Absolute Closure Research Articles

Late Paracetamol Therapy for Hemodynamically Significant Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Very Low Birth Weight Infants Born before 28+6 Weeks Gestation – Echocardiographic and Clinical Correlation

Aim: To ascertain the efficacy of late paracetamol therapy in managing haemodynamically significant patent ductus arteriosus (hsPDA) in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants and correlate echocardiographic findings with clinical outcome. Methods: This is a retrospective audit of 23 VLBW infants (< 28+6 weeks) born in a large tertiary hospital who received late paracetamol therapy (initiated beyond two weeks of life) for hsPDA. Baseline patient characteristics, echocardiographic data before and after treatment, and adverse effects were collected and analyzed. Results: The mean gestation was 26.1 ± 2.1 weeks and birth weight 830 ± 307 grams. The mean age at initiation of paracetamol therapy was 31 ± 2.9 weeks postmenstrual age (IQR range 28-33 weeks). A significant decrease in PDA size was noted (2.82 ± 0.72 mm pre-treatment to 2.50 ± 0.59 mm post-treatment, p = 0.03). The maximal systolic and diastolic velocity across PDA, before and after paracetamol therapy was also significantly different (2.23 ± 0.83 m/s vs. 2.68 ± 0.77 m/s, p = 0.04 and 0.63 ± 0.45 m/s vs. 1.06 ± 0.63 m/s, p < 0.01, respectively). However, the overall complete closure rate of hsPDA was only 13% (3 out of 23), and the constriction rate (decrease in size by more than 25%) was 18%. There were no significant side effects. Conclusion: Late therapy with paracetamol appears to have a modest effect on reducing the size of hsPDA in VLBW infants, but the absolute closure rate is low. It could still be considered before surgical ligation of the PDA.

POLÍTICAS CURRICULARES EM UMA LÓGICA CENTRALIZADORA E ESCAPES POSSÍVEIS: TECENDO OUTRAS REDES POLÍTICAS

Este artigo discute a produção de políticas curriculares num contexto em que perspectivas de centralização curricular se fortalecem, tomando como foco de análise o Pacto Nacional pela Alfabetização na Idade Certa (PNAIC), um programa de formação continuada de professores alfabetizadores instituído em 2012 pelo Ministério da Educação e que, em nossas pesquisas, lemos como política curricular, principalmente pelos nexos que estabelece com a produção da Base Nacional Comum Curricular e com o alinhamento à ideia de construção de um currículo nacional para a alfabetização. Operando com uma perspectiva discursiva apoiada nas teorizações de Bhabha, Laclau e Derrida e considerando a produção de redes de política como propõe Ball, assumimos o currículo como produção discursiva, fruto de lutas pelo poder de significação. Nessa linha, assumimos que não há significação objetiva nem há fechamento absoluto de sentidos, o que nos possibilita observar produções que transbordam os limites da própria política e incitam pensar escapes à lógica centralizadora em que ela se baseia. Tal percepção se desenvolve com base no que elegemos como mote de discussão: a leitura dos blogs criados por professores. Os blogs figuram no desenho do PNAIC como estratégia de disseminação de práticas exemplares, em uma regulação implícita das práticas pedagógicas. Contudo, temos observado que os professores, nessas redes, ao fortalecer diálogos com suas práticas e pares, tecem outras perspectivas de conhecimento, de currículo e de docência pelas significações que multiplicam acerca do currículo, o que defendemos como possibilidade de pensar a democratização curricular.

How to Talk About Nature When There Is No More Nature to Talk About: Toward a Sustainable Universal

How to Talk About Nature When There Is No More Nature to Talk About: Toward a Sustainable Universal

Captive Thinking, Thinking Capture

Captive Thinking, Thinking Capture Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture, by Rey Chow. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. 186 pp. $23.95 paperback. $84.95 hardcover.What if entanglement, attachment, and captivity were understood not as obstacles to freedom to be overcome but as categories of agency and critical thought? What would a mode of thinking that did not belong to itself, that dwelled in passivity rather than attempting to act, look like? masochism best describes unifying gesture of Rey Chow's Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture, a collection of essays that explore, across a wide spectrum of phenomena and media, epistemological and erotic implications of being on receiving end of historical structures that capture and dominate. Chow cautions against any kind of intellectual move that would attempt to give critic upper hand over his or her object, whether it be an artwork or a historical constellation. Rather, as Chow argues, one must take states of captivity, servitude, and entanglement as being constitutive of thinking.Entanglements, as Chow writes in her introduction, imply the linkages and enmeshments that keep things apart; voidings and uncoverings that hold things (12). essays in volume assemble a multitude of cross-disciplinary motifsfigures culled from philosophy, literature, film, and visual art-that are held together by precisely this sense of a fragile and shared differentiation, by meetings that are not necessarily defined by proximity or affinity (1). book offers a critique of what Chow sees as a tendency in contemporary theoretical thinking to equate reflexivity with critical distance that, according to her, effaces sensuous captivation in name of laying bare device (16). In first chapter, When Reflexivity Becomes Porn, Chow argues that Brechtian gesture of distanciation becomes in contemporary culture a normalized state of cool detachment. Critical distance, or impulse to estrange spectator from embodied fellow feelings such as pity and fear in order to reveal workings of medium as such is, in Chow's view, comparable to pornography (30). Obsessed with unobstructed visibility, both porn and aesthetic reflexivity dwell in shocking disconnect between spectacle and spectatorship, between extreme staging of trauma and nonchalance of audience reaction (ibid.). Chow's point is that in its desire to visualize structures of mediation, Brechtian reflexivity attempts to occupy an active and scoptic position, to see rather than be seen, to act rather than to be acted upon. In chapters 2, 4, and 5, Chow identifies similar dynamics at work in key figures of contemporary thought: Jacques Ranciere's discourse on aesthetic democratization, Giorgio Agamben's concept of bare life, and Jacques Derrida's valorization of forgiveness. Chow demonstrates that in each instance agency of victim qua victim is effaced through an undue emphasis on, respectively, unmarked beholder, sovereign, and/or one who forgives. Chow instead envisions a mode of thinking that would be enmeshed with victim. While Ranciere could only understand Emma Bovary's death as an act of murder by Flaubert, her author, what would it mean, Chow asks, to see her suicide as self-authored?To this end, Entanglements examines a series of literary, visual, and philosophical figures that, in Chow's view, demand a different kind of thinking, one that resides on passive side of uneven relationships. A most poignant example occurs in second chapter, On Captivation, where Chow supplements Ranciere's conception of art as that which challenges distinction between art and nonart with anthropologist Alfred Gell's example of animal trap as both art and artifact. The trap is, to all appearances, opposite of freedom, observes Chow, but its absolute closure is assumed only from perspective of hunter (42). …

The Effect of Percutaneous Intervention on Wound Healing in Patients With Mixed Arterial Venous Disease

Open venous ulcers in patients with combined arterial and venous insufficiency are notoriously hard to treat. Patients with an ankle-brachial index (ABI) of 0.5-0.8 have been shown to heal poorly. Because adequate compression therapy is contraindicated in patients with an ABI of <0.7, we decided to undertake an aggressive approach of percutaneous revascularization for these patients. A total of 27 patients with clinical and duplex scan evidence of chronic venous insufficiency, active leg ulcers, and impaired arterial perfusion (ABI: <0.7) were treated using a protocol that required performing percutaneous revascularization before ambulatory compression therapy. The patients were followed at 2-week intervals (average) before and after revascularization. Wound measurements and time to complete closure were also recorded. The results of the patients were compared with their own previous wound healing trajectories. Additionally, their healing rate was compared with previously published rates of impaired arterial perfusion venous wound closure; 25% closure at 10 weeks, 50% at 19 weeks. At enrollment, the average ABI and wound sizes were 0.56 and 12 cm(2), respectively. On average, the wounds had remained open for 17 weeks. After the intervention, the average ABI was 0.97, average time taken to complete closure was 10 weeks, closure rate at 10 weeks was 75%, and absolute closure rate was 100%. Although previous studies have shown that closure of mixed arterial venous ulcers occur without arterial intervention, attaining a near normal ABI allows for timelier wound closure. Therefore, we advocate an aggressive approach of percutaneous revascularization in this population.

A categorical approach to absolute closure

Notions of strongly and absolutely closed objects with respect to a closure operator X on an arbitrary category X and with respect to a subcategory Y are introduced. This yields two Galois connections between closure operators on a given category X and subclasses of X, whose fixed points are studied. A relationship with some compactness notions is shown and examples are provided.

Effects of speaking rate on the single/geminate stop distinction in Japanese

This study addressed an issue in the theory of acoustic invariance. The question was whether an invariant acoustic property exists for distinguishing Japanese single and geminate voiceless stops across rates and speakers. Four native Japanese speakers produced disyllabic words with single and geminate stops (e.g., /kako/ and /kak:o/) spoken in a carrier sentence at three speaking rates. Durations of sentences, words, stop closures, vowels preceding the contrasting stops, and voice onset times were measured. Ratios of geminate to single stop closures, geminate words to singleton words, closures to preceding vowels, and closures to words were calculated. The effect of rate on closure duration was to yield overlap between the singleton and geminate categories, and to lengthen geminate closures more than single closures as rate decreased. However, the ratio of geminate to single closure duration was unaffected by rate. Furthermore, the ratio of closure to word duration (0.35 as an optimal boundary) best classified all singleton and geminate tokens with 95.7%-98% accuracy. Thus, in spite of overlap in absolute closure duration between single and geminate voiceless stops, there is a relationally invariant measure that divides the two phonemic categories across rates and speakers, supporting the theory of relational acoustic invariance. co ustical Society of America.

Relational acoustic invariance in the single/geminate stop distinction in Japanese

This study addressed an issue in the theory of relational acoustic invariance [Pickett et al., Phonetica 56, 135–157 (1999)]. The question was whether an invariant acoustic property exists for distinguishing Japanese single and geminate voiceless stops across different speaking rates. Four native Japanese speakers produced disyllabic words with single and geminate voiceless stops spoken in a carrier sentence at three speaking rates. Durations of sentences, words, stop closures, and vowels preceding the contrasting stops were measured. Ratios of geminate to single stop closures, geminate words to single words, closures to preceding vowels, and closures to words were calculated. The stop closure duration significantly overlapped between the single and geminate categories across rates. However, the ratio of geminate to single closure duration was unaffected by rate. Among the measures examined, the ratio of closure to word duration (0.35 as an optimal boundary) best classified all single and geminate tokens with 95.7–98% accuracy. These results suggest that, in spite of overlap in absolute closure duration between single and geminate stops, there is a relationally invariant measure that divides the two phonemic categories across rates and speakers, supporting the theory of relational acoustic invariance.

On completeness of quasi‐pseudometric spaces

We discuss completeness in terms of a notion of absolute closure. This will be done in the context of separated quasi‐pseudometric spaces and bitopological spaces. The notion is equivalent to the classical notion of completeness when restricted to the class of metric spaces.

Discrimination of geminate and single stops in Japanese by five different language speakers

Thirty Korean, Chinese, Thai, American, and Spanish, subjects heard two-syllable Japanese words including geminate or single stops in two pitch accent contexts. The subjects discriminated between geminate and single stops. Their discrimination ability was examined and compared among these different speakers. Five language groups were clearly separated into two groups according to the results. The first group (Korean, Chinese, and Thai) that had three-way stop contrasts different in tense or aspiration, showed a lower correct ratio. Also pitch accent (LH, HL) and consonant type (/p/,/t/,/k/) of the stimuli appeared to influence the discrimination similarly in this group. The second American and Spanish group could perform the discrimination task better than the first group and little influence of accent and consonant contexts were observed. The second group seemed to depend more on the absolute closure duration of stop consonants in judging geminate or single. These results suggest that different language speakers use different acoustic cues in discriminating non-native contrast. In particular, while Japanese speakers discriminate single stops from their geminate counterparts using only relative segmental duration, Korean, Chinese, and Thai speakers seem to use additional acoustic information such as tense and aspiration.

Repair Kinetics of Amnion Cells after Microsurgical Injury

There is a paucity of data regarding healing of fetal membranes. We assessed the repairing ability of a microsurgically-injured monolayer of amnion-derived cells compared to an endothelial cell line. Amnion-derived cells (FL cells) were grown to confluence in 10% fetal calf serum (FCS). A microsurgical incision was performed under an inverted microscope. The area of each incision was measured at times 0, 6, 12 and 24 h using MCID M4 image analysis software. The experiments were repeated using 1% FCS. The observations were also made replacing the media at 6 and 12 h. Umbilical-cord-derived endothelial cells were used for comparison. The rate of repair of the incision was measured using three methods: (a) absolute closure rate (ACR): (A0-A1)/T, where A0 is the original incisional area, and A1 is the new area at interval T: (b) relative percentage rate (RPR): (A0-A1)/A0/T x 100, and (c) healing rate (HR): (A0-A1)/A0 x 100. Amnion cells were capable of repairing the microsurgical defect. The ACR decreased over time, and was higher with larger defects. A lower concentration of FCS nor the addition of fresh media altered the repair process significantly. Endothelial cells were significantly faster than amnion cells or amnion-supplemented cells with endothelial media. The RPR remained relatively constant for all groups, suggesting Gompertzian kinetics. Amnion cells are capable of repairing a surgical defect at a relatively constant percent rate, but are slower than an endothelial cell line. The decreased rate of closure over time may be due to relative contact inhibition. Further studies will concentrate on the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in this process.

The influence of utterance length upon bilabial closure duration of selected deaf children

Measurements were made of intraoral air pressure associated with bilabial closure durations of VCV syllables in sentence-like frames of increasing length for nine deaf and nine matched normal hearing children. Results demonstrated significantly longer absolute closure durations at all utterance lengths for the deaf, but with the same relative decrease in closure durations with increases in utterance length for both groups. The deaf children showed lower peak intraoral air pressure values with more variability than the normal children. In addition, the deaf children had longer air-pressure pulse durations than did the normals. Clinical application of these findings to speech management are discussed.

Compactification and Completion as Absolute Closure

Compactification and Completion as Absolute Closure

Compactification and completion as absolute closure

It is well known that a Tychonoff (respectively, Hausdorff uniform) space is compact (resp., complete) iff it is absolutely closed, i.e., dense in no other such space; we shall sketch a proof of this to our purpose, which is: Given X X , we apply Zorn’s Lemma to obtain a space maximal with respect to the property of containing X X densely, thus compact or complete. For uniform spaces, the “maximal extension” is automatically the completion; for Tychonoff spaces, we must, and do, explicitly arrange things so that the “maximal extension” has the universal mapping property describing the Stone-Čech compactification. A variant of the construction yields the Hewitt realcompactification. A crucial point in the proofs is (of course) the exhibition of an upper bound for a chain; this is, in essence, a direct limit construction.