The success of fecal microbiota transplantation as a treatment for Clostrioides difficile infection has stirred excitement about the potential for microbiota transplantation as a therapy for a wide range of diseases and conditions. In this article, we discuss vaginal microbiota transplantation as “the next frontier” in microbiota transplantation and identify the medical, regulatory, and ethical challenges related to this nascent field. We further discuss what we anticipate will be the first context for testing VMT in clinical trials, prevention of the (...) recurrence of a condition referred to as bacterial vaginosis. We also compare clinical aspects of VMT with FMT and comment on how VMT may be similar to or different from FMT in ways that may affect research design and regulatory decisions. (shrink)

In this paper, DSEK model with fractional derivatives of the Atangana-Baleanu Caputo is proposed. This paper gives a brief overview of the ABC fractional derivative and its attributes. Fixed point theory has been used to establish the uniqueness and existence of solutions for the fractional DSEK model. According to this theory, we will define two operators based on Lipschitzian and prove that they are contraction mapping and relatively compact. Ulam-Hyers stability theorem is implemented to prove the fractional DSEK model’s stability (...) in Banach space. Also, fractional Euler’s numerical method is derived for initial value problems with ABC fractional derivative and implemented on fractional DSEK model. The symmetric properties contribute to determining the appropriate method for finding the correct solution to fractional differential equations. The numerical solutions generated using fractional Euler’s method have been plotted for different values of α where α ∈ 0,1 and different step sizes h. Result discussion will be given, describing the changes that occur due to the step size h. (shrink)

This study examines the R&D investment behaviour of different types of family-controlled firms with the moderating role of ownership discrepancy between cash-flow rights and excess voting rights by using the sufficiency conditions’ theoretical framework of ability and willingness developed by De Massis. It uses data from family firms that have issued A-shares from 2008 to 2018. They used pooled OLS regression for data analysis and Tobit regression for robustness checks. This study classifies family firm types into two categories, namely, the (...) lone-controller family firms (LCFFs) and the multi-controller family firms (MCFFs), with each being further classified as “excess” or “no excess” voting rights. Both LCFFs without excess voting rights and MCFFs with excess voting rights have the “ability” and “willingness” toward R&D investment. LCFFs with excess voting rights and MCFFs without excess voting rights only have the ability but low willingness to invest in R&D. The study also establishes that Chinese family-controlled firms are heterogeneous toward risky investment. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to differentiate Chinese family firms by their unique ownership structure characteristics in investigating the effect of the family firm structure on R&D investment. The study is a novel attempt to test the willingness and ability framework of LCFFs and MCFFs. Previous studies based on agency theory have tacitly assumed that ability and willingness exist in family-controlled firms. However, this study challenges this implicit assumption. (shrink)

The expropriation of marginalized women’s labor is a key issue in business ethics in these times of global outsourcing and informal work arrangements. This has led to a transnational advocacy movement for securing the labor rights of homeworkers, who are poor women working on piece-rate contracts out of their homes. Drawing on materialist feminism, our paper critically explores the homeworker network in Pakistan, that was set up as part of a global push by international institutions and networks to localize the (...) issue across geographies. Our focus is the national women’s NGO that leads advocacy efforts on the issue in the country and its relationship with other actors. Through fieldwork spanning 3 years we find that the network employs a top-down ‘us versus them’ approach in advocacy and mobilization. The race-to-the-bottom between the network’s national and district-level actors for donor funding further undermines prospects for developing indigenous narratives of resistance. The network, while mission bound to enhance the collective agency of its constituency, has depoliticized what should have been a class-based feminist struggle. From a materialist perspective, we conclude that the NGOized network rests upon and feeds off of its constituency, creating an additional layer of primitive accumulation over the workers it represents. (shrink)

After the American elections of 2016, an upset occurred with the victory of Donald Trump as the president of United States of America. From day one, he was in lime light due to his controversial polices and extremist behaviour towards Muslims and other countries of the world. Similarly, he had a very odd behaviour towards European Union and its member countries or in other words it would be accurate to say that he wanted to demolish European Union. In current scenario, (...) EU is facing multidimensional problems in the form refugee crisis from many parts of the world, Russian aggressive policies towards EU, ethnic movements in Europe, and above all critical elections in Italy, France and the Netherlands. Currently, it seems that the whole Europe is at stake and all these circumstances are leading EU towards a huge crisis. It seems that EU is facing the most difficult time period since its emergence. Critics are clearly indicating that EU could only survive with the active participation of France and Germany and that Europe needs serious changes by hearing the voice of the people and can gain its strength back by solving the major issues such as immigration problems and increased terrorism. (shrink)

Europe is a melting pot of diverse cultures, civilizations and amalgamation of various ethnicities. It is a land which faced many catastrophes, high intensity conflicts and wars. Two world wars have been fought on this land. Almost all the major nations participated directly or indirectly at massive scale. Franco-German axis is a term to explain the relations of both the countries in the context of their mutual cooperation and their significant role in contemporary political affairs of Europe. Post war era (...) 1945, congenial atmosphere of synchronization between both the countries replaced three century old French- German hostility. This tandem performed active role not only in the politically integrated European nation but also they played a vital role in the formation of single currency euro as well. Comparatively their functioning is becoming slow but they are still necessary for future of Europe. It is a general impression that the FrancoGerman alliance is facing critical phase, or in other words they are no longer being capable to act as the twin motor of European integration but Euro pe do not have an appropriate replacement. As far as the future of Franco-German relationship or leadership is concerned it acted necessary of European Union’s twin motor in the past but in recent years national interest became more supreme than the interest of European Union as a whole. (shrink)

This study addresses the gap between policy and practice on the issue of women’s right to own rural land through a qualitative study conducted in Pakistan’s two largest provinces, Punjab and Sindh. A recent survey finds that only 4% of women own rural land in Pakistan. Given the relatively large agrarian economy, land is a key resource determining women’s agency. To understand the dynamics that maintain this status quo, I use two distinct strands of feminist theory. First is Joan Acker’s (...) organizational theory of gender and class structures, to explore the inequality regimes embedded in rural patriarchy. Second, I adapt Suad Joseph’s conceptualization of patriarchal connectivity to show how in rural Pakistan, valorizing kinship works to exclude women from matters pertaining to land and silencing demands for their inheritances. This framework simultaneously allows for a fine-grained analysis of the politico-economic and social structures of rural society, while building an intimate understanding of familial relations. The findings show how land is discursively defined as a collective good to ensure that landed patriarchs remain entrenched within the political and economic order of the state, limiting possibilities, for women, of acquiring agency through owning and controlling rural land. The study also upends the widespread myth of Islamic misogyny, for it demonstrates the political economy of patriarchal domination over religion in Pakistan. (shrink)

Readers of literary narratives undergo an emotional experience by feeling varied emotions in various ways. While going through a narrative, we assume here, a fictive reader may be absorbed because they very often believe they develop a feel what is to be felt from a perspective presented and, similarly they understand what is to be understood in a given situation and character engaged in highly textually interwoven situation. Therefore, certain techniques and devices are employed by the authors of emotional fiction (...) to engage their readers emotionally and to create text- reader empathy. In this paper, an attempt has been made to discover the lexico-grammatical texturing of emotional fiction using the Corpus Stylistics Framework for identifying emotional intensity based on Systemic Functional Linguistics to unveil how this particular texturing causes emotional immersion. Through a lexico-grammatical analysis of the selected passages of ‘The Bride’, it is established that by using particular lexical choices and devices, the author engages the reader emotionally and therefore, enhances readers’ involvement in the text. Hence, it supports our claim that the lexicogrammar of the emotional passages is instrumentally di?erent for projecting emotionally engaged responses. (shrink)

For efficient energy distribution, microgrids provide significant assistance to main grids and act as a bridge between the power generation and consumption. Renewable energy generation resources, particularly photovoltaics, are considered as a clean source of energy but are highly complex, volatile, and intermittent in nature making their forecasting challenging. Thus, a reliable, optimized, and a robust forecasting method deployed at MG objectifies these challenges by providing accurate renewable energy production forecasting and establishing a precise power generation and consumption matching at (...) MG. Furthermore, it ensures effective planning, operation, and acquisition from the main grid in the case of superior or inferior amounts of energy, respectively. Therefore, in this work, we develop an end-to-end hybrid network for automatic PV power forecasting, comprising three basic steps. Firstly, data preprocessing is performed to normalize, remove the outliers, and deal with the missing values prominently. Next, the temporal features are extracted using deep sequential modelling schemes, followed by the extraction of spatial features via convolutional neural networks. These features are then fed to fully connected layers for optimal PV power forecasting. In the third step, the proposed model is evaluated on publicly available PV power generation datasets, where its performance reveals lower error rates when compared to state-of-the-art methods. (shrink)

This series of responses was commissioned to accompany the article by Singer et al, which can be found at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/2/1. If you would like to comment on the article by Singer et al or any of the responses, please email us on [email protected].

This paper presents a diagrammatic notation for visualizing epistemic entities and relations. The notation was created during the Visualizing Worldviews project funded by the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute and has been further developed by the scholars participating in the university’s Research Opportunity Program. Since any systematic diagrammatic notation should be based on a solid ontology of the respective domain, we first outline the current state of the scientonomic ontology. We then proceed to providing diagrammatic tools for visualizing the (...) epistemic entities and relations of this ontology. These basic diagramming techniques allow us to construct diagrams of various types for both synchronic and diachronic visualizations. The paper concludes by highlighting some future research directions. As the notation presented here is de facto accepted and used in scientonomy, the paper suggests no modifications. (shrink)

Despite the frequency of stillbirths, the subsequent implications are overlooked and underappreciated. We present findings from comprehensive, systematic literature reviews, and new analyses of published and unpublished data, to establish the effect of stillbirth on parents, families, health-care providers, and societies worldwide. Data for direct costs of this event are sparse but suggest that a stillbirth needs more resources than a livebirth, both in the perinatal period and in additional surveillance during subsequent pregnancies. Indirect and intangible costs of stillbirth are (...) extensive and are usually met by families alone. This issue is particularly onerous for those with few resources. Negative effects, particularly on parental mental health, might be moderated by empathic attitudes of care providers and tailored interventions. The value of the baby, as well as the associated costs for parents, families, care providers, communities, and society, should be considered to prevent stillbirths and reduce associated morbidity. (shrink)

Unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly quadcopters, have several medical, agriculture, surveillance, and security applications. However, the use of this innovative technology for civilian applications is still very limited in low-income countries due to the high cost, whereas low-cost controllers available in the market are often tuned using the hit and trial approach and are limited for specific applications. This paper addresses this issue and presents a novel proof of concept low-cost quadcopter UAV design approach using a systematic Model-Based Design method for (...) mathematical modeling, simulation, real-time testing, and prototyping. The quadcopter dynamic model is developed, and controllers are designed using Proportional Integral, and Derivative, Pole Placement, and Linear Quadratic Regulator control strategies. The stability of the controllers is also checked using Lyapunov stability analysis. For verification and validation of the design, Software-in-the-Loop, Processor-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-loop testing, and Rapid Control Prototyping have been performed. The V&V methods of the MBD approach showed practically valid results with a stable flight of the quadcopter prototype. The proposed low-cost POC quadcopter design approach can be easily modified to have enhanced features, and quadcopters with different design parameters can be assembled using this approach for a diverse range of applications. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus is an infectious disease that spread across the world, bringing with it serious mental health problems for men and women. Women in Pakistan are infected with COVID-19 at a much lower rate than men, yet report worse mental health. To explain this paradox, we surveyed 190 participants shortly following the country lockdown, focusing on perceptions of the COVID-19 impact and positive adjustment. Measures used in this study included the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and Distress Tolerance Scale. Factor (...) analysis revealed five distinct areas related to COVID-19, which did not differ by sex. However, men reported higher levels of both distress tolerance and well-being than women. High endorsement of actions to protect against COVID-19 was related to lower distress tolerance scores, but in different ways for men and women. Men, but not women, who endorsed more protective measures to stop the pandemic reported higher DTS absorption scores, and therefore being more consumed by distress; women who endorsed more protective measures to stop the pandemic reported less acceptance of distress than men, as reflected in DTS appraisal scores. An in-depth analysis of women’s beliefs and behaviors related to COVID-19 is warranted to understand why Pakistani women who are infected with COVID-19 at lower rates than men show more mental health symptoms. (shrink)

This study examines the micro-level consequences of perceived corporate social responsibility and hypothesizes that perceived CSR affects the perception-emotion-attitude-behavior sequence. We hypothesized that perceived CSR affects organizational pride, affects affective commitment, and enhances the employees’ creative behaviors by using the lens of appraisal theory of emotion. This study also hypothesizes that the association of perceived CSR and employee creative behaviors is serially mediated by OP and AC. The time-lagged data were collected from employees of only those companies participating in CSR (...) activities to analyze the sequential mediation effect. We have tested the hypotheses of this study through Hayes approach. Results showed that perceived CSR kindles the employees’ creative behaviors. Furthermore, “organizational pride” and “affective commitment” serially mediate the association of perceived CSR and ECB. Hence, the hypothesized perception-emotion-attitude-behavior model received a significant support and demonstrated that micro-level positive consequences of CSR could be created through emotional, attitude, and behavioral mechanisms. The organization should promote their CSR activities using documentaries and contents to improve their perception of environmental and social issues, and it enhances employees’ pride and creativity. (shrink)