Speculative Extrapolation Research Articles

Emerging Potentials: Times and Climes of the Belt and Road Initiative in Cambodia and Beyond

Drawing on STS, anthropological, and geographical studies of infrastructure and extended forms of media theory, this paper examines events and processes unfolding around the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Cambodia as an ontological experiment. The initiate is elicited as a massively distributed arrangement for making futures the contours of which no one can foresee with much precision. After sketching some conflicting diagnoses of the BRI, I turn to its implementation in Cambodia. I move between two coastal towns, Kampot, where its impacts are still barely felt, and Sihanoukville, which has been greatly disrupted. These settings facilitate characterization of the BRI’s scale-making capacities as consequent upon fuzzy relations between the infrastructure core and heterogeneous companions and parasites attaching to the initiative in search of untapped potentials opening at the edges. These complex developments provide the backdrop for a more speculative extrapolation of an infrastructural strategy oriented to emerging potentials. Over time, I suggest in conclusion, this strategy of maturation is likely to have dramatic social, environmental and climatic implications in Cambodia and far beyond.

Epidemiology of Sepsis-3 in a sub-district of Beijing: secondary analysis of a population-based database.

Background:With the publication of Sepsis-3 definition, epidemiological data based on Sepsis-3 definition from middle-income countries including China are scarce, which prohibits understanding of the disease burden of this newly defined syndrome in these settings. The purpose of this study was to describe incidence and outcome of Sepsis-3 in Yuetan sub-district of Beijing and to estimate the incidence rate of Sepsis-3 in China.Methods:The medical records of all adult residents hospitalized from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2014 in Yuetan sub-district of Beijing were reviewed. Patients with sepsis-3 and severe sepsis/septic shock were identified. The incidence rates and mortality rate of sepsis-3 and sepsis/septic shock were calculated, incidence rates and in-hospital mortality rates were normalized to the population distribution in the 2010 National Census. Population incidence rate and case fatality rate between sexes were compared with the Z test, as the data conformed to Poisson distribution.Results:Of the 21,191 hospitalized patients, 935 patients were diagnosed with Sepsis-3, and 498 cases met severe sepsis/septic shock criteria. The crude annual incidence rate of Sepsis-3 in Yuetan sub-district was 363 cases per 100,000 population, corresponding to standardized incidence rates of 236 cases per 100,000 population per year, respectively. The overall case fatality rate of Sepsis-3 was 32.0%, the crude population mortality rates of Sepsis-3 was 116 cases per 100,000 population per year, the standardized mortality rate was 67 cases per 100,000 population per year, corresponding to a speculative extrapolation of 700,437 deaths in China. The incidence rate and mortality rate of Sepsis-3 were significantly higher in males, elderly people, and patients with more comorbidities. The 62.1% of patients with Sepsis-3 had community-acquired infections, compared with 75.3% of infected patients without Sepsis-3 (P < 0.001). The most common infection in patients with Sepsis-3 was lower respiratory tract infection. When compared with patients with Sepsis-3, patients diagnosed as severe sepsis/septic shock were more likely to have higher case fatality rate (53.4% vs. 32.0%, P < 0.001)Conclusions:This study found the standardized incidence rate of 236 cases per 100,000 person-year for Sepsis-3, which was more common in males and elderly population. This corresponded to about 2.5 million new cases of Sepsis-3 per year, resulting in more than 700,000 deaths in China.Clinical trial registration:NCT02285257, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT02285257.

Epidemiological comparison between the new and the old diagnostic criteria for sepsis: a retrospective cohort study based on the database of Beijing Public Health Information System

To describe and compare the epidemiology of Sepsis-1 and Sepsis-3 in Yuetan Subdistrict of Beijing, and to estimate the incidence of Sepsis-3 in China. A population-based cohort study was conducted. Through the database of Beijing Public Health Information System, the medical records of all adult residents hospitalized from July 1st, 2012 to June 30th, 2014 in Yuetan Subdistrict were reviewed. According to the clinical data of these patients, patients with Sepsis-1 and Sepsis-3 were enrolled in this analysis and the demographic characteristics of them were compared. Incidence and in-hospital mortality was calculated. Logistic regression method was used to analyze the risk factors of sepsis. Compared with non-septic patients with infections, patients with Sepsis-1 or Sepsis-3 were more likely to be male, older, had more comorbidities and lower body mass index (BMI), had more lower respiratory tract infections, more intra-abdominal infections and more blood flow infections, but had fewer urogenital tract infections, fewer upper respiratory tract infections, fewer gastrointestinal infections and fewer skin and soft tissue infections, and had pure prognosis with longer length of hospital stay [days, Sepsis-1 compared with non-Sepsis-1: 18 (10, 34) vs. 14 (9, 22), Sepsis-3 compared with non-Sepsis-3: 20 (11, 39) vs. 14 (9, 25)] and higher mortality [Sepsis-1 compared with non-Sepsis-1: 20.6% (353/1 716) vs. 2.5% (44/1 733), Sepsis-3 compared with non-Sepsis-3: 32.0% (299/935) vs. 3.9% (98/2 514), all P < 0.01]. Logistic regression analysis showed that male, elder (age ≥ 65 years old), low BMI, bed-rest state, and combined with cerebrovascular disease and hematological malignancies were risk factors for Sepsis-1 [all odds ratio (OR) > 1, all P < 0.05], while the male, elder (age ≥ 65 years old), low BMI, bed-rest state, and combined with cerebrovascular disease, rheumatic immune disease, malignant diseases of blood system and dementia were risk factors for Sepsis-3 (all OR > 1, all P < 0.05). Sepsis-3 was more common in males [OR = 1.19, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) was 1.01-1.40, P < 0.05] and elderly patients (age 65-84 years old: OR = 1.60, 95%CI was 1.28-1.99, P < 0.01; age ≥ 85 years old: OR = 1.76, 95%CI was 1.39-2.23, P < 0.01) as compared with Sepsis-1. After adjusted for gender and age, the standardized incidence of Sepsis-1 was 461 per 100 000 person-year, and that of Sepsis-3 was 236 per 100 000 person-year, with the standardized mortality of 79 per 100 000 person-year and 67 per 100 000 person-year, respectively, in Yuetan Subdistrict of Beijing. Corresponding to a speculative extrapolation of 4 856 532 new cases for Sepsis-1 and 2 487 949 new cases for Sepsis-3, there were 831 674 deaths and 700 437 deaths per year in China, respectively. Male, elder, more comorbidities and low BMI were risk factors for sepsis. The standardized incidence of Sepsis-3 in Yuetan Subdistrict of Beijing was 236 per 100 000 person-year, and speculated there were 2.5 million new cases of Sepsis-3 per year, resulting in more than 700 000 deaths in China. According to the diagnostic criterion of Sepsis-3, 2.36 million new cases per year were reduced, and the mortality was increased by 11.4%, as compared with the criterion of Sepsis-1.

Future History: Global Fantasies in Seventeenth-Century American and British Writings by Kristina Bross

Reviewed by: Future History: Global Fantasies in Seventeenth-Century American and British Writings by Kristina Bross Alison Searle (bio) Future History: Global Fantasies in Seventeenth-Century American and British Writings kristina bross New York: Oxford University Press, 2017 248 pp. Kristina Bross's wide-ranging analysis of seventeenth-century British and American writing is politically engaged, carefully researched, and methodologically innovative, even speculative, in the theoretical approaches it interrogates and adopts. As she notes in her preface, "the texts that are the focus of my analysis are the literature of an early moment of globalization that in many ways parallels our own, right down to debates about the legality of torture" (xi). Bross's "lens on the past" is deeply grounded by the "events of [her] own moment" (xi) and this intimately energizes and informs every aspect of her exploration of English archives and the technologies and fantasies that shaped globalization in the early modern period. Her preface briefly contextualizes the way such "presentist motivation" has impacted early American studies, noting both the dangers and affordances that deliberately incorporating a consciousness of the present into one's study of the past offers. By way of Roland Barthes's concepts of studium and punctum, Bross develops her concept of "the Archive": this "can masquerade as a repository of objective truth" because "archival materials are created by particular technologies that make them seem complete or even 'objective'" (xiii); it can immure the past and "shelter to forget" (xv). One of Bross's goals is to puncture the assumption that "people in earlier times" were isolated and conditioned only by local allegiances: her "rather idiosyncratic literary history … encodes the personal and discursive connections among early modern English writers and travellers" (xv) and analyzes how "in their works they navigated the changing political, economic, and … religious systems … that connected them from the West to the East Indies," though "such imaginative work is always contingent on its own contexts, even our own" (xv–xvi). Bross's study consists of a theoretical introduction followed by five discrete chapters that are each accompanied by a coda. Each chapter offers "a historicized analytical framework," while the codas explore Bross's research paths, "analyzing the archival scaffolding that makes early modern material available" (18) and facilitating "inscriptions of the global imaginary [End Page 591] that are hard to categorize or fit into a literary history and that depend heavily on critical speculation" (19). Chapter 1 examines a pamphlet debate about eschatological status during the 1650s and "demonstrates the way that East-West connections mattered even in works that had little direct concern with English experiences in America or Asia" (24). The global vision of these pamphlets is rooted in Christian prophetic understandings of the coming millennium: the first, A Brief Description of the Future History of Europe, from Anno 1650 to An. 1710 (London, 1650), which gives Bross her title; the second, William Lilly's Monarchy or No Monarchy in England (1651). The coda analyzes an annotated copy of Lilly's pamphlet held by Purdue University, and Bross examines the implications of its cataloguing as a work of economic history. She then seeks to interpret the marginal notes in this copy, suggesting that they "constitute a third voice in the debate and dialogue about millennialism initiated by Lilly and the author of Future History" (47). These form the basis for a speculative extrapolation: "I've named the voice in my head that speaks these words in the margins Elizabeth Wilcocks, though I readily admit that I've no evidence that she wrote any of them," but by imagining the marginal comments "as connected, they create a compelling dialogue that gets us out of the closed print conversation between Lilly and the author of Future History" (52). Chapter 2 demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary interrogation if one is properly to study "global currents of thought and belief" (53) by way of Thomas Gage's travel narrative The English-American His Travail by Sea and Land (1648). Bross categorizes Gage as both an early modern cosmopolitan and as an expert: someone who could "adapt and learn from the examples of rivals and predecessors" and offer the "specialized knowledge" necessary for the...

Cutting the cord from myelodysplastic syndromes: chronic myelomonocytic leukemia-specific biology and management strategies.

Chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) is a troublesome hematologic malignancy characterized by peripheral blood monocytosis, marrow dysplasia, cytopenias, frequent extramedullary involvement by clonal cells, and a propensity for progression to acute myeloid leukemia. Although previously considered a subtype of the myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), CMML is now recognized as a distinct entity with unique biologic and clinical features. This change has created a scientific and clinical research landscape that makes it difficult to discern CMML-specific validated conclusions versus speculative extrapolation from more general MDS data. Here, we review recent biologic observations that support the current CMML WHO classification, such as the high frequency of SRSF2 and ASXL1 mutations compared with MDS and critical dependence of CMML cells on granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor signaling. In addition, we discuss CMML-specific prognostic tools and therapeutic results of agents developed for MDS in patients with CMML. The present review focuses on evidence supporting CMML ontology and identifies key clinical differences in the management of CMML and that of MDS subtypes.

To hype, or not to(o) hype

Scientists and journalists try to engage the public with exciting stories, but who is guilty of overselling research and what are the consequences?

Towards Ultra-High Resolution Models of Climate and Weather

We present a speculative extrapolation of the performance aspects of an atmospheric general circulation model to ultra-high resolution and describe alternative technological paths to realize integration of such a model in the relatively near future. Due to a superlinear scaling of the computational burden dictated by stability criterion, the solution of the equations of motion dominate the calculation at ultra-high resolutions. From this extrapolation, it is estimated that a credible kilometer scale atmospheric model would require at least a sustained ten petaflop computer to provide scientifically useful climate simulations. Our design study portends an alternate strategy for practical power-efficient implementations of petaflop scale systems. Embedded processor technology could be exploited to tailor a custom machine designed to ultra-high climate model specifications at relatively affordable cost and power considerations. The major conceptual changes required by a kilometer scale climate model are certain to be difficult to implement. Although the hardware, software, and algorithms are all equally critical in conducting ultra-high climate resolution studies, it is likely that the necessary petaflop computing technology will be available in advance of a credible kilometer scale climate model

Praetorius's Cammerthon Pitch Standard

Neither of these approaches represents the normal way that scholarship is performed to generate knowledge. That is to collect evidence and then objectively to pick the generalisation (formally called theory, hypothesis or model, informally called picture, story or understanding) that most reasonably and fully explains that evidence. Brown's quote may express a confident feeling one may have at the onset of a research project, when it is appropriate as a working hypothesis, but in good scholarship, the theory must be adjusted to fit the evidence, while this statement could be interpreted to imply the reverse. Mendel's quote expresses the frustration of being the leading collector of evidence in the field, mourning having to give up the theory he was famous for because the evidence (i.e on organ pitches, especially that of Praetorius) was against it, and finding no other theory that explained the evidence to him as convincingly. And what he described as 'what is known' was 'knowledge' on the basis of popular belief rather than having been arrived at by the method of scholarship. He did not identify what he was referring to, but it seems obvious that it was the assumptions in the early-music field that baroque pitch was a semitone below modern pitch, and that Renaissance pitch was about a semitone above modern pitch. These conclusions originated as very speculative extrapolations from some pitch measurements of

Options for Screening for Colorectal Cancer in the Royal Air Force: A Cost-effectiveness Evaluation

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common form of malignancy, causing death after late presentation in two-thirds of cases. Early detection makes curative treatment likely. Faecal occult blood tests (FOBTs) detect some pre-symptomatic CRCs and their precursor lesions, adenomatous polyps. A trial showed reduced mortality in USA volunteers aged 50-80 with regular FOBTs; both this and the Nottingham population-based trial detected earlier-stage CRCs. Current US guidelines recommend annual digital rectal examination and FOBTs from age 40. FOBTs have been included in the USAF examination of aircrew for several years. Day-case colonoscopy, with appropriate biopsy-excision, is the first-choice follow-up investigation. This study aims to investigate the design of any programme to introduce FOBTs as part of the RAF's existing schedule of Periodic Medical Examinations (PMEs) and Screenings, and the age groups to be included, rather than the decision as to whether or not it should be commenced. The analysis therefore examines the cost per cancer detected. The information required to evaluate subsequent outcomes, such as cost per life-year saved, is not available for the RAF population so speculative extrapolation from other data is not attempted. Over a third of RAF personnel are under the age of 25, nearly three-quarters under 35 and over four-fifths under 40. Over a quarter of the 4 RAF CRC cases pa occur under age 40 and two-thirds under 50. The most cost-effective age at which to introduce FOBTs in the RAF is 40, regardless of the following parameters. Assuming FOBT sensitivity of 55% and positivity 5%, FOBT costing 23p and colonoscopy 175 pounds, starting FOBTs RAF-wide at age 40 would cost annually 35,968 pounds and 15,881 pounds per CRC case detected. The FOBT contribution to the costs is extremely small and the importance of maximising sensitivity and specificity very great. Hence dietary modification, and using a test or combination of tests with higher sensitivity and/or lower false-positivity, even if much more expensive, would be highly cost-effective, reducing the above costs substantially. Counting as "cases" persons with adenomas reduces the cost per "case" detected by about 75%. A pilot study is proposed concerning the introduction on selected stations of FOBTs with RAF PMEs/Screenings, from age 40, to determine: sensitivity and false-positivity rates for single and serial FOBTs, and the predictive value of positive tests, in RAF screenees; the annual cost; the costs per CRC case, and per CRC-plus-adenoma case, detected; possibly, an estimate of the cost per life-year saved; and, hence, whether the programme should be extended to all RAF personnel. FOB screening from age 40 would miss the quarter of RAF CRC cases which occur in personnel under 40. Identification is therefore recommended now of personnel at high risk for CRC, because of personal or family history, at all PMEs/Screenings, regardless of age, with the subsequent offer of serial FOBTs annually and regular colonoscopy. 2 1/2 yearly [corrected] FOBTs, done with PMEs/Screenings and half-way through the 5 year interval, would detect almost as many CRCs as annual testing, missing only half as many as 5-yearly testing. This analysis provides information on the costs and consequences of various FOB screening strategies for the RAF and other Services. Similar principles can be applied to develop informed strategies for other screening.

Speculations on a spatial memory for the Port Jackson shark (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) (Meyer) (Heterodontidae)

SCUBA observations show that Port Jackson sharks repeatedly visit specific resting sites on ocean reefs at South Bondi (New South Wales) and, when disturbed, move directly from one site to another. The sharks also use specific resting sites in Sydney Harbour and, when transferred by boat to different localities within the harbour, up to 3 km away, return to their original resting sites. The sharks migrate from as far south as Tasmania to Sydney Harbour to lay their eggs in specific sites. Speculative extrapolation from the above observations suggests that Port Jackson sharks must have a highly developed spatial memory.

Combustion Research for the 21st Century—Some Speculative Extrapolations

Combustion Research for the 21st Century—Some Speculative Extrapolations

The Development and Future of Home Banking

A brief review is provided as to the growth of home banking in the UK in general and in Scotland in particular. Some attention is paid to a comparison in the services provided by two leading home banking systems and a speculative extrapolation is made as to how developments in home banking may proceed into the future.

The Popular Concept of “Home” in Nineteenth-Century America

Professor Erik Erikson was more than justified in 1950 when he asserted that the work he produced on childhood and society was one concerning historicprocesses. He began by documenting certain childhood experiences which he took to be universal, and he continued by urging upon his readers speculative extrapolations that might be seen to apply to society as a whole. Erikson suggested that human beings progressed normally through a chronology of eight ages, the first of which, experienced by infants, involved a psychological dichotomy reflecting the infant's feelings of what he called “basic trust vs. basic mistrust” of the exterior world. Essentially, this early experience, as described by Erikson, was one of tension between a sense of cogency, continuity, and sustenance in the outside world, and an opposite sense that the outer world was unfaithful in its appearances and liable to aberrations in the expected order of things. This antithetical reality, he supposed, was replayed in the wider social institutions of adult life. Experiences of a positive cast, such as basic trust, were so elemental and psychologically crucial that they “bore a special relation to one of the basic elements of society,” and were, thus, re-lived by individuals through the vehicle of some contemporary institution. The past essential crisis, consequently, was eternally present, and historical developments in institutions, to a certain extent, were replays of elemental childhood experiences.

Practical problems in the modelling of chemical reactions in fixed bed reactors

Establishing a reaction rate model consists of the following steps: experimental design, evaluation of experimental results, choice of main components and main reaction steps, choice of a mathematical model for the test reactor and the rate equations and parameter identification. It will be shown that each of the above steps requires a number of decisions and assumptions which limit the general validity and extrapolability of the resulting model. In particular there is a strong interrelation of the rate equation and the underlying model of the reactor in which the kinetic experiments are performed. The restricted extrapolability requires discrimination between two different ways of using mathematical models. For design purposes, models are required which have the character of interpolations between experiments rather than that of extrapolations. In the second category models are used for speculative extrapolations to gain a better qualitative understanding of the complex interactions of transport and reaction. This in turn provides a base for decisions among rival options in chemical reaction engineering research and development. The purpose of this paper was to provide a critical review of the different steps that lead to the formulation of a reaction rate model. It was shown that each step forces a number of assumptions and decisions and this limits the general validity and extrapolability of the resulting rate model. In particular, the strong interrelations of the rate equation and the underlying reactor model are pointed out. This means that reliable simulation results can only be expected if the rate model has been determined in the same kind of reactor that is to be simulated and if the simulation results have the character of interpolations between the underlying experiments rather than extrapolations. However, even in ranges where the model results have the character of speculative extrapolations, modelling has proven an important tool in reaction engineering. Since the model results are quantified and fulfil at least the basic laws of heat and mass conservation, they can serve as guidelines for the complex interrelations of heat and mass transport and reaction in industrial reactors. It is with these guidelines at hand that decisions about alternative options for research and development in chemical reaction engineering can be put on a sound base.

Global Circulation of the Sun: Where are we and where are we going?

There are several goals I hope to reach in this talk. First, I would like to give this broad audience some idea of our present state of knowledge concerning global circulation of the sun—what the observations tell us (and don’t tell us!) as well as current theories. This will comprise a large part of my talk. In doing this, I hope I do not bore the specialists in this area. Second, I would like to put the problem of global circulation of the sun in the broader context of “solar variability”, a topic of rapidly growing interest in the solar community, that has implications for stars generally, and which may not have caught the attention of the stellar community. I would like also to put the solar circulation problem in the context of stellar rotation, by making a few admittedly speculative extrapolations to other stars. In addition, I will give a few of my own opinions about what we should be doing in the near future to make more progress in understanding the solar problem. And finally, I hope to provoke a wide ranging discussion of the whole area of circulation and variability in the sun and stars.

The effect of repeated Compton scatterings on the diffuse X-ray background

Recent Monte Carlo computations, based on a speculative extrapolation of the electron spectrum, suggested that repeated scatterings contribute most of the extragalactic X-ray background around 3 MeV in a Compton model. We have redone this calculation analytically with a similar electron spectrum, but with very different results. The double-scatter contribution near 3 MeV does not exceed 1 percent and cannot improve the fit to data. The effect is largest near 1 keV but will probably not be observable.