Unusual Connections Research Articles

What can we learn about mental health from 10,933 patient lived experiences using a novel quantitative-qualitative network analysis?

AbstractObjective: The study aims to build a comprehensive network structure of psychopathology based on patient narratives by combining the merits of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. Research methods: The study web-scraped data from 10,933 people who disclosed a prior DSM/ICD11 diagnosed mental illness when discussing their lived experiences of mental ill health. The study then used Python 3 and its associated libraries to run network analyses and generate a network graph. Key findings: The results of the study revealed 672 unique experiences or symptoms that generated 30023 links or connections. The study also identified that of all 672 reported experiences/symptoms, five were deemed the most influential; “anxiety,” “fear,” “auditory hallucinations,” “sadness,” and “depressed mood and loss of interest.” Additionally, the study uncovered some unusual connections between the reported experiences/symptoms. Discussion and recommendations: The study demonstrates that applying a quantitative analytical framework to qualitative data at scale is a useful approach for understanding the nuances of psychopathological experiences that may be missed in studies relying solely on either a qualitative or a quantitative survey-based approach. The study discusses the clinical implications of its results and makes recommendations for potential future directions.

Digital assemblages with AI for creative interpretation of short stories

Abstract I demonstrate an approach fostering inventive interpretation of short stories in Literary Studies and higher education generally. It involves constructing an ‘assemblage’—at its simplest, an evolving network of unusual connections for creative outcome. The assemblage of this article combines freshly located research literature, directly and indirectly related to a story’s themes, and/or the personality type of protagonists. Importantly, this assemblage also utilizes text analysis software revealing the relatively invisible (e.g. (in)frequent words, parts of speech, and topics) and Large Language Model (LLM) Generative AI to enrich the interpretation. The use of all these elements helps productively exceed initial intuitions about the story, facilitating creativity. I model the approach using Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Black Cat, whose protagonist is a homicidal psychopath. Specifically, the assemblage here includes relevant software-based research (a corpus analysis of homicidal psychopathic language), non-software-based research (psychoanalytical literary criticism of The Black Cat using the empirically validated concept of transference), text analysis software (WMatrix and Datayze), and the LLM Generative AI, ‘ChatGPT’ (using the freely available LLM GPT-3.5). One use of this approach is as a pedagogy in Literary Studies employing text analysis software (e.g. on a digital stylistics course). Yet given creative adaptability is a key 21st-century skill, with digital literacy—including the use of Generative AI—an important contemporary competence, and with the short story genre universally known, I highlight too the utility of this approach as a university-wide pedagogy for enhancing creative thinking.

The topological organization of the turtle cranium is constrained and conserved over long evolutionary timescales.

The cranium of turtles (Testudines) is characterized by the secondary reduction of temporal fenestrae and loss of cranial joints (i.e., characteristics of anapsid, akinetic skulls). Evolution and ontogeny of the turtle cranium are associated with shape changes. Cranial shape variation among Testudines can partially be explained by dietary and functional adaptations (neck retraction), but it is unclear if cranial topology shows similar ecomorphological signal, or if it is decoupled from shape evolution. We assess the topological arrangement of cranial bones (i.e., number, relative positioning, connections), using anatomical network analysis. Non-shelled stem turtles have similar cranial arrangements to archosauromorph outgroups. Shelled turtles (Testudinata) evolve a unique cranial organization that is associated with bone losses (e.g., supratemporal, lacrimal, ectopterygoid) and an increase in complexity (i.e., densely and highly interconnected skulls with low path lengths between bones), resulting from the closure of skull openings and establishment of unusual connections such as a parietal-pterygoid contact in the secondary braincase. Topological changes evolutionarily predate many shape changes. Topological variation and taxonomic morphospace discrimination among crown turtles are low, indicating that cranial topology may be constrained. Observed variation results from repeated losses of nonintegral bones (i.e., premaxilla, nasal, epipterygoid, quadratojugal), and changes in temporal emarginations and palate construction. We observe only minor ontogenetic changes. Topology is not influenced by diet and habitat, contrasting cranial shape. Our results indicate that turtles have a unique cranial topology among reptiles that is conserved after its initial establishment, and shows that cranial topology and shape have different evolutionary histories.

C-BEDIM and S-BEDIM: Lateral movement detection in enterprise network through behavior deviation measurement

Lateral movement plays a vital role in a network attack campaign. After breaking into the intranet, perpetrators penetrate to their final target through this procedure. In order to protect the crucial resources of an enterprise, it is of significant importance to identify lateral movement traces. Previous studies related to this area have proposed several methods. However, most of them failed to raise high-quality alerts, and security operators cannot identify the real threat from raised massive alerts and make a response in time. To fill this gap, in this paper, we propose a novel approach based on Behavior Deviation Measurement (BEDIM) to raise a few effective alerts for lateral movement detection. By modeling the behavior deviation level of each machine on the connection expanded graph sequences, BEDIM can locate unusual connections from massive logs as initial abnormal records. Apart from this, BEDIM also applies a strategy to filter benign records from initial abnormal connections to further reduce false alerts. Specifically, we propose two implementations of BEDIM, which are S-BEDIM (Simple) and C-BEDIM (Complex). Compared to related state-of-the-arts, both S-BEDIM and C-BEDIM are more precise, robust, and efficient. To demonstrate this, we conduct experiments on two datasets, which are collected from the intranet of two enterprises. The experiment results show that both S-BEDIM and C-BEDIM can raise a few effective alerts. Especially for C-BEDIM, with taking proper period, it can achieve 100% accuracy on both datasets.

Breathing Air into the Archive

Museums are increasingly interested in acquiring and preserving live performance art pieces even if it confronts them with tantalizing dilemmas. Still too often, performance art is forced into rigid formats or pre-existing cataloguing systems that take the life out of the work, turning it into a reified relic. In this contribution, we ask how cultural institutions like museums and archives can breathe life back into the performance art they aim to preserve and present. We argue that a profoundly dialogic interaction with the artworks and, if possible, with the artists is one of the primary conditions to achieve this goal. To develop this claim, we focus on the performance practice of the Nigerian-born and Antwerp-based artist Otobong Nkanga, who herself reached out to the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (MHKA) to examine how her performances could enter into the collection of the museum while ensuring their afterlife would still be alive. Central in our discussion stands ‘the breathing archive’, a notion the artist herself mentioned in one of the interviews we conducted with her. We demonstrate how the breathing archive serves as a particularly productive figure to rethink the museal incorporation of performance art practices like Nkanga's as it makes fairly unusual connections between performance, air and archivization. Moreover, this approach exposes the need to supplement archival theories mainly developed by Western thinkers with decolonial strands of thought. Especially relevant in this respect is the work of the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe and the African American artist-theorist Ashon T. Crawley who – much in line with Nkanga's poetics – each foreground breath as a driving force for humankind and creative imagination. This article ultimately reveals how breathing air into the archive is a deeply political project that requires our attention perhaps more than ever.

Unusual Connections As Forming Literary Text`

This article examines the role of the unusual connection in the formation of the literary text, which is a type of unusual connection in the Uzbek language. It has also been analyzed using examples that this tool is also a means of emotional expression in a literary text.

Unusual Ventriculo-Arterial Alignments and Connections.

In this issue of World Journal for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, Kari and colleagues present a case of anatomically corrected malposition {S, L, L} with ventricular septal defect and complex subaortic stenosis managed by staged biventricular repair. This rare case with interesting management strategy provides an opportunity to clarify this and related unusual ventriculo-arterial alignments.

El diálogo como método

Este artículo se refiere al intercambio de ideas que se viene dando hace algunos años entre Pilar Flores y Roberto Vega; intercambio expresado en conversaciones, apuntes e imágenes que, eventualmente, se han convertido en textos. La escritura de estos textos ha construido pensamiento a partir de reflexiones que son sostenidas por ejes y elementos conceptuales que, a su vez, potencian el lenguaje de imágenes y permiten identificar las abstracciones de la creación. En este proceso, la escritura se convierte en la obra artística, entendida como un sistema complejo, que se nutre de conexiones inusuales, del cambio, de la inestabilidad; se construye desde la incertidumbre, la duda y la intuición.

Interazioni del sacro. Forme e modelli di culto nella pittura bizantina di Puglia

To trace unusual connections in the Byzantine wall paintings of monuments around Salento in both their local and broader, Mediterranean-basin dimensions, this study considers paintings in construct...

Coil embolization of a traumatic arteriovenous fistula of the lower extremity

Arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs) are unusual connections between the arterial and venous system that bypass the normal anatomic capillary beds. This case report presents an arteriovenous fistula of the lower extremity caused by a penetrating injury. The patient was diagnosed by Duplex ultrasonography. Diagnostic catheterization of the affected limb showed a high-flow AVF between the left profunda femoris artery and left femoral vein with a deep femoral vein aneurysm measuring 9x4 cm. The AVF was successfully treated with coil embolization.

Phenomenologically varying Λ and a toy model for the universe

We consider a model of the Universe with variable G and Λ. The subject of interest is a phenomenological model for Λ proposed and considered in this article for the first time (to our knowledge), with the assumption that ghost dark energy exists and interacts with the Universe through Λ. We consider the possibility that there exist unusual connections between different components of the fluids in Universe. We would like to stress that this is simply an assumption and could be very far from reality. This model is interesting phenomenologically and mathematically but we will not discuss physical conditions or possibilities of implementing the modifications. To test our assumption and to observe the behavior of the Universe, we will consider toy models filled by a barotropic fluid and modified Chaplyagin gas. Finally, we will consider interaction between barotropic fluid or Chaplygin gas and ghost dark energy as a separate scenario. The statefinder diagnostic provided stability analysis of the models. All free parameters of the model are fixed to satisfy the generalized second law of thermodynamics.

Unusual neural connection between injured cingulum and brainstem in a patient with subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Unusual neural connection between injured cingulum and brainstem in a patient with subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Slow Processing: A New Minor Literature by Autists and Modernists

Many contemporary texts written by individuals with autism spectrum disorders share a specific way of using language and a non-normative form of organization with experimental literature written by modernists like T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Hugh MacDiarmid. These texts present protagonists in moments of cognitive overload, and they s(t)imulate this cognitive state using literary techniques that require readers to expend more effort when processing them. For example, onomatopoeia and hyperbole draw attention to sensory stimuli to which readers would not otherwise have access, and authors like Tito Mukhopadhyay and H.D. juxtapose different literary elements without reconciling them. When exposed to competing stimuli, the protagonists of these texts strive to make sense of their environment by creating new and unusual connections — an effort reflected in their unconventional figurative language. Based on these convergences, these texts constitute what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call a minor literature.

Unusual fistulas and connections in the cardiovascular system: A pictorial review.

A fistula is an abnormal vascular connection leading to diversion of blood from a high resistance arterial circuit to low resistance venous circuit. Coronary artery fistulas are abnormal communications of the coronary artery with a chamber of the heart, or with any segment of systemic or pulmonary circulation, bypassing the myocardial capillaries. Other unusual fistulas include connection between aorta and the right atrium/superior vena cava, aorta and the inferior vena cava or between a coronary artery bypass graft and a cardiac vein. Abnormal connections also include origin of the coronary artery from the pulmonary artery. In this article, we review the imaging, particularly computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging of unusual fistulas and connections involving the cardiovascular system, particularly the coronary arteries and the aorta.

Nemaspela ladae sp. n., a new troglobitic nemastomatid (Opiliones, Dyspnoi, Nemastomatidae) from a Dinaric cave.

A new troglobitic Nemastomatidae from Mt. Romanija in Bosnia, is described and provisionally placed in the otherwise Caucasian genus Nemaspela Šilhavý, 1966 for sharing morphological similarities. Nemaspela ladae sp. n. seems not closely related to the second troglobitic Balkan genus Hadzinia Šilhavý, 1966, which shows closer relationship with Nemaspela femorecurvata Martens, 2006. New male specific characters shared by Hadzinia karamani (Hadži, 1940) and several similar, still undescribed species, indicate Hadzinia as an independent lineage. The unusual distribution of the Hadzinia-Nemaspela complex might indicate its relictual status as elements of the paleo-European mainland fauna, which survived adverse climatic changes during the Pleistocene in southern refuges. Possible relation of this complex with the fossils Mitostoma gruberi Dunlop and Mitov, 2009 from Bitterfeld and Baltic ambers is discussed. Further studies of the entire Hadzinia-Nemaspela complex and relatives are necessary to solve their phyletic and unusual zoogeographic connections.

Unusual compensatory neural connections following disruption of corpus callosum fibers in a patient with corpus callosum hemorrhage

Objective: We report on a patient with hemorrhage of the corpus callosum (CC) in whom unusual compensatory neural connections were observed following disruption of CC fibers. Methods: A 42-year-old female patient presented with callosal alien hand syndrome (AHS) after the onset of the hemorrhage. She showed a rapid recovery and the symptoms of her AHS had almost disappeared at 7 weeks after onset. We performed diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) for the evaluation of CC fibers and performed a comparison with DTT findings acquired from a normal subject (a 47-year-old female). Results: Findings on DTT of the patient revealed extensive disruption of CC fibers passing through the anterior portion of the genu and most of the CC body. We observed that CC fibers in the right and left temporal lobes joined with the right and left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, respectively, and these neural fibers were connected to each other through the anterior commissure. These changes of neural connections were not observed in the normal subject. Conclusion: We think that the unusual neural connections in this patient were compensatory phenomena for disruption of CC fibers. In addition, the good recovery from symptoms of AHS in this patient appears to be correlated with these unusual compensatory neural connections. We believe that the results of this study suggest a mechanism for neural recovery following injury of the CC fibers.

Three-dimensional visualisation of developmental stages of an apicomplexan fish blood parasite in its invertebrate host

BackgroundAlthough widely used in medicine, the application of three-dimensional (3D) imaging to parasitology appears limited to date. In this study, developmental stages of a marine fish haemogregarine, Haemogregarina curvata (Apicomplexa: Adeleorina), were investigated in their leech vector, Zeylanicobdella arugamensis; this involved 3D visualisation of brightfield and confocal microscopy images of histological sections through infected leech salivary gland cells.Findings3D assessment demonstrated the morphology of the haemogregarine stages, their spatial layout, and their relationship with enlarged host cells showing reduced cellular content. Haemogregarine meronts, located marginally within leech salivary gland cells, had small tail-like connections to the host cell limiting membrane; this parasite-host cell interface was not visible in two-dimensional (2D) light micrographs and no records of a similar connection in apicomplexan development have been traced.ConclusionsThis is likely the first account of the use of 3D visualisation to study developmental stages of an apicomplexan parasite in its invertebrate vector. Elucidation of the extent of development of the haemogregarine within the leech salivary cells, together with the unusual connections between meronts and the host cell membrane, illustrates the future potential of 3D visualisation in parasite-vector biology.

Revenge of the “Neurds”: Characterizing Creative Thought in Terms of the Structure and Dynamics of Memory

There is cognitive, neurological, and computational support for the hypothesis that defocusing attention results in divergent or associative thought, conducive to insight and finding unusual connections, while focusing attention results in convergent or analytic thought, conducive to rule-based operations. Creativity appears to involve both. It is widely believed that it is possible to escape mental fixation by spontaneously and temporarily engaging in a more associative mode of thought. The resulting insight (if found) may be refined in a more analytic mode of thought. The questions addressed here are: (a) How does the architecture of memory support these two modes of thought, and (b) what is happening at the neural level when one shifts between them? Recent advances in neuroscience shed light on this. Activated cell assemblies are composed of multiple neural cliques, groups of neurons that respond differentially to general or context-specific aspects of a situation. I refer to neural cliques that would not be included in the assembly if one were in an analytic mode, but would be if one were in an associative mode, as neurds. It is posited that the shift to a more associative mode of thought is accomplished by recruiting neurds that respond to abstract or atypical microfeatures of the problem or task. Since memory is distributed and content-addressable, this fosters the forging of associations to potentially relevant items previously encoded in those neurons. Thus it is proposed that creative thought occurs not by searching a space of predefined alternatives and blindly tweaking those that hold promise, but by evoking remotely associated items through the recruitment of neurds in a distributed, content-addressable memory.

From the Editor

From the Editor Elaine Forman Crane This issue of Early American Studies offers a range of articles that have unusual connections. For those absorbed by the complex issues involving cultural change and exchange, essays about New England and the Caribbean will command attention. Andrea Cremer and James Robertson focus on the ways colonial cultures seek to impose change and, in turn, are changed by competing powers. Michael Mulcahy links the Port Royal earthquake to changes in intellectual interpretations of natural phenomena and because both Robertson and Mulcahy concentrate on Jamaica, their essays flow together nicely. Three other articles concentrate on words, albeit in different ways: words that imbue power, words that instill national loyalty, and words that create events. Antonio Bly offers evidence of a greater number of literate runaways than we have previously conceived, Neil York explores the perpetuation of patriotism through Johnny Tremain, and Jonathan Beecher Field examines the historiographical construction of the Antinomian controversy. This issue welcomes a new department, “Lecture Notes.” Designed for authors who do not plan further revision or expansion of conference papers, this occasional department will publish presentations that concern subjects of limited or immediate interest rather than those requiring long-term research. The essays will be printed as the audience heard them: without footnotes. Michael Zuckerman’s piece on the politics of then and now fits the parameters of this new department quite nicely. Finally, the second half of the diary of Horace Lee appears in this issue, covering the year between July 1841 and July 1842. Patrick Farmer reintroduces Lee to us, and we only wish that somewhere, sometime, someone will find—in a dusty New England attic—the missing journal that precedes the one written by this charming young man. But whether the earlier volume emerges or not, the selections published in Early American Studies must take their place alongside the most delightful of New England diaries. Fall 2008 [End Page v] Copyright © 2008 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies

Kekulé structures of hexagonal chains—some unusual connections

It is known since 1977 that the number K of Kekule structures of a hexagonal chain is equal to the topological Z-index of a pertinently constructed “caterpillar” tree. Based on this relation we now connect K with some of other, seemingly unrelated, concepts: continuants (from number theory) and matchings of the path–graph (further related to Fibonacci numbers). We also arrive at a tridiagonal determinantal expression for K.