To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
We previously analyzed five trials on ticagrelor/aspirin versus clopidogrel/aspirin in patients with minor stroke/ TIA in a network meta-analysis. We updated our search and identified 311 new citations with one study for inclusion: CHANCE2 enrolled patients with CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles and randomized them to ticagrelor/aspirin or clopidogrel/aspirin. Pooling of CHANCE2 with the original studies could not be completed due to violation of NMA assumptions, due to significant inconsistency. This suggests patients with CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles represent a subpopulation that is inherently different from the general stroke population in their antiplatelet response. Results from CHANCE-2 may not be generalizable without genotype testing.
Bentonites are proposed to be used as buffers in high-level radioactive waste repositories. The elevated temperatures in repositories may, however, affect bentonites’ desired properties. For instance, heating under dry conditions can cause cation fixation, potentially affecting swelling properties. The kinetics of mineral dissolution and precipitation reactions will equally be influenced by temperature. Redistributions of Ca-sulphates and -carbonates have been observed, as well as illitization of smectite. Illitization, however, has only been observed in laboratory experiments at large solution/solid ratios, whereas it has not yet been unambiguously identified in large-scale experiments. In many large-scale tests, cation exchange is the first observable geochemical reaction. In addition, an enrichment of Mg close to the heater is found in many such tests. The thermal gradient and (incongruent) smectite dissolution are suspected to play a role with respect to the Mg enrichment, but the underlying mechanism has not been unravelled so far. To predict the long-term performance of a bentonite buffer, numerical modelling is required in order to be able to simulate the reactions of all accompanying mineral phases. Smectites, which dominate the bentonite composition, are therefore particularly difficult to characterise, as their dissolution is often observed to be non-stoichiometric. Various model approaches exist to simulate smectite reactions, mostly based on kinetic rate reactions, ideally considering the effect of pH (congruent or incongruent dissolution), temperature and the degree of saturation of the solution. Reassessing and improving the thermodynamic/kinetic data of smectites are prerequisites for improving long-term buffer performance assessment.
The goal of this single-centre study was to evaluate long-term results of percutaneous closure of secundum-type atrial septal defect using Amplatzer Septal Occluder with the follow-up to 25 years.
Methods:
A retrospective analysis of patients who underwent percutaneous closure of secundum-type atrial septal defect between September 1995 and October 2012 in our institution was performed. All procedures were performed after fulfilling strict indication criteria. More than 5 years follow-up was reached in 651/803 patients (81%) with median follow-up time of 12 (5–25) years.
Results:
The mean stretched defect diameter was 14,0 ± 5,2 mm. Early reintervention due to moderate or severe residual atrial septal defect had to be performed in 3/803 patients (0,03%). The incidence of long-term moderate or severe residual atrial septal defect was 0,0%. The complete closure rate at 10-year follow-up was 98,5%, as trivial residual shunts persisted in 8/508 patients (1,5%). A significant rate of the echocardiographic right ventricular end-diastolic diameter post-procedural normalisation (p < 0,05) was encountered. The rate of major complications was 0,5%. One device embolisation, one thrombus formation at the occluder surface, and one cardiac erosion in periprocedural or short post-procedural course were experienced. Only one late complication of infective endocarditis at the region of implanted occluder and the aortic valve was detected. The survival rate of all followed patients was 100%.
Conclusions:
Percutaneous closure of secundum-type atrial septal defect using Amplatzer Septal Occluder is a safe and effective procedure accounting for a very low incidence of major complications in the long-term follow-up.
Jujube is both consumed as a food source and medicinal plant in local markets. It is expected that different geographical populations of Ziziphus jujuba, differ in their genetic content as they grow in different ecological conditions. It is important to have detailed information on population genetic structure and the available genetic variability to make a proper germplasm collection of jujube. We have no data on jujube populations of Iran based on SCoT and REMAP molecular markers, and therefore we planned a population genetic study of these trees in 10 geographical areas. We used SCoT and REMAP molecular markers for our genetic investigation. We found the loci with a high value of Gst (1.00) in SCoT and REMAP markers that can be used in fingerprinting of jujube.
We study a retirement savings plan with a default contribution rate of 12 percent of income, which is much higher than previously studied defaults. Twenty-five percent of employees had not opted out of this default 12 months after hire; a literature review finds that the corresponding fraction in plans with lower defaults is approximately one-half. Because only contributions above 12 percent were matched by the employer, 12 percent was likely to be a suboptimal contribution rate for employees. Employees who remained at the 12 percent default contribution rate had average income that was approximately one-third lower than would be predicted from the relationship between salaries and contribution rates among employees who were not at 12 percent. Defaults may influence low-income employees more strongly in part because these employees face higher psychological barriers to active decision making.
Field amputations are a low-frequency, high-risk procedure. Many prehospital personnel utilize the reciprocating saw. This study compares the efficiency, speed, and degree of tissue damage of different reciprocating saw blades found commercially.
Methods:
Amputations were performed on two human cadavers at different levels of the upper and lower extremities. Four different blades were used, each with a different teeth-per-inch (TPI) design. The amputations were timed, blade temperature was recorded, subjective operator effort was obtained, amount of splatter was evaluated, and an orthopedic physician evaluated the extent of tissue damage and operating room repair difficulty.
Results:
The blade with fourteen TPI was superior in overall speed to complete the amputations at 1.07 seconds per one centimeter of tissue (SD = 0.49 seconds) and had the lowest fail rate (0/8 amputations). The three TPI, six TPI, and ten TPI blades all required a “rescue” technique and were slower. The blade with fourteen TPI caused the least amount of tissue damage and was deemed the easiest to repair. Secondary outcomes demonstrated the fourteen TPI blade had generated the least amount of heat and produced the least amount of splatter. All blades had a perceived effort of “easy” to complete the amputation.
Conclusion:
While all blades were able to achieve an amputation, the overall recommendation is use of a fourteen TPI blade. It did not require any rescue techniques, provided the most straightforward amputation to repair, had the least amount of biohazard splatter and temperature increase, and was the fastest blade overall.
This article explores the early history of two American peanut companies: Planters and Tom’s. Both food manufacturers developed major commercial brands through the ownership of intellectual property. In this case, the sourcing of different peanut types figured into the marketing of salted peanuts. Through a legal dispute involving Tom’s patented retail bag, I examine how food packaging changed the way that peanuts were advertised, distributed, and consumed in the United States. The argument is made for an historical analysis of food brands that considers how intellectual property domains interacted with one another and with the material properties of food itself.
This article develops a framework to test how surface-level and deep-level faultlines impact team performance through subgroup formation and team interaction quality. We test it with 96 empirical articles on team faultlines from 2002 to 2022, using meta-analytic techniques. Firstly, results suggest that subgroup formation and team interaction quality act as serial mediums through which surface-level and deep-level faultlines exert negative indirect effects on team performance. Secondly, moderator analyses reveal that increasing interaction time will mitigate the effects of surface-level faultlines but enhance the effects of deep-level faultlines. Finally, surface- and deep-level social faultlines and deep-level task faultlines are detrimental to team interaction quality, and these negative effects are mediated by subgroup formation. Surface-level task faultlines are beneficial to team interaction, and this positive effect does not work through subgroup formation.
Feeding whole prey to felids has shown to benefit their gastrointestinal health. Whether this effect is caused by the chemical or physical nature of whole prey is unknown. Fifteen domestic cats, as a model for strict carnivores, were either fed minced mice (MM) or whole mice (WM), to determine the effect of food structure on digestibility, mean urinary excretion time (MUET) of 15N, intestinal microbial activity and fermentation products. Faeces samples were collected after feeding all cats a commercially available extruded diet (EXT) for 10 d before feeding for 19 d the MM and WM diets with faeces and urine collected from day 11 to 15. Samples for microbiota composition and determination of MUET were obtained from day 16 to 19. The physical structure of the mice diet (minced or not) did not affect large intestinal fermentation as total SCFA and branched-chain fatty acid (BCFA), and most biogenic amine (BA) concentrations were not different (P > 0·10). When changing from EXT to the mice diets, the microbial community composition shifted from a carbolytic (Prevotellaceae) to proteolytic (Fusobacteriaceae) profile and led to a reduced faecal acetic to propionic acid ratio, SCFA, total BCFA (P < 0·001), NH3 (P = 0·04), total BA (P < 0·001) and para-cresol (P = 0·08). The results of this study indicate that food structure within a whole-prey diet is less important than the overall diet type, with major shifts in microbiome and decrease in potentially harmful fermentation products when diet changes from extruded to mice. This urges for careful consideration of the consequences of prey-based diets for gut health in cats.
Results of stabilization for the higher order of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation are presented in this manuscript. Precisely, we prove with two different approaches that under the presence of a damping mechanism and an internal delay term (anti-damping) the solutions of the Kawahara–Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation are locally and globally exponentially stable. The main novelty of this work is that we present the optimal constant, as well as the minimal time, that ensures that the energy associated with this system goes to zero exponentially.
It is consistent relative to an inaccessible cardinal that ZF+DC holds, and the hypergraph of isosceles triangles on $\mathbb {R}^2$ has countable chromatic number while the hypergraph of isosceles triangles on $\mathbb {R}^3$ has uncountable chromatic number.
Infrastructures are central to processes of state formation. The revival of materialism in International Relations has made an important contribution to our understanding of states through careful analysis of the politics of infrastructure and state building. Yet, to date, engagement with the state-theoretical tradition associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and Bob Jessop has been absent. Through comparison with the external-relational ontology of Bruno Latour and actor-network theory (ANT), this article argues that state theory and its internal-relational ontology avoids reifying the state while providing an analysis of infrastructure and state formation sensitive to the historical reproduction of social orders over time. Developing Gramsci’s concept of the ‘integral state’, it emphasises the necessary interpenetration between civil society, the state apparatus, and the creation of infrastructure. These conceptual arguments are illustrated through an analysis of the United States’ development of nuclear infrastructures during the early Cold War period, in the internal relations between infrastructure and the integral state are explored through Civil Defense Education programmes. Clarifying the internal relations of past, present, and potential future forms of socio-technical order is an important task for rethinking the politics of technological design in International Relations.
The whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) is documented as a major pest on soybean. It was reported that whitefly response towards its hosts and their cultivars varies, and is mediated through various host-related factors. Considering the significance of leaf morphological characteristics in influencing the host–whitefly responses, the present investigation was conducted in screen-house conditions to study the prevailing variations in leaf morphological characteristics of soybean genotypes and their role in governing the adult whitefly attractiveness and oviposition preference. In the multiple-choice test, the whitefly population (eggs, nymphs and adults) was found to be lowest in moderately resistant genotypes (SL 1028 and SL 1074) compared to highly susceptible (DS 3105) and susceptible genotypes (SL 688, SL 958 and SL 1113). The foliar trichomes were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and leaf area, leaf lamina thickness and leaf shape data were acquired using standard procedures. To determine the factors involved in the resistance/susceptible responses towards whitefly, Pearson correlation was applied between the morphological characteristics and the whitefly population. The results show that the leaf area, trichome density, trichome length and trichome angle showed a significant positive correlation with the whitefly population, whereas leaf lamina thickness was negatively correlated. Thus, for developing whitefly-resistant germplasm, breeders should choose genotypes having narrow and thick leaves with sparse, short and flat trichomes.
The names of Athenian warships are a valuable source for cultural history, but scholars have long laboured without a sense of how these names were chosen. In a recent article, the present author has suggested that naval architects (master craftsmen elected by the Athenian Assembly) were responsible for naming each vessel they built. This explanation applies to the great majority of Athenian warship names known to us, but exceptions to the rule remain. Naval architects cannot have named vessels they did not build, and we know of several foreign-built ships (e.g., captured or donated ships) in the Athenian fleet. Vessels with the special status of ‘sacred triremes’ must also have followed their own unique naming procedure. Such exceptional cases are the subject of this paper.
Proverbs exist in a plethora of languages to express worldly wisdom, frequently in a metaphorical way. A number of proverbs are documented in more than one language since speakers adopt them from cultures they have been in contact with. The focus of the present study is on animal proverbs in English which have a foreign equivalent in another language, such as French, Latin, Greek, Japanese or Arabic. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (henceforth referred to as the ODP), edited by Jennifer Speake in 2015, is a valuable source for collecting the variety of animal proverbs which have become established in English over time.
In this paper, we study intersection configurations – which describe the behaviour of multiple (finite) intersections of subgroups with respect to finite generability – in the realm of free and free times free-abelian (FTFA) groups. We say that a configuration is realizable in a group $G$ if there exist subgroups $H_1,\ldots, H_k \leqslant G$ realizing it. It is well known that free groups ${\mathbb {F}_{n}}$ satisfy the Howson property: the intersection of any two finitely generated subgroups is again finitely generated. We show that the Howson property is indeed the only obstruction for multiple intersection configurations to be realizable within nonabelian free groups. On the contrary, FTFA groups ${\mathbb {F}_{n}} \times \mathbb {Z}^m$ are well known to be non-Howson. We also study multiple intersections within FTFA groups, providing an algorithm to decide, given $k\geq 2$ finitely generated subgroups, whether their intersection is again finitely generated and, in the affirmative case, compute a ‘basis’ for it. We finally prove that any intersection configuration is realizable in an FTFA group ${\mathbb {F}_{n}} \times \mathbb {Z}^m$, for $n\geq 2$ and large enough $m$. As a consequence, we exhibit finitely presented groups where every intersection configuration is realizable.