The body in the library: adventures in realism

This essay looks at two aspects of the virtual ‘material world’ of realist fiction: objects encountered by the protagonist and the latter’s body. Taking from Sartre two angles on the realist pact by which readers agree to lend their bodies, feelings, and experiences to the otherwise ‘languishing signs’ of the text, it goes on to examine two sets of first-person fictions published between 1902 and 1956 — first, four modernist texts in which banal objects defy and then gratify the protagonist, who ends up ready and almost able to write; and, second, three novels in which the body of the protagonist is indeterminate in its sex, gender, or sexuality. In each of these cases, how do we as readers make texts work for us as ‘an adventure of the body’

Impact of Ultra High Definition on Visual Attention

Ultra high definition (UHD) TV is rapidly replacing high definition (HD) TV but little is known of its effects on human visual attention. However, a clear understanding of this effect is important, since accurate models, evaluation methodologies, and metrics for visual attention are essential in many areas, including image and video compression, camera and displays manufacturing, artistic content creation, and advertisement. In this paper, we address this problem by creating a dataset of UHD resolution images with corresponding eye-tracking data, and we show that there is a statistically significant difference between viewing strategies when watching UHD and HD contents. Furthermore, by evaluating five representative computational models of visual saliency, we demonstrate the decrease in models' accuracies on UHD contents when compared to HD contents. Therefore, to improve the accuracy of computational models for higher resolutions, we propose a segmentation-based resolution-adaptive weighting scheme. Our approach demonstrates that taking into account information about resolution of the images improves the performance of computational models

Quality Assurance Driving Factors as Antecedents of Knowledge Management: a Stakeholder-Focussed Perspective in Higher Education

Similar to many other types of organisations, the successful development of higher education institutions generally depends on proactive multi-stakeholder management strategy. As a social responsibility of universities, quality assurance (QA) of higher education is already an established research domain. However, the issues that serve as driving factors in higher education’s quality are acknowledged in this vast knowledge stream in a dispersed way. An objective of this paper is to provide a quick snapshot of the major QA driving factors in higher education. Another objective here is to discuss the significance of these existing QA driving factors in higher education as prospective antecedents of knowledge management among the key stakeholders in the higher education sector and beyond. An inductive constructivist approach is followed to review the relevant QA driving factors from the extant scholarly views. A number of relevant factors are précised from the literature that would be instrumental to uphold quality in higher education. The discussion demonstrates that these factors are also significant to transfer and share knowledge between the key stakeholders not only for universities, but also for businesses, governments and other organisational stakeholders. The paper proposes a framework of the QA drivers’ application for meaningful knowledge transfer between diverse stakeholders and clarifies the framework’s managerial implications. This conceptual framework specifies different scenarios and perspectives of QA drivers’ application in the global education sector. The academic novelty is based on the inductive approach applied in the paper. QA practitioners will be able to follow these factors as steering phenomena to effectively assure quality, in relation to their multi-stakeholder relationships in higher education and beyond

Trends in floating drug delivery systems

11-21Among novel drug delivery systems, rate controlled oral drug delivery system forms an important area. Research is directed towards overcoming physiological problems, such as short gastric residence times (GRT) and unpredictable gastric emptying times. Prolonged GRT may widen the stomach potential as a drug-absorbing organ. Several approaches are currently utilized in the prolongation of the GRT, including floating drug delivery systems (FDDS), swelling and expanding systems, polymeric bioadhesive systems, modified-shape systems, high-density systems and other delayed gastric emptying devices. Narrow absorption window drugs compounded in such systems have improved in vivo absorption properties. These findings are an important step towards the implementation of FDDS in the clinical setting. In this review, the current technological developments of FDDS including patented delivery systems and marketed products have been discussed. In addition, the pharmaceutical basis of their design, their advantages and future potential for oral controlled drug delivery are discussed

Close proximity of immune and tumor cells underlies response to anti-PD-1 based therapies in metastatic melanoma patients

Immune checkpoint blockade has greatly improved the clinical outcomes of many patients with metastatic melanoma, however, almost half do not respond. Whether the interspatial distribution of immune and tumor cells predicts response to anti-PD-1-based therapies and patient outcomes in any cancer, including melanoma, is currently unknown. Here, we examined the spatial distribution of immune and tumor cells via multiplex immunofluorescence. Pre-treatment melanoma specimens from 27 patients (n = 18 responders; n = 9 non-responders) treated with anti-PD-1 monotherapy and 34 patients (n = 22 responders; n = 12 non-responders) treated with combined ipilimumab and anti-PD-1 immunotherapy were studied. Responders displayed significantly higher densities of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes within a 20 µM distance from a melanoma cell compared to non-responders in both anti-PD-1 alone (p = .0024) and combination-treated patients (p = .0096), that were associated with improved progression-free survival for both therapies (anti-PD-1 p = .0158; combination therapy p = .0088). In multivariate analysis, the best model for 12-month progression-free survival for anti-PD-1 monotherapy included PD-L1+ cells within proximity to tumor cells and intratumoral CD8+ density (AUC = 0.80), and for combination therapy included CD8+ cells in proximity to tumor cells, intratumoral PD-L1+ density and LDH (AUC = 0.85). Assessment of the spatial distribution of immune cells in relation to tumor cells provides insight into their role in modulating immune response and highlights their potential role as predictors of response to anti-PD-1 based therapies