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The local invariants of a meromorphic quadratic differential on a compact Riemann surface are the orders of zeros and poles, and the residues at the poles of even orders. The main result of this paper is that with few exceptions, every pattern of local invariants can be obtained by a quadratic differential on some Riemann surface. The exceptions are completely classified and only occur in genera zero and one. Moreover, in the case of a nonconnected stratum, we show that, with three exceptions in genus one, each configuration of invariants can be realized in each non-hyperelliptic connected component of the stratum. In the hyperelliptic components with two poles the residues at both poles coincide. These results are obtained using the flat metric induced by the differentials. We give an application by bounding the number of disjoint cylinders on a primitive quadratic differential.
The main theorem of this paper establishes a uniform syndeticity result concerning the multiple recurrence of measure-preserving actions on probability spaces. More precisely, for any integers $d,l\geq 1$ and any $\varepsilon> 0$, we prove the existence of $\delta>0$ and $K\geq 1$ (dependent only on d, l, and $\varepsilon $) such that the following holds: Consider a solvable group $\Gamma $ of derived length l, a probability space $(X, \mu )$, and d pairwise commuting measure-preserving $\Gamma $-actions $T_1, \ldots , T_d$ on $(X, \mu )$. Let E be a measurable set in X with $\mu (E) \geq \varepsilon $. Then, K many (left) translates of
cover $\Gamma $. This result extends and refines uniformity results by Furstenberg and Katznelson. As a combinatorial application, we obtain the following uniformity result. For any integers $d,l\geq 1$ and any $\varepsilon> 0$, there are $\delta>0$ and $K\geq 1$ (dependent only on d, l, and $\varepsilon $) such that for all finite solvable groups G of derived length l and any subset $E\subset G^d$ with $m^{\otimes d}(E)\geq \varepsilon $ (where m is the uniform measure on G), we have that K-many (left) translates of
Farmland abandonment contributes to agroecosystem degradation and food crises. Sustainable farmland use requires a well-designed agri-environmental policy to provide farmers with incentives, including agroecosystem services apart from food production. One of these is recreation. Here, we focus on a Japanese terraced paddy land. We assessed seasonal changes in the value of recreational ecosystem services by integrating mobile phone big data of on-site visitors, collected between 2018 and 2020, into a valuation method. The application of mobile data enables the precise and consistent analysis of non-market agroecosystem services. The recreational value of the paddy land varied with season but overall was high. Sustainable farmland use provides social benefits, and we support the validity of agri-environmental policies that relate to economic incentives for agroecosystem conservation. However, the results show that the incentives provided by the public/government may be insufficient in comparison to this recreational value. Our findings provide information regarding the appropriate amount of economic support required to achieve sustainable agricultural land use in this setting.
The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet is highly effective in controlling blood pressure (BP). Although Na restriction is not a primary focus within the DASH diet, it is recommended that it be added to control BP. Therefore, we aimed to systematically review the characteristics and BP-lowering effects of Na-restricted DASH diet interventions. We searched thirteen databases, namely, MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, KoreaMed, KISS, KMbase, RISS, CINAHL, Scopus, ClinicalTrials.gov, Grey Literature Report, OpenGrey and PQDT Global, for articles published through May 2023. The randomised controlled trials assessing the BP-lowering effect of the Na-restricted DASH diet in adults aged 18 years and older were included. The study protocol was registered in the PROSPERO registry (CRD42023409996). The risk of bias in the included studies was also assessed. Nine articles were included in this review. Interventions were categorised into three types: feeding, provision and education, and the study results were compared by intervention type. BP was significantly reduced in two of the three feeding studies, one of the three provisional studies and none of the educational studies. In eight studies, effect sizes varied among both systolic BP (–7·7 to −2·4) and diastolic BP (–8·3 to 0·1). Six studies showed an overall high risk of bias. In conclusion, Na-restricted DASH may have beneficial effects on BP control. Additionally, compared with control interventions, feeding interventions appeared to have a greater BP-lowering effect. Further high-quality studies are needed to improve the quality of the evidence.
The importance and impact of feminist mobilization across borders is well documented, but the impact of autonomy as an aspect of such organizing has not been explored in the transnational context. We argue that to understand the impact of transnational feminist mobilization, at least two distinct types of feminist mobilization require further conceptual development and empirical exploration in the transnational context, namely, autonomous as contrasted with multilateral mobilization. We offer a conceptual framework for distinguishing and studying these two forms. Further, using a mixed-methods study design, we empirically distinguish domestic and transnational dimensions of feminist activism and illuminate the impact of both multilateral feminist organizing and autonomous feminist organizing in the transnational space. Our analysis reveals that domestic and transnational organizing are distinct but related phenomena. We also find that in online organizing spaces, autonomous feminist campaigns amplify the messaging of geographically dispersed grassroots and individual activists more than multilateral ones. It further suggests that autonomous movements may offer more potential for representing marginalized groups of women, though this potential may not always be realized. The paper offers new concepts and empirical insights for the study of transnational feminism, thereby enabling a new research agenda. Further, this research contributes to the study of the ways that Transnational Social Movements can enrich global civil society and deepen global democracy.
The aim of this paper is to prove a qualitative property, namely the preservation of positivity, for Schrödinger-type operators acting on $L^p$ functions defined on (possibly incomplete) Riemannian manifolds. A key assumption is a control of the behaviour of the potential of the operator near the Cauchy boundary of the manifolds. As a by-product, we establish the essential self-adjointness of such operators, as well as its generalization to the case $p\neq 2$, i.e. the fact that smooth compactly supported functions are an operator core for the Schrödinger operator in $L^p$.
This paper presents linguistic and philological analyses of glossed medieval Georgian transcriptions of the Middle Mongol zodiac terms in the fourteenth-century anonymous ასწლოვანი მატიანე Asc'lovani Mat'iane (Chronicle of One Hundred Years), revealing unique details on Middle Mongol as attested in medieval Georgia. This is the first instalment of the authors’ joint research on this vastly important, largely untapped contemporaneous Georgian source on medieval Mongol language, culture and history.
We report the first-stage percutaneous palliation in a newborn with a rare heterotaxy syndrome variant including interrupted inferior vena cava, partial anomalous pulmonary venous drainage, and restrictive interatrial communication. Virtual reality imaging aided visualisation, decision-making, and planning. Successful atrial septoplasty performed via the internal jugular vein and anomalous pulmonary vein was followed by stenting of ductus arteriosus.
Observational studies suggest that a healthy diet in combination with ample physical activity is associated with a lower prevalence of cancer-related fatigue. The SoFiT trial (SoFiT: Study on Fatigue: a lifestyle intervention among colorectal cancer survivors) will assess the effect of a personalised lifestyle programme on cancer-related fatigue in a randomised study. We designed a programme that aims to increase adherence to lifestyle recommendations on diet and physical activity. The programme was person-centred with regard to the lifestyle and personal characteristics of participants, to the determinants of behaviour of that participant, and to the preferences, opportunities and barriers of the participant. The effect of the programme was tested in the SoFiT trial: a two-armed, parallel, randomised controlled trial among adult stage I–III colorectal cancer survivors, who experience cancer-related fatigue after treatment completion; intended sample size n=184. Participants randomised to the intervention group received the personalised lifestyle programme. During 6 months, participants in the intervention group had individual sessions with a lifestyle coach of which four sessions were face-to-face and eight sessions were remote. After 6 months, participants randomised to the control group had access to two lifestyle coaching sessions and to the same materials that the intervention group also received. The primary endpoint of the trial is cancer-related fatigue. Secondary endpoints are sleep quality and duration, health-related quality of life, physical performance, depression and anxiety, skeletal muscle echo intensity and cross-sectional area, and gut microbiota composition. This trial will show the effects of a personalised lifestyle programme on cancer-related fatigue and on an extensive set of secondary outcomes. Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT05390398.
We performed a single-centre retrospective study comparing the accuracy of non-invasive elastography with liver biopsy in accurate assessment of Fontan-associated liver disease.
Methods:
Fontan patients who underwent combined assessment with a percutaneous liver biopsy and non-invasive elastography between January 2015 and December 2023 at our Children’s hospital were included. Liver biopsies were classified using the Congestive Hepatic Fibrosis Score as early Fontan-associated liver disease (scores 1, 2) and advanced Fontan-associated liver disease (score 3/bridging fibrosis and score 4/cirrhosis). Elastography values were categorised as advanced Fontan-associated liver disease for liver elasticity >2.1 m/s by ultrasound and liver stiffness >5 KPa on magnetic resonance elastography.
Results:
We included 130 patients (116 children, 89%, mean age at biopsy: 14.6 years ± 3.6) who underwent liver biopsy at a mean duration of 11.1 years (±0.3) following Fontan surgery. Advanced Fontan-associated liver disease was noted in 41 (31.5%) patients with 13 (10%) showing frank cirrhosis. Pre-biopsy ultrasound showed advanced liver fibrosis in 18/125 (14%), with low sensitivity (23%), high specificity (90%), and low accuracy (68%, k = 0.1) in diagnosing advanced Fontan-associated liver disease. Similarly, pre-biopsy magnetic resonance elastography showed advanced fibrosis in 23/86 (27%) of patients, with low sensitivity (30%), fair specificity (75%), and low accuracy (63%, k = 0.1). Interestingly, advanced Fontan-associated liver disease was missed by ultrasound in 29% and by magnetic resonance elastography in 25% of patients. Advanced Fontan-associated liver disease was associated with lower platelet count (p = 0.02) and higher Gamma-glutamyl Transferase levels (p = 0.02).
Conclusion:
Advanced hepatic fibrosis is common among paediatric Fontan patients. Non-invasive elastography may overestimate and underestimate the degree of liver fibrosis, and therefore, liver biopsy may be required for confirming disease severity.
This cross-sectional study employs structural equation modelling (sEM) to explore both direct and indirect effects of parental level of education and child individual factors on the length-for-age outcomes in children aged 6–24 months assisted by the Bolsa Família Program in the State of Alagoas. A total of 1448 children were analysed by the sEM technique. A negative standardised direct effect (sDE) of the children’s younger age (sDE: −0·06; P = 0·017), the use of bottle feeding (sDE: −0·11; P < 0·001) and lack of a minimum acceptable diet (sDE: −0·09; P < 0·001) on the length-for-age indicator was found. Being female (SDE: 0·08; P = 0·001), a higher birth weight (SDE: 0·33; P < 0·001), being ever breastfed (sdE: 0·07; P = 0·004) and a higher level of parental education (SDE: 0·09; P < 0·001) showed a positive SDE effect on the child’s length-for-age. The model also demonstrated a negative standardised indirect effect (SIE) of the sweet beverage consumption (SIE: −0·08; P = 0·003) and a positive effect of being ever breastfed (SIE: 0·06; P = 0·017) on the child’s length-for-age through parental level of education as a mediator. This research underscores the crucial role of proper feeding practices and provides valuable insights for the development of targeted interventions, policies and programmes to improve nutritional well-being and promote adequate linear growth and development among young children facing similar challenges.
We classify the automorphic Lie algebras of equivariant maps from a complex torus to $\mathfrak{sl}_2(\mathbb{C})$. For each case, we compute a basis in a normal form. The automorphic Lie algebras correspond precisely to two disjoint families of Lie algebras parametrised by the modular curve of $\mathrm{PSL}_2({\mathbb{Z}})$, apart from four cases, which are all isomorphic to Onsager’s algebra.
When a sphere rotates near a rigid boundary coated with a thin layer of viscous liquid, ‘tracks’ are generated both behind and over the sphere. This paper describes a theory for the simplest one-track configuration which can occur under particular experimental conditions. The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with experimental observations.
Refugees drown, are beaten, and are pushed back at the borders of the states of the Global North. Moral outrage is understandable in the face of such treatment. But does it constitute a good political theory? Can morality supply us with good normative arguments for a political world? In this article, I argue that they cannot. Drawing on political realism, I show why moral arguments for admitting refugees fail. What we require is not the extrapolation of moral arguments onto a political world, but a new form of political normativity that is derived from how politics works. I show that refugeehood possesses a specific political function in international politics. States do not admit refugees based on humanitarian reasons. This is what moral arguments get wrong. Rather, they fulfill the political function of condemning and embarrassing other states, of building oppositional and military forces to undermine rival political systems both ideologically and materially. In other words, they play an important political role—a role that allows us to build normative arguments from within a political and not a moral understanding of the world.
To characterize the relationship between chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) skin concentration and skin microbial colonization.
Design:
Serial cross-sectional study.
Setting/participants:
Adult patients in medical intensive care units (ICUs) from 7 hospitals; from 1 hospital, additional patients colonized with carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE) from both ICU and non-ICU settings. All hospitals performed routine CHG bathing in the ICU.
Methods:
Skin swab samples were collected from adjacent areas of the neck, axilla, and inguinal region for microbial culture and CHG skin concentration measurement using a semiquantitative colorimetric assay. We used linear mixed effects multilevel models to analyze the relationship between CHG concentration and microbial detection. We explored threshold effects using additional models.
Results:
We collected samples from 736 of 759 (97%) eligible ICU patients and 68 patients colonized with CPE. On skin, gram-positive bacteria were cultured most frequently (93% of patients), followed by Candida species (26%) and gram-negative bacteria (20%). The adjusted odds of microbial recovery for every twofold increase in CHG skin concentration were 0.84 (95% CI, 0.80–0.87; P < .001) for gram-positive bacteria, 0.93 (95% CI, 0.89–0.98; P = .008) for Candida species, 0.96 (95% CI, 0.91–1.02; P = .17) for gram-negative bacteria, and 0.94 (95% CI, 0.84–1.06; P = .33) for CPE. A threshold CHG skin concentration for reduced microbial detection was not observed.
Conclusions:
On a cross-sectional basis, higher CHG skin concentrations were associated with less detection of gram-positive bacteria and Candida species on the skin, but not gram-negative bacteria, including CPE. For infection prevention, targeting higher CHG skin concentrations may improve control of certain pathogens.
We leverage plausibly exogenous variation in regional exposure to corruption to provide causal estimates of the impact of local political corruption on terrorist activity for a sample of 175 countries between 1970 and 2018. We find that higher levels of corruption lead to more terrorism. This result is robust to a variety of empirical modifications, including various ways in which we probe the validity of our instrumental variables approach. We also show that corruption adversely affects the provision of public goods and undermines counter-terrorism capacity. Thus, our empirical findings are consistent with predictions from a game-theoretical representation of terrorism, according to which corruption makes terrorism relatively more attractive compared to peaceful contestation, while also decreasing the costs of organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks.
This article provides a review of research in applied linguistics published in Australia in the period 2015–2022. Primarily, it is based on articles from Australian publications as material from other sources is more widely available to an international audience. The research has been published in such journals as the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL), BABEL, English in Australia, Papers in Language Testing and Assessment and TESOL in Context. Five key areas of research are discussed: First Nations peoples and their multilingualism, language and migration, language testing and assessment, language curricula and pedagogy, and teacher development, and their identity and pedagogical beliefs.
This study proposes a self-learning algorithm for closed-loop cylinder wake control targeting lower drag and lower lift fluctuations with the additional challenge of sparse sensor information, taking deep reinforcement learning (DRL) as the starting point. The DRL performance is significantly improved by lifting the sensor signals to dynamic features (DFs), which predict future flow states. The resulting DF-based DRL (DF-DRL) automatically learns a feedback control in the plant without a dynamic model. Results show that the drag coefficient of the DF-DRL model is 25 % less than the vanilla model based on direct sensor feedback. More importantly, using only one surface pressure sensor, DF-DRL can reduce the drag coefficient to a state-of-the-art performance of approximately 8 % at Reynolds number $(Re) = 100$ and significantly mitigates lift coefficient fluctuations. Hence, DF-DRL allows the deployment of sparse sensing of the flow without degrading the control performance. This method also exhibits strong robustness in flow control under more complex flow scenarios, reducing the drag coefficient by 32.2 % and 46.55 % at $Re =500$ and 1000, respectively. Additionally, the drag coefficient decreases by 28.6 % in a three-dimensional turbulent flow at $Re =10\,000$. Since surface pressure information is more straightforward to measure in realistic scenarios than flow velocity information, this study provides a valuable reference for experimentally designing the active flow control of a circular cylinder based on wall pressure signals, which is an essential step toward further developing intelligent control in a realistic multi-input multi-output system.
In this note, we examine the proportion of periodic orbits of Anosov flows that lie in an infinite zero density subset of the first homology group. We show that on a logarithmic scale we get convergence to a discrete fractal dimension.