Traveling Material↔Semiotic Environments of Disability, Rehabilitation, and Physical Activity

In this article, we apply narrative dialogism and new materialism to health research. We examine how material↔semiotic environments (MSEs) affect the rehabilitation process of Patrick, a man who exercised with the aim to recover from spinal cord injury. The MSEs are considered embedded subcases within the overall holistic case of Patrick. Three MSEs were identified: the hospital gym, the personal gym, and the adapted gym. These are examined using the analytical lens of assemblages. First, the mutually affecting components of each MSE are described. Second, a larger environmental assemblage is identified, which is termed exercise-is-restitution assemblage. This composite assemblage illuminates the associations between the three MSEs, and reveals how restitution resonated across time and space. The article contributes to the literature by reconceptualizing restitution. It highlights the importance of the materiality of health-related narratives, and it reveals the potential of MSE for transforming rehabilitation and improving exercise promotion and maintenance

Highlights on HIV eradication in 2013

Almost 20 years after the introduction of HAART, scientific community, doctors and patients are still struggling with the absence of effective strategies aimed at eradicating HIV infection, or at preventing it through a vaccin

A Nonlocal Elasto-Plastic Model for Structured Soils at Large Strains for the Particle Finite Element Method

This work presents a robust and mesh-independent implementation of an elasto-plastic constitutive model at large strains, appropriate for structured soils, into a Particle Finite Element code specially developed for geotechnical simulations. The constitutive response of structured soils is characterized by softening and, thus, leading to strain localization. Strain localization poses two numerical challenges: mesh dependence of the solution and computability of the solution. The former is mitigated by employing a non-local integral type regularization whereas an Implicit-Explicit integration scheme is used to enhance the computability. The good performance of these techniques is highlighted in the simulation of the cone penetration test in undrained conditions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

An in-depth view of the microscopic dynamics of Ising spin glasses at fixed temperature

Using the dedicated computer Janus, we follow the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Ising spin glass in three dimensions for eleven orders of magnitude. The use of integral estimators for the coherence and correlation lengths allows us to study dynamic heterogeneities and the presence of a replicon mode and to obtain safe bounds on the Edwards-Anderson order parameter below the critical temperature. We obtain good agreement with experimental determinations of the temperature-dependent decay exponents for the thermoremanent magnetization. This magnitude is observed to scale with the much harder to measure coherence length, a potentially useful result for experimentalists. The exponents for energy relaxation display a linear dependence on temperature and reasonable extrapolations to the critical point. We conclude examining the time growth of the coherence length, with a comparison of critical and activated dynamics.Comment: 38 pages, 26 figure

Conservation of energy and momenta in nonholonomic systems with affine constraints

We characterize the conditions for the conservation of the energy and of the components of the momentum maps of lifted actions, and of their `gauge-like' generalizations, in time-independent nonholonomic mechanical systems with affine constraints. These conditions involve geometrical and mechanical properties of the system, and are codified in the so-called reaction-annihilator distribution

The effect of thermal treatment on structure and surface composition of PtCo electro-catalysts for application in PEMFCs operating under automotive conditions

Ontem, como aqui escrevi, José Eduardo Moniz, Director-Geral da TVI, fez uma conferência intitulada A Televisão num Mundo Audiovisual em Mudança na UCP. No vídeo, Moniz fala de seis assuntos: 1) televisão generalista e novas plataformas, 2) perfil de oferta para o telespectador, 3) surgimento do quinto canal, 4) três canais de notícias, 5) programação de qualidade, e 6) blocos informativos

Ability to Monitor National Responses to the HIV Epidemic "Beyond Viral Suppression": Findings From Six European Countries.

With more people living with HIV (PLHIV) ageing into their 50s and beyond in settings where antiretroviral therapy is widely available, non-AIDS comorbidities and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are becoming major challenges. Information is needed about whether national HIV monitoring programmes have evolved to reflect the changing focus of HIV care. " - " We created a 56-item English-language survey to assess whether health systems report on common health-related issues for people with HIV including physical and mental health comorbidities, HRQoL, psychosocial needs, and fertility desires. One expert was identified via purposive sampling in each of six countries (Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, and Turkey) and was asked to participate in the survey. " - " Three respondents reported that the current monitoring systems in their countries do not monitor any of four specified aspects of 10 comorbidities including bone loss, cardiovascular disease, and neurocognitive disorders. Two respondents stated that their countries potentially can report on leading causes of hospital admission among PLHIV, and five on leading cases of death. In three countries, respondents reported that there was the ability to report on the HRQoL of PLHIV. In two countries, respondents provided data on the percentage of PLHIV denied health services because of HIV status in the past 12 months. " - " This study identified areas for potential HIV monitoring improvements in six European countries in relation to comorbidities, HRQoL, discrimination within health systems, and other issues associated with the changing nature of the HIV epidemic. It also indicated that some countries either currently monitor or have the ability to monitor some of these issues. There are opportunities for health information systems in European countries to expand the scope of their HIV monitoring in order to support decision-making about how the long-term health-related needs of PLHIV can best be met

Matching microscopic and macroscopic responses in glasses

We first reproduce on the Janus and Janus II computers a milestone experiment that measures the spin-glass coherence length through the lowering of free-energy barriers induced by the Zeeman effect. Secondly we determine the scaling behavior that allows a quantitative analysis of a new experiment reported in the companion Letter [S. Guchhait and R. Orbach, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 157203 (2017)]. The value of the coherence length estimated through the analysis of microscopic correlation functions turns out to be quantitatively consistent with its measurement through macroscopic response functions. Further, non-linear susceptibilities, recently measured in glass-forming liquids, scale as powers of the same microscopic length.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Nature of the spin-glass phase at experimental length scales

We present a massive equilibrium simulation of the three-dimensional Ising spin glass at low temperatures. The Janus special-purpose computer has allowed us to equilibrate, using parallel tempering, L=32 lattices down to T=0.64 Tc. We demonstrate the relevance of equilibrium finite-size simulations to understand experimental non-equilibrium spin glasses in the thermodynamical limit by establishing a time-length dictionary. We conclude that non-equilibrium experiments performed on a time scale of one hour can be matched with equilibrium results on L=110 lattices. A detailed investigation of the probability distribution functions of the spin and link overlap, as well as of their correlation functions, shows that Replica Symmetry Breaking is the appropriate theoretical framework for the physically relevant length scales. Besides, we improve over existing methodologies to ensure equilibration in parallel tempering simulations.Comment: 48 pages, 19 postscript figures, 9 tables. Version accepted for publication in the Journal of Statistical Mechanic