(Il)Legitimisation of the role of the nation state: Understanding of and reactions to Internet censorship in Turkey

This study aims to explore Turkish citizen-consumers' understanding of and reactions to censorship of websites in Turkey by using in-depth interviews and online ethnography. In an environment where sites such as YouTube and others are increasingly being banned, the citizen-consumers' macro-level understanding is that such censorship is part of a wider ideological plan and their micro-level understanding is that their relationship with the wider global network is reduced, in the sense that they have trouble accessing full information on products, services and experiences. The study revealed that citizen-consumers engage in two types of resistance strategies against such domination by the state: using irony as passive resistance, and using the very same technology used by the state to resist its domination

Technological and Sustainable Perception on the Advancements of Prefabrication in Construction Industry

The construction industry has experienced phenomenal growth because of technological advancements in the past couple of decades. Prefabrication constitutes a sizeable share of this industry and is being adopted all over the world. The method of casting construction elements in a controlled environment and assembling them on-site has revolutionised the industry. Research on various aspects of the technology is ongoing around the world, and an impressive number of articles have been published. However, the prefab technology, materials used, and terminology have varied across locations, which may have hindered the method’s wider acceptability. By evaluating technical articles published between 1991 and 2022, this report analyses the present body of knowledge regarding prefab technology, its evolution, sustainability, and stakeholder views. This technology effectively contributes around 40% in time saving, 27% in cost reduction, 30% in reduced carbon emissions, and 84% in on-site wastage reduction. It also increases quality, gives a dependable alternative for meeting mass construction targets, is energy efficient, and provides environmentally conscious options. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a snapshot of the prefab industry spanning three decades, detailing a wide range of factors affecting the industry

Refractive change following pseudophakic vitrectomy: a retrospective review

Background To assess the occurrence and magnitude of refractive change in pseudophakic eyes undergoing 20 gauge pars plana vitrectomy without scleral buckling and to investigate possible aetiological factors. Methods Retrospective case note review of 87 pseudophakic eyes undergoing 20 gauge pars plana vitrectomy for a variety of vitreo-retinal conditions over a three-year period. Anterior chamber depth (ACD) was measured before and after vitrectomy surgery in 32 eyes. Forty-three pseudophakic fellow eyes were used as controls. Results Eighty-seven eyes (84 patients) were included in the study. Mean spherical equivalent refraction prior to vitrectomy was -0.20 dioptres, which changed to a mean of -0.65 dioptres postoperatively (standard deviation of refractive change 0.59, range-2.13 to 0.75 dioptres) (p < 0.001). Sixty-one of the 87(70%) eyes experienced a myopic shift and 45(52%) eyes had a myopic shift of -0.5 dioptres or more. Mean fellow eye refraction was -0.19 dioptres preoperatively and -0.17 dioptres postoperatively (p = 0.14)(n = 37) Mean ACD preoperatively was 3.29 mm and postoperatively 3.27 mm (p = 0.53) (n = 32) and there was no significant change in ACD with tamponade use. Regression analysis revealed no statistically significant association between changes in anterior chamber depth, as well as a wide variety of other pre-, intra and postoperative factors examined, and the refractive change observed. Conclusion Significant refractive changes occur in some pseudophakic patients undergoing 20 g pars plana vitrectomy. The mean change observed was a small myopic shift but the range was large. The aetiology of the refractive change is uncertain

Introduction of the chemical potential in the overlap formalism

We investigate the possibility of coupling a chemical potential only to the physical chiral fermions on the lattice starting from the many body state description of overlap fermions. After developing the formalism for a chiral gauge theory, we focus our attention on the case of free fermions coupled to a vector like chemical potential and discuss the issue of zero temperature divergences.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, minor changes to v1, version to appear in JHE

Arctic marine secondary organic aerosol contributes significantly to summertime particle size distributions in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Summertime Arctic aerosol size distributions are strongly controlled by natural regional emissions. Within this context, we use a chemical transport model with sizeresolved aerosol microphysics (GEOS-Chem-TOMAS) to interpret measurements of aerosol size distributions from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago during the summer of 2016, as part of the "NETwork on Climate and Aerosols: Addressing key uncertainties in Remote Canadian Environments" (NETCARE) project. Our simulations suggest that condensation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) from precursor vapors emitted in the Arctic and near Arctic marine (ice-free seawater) regions plays a key role in particle growth events that shape the aerosol size distributions observed at Alert (82.5° N, 62.3° W), Eureka (80.1° N, 86.4° W), and along a NETCARE ship track within the Archipelago. We refer to this SOA as Arctic marine SOA (AMSOA) to reflect the Arctic marine-based and likely biogenic sources for the precursors of the condensing organic vapors. AMSOA from a simulated flux (500 μgm-2 day-1, north of 50° N) of precursor vapors (with an assumed yield of unity) reduces the summertime particle size distribution model-observation mean fractional error 2- to 4-fold, relative to a simulation without this AMSOA. Particle growth due to the condensable organic vapor flux contributes strongly (30 %-50 %) to the simulated summertime-mean number of particles with diameters larger than 20 nm in the study region. This growth couples with ternary particle nucleation (sulfuric acid, ammonia, and water vapor) and biogenic sulfate condensation to account for more than 90% of this simulated particle number, which represents a strong biogenic influence. The simulated fit to summertime size-distribution observations is further improved at Eureka and for the ship track by scaling up the nucleation rate by a factor of 100 to account for other particle precursors such as gas-phase iodine and/or amines and/or fragmenting primary particles that could be missing from our simulations. Additionally, the fits to the observed size distributions and total aerosol number concentrations for particles larger than 4 nm improve with the assumption that the AMSOA contains semivolatile species: the model-observation mean fractional error is reduced 2- to 3-fold for the Alert and ship track size distributions. AMSOA accounts for about half of the simulated particle surface area and volume distributions in the summertime Canadian Arctic Archipelago, with climaterelevant simulated summertime pan-Arctic-mean top-of-theatmosphere aerosol direct (-0:04Wm-2) and cloud-albedo indirect (-0:4Wm-2) radiative effects, which due to uncertainties are viewed as an order of magnitude estimate. Future work should focus on further understanding summertime Arctic sources of AMSOA

The NeST (Neoadjuvant systemic therapy in breast cancer) study: National Practice Questionnaire of United Kingdom multi-disciplinary decision making.

BACKGROUND: Neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NST) is increasingly used in the treatment of breast cancer, yet it is clear that there is significant geographical variation in its use in the UK. This study aimed to examine stated practice across UK breast units, in terms of indications for use, radiological monitoring, pathological reporting of treatment response, and post-treatment surgical management. METHODS: Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) from all UK breast units were invited to participate in the NeST study. A detailed questionnaire assessing current stated practice was distributed to all participating units in December 2017 and data collated securely usingREDCap. Descriptive statistics were calculated for each questionnaire item. RESULTS: Thirty-nine MDTs from a diverse range of hospitals responded. All MDTs routinely offered neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) to a median of 10% (range 5-60%) of patients. Neoadjuvant endocrine therapy (NET) was offered to a median of 4% (range 0-25%) of patients by 66% of MDTs. The principal indication given for use of neoadjuvant therapy was for surgical downstaging. There was no consensus on methods of radiological monitoring of response, and a wide variety of pathological reporting systems were used to assess tumour response. Twenty-five percent of centres reported resecting the original tumour footprint, irrespective of clinical/radiological response. Radiologically negative axillae at diagnosis routinely had post-NACT or post-NET sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in 73.0 and 84% of centres respectively, whereas 16% performed SLNB pre-NACT. Positive axillae at diagnosis would receive axillary node clearance at 60% of centres, regardless of response to NACT. DISCUSSION: There is wide variation in the stated use of neoadjuvant systemic therapy across the UK, with general low usage of NET. Surgical downstaging remains the most common indication of the use of NAC, although not all centres leverage the benefits of NAC for de-escalating surgery to the breast and/or axilla. There is a need for agreed multidisciplinary guidance for optimising selection and management of patients for NST. These findings will be corroborated in phase II of the NeST study which is a national collaborative prospective audit of NST utilisation and clinical outcomes

Breast cancer management pathways during the COVID-19 pandemic: outcomes from the UK 'Alert Level 4' phase of the B-MaP-C study

BACKGROUND: The B-MaP-C study aimed to determine alterations to breast cancer (BC) management during the peak transmission period of the UK COVID-19 pandemic and the potential impact of these treatment decisions. METHODS: This was a national cohort study of patients with early BC undergoing multidisciplinary team (MDT)-guided treatment recommendations during the pandemic, designated 'standard' or 'COVID-altered', in the preoperative, operative and post-operative setting. FINDINGS: Of 3776 patients (from 64 UK units) in the study, 2246 (59%) had 'COVID-altered' management. 'Bridging' endocrine therapy was used (n = 951) where theatre capacity was reduced. There was increasing access to COVID-19 low-risk theatres during the study period (59%). In line with national guidance, immediate breast reconstruction was avoided (n = 299). Where adjuvant chemotherapy was omitted (n = 81), the median benefit was only 3% (IQR 2-9%) using 'NHS Predict'. There was the rapid adoption of new evidence-based hypofractionated radiotherapy (n = 781, from 46 units). Only 14 patients (1%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during their treatment journey. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of 'COVID-altered' management decisions were largely in line with pre-COVID evidence-based guidelines, implying that breast cancer survival outcomes are unlikely to be negatively impacted by the pandemic. However, in this study, the potential impact of delays to BC presentation or diagnosis remains unknown

Continuation for thin film hydrodynamics and related scalar problems

This chapter illustrates how to apply continuation techniques in the analysis of a particular class of nonlinear kinetic equations that describe the time evolution through transport equations for a single scalar field like a densities or interface profiles of various types. We first systematically introduce these equations as gradient dynamics combining mass-conserving and nonmass-conserving fluxes followed by a discussion of nonvariational amendmends and a brief introduction to their analysis by numerical continuation. The approach is first applied to a number of common examples of variational equations, namely, Allen-Cahn- and Cahn-Hilliard-type equations including certain thin-film equations for partially wetting liquids on homogeneous and heterogeneous substrates as well as Swift-Hohenberg and Phase-Field-Crystal equations. Second we consider nonvariational examples as the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation, convective Allen-Cahn and Cahn-Hilliard equations and thin-film equations describing stationary sliding drops and a transversal front instability in a dip-coating. Through the different examples we illustrate how to employ the numerical tools provided by the packages auto07p and pde2path to determine steady, stationary and time-periodic solutions in one and two dimensions and the resulting bifurcation diagrams. The incorporation of boundary conditions and integral side conditions is also discussed as well as problem-specific implementation issues