Interesting Points Research Articles

A renal aplasia case mimicking radiologically as unilateral renal agenesis in a child with spina bifida, atresia ani and unilateral undescended testis: a case report

BackgroundAs a result of the failure of embryogenic kidney formation, a condition can occur where not a single kidney appears and this phenomenon is known as unilateral renal agenesis (URA). Both aplastic and dysplastic kidney are different from renal agenesis, atrophy and renal hypoplasia. However, from this case report it can be seen that there are similarities, both radiologically and macroscopically, between cases of unilateral renal aplasia and renal agenesis.Case presentationA 2 year old Javanese boy came to the health facility with complaints of recurrent fever and urinary tract symptoms such as dysuria and straining. Computerized Tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen and urography showed agenesis of the left kidney and a probable spina bifida. Cystourethrography examination was done and showed grade 5 voiding, then retrograde pyelography was performed with the diagnosis of unilateral renal agenesis was made because there was no visible left side collecting system even though there was a duplication in the left ureter. The next examination was carried out by histopathology and immunohistochemistry after resection of the left side of the ureter and the diagnosis increasingly pointed towards renal aplasia after primitive renal structures were found.ConclusionsRenal agenesis and aplastic kidney are difficult to differentiate macroscopically and radiologically. Nevertheless, from this case report, we try to provide some interesting points to differentiate cases of unilateral renal agenesis from Renal Dysplasia which presents as unilateral renal aplasia.

Mount Etna as a terrestrial laboratory to investigate recent volcanic activity on Venus by future missions: A comparison with Idunn Mons, Venus

The recently selected missions to Venus have opened a new era for the exploration of this planet. These missions will provide information about the chemistry of the atmosphere, the geomorphology, local-to-regional surface composition, and the rheology of the interior. One key scientific question to be addressed by these future missions is whether Venus remains volcanically active, and if so, how its volcanism is currently evolving. Hence, it is fundamental to analyze appropriate terrestrial analog sites for the study of possibly active volcanism on Venus. To this regard, we propose Mount Etna - one of the most active and monitored volcanoes on Earth - as a suitable terrestrial laboratory for remote and in-situ investigations to be performed by future missions to Venus. Being characterized by both effusive and explosive volcanic products, Mount Etna offers the opportunity to analyze multiple eruptive styles, both monitoring active volcanism and identifying the possible occurrence of pyroclastic activity on Venus. We directly compare Mount Etna with Idunn Mons, one of the most promising potentially active volcanoes of Venus. Despite the two structures show a different topography, they also show some interesting points of comparison, and in particular: a) comparable morpho-structural setting, since both volcanoes interact with a rift zone, and b) morphologically similar volcanic fields around both Mount Etna and Idunn Mons. Given its ease of access, we also propose Mount Etna as an analog site for laboratory spectroscopic studies to identify the signatures of unaltered volcanic deposits on Venus.

Mobilizing Hope Against Pessimism and Plutocracy

This paper offers responses to the challenges and questions rasied by the comments of John M. Meyer, Gwen Ottinger, Mark Reiff, and Steve Vanderheiden to my book Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change and Global Poverty. Their concerns are insightful, many, and varied. My reply focuses on the following themes: The relationship between moral concern about climate change and moral concern abut global poverty, the role of hope in responding to climate change, the problem of plutocratic influences in democratic politics and international negotiations, the role of technology in responding to climate change, and the value presuppostion of the book. I cannot do justice to all of the interesting points the commentators make, but I hope at least to have mustered decent replies in these areas.

Geoarchaeology of open-air sites of the Foz do Chapecó area in the upper Uruguay river, southern Brazil

This paper presents the results of the investigations that defined the formation of the sedimentary deposits and the chronological sequence of the Foz do Chapecó archaeological area in the Volta Grande of the Upper Uruguay River, Southern Brazil. This research was undertaken to contribute to the definition of the diachronic, sedimentary and stratigraphic context of the archaeological occupations. To achieve these goals a geoarchaeological prospection by land and water was conducted, focusing on the valley bottoms, in the whole Volta Grande area. It comprehended the characterization of surface sedimentary deposits, the exposure and analysis of stratigraphic profiles, and sedimentological analysis. Four superficially exposed deposits were identified: i.e., fluvial conglomerates, fine sediments with sandy texture, clay colluviums and current and recent alluvial deposits. Six interesting points for the opening of stratigraphic profiles were identified, and subsequently resulted in the identification of sedimentary facies associated with river-bed, colluvial and colluvial-alluvial deposits. Three of these points presented a clear sequence of archaeological levels in the stratigraphic context. The results indicated that the local sediments are predominantly composed of a variable mixture of silt and clay, with sands occurring predominantly in an interdigitated form. The stratigraphic structure of the identified layers led to the establishment of 7 sedimentary facies, associated with colluvium (Cm), colluvium-alluvium (Sm) and alluvium and fluvial channels (Sm, Fl, Gms, Gt, Gp, Gh). The radiocarbon dating gives an age between 12.0 and 0.3 cal kBP, indicating that the filling of the local valley occurred during the end of the Pleistocene and throughout the Holocene by means of both fluvial and colluvial systems. Nine distinct archaeological levels, with a clear stratigraphic, chronological, and technological characterization were identified. The pre-ceramic archaeological sequence shows the following chronology: the oldest occupation occurred between 12.0 and 11.0 cal kBP (Cm facies); this was followed by an occupation between 10.5 and 9.5 cal kBP (Cm, Gt, Gp and Gh facies in three archaeological sites with eleven 14C data), then an occupation between 8.7 and 8.5 cal kBP (Cm facies), another between 5.7 and 5.5 cal kBP, one more between 4.8 and 4.6 cal kBP (Cm facies), and the last between 3.4 and 3.3 cal kBP (Cm and Sm facies). The ceramic phase seems to form a single dense component with the anthropogenic soil formation, and was dated between 0.5 and 0.3 cal kBP (Sm facies). These data present a previously unpublished chronostratigraphic sequence that is unique for the context of open-air sites in inner southern Brazil.

Possibility of stable thin-shell around wormholes within string cloud and quintessential field via the van der Waals and polytropic EOS

In this work, we present the Einstein field equations (EFE) in the framework of a modified matter source and thus find out the solutions for the Wormhole. To obtain characteristic solutions set, we employ two kinds of equations of states (EOS), i.e., the van der Waals and polytropic EOS to the EFE. We adopt embedding class as a general technique for the system and discuss several physical attributes of the stellar system under embedded wormhole solutions. Detailed discussion about the matter contents of the thin-shell developed around the obtained wormhole solutions in the background of Schwarzschild BH surrounded by cloud and quintessence-type fluid distribution by using a well-known cut and paste approach. We have also performed stability analysis using the linearized radial perturbation method for the van der Waals EOS and polytropic EOS. Several interesting points have evolved from the entire investigation along with the features of the thin shell around the wormhole. It is interesting to mention that the van der Walls equation of state plays a remarkable role to maintain the stability of the thin-shell around the wormhole structure as compared to polytropic model for both choices of shape functions.

Bayesian Semiparametric Local Clustering of Multiple Time Series Data

In multiple time series data, clustering the component profiles can identify meaningful latent groups while also detecting interesting change points in their trajectories. Conventional time series clustering methods, however, suffer the drawback of requiring the co-clustered units to have the same cluster membership throughout the entire time domain. In contrast to these “global” clustering methods, we develop a Bayesian “local” clustering method that allows the functions to flexibly change their cluster memberships over time. We design a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm to implement our method. We illustrate the method in several real-world datasets, where time-varying cluster memberships provide meaningful inferences about the underlying processes. These include a public health dataset to showcase the more detailed inference our method can provide over global clustering alternatives, and a temperature dataset to demonstrate our method’s utility as a flexible change point detection method. Supplemental materials for this article, including R codes implementing the method, are available online.

Proving concurrency by loci

A fascinating and catchy method for proving that a number of special lines concur is using the concept of locus. This is now the classical method for proving the concurrency of the internal angle bisectors and perpendicular side bisectors of a triangle. In this paper, we prove the concurrency of the altitudes and the medians by showing that they are loci of some interesting points. Our proofs for these ancient theorems seem to be new. We also provide loci method proofs for the concurrency theorems of Ceva and Carnot.

Face detection based on a human attention guided multi-scale model

Multiscale models are among the cutting-edge technologies used for face detection and recognition. An example is Deformable part-based models (DPMs), which encode a face as a multiplicity of local areas (parts) at different resolution scales and their hierarchical and spatial relationship. Although these models have proven successful and incredibly efficient in practical applications, the mutual position and spatial resolution of the parts involved are arbitrarily defined by a human specialist and the final choice of the optimal scales and parts is based on heuristics. This work seeks to understand whether a multi-scale model can take inspiration from human fixations to select specific areas and spatial scales. In more detail, it shows that a multi-scale pyramid representation can be adopted to extract interesting points, and that human attention can be used to select the points at the scales that lead to the best face detection performance. Human fixations can therefore provide a valid methodological basis on which to build a multiscale model, by selecting the spatial scales and areas of interest that are most relevant to humans.

Jenseits der pädagogischen Illusion? Historischvergleichende Überlegungen zur Wirkungsgeschichte der moralischen Bildung von Kindern und Jugendlichen

This article can be broken down into two parts, perhaps somewhat unequally as far as its orientation is concerned. In the first part, the author takes the reader on a kind of exploration of the history of moral education, a subject which, at first glance and from the perspective of the years he spent studying educational historiography, appears to be rather undeveloped terrain. Since the piece is related to the awarding of the Comenius Medal, Comenius himself already provides a good starting point for this round of studies. As in the case of Herbart, another classic within the canon of educational history, Comenius held the opinion that morality plays a key role in upbringing of young people, which became increasingly scintillating in appearance from the Enlightenment onwards. For in a well-regulated society, it was by means of upbringing and education that individual freedom could be created. However, in the course of the 20th century and to the shame of humanity, people were forced to witness how the idea that people and society could be shaped by social engineering could equally give rise to a lack of freedom, as the aberrations of Nazism, fascism and ultimately Marxism-Leninism unequivocally demonstrated. So can such “reversals” of modern-day thought ultimately teach us any overall lessons about the content, manner and results with which moral curricula are imposed? Or must we first set out to identify the “abnormal” cases that society first branded as such and only subsequently extract those lessons? In other words, can extraordinary situations and events teach us something about the everyday reality of moral education as manifested in the so-called “civilising offensive” that took place from the end of the 18th century onwards? As far as the Low Countries are concerned, the author is, for that matter, setting foot on familiar ground. By utilising previous research on Belgium, Flanders and the (Belgian) Congo, the second part of the article wastes no time in examining what moral education meant in more specific terms in the 20th century. In that regard, the focus not only lies on contextualising the insights and questions raised by the first part, as a “tour d’horizon”, but equally on analysing them in greater depth. After all, the author’s years of research already provide three interesting points of reference: 1) the strong continuity of the patronising perspective; 2) the problematic nature of thinking about educational innovations and didactic innovations in binary terms, such as “old” and “new”, and 3) the lack of a straightforward link between parenting and educational goals on the one hand and their results and effects (including and especially in the long term) on the other. Which leads inevitably to the conclusion that education, important as it is, must not be overestimated. Nor should history for that matter. Perhaps both are nothing more than an opportunity to partake of a meaningful encounter that may be effective, but whose outcome one can never be sure of. Which in turn does not take away from the fact that we must still place our hopes on it. For hope is probably the most positive thing that human beings carry within them, just as Comenius himself proved in his lifetime, by the way.

Colorectal Cancer: 35 Cases in Asbestos-Exposed Workers

Background: Asbestos is considered one of the major global work-related carcinogens. Some studies suggest a potential causal relationship between asbestos exposure and colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the role of asbestos in CRC carcinogenesis is still controversial. Methods: 35 claims of occupational CRC among asbestos-exposed workers were reviewed. All claims were rejected by the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents (INAIL) due to the “lack of scientific evidence in the causality” between asbestos exposure and CRC; causality was finally assessed in civil trials. All cases were categorized by age, gender, industry type, task, exposure and latency periods, anatomical location, and histopathological characteristics of CRC and concomitant respiratory diseases. Results: Most workers were males aged 60 years or more and employed in occupational activities with extensive use of asbestos for over 20 years. In 31 out of 35 cases, CRC was diagnosed over 39 years after employment. Right-sided colic adenocarcinoma was diagnosed in nine cases; rectum was involved in eight cases. Respiratory comorbidities were observed in 22 workers. Conclusions: Our study provides some interesting points in the assessment of the causal relationship between asbestos exposure and CRC.

『옥원재합기연』에 나타난 여성의 자결 시도와 자결 논쟁

This study investigates a female protagonist’s suicide attempts in Ogwonjaehapgiyeon, a work of fiction written in the late Joseon Dynasty. So far, one of the most interesting points in the work involves a female protagonist who tried to kill herself six times but survived. Nevertheless, her suicide attempts in fiction have not been structurally analyzed.
 I examined scenes and the corresponding meanings of the protagonist’s suicide attempts in Ogwonjaehapgiyeon. Hyeonyeong, the character who attempted suicide six times, was saved by other people such as a nanny, a character from Tang chuanqi named Liuyizhuan, a historical character, a widow, and father-in-law. She finally decided to live as they persuaded her to stop killing herself by suggesting other options.
 Many widows killed themselves when their husbands contracted fatal illnesses in 18-19th century Korea, a phenomenon that can be said to have resulted from oppression by the patriarchy. Ogwonjaehapgiyeon focused the debates on chastity between Hyeonyeong and the other people, making the narrative interesting. Also, the work asserted that people should not recommend that widows take their own lives.

Antibiotics in water bodies, cyanobacterial toxicity and odorous compounds release: a review

The present study aimed to propose a new cause of odorous compounds release, i.e., the presence of antibiotics in water bodies and its toxicity to cyanobacteria, known to be the main producer of geosmin (GEO) and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB). Therefore, a literature review was carried out regarding the problems caused by antibiotics in aquatic environment, including cyanobacterial blooms and GEO and 2-MIB release. In addition, a bibliometric analysis was performed using the VOSviewer software based on the results obtained from the Web of Science (WOS) database. This review aims to build a scientific understanding of the problem, presenting interesting points that converge with the proposed association. It is worth mentioning that no work has been found in the literature that has proposed this relationship. Thus, based on the bibliographic survey, observations and information acquired in recent years about cyanobacterial blooms and environmental contamination by pharmaceutical drugs, one of the main causes of an earthy and musty flavour and odour in a drinking water supply is the toxicity imposed by the presence of antibiotics in aquatic environments on cyanobacteria.

Nationality Beyond the Nation-State? The Search for Autonomy in Abdullah Öcalan and Otto Bauer

ABSTRACT In today’s globalised era, the limitations of the nation-state model are increasingly apparent. This model often demands homogeneity, leading to identity conflicts and separatist demands by national minorities. However, national and cultural identities remain politically relevant, making post-national ambitions difficult to achieve. To address this problem, we compare the thoughts of Otto Bauer and Abdullah Öcalan, who both emphasise overcoming the limits of the nation-state without dismissing national and cultural identities. Öcalan’s ideas prioritise autonomy and multiplicity, while Bauer’s contribution is based on a deterritorialised notion of national identity. As we argue in this article, the two authors share interesting points of convergence that have been understudied in academia. What is more, this comparison provides valuable insights for understanding contemporary challenges and solutions to multinational societies and identity conflicts.

OA01 Tennis shoulder? A rare case of brachial neuritis

OA01 Tennis shoulder? A rare case of brachial neuritis

Health System Response to the 2023 Floods in Emilia-Romagna, Italy: A Field Report.

In May 2023, the Italian region Emilia-Romagna was hit by intense rainfall, which caused extensive floods in densely populated areas. On May 4, 2023, a 12-month state of emergency was declared in the region with the activation of response and recovery plans. This field report provides an overview of the health response to the floods, paying particular attention to the measures put in place to ensure care for displaced populations and raising interesting points of discussion regarding the role of the health system during extreme weather events (EWEs). The considerations that emerge from this report underline the need for a primary care approach to disasters, especially when these occur in areas with a high prevalence of elderly resident population, and underscore the importance of integration of different levels of care.

The CN(X 2Σ+) + C2H6 reaction: Dynamics study based on an analytical full-dimensional potential energy surface.

The hydrogen abstraction reaction of the cyano radical with molecules of ethane presents some interesting points in the chemistry from ultra-cold to combustion environments especially with regard to HCN(v) product vibrational distribution. In order to understand its dynamics, a new analytical full-dimensional potential energy surface was developed, named PES-2023. It uses a combination of valence bond and mechanic molecular terms as the functional form, fitted to high-level abinitio calculations at the explicitly correlated CCSD(T)-F12/aug-cc-pVTZ level on a reduced and selected number of points describing the reactive process. The new surface showed a continuous and smooth behavior, describing reasonably the topology of the reaction: high exothermicity, low barrier, and presence of intermediate complexes in the entrance and exit channels. Using quasi-classical trajectory calculations (QCT) on the new PES-2023, a dynamics study was performed at room temperature with special emphasis on the HCN(v1,v2,v3) product stretching and bending vibrational excitations, and the results were compared with the experimental evidence, which presented discrepancies in the bending excitation. The available energy was mostly deposited as HCN(v) vibrational energy with the vibrational population inverted in the CH stretching mode and not inverted in the CN stretching and bending modes, thus simulating the experimental evidence. Other dynamics properties at room temperature were also analyzed; cold rotational energy distribution was found, associated with a linear and soft transition state, and backward scattering distribution was found, associated with a rebound mechanism.

Synthesis of New Coumarin Scaffold Bearing 2-Iminochromene Moiety

Coumarin is classified as one of interesting therapeutic starting research points to obtain remarkable compounds with high efficacy. So, during this research, new 2-iminochromene derivatives bearing coumarin moiety were synthesized. At first, cyanoacetohydrazone of 3-acetylcoumarin was prepared and used as the starting material. The 2-iminochromene derivatives were synthesized through the ring closure of cyanoacetohydrazone derivative with 4-hydroxysalicylaldehyde, 5-aryldiazosalicylaldehydes, 2-hydroxynaphthaldehyde and 7-hydroxychromone-6-carboxaldehyde derivative. All of the newly synthesized coumarin derivatives were obtained in excellent yields; so, the new synthesized coumarin derivatives will participate in the enrichment of the chemical libraries.

Lithium-Ion Battery Diagnostics Using Electrochemical Impedance Via Machine-Learning

Diagnosing battery states such as health, state-of-charge, or temperature is crucial for ensuring the safety and reliability of electrochemical energy storage systems. While some states, such as temperature, may be measured using cheap sensors, accurate diagnosis of battery health metrics usually requires time-consuming performance measurements, making them infeasible for use in real-world operation. These health metrics can be measured during lab-testing and then estimated on-line using predictive life models or via state observer algorithms such as Kalman filters, but these predictive methods should be supplemented by actual measurement of battery health whenever possible to ensure reliability. Rapid measurement of battery health may be done by various types of fast diagnostic techniques such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), which can be performed in only a few minutes and require only a fraction of the energy and power needed for a full charge and discharge measurement. But there is a substantial challenge for estimating battery health using EIS data, as EIS is sensitive to cell temperature, state-of-charge, current, and resting time in addition to health. Thus, utilizing EIS data to predict battery capacity requires correcting for all these additional variables, a task that is extremely difficult to handle analytically.This talk utilizes machine-learning methods to estimate the effectiveness of battery capacity prediction from EIS data, leveraging a data set of hundreds of EIS measurements recorded at varying temperature and state-of-charge throughout a 500-day aging study of 32 commercial, large-format NMC-Graphite lithium-ion batteries. Using EIS as input to machine-learning models is complicated by the nonlinear response of impedance to battery health, temperature, and state-of-charge, as well as the collinearity between the impedance response at neighboring frequencies, which can easily lead to overfit models. To train robust models, features from EIS data need to be extracted from the data or some subset of critical frequencies selected. Many approaches for extracting and selecting features from EIS data from electrochemical analysis and machine-learning fields were identified for analysis: using the entire raw spectra; selection of one, two, or many frequencies from the entire spectra; selecting interesting points from the EIS measurement using domain knowledge; fitting EIS with an equivalent-circuit model; calculating statistics on the raw impedance values; and reducing the dimensionality of the data using unsupervised linear (principal component analysis) and non-linear (uniform manifold approximation and projection) methods. These approaches were rigorously compared using a machine-learning pipeline approach, training linear, Gaussian process, and random forest regression models and quantifying performance using cross-validation as well as a held-out test set. An artificial neural network model trained on the raw spectra was also tested. Promising pipelines were fine-tuned via Bayesian hyperparameter optimization using cross-validation loss and training with class-specific weights to counter data set imbalance.The most reliable method for utilizing impedance in this work was the selection of two optimal frequencies through an exhaustive search, resulting in about 2% mean absolute error on test data for both Gaussian process and random forest model architectures. Interrogation of a variety of models reveals critical frequencies of 100 Hz and 103 Hz for this data set, though the optimal set of frequencies is not necessarily intuitive, i.e., the best performing models are not simply those that use impedance at frequencies that have the highest correlation to the relative discharge capacity. The best performing model is an ensemble model, which is able to predict battery capacity with 1.9% mean absolute error for unseen cells using impedance recorded at a variety of temperatures and states-of-charge.

Design and Build a Virtual Reality Based Cycling Simulator Game

At the present time, there is a lot of digitalization being carried out. The current busy work also often makes people need to carry out an activity without leaving the place. One of them is exercising, in this case is cycling.Therefore, an idea emerged to design a VR-based cycling simulator game. The purpose of this study is to find out how the interaction between cycling and VR is, and to find out the interesting points of this game and its use as a new alternative to cycling. The method used in this study was to test the "Simulator Sepeda VR" game on several users and collect data through interviews. The results of this study indicate that the "Simulator Sepeda VR" game is able to provide an interesting experience and can also be an alternative for cycling at home.

Static traversable wormhole solutions in f(R,ℒm) gravity

In this study, we explore the new wormhole solutions in the framework of new modified $f(R,L_m)$ gravity. To obtain a characteristic wormhole solution, we use anisotropic matter distribution and a specific form of energy density. As second adopt the isotropic case with a linear EoS relation as a general technique for the system and discuss several physical attributes of the system under the wormhole geometry. Detailed analytical and graphical discussion about the matter contents via energy conditions is discussed. In both cases, the shape function of wormhole geometry satisfies the required conditions. Several interesting points have evolved from the entire investigation along with the features of the exotic matter within the wormhole geometry. Finally, we have concluding remarks.