Aesthetic Worlds: Rimbaud, Williams and Baroque Form

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of literary text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism

Development and validation of a risk score for chronic kidney disease in HIV infection using prospective cohort data from the D:A:D study.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major health issue for HIV-positive individuals, associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Development and implementation of a risk score model for CKD would allow comparison of the risks and benefits of adding potentially nephrotoxic antiretrovirals to a treatment regimen and would identify those at greatest risk of CKD. The aims of this study were to develop a simple, externally validated, and widely applicable long-term risk score model for CKD in HIV-positive individuals that can guide decision making in clinical practice

The long and the short of it: long-styled florets are associated with higher outcrossing rate in Senecio vulgaris and result from delayed selfpollen germination

The research reported in this article was funded in part by the Natural Environment Research Council under grants: GR3/6203A - Male competition and outcrossing rate in a hermaphrodite plant. GR9/1782A – Genomic analysis of wild hybrid derivatives of Senecio squalidus x S. vulgaris using in situ hybridization.Background: It has been reported that some plants of the self-compatible species, Senecio vulgaris, produce capitula containing long-styled florets which fail to set seed when left to self-pollinate, although readily set seed when self-pollinated by hand. Aims: To determine if production of long-styled florets is associated with higher outcrossing rate in S. vulgaris, and whether long-styles occur in non-pollinated florets, whereas short-styles are present in self-pollinated florets. Methods: The frequency of long-styled florets was compared in the radiate and non-radiate variants of S. vulgaris, known to exhibit higher and lower outcrossing rates, respectively. In addition, style length was compared in emasculated florets that were either self-pollinated or left non-pollinated. Results: Long-styled florets were more frequent in the higher outcrossing radiate variant. Following emasculation, long styles occurred in non-pollinated florets, while short styles were present in self-pollinated florets. The two variants did not differ in style length within the non-pollinated or within the self-pollinated floret categories. Conclusions: A high frequency of long-styled florets is associated with higher outcrossing rate in S. vulgaris and results from delayed self-pollination and pollen germination on stigmas.Publisher PDFPublisher PDFPeer reviewe

Renal Impairment and Cardiovascular Disease in HIV-positive Individuals; The D:A:D Study

BACKGROUND: While the association between renal impairment and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is well established in the general population, the association remains poorly understood in HIV-positive individuals. METHODS: Individuals with >2 estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFRs) after 1/2/2004 were followed until CVD, death, last visit plus six months or 1/2/2015. CVD was defined as centrally validated myocardial infarction, stroke, invasive cardiovascular procedures or sudden cardiac death. RESULTS: During 8.0 years median follow-up (Interquartile range 5.4-8.9) 1,357 of 35,357 developed CVD (incidence 5.2/1000 person-years [95%confidence interval, CI [5.0-5.5]). Confirmed baseline eGFR and CVD were closely related with 1.8% [95%CI 1.6-2.0%] estimated to develop CVD at five years at eGFR>90 ml/min/1.73m(2), increasing to 21.1% [95%CI 6.6-35.6%] at eGFR<30 ml/min/1.73m(2) The strong univariate relationship between low current eGFR and CVD was primarily explained by increasing age in adjusted analyses, although all eGFRs<80 ml/min/1.73m(2) remained associated with 30-40% increased CVD rates and particular high rates at eGFR<30 ml/min/1.73m(2) (3.08 [95%CI 2.04-4.65]). CONCLUSIONS: Among HIV-positive individuals in a large contemporary cohort a strong relation between confirmed impaired eGFR and CVD was observed. This finding highlights the need for renal preventive measures and intensified monitoring for emerging CVD, in particular in older individuals with continuously low eGFR

Recovering from failure by asking for help

Robots inevitably fail, often without the ability to recover autonomously. We demonstrate an approach for enabling a robot to recover from failures by communicating its need for specific help to a human partner using natural language. Our approach automatically detects failures, then generates targeted spoken-language requests for help such as “Please give me the white table leg that is on the black table.” Once the human partner has repaired the failure condition, the system resumes full autonomy. We present a novel inverse semantics algorithm for generating effective help requests. In contrast to forward semantic models that interpret natural language in terms of robot actions and perception, our inverse semantics algorithm generates requests by emulating the human’s ability to interpret a request using the Generalized Grounding Graph (G[superscript 3]) framework. To assess the effectiveness of our approach, we present a corpus-based online evaluation, as well as an end-to-end user study, demonstrating that our approach increases the effectiveness of human interventions compared to static requests for help.Boeing CompanyU.S. Army Research Laboratory (Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance

On the Stability and Structural Dynamics of Metal Nanowires

This article presents a brief review of the nanoscale free-electron model, which provides a continuum description of metal nanostructures. It is argued that surface and quantum-size effects are the two dominant factors in the energetics of metal nanowires, and that much of the phenomenology of nanowire stability and structural dynamics can be understood based on the interplay of these two competing factors. A linear stability analysis reveals that metal nanocylinders with certain magic conductance values G=1, 3, 6, 12, 17, 23, 34, 42, 51, 67, 78, 96, ... times the conductance quantum are exceptionally stable. A nonlinear dynamical simulation of nanowire structural evolution reveals a universal equilibrium shape consisting of a magic cylinder suspended between unduloidal contacts. The lifetimes of these metastable structures are also computed.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Internal and external cooling methods and their effect on body temperature, thermal perception and dexterity

© 2018 The Authors. Published by PLOS. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191416© 2018 Maley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Objective The present study aimed to compare a range of cooling methods possibly utilised by occupational workers, focusing on their effect on body temperature, perception and manual dexterity. Methods Ten male participants completed eight trials involving 30 min of seated rest followed by 30 min of cooling or control of no cooling (CON) (34C, 58% relative humidity). The cooling methods utilised were: ice cooling vest (CV0), phase change cooling vest melting at 14C (CV14), evaporative cooling vest (CVEV), arm immersion in 10C water (AI), portable water-perfused suit (WPS), heliox inhalation (HE) and ice slushy ingestion (SL). Immediately before and after cooling, participants were assessed for fine (Purdue pegboard task) and gross (grip and pinch strength) manual dexterity. Rectal and skin temperature, as well as thermal sensation and comfort, were monitored throughout. Results Compared with CON, SL was the only method to reduce rectal temperature (P = 0.012). All externally applied cooling methods reduced skin temperature (P0.05). Conclusion The present study observed that ice ingestion or ice applied to the skin produced the greatest effect on rectal and skin temperature, respectively. AI should not be utilised if workers require subsequent fine manual dexterity. These results will help inform future studies investigating appropriate pre-cooling methods for the occupational worker.This project is financially supported by the US Government through the Technical Support Working Group within the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.Published versio

Improving response rates using a monetary incentive for patient completion of questionnaires: an observational study

Background: Poor response rates to postal questionnaires can introduce bias and reduce the statistical power of a study. To improve response rates in our trial in primary care we tested the effect of introducing an unconditional direct payment of 5 pound for the completion of postal questionnaires. Methods: We recruited patients in general practice with knee problems from sites across the United Kingdom. An evidence-based strategy was used to follow-up patients at twelve months with postal questionnaires. This included an unconditional direct payment of 5 pound to patients for the completion and return of questionnaires. The first 105 patients did not receive the 5 pound incentive, but the subsequent 442 patients did. We used logistic regression to analyse the effect of introducing a monetary incentive to increase the response to postal questionnaires. Results: The response rate following reminders for the historical controls was 78.1% ( 82 of 105) compared with 88.0% ( 389 of 442) for those patients who received the 5 pound payment (diff = 9.9%, 95% CI 2.3% to 19.1%). Direct payments significantly increased the odds of response ( adjusted odds ratio = 2.2, 95% CI 1.2 to 4.0, P = 0.009) with only 12 of 442 patients declining the payment. The incentive did not save costs to the trial - the extra cost per additional respondent was almost 50 pound. Conclusion: The direct payment of 5 pound significantly increased the completion of postal questionnaires at negligible increase in cost for an adequately powered study

Alcohol affects neuronal substrates of response inhibition but not of perceptual processing of stimuli signalling a stop response

Alcohol impairs inhibitory control, including the ability to terminate an initiated action. While there is increasing knowledge about neural mechanisms involved in response inhibition, the level at which alcohol impairs such mechanisms remains poorly understood. Thirty-nine healthy social drinkers received either 0.4g/kg or 0.8g/kg of alcohol, or placebo, and performed two variants of a Visual Stop-signal task during acquisition of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. The two task variants differed only in their instructions: in the classic variant (VSST), participants inhibited their response to a “Go-stimulus” when it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. In the control variant (VSST_C), participants responded to the “Go-stimulus” even if it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. Comparison of successful Stop-trials (Sstop)>Go, and unsuccessful Stop-trials (Ustop)>Sstop between the three beverage groups enabled the identification of alcohol effects on functional neural circuits supporting inhibitory behaviour and error processing. Alcohol impaired inhibitory control as measured by the Stop-signal reaction time, but did not affect other aspects of VSST performance, nor performance on the VSST_C. The low alcohol dose evoked changes in neural activity within prefrontal, temporal, occipital and motor cortices. The high alcohol dose evoked changes in activity in areas affected by the low dose but importantly induced changes in activity within subcortical centres including the globus pallidus and thalamus. Alcohol did not affect neural correlates of perceptual processing of infrequent cues, as revealed by conjunction analyses of VSST and VSST_C tasks. Alcohol ingestion compromises the inhibitory control of action by modulating cortical regions supporting attentional, sensorimotor and action-planning processes. At higher doses the impact of alcohol also extends to affect subcortical nodes of fronto-basal ganglia- thalamo-cortical motor circuits. In contrast, alcohol appears to have little impact on the early visual processing of infrequent perceptual cues. These observations clarify clinically-important effects of alcohol on behaviour