531 research outputs found
Horizons Without Borders: Wendy Trevino's 'Cruel Fiction' and the Utopian Poetry of the Commune
Contemporary anti-capitalist and anti-racist politics are beginning to organize around the violence of borders. This comes in reaction to the re-enforcement of nation-states which has taken hold after the economic crisis of 2008. In this article I analyze the collection of poems, Cruel Fiction, by the American poet Wendy Trevino, to show how the new struggles are taking up poetry as one of their weapons and in doing so build on a utopian tradition of revolutionary struggle. I focus my reading around Trevino's invocation of communal forms such as plural "We's" and her use of historic revolutionary moments, and how this all together shapes the inherent utopian horizon in her poetry. The reading of Cruel Fiction will take form in a three-step structure investigating the way Trevino, in her poems, moves from the singular "I" over the plural "We", finally ending with the political subject of the "Commune". I summarize my reading by pointing to how Cruel Fiction is uniquely connected to the real political struggle going on in the present against borders and other capitalist formations, and how she forms this connection between poetry and political struggle in the figure of the commune. The commune comes to be the figure of a place of open reproduction of identity freed from the capitalist reproduction of oppression
Neural Message Passing with Edge Updates for Predicting Properties of Molecules and Materials
Neural message passing on molecular graphs is one of the most promising
methods for predicting formation energy and other properties of molecules and
materials. In this work we extend the neural message passing model with an edge
update network which allows the information exchanged between atoms to depend
on the hidden state of the receiving atom. We benchmark the proposed model on
three publicly available datasets (QM9, The Materials Project and OQMD) and
show that the proposed model yields superior prediction of formation energies
and other properties on all three datasets in comparison with the best
published results. Furthermore we investigate different methods for
constructing the graph used to represent crystalline structures and we find
that using a graph based on K-nearest neighbors achieves better prediction
accuracy than using maximum distance cutoff or the Voronoi tessellation graph
Materials property prediction using symmetry-labeled graphs as atomic-position independent descriptors
Computational materials screening studies require fast calculation of the
properties of thousands of materials. The calculations are often performed with
Density Functional Theory (DFT), but the necessary computer time sets
limitations for the investigated material space. Therefore, the development of
machine learning models for prediction of DFT calculated properties are
currently of interest. A particular challenge for \emph{new} materials is that
the atomic positions are generally not known. We present a machine learning
model for the prediction of DFT-calculated formation energies based on Voronoi
quotient graphs and local symmetry classification without the need for detailed
information about atomic positions. The model is implemented as a message
passing neural network and tested on the Open Quantum Materials Database (OQMD)
and the Materials Project database. The test mean absolute error is 20 meV on
the OQMD database and 40 meV on Materials Project Database. The possibilities
for prediction in a realistic computational screening setting is investigated
on a dataset of 5976 ABSe selenides with very limited overlap with the OQMD
training set. Pretraining on OQMD and subsequent training on 100 selenides
result in a mean absolute error below 0.1 eV for the formation energy of the
selenides.Comment: 14 pages including references and 13 figure
Can disability predict treatment outcome among traumatized refugees?
The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of disability on changes in symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression among treatment-seeking traumatized refugees. Eighty-one refugees participated in different rehabilitation programs. PTSD symptomatology was assessed by the HTQ-IV and symptoms of depression and anxiety were assessed by the HSCL-25. Disability was assessed by the WHODAS 2.0 before treatment. Following treatment, no statistically significant changes in PTSD, depression, and anxiety symptom scores were observed. Disability in the domain ‘getting along’ was a significant predictor of PTSD scores following treatment, when controlling for baseline scores. Neither total disability nor individual disability domains predicted any other symptom changes. Living with one’s partner did, however, seem to be a consistent and significant predictor of treatment outcome. The results are discussed in terms of clinical implications and future research needs
Semen quality in patients with pituitary disease and adult-onset hypogonadotropic hypogonadism
Objective: Gonadotropins (luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)) are released from the pituitary gland and stimulate Leydig cells to produce testosterone and initiates spermatogenesis. Little is known about how and when the deterioration of semen quality occurs in patients with adult-onset gonadotropin insufficiency.
Design and methods: A retrospective study comprising 20 testosterone-deficient men (median age, 29Â years) with acquired pituitary disease who delivered semen for cryopreservation before initiation of testosterone therapy. Semen variables and hormone concentrations were compared to those of young healthy men (n = 340).
Results: Thirteen of 20 patients (65%) and 82% of controls had total sperm counts above 39 million and progressive motile spermatozoa above 32% (P = 0.05). For the individual semen variables, there were no significant differences in semen volume (median (intraquartile range) 3.0 (1.3–6.8) vs 3.2 (2.3–4.3) mL, P = 0.47), sperm concentration 41 (11–71) vs 43 (22–73) mill/mL (P = 0.56) or total sperm counts (P = 0.66). One patient had azoospermia. Patients vs controls had lower serum testosterone 5.4 (2.2–7.6) vs 19.7 (15.5–24.5) nmol/L (P = 0.001), calculated free testosterone (cfT) 145 (56–183) vs 464 (359–574) pmol/L (P < 0.001), LH 1.5 (1.1–2.1) vs 3.1 (2.3–4.0) U/L (P = 0.002) and inhibin b (P < 0.001). Levels of FSH were similar (P = 0.63). Testosterone/LH ratio and cfT/LH ratio were reduced in patients (both P < 0.001).
Conclusions: Despite Leydig cell insufficiency in patients with acquired pituitary insufficiency, the majority presented with normal semen quality based on the determination of the number of progressively motile spermatozoa. In addition, the data suggest reduced LH bioactivity in patients with pituitary insufficiency
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