For Baudrillard, absolute Evil today comes from an excess of Good, of technologcial development, of totalitarian morality, of the desire to do Good without opposition. The attempt to force the world into a globalized and integrated society merely has the opposite effect of generating an ideological “Axis of Evil” in the form of terrorism. But there can be no axis of Evil, Baudrillard insists, because evil does not have a direction; only Good–i.e. the global dominance of the free market, etc.–can have a forward, linear direction. Evil is more of a parallax, or a deviance, so it cannot even be opposed to the Good. Only Good can have an axis, a direction, so the “axis of evil” is something that is projected upon the Evil in order to justify the Good as ideology. When you fight Evil militarily with a frontal attack, you can only miss it. 

In this paper we study the existence of a Nash-type equlibrium for a non-potential nonlinear system by combining variational methods with the monotonicity approach. The advance over existing research is that we can consider systems of Dirichlet problems in which the operator is not necessarily linear.

Abstract: In this paper, the nonlinear Schrödinger-type equation −(∇ + iA) ^2 u + u + λ[I_α*(K|u|^2)]Ku=af(|u|)u/|u| in R ^3 is considered in the presence of magnetic field, where A ∈ C ^1 (R ^3 ,R^ 3 ), α ∈ (0,3), I_α denotes the Riesz potential, K ∈ L^ p (R ^3 ,(0,∞)) for some p ∈ (6/(1 + α),∞], a ∈ L^ q (R 3 ,[0,∞)) \ {0} for some q ∈ (3/2,∞], and f ∈ C(R,[0,∞)) is assumed to be asymptotically linear at infinity. Under suitable assumptions regarding A, K, a, and f, variational methods are used to establish the existence of ground-state solutions of the above equation for sufficiently small values of the parameter λ.

In order to plan a safe and effective UAV trajectory for quay crane inspection, this paper proposes a UAV trajectory planning method using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanner. Firstly, viewpoints of UAV inspection are selected according to LiDAR and detected surface of quay crane. Secondly, vector jump point search algorithm (VJPS) is proposed to generate a collision-free path. Finally, by applying corridor constraints and deviation function, four inspection trajectories are simulated according to the dynamic characteristics of UAV. The simulation results show that the proposed path planning method can decrease 5.79% search time and 15.52% total path length, the proposed trajectory optimization method can generate a trajectory close to the planned path, which reduces the deviation distance between the planned path and actual trajectory. Overall, it appears that when tracking the trajectory generated by the above method, a LiDAR-equipped UAV can accomplish inspection tasks more effectively and safely in the quay crane environment.

High resolution monitoring is fundamental to understand and predict the dynamics of ecological communities in an era of global change and biodiversity declines. While real-time and fully automated monitoring of the abiotic components of ecosystems has been possible for some time, monitoring the biotic components at different organizational scales, e.g. from individual behaviours and traits to the abundance and distribution of species, is far more challenging. Recent technological advancements offer potential solutions to achieve this through: (i) increasingly affordable high throughput recording hardware, which can collect rich multidimensional data, and (ii) increasingly accessible artificial intelligence approaches, which are able to extract ecological knowledge from large datasets. However, automating the monitoring of facets of ecological populations and communities via such technologies is still in its infancy, being primarily achieved at low spatiotemporal resolutions within specific stages of the monitoring workflow. Here, we review existing technologies for data recording and processing that enable automated monitoring of ecological communities. We then present novel frameworks that combine such technologies, forming fully automated pipelines to detect, track, classify, and count multiple species, and even record behavioural and morphological traits, at resolutions which have previously been impossible to achieve. Based on these rapidly developing technologies, we illustrate a solution to one of the greatest challenges in ecology and conservation: the ability to rapidly generate high resolution, multidimensional, and critically, standardized data across complex ecologies.

Understanding the factors that regulate the functioning of our ecosystems in response to environmental changes can help to maintain the stable provisioning of ecosystem services to mankind. This is especially relevant given the increased variability of environmental conditions due to human activities. In particular, maintaining a stable production and plant biomass during the growing season (intra-annual stability) despite pervasive and directional changes in temperature and precipitation through time can help to secure food supply to wild animals, livestock, and humans. Here, we conducted a 29-year field observational study in a temperate grassland to explore how the intra-annual stability of primary productivity is influenced by biotic and abiotic variables through time. In particular, we analyzed the relationship of community biomass intra-annual stability with plant diversity and seasonal distribution patterns of temperature and precipitation. We found that lower accumulated precipitation between June and September during the 29-year investigated contributed to lower intra-annual community stability because of a decrease in compensatory mechanisms among species (species asynchrony). Additionally, higher precipitation in July contributed to higher intra-annual stability because higher species richness with higher precipitation led to higher average intra-annual stability of all species in the community (species stability). In contrast, we found no evidence that temperature influenced community intra-annual stability. Our results indicates that ongoing reduced seasonal precipitation leading to reduced intra-annual stability in the temperate grassland, which has important theoretical significance for us to take active measures to deal with climate change.

The non-breeding period represents a significant part of an Afro-Palearctic migratory bird’s annual cycle. Decisions such as whether to remain at a single site and whether to return to it across years have important effects on aspects such as survival, future breeding success, migratory connectivity, and conservation. During this study, we colour-ringed > 300 Common Whitethroats Curruca communis and undertook daily resightings to understand site persistence and the degree of site fidelity throughout three non-breeding periods (November – April) in Nigeria. The probability of detecting a colour-ringed Whitethroat when it was present, was 0.33. Site persistence varied widely across individuals (1 – 165 days) and did not differ significantly with sex or year, though first-year birds remained for significantly shorter periods than adults. We believe that shorter residencies are likely due to the use of multiple stationary non-breeding sites rather than low winter survival. A minimum of 19% of individuals returned to the study site the following year and shifted, on average, 300 meters, suggesting that Whitethroats have a relatively high degree of between-years site fidelity at a very fine scale. An individual’s previous residency duration did not seem to determine its residency duration the following year. We suggest that spatial fidelity is high and constant through years, but temporal fidelity is not, and individual residency patterns vary, probably according to yearly and seasonal conditions. Our results highlight the complexity of the annual cycle of a single species and the importance of carrying out in situ, small scale research throughout a migrant’s annual cycle over several years.

Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is a rare Gram-negative bacillus that cause enterocolitis and terminal ileitis. We report the first Danish case with Y. pseudotuberculosis multiple pyogenic liver abscess presenting with six weeks intermittently fever, fatigue and weight loss. The patient was successfully treated with percutaneous drainage and intravenous piperacillin/tazobactam and oral ciprofloxacin.

Foreign body aspiration is rare in children below 6 months of age. Very young children presenting with stridor, atypical croup presentation, and not responding accordingly, subglottic foreign body aspiration should be considered. These may not always be visible with bedside flexible endoscopy and may need investigation under anesthesia. We report 2 cases of devil's thorn aspiration in young infants. These children were left on the floor to play and devils thorn may be a danger lurking as the they have been deposited unknowingly by the shoes people wear and pick up by these young infants.

In the laryngeal foreign body caused by plate-shaped grilled liver, computed tomography imaging showed the presence of air along the pharyngeal wall between the wall and the meat, which can be mistaken as pharyngeal emphysema.

Marfan syndrome (MFS) an inherited disorder caused by FBN1 gene mutations, is well known to cause lethal aortic aneurysm and dissections at a relatively young age. Here, we report giant internal carotid artery aneurysms and porcelain aorta in an elderly patient with MFS.

A 76-year-old man receiving maintenance therapy with oral steroids for IgG4-related disease presented to our hospital with the chief complaint of visual disturbance. After detailed history-taking for IgG4-related disease, an imaging diagnosis of an intracranial lesion was made. Intensified steroid therapy was performed, which led to symptom resolution.

Erythema multiforme is a reactive inflammatory mucocutaneous disorder. It is etiology varied from bacterial, viral or fungal infection to drug reaction. The aim was to report a case of drug induced oral erythema multiforme, in order to highlight it's clinical and histological features in addition to the therapeutic modalities.

Data representation has received much attention in the fields of machine learning and pattern recognition. It is becoming an indispensable tool for many learning tasks. It can be useful for all learning paradigms: unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised. In this paper, we present a graph-based, deep and flexible data representation method using feature propagation as an internal filtering step. The presented framework ensures several desired features such as a graph-based regularization, a flexible projection model, a graph-based feature aggregation, and a deep learning architecture. The model can be learned layer by layer. In each layer, the nonlinear data representation and the unknown linear model are jointly estimated with a closed form solution. We evaluate the proposed method on semi-supervised classification tasks using six public image datasets. These experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented scheme, which compares favorably to many competing semi-supervised approaches.

Aim: Guidelines establish a framework for how therapeutics and vaccines are developed, assessed and approved. They influence which innovations are likely to be approved in the EU, and by that, they have an impact on the pipeline decisions taken by the research-based industry. This study analyses the level of acceptance for changes suggested by stakeholders within the authoring groups at the EMA. Methods: We looked at 87 guidelines from EMA Working Parties (WPs) launched for consultation between 2013-2017. Acceptance of stakeholder proposals and the time between the end of consultation and guideline adoption were studied as well as the openness of different Working Parties to accept changes. Results: Adoption of a guideline after the close of public consultation took at least 4 months, with average 12-16 months. The number of accepted and rejected comments were nearly equal across the stakeholders, with government having slightly higher chance for acceptance. Academia and NGOs had generally higher chances to have their comments accepted for general and indication-level guidelines. Government and individual companies had highest acceptance for molecule-level guidelines and trade associations for indication-level guidelines. The EMA WPs working with emerging technologies were more open to accept proposed changes. Conclusion: This pattern of progress in regulatory science at EMA demonstrates the essential and interrelated role of academia, industry, government and civil society – described as the quadruple helix model - to promote establishment of a strong innovation ecosystem in Europe. Further integration and utilisation of competences of each stakeholder is necessary for guideline development.

Multiple primary malignant tumors represent two or more primary tumors of different origin in a single individual is rare. We report a rare case of a 57-year-old female who had breast cancer, synchronous lung cancer, and a huge mucinous cystadenoma and simultaneously underwent successful combined surgery.

A document by Jordan Llerena-Velastegui. Click on the document to view its contents.

The maternally-inherited endosymbiont, Wolbachia, is known to alter the reproductive biology of its arthropod hosts for its benefit and can induce both positive and negative fitness effects in many hosts. Here we describe the effects of the maintenance of two distinct Wolbachia infections, one each from supergroups A and B, on the parasitoid host Nasonia vitripennis. We compare the effect of Wolbachia infections on various traits between the uninfected, single A infected, single B infected, and the double infected strains with their cured versions. Contrary to the previous reports, our results suggest that there is a significant cost associated with the maintenance of Wolbachia infections where traits like family size, fecundity, longevity, and rates of male copulation are compromised in Wolbachia infected strains. The double infected and supergroup B infection strains show higher Wolbachia titer than supergroup A. The double infected Wolbachia strain has the most detrimental impact on the host as compared to single infections. Moreover, there is a supergroup-specific negative impact on these wasps as the supergroup B infections elicit the most pronounced negative effects. These findings raise important questions on the mechanism of survival and maintenance of these reproductive parasites in arthropod hosts.

Background In this study, the time and path of transmission of H1N1 serotype influenza A viruses in Iran and neighboring countries have been investigated by using Bayesian phylogeography analysis on the sequences extracted from the gene bank. Methods We obtained all hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) nucleotide sequences of influenza H1N1 available up to December 25, 2020, from Iran and its neighboring countries (i.e., Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Iraq). We also performed a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo method to infer the evolutionary dynamic and the most recent common ancestor for the HA and NA sequences. Results Based on the extracted sequences, the age of emergence of H1N1 influenza virus serotype was older in Iran compared to neighboring countries, and Tehran had a key role and epicenter of transmission to other cities within Iran. The mean time of the most recent common ancestor of H1N1 viruses was 1989 (95% HPD: 1980-1994) for HA and NA as well. Conclusions Along with ordinary measures like resource management, diagnostic approaches, and preparedness to fight against viruses that were in place, continuous monitoring, and screening of H1N1 serotype influenza virus in the country, especially by implementation of feasible, effective, and innovative measures at border line should be initiated and identified gaps and shortage that should be a priority for virus control. It is also important for countries to have a regional monitoring program in addition to internal monitoring programs, as well as to start a virus molecular care program.

In this paper, we derive an Euler-Maruyama (EM) method for a class of multi-term fractional stochastic nonlinear differential equations, and prove its strong convergence. The strong convergence order of this EM method is $\min\{\alpha_{m}-0.5,~\alpha_{m}-\alpha_{m-1}\}$, where $\{\alpha_{i}\}_{i=1}^{m}$ is the order of Caputo fractional derivative satisfying that $1>\alpha_{m}>\alpha_{m-1}>\cdots>\alpha_{2}>\alpha_{1}>0$, $\alpha_{m}>0.5$, and $\alpha_{m}+\alpha_{m-1}>1$. Then, a fast implementation of this proposed EM method is also presented based on the sum-of-exponentials approximation technique. Finally, some numerical experiments are given to verify the theoretical results and computational efficiency of our EM method.

Background: Central nervous system tumors (CNS) are the second most common malignancies in childhood. Inflammation and changes in nutritional status play an important role and can be used as prognostic markers. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the predictive ability of nutritional status and inflammatory markers on overall survival (OS) of pediatric patients with CNS. Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, 103 patients were followed for 1, 3, and 5 years. Clinical, anthropometric, and hematological data were collected. Body mass index for age (BMI/A), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and systemic inflammation response index (SIRI) were calculated. OS curves were calculated using the Kaplan Meier method and evaluated using the Log-Rank test. The Cox proportional hazards model was performed to identify independent variables associated with prognostic factors, generating hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: Nutritional status did not significantly affect OS. However, patients with NLR ≥ 2.18 and SIRI ≥ 1249.18 had significantly lower OS in the three periods evaluated. However, only treatment with exclusive radiotherapy or chemotherapy (RT or CT) and high NLR were identified as independent prognostic factors for worse OS. Treatment (RT or CT) was an independent prognostic factor for OS at 1 year (HR: 12.76; 95%CI 1.73-94.12), 3 years (HR: 16.22; 95%CI 2.19-120.06), and 5 years (HR: 16.2295%CI 2.19-120.07) while NLR was a prognostic factor only at 3 years and 5 years (HR: 1.94; 95%CI 1.02-3.69). Conclusion: High pretreatment NLR was shown to be an independent prognostic factor for OS in pediatric patients with CNS.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to conduct single-molecule imaging of protein/DNA complexes involved in the regulation of the arabinose operon of Escherichia coli. In the presence of arabinose, the transcription regulatory protein AraC binds to a 38 bp region consisting of the araI1 and araI2 half-sites. The structure of full-length AraC, when bound to DNA, was not previously known. In this study, AraC was combined with 302 bp and 560 bp DNA and arabinose, deposited on a mica substrate, and imaged with AFM in air. A statistical analysis showed that AraC induces a bend in the DNA with an angle of 69° ± 25°. By using known domain structures of AraC, geometric constraints, and contacts determined from biochemical experiments, we developed a model of the tertiary and quaternary structure of DNA-bound AraC in the presence of arabinose. The DNA bend angle predicted by the model is in agreement with the measurement value. We discuss the results in view of other regulatory proteins that cause DNA bending and formation of the open complex to initiate transcription.

Von Willebrand disease (VWD) is a hereditary bleeding disorder characterized by a deficiency of von Willebrand factor (VWF). In pediatrics, plasma-derived VWF (pdVWF) is the standard for factor replacement when indicated. Alternatives are needed for kids who are refractory or intolerant to pdVWF. There is limited data on the safety and efficacy of recombinant VWF in the pediatric population, and none regarding the switch from pdVWF to rVWF due to intolerance. Herein, we describe the safe and effective use of rVWF in a pediatric patient with history of anaphylaxis to pdVWF, who underwent elective orthopedic surgery.

We are happy to announce our work on MMAS special issue “Integro-differential models of natural and anthropogenic processes and phenomena” is successfully completed, so please enjoy original and high-quality contributions related to the mathematical theory of such processes and phenomena including the models, computational algorithms and analysis and mathematical methods regarded as new and promising for the understanding the problems arise both in natural and anthropogenic conditions.