Contemporary United Research Articles

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and An Untold Tale of Subjugation and Eschatological Reality

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1986) is adystopian novel that opens us to the bizarre reality of women's custodianrape and violence. Things look quite strange and alarming due towomen's oppression which results in a traumatized experience. This isovertly a political novel and tries to spotlight the sense of ineffable lifethat is miserable and also self-revealing. The novel narrates the story ofOffred, a handmaid a sinister handmaid. She was forced to become onedue to the rise of fanatic power in the states of America. America is nowthe Republic of Gilead, where everything is controlled by dominance,oppression, and bigotry. It is, glamorized as a fantasy that impinges onour real life. The novel lends itself to solicit the feminist cause whichleads us to an eschatological reality. Briefly, it tells a tale in the mostpersonal sense about the complicity, fidelity, and betrayal, in the politicalsetup in the contemporary United States.As the novelist, Atwood builds up fine gossamer ofimaginative tale out of a deep love for nature, libertine feminist activismand inclination of science, etc., and perhaps an awful condition we arestruggling to tackle but all in the future time frame.

Hemoglobin A1C as a prognostic factor and the pre-diabetic paradox in patients admitted to a tertiary care medical center intensive cardiac care unit

BackgroundHemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) is a form of glycated hemoglobin used to estimate glycemic control in diabetic patients. Data regarding the prognostic significance of HbA1c levels in contemporary intensive cardiac care unit (ICCU) patients is limited.MethodsAll patients admitted to the ICCU at a tertiary care medical center between January 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, with documented admission HbA1c levels were included in the study. Patients were divided into 3 groups according to their HbA1c levels: < 5.7 g% [no diabetes mellitus (DM)], 5.7–6.4 g% (pre-DM), ≥ 6.5 g% (DM).ResultsA total of 1412 patients were included. Of them, 974 (69%) were male with a mean age of 67(± 15.7) years old. HbA1c level < 5.7 g% was found in 550 (39%) patients, 5.7–6.4 g% in 458 (32.4%) patients and ≥ 6.5 g% in 404 (28.6%) patients. Among patients who did not know they had DM, 81 (9.3%) patients had high HbA1c levels (≥ 6.5 g%) on admission. The crude mortality rate at follow-up (up to 1.5 years) was almost twice as high among patients with pre-DM and DM than in patients with no DM (10.6% vs. 5.4%, respectively, p = 0.01). Interestingly, although not statistically significant, the trend was that pre-DM patients had the strongest association with mortality rate [HR 1.83, (95% CI 0.936–3.588); p = 0.077].ConclusionsAlthough an HbA1c level of ≥ 5.7 g% (pre-DM & DM) is associated with a worse prognosis in patients admitted to ICCU, pre-DM patients, paradoxically, have the highest risk for short and long-term mortality rates.

A Consideration of Racism in Pediatric Epidemiologic Studies

A Consideration of Racism in Pediatric Epidemiologic Studies

Stratigraphic analysis of Ponta do Mel carbonate platform, Albian-Cenomanian in Potiguar Basin, NE of Brazil

This work intends to understand how the Ponta do Mel carbonate platform was implanted, to characterize its depositional model and its evolution in the light of modern stratigraphy, as well as to understand the stratigraphic relations with beneath, overlapping and contemporary units, from wells and seismic data. The focus area of this study corresponds to a belt in the offshore portion of the Potiguar Basin, which runs parallel to the shoreline, about 40 km from it. The carbonate rocks of the Ponta do Mel Formation date from the Late Albian and, similar to what occurs in the other basins of the Brazilian continental margin, their deposition is related to the separation events of the African and South American continents. In the stratigraphic analysis of the wells (1D analysis), it was possible to characterize carbonate lithofacies, that are the predominant, as well as mixed and siliciclastic lithofacies. It was also possible to individualize shallowing upward cycles and cycle sets, which were associated with the identified systems tracts. In the seismic stratigraphic analysis, in the same way, four seismic facies were visualized, which, in general, are related to the tractive processes involved in the deposition of the carbonate, mixed and siliciclastic lithofacies, defined in the 1D analysis. The integration of the results from the well data analysis to the seismic stratigraphic analysis allowed to understand that the studied interval, which coincides, in lithostratigraphic terms, with the Ponta do Mel Formation, represents a complete depositional sequence, here referred to as the Albian-Cenomanian Sequence, formed by the Lowstand Systems Tract (LST), Transgressive Systems Tract (TST), and Highstand Systems Tract (HST). The sedimentation history of the Ponta do Mel unit started from the deposition of siliciclastic and carbonate facies in a shallow water platform environment. Then, with the increase in the accommodation space, in a transgressive phase, a thick interval of deeper water facies, represented mainly by calcilutites and pelitic rocks, was deposited. At the end of this interval, facies of coarser granulation, represented mainly by thick calcarenites layers, and sometimes calcirrudites, started to dominate the platform scenario, denoting a regressive phase and thus ending the Albian-Cenomanian Sequence.

Diverse Sexual Behaviors and Pornography Use: Findings From a Nationally Representative Probability Survey of Americans Aged 18 to 60 Years

BackgroundConvenience sample data indicate that substantial portions of adults have engaged in sexual behaviors sometimes described as rough; little is known about these behaviors at the population level. AimTo describe, in a U.S. probability sample of Americans aged 18 to 60 years, (i) the prevalence of diverse sexual behaviors, described here as dominant and target behaviors; (ii) the age at first pornography exposure as well as prevalence, range, and frequency of pornography use; (iii) the association between past year pornography use frequency and dominant/target sexual behaviors; and (iv) associations between lifetime range of pornography use and dominant/target sexual behaviors. MethodsA confidential cross-sectional online survey was used in this study. OutcomesLifetime engagement in dominant behaviors (eg, spanking, choking, name calling, performing aggressive fellatio, facial ejaculation, penile-anal penetration without first asking/discussing) and lifetime engagement in target behaviors (eg, being spanked, being choked, being called names during sex, having their face ejaculated on, receiving aggressive fellatio, or receiving penile-anal penetration without having discussed) were assessed; lifetime pornography use, age at first porn exposure, past-year frequency of porn viewing, and lifetime range of pornography were also assessed. ResultsWomen as well as men who have sex with men were more likely to report target sexual behaviors: having been choked (21.4% women), having one's face ejaculated on (32.3% women, 52.7% men who have sex with men), and aggressive fellatio (34.0% women). Lifetime pornography use was reported by most respondents. After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant. Clinical ImplicationsClinicians need to be aware of recent potential shifts in sexual behaviors, particularly those such as choking that may lead to harm. Strengths & LimitationsStrengths include U.S. probability sampling to provide population level estimates and the use of Internet-based data collection on sensitive topics. We were limited by a lack of detail and context related to understanding the diverse sexual behaviors assessed. ConclusionClinicians, educators, and researchers have unique and important roles to play in continued understanding of these sexual behaviors in the contemporary United States.Herbenick D, Fu T-C, Wright P, et al. Diverse Sexual Behaviors and Pornography Use: Findings From a Nationally Representative Probability Survey of Americans Aged 14 to 60 Years. J Sex Med 2020;17:623–633.

Beyond faith and foxholes: vernacular religion and asymmetrical warfare within contemporary IDF combat units

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the vernacular roles that religious practices and experiences play within contemporary combat units of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). We argue for an anthropological perspective that highlights the modes through which rituals serve efficacious – as opposed to semiotic – ends. In this way, we seek to push back against what we term the ‘faith in a foxhole’ paradigm, where religion is primarily seen as a meaning-making system whose nearly sole function is to aid soldiers in coping with the chaos and uncertainty of combat. We demonstrate how amidst the low-level and long-term style of contemporary asymmetrical warfare, ritual practices can often function less as the matrix for broader meaning making systems but are rather mobilized in ways that are meant to support certain practical and pragmatic goals. The article concludes that while scholars have mostly focused attention on the institutional forces and political consequences of ‘religionization’ within Israeli society, they have missed the many vernacular ways in which Israelis mobilize and instrumentalize their use of ritual and religious practices in both military and civilian contexts.

Gender stereotypes in Spanish phraseology

In this paper the results of research on gender stereotypes underlying Spanish phraseology are presented. Its main aim is to reveal which gender stereotypes are explicitly or implicitly present in commonly used contemporary Spanish Phraseological Units (PUs). In order to achieve this goal, all PUs associated with men and women documented in the most complete dictionary of current Spanish phraseology (Diccionario fraseológico documentado del español actual: locuciones y modismos españoles) have been analysed. In order to systematize the analysis, an inventory of stereotypes has been collected and split into five main thematic categories: physical characteristics; attitude, personality and abilities; sexuality; family; activities and professions. Moreover, a sixth, transversal category has been added – the opposite male and female conceptualisations of the passing of time.

Production of Shapes for Electrical Engineering Purposes in a Rolling and Drawing Mill

Industrial output of electrical engineering shapes, i.e., rectangular sections intended for preparing various components by cold forming, and wedge-shaped sections for electrical machine commutators, is assimilated using a contemporary rolling and drawing unit based on planned rolling regimes and repeated drawing with sliding. Contact wires are also produced for overhead town electrical transport networks (trolleybuses, tramways).

Waste of Space in the Design of Contemporary Local Dwelling Units

Waste of Space in the Design of Contemporary Local Dwelling Units

현대 근린단위 공공영역 유형에 관한 연구

현대 근린단위 공공영역 유형에 관한 연구

Who's Your Paddy? Racial Expectations and the Struggle for Irish American IdentityJenniferNugent Duffy. New York: New York University Press, 2014.

Who's Your Paddy? Racial Expectations and the Struggle for Irish American Identity Jennifer Nugent Duffy. New York: New York University Press, 2014.The Irish have long occupied an uncertain position in the and ethnographic history of the United States. Variously vilified, romanticized, demeaned, and eventually celebrated over the course of American history, the collective ideas and ideals surrounding American Irishness have prompted much scholarly work to determine how and to what extent the Irish have been woven into the American tapestry. Jennifer Nugent Duffy's aptly-named book contributes a focused study of Irish identity that simultaneously reinforces other works in the field while upsetting the conventional narrative of Irish acceptance in the contemporary United States.More than an eye-catching pun title, Who's Your Paddy}, serves to investigate the question of Irish identity in the context of twentieth-century American society. While other scholars have focused on the racialization of Irish immigration and settlement (Matthew Frye Jacobson and David Roediger foremost among them), their focus has primarily been centered on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which scientific racism seemed to enjoy a powerful, if temporary, ubiquity in American (and Western) intellectual culture. Duffy's book shifts the timeline to focus on the continued racialization of Irish identity from the twentieth century onward, demonstrating the interactions between Irish immigrants and those Americans who continued to judge the Irish through the lens of race well after the boundaries of whiteness had supposedly shifted to firmly include the Irish within its fickle parameters.The book documents the general experience of Catholic Irish arrivals to Yonkers, New York from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, though there is special emphasis on the last five decades. Duffy categorizes the generations of Irish who settled in Yonkers over the past century into three distinct migratory waves: descendants of nineteenth-century immigrants, the suburbian white flighters who left New York City in the 1960s and 1970s, and a group of primarily undocumented immigrants who began to arrive in the 1990s. Each successive wave encounters challenges to immediate social acceptance that are inevitably couched in the language of race. Duffy finds that, through the assimilatory process in which Irish immigrants and their descendants become an established part of the social landscape in Yonkers, a specter of racial hazing projected by American nativists serves as a surveillance device to bring newcomers into line in the idealized environment of the suburbs. …

Functional Quality of private open/ semi-open spaces in residential units (Case Study: Bushehr city)

The qualitative aspects of residential environments have been great interest in recent researches. Despite the need of access to private open space for each dwelling unit, today in the city of Bushehr, we observe the construction of apartments which, in their design, the private open / semi- open spaces, have no performance quality and in addition, due to aberrant use, have reduced the quality of housing units and destruction of the urban landscape. The purpose of this research is to improve the quality of private open/semi- open spaces in housing units of Bushehr city. This fieldwork research is performed in residential units of Bushehr city. 20 samples were selected from contemporary residential units and 10 samples from vernacular architecture houses, using stratified sampling with the aim to include diverse types of private open/semi-open spaces. Physical characteristics of private open/semi-open spaces, as the independent variable and the quality of these spaces, as the dependent variable were evaluated; the first by harvest field and the latter by using a Likert scale and a non-interventionist view. Firstly, the physical characteristics of these spaces in contemporary architecture and vernacular architecture were compared by Kruskal-Wallis test. In the second stage, the correlation of the physical characteristics of these spaces with their quality was measured by Spearman test and ETA test. Among the physical characteristics of space, depth of space, and the ratio of length / depth of space, had the highest correlation with performance of space, and the lack of visual privacy and security were the most important factors for Creating Extensions by residents. Based on the test results, the focus has been to provide recommendations in order to improve the quality of private open / semi- open spaces.

Assimilation of High-Strength Austenitic Corrosion Resistant Nitrogen-Containing Steel Melting Technology Using Large-Capacity Equipment

A technology is developed for production of high-strength austenitic nitrogen-containing steel, including melting of intermediate product in a basic arc furnace, ladle vacuum-oxygen decarburization, and furnace ladle treatment. Use of contemporary large metallurgical units and the developed technology makes it possible to assimilate industrial production of high-strength austenitic nitrogen-containing steel with provision of a prescribed chemical composition and product quality corresponding to required specifications.

Interactive synthesis of self-organizing tree models on the GPU

Real-time synthesis of realistic tree models is a desirable functionality for computer games, simulators, and landscape design software. Self-organizing tree models that adapt to the environment are a welcome addition and central to various 3D design tools but present a challenging task for interactive use even on modern commodity hardware. The paper describes the implementation of a complete self-organizing tree synthesis method running on a contemporary graphics processing unit using OpenCL. We demonstrate that generation and display of tree-populated scenes with shadows at interactive rates can be achieved by utilizing the massively parallel GPU architecture to accelerate the computationally intensive steps of the method. A comparison with the performance of single-threaded and CPU-based OpenCL implementation of the same method is reported.

How we transitioned to a comprehensive professional and graduate student affairs office

Background: Contemporary student affairs units arm students with professional skills, abilities and dispositions as they promote student learning, growth and development, as opposed to providing only administrative services.Aim: To describe the process for designing, planning, implementing and assessing a comprehensive student affairs unit that serves graduate and professional students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy.Method: A student services office that served only professional students was transformed in 2011 to an office of student affairs. The goal of the expanded, comprehensive unit is to work, in collaboration with academic affairs, to promote holistic student growth and development through proactive, intentional planning of co-curricular experiences.Results: The comprehensive student affairs model has allowed for more student programming and mentoring opportunities, improved graduate students’ feelings of connectedness to the School and improved efficiency of processes. The next steps include thorough assessment of the model and monitoring of the strategic plan.Conclusions: A comprehensive, centralized student affairs unit, working in partnership with academic affairs, can help professional and graduate health affairs programs meet their goals for student development, while improving the efficiency of administrative processes. This model can be easily implemented in other schools.

Design of nanocomposite EMC structures via unconditionally-stable nonstandard time-domain schemes and efficient GPU implementation

A consistent time-domain methodology for the systematic design and broadband assessment of complicated nanos- tructured EMC devices is introduced in this paper. The novel technique combines a family of nonstandard locally one- dimensional finite-difference time-domain schemes with the advanced features of contemporary graphics processor units in general curvilinear coordinates which preserve the hyperbolic profile of Maxwell's laws. In this way, the resulting formulation remains completely explicit and generates effective dual meshes free of artificial vector parasites or spurious modes, while the frequency-dependent attributes of every setup are successfully modelled. Numerical results reveal the significant reduction of dispersion errors along with the considerable speedup compared to serialised realisations through various fabric/epoxy devices with nanocomposite media.

Low-Cost Concurrent Error Detection for Floating-Point Unit (FPU) Controllers

We present a nonintrusive concurrent error detection (CED) method for protecting the control logic of a contemporary floating-point unit (FPU). The proposed method is based on the observation that control logic errors lead to extensive data path corruption and affect, with high probability, the exponent part of the IEEE-754 floating-point representation. Thus, exponent monitoring can be utilized to detect errors in the control logic of the FPU. Predicting the exponent involves relatively simple operations; therefore, our method incurs significantly lower overhead than the classical approach of duplicating the control logic of the FPU. Indeed, experimental results on the openSPARC T1 processor using SPEC2006FP benchmarks show that as compared to control logic duplication, which incurs an area overhead of 17.9 percent of the FPU size, our method incurs an area overhead of only 5.8 percent yet still achieves detection of over 93 percent of transient errors in the FPU control logic. Moreover, the proposed method offers the ancillary benefit of also detecting 98.1 percent of the data path errors that affect the exponent, which cannot be detected via duplication of control logic. Finally, when combined with a classical residue code-based method for the fraction, our method leads to a complete CED solution for the entire FPU which provides a coverage of 94.1 percent of all errors at an area cost of 16.32 percent of the FPU size.

The Incorporated What Group: Ethnographic, Economic and Ideological Perspectives on Customary Land Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

Land law and economic development in Papua New Guinea, by David Lea and Timothy Curtin. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK, 2011, 207pp. ISBN: 9-781443-826518. The incorporated land group (ILG), created by the Land Group Incorporation Act (1974) in Papua New Guinea, was one of a number of results of the 1971 Committee of Inquiry into Land Matters that convened in Papua New Guinea just before Papua New Guinea independence in 1975. It allowed for the legal incorporation of customary land-holding groups and was designed to promote business and cash-earning opportunities in rural Papua New Guinea in the post-independence period of nation- and citizen-building. In more recent times, the ILG however has been put under considerably more strain by being forced to acquire functions that were not envisioned by its architects in 1971—namely the receipt, distribution and investment of incomes from resource extraction projects. The ILGs set up by various resource projects (most significantly in the petroleum project areas of PNG) have all run into various and severe difficulties in meeting these requirements of resource income management and business development on a scale not ever anticipated in 1971. Using examples from Papua New Guinea's petroleum project area and elsewhere, I cast doubts on the capacities of contemporary indigenous landowning units to make incorporation work for them in the face of current organization and financial challenges.

Study of elastic mechanical and physicochemical properties of refractory objects with the aim of predicting the endurance of a nonferrous metallurgy unit lining

The construction of contemporary laboratory units, procedures for studying the elastic mechanical and physicochemical properties of different composition, both original, and impregnated with molten slag-matte of copper composition are developed with the aim of determining nonferrous metallurgy unit lining endurance,. The procedures developed using new laboratory devices making it possible to predict nonferrous metallurgy unit lining endurance with sufficient accuracy. On the basis of studies using the new procedures combined highly resistant linings are created and introduced for horizontal converters and aWaelz kiln for a number of nonferrous metallurgy enterprises.

The Late Cretaceous shark Ptychodus marginalis in the Western Interior Seaway, USA

Re-evaluation of teeth referred to the Late Cretaceous shark Ptychodus polygyrus from North America are hereby determined to be synonymous with another species having similar tooth morphology, Ptychodus marginalis Agassiz. Ptychodus marginalis differs from P. polygyrus by having an elevated and rounded tooth crown with transverse ridges restricted centrally on the apex of the crown with a clearly defined marginal area. The type specimen of P. marginalis was described from Middle Cenomanian to Middle Turonian deposits in the English Chalk, and teeth possessing identical tooth morphologies are found within contemporary units in North America, whereas teeth having the typical P. polygyrus morphology are restricted to Late Santonian-Early Campanian deposits.