy. In addition to these parameters, the instruments were compared with each other while measuring aerosol particle number size distributions side by side from an aerosol chamber. Beyond the evaluation of instrument performance, the workshop aimed to test and assess calibration and comparison methods to identify aspects of ACTRIS compliance requiring further refinement. Although this work highlights the key strengths of the different measurement techniques and instruments, several challenges remain. Mobility-based systems showed high sizing accuracy, especially for particles larger than 2 nm, while encountering challenges in measuring particles in the lower atmospheric concentration range. Activation-based systems proved more sensitive at lower particle number concentrations and particle sizes, with the drawback of slight unit-to-unit variability. Additionally, a systematic size shift was identified in aerosols generated by 4-way-cross glowing wire generator setups, indicating a need for further investigation on this effect and the development of calibration equipment in the sub-10 nm size range.