Decadal Time Research Articles

Vitiligo: Targeted Therapies Add Color to Disease Pathophysiology

There is excitement in the air for patients with vitiligo. For the first time in decades, we have early case studies showing that targeted therapies can repigment vitiliginous skin, and well-powered clinical trials are underway. However, at the time of this writing, there is no Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for vitiligo. In a randomized clinical trial by Khemis etal. report negative results on a randomized clinical trial testing the combination of apremilast, a phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor, and narrowband-ultraviolet B versus placebo and narrowband-ultraviolet B in patients with nonsegmental vitiligo. The results of this trial are a reminder that clinical management of vitiligo is challenging at best, even when combining anti-inflammatory and/or immunomodulating agents with repigmenting agents. However, these negative trials are critical in improving our understanding of this complex and disfiguring disease.

COVID-19 and biodiversity: The paradox of cleaner rivers and elevated extinction risk to iconic fish species.

Notwithstanding the human suffering caused by COVID-19, the response (e.g. shelter-in-place orders) has yielded some tangible environmental benefits such as substantial improvements in air and water quality (Corlett et al., 2020). In India, this has manifested as heavily polluted rivers now running clear for the first time in decades with, for example, reports suggesting that the quality of the River Ganges has improved sufficiently to support safe bathing. Hidden beneath these brighter stories however, COVID-19 is also intensifying pressure on India's aquatic wildlife. In an already poverty-stricken country, an additional ~12 million are predicted to face extreme poverty as a result of COVID-19 (World Bank, 2020). Lacking social security, 90% of India's workforce are entirely dependent on daily wages, and are heavily reliant on food supply chains (Reardon et al., 2019) that have been severely disrupted across rural India. With fish (farmed as well as marine-sourced) and meat forming a primary source of protein for many, its sudden unavailability has resulted in local communities exploiting wild populations, especially freshwater fish. As most newly recruited fishers lack knowledge on responsible and regulated capture techniques, illegal, indiscriminate and destructive methods are being used that have impacts on all aquatic fauna (e.g. dynamite, poisons). This also includes harvesting species of high extinction risk, exemplified by the endemic hump-backed mahseer (Tor remadevii, Figure 1), an iconic and critically endangered member of the freshwater megafauna (Pinder, Raghavan, & Britton, in press) symbolic of India's extraordinarily diverse aquatic life. There is increasing evidence that their last remaining giant specimens are being removed from South India's River Cauvery by illegal fishers using a variety of capture methods (Deccan Herald, 2020), pushing them a step closer to extinction. This demonstrates that to understand fully the longer-term environmental impacts of COVID-19, there is always a need to look beneath the surface.

Prepectoral 2-stage Breast Reconstruction with Carbon Dioxide Tissue Expansion.

Background:Roughly 80% of patients undergoing mastectomy in the United States opt for reconstruction with implants. The introduction of acellular dermal matrices has allowed for placement of breast prostheses in the prepectoral plane, while a new carbon dioxide tissue expander (TE) (AeroForm) allows for needle-free, patient-controlled expansion. These 2 novel technologies have ushered in a new patient-centered era of breast reconstruction, with the possibility of reducing patient morbidity for the first time in decades. We hypothesize that AeroForm expanders placed in the prepectoral plane reduce time to second-stage reconstruction, reduce the number of clinic visits, and have lower complications than traditional saline TEs.Methods:This is a retrospective review of all patients undergoing breast mastectomy and TE placement in the prepectoral plane over a 21-month period (169 patients, 267 breasts), comparing AeroForm expanders to TEs.Results:The AeroForm group (n = 57) had a shorter period to second-stage reconstruction than the TE group (n = 210) (135.4 versus 181.7 days; P = 0.01) and required fewer clinic visits (5.1 versus 6.9; P < 0.01). Partial thickness (25.6% versus 12.3%, P = 0.03) and full thickness (8.7% versus 0.0%, P = 0.02) necrosis were more common in the saline cohort. The rates of infection, hematoma, and seroma requiring drainage were not statistically significant between the 2 groups.Conclusions:Two-staged breast reconstruction with the use of AeroForm expanders in the prepectoral space marks progress in improving care for breast cancer patients by demonstrating a reduction in some adverse events, the number of clinic visits, and the time to second-stage reconstruction.

COVID-19 response in the Middle East and north Africa: challenges and paths forward

COVID-19 response in the Middle East and north Africa: challenges and paths forward

All-time low period fertility in Finland: Demographic drivers, tempo effects, and cohort implications

The ongoing period fertility decline in the Nordic countries is particularly strong in Finland, where the total fertility rate (TFR) reached an all-time low of 1.41 in 2018. We analyse the decrease in Finland's TFR in 2010–17, and assess its consequences for cohort fertility using complementary approaches. Decomposition of this fertility decline shows that first births and women aged <30 are making the largest contributions. However, women aged 30–39 are also, for the first time in decades, experiencing a sustained fertility decline. Tempo adjustments to the TFR suggest that quantum change is part of the decline. Several forecasting methods indicate that cohort fertility is likely to decline from the long-lasting level of 1.85–1.95 to 1.75 or lower among women born in the mid-1980s. Without an exceptionally strong recovery in fertility, Finnish cohort fertility is likely to decline to levels currently observed among countries with very low fertility.

Risk and counter-strategies: The impact of electric mobility on German automotive suppliers

For the first time in decades, the automotive industry is undergoing a technological paradigm shift, as the combustion engine technology is gradually being replaced by electric engines. This transition will make parts of the existing automotive supply chain redundant. Risks of this market shift are particularly pronounced in the automotive supply sector in Germany. Numerous studies examine the risks and opportunities of automotive market transitions on a macro-level. However, empirical evidence is missing on the aspect of how “traditional” German automotive suppliers actually respond to the expected market uptake of electric vehicles.This study aims to contribute to the understanding of strategic options and choices of automotive suppliers from the forging and foundry industries as well as system suppliers by presenting evidence from qualitative interviews. It argues that existing patterns of supplier-buyer relationships make upgrading strategies within given value chains a more attractive strategic option than sector diversification. In order to evaluate the individual circumstances on the company-level and the implications of firm strategies on their organizational environment, conceptual aspects from the theories of global production networks and global value chains are applied.

Stability and decline in deep-sea coral biodiversity, Gulf of Mexico and US West Atlantic

Characterizing deep-sea coral biodiversity is essential to evaluate the current state of deep-sea ecosystems and to assess vulnerability to anthropogenic threats such as offshore drilling and ocean acidification. Thousands of deep-sea coral records from the past 6 decades are compiled in the publicly accessible NOAA database, but few large-scale analyses of deep-sea coral biodiversity through time have been conducted. This study provides the longest temporal analysis of deep-sea coral generic biodiversity (58 yr), and the first such study for US waters. To mitigate missing temporal and spatial data, a machine learning model was employed to simulate deep-sea coral occurrences. Patterns of deep-sea coral generic biodiversity were calculated for observed and simulated data from 1960 to 2018 in the US marine ecoregions of the Gulf Stream Slope, Carolinian Atlantic Shelf and Slope, South Florida/Bahamian Atlantic Shelf and Slope, and Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) Shelf and Slope. There were statistically significant decreases in deep-sea coral generic biodiversity for all ecoregion/depth pairs in simulated data and most ecoregion/depth pairs in observed data. There was relative stability in biodiversity from 1960 to the mid-2000s, followed by generally rapid decreases between 2007 and 2011. Biodiversity stabilized after 2011, though it remains at the lowest average level in the past 58 yr. Most ecoregions and depths show the lowest generic richness during the most recent time interval (2010–2018) compared to the preceding 5 decades. The most persistent deep-sea coral genera from 1960 to 2018 vary based on ecoregion and depth. Rapid decreases in biodiversity support previous work showing deep-sea corals can undergo biodiversity loss in less than 4 yr, which is alarming given their slow growth and decadal recovery times. This analysis provides a robust temporal framework for future researchers to evaluate casual mechanisms affecting deep-sea coral biodiversity and inform on conservation strategies.

New Records of Bark and Ambrosia Beetles (Coleoptera: Scolytinae) from Cuba with Description of a New Species

We present a reassessment of the diversity of bark and ambrosia beetles in Cuba. For the first time in decades, an official Cuban-American binational collaboration allowed us to re-visit all known entomology collections in Cuba, and collect in the field. There are at least 94 species of scolytine beetles in Cuba. We report a new species, Xylosandrus aurinegro Gomez & Hulcr (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), and 7 new species records, including the first genus record for Dryocoetoides Hopkins and Tricolus Blandford (both Coleoptera: Curculionidae) for the island. In terms of species with potential concern to the USA, we corroborate a subspecies of Ips calligraphus Wood & Bright (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) that acts as a pine pest in Cuba and is not yet present in North America.

The Battle of the Video Codecs in the Healthcare Domain - A Comparative Performance Evaluation Study Leveraging VVC and AV1

Video compression is the core technology in mobile (mHealth) and electronic (eHealth) health video streaming applications. With global video traffic projected to reach 82% of all Internet traffic by 2022, there is a strong need to develop efficient compression algorithms to accommodate expected future growth. For the first time in decades, and especially since ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG expert groups strategically joined forces to develop the highly successful H.264/AVC standard, we have two distinct initiatives competing for the best performing video codec. On the one hand, we have the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) that support a new, royalty free video codec generation, termed AV1, based on VP8 and VP9 efforts. On the other hand, the Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) has been developing the Versatile Video Codec (VVC) as the successor of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. At the same time, the breadth of applications utilizing video codecs, involving significant content variability and moving across the video resolution ladder, to satisfy different constraints, have resulted in mixed literature results, with respect to the best performing codec. In this paper, we compare the performance of emerging VVC and AV1 codecs, along with popular HEVC implementations, namely the HEVC Test Model (HM) and x265, as well as earlier, VP9 codec, and investigate their suitability for medical applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first performance comparison of emerging VVC and AV1 video codecs for use in the healthcare domain. Experimental evaluation based on three datasets (ultrasound, emergency scenery, and general-purpose videos) demonstrate that VVC outperforms all rival codecs while AV1 achieves better compression efficiency than HEVC in all cases but low-resolution ($560\times448$ @40Hz) ultrasound videos of the common carotid artery. Furthermore, the use of video despeckling prior to ultrasound video compression can provide significant bitrate savings.

Colombia’s New Ambitions Include Caribbean and Shale Development, But Are They Achievable?

At some point during the first half of this year, Colombia replaced politically and economically crippled Venezuela as Latin America’s third-largest oil-producing country. That put Colombia behind only Brazil and Mexico in the hydrocarbons-rich region, two nations on divergent paths in terms of oil flow. Since Brazil ended state-owned Petrobras’ monopoly and opened up its industry to international companies in the late 1990s, the country’s oil output has almost tripled as it found and tapped into its giant offshore presalt fields. Output from Mexico’s state-owned Pemex, meanwhile, has fallen to its lowest level since at least 1990, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is working to stymie energy reforms implemented in 2013 to rejuvenate industry in the country. With the lessons of its resource-rich neighbors in mind, Colombia finds itself in a similar position where it must carefully choose a path forward for its industry or risk squandering great potential, or worse, losing what took years to build. The Andean country in the early 2000s overhauled its regulatory framework, reduced government take, and held licensing rounds with the intent of attracting foreign investment. Oil production subsequently rose to more than 1 million B/D before dropping amid the global industry downturn. Output in May averaged just short of 900,000 B/D. The Colombian government is trying to build on the foundation established by those reforms by implementing a novel permanent, continuously open bidding process and exploring unconventional development. The aim is to replenish depleted oil and gas reserves and increase production. Based on its 2018 output, the country’s crude reserves are good for just 6.2 years, while its natural gas reserves would last 9.8 years, falling below the 10-year mark for the first time in decades, according to statistics from Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH). But Colombia has long been seen by the global industry as a petroleum province with upside that surpasses just incremental reserves and production gains. All of its liquids and nearly all of its gas production is extracted conventionally onshore, meaning its offshore and unconventional sectors are nascent. Colombia, which shares a more than 2000-km border with Venezuela, has proven petroleum systems that have produced oil and gas for a century, and the application of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing offers huge promise.• Maria Fernanda SuÁrez, Colombia’s minister of mines and energy, has said that unconventional development could triple the country’s oil and gas reserves. Standing in the way, however, has been public resistance to hydraulic fracturing, and pilot projects that would demonstrate its benefits are yet to get environmental approval. There is “game-changing potential—if the industry can get going with development,” said Ruaraidh Montgomery, research director at oil and gas research firm•Welligence Energy Analytics.

The phenomenon of adults relearning instrumental music in an American wind band

As the world’s population continues to grow older, retired individuals seek out musical experiences. Many of these musicians are returning to playing in a wind band for the first time in decades, so they are, in essence, beginners again. The learning experiences of adults of returning to band contains both physical and social barriers but returning beginners are often able to overcome individual difficulties to find meaning and enjoyment in an activity they gave up many years ago. Twelve returning beginners from a New Horizons Band were interviewed and their experiences were analyzed through hermeneutic phenomenology to explore relearning an instrument through participation in an American wind band. Five themes emerged through the analysis: return of ability, awareness of physical change, consciousness of ability, continual progress, and ensemble concerns. These themes consisted of both individual and social components within the essence of returning to instrumental music through an American wind band. The essence of returning to band can help community ensemble directors derive pedagogical strategies and consider specific factors that could contribute to the adult music learning process.

Administrative Records after Department of Commerce v. New York

The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA) permits judicial review of agency action upon “the whole record” of the agency. What composes that term is not explicated by the text of the statute. Until recently, the Supreme Court had declined to lay down markers on the meaning of “the whole record,” leaving confusion among litigants and interdecisional inconsistency among the lower courts. In the seventy years since the APA’s enactment, courts have sewn a patchwork of jurisprudential principles elucidating what belongs in such a record, one negative effect of which was the continual relitigation of the same issues before separate judges. Our 2018 article, Administrative Records and the Courts, surveyed the law and concluded that the courts were improperly defining the administrative record and erroneously conflating records issues and merits issues. The landscape shifted in June 2019 when the Supreme Court decided Department of Commerce v. New York, which considered whether the U.S. Census Bureau lawfully added a question to the impending 2020 census that asked respondents whether they are U.S. citizens. The Court addressed the composition of “the whole record” in APA litigation for the first time in decades and held that the challengers had made a “strong showing of bad faith or improper behavior” that merited the supplementation of the record. The majority concluded that the trial court had improperly and prematurely ordered supplementation of the record, but held that the error was harmless and justified in hindsight. With the record’s contours so set, the Court then held that the Census Bureau had improperly added the citizenship question to the 2020 census. In partial concurrence and partial dissent, Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, cited our scholarship and questioned the provenance of the “strong showing of bad faith or improper behavior” exception to the APA record rule. This essay is another entry in the sparse field of APA administrative record and judicial review scholarship. It further explicates our criticism of the bad faith exception to APA record review and explains how Department of Commerce perpetuated and invigorated this exception, which is inconsistent with the text, purpose, and history of the APA. It closes by hypothesizing the consequences of the Court’s two record rule holdings, primarily the ability of litigants to (improperly) supplement APA administrative records.

Prescribed Fire Increases Seedling Recruitment in a Natural Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida) Population at its Northern Range Limit

Disturbances, including wildfire, play an important role in forest maintenance, and have been modified over time. Determining the importance of historical disturbance can be complex, especially if disturbance regimes differ over a species' range. Pinus rigida (pitch pine) is associated with wildfire in the core of its range; however, the association becomes less certain toward its range margins, including at the northeast extent of its range in the Thousand Islands Ecosystem (TIE), Ontario, where the species is rare. To test for fire dependence of seedling recruitment in a natural pitch pine population at this range limit, we compared the efficiency of prescribed fire to mechanical and control treatments. We used a Before–After Control–Impact (BACI) design at two sites in the TIE, controlling for the effects of canopy cover, understory cover, and depth to mineral soil. Pitch pine seedlings were observed for the first time in decades in the TIE following treatment; only fire had a significant positive effect on recruitment. Our results suggest that prescribed fire is effective in increasing pitch pine seedling recruitment even in a marginal natural pitch pine population. We discuss what mechanisms might explain these results, as well as restoration considerations including the potential for modified mechanical disturbance treatments where prescribed fires might not be feasible.

STEM K-12 Outreach as the Root of Transportation Education: Experiences from the Railway Engineering Field

Demand for graduates with rail transportation expertise remains strong in North America, particularly in engineering and technical fields. Over the past decade, various activities by the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-way Association and rail-focused University Transportation Centers have slowly re-established a railway engineering academic community. Railway courses are now offered at two dozen universities in the United States (U.S.), and, for the first time in decades, several universities offer specific degrees in railway engineering. Despite this progress, challenges remain, such as raising student awareness of rail industry career paths. Since most railway engineering courses are senior-level electives, many students are already committed to other engineering disciplines before they are exposed to railway concepts. To raise student interest in rail courses and satisfy industry demands for internships, students must be introduced to railway concepts before they decide on the direction of their studies. One approach to directing more rail-aware students into engineering programs is rail-themed outreach to K-12 students. Railways still hold a fascination for many young people as complex, multidisciplinary systems, and numerous interesting science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts can be demonstrated through the lens of railway transportation. Interactive rail-themed classroom activities can illustrate STEM topics while highlighting rail career opportunities and reinforcing railway transportation. This paper reviews rail-themed K-12 STEM outreach activities being undertaken by universities and the strong partnerships between industry and academia required to grow future generations of railway professionals.

A new approach to create a realistic virtual model of a cylindrical robot using Automation Studio

Industry 4.0 is mainly represented by the digitalization technologies of physical industrial assets, thus obtaining the cyber-physical systems. A key role in digitalization developing is indeed played by possibility to develop a realistic virtual model (3D model) and using this model in virtual simulations to test the functionality of the system at possible scenarios from real world. The paper presents the modelling a mechatronic system represented by a three-dimensional cylindrical type manipulator in Automation Studio software and aims creating cinematic animation which will be used in the field of virtual commissioning. This approach in Industry 4.0 paradigm is studied in the academic environment and in the industrial research from last decade time, because generate major benefits such as in remote accessibility for learning, time efficiency from planning to real setup with possibility of detection and debugging of errors in the system, for minimizing time commissioning and predictive maintenance.

Political Affiliation in Resumes: Loathing, Disidentification, and the Dark Side of Assessment

Members of major political parties in the United States view each other much more negatively than at any time in the past several decades, and political discord is common around the globe. To test ...

The Presbyterian Church and Zionism Unsettled: Its Antecedents, and Its Antisemitic Legacy

The new millennium has seen increased hostility to Israel among many progressive constituencies, including several mainline Protestant churches. The evangelical community in the US remains steadfastly Zionist, so overall support for financial aid to Israel remain secure. But the cultural impact of accusations that Israel is a settler colonialist or apartheid regime are nonetheless serious; they are proving sufficient to make support for the Jewish state a political issue for the first time in many decades. Despite a general movement in emphasis from theology to politics in church debate, there remain theological issues at the center of church discussion. The Protestant church with the longest running and most well-funded anti-Zionist constituency is the Presbyterian church in the US. In the last decade, its Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) has produced several increasingly anti-Zionist books designed to propel divestment resolutions in the church’s annual meeting. The most widely debated of these was 2014’s Zionism Unsettled: A Congregational Study Guide. This essay mounts a detailed analysis and critique of the book which documents the IPMN’s steady movement toward antisemitic positions. Among the theological issues underlying debate in Protestant denominations are the status of the divine covenant with the Jewish people, the role that the gift of land has as part of that covenant, and the nature of the characterization of the Jews as a “chosen people”. These, and other issues underlying Protestant anti-Zionism, have led to the formation of Presbyterians for Middle East Peace (PFMP), a group, unlike IPMN, that supports a two-state solution. The competing positions these groups have taken are of interest to all who want to track the role that Christian denominations have played in debates about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The Depopulation of Romania – Is It an Irreversible Process?

The present article has as the main ground a shocking reality, which unfolds almost imperceptible in front of our eyes: the population of Romania has started, since 1990, to decrease steadily, a fact that will surely lead to a gradual depopulation of the country. Consequently, the priority problems, for the central and local administrations, are those addressing the stopping of the national demographic plunge, and the improvement of the moral climate from the society. The both issues can become the object of a national project that concerns the strategically development of the country, in the near future. At the end of 2017, the social Romania had a population of 19.6 million, from which 5,528,199 were active employees, 9,154,473 were pensioners, pupils, students, unemployed etc., and approximately 5 million of them were left in other countries around the world. Although it is on the 7th place in the hierarchy of the 47 states of Europe, on addressing the number of dwellers, Romania might lose this position in the next decades. The demographic prognosis estimates that in 4 decade time, the population of our country will reach approximately 13,7 million dwellers, that is a smaller number than that from 1919 (15.5 mil.). Already, in 2017, there were 3.5 million dwellers less than in 1989, the most significant decrease of the population registering in the 5 counties from the South-West region of Oltenia. The causes of the national demographic decline are multiple, but the ones with the most direct impact proved to be: the maintaining of the birth rate at low shares (9 in one thousand dwellers), and the mortality rate at high shares, especially in the rural regions (14.9 for one thousand dwellers), to which there is added the high rate of abortion (311.5 for one thousand babies born alive in 2016), and the massive emigration towards the developed countries, which has been shifting 5 million dwellers. The high rate of the abortions and emigration placed our country among the first places, in the European states. The demographic phenomena are analysed from a statistic and sociological perspective, and in such a theoretical background, there is merged the diagnosis approach with the prognosis one. The propositions formulated here have a strong pragmatic character, and express the optimistic conviction of the authors that the demographic decline of Romania can be interrupted, and the increased demographic trend for the Romanian population can be brought back, through the therapy of the causes, and based on concrete and viable measures.

Management of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

The emergence of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB; defined as resistance to at least rifampicin and isoniazid) represents a growing threat to public health and economic growth. Never before in the history of mankind have more patients been affected by MDR-TB than is the case today. The World Health Organization reports that MDR-TB outcomes are poor despite staggeringly high management costs. Moreover, treatment is prolonged, adverse events are common, and the majority of affected patients do not receive adequate treatment. As MDR-TB strains are often resistant to one or more second-line anti-TB drugs, in-depth genotypic and phenotypic drug susceptibility testing is needed to construct personalised treatment regimens to improve treatment outcomes. For the first time in decades, the availability of novel drugs such as bedaquiline allow us to design potent and well-tolerated personalised MDR-TB treatment regimens based solely on oral drugs. In this article, we present management guidance to optimise the diagnosis, algorithm-based treatment, drug dosing and therapeutic drug monitoring, and the management of adverse events and comorbidities, associated with MDR-TB. We also discuss the role of surgery, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, palliative care and smoking cessation in patients with MDR-TB. We hope that incorporating these recommendations into patient care will be helpful in optimising treatment outcomes, and lead to more MDR-TB patients achieving a relapse-free cure.

From the border to the bedroom: changing conflict dynamics in Karamoja, Uganda

AbstractFor the latter decades of the last century, the Karamoja region of north-eastern Uganda was infamous as a place of violent cattle raids and road ambushes, populated by fierce warriors. Using primary data, this article examines the shifts from large-scale raiding to opportunistic theft as well as the profound transformation in the security environment over the past 10 years. We argue that the combination of a top-down sustained disarmament campaign and grassroots peace resolutions have created relative stability for the first time in decades. This stability has allowed for the expansion of markets, investments by national and international actors, and the rejuvenation of livelihoods for many residents. However, while large-scale violent cattle raids are largely a thing of the past, violence and insecurity have shifted to the domestic sphere in the form of small-scale but pervasive thefts and rampant domestic violence.