Properties of the PCygni wind found using the Self Absorption Curve method

We have used the optical lines of N II and Fe III to study the wind of the luminous blue variable P Cyg. This was performed by applying a version of the Self Absorption Curve (SAC) method, involving few assumptions, to lines whose flux can be measured. A rather surprising result was obtained; the lines of more excited multiplets without blue shifted absorption components appear to be optically thick, while the lines of the most excited multiplets may show some indications of being optically thicker than the lines of less excited ones. Explanations of such effects are discussed, including possible inhomogeneities in the wind.Comment: accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysic

Child Welfare Reform in Bulgaria - from Institutional to Family-Based Community Care: Engaging with Families, Children and Colleagues?

The authors present the child welfare policy reform and the process of deinstitutionalization of children's services in Bulgaria. These developments are examined in the context of the country's transition from a post-totalitarian to a liberal democratic state and from collectivistic to individual-centred practices. Therefore, the implementation of social policy promoting and regulating individualised community-based services faces challenges related to attitudes that support group-oriented and institutional-based care. There are three key contextual barriers to the provision of quality services for children with disability: engaging with the individual client, involving parents, and working in multidisciplinary teams. Clinical social work vignettes are presented to illustrate the above challenges

Assessment of Intellectual Functioning among Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Challenges and Implications Beyond the Clinical Practice

Early and precise identification of neurodevelopmental disorders together with provision of adequate and timely interventions remain increasingly important tasks for multidisciplinary clinical teams. А central component in this process of comprehensive clinical evaluation is the assessment of children’s intellectual functioning. Intelligence test results represent a central component in the decision making process of determining a child’s future in terms of: qualification for special education, access to social welfare support, placement in therapeutic programs, etc. Clinical results yielded through the application of standardized intelligence assessment instruments (WISC, K-ABC, RPM), and especially the overall quantitative measure of cognitive ability (IQ) have become a central, and sometimes the only measure taken into consideration when determining a child’s level of functioning. Together with some distinct benefits, this practice places many children at risk of being underestimated and calls for revision and modification of standard assessment procedures. In line with these considerations, authors raise for discussion traditional approaches to diagnostics of intellectual functioning, highlighting some challenges, emerging from the constitutive particularities in the cognitive functioning of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. An attempt for identifying areas for further improvement alongside with research-informed recommendations for a contemporary, individualized and sensitive to the specifications of children with neurodevelopmental disorders assessment practice are outlined at the end of this paper. According to the authors’ opinion, exploration of the topic provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding of clinicians, primary healthcare professionals, educators and other professionals involved in supporting children with developmental deficits

Early Assessment of Mental Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and other Neurodevelopmental Disorders - Sharing of Clinical Experience

The authors present a synthesised review of the methods for assessing mental development and autism, with an emphasis on the general tendency to reduce the age of diagnosis. Based on clinical experience, a number of particularities are described in terms of: testing, working with parents, observing and reflecting on the nature and meaning of autistic behaviours. On focus is a toolkit for detailed assessment of mental development that was elaborated within the inter-university cooperation between Sofia Medical University and Universite catholique de Louvain (UCL) - Belgium. Illustrated and discussed are typical profiles of cognitive and socio-communicative functioning of children with ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders, which help a differential diagnosis to be made by the multidisciplinary clinical team. Further described are the advantages of early assessment of mental development as a basis for future educational and therapeutic programs

Visualizing membrane trafficking through the electron microscope: cryo-tomography of coat complexes

Coat proteins mediate vesicular transport between intracellular compartments, which is essential for the distribution of molecules within the eukaryotic cell. The global arrangement of coat proteins on the membrane is key to their function, and cryo-electron tomography and subtomogram averaging have been used to study membrane-bound coat proteins, providing crucial structural insight. This review outlines a workflow for the structural elucidation of coat proteins, incorporating recent developments in the collection and processing of cryo-electron tomography data. Recent work on coat protein I, coat protein II and retromer performed on in vitro reconstitutions or in situ is summarized. These studies have answered long-standing questions regarding the mechanisms of membrane binding, polymerization and assembly regulation of coat proteins

Socio-Psychological Aspects of Family Education

The article reveals the importance of family education – a physically and mentally healthy person. The core of family relations is moral, intellectual, aesthetic, Patriotic, multicultural, and other education. Parents should make reasonable demands on their children, love them, and create conditions for all-round development.В статье раскрывается важность семейного воспитания – физически и психически здоровой личности. Стержнем отношений в семье является нравственное, интеллектуальное, эстетическое, патриотическое, поликультурное и др. воспитание. Родители должны предъявлять к детям разумные требования, любить их, создавать условия для всестороннего развития

Nonlinear dynamics of soft fermion excitations in hot QCD plasma III: Soft-quark bremsstrahlung and energy losses

In general line with our early works [Yu.A. Markov, M.A. Markova, Nucl. Phys. A770 (2006) 162; 784 (2007) 443] within the framework of a semiclassical approximation the general theory of calculation of effective currents and sources generating bremsstrahlung of an arbitrary number of soft quarks and soft gluons at collision of a high-energy color-charged particle with thermal partons in a hot quark-gluon plasma, is developed. For the case of one- and two-scattering thermal partons with radiation of one or two soft excitations, the effective currents and sources are calculated in an explicit form. In the model case of `frozen' medium, approximate expressions for energy losses induced by the most simple processes of bremsstrahlung of soft quark and soft gluon, are derived. On the basis of a conception of the mutual cancellation of singularities in the sum of so-called `diagonal' and `off-diagonal' contributions to the energy losses, an effective method of determining color factors in scattering probabilities, containing the initial values of Grassmann color charges, is suggested. The dynamical equations for Grassmann color charges of hard particle used by us early are proved to be insufficient for investigation of the higher radiative processes. It is shown that for correct description of these processes the given equations should be supplemented successively with the higher-order terms in powers of the soft fermionic field.Comment: 93 pages, 20 figure