Intrinsic Challenges Research Articles

‘That is a Ministry of Health thing’: Article 5.3 implementation in Uganda and the challenge of whole-of-government accountability

IntroductionWhile Uganda has made legislative progress towards implementing Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), ongoing challenges in minimising tobacco industry interference have not been adequately...

Criteria of Embarrassment: J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Jesus Trilogy’ and the Legacy of Modernist Difficulty

This article takes as its starting point the divergent responses that J.M. Coetzee’s Jesus trilogy (The Childhood of Jesus [2013], The Schooldays of Jesus [2016] and The Death of Jesus [2019]) has drawn from reviewers and scholars respectively. Where reviewers have generally regarded these works’ difficulty as obstructive, scholars have taken their difficulty as both the justification and catalyst for sustained engagement. This divergence is explained, in part, as a consequence of the literacies developed by and in response to modernism – literacies which regarded difficulty as both the signature of the worthwhile artwork and as the criterion which justifies the special attention of specialized readers. If one aim of this article is to situate Coetzee and Coetzee studies within this tradition, a second aim is to ask whether the forms of attention garnered by his late trilogy are less an index of intrinsic challenges than of Coetzee’s reputation as a challenging writer. To do so is to worry the overready ascription of ‘Coetzeean’ difficulty – along with the modes of reading it tends to enlist – in order to reposition bewilderment, embarrassment and other ugly aesthetic-affects as generative for criticism.

Autofocus-Based Estimation of Penetration Depth and Permittivity of Ice Volumes and Snow Using Single SAR Images

An intrinsic challenge in the geophysical interpretation of low-frequency synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery of semitransparent media, such as ice sheets, is the position ambiguity of the scattering structures within the glacial volume. Commonly tackled by applying interferometric and tomographic techniques, their spaceborne implementation exhibits by orders higher complexity compared to missions relying on single SAR images, making them cost expensive or, in the context of planetary missions, even impossible due to limited navigation capability. Besides, even these sophisticated techniques are commonly biased due to inaccurate permittivity estimates, leading to geometric distortions up to several meters. We present a novel inversion procedure to estimate volume parameters of ice sheets, namely, the depth of the scattering layer within the glacial volume and the dielectric permittivity of the ice, based on single-image single-polarization SAR acquisitions. The information is inherent in the processed SAR data as phase errors on the azimuth signals resulting from uncompensated nonlinear propagation of the radar echoes through ice. We suggest a local map-drift autofocus approach to quantify and spatially resolve the phase errors and an inversion model to relate them to the penetration depth and permittivity. Testing the proposed technique using P-band SAR data acquired using DLR’s airborne sensor F-SAR during the ARCTIC15 campaign in Greenland shows promising results and good agreement with tomographic products of the analyzed test site.

Why I Chose to Become a Mathematics Teacher? <br/>—An Analysis of the Motivations behind the Choice of Profession Based on Gender, Seniority, and Age of Students

One of the major decisions individuals make in their life is their choice of profession. This article presents a unique study of 60 mathematics teachers who disclose their motivations for choosing to teach mathematics. It shows that their main reasons are the intrinsic challenge in learning and teaching mathematics, their desire to impart knowledge to students and influence the next generation, their desire to be an educational figure, and their sense of purpose and mission. The teachers filled out a questionnaire with statements in categories based on findings in the literature, which were then analyzed on the basis of gender, seniority, and type of school (elementary/post-elementary). The results suggest that women were more apt than men to be motivated by the desire to impart learning strategies to students, the desire to be an educational figure, and out of a sense of purpose and mission; veteran teachers were more motivated than novice by their love of mathematics and their desire to influence their student’s personal development; and elementary school teachers were attracted to the profession because the degree required is not difficult to achieve and because students respect mathematics and therefore it is easy to teach it, whereas post-elementary teachers were attracted to the structure of the work week which is suitable for raising children. While there are many studies in the literature pertaining to why an individual may choose the teaching profession in general, there are hardly any studies that focus on teaching mathematics in particular.

The submental island pedicled flap and supraclavicular artery island flap in a free flap practice

Reconstruction of head and neck defects is a delicate endeavor that poses numerous intrinsic and extrinsic challenges, which are currently magnified by rising health care costs and limitations in system resources. Current trends in the United States heavily favor the use of free tissue transfer over locoregional pedicles flaps (LRPF); however, the latter group is often undervalued, offering high utility, practicality, and cost-efficiency whilst providing equivalent results. The submental island flap and supraclavicular artery island flap are two LRPF that should be in the arsenal of the modern reconstructive surgeon.

Homologous Recombination as a Fundamental Genome Surveillance Mechanism during DNA Replication.

Accurate and complete genome replication is a fundamental cellular process for the proper transfer of genetic material to cell progenies, normal cell growth, and genome stability. However, a plethora of extrinsic and intrinsic factors challenge individual DNA replication forks and cause replication stress (RS), a hallmark of cancer. When challenged by RS, cells deploy an extensive range of mechanisms to safeguard replicating genomes and limit the burden of DNA damage. Prominent among those is homologous recombination (HR). Although fundamental to cell division, evidence suggests that cancer cells exploit and manipulate these RS responses to fuel their evolution and gain resistance to therapeutic interventions. In this review, we focused on recent insights into HR-mediated protection of stress-induced DNA replication intermediates, particularly the repair and protection of daughter strand gaps (DSGs) that arise from discontinuous replication across a damaged DNA template. Besides mechanistic underpinnings of this process, which markedly differ depending on the extent and duration of RS, we highlight the pathophysiological scenarios where DSG repair is naturally silenced. Finally, we discuss how such pathophysiological events fuel rampant mutagenesis, promoting cancer evolution, but also manifest in adaptative responses that can be targeted for cancer therapy.

SecDocker: Hardening the Continuous Integration Workflow

Current Continuous Integration (CI) processes face significant intrinsic cybersecurity challenges. The idea is not only to solve and test formal or regulatory security requirements of source code but also to adhere to the same principles to the CI pipeline itself. This paper presents an overview of current security issues in CI workflow. It designs, develops, and deploys a new tool for the secure deployment of a container-based CI pipeline flow without slowing down release cycles. The tool, called SecDocker for its Docker-based approach, is publicly available in GitHub. It implements a transparent application firewall based on a configuration mechanism avoiding issues in the CI workflow associated with intended or unintended container configurations. Integrated with other DevOps Engineers tools, it provides feedback from only those scenarios that match specific patterns, addressing future container security issues.

KEINOVATIFAN PEREMPUAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF KARIR YANG BERPRESTASI

Woman, in their career, are potential. They should do some innovations. Innovations are somewhat like ideas, some things understandable as novel things. The biggest challenges faced by the career-woman are stemming from themselves, namely the intrinsic challenges. As long as they are able to keep this intrinsic challenges with them, they will not be defeated by outside challenges. Consequently, the peak of achievement they achieve is not but the result of their intended innovations.

LSTM-Based Channel Access Scheme for Vehicles in Cognitive Vehicular Networks With Multi-Agent Settings

In this paper, we study the channel access problem of vehicles in a cognitive radio vehicular network, where each vehicle opportunistically accesses the channel resources of the primary network in order to successfully receive the necessary data packets within a time deadline. Given the access priority constraint and the limited bandwidth of the primary network, a smart channel connection scheme is indispensable to ensure a decent quality of service (QoS) at the vehicles’ side. Due to the competitive nature of vehicles, the vehicle access control is formulated as a multi-agent access problem that comes with an intrinsic challenge, i.e. the partial observation of the information about the environment dynamics. On top of that, considering the temporal usage profile of the primary network, the environment dynamics are also time-dependant, and hence making the aforementioned access control a non-Markovian problem. Consequently, the estimation of the system states, which are used for the decision making process of a vehicle, is very challenging. To deal with the issues arising from such non-Markovian problem, we propose a vehicle connection algorithm based on a deep recurrent Q-learning network. With the aid of a recurrent Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) layer integrated into a deep Q-network, the time-correlated system states can be properly estimated, thereby improving the vehicle channel access policy. Besides, we introduce novel reward quantities that help improving the network performance and the capability to flexibly adapt to unexplored scenarios. A new structure of the cumulative reward function is also presented to balance the performance trade off between the cooperative and competitive objectives. Simulation results are provided to verify the advantage and the stability of our proposed algorithm over the benchmark schemes.

Totally Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Connection Outcomes from A Single Center

Introduction: There is limited data on totally anomalous pulmonary venous connection (TAPVC) repair results in our country. The aim of this study is to evaluate the early postoperative results of a large series of TAPVC patients operated in our clinic. Patients and Methods: The data of the patients who underwent TAPVC repair in our clinic between May 2005 and May 2021 were retrospectively reviewed using hospital records. Results: A total of 150 TAPVC patients aged between 0 days and 39 years (median 3 months, IQR: 18 days-9 months), 92 males (61%) and 58 females (39%) underwent surgical intervention. The median length of hospi- tal stay was 12 (IQR: 7-16) days. Overall mortality was 14% (21 patients). Seventeen out of 32 patients with additional cardiac anomalies (53%) and 4 out of 118 patients with isolated TAPVC (3%) died. The presence of additional cardiac anomalies was associated with mortality (p< 0.00001). Mortality rate in univentricular patients was 59% (10 patients). This rate was higher in comparison to the mortality rate of biventricular patients (8%; p< 0.00001). Three patients were reoperated due to postoperative pulmonary venous stenosis. Conclusion: The TAPVC outcomes in isolated and biventricular patients were favorable with a low mortality and postoperative pulmonary venous stenosis in this cohort. Patients with a single ventricle physiology and/or heterotaxia had a significantly increased risk of mortality, which might be due to the intrinsic challenges of the univentricular physiology regarding the balance between the pulmonary and systemic circulations. Tendency for increased mortality in the cases with preoperative pulmonary venous obstruction is a potential target for improvement.

Insect feeds in salmon aquaculture: sociotechnical imagination and responsible story-telling

Salmon aquaculture is a growing industry with increasing challenges of feed sustainability and availability. This global sustainability issue has led to calls for novel feeds. Aquafly, a Norwegian research project, has performed small-scale tests using the black soldier fly as an ingredient in salmon diet. However, in order for insect feeds to become a reality on the industrial scale, workable scientific, technical and political solutions have to be envisioned in tandem. In this study, we studied, elicited and assessed sociotechnical imaginaries in the Aquafly research consortium, using the approaches of concomitant ELSA research, the Ethical Matrix and Quantitative Story-Telling. We show how the sociotechnical imaginaries develop together with the scientific trajectory of the project, and how this also affects the assessment of the ethical and environmental impacts of the technology, including issues of food and feed safety and security, fish health and welfare, pollution and efficient use of waste streams. We show how there are intrinsic challenges when dealing with global sustainability issues in the research project. For instance, overcoming the problem of salmon feed scarcity may aggravate the challenges caused by intensive aquaculture. We report the results of a Quantitative Story-Telling exercise that indicates that Aquafly can be seen as part of a larger economy of technological promise, and discuss if and how this critique can be employed and integrated into scientific and technical imagination in a research project, contributing to Responsible Research and Innovation.

Intrinsic challenges in x-ray spectrometry instrumentation with CdTe diode detector

The X-ray spectrometry is subject to a diversity of problems that distort the measured beam. To observe them, spectra from N20, N25, N30, N60, N80, and N100 radiation qualities were obtained and evaluated their non-correction impact in the values of mean energy when compared with the requirements on ISO 4037-1 standard. The error percentages calculated were 2%, 2%, 2%, 11%, 9%, and 6%, respectively, related to partial energy deposition, efficiency loss, and charge trapping. These results suggest the need for correction of measured spectra, mainly for voltages higher than 30 kV.

A coculture-coproduction system designed for enhanced carbon conservation through inter-strain CO2 recycling

Carbon loss in the form of CO2 is an intrinsic and persistent challenge faced during conventional and advanced biofuel production from biomass feedstocks. Current mechanisms for increasing carbon conservation typically require the provision of reduced co-substrates as additional reducing equivalents. This need can be circumvented, however, by exploiting the natural heterogeneity of lignocellulosic sugars mixtures and strategically using specific fractions to drive complementary CO2 emitting vs. CO2 fixing pathways. As a demonstration of concept, a coculture-coproduction system was developed by pairing two catabolically orthogonal Escherichia coli strains; one converting glucose to ethanol (G2E) and the other xylose to succinate (X2S). 13C-labeling studies reveled that G2E + X2S cocultures were capable of recycling 24% of all evolved CO2 and achieved a carbon conservation efficiency of 77%; significantly higher than the 64% achieved when all sugars are instead converted to just ethanol. In addition to CO2 exchange, the latent exchange of pyruvate between strains was discovered, along with significant carbon rearrangement within X2S.

Continuous Hydrogenation: Triphasic System Optimization at Kilo Lab Scale Using a Slurry Solution

Despite their widespread use in the chemical industries, hydrogenation reactions remain challenging. Indeed, the nature of reagents and catalysts induce intrinsic safety challenges, in addition to demanding process development involving a 3-phase system. Here, to address common issues, we describe a successful process intensification study using a meso-scale flow reactor applied to a hydrogenation reaction of ethyl cinnamate at kilo lab scale with heterogeneous catalysis. This method relies on the continuous pumping of a catalyst slurry, delivering fresh catalyst through a structured flow reactor in a continuous fashion and a throughput up to 54.7 g/h, complete conversion and yields up to 99%. This article describes the screening of equipment, reactions conditions and uses statistical analysis methods (Monte Carlo/DoE) to improve the system further and to draw conclusions on the key influential parameters (temperature and residence time).

Robots and emotion: a survey of trends, classifications, and forms of interaction

The use of emotion to drive robotic interaction continues to grow across a range of use cases, from social robotics to increased survivability. Nevertheless, these efforts remain isolated from each other and are not easily compared between papers and projects. To this end an extensive survey of 1427 IEEE and ACM publications was conducted, covering robotics and emotion. The survey first resulted in broad categorizations of key trends covering emotional input and output. This was followed by an extended analysis on 232 papers that focused on the internal processing of emotion, where emotion was handled through some kind of algorithm and not just as an input or output. From this analysis, three broad categories were developed: emotional intelligence, emotional model, and implementation. Emotional intelligence captured the manner in which emotion was handled and included the subcategories: algorithm, mapping, and history. The emotional model category captured the emotion categories and number of emotions used, while the implementation category tracked the role, purpose, and platform. This paper concludes with a summary of key features discovered through the process, future opportunities, and a discussion of the intrinsic challenges emerging from the interaction of emotion and robotics.

Synthesis and Absorption Properties of Long Acenoacenes.

Acenes, polyaromatic hydrocarbons composed of linearly fused benzene rings have received immense attention due to their performance as semiconductors in organic optoelectronic applications. Their appealing physicochemical properties, such as extended delocalization, high charge carrier mobilities, narrow HOMO-LOMO gaps and partially radical character in the ground state make them very attractive targets for many potential applications. However, the intrinsic synthetic challenges of unsubstituted members such as high reactivity and poor solubility are still limiting factors for their wider exploitation. Herein, we report a simple general synthesis of a new family of angularly fused acenoacenes with improved stability compared to their isoelectronic linear counterparts. The synthesis and comprehensive characterization of pentacenopentacene, pentacenohexacene and hexacenohexacene, with lengths between decacene and dodecacene, are disclosed.

Fe3O4@Pt nanoparticles to enable combinational electrodynamic/chemodynamic therapy

Electrodynamic therapy (EDT) has recently emerged as a potential external field responsive approach for tumor treatment. While it presents a number of clear superiorities, EDT inherits the intrinsic challenges of current reactive oxygen species (ROS) based therapeutic treatments owing to the complex tumor microenvironment, including glutathione (GSH) overexpression, acidity and others. Herein for the first time, iron oxide nanoparticles are decorated using platinum nanocrystals (Fe3O4@Pt NPs) to integrate the current EDT with chemodynamic phenomenon and GSH depletion. Fe3O4@Pt NPs can effectively induce ROS generation based on the catalytic reaction on the surface of Pt nanoparticles triggered by electric field (E), and meanwhile it may catalyze intracellular H2O2 into ROS via Fenton reaction. In addition, Fe3+ ions released from Fe3O4@Pt NPs under the acidic condition in tumor cells consume GSH in a rapid fashion, inhibiting ROS clearance to enhance its antitumor efficacy. As a result, considerable in vitro and in vivo tumor inhibition phenomena are observed. This study has demonstrated an alternative concept of combinational therapeutic modality with superior efficacy.

Construction of Heptagon-Containing Molecular Nanocarbons.

Molecular nanocarbons containing heptagonal rings have attracted increasing interest due to their dynamic behavior, electronic properties, aromaticity, and solid-state packing. Heptagon incorporation can not only induce negative curvature within nanocarbon scaffolds, but also confer significantly altered properties through interaction with adjacent non-hexagonal rings. Despite the disclosure of several beautiful examples in recent years, synthetic strategies toward heptagon-embedded molecular nanocarbons remain relatively limited due to the intrinsic challenges of heptagon formation and incorporation into polyarene frameworks. In this Review, recent advances in solution-mediated and surface-assisted synthesis of heptagon-containing molecular nanocarbons, as well as the intriguing properties of these frameworks, will be discussed.

Construction of Heptagon‐Containing Molecular Nanocarbons

AbstractMolecular nanocarbons containing heptagonal rings have attracted increasing interest due to their dynamic behavior, electronic properties, aromaticity, and solid‐state packing. Heptagon incorporation can not only induce negative curvature within nanocarbon scaffolds, but also confer significantly altered properties through interaction with adjacent non‐hexagonal rings. Despite the disclosure of several beautiful examples in recent years, synthetic strategies toward heptagon‐embedded molecular nanocarbons remain relatively limited due to the intrinsic challenges of heptagon formation and incorporation into polyarene frameworks. In this Review, recent advances in solution‐mediated and surface‐assisted synthesis of heptagon‐containing molecular nanocarbons, as well as the intriguing properties of these frameworks, will be discussed.

Robust voice querying with MUVE

Recently proposed voice query interfaces translate voice input into SQL queries. Unreliable speech recognition on top of the intrinsic challenges of text-to-SQL translation makes it hard to reliably interpret user input. We present MUVE (Multiplots for Voice quEries), a system for robust voice querying. MUVE reduces the impact of ambiguous voice queries by filling the screen with multiplots, capturing results of phonetically similar queries. It maps voice input to a probability distribution over query candidates, executes a selected subset of queries, and visualizes their results in a multiplot. Our goal is to maximize probability to show the correct query result. Also, we want to optimize the visualization (e.g., by coloring a subset of likely results) in order to minimize expected time until users find the correct result. Via a user study, we validate a simple cost model estimating the latter overhead. The resulting optimization problem is NP-hard. We propose an exhaustive algorithm, based on integer programming, as well as a greedy heuristic. As shown in a corresponding user study, MUVE enables users to identify accurate results faster, compared to prior work.