Populism in the Media Representation of UKIP

Populism is a phenomenon gaining popularity throughout Europe and has been enhanced by the current economic crisis. The aim of this thesis is to examine the image of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the media and analyse whether it can be qualified as populist. I have included an overview of previous researcher on populism, in order to define it. In addition to the theories of knowledge, there is a look at media analysis theories, which would be used for the research. The study is of a qualitative type and it depends on the qualitative content analysis as a research method. The data sources chosen are “The Telegraph”, “The Guardian” and “BBC News”. The media have some differences in the way they frame UKIP, but the results from their analysis are closely similar. All of them use the same dimensions to construct the image of the party, with only minor differences, thus managing to qualify it as a populist one

O princípio da precaução nas políticas ambientais globais

The article evaluates the application of the precautionary principle at the international level. It employsa comparative study of four cases in global environmental politics: ozone depletion, acid rain,deforestation and coral reef degradation. Contrary to widespread academic notions, the precautionaryprinciple is not widely applied in international environmental policy. The empirical record shows thatgovernments abstain from regulatory policy when they face uncertainty about key aspects of ecologicalproblems. The key question that the literature has ignored is: what kind of uncertainty? Indeed, statesdo take action when the extent of ecological problems is unknown. However, uncertainty about thetransboundary consequences of alleged problems prevents international policy. Existing scholarshiphas misappraised the status of PP in international law, by underspecifying when PP is applied and under what kind of scientific uncertainty.O artigo avalia a aplicação do princípio da precaução no nível internacional, utilizando um estudo comparativode quatro casos nas políticas ambientais globais: erosão da camada de ozônio, chuva ácida,desmatamento e a degradação dos recifes de coral. Contrariamente às noções acadêmicas correntes, oprincípio da precaução não é amplamente empregado na política ambiental internacional. Os registrosempíricos mostram que os governos se abstêm de implementar uma política de regulamentação quando háincerteza sobre aspectos-chave dos problemas ecológicos. A questão-chave que a literatura tem ignoradoé: que tipo de incerteza? De fato, os estados agem mesmo quando a extensão dos problemas ecológicosé desconhecida. Contudo, a incerteza sobre as consequências transfronteiriças de supostos problemasatuam como barreiras à política internacional. Conhecimentos existentes têm subestimado o status doprincípio da precaução no direito internacional, subespecificando quando o princípio da precaução éaplicado e sob que tipo de incerteza científica

Manual adjustment of brain extraction parameters in a volumetric study

INTRODUCTION: Brain volumetry is a contemporary method used in scientific and clinical research in neurodegenerative diseases. The process can be fully automated but it allows some parameters to be manually adjusted in order to minimize errors. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the use of additional settings in the process of extracting brain tissue from the skull in volumetric assessments performed using FSL-SIENAX, to point out the most frequently used ones, and to provide recommendations for their application.MATERIAL AND METHODS: 3DT1 MRI scans of 51 patients with multiple sclerosis were processed. After conversion from the native format, brain tissue was extracted using the BET procedure. Multiple experiments were done using different parameters followed by a visual assessment of the results. Optimal values were chosen for each case. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed.RESULTS: Manual corrections of the default settings of BET were made in all studied cases. The most frequently applied parameter (100% of cases) was `-f`, which adjusts the aggressiveness of the algorithm, followed by `-B` (51%), which reduces bias field and neck voxels, `-R` (31,4%), multiple iterations of the algorithm, `-g` (25,5%), correction of the vertical gradient, `-S` (2%), removal of wrongfully identified optic nerves and eyeballs.CONCLUSION: The fully automatic volumetric assessment of the brain performed by FSL-SIENAX accelerates the workflow, but may lead to imperfections in the results. Manual adjustment trials may begin with the "-f" parameter, followed by "-Ð’", "-R", "-g", and combinations between them

PlanE: Representation Learning over Planar Graphs

Graph neural networks are prominent models for representation learning over graphs, where the idea is to iteratively compute representations of nodes of an input graph through a series of transformations in such a way that the learned graph function is isomorphism invariant on graphs, which makes the learned representations graph invariants. On the other hand, it is well-known that graph invariants learned by these class of models are incomplete: there are pairs of non-isomorphic graphs which cannot be distinguished by standard graph neural networks. This is unsurprising given the computational difficulty of graph isomorphism testing on general graphs, but the situation begs to differ for special graph classes, for which efficient graph isomorphism testing algorithms are known, such as planar graphs. The goal of this work is to design architectures for efficiently learning complete invariants of planar graphs. Inspired by the classical planar graph isomorphism algorithm of Hopcroft and Tarjan, we propose PlanE as a framework for planar representation learning. PlanE includes architectures which can learn complete invariants over planar graphs while remaining practically scalable. We empirically validate the strong performance of the resulting model architectures on well-known planar graph benchmarks, achieving multiple state-of-the-art results.Comment: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual Conference on Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023). Code and data available at: https://github.com/ZZYSonny/Plan

COMPLICATIONS DURING A SUPRACLAVICULAR ANESTHESIA OF THE BRACHIAL PLEXUS WITH INTERSCALENE APPROACH

A hemidiaphragmatic paresis is one of the most frequently observed complications following the supraclavicular anesthesia of the brachial plexus with interscalene approach. In patients, crucially dependant on adequate diaphragmatic function, hemidiaphragmatic paresis may provoke acute respiratory disturbances. The aim of this study was to analyze the anatomical features the brachial plexus with regard of the anesthesia of specific areas of the shoulder and the upper limb.A dissection of the cervical and the brachial plexuses was done in human cadavers. We established that in some cases the phrenic nerve and the accessory phrenic nerve arise from the superior trunk of the brachial plexus. This type of anatomical arrangement significantly increases the risk of hemidiaphragmatic paresis during supraclavicular anesthesia with interscalene approach because the anesthetic tends to invade the supraclavicular space

Comorbidity of Structural Epilepsy and Multiple Sclerosis: MRI, 18FFDG PET/CT and EEG Investigations

There is accumulating evidence of a mutual relationship between multiple sclerosis and structural epilepsy. Comorbidity of these severe neurological disorders is reported in numerous recent publications in the available foreign literature. Modern diagnostic tools include comprehensive neurological examinations as well as computed tomography, electroencephalography and 18FFDG positron emission tomography. In this paper we report the case of a female patient with multiple sclerosis and structural epilepsy

Determination of the antimicrobial activity of lactic acid bacteria isolated from the Black sea mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Lamarck, 1819

The present study reports on the determination of the antimicrobial activity of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from the Black sea mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Lamarck, 1819. The samples were collected in the period of August 2018 until March 2021. The BIOLOG system was used for microbiological determination. From the mussel M. galloprovincialis Lam. four species of LAB were isolated - Sporolactobacillus kofuensis, Lactobacillus sakei, Streptococcus gallolyticus ss gallolyticus and Lactibacillus brevis. The activity of the strains was determined against test cultures (Escherichia coli 3398, Staphylococus aureus 745, Bacillus subtilis 6633, Salmonella typhimurium 3591, Listeria monocytogens 863 Enterobacter aerogenes 3691, Aspergillus niger, Penicillium claviforme, Saccharomyces cerevisae, Candida albicans 8673 and Candida glabrata 72). Before the analysis for antimicrobial activity, the LAB were cultured in media with different concentrations of sugars - 2, 5 and 10%. The results showed that 4 strains S. kofuensis, L. sakei, S. gallolyticus ss gallolyticus and L. brevis cultured on glucose and oligosaccharides completely lost their activity in all studied variants. Therefore, some carbohydrates (glucose) and oligosaccharides induce the synthesis outside the cell of biologically active molecules, which can probably be attributed to peptides/proteins

International Nonregimes: A Research Agenda1

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146934/1/j.1468-2486.2007.00672.x.pd