Unexpected Areas Research Articles

Flexible habitat use and range extension by the striped hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus semistriatus) in Brazil

We present evidence of plasticity in habitat use and range extension of the striped hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus semistriatus) in Brazil. We first compiled literature records of C. semistriatus across its known distribution (N = 390), added new records from primary data (N = 10), and compared the main landscape composition (forest, savannah, grassland, agriculture) among these occurrence sites (N = 400). We unveil that landscape composition among occurrence sites varied widely within and among biomes in Brazil (Caatinga, Cerrado and Atlantic Forest), indicating C. semistriatus presence from dense forested habitats to grasslands and anthropogenic areas (especially agricultural landscapes). Almost 30% of the occurrence records of C. semistriatus are outside of the species known distribution, including records in ecotones between Cerrado-Amazonia biomes, extending its occurrence area in 449,118 km2. We conclude that habitat modification is a driver for the occurrence of C. semistriatus in dense forested habitats, facilitating its distribution expansion to previously unexpected areas.

Ursodeoxycholic acid and its unexpected application areas

Introduction. Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) came into modern medicine in the 1970s as a potential solvent for small gallstones. But as early as the 1980s, there were clinical studies to improve biochemical indices when using UDCA in other liver diseases. These studies initiated a worldwide active study of the clinical possibilities and various therapeutic effects of UDCA in various diseases, including those beyond the liver. Today, worldwide, UDCA drugs are the lifelong basis for the treatment of primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). It is indicated for all types of hepatitis: infectious, toxic, drug-induced, autoimmune and others. It can be stated that the history of study and introduction of UDCA drugs in medicine is the history of the expansion of its application areas, which continues to this day. The purpose of the review is to present the results of the use of UDCA drugs outside the traditional circle of cholestatic liver diseases, the causes and possibilities of their use in other areas of medicine. Main principles. It has been shown that UDCA, originally designed for the treatment of cholestatic liver diseases, along with the known antioxidant, antifibrotic and immunomodulatory effects has a proven fundamental apoptosis regulatory effect. This allows it to have as a possible therapeutic target a whole range of extrahepatic diseases, such as gastrointestinal lesions (IBD, clostridi-osis, radiation and medical intestinal lesions, etc.), diseases of the cardiovascular system, neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS), prion diseases (Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) and a number of others. Conclusion. According to modern views, UDCA can be considered as a unique drug of universal cytoprotective action, the expansion of its therapeutic possibilities is promising and is subject to further multilateral study.

Problems and prospects of digitalization and informatization of forest education in Russia

Digital technologies are rapidly invading all spheres of life of modern society. Education is no exception. On the contrary, education is becoming one of the main subjects and beneficiaries of digitalization in the broad sense of the word, often in the most unexpected areas of knowledge obtaining, mastering and applying.

German Operetta on Broadway and in the West End, 1900–1940 by Derek B. Scott

Reviewed by: German Operetta on Broadway and in the West End, 1900–1940 by Derek B. Scott Andrea Cawelti German Operetta on Broadway and in the West End, 1900–1940. By Derek B. Scott. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2019. [x, 383 p. ISBN 978-1-108-48458-9 (hardcover). $120] From The Singing Bourgeois (Aldershot, Hamp -shire: Ashgate, 2001), to his recent appearance with Lucy Worsley in the second episode of A Very British Romance (BBC, 2015, broadcast in the U.S. in 2020), Derek B. Scott has been a frequent commentator on the sociology of music. His latest book, German Operetta on Broadway and in the West End, 1900–1940, explores musical connection and affinity during the Silver Age of operetta between the stages of Vienna and Berlin (among others), and those of London and New York. Scholarly attention to the ‘lighter’ genres of dramatic music, such as ballets and musicals, has exploded in the last decade and this work makes a welcome addition with its deeper dive. Readers with some previous knowledge of music will get the most out of it, and some familiarity with the German language will help (while Scott translates most of the quotes and titles, some have slipped through without intervention). His writing style is easily approachable even to a generalist, being blessedly free of jargon and sprinkled with entertainingly whimsical details throughout. The material is presented in two parts: the first, ‘The Production of Operetta’, analyses the ingredients of the operettas themselves, while the second, ‘The Reception of Operetta’, discusses the context and reception of the works, provides some explanation of the environment that made such an unexpected cultural affinity possible, and presents an argument for why operetta was so successful on both sides of the Atlantic during this time. Scott’s Introduction lays out the framework ‘in the context of audience expectations, aspirations, and anxieties . . . the social, cultural, and moral values of the period, and asks how operettas engaged with modernity, innovative technology, social change, and cultural difference’ (p. 2). Being more episodic in nature, Part 1 requires a somewhat more detailed exploration than Part 2. Chapter 1, ‘The Music of Operetta’, starts with the characteristics of musical style in operetta, including examples that range (unexpectedly) from solo voice parts, to voice with piano accompaniment, to piano scores with super-linear text. The examples are only identified by title, which can prove challenging to the browser where the textual discussion is not visually near the example. Scott incorporates jazz, the importance of dance, orchestrations, and libretto details, with an eye to breadth of information rather than depth. His gloriously extensive citations (employed throughout) function as a clearinghouse, frequently providing the reader with sources of more depth. Chapter 2, ‘Cultural Transfer: Translation and Transcreation’, discusses the process of the ‘transcreation’ of a work. Shows were never simply translated into English. Books and lyrics required varying amounts of adaptation regarding differing cultural expectations. English and American tastes often led to interpolated musical numbers either solicited from the original creator or created by a local team. Substantial changes were sometimes required; Scott illustrates some of these situations in significant detail with individual productions. The production underpinning required to support all of this is laid out in Chapter 3, ‘The Business of Operetta’. This section is particularly illuminating, as business details, historically overlooked, have now become a burgeoning area of study, challenging to research. Scott [End Page 260] examines performing rights and fees, copyright, and individual theatres associated with operetta, with a focus on financial details going right up through the Great Depression. How producers identified and chose suitable operettas is discussed (and this is also discussed from different angles in Part 2). Analysing the merchandising of operetta is broken down into details of unusual ticketing systems, music publication, photography, periodicals and reviews, and even how fashion in clothing and décor fed back and forth from the street to the stage. Chapter 4, ‘Producers, Directors, Designers, and Performers’, outlines the functions of these pillars of any dramatic production, with the critical eye of a seasoned teacher: many of their responsibilities were different in unexpected areas than they are today. Additionally, Scott...

Efficient and Compressive IoT based Health Care System for Parkinson’s Disease Patient

There are various diseases arising in the world with new unexpected areas. Each disease has its own symptoms and cures. Some people are capable to fight against these diseases but most of them are a part of the attacks done by the diseases. This paper introduces the Parkinson’s disease patient with the idea to work their body normally with the help of artificial life to their neurons by adding a chip known as Electroencephalography (EEG) into their brains that work in the form of wearable devices. This is required for those people who are suffering from this disease and could not able to communicate with another people just because they cannot able to send their signals properly to the brain because they do not get the signals on time because of dead neurons. This paper is going to introduce architecture to work on the brain by using several chips, which help to send signals and become a mediator/ transmitter who sends to do work.

신남방지역 디지털경제 협력방안 (The Digital Economy in ASEAN and India: Policy Implications for Korea)

신남방지역 디지털경제 협력방안 (The Digital Economy in ASEAN and India: Policy Implications for Korea)

Advancing Fourier: space-time concepts in ultrafast optics, imaging, and photonic neural networks.

The concepts of Fourier optics were established in France in the 1940s by Pierre-Michel Duffieux, and laid the foundations of an extensive series of activities in the French research community that have touched on nearly every aspect of contemporary optics and photonics. In this paper, we review a selection of results where applications of the Fourier transform and transfer functions in optics have been applied to yield significant advances in unexpected areas of optics, including the spatial shaping of complex laser beams in amplitude and in phase, real-time ultrafast measurements, novel ghost imaging techniques, and the development of parallel processing methodologies for photonic artificial intelligence.

Mass transfer characteristics and concentration field evolution for gas-liquid Taylor flow in milli channels

The results of the recent experimental work performed by Butler et al. (2016, 2018) are analysed based on the dominant phenomena: (i) small scale convection by means of Taylor vortices in the liquid slugs and (ii) diffusion in lubrication film. A main result shown here is that the Taylor circulation frequency is able to reflect the global mass transfer rate in gas-liquid Taylor flow through an almost linear relationship, which emphasizes the interest of the circulating motion in the slug, and gives a very simple correlation to predict the kLa value (at large Schmidt number). A mechanism of flow behavior during the bubble formation at the T-mixer is proposed as a possible explanation of unexpected concentration areas (called “islands”). However, despite of these unusual concentration field structures in these cases, the mass transfer rate coefficient kLa is still accurately predicted by the Taylor circulation frequency in the slug.

What Is Gnosis? An Exploration

Abstract The word “gnosis” is widely used in contemporary scholarship in a range of fields including not only the study of the historical phenomenon of Gnosticism, but also in more unexpected areas like translations of Buddhist texts, where the term has taken on a fairly specific collectively understood meaning. Broadly speaking, in the developing consensus visible both in scholarship and in popular culture, gnosis refers to knowledge that transcends ratiocinative, discursive, or dualistic forms of knowledge. Gnosis, broadly understood both in scholarship and to some extent in popular culture, refers to knowledge understood as the transcendence of self/other dualism. Authors discussed include Edward Conze, Theodore Roszak, Carl Jung, Andrew Newberg, April DeConick, Peter Carroll, Andrieh Vitimus, Ken Wilber, and Christopher Bache.

ANALYSIS OF LASER PROCESSING OF ARTIFICIAL LEATHER

With the development of laser technologies, the field of application of lasers is developing as well. They are capable of processing numerous materials and are still finding their application in unexpected areas. In this case, lasers are studied as a system with which black and white color artificial leather can be processed. This modern material allows you to combine comfort, practicality and reasonable price in a finished product. The manufacturer of artificial leather provides wide possibilities of design. In this study laser beam was used for dark and light laser markings on black and white color artificial leather and in this work, it could be observed how CO2 and fiber laser processing influence this specific material.

Safety and efficiency control protocol for highways using intelligent vehicular networks

Several emergency cases negatively affect the traffic safety and efficiency over highway roads. Un-expected areas of traffic congestion are usually caused by the occurrence of an accident, existence of a damaged vehicle, or the appearance of an emergency vehicle. These scenarios have safety considerations regarding the involved vehicles in the event of emergency. However, the effect of these cases on surrounding vehicles is usually restricted to the parameters of traffic fluency and efficiency. However, in extreme scenarios, nearby vehicles may become involved in the emergency, such as in a chained accident. In this paper, we first aim to investigate the possible emergency cases over the highway roads. Secondly, we study the effects of these cases on the surrounding traveling vehicles, based on the relative location of each vehicle from the detected case, and the speed and moving direction of each vehicle. Third, we introduce a recommendation protocol that provides the most appropriate response to each vehicle in the vicinity of the detected emergency case. Reducing/increasing the vehicle’s speed, changing the traveling lane, and completely stopping the vehicle are the most popular responses in these scenarios. From the experimental results, we can see that the proposed protocol has increased the traffic fluency in the vicinity of the emergency cases over highways. It decreases the delay in vehicles’ traveling time and increases the throughput of each lane compared to the typical highway protocol. Moreover, it has increased the safety conditions for vehicles and decreased the percentage of vehicles to become involved in accidents.

Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic by Seb Franklin

Reviewed by: Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic by Seb Franklin Dustin Abnet (bio) Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic. By Seb Franklin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. Opening by invoking Daniel Bell's concept of the postindustrial society, Seb Franklin's Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic examines how and why people in the late twentieth century believed they had entered a revolutionary era defined not just by the digital computer, but by an entire constellation of social and cultural transformations. To understand such periodization, Franklin analyzes the "cultural logic" that undergirds it and explores the harmful effects of applying that logic to people and society (p. xiv). This logic, he argues, is control, "the episteme grounding late capitalism" (p. xv) which enables both euphemistic phrases, such as "postindustrial society," and the capitalist exploitation that remains intrinsic to human life. Relying on an interdisciplinary literature in conversation with Gilles Deleuze's description of "societies of control" that displaced Foucault's disciplinary societies, Franklin defines control in a cybernetic sense of self-regulation. "Control," Franklin argues, "should be understood as the logical basis of a worldview that imbricates literal practices of computation, the new organization and infrastructural concepts these practices facilitate, and metaphors derived from the electronic digital computer and its processes with a system of value production that can produce profit only by exploiting and dispossessing human life" (p. xviii). Franklin's contribution is a focus on how the digital computer became not just a technology but "a fundamental condition" applied metaphorically to both people and society. "T o exist, from the point of view of control," he proposes, "is to be digital" (p. xix). Though such digitality "promises to render the world legible, recordable, and knowable," it also filters out important elements (p. xix). Under such an episteme, the person becomes just another programmable object, and everything becomes just another form of exploitable labor. Franklin first examines how the computer became a "universal metaphor closely attuned to the logics of equivalence, expansion, and subsumption inherent to capitalism" (p. 83). Here, Franklin traces the genealogy of control to the nineteenth-century works of Joseph Marie Jacquard, Charles Babbage, and Herman Hollerith which, he claims, predated the efforts of cyberneticists to equate people to digital devices. Then, in a fascinating chapter centered on cybernetics and game theory, Franklin shows how concepts initially developed to describe machines and human-machine interactions became generalized and universalized as metaphors for people and society that ultimately buttressed neoliberal economy theories espoused by writers such as Friedrich Hayek. Such historical grounding is useful, but it does raise questions about periodization. Much of nineteenth-century development—including, as [End Page 1128] Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told suggests, slavery—relied on computational methodologies, placing workers in competition with each other and breaking the individual into separate parts—all identified by Franklin as central elements of control. In developing this history, Franklin suggests not simply a genealogy but that disciplinary and control societies coexist, sometimes in tension but often in in harmony. If that is the case, then where is the dividing line between the two? How do they relate to each other? Franklin begins to answer such questions, but more thorough development in the context of the nineteenth century would be fruitful. In the remainder of the book, Franklin explores how control spread through a range of cultural elements, including the "black box" metaphor of cyberneticists, the literary works of Samuel Beckett, films such as The Sixth Sense, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Each, Franklin shows, transformed the computer from a "finite, concrete technology to a universal metaphor" (p. xxi) applicable to both society and people. These chapters provide excellent models for analyzing digitality even in unexpected areas, but further contextualization, especially on issues of gender, race, and sexuality, would have broadened the analysis. It would have been illuminating, for instance, to analyze why so many people from disempowered groups have seen the digital as a means of resistance. Do such views suggest another, potentially more liberating, logic beyond control? Franklin does not say, and the final analysis offers few specific solutions or possibilities for escape from the logic of control. Often challenging but always insightful, Franklin's...

Some remarks on parametric excitation in circulatory systems

AbstractDynamical systems with time‐periodic coefficients, i.e. with parametric excitation, have been studied in different fields for over a hundred years. It is well known that the presence of parametric excitation acts mostly destabilizing, leading to the emergence of instability regions depending on the amplitude and frequency of excitation. However, most of the work is done on systems with synchronous parametric excitation, while there are only few papers dealing with out‐of‐phase time‐periodicity. At the same time little to no research in this context is done on systems containing gyroscopic or circulatory terms. The present paper demonstrates different approaches for stability assessment of time‐periodic systems featuring nonconservative terms. In particular, out‐of‐phase parametric excitation as well as circulatory forces are considered in an example which is treated analytically and numerically. The derived stability boundaries show that the interaction of both features leads to the occurrence of rather unexpected resonance areas. The results extend the understanding of the influence of parametric excitation and encourage study of more general systems.

Evaluation of Climate Variability Performances using Statistical Climate Models

Uncertainty of the climates nowadays bring the crucial calamities problems especially at unexpected areas and in anytime. Thus, the projection of climate variability becomes significant information especially in the designing, planning and managing of water resources and hydrological systems. Numerous climate models with varies methods and purposes have been developed to generate the local weather scenarios with considered the greenhouse gasses (GHGs) effect provided by General Circulation Models (GCMs). However, the accuracy and suitability of each climate models are depending on the atmospheric characters’ selection and the variables consideration to form the statistical equation of local-global weather relationship. In this study, there are two well-known statistical climate models were considered; Lars- WG and SDSM models represent for the regression and weather typing methods, respectively. The main aim was to evaluate the performances among these climate models suit for the Pahang climate variability for the upcoming year ∆2050. The findings proved the Lars-WG as a reliable climate modelling with undemanding data sources and use simpler analysis method compared to the SDSM. It is able to produce better rainfall simulated results with lesser % MAE and higher R value close to 1.0. However, the SDSM lead in the temperature simulation with considered the most influenced meteorological parameters in the analysis. In year ∆2050, the temperature is expected to rise achieving 35°C. The rainfall projection results provided by these models are not consistent whereby it is expecting to increase 2.6% by SDSM and reduce 1.0% by Lars-WG from the historical trend and concentrated on Nov.

Trust, organisational boundaries and gender: Mothers Prayers in Ukraine

ABSTRACTThis article is focused on the Ukrainian branch of an international prayer network Mothers Prayers and its relations with the hierarchy of the Greek Catholic Church. The argument made here can be located within investigations on the transformations of religion and gender relations under Soviet socialism and the post-Soviet conditions (Buckley 1997; Kormina et al. 2015; Luehrmann 2011; Ngo and Quijada 2015; Wanner 2012). While a gender-focused analysis can undoubtedly help us understand some crucial aspects of this movement’s development, here I put forward a complementary interpretation which stresses the need to understand religious vitality and the role of religion, including religious organisations such as churches, in social and political struggles as an outcome of the Soviet secularisation project. The secularisation politics in the Soviet Union resulted both in the appearance of an ‘ambient faith’ (Engelke 2012; Wanner 2014) in unexpected areas of life and in changes of how people perceive the role of religious organisations in religious and political life. I argue that the praying mothers mobilise their motherhood to challenge the male-dominated hierarchical religious organisation in ways that are implicit and indirect, but nevertheless significant.

Development of an enzyme immunoassay for detection of antibodies against Coccidioides in dogs and other mammalian species.

Coccidioides is a soil-dwelling fungus that causes coccidioidomycosis, a disease also known as Valley fever, which affects humans and a variety of animal species. Recent findings of Coccidioides in new, unexpected areas of the United States have demonstrated the need for a better understanding of its geographic distribution. Large serological studies on animals could provide important information on the geographic distribution of this pathogen. To facilitate such studies, we used protein A/G, a recombinant protein that binds IgG antibodies from a variety of mammalian species, to develop an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) that detects IgG antibodies against Coccidioides in a highly sensitive and high-throughput manner. We showed the potential of this assay to be adapted to multiple animal species by testing a collection of serum and/or plasma samples from dogs, mice, and humans with or without confirmed coccidioidomycosis. We then evaluated the performance of the assay in dogs, using sera from dogs residing in a highly endemic area, and found seropositivity rates significantly higher than those in dogs of non-endemic areas. We further evaluated the specificity of the assay in dogs infected with other fungal pathogens known to cross-react with Coccidioides. Finally, we used the assay to perform a cross-sectional serosurvey investigating dogs from Washington, a state in which infection with Coccidioides has recently been documented. In summary, we have developed a Coccidioides EIA for the detection of antibodies in canines that is more sensitive and has higher throughput than currently available methods, and by testing this assay in mice and humans, we have shown a proof of principle of its adaptability for other animal species.

The Mario Brothers are Unfair: A study on Sense of Progression in Computer Gameplay

This study investigated how a sense of progression, rather than a precise calculation of the goal distance, is important in making the decision to invest additional resources in an ongoing task. One hundred participants were recruited to play a computer game in which the goal stage of the game was not provided and the game character could be killed by different death traps that were located in unexpected areas. The results indicate that more participants continued playing the game when they believed that they could make progress in the gameplay. When they did not experience a sense of progression, they chose to quit no matter how much time they had already spent playing the game. The results of this study further suggest that in fixed conditions, a sense of progression is built through the gradual improvement that can be anticipated in the gameplay. However, no sense of progression could be established in random conditions under which improvement through experience was impossible.

Progress in novel and unexpected areas

Progress in novel and unexpected areas

Showcasing metabolomic applications in aquaculture: a review

AbstractAquaculture production is currently challenged to meet the growing demands for seafood protein throughout the world. To achieve this growth in an efficient, safe and sustainable manner, novel tools and applications will need to be incorporated at each step of the production line. A variety of ‘omics’ (e.g. transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics) applications have already begun to emerge in aquaculture research with extreme success. A promising new ‘omics’ approach is metabolomics, which aims to use metabolite profiles to identify biomarkers indicative of physiological responses of living samples (e.g. whole organism, tissues, cells) to environmental or culture conditions. One of the benefits of this approach is that it uses a broad scan of biological conditions to identify often unexpected problem or risk areas upon which to focus management attention. In this contribution, we have selected relevant research examples to showcase the applications of metabolomics in aquaculture in four major areas: hatchery production, nutrition and diet, disease and immunology, and post‐harvest quality control. The novelty of this approach is highlighted by the fact that we cite the majority of published papers in this field, and they are all recent (within the last decade) contributions.

High Precision Imaging of Microscopic Spread of Glioblastoma with a Targeted Ultrasensitive SERRS Molecular Imaging Probe

The dismal prognosis of patients with malignant brain tumors such as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is attributed mostly to their diffuse growth pattern and early microscopic tumor spread to distant regions of the brain. Because the microscopic tumor foci cannot be visualized with current imaging modalities, it remains impossible to direct treatments optimally. Here we explored the ability of integrin-targeted surface-enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy (SERRS) nanoparticles to depict the true tumor extent in a GBM mouse model that closely mimics the pathology in humans. The recently developed SERRS-nanoparticles have a sensitivity of detection in the femtomolar range. An RGD-peptide-conjugated version for integrin-targeting (RGD-SERRS) was compared directly to its non-targeted RAD-SERRS control in the same mice via Raman multiplexing. Pre-blocking with RGD peptide before injection of RGD-SERRS nanoparticles was used to verify the specificity of integrin-targeting. In contrast to the current belief that the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect results in a baseline uptake of nanoparticles regardless of their surface chemistry, integrin-targeting was shown to be highly specific, with markedly lower accumulation after pre-blocking. While the non-targeted SERRS particles enabled delineation of the main tumor, the RGD-SERRS nanoparticles afforded a major improvement in visualization of the true extent and the diffuse margins of the main tumor. This included the detection of unexpected tumor areas distant to the main tumor, tracks of migrating cells of 2-3 cells in diameter, and even isolated distant tumor cell clusters of less than 5 cells. This Raman spectroscopy-based nanoparticle-imaging technology holds promise to allow high precision visualization of the true extent of malignant brain tumors.