Network Of Connections Research Articles

Evaluation of the Physical Treatment Success in Patients with Peripheral Nerve Injury Caused by Firearm

Background: All wars bring high incidence of patients with peripheral nerve injuries, and many of today's knowledge about degeneration, regeneration and surgical treatment in this casuistry come from the period of the global world conflict. Such injuries do not endanger life, but the function of the extremities is threatened, which manifests itself in motor and sensory outbursts, as well as negative psychological implications. Objective: The aims of this article were: a) To present the method of monitoring physical treatment in a patient with a peripheral nerve injury; b) To perform a quantitative analysis of nerve lesions caused by firearms (n = 445);; c) To present the effects of physical treatment for this condition;; d) To analyze the time interval from injury to healing (n = 220);; e) Determine the time from injury until the surgery. Results: Anatomical disruption of axons with complete Waler degeneration. The connective tissue network remains intact and the endoneurium can guide the regenerated nerve fibers to their destination. Spontaneous functional recovery can be expected in 12 to 18 months. Clinical evaluation shows a deficit in the innervation area of damaged axons with muscle atrophy and loss of sensitivity. Nerve recovery can be inhibited by scar formations at the site of injury. Complete interruption of the nerve. Functional recovery is not possible without surgical intervention. Paralysis of mm. atrophy, anesthesia and atrophic skin changes are visible. Conclusion: Rehabilitation is a delicate problem and requires long-term treatment and multidisciplinary cooperation, and is carried out in accordance with the principles of peripheral nerve repair. Factors that facilitate successful regeneration are: a) Pre and post-operative physical treatment; b) Younger age; c) Shorter time since injury (<6 months); d) More distal level of the lesion; e) Absence of factors complicating the injury (infection); and f) The first signs of nerve recovery are the return of sweating and pain.

Tattooing of Scars and Disfiguring Burn Lesions.

Cutaneous scars are permanent and the result of physiological wound healing with formation of disorganized collagen instead of the normally structured connective tissue network (or "textile") of the dermis. A scar restores the physical and tensile integrity of skin; skin is a vital protective layer on the body. Scars are of many types and with a broad spectrum of individual variations of color, texture, thickness, furrowing, tension, and contraction. Scars can be red and hypertrophic and, moreover, aggressive and manifested as keloids. White scars can be changed in color into a normal tone and look by the application of medical tattooing. This can help many scar victims regain their quality of life. High level of skill is required by the tattoo artist, who shall be experienced. Tattooing may restore skin color, but it cannot restore textural and structural changes, which may need correction using other methods before the tattoo is ready to correction of color by tattooing. The medical tattooist needs to cooperate with other specialists and develop a consistent strategy of the treatments to be applied including the sequence of treatments with tattooing added at the end for final color correction back towards normal. The medical tattooist from start shall take responsibility and select the clients who are likely to benefit from tattooing and exclude clients, who shall not be offered this treatment.

Peer correlations in income: Evidence from a Guanxi network in rural China

We investigate peer correlations in income using a novel panel of data from a village in China. We construct a complete and heterogeneous social connections (guanxi) network that includes all households, and use spatial-network econometric models to estimate peer correlations. The results provide unique empirical evidence for the existence of a peer correlation in income, even after netting out influences of family characteristics, contextual effects, and various unobservable factors. We identify peer effects in land and labor allocations as the drivers of peer correlations in income.

The Words of the Righteous: The Death of Text and the Eternity of Stone

Abstract: This essay examines examples of the Oral Torah as a concrete, material phenomenon in late ancient rabbinic sources. The oral nature of oral Torah, both as an ideology and as a description of rabbinic textual practices, can elide some of the more evocative discussions of the nature of oral Torah. Previous discussions, such as Wollenberg (2019), have shown that the nature of the written Torah was often understood as unstable, changing, and mutable. This essay explores the other side of that equation, exploring discussions of oral Text as concrete, enduring, and unchanging. Two main examples are studied: the first from a passage in the Palestinian Talmud, and the second in a passage from the Babylonian Talmud. The Palestinian Talmud draws a dense network of connections between Torah scrolls, oral teachings, rabbinic sages, and the imagery of death and memorialization. The Babylonian Talmud similarly extends the value of rabbinic oral teaching into the World to Come, showing that while the associations between teaching, death, and eternal life manifest differently, they are still present in different rabbinic contexts. Taken together, these inscriptions of a concrete and material Oral Torah are fully realized in the body of the rabbinic sage. Other scholars have also shown that rabbinic sages become an embodiment of Torah: this essay examines the nature of rabbinic Torah, as discussed in rabbinic literature, to understand how that embodiment comes about.

S-06-4: IMPACT OF ANTI-HYPERTENSIVE THERAPY ON CEREBRAL FUNCTIONAL NETWORKS AND CONNECTIVITY

It is well known that hypertension is the main modifiable risk factor leading to cognitive impairment and various forms of dementia. Leveraging functional MRI it has been possible to characterize hypertensives brain functional connectivity, a main feature of cerebral activation and health measurable by resting-state functional MRI. This characterization let us analyze how pathological conditions influence the cognitive processes and the spontaneous organization of brain activity, and have shown that hypertensive patients even before showing signs of vascular dementia have alterations in cerebral connections compared to normotensive patients. Our current question is whether different classes of antihypertensives, differentiated in mechanism of action and potential to cross the blood brain barrier may have different impact on cerebral functional organization. 42 hypertensives with controlled hypertension (SBP< 140mmHg e DBP< 90mmHg) were subjected to resting-state functional MRI. Functional connectivity was elaborated by CONN, according to an analysis pipeline to build functional connectivity networks matrices calculating the cross-correlation of BOLD signal among different brain regions. The obtained network of connections has been analyzed by general linear model, to implement regression models that highlight the connections in the brains modulated by the specific classes of antihypertensives analyzed. The application of regression models with age, sex, BMI, alcohol, smoke, SBP and DBP levels, heart rate as covariates shown that treatment with diuretics modulate a large connectivity network among Salience Network, Default Mode Network and Language Network (Fig. A). Ace-inhibitors treatment is associated with a significant modulation of a connection between Default Mode Network and the FrontoParietal Network (Fig. B), while ARBs are associated to the modulation of connections between Cerebellar and Language Networks (Fig. C). Finally, beta-blockers are associated with connections centered in Dorsal Attention Network and projected to Language and FrontoParietal Networks (Fig. D). Globally, the most relevant functional modulation of the brain is imposed by the use of diuretics, with a possible explanation in the fact that lowering global volume of circulating blood may have a significant impact on cerebral circulation. By this analysis, we will be able to take into account the central and cognitive impact of different antihypertensive drugs on the choice of best personalized treatment of hypertension.

The Capacity of Women Self-Help Groups in Social Capital Formation by Agro-Processing

Social capital is simply the network of connections and contacts that a person has accumulated during their lifetime or can be described as a type of capital that generates public goods for a shared goal. In the case of bonding social capital, some social relationships already exist and should be used in the best way possible. Building social capital leads to the development of new ties outside of one's own social circle. Linkage social capital can be considered as developing relationships with influential people in order to advance with the aid of their authority and influence. Self-help groups includes all the three forms of social capital. Social Capital Assessment Tool (SOCAT)developed by the World Bank was used for social capital formation analysis. The study conducted, revealed that self-help groups working on the basis of agro-processing were able to produce medium level of social capital. More raw materials related to their agro-processing unit and financial assistance can be provided, which will boost social capital formation. By stimulating more cooperation and collective action, members will develop a greater sense of trust in one another, which will ultimately support the empowerment of women by encouraging them to collaborate within self-help groups.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PROCESS IN ENTERPRISES OF THE AGRI-FOOD INDUSTRY IN PODKARPACIE

One of the elements of creating a competitive advantage of modern enterprises is the development of supply chains, in which logistic processes are essential. Managing such a supply chain allows the integration of key business processes from the end user through suppliers delivering products, services and information, which provides added value for customers and other stakeholders.
 The main purpose of the study is to assess the degree of implementation of logistic business processes within the supply chain in enterprises operating in the agri-food industry. The source material on the basis of which the analysis was carried out and conclusions were formulated were surveys conducted among agribusiness entrepreneurs from Podkarpacie.
 The conducted research shows that the level of advancement of logistics processes in supply chains depends on the type of industry in which a specific company operates and its size. Larger economic entities, due to the possibilities and capital they have, use advanced and integrated IT systems supporting production planning, supply, distribution and sales. The implementation of such tools allows for the standardization of many business processes within the network of connections of entities participating in a common supply chain.

Motivations for Patronage: Early Modernist Literature as a Case Study

Patronage of early modernist English-language writers is investigated, drawing upon biographical source material. The process of identifying patrons started with Imagist poets in the first decades of the twentieth century followed by a search for their social connections with fellow writers and patrons. Fifteen patrons were identified who brought new money into the network of connections, twelve of them women. Analysis of their personal characteristics reveals a distinctive pattern of substantial, inherited financial resources, education, literary interests and unorthodox lifestyle, notably for the women in the sample. Explanations of motivation in terms of social identity, gift exchange and co-creation are discussed.

Jamail A. Kamlian and Juvanni A. Caballero. Informal Credit (Pagsanda) Among the Tausug of Sulu, Mindanao, Philippines: The Interrelation of Economic, Social and Religious Factors (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2018). A Book Review

Focusing on an indigenously evolved informal credit system (pagsanda), the book dwells on the centrality of money-lending and indebtedness as the fulcrum of the dynamics of society. How is it that the pagsanda as a communal self-help mechanism intended to lend a hand in moments of need is tied up with, or even central to the dynamics of conflict among the Tausugs in Sulu? How can something so condemned as un-Islamic become so prevalent and widespread among the Muslims in the area? The book opens the discourse to help find answers to these questions. And it did so by weaving a narrative that captures the interplay of various issue areas that feed on the other to create a self-sustaining system that becomes a precarious social powder keg. The pagsanda’s pristine form of unselfish assistance has clearly morphed through time into many variants of exploitative and even oppressive callous social exchange. By analyzing the complex network of connections between the pagsanda, local politics, economics, socio-cultural practices and violent conflict, the book sheds light into the nature and causes of the social dynamics in Sulu.

Performance Analysis of sub-6 GHz/mmWave NOMA Hybrid-HetNets Using Partial CSI

The ever-increasing number of wireless users (or devices) and their varied demand require the need for an advanced architecture for the future wireless network. To support massive connectivity, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recognized as a promising solution. NOMA increases the number of simultaneous connections using available resources for users with varying demands. Furthermore, recent measurements and experiments suggest that wide underutilized bandwidth available at millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies provide high data rate and therefore are capable of addressing the issue of spectrum scarcity at sub-6 GHz bands utilized by the 4 G network. Consequently, co-existence of multi-radio access technologies (RATs) for 5 G and beyond networks has been of interest to both industries and academia. In this context, this work studies the co-existence of the two RATs, namely, sub-6 GHz and mmWave communication using NOMA-enabled hybrid heterogeneous network (NOMA-HHN) for massive connectivity. The application of NOMA requires ordering users, which in turn requires the knowledge of users' channel state information (CSI). However, gathering and processing CSI of such a large number of users is difficult to implement in practice. Thus, a solution based on partial CSI is proposed. Additionally, a feedback scheme for user scheduling and RAT selection using dual association is proposed to reduce the initial access delay in beam-training at the mmWave network. Moreover, utilizing directional nature of the mmWave communication, random beamforming is used to reduce system overhead in a network with massive users. The analytical results are confirmed using Monte-Carlo simulation, and various significant advantages are noted for the proposed NOMA-HHN over existing architectures.

“They don’t work with people”. The authorities and civil society in contemporary Serbia

The article discusses the condition of civil society in contemporary Serbia, with special emphasis on the relations between its representatives and the authorities (both at the local and state level). The main objective of the analyses is to answer the question of the position of the civil sector within Serbia’s broadly understood political system. What role do both formal non-governmental organizations and grassroots non-institutionalized social movements play in this relatively young democracy? What is the attitude of the authorities to grassroots civil activities, which often manifest criticism towards the decisions and actions of those in power? These questions will constitute the central axis of my considerations in this article. The research problem indicated above is analysed on two essential levels. Firstly, the article discusses existing studies and research on the nature of civil society in Serbia and the ways in which it functions. Secondly, the author analyses the results of qualitative research carried out at the late 2018 and early 2019 among representatives of Serbian civil movements and organizations. The conclusions stemming from these analyses are presented in the final part of the article. The analyses carried out indicate the problems that face the civil sector in Serbia. First and foremost, one should draw attention to the authorities’ rather negative view of the civil sector. What is also noteworthy is an extended network of connections of the authorities with the private sector as well as with right-wing, nationalist, pro-government organizations. These circumstances to a large extent hinder or even preclude dialogue (and further cooperation) between public and civil institutions.

PENGETAHUAN TENTANG COVID-19 (COVID LITERACY) DI KALANGAN MASYARAKAT INDONESIA DI MASA PANDEMI LANJUT

This research aims to elaborate the knowledge of people regarding Covid-19 and the characteristics of the Corona Virus in the later stage of the pandemic. The latest pandemic that had happened prior to pandemic Covid-19 with arguably similar scale was the Spanish Flu that happened in 1918, when the network of global connection still sparsely established. On the contrary, pandemic Covid-19 happened in globalized network society and in the era when information can be access easily and can be spread rapidly and massively. The overwhelming amount of information about Covid-19, both accurate and inaccurate information had flooded the public sphere and public conversation, event WHO coined the situation as “infodemic”. However, whether the vast amount of information has generated a well-informed public is need to be scrutinized further. Using the Covid-19 literacy scale develop by Naveed, et.al., in 20202, which consist of two dimensions; infection spread and symptoms; and infection prevention and treatment, this research investigates the knowledge or the literacy of Covid among adults in Indonesia. The result shows that the vast amout information can shape the knowledge of the respondent to be literate of the Covid-19. It indicates that respondents were able to take and retain accurate information regarding Covid-19. This research, however, does not say that inaccurate and false information would not cause harmful effect. The literacy endeavor must continue to be pursued to build literate society.

Mapping an emerging hashtag ecosystem: connective action and interpretive frames in the Swedish #MeToo movement

ABSTRACT When #MeToo reached Sweden in the fall of 2017, it gave rise to nearly 80 industry-specific petitions that demanded a stop to sexual misconduct in the workplace, some with their own hashtags. This article examines the discourse of #MeToo on Twitter in Sweden in relation to these petition hashtags. Focusing on how #MeToo, petition hashtags, and other hashtags are co-articulated in Tweets, it maps the emergent network of hashtags using SNA and explores the resulting interpretative frames using discourse analysis. By co-articulating the MeToo and petition hashtags with hashtags related to Swedish politics and feminism, and by utilising the @-mention function to call out responsible politicians and industry executives, Twitter users extended the initial #MeToo frame beyond individualised problems and solutions common in connective action networks. We suggest that Twitter users utilise platform affordances to perform framing work in relation to political hashtags, not unlike framing work performed in traditional social movements.

Brain-wide inputs to the non-lemniscal inferior colliculus in mice

The inferior colliculus (IC) is the hub along the auditory pathway. Although it is fundamentally an auditory structure, the neurons in the IC, especially its non-lemniscal part also respond to multimodal stimuli. However, the sources of these non-auditory inputs are unclear. In this study, we injected the rAAV2-retro virus, a virus with efficient retrograde function, into the non-lemniscal IC of the Ai14 reporter line. The majority of cortical and subcortical brain areas, including cognitive, motor, somatosensory, auditory, and visual-related regions were revealed. The quantified whole brain input data have showed that the non-lemniscal IC received a higher proportion of inputs from ipsilateral cortical brain regions. The non-lemniscal IC integrates different multimodal patterns, for the dorsal cortex (ICD) receives primarily auditory inputs, and the external cortex (ICE) receives primarily auditory and somatosensory inputs. These findings demonstrate that auditory integration is shaped by a network of multi-sensory connections in the non-lemniscal IC subregions.

Connections between and within extended psychosis and autistic phenotypes and social relationships in the general population

ObjectivesNon - clinical individuals with higher levels of autistic traits and psychotic experiences also have problems in social relationships. Therefore, this study aimed to model complex associations between autistic and psychotic phenotypes and indicators of social relationships in the general population using a network approach. MethodsThe sample consisted of 649 participants with a mean age of M = 40.23 and SD = 13.09 sampled from the general population. The sample was representative for the 18–65 years old general population in the Slovak Republic. The following scales were administered: Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences, The Comprehensive Autistic Trait Inventory, and NIH Toolbox Adult Social Relationship Scales. Associations between variables and the presence of communities were identified using Exploratory Graph Analysis. ResultsResults revealed four highly stable and densely connected communities within the network: social relationships, autistic traits, positive symptoms, and the last one consisting of all negative symptoms, problems in social interactions, and depression. The most important variables in the network were difficulties in social interaction, perceived rejection, bizarre ideas, depression, and social withdrawal. ConclusionsThe psychotic and autistic phenotypes in the general population showed a network of connections with characteristics of social relationships. Community detection revealed that autistic traits and psychotic–like experiences formed relatively independent communities. Further, there was substantial overlap between negative symptoms (e.g., social withdrawal), and core features of the autistic phenotype, especially social interaction difficulties.

Rebuilding from the vacuum: A qualitative study of people with a recent history of incarceration

AbstractThirty‐four adults recently released from incarceration and living in transitional homes were interviewed in this qualitative study. An open‐ended approach to interviewing was used to allow participants’ main concerns to emerge. Participants were primarily focused on rebuilding relationships to achieve stability post‐incarceration. Participants who rebuilt stable relationships were able to work on internal goals (e.g., sobriety). Participants who did not rebuild stable relationships returned to existing social networks of unstable connections characterized by drug addiction, abuse, or criminal activity.

Comradely Exchanges: Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Physiological Collectivism and Community Reimagined

This article examines Soviet theorist Aleksandr Bogdanov’s physiological collectivism, which builds around the idea of mutual blood exchange as a method of eroding borders between individuals to increase the resilience of the social organism as a whole; and reconceptualizes community as a network of material connections between the cells of said organism. The COVID-19 pandemic increased interest in convalescent plasma (CP). This article examines the physiological collective together with theorists like Jane Bennett and Donna Haraway as a basis for how convalescent plasma can function as a first step towards establishing material community today.

Determinants of Training Competitive Business Professionals in the Hospitality Industry

Against the background of increasing level of competition in the hospitality industry, the growth of tourism on a global scale, the importance of training competitive professionals in the hospitality industry is growing. The purpose of the academic paper lies in defining the determinants of training competitive business professionals in the hospitality industry. The methodology of the research is based on a survey of 314 students of higher educational institutions (HEIs) of Ukraine among the four educational programs “Management of tourism and hotel and restaurant business”. The results indicate to the fact that five groups of determinants of influence on educational programs for training professionals of the hospitality industry have been revealed, among which the highest level of impact is provided by student support (this group of determinants ensures 43,99 % of the effectiveness of programs). The second place in terms of influence level is occupied by the network of connections in the hospitality industry (variation 7,36 %), the innovation of educational programs (variation 5,93) is in third place. It should also be mentioned that the important factors in the quality of educational programs are the educational environment (4,84 %) and the availability of certificates confirming the quality of faculties and programs. As a result of statistical analysis based on the t-test, no significant difference was revealed between the students’ genders in the perception of the determinants of the quality of training programs (curricula). Significant differences were found between assessments of the perception of the quality of training programs by first-year students / second-year students, junior and senior specialists.

Multi-scale enhanced graph convolutional network for mild cognitive impairment detection

As an early stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is able to be detected by analyzing the brain connectivity networks. For this reason, we devise a new framework via multi-scale enhanced graph convolutional network (MSE-GCN) for MCI detection, which integrates the structural and functional information from the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI), respectively. Specifically, both information in the brain connective networks is first integrated based on the local weighted clustering coefficients (LWCC), which is concatenated as the feature vector for representing a population graph's vertice. Simultaneously, the gender and age information in each subject are integrated with the structural and functional features to construct a sparse graph. Then, various parallel graph convolutional network (GCN) layers with multiple inputs are designed from the embedding from random walk embeddings in the GCN to identify the essential MCI graph information. Finally, all GCN layers’ outputs are concatenated via the fully connection layer to perform disease detection. The experimental results on the public Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database show that our method is promising to detect MCI and superior to other competing algorithms, with a mean classification accuracy of 90.39% in the detection tasks.

The impact of air travel on the precocity and severity of COVID-19 deaths in sub-national areas across 45 countries

Human travel fed the worldwide spread of COVID-19, but it remains unclear whether the volume of incoming air passengers and the centrality of airports in the global airline network made some regions more vulnerable to earlier and higher mortality. We assess whether the precocity and severity of COVID-19 deaths were contingent on these measures of air travel intensity, adjusting for differences in local non-pharmaceutical interventions and pre-pandemic structural characteristics of 502 sub-national areas on five continents in April–October 2020. Ordinary least squares (OLS) models of precocity (i.e., the timing of the 1st and 10th death outbreaks) reveal that neither airport centrality nor the volume of incoming passengers are impactful once we consider pre-pandemic demographic characteristics of the areas. We assess severity (i.e., the weekly death incidence of COVID-19) through the estimation of a generalized linear mixed model, employing a negative binomial link function. Results suggest that COVID-19 death incidence was insensitive to airport centrality, with no substantial changes over time. Higher air passenger volume tends to coincide with more COVID-19 deaths, but this relation weakened as the pandemic proceeded. Different models prove that either the lack of airports in a region or total travel bans did reduce mortality significantly. We conclude that COVID-19 importation through air travel followed a ‘travel as spark’ principle, whereby the absence of air travel reduced epidemic risk drastically. However, once some travel occurred, its impact on the severity of the pandemic was only in part associated with the number of incoming passengers, and not at all with the position of airports in the global network of airline connections.