Prenatal diagnosis and postnatal follow-up of congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries and recurrent supraventricular tachycardia

The prenatal sonographic diagnosis of congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries (ccTGA), a rare form of congenital heart disease is very difficult. A24-year-old woman was referred to our center at 28 weeks’ gestation because of suspected fetal cardiac anomalies. This article reports a case of ccTGA with supraventricular tachycardia, ventricular septal defect, pulmonary valve stenosis, tricuspid valvar displacement and moderate tricuspid regurgitation during her pregnancy. The combined presence of SVT and ccTGA are occasionally present in the literature.peer-reviewe

Stacking in Colloidal Nanoplatelets: Tuning Excitonic Properties

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Colloidal semiconductor quantum wells, also commonly known as nanoplatelets (NPLs), have arisen among the most promising materials for light generation and harvesting applications. Recently, NPLs have been found to assemble in stacks. However, their emerging characteristics essential to these applications have not been previously controlled or understood. In this report, we systematically investigate and present excitonic properties of controlled column-like NPL assemblies. Here, by a controlled gradual process, we show that stacking in colloidal quantum wells substantially increases exciton transfer and trapping. As NPLs form into stacks, surprisingly we find an order of magnitude decrease in their photoluminescence quantum yield, while the transient fluorescence decay is considerably accelerated. These observations are corroborated by ultraefficient Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) in the stacked NPLs, in which exciton migration is estimated to be in the ultralong range (>100 nm). Homo-FRET (i.e., FRET among the same emitters) is found to be ultraefficient, reaching levels as high as 99.9% at room temperature owing to the close-packed collinear orientation of the NPLs along with their large extinction coefficient and small Stokes shift, resulting in a large Forster radius of similar to 13.5 nm. Consequently, the strong and long-range homo-FRET boosts exciton trapping in nonemissive NPLs, acting as exciton sink centers, quenching photoluminescence from the stacked NPLs due to rapid nonradiative recombination of the trapped excitons. The rate-equation-based model, which considers the exciton transfer and the radiative and nonradiative recombination within the stacks, shows an excellent match with the experimental data. These results show the critical significance of stacking control in NPL solids, which exhibit completely different signatures of homo-FRET as compared to that in colloidal nanocrystals due to the absence of inhomogeneous broadening

Advertising agency scene in Saudi Arabia

Looks at advertising agencies in Saudi Arabia and describes their strengths and the facilities they can offer. Focuses on five major advertising agencies – Tihama for Advertising, Public Relations and Marketing; United Outdoor Advertising Company Ltd.; Raed Marketing and Advertising; Narwah Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing; and Transworld Publicity Limited – and mentions five others. Explores the history of advertising in Saudi Arabia; it's a relatively new industry built on the crude oil boom of 1973, when the Saudis embarked on an intensive economic development programme. © 1998, MCB UP Limite

Present-bias in different income groups

The excessive use of credit cards and increasing consumer borrowing has been a major problem. Laibson (1997) suggests the present-bias problem as one of the driving forces of excessive borrowing. Shefrin and Thaler (1988) suggest that self-control underlies national borrowing/savings rate. We conduct a survey to check for present-bias as well as self-control problems among individuals in Turkey. Our findings show that different income groups have similar discount factors, i.e., impatience levels, but very different degrees of dynamic inconsistencies, i.e. present-bias levels. In particular, 29.4% of low-income individuals exhibit present-bias whereas this is down to 6.4% for high-income individuals. Using the parameters we achieve through the surveys, policymakers can design appropriate commitment devices for time-inconsistent individuals to ensure a sustainable level of aggregate saving and financial investment

The anticipated social cost of disclosing a rejection experience

Social rejection is a negative experience. Disclosing this experience to others may be beneficial for the target but may also entail costs if the audience reacts negatively. Across five pre-registered studies (N = 1120), we investigated how people may feel an urge to disclose a certain hypothetical rejection experience, but, depending on anticipated costs and benefits, may be reluctant to do so. The results reveal that when considering disclosing this rejection experience (a) targets anticipate social costs rather than benefits, and audiences indeed devalue such targets who disclose that they were rejected; (b) targets feel the urge to talk about this experience yet feel reluctant to do so; and (c) targets see disclosing to a close other as less risky, hence mitigating the conflicting urge and reluctance to talk. These findings suggest that people view disclosing a rejection experience as risky and perhaps not as the best coping strategy

Combined filtering and key-frame reduction of motion capture data with application to 3DTV

A new method for combined filtering and key-frame reduction of motion capture data is proposed. Filtering of motion capture data is necessary to eliminate any jitter introduced by a motion capture system. Key-frame reduction, on the other hand, allows animators to easily edit motion data by representing animation curves with a significantly smaller number of key frames. The proposed technique achieves key frame reduction and jitter removal simultaneously by fitting a Hermite curve to motion capture data using dynamic programming. Copyright © UNION Agency - Science Press

Intensity, intent, and ambiguity:Appraisals of workplace ostracism and coping responses

Using both correlational and experimental designs across four studies (N = 1251 working individuals), the current project aimed to contribute to the understanding of workplace ostracism by studying two research questions. First, we tested whether the subjective experience of targets reflects the current theorizing of ostracism. Second, drawing from the transactional theory of stress and coping, we investigated whether this subjective experience impacts targets' coping responses. Findings based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the current theorizing of workplace ostracism such that perceived intensity, intent, and ambiguity were reflected in how targets appraised being ostracized at work. The appraisals were also related to coping responses. Perceived intensity predicted more approach-oriented (e.g., confrontation) and less avoidance-oriented coping responses (e.g., minimization). While attributions of intent also predicted some coping responses (e.g., instrumental support seeking), the explanatory power of perceived ambiguity was lower than the other two appraisals. Although these researcher-defined dimensions may be reflective of targets' experience, we propose that predictions made based on these dimensions need further refinement. The theoretical and practical significance of these findings are discussed in relation to how workplace ostracism is typically studied in the literature

Astronomical Site Selection for Turkey Using GIS Techniques

A site selection of potential observatory locations in Turkey have been carried out by using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) coupled with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and satellite imagery which in turn reduced cost and time and increased the accuracy of the final outcome. The layers of cloud cover, digital elevation model, artificial lights, precipitable water vapor, aerosol optical thickness and wind speed were studied in the GIS system. In conclusion of MCDA, the most suitable regions were found to be located in a strip crossing from southwest to northeast including also a diverted region in southeast of Turkey. These regions are thus our prime candidate locations for future on-site testing. In addition to this major outcome, this study has also been applied to locations of major observatories sites. Since no goal is set for \textit{the best}, the results of this study is limited with a list of positions. Therefore, the list has to be further confirmed with on-site tests. A national funding has been awarded to produce a prototype of an on-site test unit (to measure both astronomical and meteorological parameters) which might be used in this list of locations.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Experimental Astronom

Keyframe reduction techniques for motion capture data

Two methods for keyframe reduction of motion capture data are presented. Keyframe reduction of motion capture data enables animators to easily edit motion data with smaller number of keyframes. One of the approaches achieves keyframe reduction and noise removal simultaneously by fitting a curve to the motion information using dynamic programming. The other approach uses curve simplification algorithms on the motion capture data until a predefined threshold of number of keyframes is reached. Although the error rate varies with different motions, the results show that curve fitting with dynamic programming performs as good as curve simplification methods. ©2008 IEEE

DEEP LEARNING BASED AERIAL IMAGERY CLASSIFICATION FOR TREE SPECIES IDENTIFICATION

Forest monitoring and tree species categorization has a vital importance in terms of biodiversity conservation, ecosystem health assessment, climate change mitigation, and sustainable resource management. Due to large-scale coverage of forest areas, remote sensing technology plays a crucial role in the monitoring of forest areas by timely and regular data acquisition, multi-spectral and multi-temporal analysis, non-invasive data collection, accessibility and cost-effectiveness. High-resolution satellite and airborne remote sensing technologies have supplied image data with rich spatial, color, and texture information. Nowadays, deep learning models are commonly utilized in image classification, object recognition, and semantic segmentation applications in remote sensing and forest monitoring as well. We, in this study, selected a popular CNN and object detection algorithm YOLOv8 variants for tree species classification from aerial images of TreeSatAI benchmark. Our results showed that YOLOv8-l outperformed benchmark’s initial release results, and other YOLOv8 variants with 71,55% and 72,70% for weighted and micro averaging scores, respectively