Through Process

At the core of any designer’s activity is the process they engage with to create design. Process is not only a way to get from an idea to a completed work, it is also what determines our attitude towards design. This is the place where both the design and the designer are created. The gray area between nothing and something is where we go to discover design, and in turn to discover who we are and what matters to us. In this thesis I am investigating the nebulous place between ideas and things, thoughts and artifacts, and being just a person to becoming a designer. Every designer works differently, but we share something in common: through process, design is discovery

Cervical Ectropion May Be a Cause of Desquamative Inflammatory Vaginitis.

Desquamative inflammatory vaginitis is a poorly understood chronic vaginitis with an unknown etiology. Symptoms of desquamative inflammatory vaginitis include copious yellowish discharge, vulvovaginal discomfort, and dyspareunia. Cervical ectropion, the presence of glandular columnar cells on the ectocervix, has not been reported as a cause of desquamative inflammatory vaginitis. Although cervical ectropion can be a normal clinical finding, it has been reported to cause leukorrhea, metrorrhagia, dyspareunia, and vulvovaginal irritation. Patients with cervical ectropion and desquamative inflammatory vaginitis are frequently misdiagnosed with candidiasis or bacterial vaginosis and repeatedly treated without resolution of symptoms. We report the case of a 34-year-old woman with a 4-year history of profuse yellowish discharge and dyspareunia. Upon presentation, her symptoms and laboratory results met the criteria for desquamative inflammatory vaginitis, but the standard treatments did not provide long-lasting relief. As a last resort, cryotherapy (cryosurgery) of her cervix was performed for treatment of her cervical ectropion, which provided complete resolution of her symptoms. Mitchell L, King M, Brillhart H, Goldstein A. Cervical Ectropion May Be a Cause of Desquamative Inflammatory Vaginitis. Sex Med 2017;X:XX-XX

Quasispecies evolution in general mean-field landscapes

I consider a class of fitness landscapes, in which the fitness is a function of a finite number of phenotypic "traits", which are themselves linear functions of the genotype. I show that the stationary trait distribution in such a landscape can be explicitly evaluated in a suitably defined "thermodynamic limit", which is a combination of infinite-genome and strong selection limits. These considerations can be applied in particular to identify relevant features of the evolution of promoter binding sites, in spite of the shortness of the corresponding sequences.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Europhysics Letters style (included) Finite-size scaling analysis sketched. To appear in Europhysics Letter

Risk factors for domestic physical violence: national cross-sectional household surveys in eight southern African countries

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The baseline to assess impact of a mass education-entertainment programme offered an opportunity to identify risk factors for domestic physical violence.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In 2002, cross-sectional household surveys in a stratified urban/rural last-stage random sample of enumeration areas, based on latest national census in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Working door to door, interviewers contacted all adults aged 16–60 years present on the day of the visit, without sub-sampling. 20,639 adults were interviewed. The questionnaire in 29 languages measured domestic physical violence by the question "In the last year, have you and your partner had violent arguments where your partner beat, kicked or slapped you?" There was no measure of severity or frequency of physical violence.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>14% of men (weighted based on 1,294/8,113) and 18% of women (weighted based on 2,032/11,063) reported being a victim of partner physical violence in the last year. There was no convincing association with age, income, education, household size and remunerated occupation. Having multiple partners was strongly associated with partner physical violence. Other associations included the income gap within households, negative attitudes about sexuality (for example, men have the right to sex with their girlfriends if they buy them gifts) and negative attitudes about sexual violence (for example, forcing your partner to have sex is not rape). Particularly among men, experience of partner physical violence was associated with potentially dangerous attitudes to HIV infection.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Having multiple partners was the most consistent risk factor for domestic physical violence across all countries. This could be relevant to domestic violence prevention strategies.</p

Response to “Comment on ‘Real‐time B‐mode ultrasound quality control test procedures’ ” [Med Phys. 25, 1547–1551 (1998)]

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134941/1/mp8333.pd

First IBEX observations of the terrestrial plasma sheet and a possible disconnection event

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has recently provided the first all-sky maps of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) emitted from the edge of the heliosphere as well as the first observations of ENAs from the Moon and from the magnetosheath stagnation region at the nose of the magnetosphere. This study provides the first IBEX images of the ENA emissions from the nightside magnetosphere and plasma sheet. We show images from two IBEX orbits: one that displays typical plasma sheet emissions, which correlate reasonably well with a model magnetic field, and a second that shows a significant intensification that may indicate a near-Earth (similar to 10 R(E) behind the Earth) disconnection event. IBEX observations from similar to 0.5-6 keV indicate the simultaneous addition of both a hot (several keV) and colder (similar to 700 eV) component during the intensification; if IBEX directly observed magnetic reconnection in the magnetotail, the hot component may signify the plasma energization

Pathogenesis of distal renal tubular acidosis

Distal renal tubular acidosis (RTA) is a syndrome characterized by hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis and an inappropriately high urine pH relative to the degree of acidosis. The clinical presentation is frequently complicated by nephrocalcinosis, hypercalciuria, and nephrolithiasis. Less frequent presenting manifestations include hypokalemia and osteomalacia (for review of clinical features, see Refs. 1–4). Initially, all cases of renal tubular acidosis were considered to have similar pathophysiologic mechanisms, but subsequent studies have subdivided the group into abnormalities of bicarbonate reabsorption (proximal RTA), disorders of net acid excretion (distal or classical), and defects of ammonium production. In the present review, we will limit our discussion to the pathogenesis of distal RTA

A double-slit `which-way' experiment on the complementarity--uncertainty debate

A which-way measurement in Young's double-slit will destroy the interference pattern. Bohr claimed this complementarity between wave- and particle behaviour is enforced by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: distinguishing two positions a distance s apart transfers a random momentum q \sim \hbar/s to the particle. This claim has been subject to debate: Scully et al. asserted that in some situations interference can be destroyed with no momentum transfer, while Storey et al. asserted that Bohr's stance is always valid. We address this issue using the experimental technique of weak measurement. We measure a distribution for q that spreads well beyond [-\hbar/s, \hbar/s], but nevertheless has a variance consistent with zero. This weakvalued momentum-transfer distribution P_{wv}(q) thus reflects both sides of the debate.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Recommender Thermometer for Measuring the Preparedness for Flood Resilience Management

A range of various thermometers and similar scales are employed in different human and resilience management activities: Distress Thermometer, Panic Thermometer, Fear Thermometer, fire danger rating, hurricane scales, earthquake scales (Richter Magnitude Scale, Mercalli Scale), Anxiety Thermometer, Help Thermometer, Problem Thermometer, Emotion Thermometer, Depression Thermometer, the Torino scale (assessing asteroid/comet impact prediction), Excessive Heat Watch, etc. Extensive financing of the preparedness for flood resilience management with overheated full-scale resilience management might be compared to someone ill running a fever of 41°C. As the financial crisis hits and resilience management financing cools down it reminds a sick person whose body temperature is too low. The degree indicated by the Recommender Thermometer for Measuring the Preparedness for Flood Resilience Management with a scale between Tmin=34,0° and Tmax=42,0° shows either cool or overheated preparedness for flood resilience management. The formalized presentation of this research shows how changes in the micro, meso and macro environment of resilience management and the extent to which the goals pursued by various interested parties are met cause corresponding changes in the “temperature” of the preparedness for resilience management. Global innovative aspects of the Recommender Thermometer developed by the authors of this paper are, primarily, its capacity to measure the “temperature” of the preparedness for flood resilience management automatically, to compile multiple alternative recommendations (preparedness for floods, including preparing your home for floods, taking precautions against a threat of floods, retrofitting for flood-prone areas, checking your house insurance; preparedness for bushfires, preparedness for cyclones, preparedness for severe storms, preparedness for heat waves, etc.) customised for a specific user, to perform multiple criteria analysis of the recommendations, and to select the ten most rational ones for that user. Across the world, no other system offers these functions yet. The Recommender Thermometer was developed and fine-tuned in the course of the Android (Academic Network for Disaster Resilience to Optimise educational Development) project