Mediamusic (E-Journal)
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Antifungal-Inbuilt Metal-Organic-Frameworks Eradicate Candida albicans Biofilms
No full textFungal biofilms cause a major clinical problem with a shrinking armamentarium for treatment. Here, the design and synthesis of voriconazole-inbuilt zinc 2-methylimidazolates frameworks (V-ZIF) is reported. Voriconazole is built in through coordination-binding between zinc and voriconazole. These metal-organic-frameworks with inbuilt voriconazole, reduce inadvertent voriconazole-leakage, yield a zero-order release kinetics of voriconazole, aid antifungal penetration in Candida albicans biofilms, and prevent Candida aggregation yielding better dispersal. Once accumulated in an acidic C. albicans biofilm, voriconazole dissociates from the metal-organic framework to cause membrane-damage and killing of inhabiting fungi. Moreover, in a murine model, the V-ZIFs eradicate open-wound infections caused by C. albicans better than voriconazole in solution, with negligible side effects to the healthy tissues of major organs. Thus, V-ZIFs may provide a welcome addition to the antifungal armamentarium currently available for the treatment of fungal biofilms.</p
Feeling better:Experiences and needs of adolescents and professionals regarding their mentoring relationship in residential youth care
No full textPurpose: In residential youth care, group care workers and teachers often serve as a mentor for individual adolescents. Research suggests that favorable mentoring relationships are associated with positive adolescent outcomes. However, few studies examined the role of mentoring in residential youth care. The present study aims to assess adolescents’, care workers’ and teachers’ mentoring relationship needs in terms of their one-on-one conversations during residential care. Method: Interviews with eleven adolescents, ten group care workers and two teachers show that all are rather satisfied with their conversations, which are often concerned with how it’s going with the adolescent. Results: Adolescents mostly consider their family and situation at home as difficult topics, while care workers mostly consider sexuality as a difficult topic to talk about. Although the aim is often ‘improvement’ with the youth, most adolescents report that they do not (know if they) show changes as a result of these conversations. Moreover, only one of the twelve professionals thinks that it is his core task to achieve behavior change with the young person. According to the professionals, conversations often aim at building a good relationship, coaching, determining treatment goals, and gaining insight into the adolescent. Adolescents prefer a mentor who is calm, has respect, listens, and is reluctant in giving advice. Most professionals do not use a specific treatment protocol or method and doubt whether they want to have conversations according to a manual, protocol or support tool. Discussion: Despite being rather satisfied, adolescents and professionals indicate several points for improvement of one-on-one conversations
Incidence and outcomes of poor healing and poor squamous regeneration after radiofrequency ablation therapy for early Barrett's neoplasia
No full textBACKGROUND: Although endoscopic eradication therapy with radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is effective in most Barrett's Esophagus (BE) patients, some might experience poor healing (PH) and/or poor squamous regeneration (PSR). We aimed to evaluate PH/PSR incidence and treatment outcomes.METHODS: We included all patients treated with RFA for early BE neoplasia, from a nationwide Dutch registry based on a joint treatment protocol. PH was defined as active inflammatory changes or visible ulcerations ≥3 months post-RFA, PSR as <50% squamous regeneration, and treatment success as complete eradication of BE (CE-BE). Results 1,386 patients (median BE C2M5) underwent RFA with baseline low-grade dysplasia (27%), high-grade dysplasia (30%), or early cancer (43%). In all 134 patients with PH (10%), additional time and acid suppression resulted in complete esophageal healing. 67/134 (50%) had normal regeneration with 97% CE-BE. In total, 74 patients had PSR (5%). As compared to patients with normal squamous regeneration, PSR patients had a higher risk for treatment failure (64% versus 2%, RR 27 [95% CI 18-40]) and progression to advanced disease (15% versus <1%, RR 30 [95% CI 12-81]). Higher BMI, longer BE, reflux esophagitis, and <50% squamous regeneration after baseline endoscopic resection were independently associated with PSR in multivariable logistic regression. Conclusions In half of the patients with PH, additional time and acid suppression may lead to normal squamous regeneration and excellent treatment outcomes. However, if patients experience PSR, the risk for treatment failure and progression to advanced disease is significantly increased with a relative risk of 27 and 30, respectively.</p
ART VIDEO "BOLERO" 2020 : THE CONCEPT OF OVERCOMING
No full textAny art work lives if it is perceived by readers, viewers, listeners, performers-interpreters and researchers. The emerging public resonance is comprehended in aesthetics in the context of the social functions of art. The proposed analysis of the one-act video ballet "Bolero" 2020 performed by Sergei Polunin (as a part of an information and educational project of moral support through the means of art for thousands of patients with a multiple sclerosis) requires precisely this aspect of consideration. The originality of the conceptual solution of this art video is established by comparing with other visual versions of reading the music of Maurice Ravel. An analysis of its synthetic text (background, makeup, costume, plastic, symbolic pas) allows us to conclude that the visual comprehensibility of the artistic language of the ballet, in which recognizes the artistically refined image of the signs of the disease, the enormous positive charge of feelings caused by its perception, and the practical therapeutic utility provide the project with effectiveness and value in artistic and social terms.http://mediamusic-journal.com/Issues/13_5.htm
The time varying causal relationship between international capital flows and the real effective exchange rate:New evidence for China
No full textWe test the bilateral causal relationship between four types of international capital flows and the real effective exchange rate (REER) in China over the period 1998:Q1 to 2016:Q2 and examine whether the link is time varying. Parameter stability tests suggest that the relationship between capital flows and the RMB REER is time varying both in the short and the long run. Bootstrap rolling-window causality tests suggest bidirectional Granger causal relationships between the current account, portfolio investments and FDI, and the REER in several sub-periods, and a Granger-causal relationship from foreign exchange reserves to the REER in some sub-periods.<br/
The transnational dissemination of the infant school to the periphery of Europe:the role of primary schools, religion, travels, and handbooks in the case of nineteenth-century Sweden
No full textThe infant school was a nineteenth-century innovation with British roots that quickly achieved an international reputation. This article contributes to the study of the transnational dissemination of the infant schools by examining the case of Swedish infant schools. Using theoretical concepts from the transnational history of education, this article focuses on how the model of infant schools was transferred to Sweden, and how this model was translated and transformed in this process and by local Swedish contexts. Combining printed handbooks and unprinted archival materials from infant school societies, this article emphasises the role of travels, handbooks, and the infant school society of Stockholm in this transfer process, and its inherent contradictions. This study indicates the vital role that religion played in transforming the content of the teaching taught at infant schools, and the impact of primary schools on the educational practices. As elsewhere, Swedish infant schools were sometimes transformed into a kind of preparatory primary school.</p
Evolution and biogeography of the <i>Zanclea</i>-Scleractinia symbiosis
No full textScleractinian corals provide habitats for a broad variety of cryptofauna, which in turn may contribute to the overall functioning of coral symbiomes. Among these invertebrates, hydrozoans belonging to the genus Zanclea represent an increasingly known and ecologically important group of coral symbionts. In this study, we analysed 321 Zanclea colonies associated with 31 coral genera collected from 11 localities across the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean regions, and used a multi-disciplinary approach to shed light on the evolution and biogeography of the group. Overall, we found high genetic diversity of hydrozoans that spans nine clades corresponding to cryptic or pseudo-cryptic species. All but two clades are associated with one or two coral genera belonging to the Complex clade, whereas the remaining ones are generalists associated with both Complex and Robust corals. Despite the observed specificity patterns, no congruence between Zanclea and coral phylogenies was observed, suggesting a lack of coevolutionary events. Most Zanclea clades have a wide distribution across the Indo-Pacific, including a generalist group extending also into the Caribbean, while two host-specific clades are possibly found exclusively in the Red Sea, confirming the importance of this peripheral region as an endemicity hotspot. Ancestral state reconstruction suggests that the most recent common ancestor of all extant coral-associated Zanclea was a specialist species with a perisarc, occurring in what is now known as the Indo-Pacific. Ultimately, a mixture of geography- and host-related diversification processes is likely responsible for the observed enigmatic phylogenetic structure of coral-associated Zanclea
Medieval Whalers in the Netherlands and Flanders:Zooarchaeological Analysis of Medieval Cetacean Remains
No full textMedieval historical sources suggest that cetacean exploitation was, for large parts of Europe, restricted to the social elite. This appears to have also been the case for the Netherlands and Flanders. It remains unclear, however, how frequently active hunting was undertaken, and which species were targeted. Zooarchaeological cetacean remains are often recovered from Medieval (AD 400-1600) sites in the Netherlands and Flanders, however the majority of these specimens have not been identified to the species level, leaving a substantial gap in our knowledge of past cetacean exploitation. By applying ZooMS, as well as morphological and osteometric analyses, these zooarchaeological specimens were identified to the species level. This analysis revealed that the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), and grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) were frequently exploited. Active whaling appears to have been undertaken as well, especially in Flanders and in Frisia (the northern part of the Netherlands). Zooarchaeological cetacean remains appear to be present with relative frequency at high-status sites such as castles, as well as ecclesiastical sites, confirming the historical evidence that the social elite indeed did have a taste for cetacean meat. However, cetacean products were also available outside of elite and ecclesiastical contexts
“My room is the kitchen”:Lived experiences of home-making, home-unmaking and emerging housing strategies of disadvantaged urban youth in austerity Ireland
No full textThe current Irish housing crisis shows that the 2008 financial crash lingers on in everyday lives and spaces. As especially poorer populations became increasingly excluded from affordable housing under austerity, it is increasingly felt as a ‘personal crisis’. This paper explores the impacts of austerity on home-(un)making to reveal home as a place where austerity becomes ‘lived’ and ‘felt’. Building on interviews with young people aged 18 to 25 in Cork and Dublin, it focusses on a group eager but unable to leave their parental home. Their experiences illustrate the immediate home-unmaking of austerity and the role of past memories and anticipated futures in home-unmaking under austerity. As future expectations and home-making strategies are adjusted to the austerity context, these reconfigure the facets and spheres through which crisis and austerity are experienced. The becoming-everyday of the financial crisis affects the places and spaces of everyday life, creating an all-encompassing ‘slow crisis’ that alters domestic routines and materialities, creates new forms of living together, and presents new strategies for housing and home-making. Housing and home are critical spheres through which austerity and recession become embedded in the everyday lives of disadvantaged urban youth and shape contemporary life courses in the city-after-austerity.</p
Power in the Food Value Chain:Theory & Metrics
No full textChapter 12 introduces a new economic framework to analyse power in the food value chain. Spurred on by the increased interest of policy makers and antitrust authorities over the last decade, academic scholarship has made progress in analysing the origins and consequences of different dimensions of power across the value chain: buyer power, bargaining power, economic dependence. This Chapter summarises the key concepts used to analyse and measure power in the food value chain and explores the different theories of harm that have been developed and occasionally tested in recent cases. Far from representing just a ‘mirror image’ of the exercise of seller power, the analysis of buyer power may at times require a different set of analytical tools and a more detailed, case-by-case understanding of its specific origins and effects. From then on, the authors move to suggesting a broader theoretical framework that would encompass all different dimensions of power in the value chain, under the rubric of vertical power. After defining the theoretical contours of the concept, the authors offer some metrics that enable an empirical verification of the existence and exercise of vertical power