"shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady": Shakespeare's use of taste words

The sense of taste has been considered an "inferior" sense for a long time, both in philosophical and scientific fields of investigation (Cavalieri 2011. Gusto: l'intelligenza del palato. Bari: GLF editori Laterza). However, the recent growing interest in Cognitive Science has driven scholars to a reconsideration of the role of taste in human cognition. This paper intends to investigate such a role in a corpus of five Shakespearean plays. To do so, I conducted an analysis by looking at the occurrences of seven taste terms. The research aims at exploring the metaphorical occurrences of the lexicon of taste, i.e. concordances in which a taste word does not describe food or an actual taste sensation. I propose an idealised cognitive model to organise such occurrences that involves a central mapping from which others derive, in keeping with Kovecses (2010. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Results are consistent in showing the role of taste in the motivation of metaphorical expression in Shakespeare's plays

Addressing manifestations of oppression at end-of-life among African Americans : unpacking White privilege in hospice care

The U.S. Census shows that African Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population and have higher mortality rates than whites but they only account for 8.9% of the hospice population. This qualitative study examined variables needed to expand hospice services among African Americans, and whether race-based historical injustice needed to be addressed with patients at end-of-life. The investigation is based on the perspectives of seven African American hospice patients receiving in- and out-patient services through one hospice program in the Southeast, U.S. Hospice usage was considered from a relational perspective whereby the cultures of both African Americans and hospice were examined in order to locate the points of both impasse and opportunity. Participants were asked about end-of-life planning, family, spirituality, mistrust, race, values and beliefs surrounding death and comfort so that biases in hospice care which are both overt and insidious would be exposed. The findings of the research showed that verbally addressing race-based historical injustice was not a necessary component of end-of-life care. Participants reported trust and care between workers and patients, which was connected to sincerity, workers\u27 ability to meet and exceed patient needs and the honoring of spiritual beliefs. Participants recommended increasing outreach efforts among African Americans and physicians proved to be hugely influential in informing African Americans of hospice services. Two key findings emerged from this study: (1) lack of information regarding hospice costs and availability of its services; and (2) the need for hospice facilities located within African American communities

A model for the interaction of high-energy particles in straight and bent crystals implemented in Geant4

A model for the simulation of orientational effects in straight and bent periodic atomic structures is presented. The continuum potential approximation has been adopted.The model allows the manipulation of particle trajectories by means of straight and bent crystals and the scaling of the cross sections of hadronic and electromagnetic processes for channeled particles. Based on such a model, an extension of the Geant4 toolkit has been developed. The code has been validated against data from channeling experiments carried out at CERN

A collimation system for ELI-NP Gamma Beam System - design and simulation of performance

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance and refine the design of the collimation system for the gamma radiation source (GBS) currently being realised at ELI-NP facility. The gamma beam, produced by inverse Compton scattering, will provide a tunable average energy in the range between 0.2 and 20 MeV, an energy bandwidth 0.5% and a flux of about 108 photons/s. As a result of the inverse Compton interaction, the energy of the emitted radiation is related to the emission angle, it is maximum in the backscattering direction and decreases as the angle increase [1,2]. Therefore, the required energy bandwidth can be obtained only by developing a specific collimation system of the gamma beam, i.e. filtering out the radiation emitted at larger angles. The angular acceptance of the collimation for ELI-NP-GBS must be continuously adjustable in a range from about 700 to 60 μrad, to obtain the required parameters in the entire energy range. The solution identified is a stack of adjustable slits, arranged with a relative rotation around the beam axis to obtain an hole with an approximately circular shape. In this contribution, the final collimation design and its performance evaluated by carrying out a series of detailed Geant4 simulations both of the high-energy and the low-energy beamline are presented

Non-invasive voiding assessment in conscious mice

OBJECTIVE: To review available options of assessing murine bladder function and to evaluate a non-invasive technique suitable for long-term recording. METHODS: We reviewed previously described methods to record rodent bladder function. We used modified metabolic cages to capture novel recording tracings of mouse micturition. We evaluated our method in a pilot study with female mice undergoing partial bladder outlet obstruction or sham operation, respectively; half of the partial obstruction and sham group received treatment with an S6K-inhibitor, targeting the mTOR pathway, which is known to be implicated in bladder response to obstruction. RESULTS: Our non-invasive method using continuous urine weight recording reliably detected changes in murine bladder function resulting from partial bladder outlet obstruction or treatment with S6K-inhibitor. We found obstruction as well as treatment with S6K-inhibitor to correlate with a hyperactive voiding pattern. CONCLUSIONS: While invasive methods to assess murine bladder function largely disturb bladder histology and intrinsically render post-cystometry gene expression analysis of questionable value, continuous urine weight recording is a reliable, inexpensive, and critically non-invasive method to assess murine bladder function, suitable for a long-term application

Experimental evidence of planar channeling in a periodically bent crystal

The usage of a Crystalline Undulator (CU) has been identified as a promising solution for generating powerful and monochromatic $\gamma$-rays. A CU was fabricated at SSL through the grooving method, i.e., by the manufacturing of a series of periodical grooves on the major surfaces of a crystal. The CU was extensively characterized both morphologically via optical interferometry at SSL and structurally via X-ray diffraction at ESRF. Then, it was finally tested for channeling with a 400 GeV/c proton beam at CERN. The experimental results were compared to Monte Carlo simulations. Evidence of planar channeling in the CU was firmly observed. Finally, the emission spectrum of the positron beam interacting with the CU was simulated for possible usage in currently existing facilities

Cost-benefit analysis of coastal flood defence measures in the North Adriatic Sea

The combined effect of global sea level rise and land subsidence phenomena poses a major threat to coastal settlements. Coastal flooding events are expected to grow in frequency and magnitude, increasing the potential economic losses and costs of adaptation. In Italy, a large share of the population and economic activities are located along the low-lying coastal plain of the North Adriatic coast, one of the most sensitive areas to relative sea level changes. Over the last half a century, this stretch of coast has experienced a significant rise in relative sea level, the main component of which was land subsidence; in the forthcoming decades, climate-induced sea level rise is expected to become the first driver of coastal inundation hazard. We propose an assessment of flood hazard and risk linked with extreme sea level scenarios, under both historical conditions and sea level rise projections in 2050 and 2100. We run a hydrodynamic inundation model on two pilot sites located along the North Adriatic coast of Emilia-Romagna: Rimini and Cesenatico. Here, we compare alternative extreme sea level scenarios accounting for the effect of planned and hypothetical seaside renovation projects against the historical baseline. We apply a flood damage model to estimate the potential economic damage linked to flood scenarios, and we calculate the change in expected annual damage according to changes in the relative sea level. Finally, damage reduction benefits are evaluated by means of cost-benefit analysis. Results suggest an overall profitability of the investigated projects over time, with increasing benefits due to increased probability of intense flooding in the near future

Steering efficiency of a ultrarelativistic proton beam in a thin bent crystal

Crystals with small thickness along the beam exhibit top performance for steering particle beams through planar channeling. For such crystals, the effect of nuclear dechanneling plays an important role because it affects their efficiency. We addressed the problem through experimental work carried out with 400 GeV/c protons at fixed-target facilities of CERN-SPS. The dependence of efficiency vs. curvature radius has been investigated and compared favourably to the results of modeling. A realistic estimate of the performance of a crystal designed for LHC energy including nuclear dechanneling has been achieved

The impact of COVID-19 on research

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or be any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has swept across the globe causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, shutting down economies, closing borders and wreaking havoc on an unprecedented scale. It has strained healthcare services and personnel to the brink in many regions and will certainly deeply mark medical research both in the short and long-term