Single Issue Research Articles

Precision neuromodulation: Promises and challenges of spinal stimulation for multi-modal rehabilitation.

Spinal cord injury results in multiple, simultaneous sensorimotor deficits. These include, but are not limited to, full or partial paralysis of muscles below the lesion, muscle spasms, spasticity, and neuropathic pain. Bowel, bladder, and sexual dysfunction are also prevalent. Yet, the majority of emerging spinal stimulation-based therapies focus on a single issue: locomotor rehabilitation. Despite the enormous potential of these translational advances to transform the lives of people living with spinal cord injury, meaningful recovery in other domains deemed critical priorities remains lacking. Here, we highlight the importance of considering the diverse patterns of neural transmission that underlie clinically similar presentations when developing spinal stimulation-based therapies. We also motivate advancement of multi-modal rehabilitation paradigms, which leverage the dense interconnectivity of sensorimotor spinal networks and the unique ability of electrical stimulation to modulate these networks to facilitate and guide simultaneous rehabilitation across domains.

ON THE SOCIAL POSITION OF SOCIO-POLITICAL VOCABULARY IN A JOURNALISTIC TEXT

The importance of studying socio-political vocabulary in the sociolinguistic aspect is explained by the fact that not a single serious issue can be considered without taking into account universal values. After all, culture is considered an integral part of the socio-political foundation, which includes traditions, national heritage, geographic and political factors, historically established social and ethnic structure, and religious beliefs. The main task of socio-political vocabulary in the formation of a journalistic text is a factor that provides public coverage of political culture, society, and the political process. They reflect models of political behavior, ideas, and systems of relations formed based on nationality, historically formed, and based on the experience of people, nations, and traditions

Improved Management of Issue Dependencies in Issue Trackers of Large Collaborative Projects

Issue trackers, such as Jira, have become the prevalent collaborative tools in software engineering for managing issues, such as requirements, development tasks, and software bugs. However, issue trackers inherently focus on the lifecycle of single issues, although issues have and express dependencies on other issues that constitute issue dependency networks in large complex collaborative projects. The objective of this study is to develop supportive solutions for the improved management of dependent issues in an issue tracker. This study follows the Design Science methodology, consisting of eliciting drawbacks and constructing and evaluating a solution and system. The study was carried out in the context of The Qt Company's Jira, which exemplifies an actively used, almost two-decade-old issue tracker with over 100,000 issues. The drawbacks capture how users operate with issue trackers to handle issue information in large, collaborative, and long-lived projects. The basis of the solution is to keep issues and dependencies as separate objects and automatically construct an issue graph. Dependency detections complement the issue graph by proposing missing dependencies, while consistency checks and diagnoses identify conflicting issue priorities and release assignments. Jira's plugin and service-based system architecture realize the functional and quality concerns of the system implementation. We show how to adopt the intelligent supporting techniques of an issue tracker in a complex use context and a large data-set. The solution considers an integrated and holistic system view, practical applicability and utility, and the practical characteristics of issue data, such as inherent incompleteness.

Editors Note: Important Topics in Applied Behavior Analysis as it Relates to Autism

The field of behavioral intervention as it relates to intervention for autistics/individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder1 (ASD) has grown exponentially. As with the growth of any field dedicated to the service of others, this growth has come with its successes and failures, its inspiration and trepidations. Undoubtably, the lives of many diagnosed with ASD and their families have been improved through the dissemination and accessibility of quality behavioral services based on the science of applied behavior analysis (ABA). There is also little doubt, and emerging evidence, that the challenges related to the rapid growth of the field have also resulted in harms as a result of the misapplication or malpractice of ABA-based services. Answers to how we may address concerns related to this rapid growth such as maltreatment, improved quality, and increased access to progressive methods are not easy and cannot be answered in a single manuscript or issue of a journal. The purpose of this issue, instead, is to continue and expand on discussions examining some recent important topics in behavioral intervention specifically as it relates to care available for autistics/individuals diagnosed with ASD.

Results from a survey of life cycle assessment-aligned socioenvironmental priorities in US and Australian communities hosting oil, natural gas, coal, and solar thermal energy production

Large energy infrastructure is often socially and environmentally disruptive, even as it provides services that people have come to depend on. Residents of areas affected by energy development often note both negative and positive impacts. This reflects the multicategory nature of socioenvironmental outcomes and emphasizes the importance of careful, community-oriented decision making about major infrastructural transitions for processes like decarbonization. Quantitative tools like life cycle assessment (LCA) seek to collect and report comprehensive impact data, but even when successful, their value for decision support is limited by a lack of mechanisms to systematically engage with values-driven tradeoffs across noncommensurable categories. Sensitivity analyses designed to help decision makers and interested parties make sense of data are common in LCA and similar tools, but values are rarely explicitly addressed. This lack of attention to values—arguably the most meaningful set of decision inputs in such tools—can lead to overreliance on single issue (e.g. climate change impact) or proxy (e.g. monetized cost) outputs that reduce the value of holistic evaluations. This research presents results from preregistered hypotheses for a survey of residents of energy-producing communities in the United States (US) and Australia, with the goal of with the goal of uncovering energy transition-relevant priorities by collecting empirical, quantitative data on people’s priorities for outcomes aligned with LCA. The survey was designed to identify diverse value systems, with the goal of making it easier for users to identify and consider value conflicts, potentially highlighting needs for further data collection, system redesign, or additional engagement. Notably, results reveal remarkably consistent priority patterns across communities and subgroups, suggesting that the common LCA practice of equal prioritization might be masking decision-relevant information. Although this effort was designed specifically to support research on energy transitions, future work could easily be extended more broadly.

Resource Allocation in Macrocell–Femtocells via Combined Rain and Whale Optimization Algorithm

Femtocell (FC) dense exploitation imposes a novel challenge for the resource allotment in a 2-tier network, like: (1) dynamic resources allotment among the 2 tiers by considering the off-load traffic from macrocell (MC), (2) permitting access to users when ensuring QoS for FC subscribers, and (3) suitable power setting, which discovers cooperation among the overall bandwidth allotted to FCs and system performances. This research work examines the problems existing on cross-tier interfering as well as resource allocation alleviation in “full-duplex (FD) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) oriented Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), which involves macrocell with underlying femtocells”. Here, three primary contributions are concerned: a single objective issue together with power allocation, price allocation & subcarrier allocation of MC-FC networks. In addition, this research establishes a new hybrid algorithm termed Hybrid Whale and Rain Optimization (HW-RO) for solving the optimization problem in MC-FC Networks. Finally, the superiority of the suggested technique is evaluated in comparison to various existing approaches.

Policy collision: a framework to identify where polycentric, multi-objective sustainability solutions are needed

The exploitation of ecosystem services, through processes like agricultural production, is associated with myriad negative environmental impacts, which are felt by stakeholders on local, regional, and global scales. The varying type and scale of impacts leads naturally to fragmented and siloed approaches to mitigating externalities by diverse governmental and non-governmental institutions. However, policies designed to address a single impact may worsen other negative impacts. As a result, even when groups have the expertise to design policy solutions in one dimension, policies addressing single issues may conflict and result in less than ideal outcomes in combination. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework and examples of this kind of ‘policy collision,’ where policies produce mutual negative interference so that policies designed independently may fail to achieve their goals. We argue that an integrated systems perspective is needed to overcome this problem and present several positive examples where this has been put into practice. Policy collision provides a useful framework for determining how each colliding policy should be modified in improve outcomes.

Class of 1923: looking back at the authors of JEB's first issue.

Journal of Experimental Biology was launched in 1923 as The British Journal of Experimental Biology, with a single issue being published in the October of that year. As we celebrate our centenary, we look back at that first issue and the zoologists publishing their work in the new journal, and draw comparisons to the JEB that we know today. Much has changed since the publication of the first issue of JEB, in the worlds of both science and publishing, and we eagerly anticipate the next 100 years of discovery.

Evaluating components of the active view of reading as intervention targets: Implications for social justice.

Inequality in reading outcomes is perhaps the single greatest social justice issue faced by school psychologists, and school psychologists need a better understanding of reading theory and its application to intervention to better combat the important issue. The present study examined the active view of reading (AVR; Duke & Cartwright, 2021), by computing effect sizes from 333 studies that were reported in 26 meta-analyses. Interventions that targeted word recognition (effect size = 0.44) and language comprehension (effect size = 0.62) had statistically significant effects for striving readers, and interventions that targeted active self-regulation (effect size = 0.46) and bridging processes (effect size = 0.70) had medium-to-large median effects on reading. We found (a) large effects of interventions for striving readers focused on text structure, verbal reasoning, and vocabulary; (b) moderate effects for fluency, language structure, motivation, and phonics; and (c) limited research included in meta-analyses for several components of the AVR, including cultural and other content knowledge. The components unique to the AVR added significant variance in reading. Analyses suggest there are many intervention targets available to school psychologists as they work toward social justice in reading outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How to Correctly Interpret Strange Data for Field Permeability (Slug) Tests in Monitoring Wells or between Packers

Abstract Falling-head and rising-head permeability tests have been carried out in monitoring wells, driven permeameters, and between packers for approximately one century. Recent tests are usually performed with a pressure transducer and an atmospheric pressure transducer, which should be synchronized, but this is rarely done. This article examines examples of strange test data for aquifers, due to field and human factors, and explains how to make an adequate interpretation. Many quality issues are listed, including poor decisions made by people who interpreted test data. Most often, a slug test has not a single quality issue but an assortment of interactive issues. Eight examples (1–8) are analyzed for (1) a too-small initial water column, (2) a shaky start when using compressed air, (3) inaccurate data for the water column height versus time, (4) variation in atmospheric pressure during the test, and (5–8) a few mixtures of listed issues with a poor estimate of the piezometric level for the test, which is ever-present. Clear plots illustrate each example. Explanations are given and listed on how to proceed to properly take into account quality issues for slug test data in aquifers. Clear rules are given to anyone who has to plan, perform, and interpret a slug test. Recommendations are made to improve a few standards and limit the risks of quality problems.

The economics of prepackaged bankruptcy

The economics of prepackaged bankruptcy

The Journal of Plastination: The Second Decade

At the 19th International Conference of the ISP in 2018, in Dalian, the history of the first ten years of The Journal of Plastination was presented, from the publication in 1987 of Volume 1, Issue 1 of what was then called ‘The Journal of the International Society of Plastination’, up until Volume 12 Issue 2 in 1997. In this article, those early years are summarized, before discussing the development of the journal and the leading figures involved with it over the following decade. The second decade culminated in the publication of the plastinators’ ‘bible’ in 2007, the eighty-page, single-issue Volume 22 “cookbook” which gave detailed instructions for plastination with all the available methods (Biodur, North Carolina, Dow/Corcoran, VisDocta, and Hoffen), for silicone (cold-temperature and room-temperature), epoxy, and polyester plastination. The Editor from 1987-2000 was Gilles Grondin; Bob Henry was Interim Editor for Volume 16 (2001), a single issue which was dedicated to the memory of Dr Harmon Bickley; Robert Reed Jr took over as Editor from 2002. During this decade, the journal continued to develop and thrive, with a glossy cover complete with a colored photograph, and improved print and image quality, including colored images, inside. The decade ended in spectacular style, with the front cover of Volume 22 (2007) bearing a striking photograph of Gunther von Hagens’ plastinated ‘Rearing Horse with Rider’.

Poverty Alleviation Programs for Selected Single Parent Households: A Case Study in Baling, Kedah

Poverty alleviation programs have been carried out in Malaysia for decades. However, poverty still exists in society and it seems to persist despite various efforts to alleviate it. The persistence of poverty among pockets of society is difficult to address. Intergenerational poverty is probably one of the reasons contributing to this scenario. Poverty is 'handed down' to the next generation and the cycle is hard to be broken. It is well documented in the literature that the incidence of poverty is more prevalent among single mother households whilst there is limited research on single father's issues. The methodology employed for this research is action research whereby an intervention will be introduced throughout the research period. The objective of this research is to develop specialized poverty alleviation programs for single parent households in Baling yet it is still in its preliminary stage. Hence, this paper provides descriptive information about the single parent respondents.

INTEGRATION OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES AND MACHINE LEARNING WITH DEEP ANALYSIS

The successful development of the digital economy, which we can observe since the advent of the internet, is closely related to progress in several "frontier technologies" (frontier technologies), among which the most important, according to the scientific community and international organizations, are such software-oriented technologies as blockchain, Big Data Analytics (Big Data), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud Computing (Cloud Computing), as well as specialized machine-oriented equipment: 3D printers, internet of Things devices (Internet of things Things, IoT), automation and robotics. Significant progress in the application of these technologies contributes to the growth of production capabilities, labor productivity, and capital return of both digital companies and enterprises of the non-digital economy while transforming their established business models and principles of generating income and expenses of companies. This makes it necessary to study the above technologies in detail from the point of view of analyzing their essence, role, and potential for use in various spheres of economic life. Although the term "blockchain" has recently entered scientific and public use, the idea of the technology appeared in the late 1980s, namely in 1989. Lamport proposed "a model for achieving consensus on results in a network of computers, where computers or the network itself can be unreliable". In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto proposed the concept of using a decentralized computer network to operate a P2P electronic money system. In the article "Bitcoin: a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" published on the internet, the innovator described the algorithm of functioning of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency as a completely independent electronic cash system from a single issue Center, which does not require the trust (mediation) of a third party, but relies on direct operations between the parties to the transaction, protected by cryptographic encryption.

Brexit, COVID-19 and climate change: mapping the impact of the ‘triple challenge’ on health and well-being in wales

ABSTRACT Brexit, COVID-19 and climate change pose challenges of national and global importance. They continue to have impacts across the economy, society, health, and the environment, all of which are determinants of health and well-being. Between 2018 and 2021, Public Health Wales undertook three Health Impact Assessments (HIA) in relation to the impact of the challenges in Wales. Based on these, work has been carried out to map the synergies across the ‘Triple Challenge’. This paper highlights the commonalities in the impact of the three challenges for Wales, discusses the process carried out, learns from it and proposes actions that can be taken to mitigate harm. Results indicate the three components of the Triple Challenge must not be viewed as separate silos as they have cumulative multi-faceted impacts. This affects some population groups more negatively than others and present a ‘Triple Challenge’ to nation states in the UK and Europe. A HIA approach can enable a range of stakeholders to critically view similar challenges not just as single issues but as a holistic whole to mobilise action.

Editorial: Politics is not a spectator sport: On the role of psycholinguists in a global crisis

Editorial: Politics is not a spectator sport: On the role of psycholinguists in a global crisis

"I agree with LGBT rights, but…": Authoritarianism and social dominance orientation underlying hypocritical attitudes of Taiwan society.

In the modern public sphere, ordinary people may display hypocrisy in political participation, showing contradictory attitudes across different social issues. But there still exists another type of hypocritical attitude within one single issue, such as agreeing with LGBT rights but refusing to amend the current Civil Code simultaneously in the case of Taiwan. In the same-sex marriage legalizing process, the hypocritical attitude could be observed in Taiwan's conservative campus, together with the explicitly prejudiced attitude. In this article, we explored the existence of the hypocritical attitude on this issue and discovered its psychological foundations. We conducted an online questionnaire survey in 2018 (N = 544) to measure Taiwanese participants' attitudes toward same-sex marriage and their psychological dispositions of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Our results showed that while attitudes toward LGBT rights and special-law were negatively correlated, several participants showed the hypocrisy of positive attitudes toward the two sets of questions simultaneously. The hypocritical people shared similar psychological dispositions with the explicitly prejudiced people as high in RWA and SDO while differentiated from the LGBT-friendly people. Attitudinal hypocrisy and explicit prejudice constitute two sides of the conservative camp in Taiwan, which is based on the Confucianism cultural value of interpersonal harmony. The cultural and societal implications were discussed.

Role of Private Law for Europe’s Digital Future

The digital transformation of the EU single market actualizes numerous issues regarding the regulation of private law relations in the digital market. The key issue is whether the digital transformation requires a complex reform of the existing rules brought by the European legislator to provide for individual rights in various private law relations in the offline market (e.g., consumer contracts, labor contracts, and contracts on the provision of services in individual economic sectors), and if that is the case, how this reform must be implemented. An answer to this question mostly depends on whether, by the existing legal instruments in the digital market, namely efficient protection and enforcement of fundamental rights, EU market freedoms and individual rights can be ensured in the same way they are protected in the offline market. This paper deals with the changes in the regulation of EU private law relations caused by the establishment of the Digital Single Market. The main aim is to consider the perspectives of the EU private law in the digital transition, and whether a different approach to the regulation of private law relations in the digital market is necessary.

Editorial preface

Journalistica's editor-in-chief, Eva Mayerhöffer, presents the 2022 issue and introduces the new, more continuous publication format, where incoming contributions are published online first and published in a single issue at the end of each year.

Look: How a Highly Influential Magazine Helped Define Mid-Twentieth Century America

Look: How a Highly Influential Magazine Helped Define Mid-Twentieth Century America