Direct Encounter Research Articles

Impact probability computation for NEO resonant returns through a polynomial representation of the Line of Variations

A differential algebra based representation and propagation of the Line of Variations for Near Earth Objects impact monitoring is presented in this paper. The Line of Variations is described at the initial epoch by a high-order polynomial that is propagated forward in time. An Automatic Domain Splitting algorithm is embedded in the numerical integrator, in such a way that when the polynomials truncation error becomes too large, the line is split as many times as necessary to meet accuracy requirements. The Line of Variations is propagated forward in time until an intersection with a properly defined target plane occurs for all the generated subdomains. The subdomains are then projected onto the target plane to compute the impact probability by numerically integrating an associated one-dimensional probability density function. The proposed approach is applied to several test-cases to assess the performance of the method for the different possible shapes of the initial confidence region. Starting from a case of direct encounter, the technique is tested up to the case of a resonant return, which features critical nonlinearities.

‘To Be, or Not To Be’

The differences between the second quarto (1604–1605) version of Hamlet’s soliloquy beginning ‘To be, or not to be’ and the version contained in the first quarto (1603) have often been used to argue for the authorial integrity of the former and the degenerate nature of the latter. However, recent research has questioned the customary primacy between these two texts, arguing instead that Q2 revises and expands Q1. This article will attempt to substantiate this interpretation by showing that Shakespeare’s revision of ‘To be, or not to be’ is inspired by Montaigne’s essay ‘By diuerse meanes men come vnto a like end’, translated by John Florio and published in 1603. Shakespeare’s indebtedness to Montaigne has been noted before, most notably in The Tempest. But it is significant that possibly Shakespeare’s first direct encounter with Montaigne is inspired by the very first three pages of Montaigne’s Essays.

High-Performance Image-Based Measurements of Biological Forces and Interactions in a Dual Optical Trap

Abstract Optical traps enable nanoscale manipulation of individual biomolecules while measuring molecular forces and lengths. This ability relies on the sensitive detection of optically trapped particles, typically accomplished using laser-based interferometric methods. Recently, precise and fast image-based particle tracking techniques have garnered increased interest as a potential alternative to laser-based detection, however successful integration of image-based methods into optical trapping instruments for biophysical applications and force measurements has remained elusive. Here we develop a camera-based detection platform that enables exceptionally accurate and precise measurements of biological forces and interactions in a dual optical trap. In demonstration, we stretch and unzip DNA molecules while measuring the relative distances of trapped particles from their trapping centers with sub-nanometer accuracy and precision, a performance level previously only achieved using photodiodes. We then use the DNA unzipping technique to localize bound proteins with extraordinary sub-base-pair precision, revealing how thermal DNA fluctuations allow an unzipping fork to sense and respond to a bound protein prior to a direct encounter. This work significantly advances the capabilities of image tracking in optical traps, providing a state-of-the-art detection method that is accessible, highly flexible, and broadly compatible with diverse experimental substrates and other nanometric techniques.

I Am Your God: A D’var Torah on Parshat Yitro

What, in the religious imagination, was the point of the Ten Commandments and their dramatic revelation to Israel at Mount Sinai? After all, most of the Ten Commandments consist of the sort of general rules of conduct that the Israelites already knew. In any event, the Torah strongly suggests that Moses began receiving legal revelations from God even before Sinai. One obvious answer is that Sinai was not just an occasion to pass down the law. It was a theophany, a rare, awe-filled, direct encounter with the divine, an appearance of God to human beings. But that just provokes a further question: Why did the theophany at Sinai have to be filled with law? This D’var Torah’s tentative answer to these questions is that the Israelites did indeed bring their common-sense ideas about right and wrong to Sinai and then learned, amid the thunder and lighting, that the divine reality on the other side of the curtain includes those truths too: that the inner life of the universe is founded on straightforward principles of justice and truth, in addition to love and redemption. That is a revelation worth noting, and celebrating.

Free Indirect Revelation: Luther's Moses and the Narration of Genesis

This essay argues that Luther's commentary treats Genesis with surprising narratological sophistication, suggesting a new avenue for research on the relationship between Protestant biblical commentary and the history of literary narrative. Trying at once to establish an intra-textual basis for preaching and church tradition and to preserve the special sanctity of a direct encounter with the salvific word, Luther reads the human ministers of Genesis—both characters within the story and Moses, who tells it—as narrators, who shape the text for particular audiences and occasions. The essay thus calls into question a commonplace description of Luther's biblical hermeneutics as focusing on the “plain, literal sense,” showing how Luther in fact renders the text substantially more mediated and sophisticated than it had previously been. Moreover, Luther's exegesis contains a remarkable, nuanced conception of the Bible's narration, which includes “novelistic” effects like free indirect style.

Interaction with complement proteins and dendritic cells implicates LCCL domain-containing proteins (CCps) of malaria parasites in immunomodulation.

The evasion of host immune defense is critical for pathogens to invade, establish infection and perpetuate in the host. The complement system is one of the first lines of innate immune defense in humans that destroys pathogens in the blood circulation. Activation of the complement system through direct encounter with pathogens or some other agents leads to osmolysis of pathogens, clearance of soluble immune complexes and recruitment of lymphocytes at the site of activation. Although malaria parasites are not exposed to the complement system owing to their intracellular development for most part of their life cycle in the human host, the extracellular stages must face the complement system of human or mosquito or both. In a recent issue of the Biochemical Journal, Sharma et al. reported that Plasmodiumfalciparum LCCL domain-containing protein 1 (PfCCp1) inhibited activation of the classical complement pathway and down-regulated effector responses of dendritic cells, which implicate PfCCp1 and related proteins in immunomodulation of the host that likely benefits the parasite. PfCCp1 belongs to a multi-domain protein family that exists as multimeric protein complexes. It needs to be investigated whether PfCCp1 or its multimeric protein complexes have an immunomodulatory effect in vivo and on the mosquito complement system.

Creating a Canvas: Artistic Pedagogies in Academia

This Special Issue Artistic Pedagogies in Academiabrings together a collection of articles, visual artefacts, and artistic representations. This Special Issue is inspired by Heron’s (1981) theory of extended epistemology. Extended epistemology refers to four interdependent ways of knowing and experiencing the world: experiential knowing (knowing through a direct encounter with a person, place or thing), presentational knowing (knowing through creative expression such as storytelling, pictures, and dance), propositional knowing (draws on concepts, ideas, and formal statements), and practical knowing (demonstrated in skills and competence; knowing in action) (Heron & Reason, 2008). These interdependent ways of knowing challenges the predominance of propositional knowing as the only approach to learning and provides a conceptual framework to integrate different and creative methods to engage diverse learners.

Design of online transaction model on traditional industry in order to increase turnover and benefits

Online transactions are transactions made sellers and buyers online through the Internet media, there is no direct encounter between buyers and sellers. Currently with the rapid development of technology and the Internet in Indonesia, has had a great impact on the change of industrial business. That is starting from the way advertising, buying and selling, how to interact between humans, and so forth. With e-commerce has changed a lot in the process of buying and selling. Panda Alami is one of the banana chips industry established since 1998 in Cipadang Pesawaran village. This banana chips industry still uses manual way in transaction process. To increase the turnover and profit that is the purpose of this study, the transaction model is developed with SDLC (System Development Life Cycle) and software used to design and design this application is PHP programming language, MySQL Database and Adobe Photoshop CS3. Features include product search, order, delivery and payment confirmation and thus provide integration of the entire inventory unit sales network. An equally important factor is trust. In this process trust is the main capital. Because without the trust of both parties, then the process of online transactions can not happen and done.

Transmission of food preference between unfamiliar house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) is dependent on social context.

Rodents obtain information about a new food source through olfactory cues of conspecifics and consequently develop an attraction for this diet. Generally, physical contact between an observer and a demonstrator that has recently consumed a novel food item is required to allow the social transmission of food preference (STFP). However, in natural populations of house mice, social encounters between unfamiliar individuals usually turn into a fight. Thus, social intolerance between the individuals involved could prevent STFP. It has been shown that the feces of rodents can act as a social stimulus and promote STFP in mice, which could reduce the social constraints associated with an encounter. Here, we examined the acquisition of the STFP in female house mice of wild origin (Mus musculus domesticus) after a direct encounter with a familiar and unfamiliar female, and after the presentation of olfactory marks of an unfamiliar female. Unlike in encounters between familiar females, our results did not provide significant support for the existence of STFP after encounters between two unfamiliar females, independently of the occurrence or absence of offensive agonistic behavior. However, STFP through olfactory marks of an unfamiliar female was effective. We suggest that the social context might strongly impair direct STFP, not necessarily via the unfamiliarity of the information provider but rather via its physical presence. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Byzantine Politics of Byzantine Mysticism

The Byzantine Politics of Byzantine Mysticism

A Case Study on the Conflict Mediation based on Restorative Justice as Correctional Welfare Practice: focused on the Sycamore Tree Project

This is a case study of the conflict mediation through Sycamore Tree Project grounded on restorative justice as correctional welfare practice. The project is the first project implemented in this country, composing of phases of intake, preparation, direct encountering, reporting, monitoring, and follow-up. For the direct encounter, seven sessions of group activities with 7 inmates and 5 crime victims were carried out. The statistically meaningful effectiveness of the program by comparing before and after the group activities was shown in changes of the participants such as inmates and crime victims in the quantitative research method. To put it specifically, the attitudes toward crime, their thoughts and behaviors of those participants were changed meaningfully and positively after taking parts in the group activities. This study show the effective results of conflict mediation program based on Restorative Justice, particularly provides a basis for help the crime victims restore from their psychosocial trauma. Finally, based on the results of this research, several implications and suggestions were made.

A Cultural Ambassador East and West: J. Hillis Miller’s Lectures in China

A Cultural Ambassador East and West: J. Hillis Miller’s <i>Lectures in China</i>

Solution sales process blueprinting

By utilising the blueprinting technique, this study develops a sales process framework that visualises different activities, actors, and customer touch-points in the solution sales process. Based on a multiple-case study that includes data from eight Finnish manufacturers (18 face-to-face interviews with company representatives), our findings show that, although the main actors that have a direct encounter with customers are the salespeople, early engagement of the project and design divisions help firms serve and understand customers better. Additionally, interactions with customers during post-sales delivery allow the acquisition and dissemination of new information. While displaying the customer touch-points and how actors in provider's organisation interact to deliver value for customers, the process blueprint reveals the need for improvements in the firms' sales process design, to better integrate the service function into the selling phase and to enhance the opportunities for post-sales customer support.

Solution sales process blueprinting

By utilising the blueprinting technique, this study develops a sales process framework that visualises different activities, actors, and customer touch-points in the solution sales process. Based on a multiple-case study that includes data from eight Finnish manufacturers (18 face-to-face interviews with company representatives), our findings show that, although the main actors that have a direct encounter with customers are the salespeople, early engagement of the project and design divisions help firms serve and understand customers better. Additionally, interactions with customers during post-sales delivery allow the acquisition and dissemination of new information. While displaying the customer touch-points and how actors in provider's organisation interact to deliver value for customers, the process blueprint reveals the need for improvements in the firms' sales process design, to better integrate the service function into the selling phase and to enhance the opportunities for post-sales customer support.

Identification of Aves, Herpetofauna and Arthropods in Miangas Island (Indonesia), the borderline of Wallacea ecoregion

Suryawan A, Yuliantoro I, Mayasari A, Christita M. 2016. Identification of Aves, Herpetofauna and Arthropods in Miangas Island (Indonesia), the borderline of Wallacea ecoregion. Biodiversitas 18: 1528-1537. Miangas Island is located on the northeast of Wallacea and bordered by the Philippines and it belongs to Talaud archipelago. This study aims to identify the species of terrestrial wildlife in Miangas Island. Observations used the direct encounter method starting at 7:00 to 17:00 pm and they were conducted through four times visits in October and December 2015, April and May 2016. Some species were found, such as 15 species of birds, 3 species of lizards, 1 snake and 1 species of Arthropods. Hirundapus caudacutus and Butastur indicus are migrant bird species. Lamprolepis smaragdina is green and classified as tree climber type. It is included to hybrid lizard type of the Pacific and the Philippines. Based on IUCN database, Eos histrio is classified as endangered group (E), Ducula pickeringii as vulnerable (V) Todirhamphus enigma enigma is classified as near threatened group (NT), Birgus latro is classified as Data deficient (DD), while Butastur indicus, Lanius Schach, Nectarinia jugular plateni, Todirhamphus chloris, Hirundo tahitica, Hirundapus caudacutus, Egretta sacra, Ardea alba, Anthus cervinus, Motacilla cinerea, Cuculus saturatus, Passer Montanus, Ducula pickeringii, Eutropis multicarinata multicarinata, Lamprolepis smaragdina, Emoia caeruleocauda and Laticauda laticauda are classified as low risk (LC).

Christian Scriptural Perspectives on Refugees

Christian Scriptural Perspectives on Refugees Peter A. Pettit This exploration must begin with the recollection that my childhood was shaped in part by the very real presence of immigrants—economic refugees. In the late 1950s, my grandparents stepped up as members of a Lutheran congregation that wanted to sponsor a Lutheran refugee family from Germany. A specific family was needed to be the sponsors, and my grandparents volunteered to be that family. Was it because my maternal great‐grandfather had come to America in the late nineteenth century, saying—as my grandmother once told me—“he wouldn't fight in the Kaiser's stupid wars?” I never thought to ask about their motivation. At some point in my preschool years, though, we welcomed a German war veteran and his wife into our extended family. The veteran had been captured on both the Eastern and Western fronts and had spent time in Soviet and American POW camps. Struggling in the difficult post‐war German economy, he and his wife as a young couple chose to seek their future in the United States. Very soon they had a child, adding one more to our extended family. The veteran is now retired from a distinguished career as a professor of German language and culture at a number of colleges up and down the East Coast; his wife died some years ago. But at my grandparents’ dining room table, at Thanksgiving or just on a random Sunday afternoon, they were very much like cousins to us. The idea of kindness and support for the alien first came to me not only as mother's milk in my family; it came also as gospel truth from our church. Grounding that truth in scripture can take a number of different turns. My research has taken me into the literature of the refugee advocacy community and the official documents of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches as well as my own searching of Christian scripture for relevant themes. There is not a lot of variation among the denominations or the advocacy groups; many of the same materials turn up time and time again. With regard to scriptural sources that address our relationship with refugees, I would suggest that three broad clusters can be identified. These are distinguished from one another by the character of each of the three parties involved in a divinely guided encounter between oneself and a refugee: Our relationship with refugees can be grounded in who we are; it can be grounded in who the other is; and it can be grounded in who God is. Beyond the question of the direct encounter with refugees, we also can explore the scriptural sources relating to the conditions which drive refugees from their homes and create the conditions that they face. We will begin with the direct encounter and its three points of grounding. Encountering refugees on the basis of our identity The first cluster of sources speaks to our character as people of God and the way in which it defines our relationship to those who have been dislocated from their homes. Within this first cluster, we can further discern three sets of sources that characterize the people of God in somewhat different dimensions. For some, we are a people descended from refugees. The International Association for Refugees has compiled a list of nearly thirty biblical characters, plus the collective people Israel, who are in some sense refugees. Many of these come easily to mind from familiar biblical stories, even if the label “refugee” is not one we might choose first to identify the characters: Adam and Eve, Cain, Jacob and his eleven sons, Naomi, and Ruth. Less obvious figures like David and Jeremiah are included. Within the New Testament, Philip and Peter and Aquila and Priscilla are all also identified as refugees at some point, fleeing persecution. Even if it seems a bit of a stretch to include Noah fleeing the flood or Jonah fleeing God's word or the midrashically driven account of the infant Jesus fleeing Herod, there is ample evidence that Christians can be considered, spiritually if not genetically, the descendants of people who needed refuge. A second dimension of this...

The City as a Space of Plastic Happening: From Grand Proposals to Exceptional Gestures in the Art of the 1970s in Zagreb

In the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of Zagreb-based artists, critics, and curators advocated the idea that art should leave the museum and engage in a direct encounter with the city and its inhabitants. Starting with the 1971 Zagreb Salon and its “Proposal” section titled The City as a Space of Plastic Happening, art took to the streets in a series of exhibition projects at the same time as Yugoslav students did so in protests that began in June 1968 in Belgrade, and continued in other cities, including Zagreb, where they were then followed by their ideological antagonist, the “Croatian Spring” movement in 1971. The notion of plasticity was a central discursive tool in the critical and theoretical accounts of the time, and the city was both the stage and target of the artistic gestures of “plastic” transformation. The article reads these projects and the discourses surrounding them as critiques of the Yugoslav socialist city, and by metonymical extension, of the failure of the Yugoslav state to live up to its promise of a just socialist society.

Clinical course and core variability in HBV infected patients without detectable anti-HBc antibodies

BackgroundThe presence of anti-HBc antibodies indicates direct encounter of the immune system with hepatitis B virus (HBV). ObjectivesAim of our study was to seek for anti-HBc negative but HBV replicating patients and analyze their clinical course and preconditions. Study designFrom 1568 HBV-DNA positive patients, 29 patients (1.85%) tested negative for anti-HBc. The absence of anti-HBc could be confirmed in 19 patients using an alternative assay. In 16 of 19 cases, a partial or full HBV genome analysis was performed with NGS sequencing to evaluate if specific mutations were associated with anti-HBc absence. As a control group samples from 32 matched HBV infected patients with detectable anti-HBc were sequenced. ResultsPatients with detectable HBV-DNA and sequenced HBV core region in the confirmed absence of anti-HBc were diagnosed with acute HBV infection (n=3), HBV reactivation (n=9) and chronic hepatitis B (n=4). Most patients (12/16) were immunosuppressed: 3/16 patients had an HIV coinfection, 7/16 patients suffered from a malignant disease and 4/16 patients underwent solid organ transplantation (from which 2/4 had a malignant disease). Compared to the control cohort, HBV variants from anti-HBc negative patients showed less variability in the core region. ConclusionsIn the absence of anti-HBc, HBV-DNA was most often found in immunocompromised hosts. Distinct mutations or deletions in the core region did not explain anti-HBc negativity. It would be advisable not to rely only on a single result of anti-HBc negativity to exclude HBV infection in immunocompromised hosts, but to measure anti-HBc repeatedly or with different methods

Delayed effect of early-life corticosterone treatment on adult anti-predator behavior in a common passerine

Acute, short-term effects of early-life stress and associated glucocorticoid upregulation on behavior are widely documented across vertebrates. However, the persistence and severity of these effects are largely unknown, especially through the adult stage and in wild species. Here, we investigate long-term effects of experimental post-natal increases in a circulating glucocorticoid on antipredator behavior in wild house sparrows (Passer domesticus) tested in captivity. We manipulate circulating corticosterone concentration in wild, free-living nestlings, transfer fledglings to captivity, and test juveniles and adults for two measures of antipredator behavior: evasiveness during a direct human encounter, and propensity to escape from a risky environment. We find no effect of early-life stress hormone manipulation on escape behavior, but a delayed effect on evasive behavior: evasive behavior was depressed in adults but not juveniles, and influenced by current body condition. These results highlight the importance of state-behavior interactions and life stage in assessing long-term effects of early-life stress, and provide rare evidence for delayed effects of early-life stress to adults of a wild avian species.

Electroconvulsive therapy in drug-resistant paranoid schizophrenia on patient with transplanted kidney – Case study

The 22-year-old female patient had her first direct encounter with a psychiatrist in 2009 due to low mood, anxiety, anhedonia, lack of energy and olfactory hallucinations. Diagnosed with delusional depression syndrome, she was treated with SSRI group, and then combined with LLP group. In 2009, she was hospitalized in the Ward of kidney diseases and dialysis due to severe kidney failure, HA affecting the heart and the kidneys and facial nerve paralysis. In May 2012, she had a kidney transplanted from the deceased donor, which led to graft-versus-host disease. She received immunosuppressive therapy. In October 2012, she was diagnosed with paranoid syndrome. She was initially treated with levomepromazine 75 mg/d and amisulpride 800 mg/d (no results), then Olanzapine 20 mg/d and aripiprazole 15 mg/d (no results). After 10 week hospitalization she was discharged in a slightly improved mental state. Three weeks later, she was hospitalized again in a psychiatric institution where she received olanzapine 20 mg/d and haloperidol 6 mg/d (no results). Due to the severe mental condition, she was qualified for electroconvulsive therapy. In the end, the therapy met with the general positive reviews of consultants of different specialties. After 7 (of the 18) treatments the patient reached a significantly improved mental state with almost no sign of psychotic experiences and with a better day-to-day functioning. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first case of ECT on the patient who was the subject of a kidney transplant, and is one of the very few that have taken place in the entire world.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.