Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. According to Attentional Control Theory, anxiety biases attention towards bottom-up and stimulus-driven processing. The goal of this study was to explore the extent to which differences in state anxiety and related measures (...) affect visual attention and category learning, both with and without the influence of tDCS. Using discovery learning, participants were trained to classify pictures of European streets into two categories while receiving 30 min of 2.0 mA anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS over the rVLPFC. The pictures were classifiable according to two separate rules, one stimulus and one hypothesis-driven. The Remote Associates Test, Profile of Mood States, and Attention Networks Task were used to understand the effects of individual differences at baseline on subsequent tDCS-mediated learning. Multinomial logistic regression was fit to predict rule learning based on the baseline measures, with subjects classified according to whether they used the stimulus-driven or hypothesis-driven rule to classify the pictures. The overall model showed a classification accuracy of 74.1%. The type of tDCS stimulation applied, attentional orienting score, and self-reported mood were significant predictors of different categories of rule learning. These results indicate that anxiety can influence the quality of subjects’ attention at the onset of the task and that these attentional differences can influence tDCS-mediated category learning during the rapid assessment of visual scenes. These findings have implications for understanding the complex interactions that give rise to the variability in response to tDCS. (shrink)

Abū al-Ḥajj¿j Yūsuf b. Muḥammad Ibn Ṭumlūs (Alhagiag Bin Thalmus, d. 620/1223) was a philosopher, physician and direct disciple of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198), who lived and practiced rational sciences in Alzira and Marrakesh, a quarter of a century after the demise of his teacher. Ibn Ṭumlūs was not Ibn Rushd's only student who engaged in work on logic, but one of dozens of disciples, suggesting that the supposed simultaneous death of the latter's philosophy is "grossly exaggerated". As a (...) valuable window into the practice of logic in 13th century al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Ṭumlūs' Compendium on Logic (Al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-manṭiq) covers all the parts of "the expanded Organon", as it was known since al-F¿r¿bī (d. 339/951). The present volume offers a complete critical Arabic edition of this work, with an English and Arabic introduction, notes and indices. (shrink)

Firearm injuries are a significant public health problem. Prior studies have analyzed firearm death data or adult firearm injury data, but few studies have analyzed firearm injury data specifically among youth. To inform the current debate surrounding gun policy in the United States, this study aims to provide an estimate of the immense burden of youth firearm injury and its associated risk factors. Therefore, we performed a descriptive analysis of the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, the largest all-payer emergency department database (...) in the United States, from January 2006 to September 2015. All patients age < 21 who presented with any diagnosis of firearm-related injuries were included. There were an estimated 198,839 incidents of firearm-related emergency department visits for patients age < 21 from 2006 through 2015. After presenting to the ED, an estimated 11,909 cases resulted in death. The population adjusted rate of firearm-related emergency department visits was highest in the South and Midwest. This study demonstrates the significant burden of firearm injury among youth. Having a reliable estimate of the number of children harmed by firearms each year is a critical tool for policymakers — and may make common-sense gun safety measures more politically possible. (shrink)

Nanotechnology shows great promise in a variety of applications with attractive economic and societal benefits. However, societal issues associated with nanotechnology are still a concern to the general public. While numerous technological advancements in nanotechnology have been achieved over the past decade, research into the broader societal issues of nanotechnology is still in its early phases. Based on the data from the Web of Science database, we applied the main path analysis, cluster analysis and text mining tools to explore the (...) main research fronts and hierarchical structure of these societal issues. We found that the research studies fell into four categories: "General Toxicity and EHS (Environment, Health and Safety)," "Medicine and Cytotoxicity," "Assessment and Regulation," and "Environment and Ecotoxicity." These research studies have disclosed much information about the potential effect of nanotechnology on public health and the environment. Relatively speaking, the studies on the assessment, regulation, preventive solutions, and environmental protection are just emerging. This finding indicates that an abundance of effort should be conducted on these emerging themes to maximize the benefits of nanotechnology while minimizing its potential harm. The implications for various parties in this domain are also presented. (shrink)

Collection of Hadith (Islamic tradition) with commentry on the teachings and responsibilities of a Muslim in a Islamic society.

Arab countries; civilization; Islamic influences.

Atomic-scale computer simulation has been used to study the thermally activated atomic transport of self-interstitial atoms in the form of planar clusters in pure Cu and f -Fe. There is strong evidence that such clusters are commonly formed in metals during irradiation with high-energy particles and play an important role in accumulation and spatial distribution of surviving defects. An extensive study of the mobility of SIA clusters containing two to 331 interstitials has been carried out using the molecular dynamics simulation (...) technique for the temperature range from 180 to 1200 K. The results obtained show that clusters larger than three to four SIAs are one-dimensionally mobile in both Cu and Fe. Large clusters of more than 100 SIAs in Cu and 300 SIAs in Fe have significantly reduced mobility. The problem of describing one-dimensional motion in three-dimensional space is discussed. An attempt is made to describe the mobility of SIA clusters within the approximation of 1D diffusion. For clusters in both metals the effective migration energy of 1D diffusion as estimated via the jump frequency of the cluster centre of mass is found to be independent of the number of SIAs in the clusters, although the cluster jump frequency decreases with increasing cluster size. Mechanisms of 1D mobility of interstitial clusters are discussed. (shrink)

In _Xiong Shili’s Understanding of Reality and Function, 1920-1937_, SANG Yu presents a detailed examination and analysis of how Xiong Shili gradually established his philosophical system of Reality (_ti_) and Function (_yong_), a key conceptual polarity in traditional Chinese philosophy.

This study examined variation in medical practitioners’ practice-based conceptions of what it means to be a doctor, based on interviews with 30 clinicians who were also medical educators. Participants included general practitioners, surgeons and physicians (non-surgical specialists). Participants were asked to draw a concept map of ‘being a doctor’, followed by semi-structured interviews using a phenomenographic research design. Three conceptions were identified, varyingly focused on (1) treating patients’ medical problems; (2) maximising patients’ well-being; and (3) maximising community health. Each conception (...) was distinguished by variation in awareness of six underlying dimensions of being a doctor: (1) doctors’ actions; (2) treatment success; (3) patients’ actions; (4) patients’ well-being; (5) community needs; and (6) social justice. Whilst all participants included dimensions 1 and 2 in their described practice, numerous participants did not include dimensions 3 and 4, i.e. did not take the patients’ role and the impact of patients’ psychosocial context into account in their practice. This is concerning, especially amongst medical educators, given the widely acknowledged importance of patient-centred care in medical practice. Similarly, only some of the participants considered community health needs and felt a broader social responsibility beyond their responsibility to individual patients. These findings highlight aspects of the medical profession that need to be further emphasised in medical training and continuing professional development. (shrink)

Antibiotic allergies are commonly reported among patients, but most do not experience reactions on rechallenge with the same agents. These reported allergies complicate management of infections in patients labelled as having penicillin allergy, including serious infections where penicillin-based antibiotics are the first-line (most effective and least toxic) treatment option. Allergy labels are rarely questioned in clinical practice, with many clinicians opting for inferior second-line antibiotics to avoid a perceived risk of allergy. Reported allergies thereby can have significant impacts on patients (...) and public health, and present major ethical challenges. Antibiotic allergy testing has been described as a strategy to circumvent this dilemma, but it carries limitations that often make it less feasible in patients with acute infections or in community settings that lack access to allergy testing. This article provides an empirically informed ethical analysis of key considerations in this clinical dilemma, usingStaphylococcus aureusbacteraemia in patients with penicillin allergies as a case study. We argue that prescribing first-line penicillin-based antibiotics to patients with reported allergies may often present a more favourable ratio of benefits to risks, and may therefore be more ethically appropriate than using second-line drugs. We recommend changes to policy-making, clinical research and medical education, in order to promote more ethically acceptable responses to antibiotic allergies than the status quo. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

For almost 700 years shoguns ruled Japan. These "gentleman warriors" developed a dedicated system of honor and strict guidlelines of behavior that Taira Shigesuke first brought together in his 16th century book—Bushido Shoshinshu. Present to a modern audience in clear, easy-to-read English, this new translation captures the majesty of the higher principles as well as the usefulness of the daily advice. From principles such as "a samurai should keep foremost in his mind the fact that he must die" to rules (...) regarding duty, personal obligation and even money management, this book sets out the guidelines that defined Japan's "way of the warrior." Honor and obligation are emphasised above all to the reader, who is taught that a samurai is expected to be indifferenet to pain, unquestioningly loyal, and an expert in his training. (shrink)

Smart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)

The essence of temporal universe creation is that any analytical solution has to comply with the boundary condition of our universe; dimensionality and causality constraints. The essence of this book is to show that everything has a price within our temporal (t > 0) universe; energy and time.

Current COVID-19 pandemic and previous SARS/MERS outbreaks have caused a series of major crises to global public health. We must integrate the large and exponentially growing amount of heterogeneous coronavirus data to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechanisms, in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs. Ontologies have emerged to play an important role in standard knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. We have initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). (...) As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is an open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. In this article, the general architecture and the design patterns of the CIDO are introduced, CIDO representation of coronaviruses, phenotypes, anti-coronavirus drugs and medical devices (e.g. ventilators) are illustrated, and an application of CIDO implemented to identify repurposable drug candidates for effective and safe COVID-19 treatment is presented. (shrink)