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Three drowning
No full textI think of poetry alternatively as me peeking out of a window or me on a bench spying on me peeking out of a window. When I am inside, I am mostly deaf and in company of images, which I rearrange in a calm similar to underwater. Because of my weak hearing, sounds are distilled and muffled and I work with them in small ways, looking at their shapes. Things go slowly—I take time to perform electroshocks on memories and dwell in places where things got stuck—often, in childhood. When I am outside, I am sad to see the house so silent and static, and sadness makes me resentful and mad. The games I invent might seem cruel in the attempt to get the me inside outside. I make temptations in the form of soundscapes and I poke objects while laughing loudly. I don’t understand why anyone would choose solitude to crowds, but I am fuelled by a secret longing for inertia. The me inside doesn’t understand why anyone would choose the opposite, but secretly she thinks about crowds, they are everywhere in her mind. This is not to say that the inside and the outside don’t communicate—on the contrary, they are the same thing, just split. I guess there are others, or there will be. It doesn’t matter if the split is double or triple or quadruple because they have a split in themselves already—there will always be so much splitting. I think this is a personal statement and I think poetry is very personal and very public at the same time. It has the thrill of a personal thing going out in the world, disguised but naked. Everyone is distracted by how naked it is, so it is in disguise
Stratospheric downward wave reflection events modulate North American weather regimes and cold spells
Get PDFFunding: This research has been supported by the European Union's H2020 research and innovation programme (ERC grant no. 948309 (CENÆ) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant no. 841902) and the National Science Foundation Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (grant no. 1914569).The Arctic stratospheric polar vortex is an important driver of mid-latitude winter cold spells. One proposed coupling mechanism between the stratospheric polar vortex and the troposphere is upward-propagating planetary waves being reflected downward by the polar vortex. However, while the wave reflection mechanism is well-documented, its role in favouring cold spells is still under-explored. Here, we analyse such stratospheric wave reflections and their impact on the tropospheric circulation and surface temperatures over North America in winter. We present a physically interpretable regional stratospheric wave reflection detection metric and identify the tropospheric circulation anomalies associated with prolonged periods of wave reflection, which we term reflection events. In particular, we characterise the tropospheric anomalies through the lens of North American weather regimes. Stratospheric reflection events show a systematic evolution from a Pacific Trough regime – associated on average with positive temperature anomalies and a near-complete absence of anomalously cold temperatures in North America – to an Alaskan Ridge regime, which favours low temperatures over much of the continent. The most striking feature of the stratospheric reflection events is thus a rapid, continental-scale decrease in temperatures. These emerge as continental-scale cold spells by the end of the reflection events. Stratospheric reflection events are thus highly relevant in a tropospheric predictability perspective.Peer reviewe
Exploring loss and damage from climate change and global perspectives that influence response mechanism in vulnerable communities
Get PDFClimate change has led to unprecedented environmental and socio-economic challenges globally, especially in vulnerable communities. Loss and damage refer to the residual effects of climate change, where adaptation and mitigation measures may not be enough to prevent adverse impacts. This study examines the impact of loss and damage caused by climate change in the Lower Niger River region of Nigeria and the influence of global perspectives on the region. The research adopted a mixed-methods approach, including a survey of 198 households and 13 interviews with key stakeholders. Furthermore, an open-source terra climate data of precipitation, runoff, and temperature covering a 30-year period (1990–2020) sourced from Climate Research Unit (CRU) dataset and analysed to show distribution of trends and patterns in climate variables. Similarly, we conducted a land use land cover change (1990–2020) to ascertain the level of changes. Findings from the study have revealed that the anthropogenic factors contribute to hydrological changes in the Lower Niger River Region and these changes result in climatic disasters like flooding which cause severe loss and damage of livelihood including loss of agricultural productivity, fisheries, and accessibility. While global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change are important, the study uncovers that the influence of global perspectives on the Lower Niger River Region is often limited by factors such as unequal power dynamics, insufficient funding, and a lack of local ownership of initiatives. The study suggests the need for sustainable land management, resolution of farmers/headers conflict and increased awareness as measures in addressing loss and damage.Peer reviewe
Improved antibiotic prescribing for acute conjunctivitis after operational research : a before-and-after study in a Ghanaian eye hospital
Get PDFFunding: This SORT IT program was funded by TDR (Grant Number TDR.HQTDR 2422924-4.1-72863). The APC was also funded by TDR. TDR is able to conduct its work thanks to the commitment and support from a variety of funders. A full list of TDR donors is available at https://tdr.who.int/about-us/our-donors (accessed on 21 July 2025).Empirical antibiotic treatment is common in acute conjunctivitis despite most cases being non-infectious or viral infections. Operational research (OR) at an eye hospital in Ghana (January–December 2021) identified appropriate antibiotic prescription in 71% of cases. Research dissemination and the sensitisation of key stakeholders followed, including communication of findings and implications to hospital prescribers. We conducted this OR covering January–December 2024 to test the hypothesis that the appropriateness of antibiotic prescriptions will improve, and to investigate the types of antibiotics prescribed and their AWaRe classification. There were 220 acute conjunctivitis cases in 2024, comparable to 2021 (201 cases). Antibiotics were prescribed in 67% of cases in 2024 and 55% in 2021 (aOR 2.51, 95% CI: 1.51–4.19, p < 0.001). Antibiotic prescription appropriateness was higher in 2024 than in 2021: 87% and 71%, respectively (95% CI for change: 5.99–25.99%, p = 0.001). In 2021, only ACCESS and WATCH antibiotics were prescribed. However, 15% of prescriptions in 2024 were RESERVE antibiotics, and multiple antibiotic prescriptions increased from 10% to 22%. This research demonstrates that regular operational research and interventions have the potential to improve antibiotic prescribing in ophthalmic practice in Ghana. It is imperative that the recommendations made by the initial researchers are fully implemented to protect the efficacy of available antibiotics.Peer reviewe
DRAPER: towards a robust robot deployment and reliable evaluation for quasi-static pick-and-place cloth-shaping neural controllers
Get PDFComparing robotic cloth-manipulation systems in a real-world setup is challenging. The fidelity gap between simulation-trained cloth neural controllers and real-world operation hinders the reliable deployment of these methods in physical trials. Inconsistent experimental setups and hardware limitations among different approaches obstruct objective evaluations. This study demonstrates a reliable real-world comparison of different simulation-trained neural controllers on both flattening and folding tasks with different types of fabrics varying in material, size, and colour. We introduce the DRAPER framework to enable this comprehensive study, which reliably reflects the true capabilities of these neural controllers. It specifically addresses real-world grasping errors, such as misgrasping and multilayer grasping, through real-world adaptations of the simulation environment to provide data trajectories that closely reflect real-world grasping scenarios. It also employs a special set of vision processing techniques to close the simulation-to-reality gap in the perception. Furthermore, it achieves robust grasping by adopting a tweezer-extended gripper and a grasping procedure. We demonstrate DRAPER’s generalisability across different deep-learning methods and robotic platforms, offering valuable insights to the cloth manipulation research community. Please visit our project website https://sites.google.com/view/draper-pnp for demonstration videos and code
On the metric dimension of the character degree graph of a solvable group
Get PDFLet be a finite solvable group and let Δ() be the character degree graph of . In this paper, we obtain the metric dimension of certain character degree graphs. Specifically, we calculate the metric dimension for a regular character degree graph, a character degree graph with Fitting height 2, a character degree graph with a diameter of 2 that is not a block, and a character degree graph with a diameter of 3 that also has a cut vertex. We also consider two related parameters, base size and adjacency dimension, and their relation to metric dimension for character degree graphs of solvable groups.Peer reviewe
Authority and group assertion
Get PDFFunding: Secretaría de Educación Pública; Consejo Nacional de Humanidades, Ciencia y Tecnología (CONAHCyT) (773961).Speakers naturally attribute assertions to groups, but what makes it the case that groups assert? The standard assumption today is that there are two kinds of group assertion: one distinguished by joint-intentional coordination and the other by spokespersons representing the group Lackey (The epistemology of groups, 2021); Ludwig (Language & Communication, 70, 2020b); Marsili (Topoi, 42, 2023). In this paper, I reject this analysis (which I call ‘the disjunctive view’), arguing that it provides neither necessary conditions—because it does not account for some cases of assertions made by research groups (I label these ‘radically collaborative assertions’)—nor sufficient conditions for group assertion—as it fails to rule out groups who are proxies for individuals. Instead, I propose a unified account of group assertion: the authority account. I claim that a special kind of entitlement distinguishes group assertion from individual assertion: the authority to assert on behalf of a group. Speakers (whether singly or in collections) perform group assertions only if they exercise this authority. I argue that, unlike previous accounts, my proposal explains what is common to all cases of group assertion, accommodates all cases, and succeeds in distinguishing group and individual assertions.Peer reviewe
From oxygen to tellurium : the impact of the chalcogen on nucleophilicities and basicities of isochalcogenourea catalysts
Get PDFFunding: This project was funded by the Austrian Science Funds (FWF) through projects P31784 (10.55776/P31784), P36004 (10.55776/P36004), PAT5703724 (10.55776/PAT5703724) and J-4592 (10.55776/J4592; Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship to A. E.). L. S. thanks the Erasmus+ program (European Union) and the shared funds of the Upper Austrian Government and JKU Linz for funding research stays at LMU München. The authors gratefully acknowledge the computational and data resources provided by the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (www.lrz.de). Financial support from the EPSRC (K.K., EP/T023643/1) and the EPSRC Programme Grant “Boron: Beyond the Reagent” (EP/W007517 to K.K. and A.D.S.) is gratefully acknowledged.Isochalcogenoureas (IChU) embedded in bi- or tricyclic ring systems have proven to be versatile Lewis base/nucleophilic catalysts that activate a wide range of electrophilic substrates for organocatalytic transformations. Ring size, variation of substituents, and the choice of the chalcogen atom affect the efficiency of IChU catalysis in a complex way. To gain a systematic insight into the key parameters that influence reactivity, 14 IChUs covering the fundamental motifs of these structural variations were selected and analyzed by a combination of kinetic, thermodynamic, and quantum-chemical methods. Two previously unknown tricyclic isotellurourea catalysts were synthesized to facilitate a comparison of all naturally abundant chalcogens (O, S, Se, and Te) in the IChU structure. Furthermore, their reactivity on the Mayr nucleophilicity scale as well as their Brønsted and Lewis basicities were determined in polar organic solvents under standardized conditions. Catalyst performance was assessed in two alcohol acylation reactions and in allenoate activation. The low electronegativity of tellurium gave rise to superior nucleophilicity and Lewis basicity of the isotelluroureas when compared to O-, S-, or Se-containing IChUs. Embedding tellurium in IChU structures thus provides a novel handle to influence and fine-tune the effectiveness of IChU organocatalysis.Peer reviewe
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