Conditions Of Stasis Research Articles

Motion planning in polyhedral products of groups and a Fadell-Husseini approach to topological complexity

We compute the topological complexity of a polyhedral product $\mathcal{Z}$ defined {in terms of} an $\operatorname{LS}$-logarithmic family of locally compact connected $\operatorname{CW}$ topological groups. The answer is given by a combinatorial formula that involves the $\operatorname{LS}$ category of the polyhedral-product factors. As a by-product, we show that the Iwase-Sakai conjecture holds true for $\mathcal{Z}$. The proof methodology {uses} a Fadell-Husseini viewpoint for the monoidal topological complexity $\big(\mathsf{TC}^M\big)$ of a space, which, under mild conditions, recovers Iwase-Sakai's original definition. In the Fadell-Husseini context, the stasis condition - $\mathsf{TC}^M$'s \emph{raison d'\^etre} - can be encoded at the covering level. Our Fadell-Husseini inspired definition provides an alternative to the $\mathsf{TC}^M$ variant given by Dranishnikov, as well as to the ones provided by Garc\'ia-Calcines, Carrasquel-Vera and Vandembroucq in terms of relative category.

Ultrasonographic appearance and possible clinical relevance of hyperechoic foci of mineralization in the canine intrahepatic biliary tree

Background: The evidence of mineralizations in the canine liver is usually considered an incidental finding of unclear clinical significance, frequently observed in small size old dogs. Aim: To describe the ultrasound features of intrahepatic biliary tree foci of mineralization, to assess their clinical relevance and their possible relationship with other gastrointestinal pathological disorders. Methods: A retrospective analysis evaluating the database of canine patients admitted to two referral veterinary centers we carried out. All dogs under study underwent an abdominal ultrasound examination in which intrahepatic biliary tree mineralization was found. Clinical and anamnestic data of the included dogs were reviewed. Results: Approximatively 90% of the patients showed ultrasonographic abnormalities regarding the biliary system, and over 85% presented ultrasonographic abnormalities of the hepatic parenchyma. In 81.2% of dogs, ultrasonographic anomalies in the digestive tract were observed. In approximately the half of our patients, we evidenced increased liver enzymes (ALP, ALT and GGT). At clinical evaluation, 84.4% (23 out of 32 dogs) of patients showed signs of gastrointestinal disease that persisted for over three months. Conclusion: The presence of intrahepatic biliary tree mineralizations is an unusual and frequently incidental finding that could be related to a bile stasis condition, a chronic inflammatory disease involving the biliary system and the hepatic parenchyma, and it could be associated to a liver-gut axis alteration.

Abstract 10433: Inhibition of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor Type 1 in Experimental Venous Thrombosis

Introduction: Conventional treatment of deep vein thrombosis is suboptimal, requiring continuous improvement in knowledge about the disease and a search for new therapeutic approaches. Hypothesis: Blood flow affects the composition of an acute venous thrombus (VT). Aim 1: Compare VT composition under flow and stasis conditions. Aim 2: Evaluate the antithrombotic properties of the novel PAI-1 inhibitor MDI-2268 in-vivo. Methods: C57BL/6 mice, 10-12w, 20-25g were used in electrolytic (EIM) and ligation (LM) models of venous thrombosis. Aim 1: The thrombus weight (TW) and the microstructure of an acute VT (Day 2) in the EIM (n=5) and the LM (n=5) were compared. Expression of PAI-1, tPA, and uPA in the vein wall and plasma levels of D-dimer were investigated. Aim 2: Five EIM groups (n=5) were studied: MDI-2268 1.5 mg/kg (Group 1), MDI-2268 3 mg/kg (Group 2), enoxaparin 7.3 mg/kg (Group 3), MDI-2268 3 mg/kg plus enoxaparin 1.8 mg/kg (Group 4), and DMSO controls (Group 5). TW and bleeding time (BT) on Day 2 were measured. Results: Aim 1: VT within the EIM was smaller compared to the LM (6.2.5±3.6 vs. 26.2±3.6, P<0.05). VT formed within the EIM had a significantly higher amount of plasminogen. The level of D-dimer was 23.4±12.5 and 4.5±1.3 ng/mL/mg in the EIM and LM, respectively (p<0.05). Aim 2: TW was 6.9±3.3 (p>.05), 5.5±1.6 (p=.035), 3.8±1.3 (p=.005), and 4.8±2.4 mg (p=.035) for groups 1,2,3, and 4; compared to 12.7±5.7 mg in the controls. BT was not affected by the MDI-2268. Conclusions: Blood flow pattern significantly affects VT composition. Non-occlusive thrombus has a higher potential to be targeted by the fibrinolytic system due to a higher plasminogen content. MDI-2268 demonstrates strong antithrombotic properties in-vivo and may be associated with a lower risk of bleeding compared to enoxaparin. This data may contribute to a better understanding of the disease process, different outcomes after venous thrombosis, and new therapeutic targets.

Utility of routine laboratory tests in the assessment of chronic venous disease progression in female patients.

Chronic venous disease (CVD) is a frequently encountered disease that progresses with age. Although the principal method of evaluation and diagnosis is Doppler ultrasound, routine laboratory tests may be an easier and more accessible way to evaluate CVD progression. The present retrospective study evaluated the laboratory results of 256 patients diagnosed with CVD. According to the Clinical, Etiological, Anatomical and Pathophysiological classification, depending on the CVD stage, patients were stratified into three groups: Group 1 (C2-C3; mild disease), Group 2 (C4; moderate to severe disease) and Group 3 (C5-C6; severe disease). The considered parameters were age, red blood cell count (RBC), white blood cell count (WBC) and platelet count (PLT), percentage of neutrophils and lymphocytes, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, prothrombin time (in percentages and seconds), internal normalized ratio, activated partial thromboplastin time, creatine kinase (CK), CK myocardial band, alanine transaminase, aspartate transaminase, total bilirubin and urea. No significant differences among the groups were noted in RBC, WBC, PLT and coagulation factors; on the other hand, inflammatory markers exhibited differences among the groups. Several differences were observed in hepatic, metabolic and muscle tissue markers. Intraluminal thrombus formation in the case of varicose veins (thrombophlebitis) may be due to conditions of turbulent flow, stasis and endothelial inflammation, rather than hypercoagulability. The results of the present study confirmed the implication of inflammatory factors in pathophysiological modifications, including thickening of venous walls and valvular modification, as well as the appearance of intraluminal thrombi and trophic lesions. NLR, ESR, CRP and fibrinogen were increased with CVD progression and may be considered useful markers in evaluating CVD progression. Simple blood tests may provide phlebologists with additional insight for the management of those patients.

BuyangHuanwu Decoction attenuates cerebral vasospasm caused by subarachnoid hemorrhage in rats via PI3K/AKT/eNOS axis.

The ancient Chinese remedy BuyangHuanwu Decoction (BHD) is used to treat qi deficit and blood stasis conditions. This work investigated the effect of BHD on cerebral vasospasm (CVS) caused by subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Rats were randomly assigned into four groups: control group, SAH group, SAH + BHD [13 g/(kg day)] group, and SAH + BHD [26 g/(kg day)] group. The Garcia neurological scoring scale was used to assess neurological dysfunction. Hematoxylin and eosin stains were used to determine the extent of vasospasm by measuring the diameter of the basilar artery. Western blot was used to measure the concentrations of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K), AKT, and phospho-AKT expression levels. RT-PCR was used to determine PI3K and AKT RNA expressions. Immunohistochemistry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay were used to measure levels of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and nitric oxide (NO), respectively, in cerebrospinal fluid. BHD treatment ameliorated CVS and mitigated neurological dysfunction after SAH. Furthermore, the findings suggest that NO concentration was increased through the activation of classical PI3K/AKT signaling and the eNOS pathway. Thus, BHD showed multifaceted roles in preventing damage via decreasing vasospasm and improving neurological impairments caused by CVS after SAH.

Quantifying the non-Newtonian effects of pulsatile hemodynamics in tubes

• A new hemorheological constitutive TEVP model able to reproduce experimental data. • Pulsating hemodynamic conditions are studied. • At high pressure-gradient, RBC aggregation primarily affects hysteresis phenomena. • The streamwise normal stress is the dominant stress component. • Inelastic models underestimate the kinematic phase-lag compared to the TEVP model. We investigate in silico the pulsatile blood flow in straight, rigid tubes using an elasto-viscoplastic, constitutive model coupled with thixotropy (TEVP) (Varchanis et al., 2019; Giannokostas et al., 2020). In addition to blood viscoelasticity, our model accounts for RBC aggregation through a kinetic equation that describes the level of blood structure at any instance and the viscoplasticity at stasis conditions. We evaluate the model parameters using steady, simple shear, and transient multi-shear rheometric experiments for human physiological subjects with normal blood aggregation. Then, we accurately reproduce previous experimental results (Thurston, 1975; Bugliarello and Sevilla, 1970; Thurston, 1976; Womersley, 1955) and provide reliable predictions for the pressure, stress, and velocity fields. We also investigate blood flow under sinusoidal and experimentally determined waveforms of the pressure-gradient with different frequencies, amplitudes, and patterns, providing a thorough parametric study. We find that the streamwise normal stress is of considerable magnitude. This stress component stretches the RBCs and their aggregates in the flow direction. Commonly used inelastic hemorheological models (e.g., Casson and Newtonian) cannot predict this. Typical values of the time-averaged wall normal-stress are found in the range of 2 Pa − 30 Pa , which are an order of magnitude larger than the corresponding wall shear-stress for the same hemodynamic conditions. The inelastic models systematically underestimate the shear-stress and overestimate the mean velocity. Finally, the TEVP model accurately predicts the phase-lags between the pressure-gradient and the flow-rate, and between the pressure-gradient and the structure-parameter for the whole range of the frequencies expressed in terms of the Womersley number, indicating its physical completeness and robustness.

Carbide-Free Bainite Transformations Above and Below Martensite Start Temperature Investigated by In-Situ High-Energy X-Ray Diffraction

Carbide-free bainitic advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) exhibits multiphase microstructures made of fine ferrite and retained austenite. The carbon partitions between these constituting phases during the bainitic transformation were studied above and below the martensite start temperature (MS) by in-situ high-energy X-ray diffraction experiments. The time-resolved analysis of the phase fraction, austenite lattice parameter, and ferrite tetragonality offer the possibility of establishing phase-scaled consistent and precise carbon balances. In the studied steel, the carbon content in ferrite ranges between 0.1 and 0.15 wt.% after isothermal treatments, meaning that the available carbon for austenite stabilization is reduced. The stasis conditions are close to the T0′ criterion below 400°C but are not reached at higher temperatures. Our multi-step experiments also prove that the transformation below MS is very sensitive to the carbon content in austenite and auto-catalytic nucleation processes inherited from prior transformations (martensite and bainite at higher temperature). The bainitic transformation thus does not follow additivity rules.

Disrupting Infrastructures of Colonial Hydro-Modernity: Lepcha and Dakelh Struggles against Temporal and Territorial Displacements

To be Indigenous within the modern nation-state is to live with a profound sense of territorial and temporal displacement. Colonial legal regimes situate indigeneity as a condition of temporal stasis, perpetuating the logic of territorial dispossession and erasure. Drawing on research in India and Canada, we focus on Indigenous experiences to theorize the relationship between colonial legal regimes, territory, temporality, and infrastructure. In the Indigenous territories of the Lepchas in the Indian Himalaya and the Dakelh in British Columbia, Canada, hydropower infrastructure effected displacements of Indigenous space-times and sovereignty. Although Indigenous peoples continue to assert legal claims challenging these massive infrastructural projects, colonial legal regimes normalize the often violent imposition of the space-times of state and capitalist development. The Dakelh have challenged the enduring impacts of a 1950s river diversion project; however, Canadian courts legitimized historic displacements, delimiting constitutional protections to current existing Dakelh rights. For the Lepchas, a recent infrastructural boom in the Indian Himalaya is threatening special constitutional provisions upholding tribal customary laws, raising concern among younger Lepchas over the future of their ancestral lands. Despite these threats, we demonstrate how Lepcha and Dakelh relations to time and territory exceed colonial containments. They call into question how the colonial present normalizes historic and ongoing displacements and demand responsibility for the past to craft alternative futures.

Innovative and m ission‐oriented financing of renewable energy in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A review and conceptual framework

AbstractNotwithstanding the high levels of renewable energy resources across Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA), modern energy use based on these abundant natural resources remains negligible. Furthermore, the current electrification rates and reliability of available power supply in the region have consistently remained significantly lower than the global average over the last three decades. And of the reasons advanced for this state of affairs, the lack of appropriate financing is said to be a crucial one. Therefore, focusing on a comparative overview of the dominant approaches to financing electrification, we characterize the persistence of this regional gap as a reflection of relative “policy stasis.” We then problematize this condition of stasis by employing the theoretical perspectives of mission‐oriented finance in conjunction with those of innovative finance and renewable energy innovation. In addition, we review relevant peer‐reviewed articles over the same period, and find evidence that indicates an underappreciation of financing models that stimulate endogenous technological innovation in renewable energy in SSA. Our analysis suggests that the types of innovation, associated configurations of financial actors, levels of capital intensity, and perceived risks in relation to beneficiaries, diverge from those accounted for in the dominant financing models. Consequently, we propose a novel, historically path‐dependent conceptual framework that emerges from the intersection among the concepts of mission‐oriented finance, endogenous innovation, and innovative financing, which we term “endogenous innovative financing.” This framework ultimately guides our recommendations for more promising financing mechanisms for resolving the interwoven challenges of sustainable universal electrification and renewable energy innovation in SSA.This article is categorized under: Energy Research & Innovation > Economics and Policy Energy and Development > Economics and Policy Energy and Climate > Economics and Policy

Current trends in blood coagulation studies

Blood coagulation occurs in flow or stasis conditions, it involves components of cell hemostasis and enzymatic cascades of reactions; it serves to stop bleeding yet it can lead to life-threatening blood thrombi. Despite the fact that a complete list of coagulation proteins was well known for decades, in recent years numerous facts has accumulated about its structure and regulation. All that has led to the creation of new methods for diagnosing of blood coagulation disorders and methods for their correction. Congenital and acquired coagulation disorders are still an acute clinical problem. This review shows modern ideas about the structure and functioning of the blood coagulation system in various conditions.

Existential Kinetics of Movement and Stasis

This article attempts to theorise people’s balancing acts between conditions of movement and stasis. Drawing on a radical empirical reading of one critical moment that occurred while conducting ethnographic research among Eritrean unaccompanied minors living in a Swiss educational institution, it thinks through what happens when this equilibrium is thrown out of whack and life’s flow is suddenly experienced as a standstill. By focusing on the experiences of one young man, it explores the importance of education as a vectorial metaphor for moving forward in one’s life. Zooming in on one critical moment in Abel’s life, it sheds light on what happens when hopes of ‘movement-through-education’ clash with the reality of a restrictive asylum system that curtails young refugees’ hopes for forward movement. By showing the dialectical ways mobility and immobility enter into and envelop each other, the article highlights how an existentially oriented ethnography can be utilised as an avenue for theorising migrant im/mobilities.

Vibration motor-integrated low-cost, miniaturized system for rapid quantification of red blood cell aggregation.

Human red blood cells (RBCs) aggregate under low shear conditions, which significantly modulates flow resistance and tissue perfusion. A higher aggregation tendency in blood thus serves as an important clinical indicator for the screening of cardiovascular disorders. Conventional ways of measuring RBC aggregation still require large sample volumes, cumbersome manual procedures, and expensive benchtop systems. These inconvenient and high-cost measurement methods hamper their clinical applicability. Here, we propose a low-cost, miniaturized system to overcome the limitations of these methods. Our system utilizes a coin vibration motor (CVM) to generate a localized vortex for disaggregating RBCs in a disposable fluidic chip. The design of the chip was optimized with fluid dynamics simulations to ensure sufficient shear flow in the localized vortex for RBC disaggregation. The time-dependent increase in light transmittance from an LED light source through the plasma gap while the RBCs re-aggregate is captured with a CMOS camera under stasis conditions to quantify the level of RBC aggregation. Our CVM-based aggregometer was validated against a commercial benchtop system for human blood samples under physiological and pathological conditions, and showed an excellent performance with a high intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.995. In addition, we were able to achieve a rapid measurement (<4 min) with the CVM-based aggregometer, requiring only a 6 μl blood sample. These illustrate the potential of our CVM-based aggregometer for low-cost point-of-care diagnostics without compromising the measurement sensitivity.

Tuning the Thromboinflammatory Response to Venous Flow Interruption by the Ectonucleotidase CD39.

Objective- Leukocyte flux contributes to thrombus formation in deep veins under pathological conditions, but mechanisms that inhibit venous thrombosis are incompletely understood. Ectonucleotide di(tri)phosphohydrolase 1 ( ENTPD1 or Cd39), an ectoenzyme that catabolizes extracellular adenine nucleotides, is embedded on the surface of endothelial cells and leukocytes. We hypothesized that under venous stasis conditions, CD39 regulates inflammation at the vein:blood interface in a murine model of deep vein thrombosis. Approach and Results- CD39-null mice developed significantly larger venous thrombi under venous stasis, with more leukocyte recruitment compared with wild-type mice. Gene expression profiling of wild-type and Cd39-null mice revealed 76 differentially expressed inflammatory genes that were significantly upregulated in Cd39-deleted mice after venous thrombosis, and validation experiments confirmed high expression of several key inflammatory mediators. P-selectin, known to have proximal involvement in venous inflammatory and thrombotic events, was upregulated in Cd39-null mice. Inferior vena caval ligation resulted in thrombosis and a corresponding increase in both P-selectin and VWF (von Willebrand Factor) levels which were strikingly higher in mice lacking the Cd39 gene. These mice also manifest an increase in circulating platelet-leukocyte heteroaggregates suggesting heterotypic crosstalk between coagulation and inflammatory systems, which is amplified in the absence of CD39. Conclusions- These data suggest that CD39 mitigates the venous thromboinflammatory response to flow interruption.

“A Home on the Island”: Interbody Performance as a Method to Move beyond Resentment

“A Home on the Island”: Interbody Performance as a Method to Move beyond Resentment Peilin Liang (bio) Introduction: “A Home on the Island,” Parts 1–2 Home is a condition of stasis emerging from the global circulation of bodies. Focusing on the inter-Asian context of East Asia and Southeast Asia, “A Home on the Island,” parts 1–2 is a multisite practice as research (PaR) project that examines the formation of home through commercialized transnational-marriage migration. Part 1, “A Home on the Island: Bodies, Objects, and Narratives,” was conducted on June 28, 2015 as a one-day applied-theatre workshop at National University of Singapore (NUS). Through Boal-inspired theatre games, exercises, image theatre, and scene improvisation, workshop participants explored the notion of home and its formation in relation to migration and globalization. Part 2, “A Home on the Island: The Seal Wife,” was a three-day applied-theatre workshop conducted in Taipei the following year, on October 20–22, 2016. Foregrounding the experience of commercialized transnational-marriage migration, the second workshop examined the structure and internal dynamics of homes created by such migration. During the first two days, this was implemented in the form of process drama through the narrative structure of the seal wife legend. On the third day, playback theatre was implemented to facilitate self-reflections on the workshop process.1 In its totality, this project used performance to intervene in participants’ understandings of family, sociality, and economic exchange.2 This essay utilizes the PaR project to propose interbody performance, an affect-oriented and body-centered performative process, as a method of generating affective shifts that propel an intercultural relationship beyond resentment. “A Home on the Island” accomplishes this goal by engaging ASEAN marriage migrants with socioculturally privileged participants from Taiwan and Singapore in a workshop setting. Through performative collaborations, the participants compared and interwove diverse affects toward home and migration through disruption, disembodiment, dynamization, and distillation. These affects included perceptions, attitudes, feelings, and sentiments, which were qualitatively documented and measured through objects, maps, improvised scenes, workshop artifacts, audio-visual recordings, follow-up questions, and post-workshop written reflections. As an increasingly multifaceted and multisensorial knowledge about ASEAN marriage migrants emerged, the nonmigrant participants began to adopt affective shifts that question the necessity of resentment. Commercialized Transnational Marriage as Migratory Routes Since the 1980s, commercialized transnational-marriage migration numbers have soared. Many women from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, have chosen marriage as a means of migrating to newly emergent Asian financial centers.3 Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore are among [End Page 27] the popular destinations (Bélanger et al.; Burgess; Chuang et al.; Im et al.; H.-S. Kim; M. Kim; Shu et al.; Tang and Wang; Yeoh et al. 2013a, 2013b). The rise of such marriage migration in Taiwan correlates with the island’s increasing trade relations with ASEAN and its rising status as a financial sub-empire within the global capitalist economy. Currently, there are an estimated 400,000 marriage migrants in Taiwan, with 31.3 percent originating from ASEAN (Neizhengbu Tongjichu). The directional flow of marriage migration reflects the uneven geopolitical and economic terrains of Asia, which, like other regions, has been reconfigured by the global capitalist economy into core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral states (Hsia 2004, 191). Within this context, commercialized transnational-marriage migration functions as a coping mechanism for the subaltern class; it allows blue-collar working males in core and semi-peripheral states to find wives and continue the family lineage. On the other hand, it provides women from semi-peripheral and peripheral states the prospect of upward social mobility and improved living conditions (Hsia 2000, 58–59; 2004, 199). In a commercialized transnational marriage, the processes of marriage, migration, and motherhood are pragmatically compressed into an extremely short time span for economic reasons. Subsequently, such a union is often perceived and experienced as a transaction, leading to the commodification of marriage migrants’ bodies (Shu et al. 3). By the patriarchal values of both home and host countries, ASEAN marriage migrants are frequently regarded as servant–wife conglomerates, who are purchased/wedded to perform...

(Im)Mobility and the emotional lives of expat spouses

Discourses circulating among various social fields where so-called expats meet (e.g., blogs, social networks, associations), tend to portray the experience of mobility by defining how people on-the-move are expected to feel. Moving to a new place is portrayed as an “exciting” yet difficult experience, and a set of solutions based on feeling and display rules to handle the challenges of mobility are provided. Based upon ongoing qualitative research in Switzerland, the paper explores how these discourses unfold in the subjective experience of professionals’ partners, when migratory experiences are enmeshed with conditions of work stasis, social immobility and related distress. It focuses on the way two women narrate their feelings about (im)mobility while engaging and disengaging in “emotion work”. Considering the tensions and proximity between how the emotional impact of mobility is publicly portrayed and how it is described at the individual level can shed light on the mutual relationship between prevailing normative frameworks, and the more personal experience, understanding and display of emotions.

210Pb-226Ra disequilibria in young gas-laden magmas

We present new 238U-230Th-226Ra-210Pb and supporting data for young lavas from southwest Pacific island arcs, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland, and Terceira, Azores. The arc lavas have significant 238U and 226Ra excesses, whereas those from the ocean islands have moderate 230Th and 226Ra excesses, reflecting mantle melting in the presence of a water-rich fluid in the former and mantle melting by decompression in the latter. Differentiation to erupted compositions in both settings appears to have taken no longer than a few millennia. Variations in the (210Pb/226Ra)0 values in all settings largely result from degassing processes rather than mineral-melt partitioning. Like most other ocean island basalts, the Terceira basalt has a 210Pb deficit, which we attribute to ~8.5 years of steady 222Rn loss to a CO2-rich volatile phase while it traversed the crust. Lavas erupted from water-laden magma systems, including those investigated here, commonly have near equilibrium (210Pb/226Ra)0 values. Maintaining these equilibrium values requires minimal persistent loss or accumulation of 222Rn in a gas phase. We infer that degassing during decompression of water-saturated magmas either causes these magmas to crystallize and stall in reservoirs where they reside under conditions of near stasis, or to quickly rise towards the surface and erupt.

Diagnostic Values of the Measurement of Fungiform Papillae in Patients with Burning Mouth Syndrome

Objectives This study evaluated the diagnostic values of measuring the number of fungiform papillae in patients with burning mouth syndrome (BMS). Methods Seventy participants (35 BMS patients and 35 Healthy control) participated in this study. The number of fungiform papillae (FP) was measured on the anterior part of the tongue within an area of 9 mm2 using a digital camera. The subjects were evaluated on their yin deficiency and blood stasis conditions using the Yin-Deficiency Questionnaire (YDQ) and Blood Stasis Questionnaire (BSQ). Moreover, the severities of subjective tongue pain in the BMS patients were assessed using Visual Analog Scale. Results There were significant differences in the number of FP and the YDQ and BSQ scores between the two groups. The number of FP and the YDQ scores in the BMS group showed statistically significant correlations with the VAS score of tongue pain. In the bivariate logistic regression analysis, the factor that most strongly contributed to BMS was the number of FP. The optimal cut-off value of the number of fungiform papillae was calculated as 5.5 with 71.4% sensitivity and 82.9% specificity. There was no statistically significant correlation between the number of FP and the YDQ or BSQ score. Conclusions According to these findings, measuring the number of FP could be a valuable evaluation indicator of BMS. Keywords: burning mouth syndrome, fungiform papillae, Yin-deficiency

Between history and apocalypse: Stumbling

Apartheid rested on a division of the senses as much as it did on a reductive politics of racial subjection and its accompanying violence. As an instance of the division of the senses, it produced a condition of stasis in which history and a post-apartheid future were increasingly marked by a politico-religious discourse of apocalypse, and a moral claim formed around family melodrama. In seeking to escape this nightmare, I ask whether we may discover in the dream of the post-apartheid a concept of stasis that does not amount to a dead end. Instead, we might return to a formulation of stasis that for the ancient Greeks approximates something akin to movement at rest. Drawing on the resources of cinema, jazz, soundtrack and memory, I argue that apartheid’s exteriorization of technology proved disastrous both for the critique of apartheid and for elaborating a concept of the post-apartheid. Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy. It is not useful for harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful. Its only use is the exposure of all forms of baseness of thought. (Deleuze, 1983: 106).

Intrasplenic Transplanted Adult Rat Isolated Hepatocyte Fraction But Not Cholangiocytes Forms Bile Canaliculi

BackgroundHepatocyte transplantation (HT) has been performed in patients with liver-based metabolic disease and acute liver failure as a potential alternative to liver transplantation in countries in which ethical regulations do not allow organ transplantation. One of the problems remains that substances normally secreted by the surviving hepatocytes to bile cannot be removed because of lack of bile canaliculi. We found that ligation of the recipient's common bile duct in hepatocyte transplantation recipients is followed by formation of bile canaliculi. The question arose as to whether the signal released from the obstructed bile vasculature activated the transplanted hepatocytes (HC) or cholangiocyte (CH) to form bile canaliculi. MethodsWe transplanted separately isolated autologous HC and CH to spleens and observed the structural organization of the grafted cells. ResultsHC formed glycogen-rich clusters but not cords usually not attached to the CH of the new bile canaliculi. Separate clusters of bile canaliculi with keratin 7 and 19–positive and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase–positive cells were observed. Transplanted CH remained keratin 7 and 19–positive and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase positive but did not form canaliculi. ConclusionsThe transplanted HC fraction may contain hepatic progenitor cells for cholangiocytes, but they become activated only under the condition of bile stasis by an as-yet undefined factor.

Relationship between fundamental and realized ecological niches

Since species are formed in course of evolutionary process, their ecological niches are formed in the evolutionary process, too. Species exist in a state of evolutionary stasis diring hundreds of thousands and millions years. Stasis in sustained mainly by counterbalance of vectors of directional selection. Niche can be viewed as a multidimensional structure. Multitude of environmental factors acts upon every population, which cause elimination and, by that, selection for adaptation to each eliminating factor. Different directions of these vectors of selection lead to their counteractions; selection in one direction is interfered by selection in an opposite direction. The counterbalance of vectors of selection interferes with progressive evolution thus supporting stasis. During species existence in a stasis condition it endures a whole set of various deterioration of environment. Such deteriorations lead to imbalance of selective processes. Unbalanced vectors of selection form adaptations to extreme conditions of existence. Such adaptations are superfluous as for usual conditions; but they define fitness borders and, by that, borders of a fundamental niche. Realized niche, as well as fundamental one, is a multidimensional structure. Each population occupies a subniche of the specific realized niche. Thus, it occupies habitats where conditions are as close to an ecological optimum as can be admitted by the conditions in the given part of the areal. The sum of all subniches of populations--the specific realized niche--coincides with a part of fundamental niche because only the part of adaptive possibilities of a species sufficient for existence in the given environment is used. Interspecific competition, even when it is capable to restrict consumption of limiting resources, is not the reason of the realized niche limitation. Restriction of one or two of niche parameters does not influece all others parameters of its multidimensional space.