Commonplace Research Articles

Mass spectrometry based proteomics: Changing the impact of protein analysis in forensic science

AbstractMass spectrometry‐based proteomics, born from the invention of soft ionization, has revolutionized protein analysis. In‐depth characterization of complex and variable mixtures of proteins, such as that found at crime‐scenes, is now possible. This capability continues to expand with advancements in mass spectral instrumentation and computational power, allowing for the development of dynamic data acquisition approaches and sophisticated bioinformatics tools for data interpretation. Proteins are the major component of all biological material, as a result they have been of interest to forensic practitioners for centuries. While DNA is the gold standard for identification, proteins are able to provide contextual information about biological material not available through genomic approaches alone. Mass spectrometry‐based proteomics has expanded the breadth and ease of forensic protein analysis with several emerging applications that promise to become common place as investigative tools, particularly in forensic serology and toxicology. This includes the targeted analysis of protein biomarkers for the classification of biological tissue and fluids, the detection of protein toxins such as ricin and identification of peptide hormones such as insulin. The ability of protein analysis to leverage information from the genome has been demonstrated to achieve individual identification from biological material, an emerging technology that can be used in the absence of extractable DNA. In recent years, there has been considerable scrutiny of forensic techniques that lack objectivity and a statistical basis, an alternative molecular approach for forensic analysis that utilizes the high specificity of mass spectrometry, is a welcome addition with many potential future applications.This article is categorized under: Forensic Chemistry and Trace Evidence > Trace Evidence

Tilling Topoi within the Creole Garden

ABSTRACT This article reroutes the more radical tendrils of the commonplace by pursuing Christa J. Olson’s call for questioning the “terrain of rhetoric.” We ask: What if commonplaces and the commonality they entrench are not required for banding together in community? By thinking with Édouard Glissant’s Creole garden, we rework the commonplace as common place, which conceives a place that welcomes difference without requiring common ground. To articulate the possibilities of Glissant’s common place for rhetorical invention, we demonstrate its movement with examples of marronage in the southern Louisiana Territory of the United States. Marronage helps us to think how the Creole garden gathers the world’s thoughts to “illustrate the immeasurable diversity of the world,” thus founding a rhetoric that resists even as it relates to settler colonialisms and racial capitalisms (Treatise). This article demonstrates how the terrain of rhetoric may be limited by the pursuit of/for common ground.

Do end-of-life outcomes differ by assisted living memory-care designation?

Residential care/assisted living (RC/AL) is an increasingly common place of end-of-life care for persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD), who have unique care needs as their health declines. Approximately 22% of RC/ALs provide specialized memory care (memory-care RC/AL). Understanding how end-of-life outcomes differ by memory care among residents with ADRD could facilitate aging/dying in place for this population. The objective of this paper is to examine if end-of-life outcomes (i.e., mortality, hospice use, and number of days receiving hospice in the last month of life) differ between residents with ADRD who moved to memory-care RC/AL, compared with residents with ADRD who moved to RC/AL without memory care (general RC/AL). Prospective cohort of 15,152 fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries with ADRD who moved to large RC/AL (> = 25 beds) between 2016 and 2018. We used inverse probability treatment weighting to account for observable differences between memory-care and general RC/AL residents. Two-part models estimated the difference by memory care in the number of days receiving hospice care in the last months of life among RC/AL decedents. The unadjusted mortality rates were 13.4% in general RC/AL and 15.8% in memory-care RC/AL with an adjusted difference of 1.3 percentage points higher mortality among memory-care RC/AL residents (p = 0.04). Hospice use was 8% and 10.6% among general and memory-care RC/AL residents, respectively, with an adjusted difference of 1.4 percentage points (p = 0.01) higher in memory care. Two-part models showed that decedents in memory-care RC/AL spent about 1.4 more days receiving hospice care in the last month of life (p = 0.02). We find a higher mortality rate and higher rate of hospice use among memory-care RC/AL residents. These findings suggest that memory care may attract residents closer to the end of life and/or promote hospice use at the end of life.

Common Place: The Public Library, Civil Society, and Early American Values

Common Place: The Public Library, Civil Society, and Early American Values

The fog computing for internet of things: review, characteristics and challenges, and open issues

The internet of things (IoT) research envisions a world in which common place objects are linked to the internet and trade, store, process, and gather data from their surroundings. Due to their inherent resource limitations, IoT devices are typically unable to directly host application services, despite their increasing importance for facilitating the supply of data to enable electronic services. Since it can survive and work in tandem with centralized cloud systems and extends the latter toward the network edge, fog computing (FC) may be an appropriate paradigm to get around these restrictions. This paper reviews the overview of the IoT in terms of application and design parameters and FC. Meanwhile, this paper presents the architecture of fog computing for IoT (FC-IoT) in terms of communication, security, data quality, sensing and actuation management, codification, analysis, and decision-making. Additionally, this review provides several characteristics and challenges of FC-IoT. Finally, open issues for this paper have been discussed.

«Муза встала рядом со мной» (об источнике творчества от Гомера до Канта)

The article explores the question of how the ideas about the source of creativity were been changing among European thinkers. In the classical period in Ancient Greece the idea prevailed, coming from Homer, Hesiod and Pindar, that poets derive the content and form of poetic works from Muses, who give them the opportunity to create at their will. At the same time, a common place was the idea that poets do not always bring the truth to the world. Plato, analyzing the work of poets, speaks of two sources – pleasure and inspiration, but only the gods choose when the poet speaks on their behalf. He also clarified the content of poetry by relating it to the different Muses. Aristotle moves away from an external source, placing the source of creativity in the creator of the work, who obtains special abilities, and Aristotle calls imitation (mimesis) the main mode of creativity. Yet at the same time he takes imitation as not limited by visible reality, since the poet speaks of what could have happened, not of what actually has happened. Christian thinkers, from apologists to scholastics and mystics, agree that God is the source of creativity. But their views differ considerably in the details. Thus, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas works we find a peculiar synthesis of the Aristotelian concept of mimesis and Plato’s breakthrough to the divine. The Renaissance desacralization of the world ultimately leads to an exclusively rational conception of association, which allows us to explain the emergence of the new only as the creation of wrong associations. Kant, turning to the theme of genius, finds himself in a difficult situation between two positions: on the one hand, he cannot accept the traditional idea of divine inspiration, on the other hand, the purely empirical idea of association built on tabula rasa material. He had to find some third way. He finds it in the a priori given principle of the ability to think the particular as subordinate to the general, which manifests itself in two aspects – as determining and as reflective. The poet has an idea of some goal and some indeterminate idea of the material and, guided by his genius and not limited by any rules, freely expresses aesthetic ideas.

Transmission of direct speech of characters in the Yakut heroic epic Olonkho

The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that the study of the ways of introducing direct speech of the characters in the Yakut heroic epic would allow us to identify characteristic formulas, representativeness of the style, peculiarities of local traditions, stability or changes in time, originality of textological techniques in fixing olonkho, etc., which is important for understanding the originality of the poetics of the folklore text. The aim of the work is to identify the peculiarities of the transmission of the direct speech of the characters in olonkho. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set: to define direct speech as an element of Olonkho narrative; to study the structure and lexical features of the introduction of direct speech by characters in Olonkho; to characterise characters in formulaic constructions that precede direct speech. Structural, lexical analysis, comparative method, system analysis of Yakut epic poetics were used. It is found that the presentation of direct speech has its own structure, consisting mainly of constructions with verbs of speech, common places, typical expressions, which can be before direct speech, within direct speech and after direct speech. The Olonkho mainly use constructions before and after direct speech. We have discovered an abundance of epic formulae, verbs that characterise the speech and singing of the heroes. In addition, there are sometimes verbs not related to 'speaking' and constructions without a verb. The dialogues of the Olonkho characters by D.A. Tomskaya from the Verkhoyansk region are characterised by simplified repetitions of a single verb. In some cases, while recording the text, the collectors were able to introduce sentences of their own, in which the name of the character and his action are indicated. It turned out that the formulaic constructions that precede direct speech contain character descriptions: first of all, this applies to the abasy bogatyr, female images, shamans, shamanesses, a child, zoomorphic images. 

#web-weaving: Parallel posts, commonplace books, and networked technologies of the self on Tumblr

The literary meme format of "parallel posts" or "web weaving" on microblogging website Tumblr emerged from intersecting fandom and bookish communities in the late 2010s, rising with the fandom-cum-subculture Dark Academia. Parallel posts are an acute symptom of a digital literary culture defined by excess of content, filtered through Tumblr's aesthetic norms as a hub of transformative fandom. Parallel posts both represent and reject the norms of bookishness on other platforms, granting insight into the conflicting impulses of media engagement in the digital age, caught between consumption and rumination. Parallel posts are a resurgence of the commonplace book or quote-collection journal; both forms are technologies of the self, practices of self-transformation and self-expression. At a moment in which the relationship between literature and digital media is in flux, parallel posts and Dark Academia demonstrate the spread of literature into a wholly transtextual, transmedial frame, grounded in both personal expression and in fandom.

Comparative evolutionary analyses of peste des petits ruminants virus genetic lineages.

Peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) causes a highly infectious disease affecting mainly goats and sheep in large parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and has an important impact on the global economy and food security. Full genome sequencing of PPRV strains has proved to be critical to increasing our understanding of PPR epidemiology and to inform the ongoing global efforts for its eradication. However, the number of full PPRV genomes published is still limited and with a heavy bias towards recent samples and genetic Lineage IV (LIV), which is only one of the four existing PPRV lineages. Here, we generated genome sequences for twenty-five recent (2010-6) and seven historical (1972-99) PPRV samples, focusing mainly on Lineage II (LII) in West Africa. This provided the first opportunity to compare the evolutionary pressures and history between the globally dominant PPRV genetic LIV and LII, which is endemic in West Africa. Phylogenomic analysis showed that the relationship between PPRV LII strains was complex and supported the extensive transboundary circulation of the virus within West Africa. In contrast, LIV sequences were clearly separated per region, with strains from West and Central Africa branched as a sister clade to all other LIV sequences, suggesting that this lineage also has an African origin. Estimates of the time to the most recent common ancestor place the divergence of modern LII and LIV strains in the 1960s-80s, suggesting that this period was particularly important for the diversification and spread of PPRV globally. Phylogenetic relationships among historical samples from LI, LII, and LIII and with more recent samples point towards a high genetic diversity for all these lineages in Africa until the 1970s-80s and possible bottleneck events shaping PPRV's evolution during this period. Molecular evolution analyses show that strains belonging to LII and LIV have evolved under different selection pressures. Differences in codon usage and adaptative selection pressures were observed in all viral genes between the two lineages. Our results confirm that comparative genomic analyses can provide new insights into PPRV's evolutionary history and molecular epidemiology. However, PPRV genome sequencing efforts must be ramped up to increase the resolution of such studies for their use in the development of efficient PPR control and surveillance strategies.

Applying the third-place concept for transitional spaces in the Korean university using the design charrette approach

PurposeThis research investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of transitional spaces in a Korean academic setting, to assess the impact of the pandemic on users' utilization of transitional spaces and evaluate any changes in their usage patterns. The research explores whether transitional spaces can function as social interactive spaces, aligning with Ray Oldenburg's “third-place” theory. The focus is on South Korean academic settings, aiming to create neutral and safe zones for users.Design/methodology/approachThe adopted methodology involves reviewing the literature and employing design charrette as a major data collection tool. The design charrette provided a platform for users to share insights on current transitional spaces during the pandemic and envision these spaces as future social and interactive spaces.FindingsThe design charrette participants advocated for modifying the current transitional space design to transform these spaces into shared spaces for both visitors and regular users in the future. Restricting access for external users to the main building area until necessary. The significance of site amenities in determining transitional spaces as “third-places” was emphasized. While the nature of the building, its location and transitional space amenities are crucial aspects to consider, designers may prioritize user opinions and preferences, as the success or failure of the design ultimately centers on user behaviors.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focused on a specific university, hindered by limited access to other institutions during the pandemic. Restrictions on external users discouraged entry without proper permission, which was challenging to obtain. The conventional design charrette outlined in the research method was impossible due to pandemic-related limitations on gathering participants in one location. Therefore, the researcher modified the design charrette method to align with strict social distancing measures.Social implicationsThe results of the research are not limited to academic settings, but they can be implied in other environments where social interaction spaces are required and where there is a constant flow of visitors and regular users. The design charrette can be used as a methodology for interior spaces along with large-scale projects of urban planning.Originality/valueThe research analyzed transitional spaces during the pandemic, suggesting redesign to serve and act as buffer zones between private and public areas and become a common social gathering place for visitors and regular users within the built environment.

Compensation and Rehabilitation of Victims of Rape

Women are important segment of the society, be it family or the government or any other sector like medical, education, administration or legal etc. Women are playing increasingly important roles in every walk of public life. Despite playing such vital role in societal progress, the women are not getting the respect due to them. Even today, majority of the country is male dominated and women have to do every act according to men. Violence and discrimination against women is common place on world. One of the most heinous crimes against women- is the act of non-consensual coercive sexual intercourse with a woman. It violates, not only the body and conscience of the victim, but also disturbs the social order. A victim of rape suffers several problems like, social stigma in addition to psychological trauma. However till today there is no efficient law to provide a compensation or rehabilitation of victims of rape in India. Moreover there are several countries which provide a proper remedy to victims. Rape is the offence which occurred in every country instead of advanced or backward, the difference is only the ratio. In this paper I will discuss the women’s movement and major legislative provisions throughout the world towards compensation and rehabilitation of Rape Victims. As well as the Indian position in the particular offence.

Food hubs in a new public place

This article covers the concept of food hubs and their relation with the common places, and other possible interactions within the civil society, in the eyes of the theoretical point of view of the “social practical theory”. Resembling the conceptualization of the food hubs more in a general way considering the problems and particularities of these systems, recognizing the different business models in the market. Additionally, we will explore some of the values and prerogatives spread by those hubs in connection with the environmental and climate change assumptions and scientific research, using a short supply chain to distribution channels in their commercial transactions. Understanding the role of the hubs in building a sustainable transformation together with those movements, NGOs, private and government initiatives additionally with the digitalization of information and relations between societies.

Passenger Routing Algorithm for COVID-19 Spread Prevention by Minimising Overcrowding

COVID-19 has become a pandemic which has resulted in measures being taken for the health and safety of people. The spreading of this disease is particularly evident in indoor spaces, which tend to get overcrowded with people. One such place is the airport where a plethora of passengers gather in common places, such as coffee shops and duty-free shops as well as toilets and gates. Guiding the passengers to less overcrowded places within the airport may be a solution to reduce disease spread. In this paper, we suggest a passenger routing algorithm whereby the passengers are guided to less crowded places by using a weighting factor, which is minimised to accomplish the desired goal. We modeled a number of shops in an airport using the AnyLogic software and we tested the algorithm showing that the exposure time is less with routing and that people are appropriately spread out across the common spaces, thus preventing overcrowding. Finally, we added a real airport in Kavala, Greece to show the efficiency of our approach.

A relational approach to knowledge exchange in higher education

ABSTRACT Reference to Knowledge Exchange (KE) in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has become common place, reflecting the continued changing role of universities within society. Arguably, KE draws together notions of HEIs as purveyors of knowledge, with students helping to create a tripartite relationship with HEIs and the wider community as well as a civic responsibility to contribute to the wider public good. Realising the potential benefits of this inter-relationship required a problematising of the meanings of both knowledge and the notion of an exchange, drawing on the work of Dewey and Bernstein. Our paper offers an analysis of the different epistemological positions governing understandings of knowledge and how these are influenced by the performativity and neoliberal responsibilisation of modern universities. More specifically, the epistemological position encouraged by the modern university leads to a tension between measurement and evaluation of KE on the one hand and pedagogical practice on the other. Taking into account these tensions, the paper offers an alternative approach to knowledge exchange with suggested principles to underpin a future relational pedagogy for KE.

A practical treatment of sensitivity analyses in activity level evaluations

Evaluations of forensic observations considering activity level propositions are becoming more common place in forensic institutions. A measure that can be taken to interrogate the evaluation for robustness is called sensitivity analysis. A sensitivity analysis explores the sensitivity of the evaluation to the data used when assigning probabilities, or to the level of uncertainty surrounding a probability assignment, or to the choice of various assumptions within the model. There have been a number of publications that describe sensitivity analysis in technical terms, and demonstrate their use, but limited literature on how that theory can be applied in practice. In this work we provide some simplified examples of how sensitivity analyses can be carried out, when they are likely to show that the evaluation is sensitive to underlying data, knowledge or assumptions, how to interpret the results of sensitivity analysis, and how the outcome can be reported. We also provide access to an application to conduct sensitivity analysis.

The Unconventional Effects of the Ketogenic Diet (KD) in Preclinical Epilepsy

The integration of metabolic therapeutics in the available clinical armory is becoming more commonplace in health care as our understanding about the dependence of disease on metabolism continues to deepen and evolve. In the epilepsy field, we often think about the ketogenic diet (KD, high fat: carbohydrate ratio) in terms of its anti-seizure efficacy. The aim of this article is to review what we’ve learned from preclinical studies about the KD’s more unconventional effects, including its neuroprotective effects, anti-epileptogenic and disease-modifying effects, and how the KD influences comorbidities associated with epilepsy. As time moves us into the future and metabolic therapies become more common place, the effects of the KD considered unconventional herein, may end up being referred to as traditional.

The problems of memory in the philosophical tradition of Antiquity

The article is devoted to the problem of actualization of the phenomenon of memory in the tradition of Ancient thought. Despite the genuine interest in the politics and techniques of memory, recollection and oblivion at the end of the twentieth century, the ancient tradition of interpreting the concept of "memory" rarely becomes an independent subject of detailed consideration by researchers. Modern authors from various fields of knowledge often mention Aristotle as the originator of the concept of memory, but such references are rather a "common place", a tribute to tradition, rather than a serious analysis. The study of the achievements of ancient authors opens the way for readers to study the problems of the work of consciousness, the general concept of time, and also creates the ground for the analysis of a wide range of epistemological problems. In this regard, the reconstruction undertaken in this article of the author's most important concepts of memory in antiquity aims not only to explain the meaning of phraseological units, such as "to fall to the source", but also to demonstrate the importance of ancient concepts for the modern understanding of the phenomenon, in particular, the understanding of memory as a specific characteristic of personality. The authors of this article proceed from the thesis that ancient Greek thinkers saw in memory the main property that distinguishes a person from other beings.

Evaluating patient safety: Analysis of adverse events in hospitals in Hidalgo

This descriptive observational study analyzes adverse events in public hospitals in Hidalgo between 2013 and 2021. The main objective is to understand patient safety at the local level using data from the Adverse Event Recording System. Data from 1,830 surveys from 14 hospitals were collected, focusing on sociodemographic, clinical, and hospital service variables. The results indicate a higher prevalence of adverse events in women (59.78%) and in the age group of 21 to 30 years. The most common places of occurrence were Internal Medicine and Hospitalization, mainly during the morning shift. The most frequent incidents were medication-related, falls, and infections, with a majority classified as 'no harm'. Patient characteristics and the application of protocols were identified as factors most commonly present in adverse events. However, only 2.02% of the events underwent a root cause analysis. The study highlights the need to develop specific strategies for prevention and reporting, emphasizing continuous education of medical staff and the strengthening of hospital policies, and the consolidation of information on adverse events for future research.

Use of the urine Determine LAM test in the context of tuberculosis diagnosis among inpatients with HIV in Ghana: a mixed methods study.

The urine Determine LAM test has the potential to identify tuberculosis (TB) and reduce early mortality among people living with HIV. However, implementation of the test in practice has been slow. We aimed to understand how a Determine LAM intervention was received and worked in a Ghanaian in-hospital context. Nested in a Determine LAM intervention study, we conducted a two-phase explanatory sequential mixed methods study at three hospitals in Ghana between January 2021 and January 2022. We performed a quantitative survey with 81 healthcare workers (HCWs), four qualitative focus-group discussions with 18 HCWs, and 15 in-depth HCW interviews. Integration was performed at the methods and analysis level. Descriptive analysis, qualitative directed content analysis, and mixed methods joint display were used. The gap in access to TB testing when relying on sputum GeneXpert MTB/Rif alone was explained by difficulties in obtaining sputum samples and an in-hospital system that relies on relatives. The Determine LAM test procedure was experienced as easy, and most eligible patients received a test. HCWs expressed that immediate access to Determine LAM tests empowered them in rapid diagnosis. The HCW survey confirmed that bedside was the most common place for Determine LAM testing, but qualitative interviews with nurses revealed concerns about patient confidentiality when performing and disclosing the test results at the bedside. Less than half of Determine LAM-positive patients were initiated on TB treatment, and qualitative data identified a weak link in the communication of the Determine LAM results. Moreover, HCWs were reluctant to initiate Determine LAM-positive patients on TB treatment due to test specificity concerns. The Determine LAM intervention did not have an impact on the time to TB treatment as expected, but patients were, in general, initiated on TB treatment rapidly. We further identified a barrier to accessing TB treatment during weekends and that treatment by tradition is administrated early in the morning. The Determine LAM testing was feasible and empowered HCWs in the management of HIV-associated TB. Important gaps in routine care and Determine LAM-enhanced TB care were often explained by the context. These findings may inform in-hospital quality improvement work and scale-up of Determine LAM in similar settings.

Squamous cell carcinoma in young adult with no predisposing factors: A case report


 
 
 A 39-year-old male was referred to the Oral and Maxillofacial Medicine department of Alborz University of Medical Sciences Dental School with a lesion that he had noticed for 3 weeks. The patient had no signs or symptoms and no cigarette and alcohol consumption. Because the lesion was placed at the lateral posterior portion of the tongue which is a common place for oral malig- nancies a biopsy was done. The pathology result was Squamous cell carcinoma grade 2. The patient was referred to Imam Khomeini Cancer Institute for further treatment.