Coordination polymers and isomerism; a study using silver(I) and a ∏-stacked ligand

The ligand 2,5-bis(2-pyridylmethylsulfanylmethyl)pyrazine (L) was prepared by the base coupling of 2-(sulfanylmethyl)pyridine and 2,5-bis(chloromethyl)pyrazine. This new ligand was treated with AgClO₄ in a 1 1 metal-to-ligand ratio and with AgNO₃in a 2 1 metal-to-ligand ratio to give coordination polymers. The crystal structures of {[Ag(L)]ClO₄}∞ ( 1) and {[Ag₂(L)](NO₃)₂}∞ ( 2) were determined. The Ag(I) ions in the one-dimensional polymeric chains of 1 adopted square-pyramidal geometries with the pyridine and pyrazine N donors coordinated in an extremely bent fashion. The structure of 2 revealed two isomeric polymer chains in the one crystal forming a single supramolecular array. The isomeric polymers differed in the donor atoms about the Ag(I) ions and in the arrangement of adjacent ligands along the chain. A feature of both structures was that L adopted a three-layer ∏-stacked arrangement

The Role of the Mass Media in Women’s Infant Feeding Decisions: A Dissertation

Breastfeeding has been established as providing the best and most complete nutrition for newborns, as this method promotes the infant’s health and supports infant growth (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 2005). Mass media have been suggested as powerful and universal means of communication with the potential to impact social norms. Thus, this qualitative descriptive study explored, within the context of the Socioecological Framework, women’s decision making on whether to breastfeed or bottle-feed their infants and the effect of mass media on their decision. Data were collected in individual audiotaped interviews with participants recruited from the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition and UMass Memorial Medical Center. Interview data were compared to text and visual representation from 12 Internet sites on parenting and infant feeding. Data analysis was conducted simultaneously with data collection and was continued until saturation was achieved. The comparison findings demonstrated that the emerging themes from the participant interviews reflected the information represented on the Internet sites. The main theme Media Matters Not suggested that mass media did not influence infant feeding decisions for this group of mothers. What did have an important impact on infant feeding decisions was the information and emotional support provided by partners, family, and HCPs (subtheme of Influences on Decisions). The participants offered suggestions of media messages they would like see in the future such as public service announcements of women breastfeeding their infants. In addition, the participants discussed media issues that had potential for influencing infant feeding decisions (Media Messages—Good and Bad), emphasized the need for public opinion to be altered so that breastfeeding in public would be viewed as more acceptable (Community/Public Opinions), and described suggestions for enhancing media messages about breastfeeding (Recommendations for Future Media Messages). The implications for nursing practice, public policy, and future research related to the topic were discussed

Assessing learning in the early years’ outdoor classroom: examining challenges in practice

The benefit the outdoor environment has for young children’s development is widely documented. However, there is less literature outlining practitioners’ experiences of assessing learning in the outdoors and factors which impact the level and quality of assessments undertaken. This study, based on a pragmatic mixed methods approach, undertaken in 9 early years’ settings in North Wales, reports the findings of 37 practitioners. The research suggests that assessing children in the outdoors is not used to its potential. Factors impeding the use of the outdoor classroom include: lack of appropriate resources; level of staff expertise; child-staff ratio; adverse weather; and changes to curriculum policy which place emphasis on the formal assessment of children. There appears to be assumptions about learners most likely to benefit from outdoor learning and assessment: boys; children in socio-economically deprived areas; and children with additional learning needs. The paper highlights the need for broader training opportunities for practitioners on planning for learning and assessment in the outdoors that go beyond a single course focus. With creative planning, there is no reason why summative assessments of all areas of learning within the early years’ curriculum cannot be done as effectively outdoors as they may be being done indoors

Symbolic music generation conditioned on continuous-valued emotions

In this paper we present a new approach for the generation of multi-instrument symbolic music driven by musical emotion. The principal novelty of our approach centres on conditioning a state-of-the-art transformer based on continuous-valued valence and arousal labels. In addition, we provide a new large-scale dataset of symbolic music paired with emotion labels in terms of valence and arousal. We evaluate our approach in a quantitative manner in two ways, first by measuring its note prediction accuracy, and second via a regression task in the valence-arousal plane. Our results demonstrate that our proposed approaches outperform conditioning using control tokens which is representative of the current state of the art.‘la Caixa’’ Foundation under Grant 100010434 and Grant LCF/BQ/DI19/1173003 - FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., through the Project MERGE through the National Funds (PIDDAC) through the Portuguese State Budget under Grant PTDC/CCI-COM/3171/2021 - European Social Fund through the Regional Operational Program Centro 2020 Project CISUC under Grant UID/CEC/00326/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A APROPRIAÇÃO, PASTEURIZAÇÃO E MERCANTILIZAÇÃO DA PRECARIEDADE ANALÓGICA PELA INDÚSTRIA DA FOTOGRAFIA DIGITAL / The appropriation, pasteurization and mercantilization of analogue precariety by the digital photography industry

Proponho uma reflexão sobre como câmeras de baixa fidelidade contribuem para subversão da fotografia tradicional e para a consolidação de uma estética caracterizada por ruídos e falhas, denominada estética da precariedade. Abordo ainda a apropriação, padronização e mercantilização da estética da precariedade pela indústria fotográfica digital, por meio de aplicativos de edição de imagens e redes sociais de compartilhamento de fotos e vídeos.Palavras-chave: Estética da precariedade; Fotografia de baixa fidelidade; Fotografia analógica; Fotografia digital; Indústria fotográfica.AbstractI propose a reflection on how low-fidelity cameras contribute to the subversion of traditional photography and to the consolidation of an aesthetic characterized by noise and flaws, called precariousness aesthetics. I also address the appropriation, standardization and commercialization of the precariousness aesthetic by the digital photographic industry, through image editing apps and photo and video sharing social networking services.Keywords: Precariousness aesthetics; Low fidelity photography; Analog photography; Digital photography, Photographic industry

Precisamos de um museu do cinema

In this paper I make an analysis of the film and photography equipment by different optics: as artifact bearer of meaning and reflection of the dynamics of the society that created it, as me-diator and modifier of the human relation with the technical image and as acting agent in the aesthetic creation. Finally, I address the need to musealize these technical objects and I bring the collection of film technology from the Cinema-theque of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro as an example.Neste artigo faço uma análise dos equipamentos de cinema e fotografia por diferentes óticas: como artefato portador de significado e reflexo da dinâmica da sociedade que o criou, como mediador e modificador da relação humana com a imagem técnica e como agente atuante na criação estética. Por fim, trato da necessidade de musealização desses objetos tecnológicos, trazendo como exemplo o acervo de tecnologia cinematográfica da Cinemateca do Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro

Simulacro e repetição como contrainformação na era da sociedade de controle

Este trabalho tem por objetivo discutir o poder da imagem-simulacro de operar como contrainformação e ato de resistência no âmbito da pós-modernidade, bem como reivindicar sua potência estética e política. Para fundamentar essa perspectiva, desenvolvo a concepção de que a simulação é um tipo de imagem que detém forças para liberar-se do campo de força do real, com capacidade de questionar o status quo imagético. Analiso exemplos em que a imagem-simulacro é capaz de desafiar os ideais de autoria, originalidade e autenticidade, engendrando processos de ressignificação e de dilatação de sentido através da repetição, caraterística criticada por autores como Fredric Jameson e Jean Baudrillard

A consistent scalar-tensor cosmology for inflation, dark energy and the Hubble parameter

The authors are grateful for financial support to the Cruickshank Trust (CW), EPSRC/GG-Top (CW, JR), Omani Government (MA), Science Without Borders programme, CNPq, Brazil (DR), and STFC/CfFP (CW, AM, RB, JM). CW and AM acknowledge the hospitality of CERN, where this work was started. The University of Aberdeen and University of Edinburgh are charitable bodies registered in Scotland, with respective registration numbers SC013683 and SC005336.Peer reviewedPostprin

Early mortality and loss to follow-up in HIV-infected children starting antiretroviral therapy in Southern Africa.

BACKGROUND: Many HIV-infected children in Southern Africa have been started on antiretroviral therapy (ART), but loss to follow up (LTFU) can be substantial. We analyzed mortality in children retained in care and in all children starting ART, taking LTFU into account. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Children who started ART before the age of 16 years in 10 ART programs in South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe were included. Risk factors for death in the first year of ART were identified in Weibull models. A meta-analytic approach was used to estimate cumulative mortality at 1 year. RESULTS: Eight thousand two hundred twenty-five children (median age 49 months, median CD4 cell percent 11.6%) were included; 391 (4.8%) died and 523 (7.0%) were LTFU in the first year. Mortality at 1 year was 4.5% [95% confidence interval (CI): 2.8% to 7.4%] in children remaining in care, but 8.7% (5.4% to 12.1%) at the program level, after taking mortality in children and LTFU into account. Factors associated with mortality in children remaining in care included age [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 0.37; 95% CI: 0.25 to 0.54 comparing > or =120 months with <18 months], CD4 cell percent (HR: 0.56; 95% CI: 0.39 to 0.78 comparing > or =20% with <10%), and clinical stage (HR: 0.12; 95% CI: 0.03 to 0.45 comparing World Health Organization stage I with III/IV). CONCLUSIONS: In children starting ART and remaining in care in Southern Africa mortality at 1 year is <5% but almost twice as high at the program level, when taking LTFU into account. Age, CD4 percentage, and clinical stage are important predictors of mortality at the individual level