bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Determinants
Authors: Lukas Andre
Published: August 2022

The determinant in arbitrary dimensions is introduced as a multi-linear, completely anti-symmetric object and it uniqueness and existence is demonstrated. Important properties of the determinant such as the multiplication rule and the basis invariance for determinants is proved. The determinant is used to introduce the concept of orientation of a basis. The co-factor matrix, the Laplace expansion and row operations facilitate computations with determinants. It is also shown how the matrix inverse can be obtaind from the determinant and Cramer’s rule is discussed. Minors can be used to compute the rank of a matrix.
Diagonalizing linear maps
Authors: Lukas Andre
Published: August 2022

It is explained what is mean by diagonalising a linear map and criteria for when this is possible are formulated. Many examples applying this to linear maps are presented, including to matrices, differential operators and projectors. Simultaneous diagonalistion of linear maps is also covered.
Diagonalization — again
Authors: Lukas Andre
Published: August 2022

The problem of diagonalising linear maps is re-considered in the presence of a scalar product. It is shown that hermitian and normal linear maps can always be diagonalised relative to an ortho-normal basis. The singular value decomposition for non-square matrices is also derived. The results are applied to the problem of computing functions of matrices
The dual vector space*
Authors: Lukas Andre
Published: August 2022

The dual vector space associated to a vector space is defined. The dual basis is introduced and it is shown that a vector space and its dual have the same dimension. The double turns our to be canonically isomorphic to the original vector space. We discuss the dual map which is an abstract version of matrix transposition.
Tensors*
Authors: Lukas Andre
Published: August 2022

The tensor product between two vector spaces is defined. It is explained how tensors can be obtained from the tensor product and why they satisfy a universal property. Index notation of tensors relative to a choice of basis and basis transformation is discussed. Tensor maps on tensor vector spaces are related to the Kronecker product for matrices. Symmetric and anti-symmetric tensors are also covered. It is explained how objects in linear algebra, such as linear maps, bi-linear forms and determinants, can be viewed as tensors. The discussion is generalised to multiple tensor products which leads to multi-linearity and the outer algebra of a vector space.
NO COUNTRY FOR WILD APES
Authors: Williams Mark , Zalasiewicz Jan
Published: August 2022

This chapter focuses on the possibilities of restoring nature. It shows possibilities of cohabitation between the numerous human and rapidly shrinking wild ape populations, such as with the Orangutan Foundation preserving habitat, releasing orphaned orangutans in protected reserves, and promoting education and livelihoods for the locals. Rewilding and restoration need concerted efforts to accommodate natural landscapes and wild animal and plant populations, and to avert a mass extinction. The chapter explores, too, the possibility of building mutualistic ‘garden’ cities and rebuilding marine ecosystems such as those of mangrove and seagrass. For a sustainable future, the human and natural worlds need sensitive and imaginative rebalancing.
INTRODUCTION
Authors: Martinho-Truswell Antone
Published: August 2022

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the similarity between humans and birds. Humans are animals, more specifically mammals, and more specifically primates, and our physical features reflect this. We have thumbs like all primates, and human hair and internal organs are more or less like those of other mammals. Yet, in another way, humans also have many things in common with birds. The ways of living first ‘invented’ by birds are very different from typical mammal strategies, but very similar to those that later made primates unique among mammals, and humans unique among primates. To understand the plumbing and infrastructure of the human body, one has to look at mammals. But to understand our minds, our behaviour, our social lives, or the reasons why our evolutionary history has unfolded in a particular way, it is to the birds, and especially the songbirds and parrots that one should look.
PARROTS IN THE MIRROR
Authors: Martinho-Truswell Antone
Published: August 2022

This chapter focuses on parrots, looking at three groups that exemplify convergent evolution—and parallel history—with humans: the cockatoos, the grey parrots, and the macaws. Like humans, they represent the extreme edge of what it means to be a parrot, the case where all the evolutionary forces combined to push a species or group of species towards an extreme version of its type. What is remarkable is that these two extreme groups of animals, the humans and the urparrots, have, in their extremity, become so remarkably similar. Rather than each being pushed to opposite ends of what it means to be an animal, they have ended up mirror images of each other, with parrots a whispered answer to the question: what if a different group of animals were to evolve like the humans? The chapter then considers the similarities that humans share with parrots, including longevity and monogamy. Where the parrots truly become our mirror image, however, is in their brains and their language. They share with us learning, fretfulness, personality, and artistry. Laboratory research has confirmed the expert lockpicking ability of these birds as well.
Introduction
Authors: Zariquiey Roberto , Valenzuela Pilar M.
Published: August 2022

This introduction outlines the chapters included in the present volume and places their contributions in the more general discussion on the grammar of body-part expressions. It underlines the substantial significance in this context of Amerindian languages, indicating that the extensive coverage and new insights detailed here willcontributing to the understanding of the nature of body-part expressions in the Americas. It also offers a detailed list of the languages discussed in the following chapters along with two maps illustrating their approximate locations.
Body parts and possessive constructions in Mataguayan languages
Authors: Nercesian Verónica , Vidal Alejandra
Published: August 2022

This chapter argues for the existence of an early possessive classifier *t(V)- that may have distinguished body parts from the rest of the inalienable nouns in the ase a language family. Evidence of this is the documentation of a t(V)-form or a t(V)-form series in the possessive flexional paradigms in this family. In most cases, it is synchronically reanalyzed as part of the possessive prefix fused to the pronominal possessive prefixes, while in others, *t(V)- seems to have been fused to the root. This suggests that, in Proto-Mataguayan, there may have been only one pronominal series-indexing possessor, and that *t(V)- was related to the meaning of the root. We also posit that there is a relationship with a formally similar verbal prefix, which classifies agentive intransitive roots, and a presumable semantic extension of *t(V)- from body-part nouns to agency in intransitive predicates.
Vestiges of body-part prefixation in Marubo
Authors: Fleck David W.
Published: August 2022

Most Panoan languages have a set of approximately thirty monosyllabic prefixes that designate mostly body parts and extensions of these. In the Panoan languages that have been studied in detail, these body-part prefixes have been found to be productive morphemes. Marubo seems to be a counterexample. This chapter argues that despite the large number of recurring elements with body-part meanings found in nouns, adjectives, and verbs, prefixation is not productive in Marubo. Nevertheless, these patterns suggest that Marubo once did have a productive system of body-part prefixation, so a second purpose of this chapter is to consider the diachronic scenarios that can explain how Marubo body-part prefixation was arrested.
Shakespeare and the Actor
Authors: Potter Lois
Published: August 2022

What is a ‘Shakespearean actor’? Does the term still have any meaning? Drawing on the biographical and autobiographical accounts of actors and directors, as well as on interviews with actors from a wide range of backgrounds, Shakespeare and the Actor looks at these questions in a variety of contexts, historical and contemporary. A survey of the training of the classical actor, with its increasing vocal and physical demands, considers how it, like the subsequent career path, is affected by class and gender. There is discussion of the uneasy balance of power between actors and directors, rehearsal practice, the difficulties faced by women as performers and directors, and attempts at undirected productions. Other chapters consider the roles that actors do and don’t want to play, and why, their relation to the Shakespeare text and editorial practice, the complex relationship between actor and audience, and the popularity of anecdotes about things that go wrong. Throughout, examples are taken, as far as possible, from the author’s own long experience of theatregoing. A final chapter looks at new trends in the theatre that have been accelerated by the long period of closure during the pandemic, particularly attempts at greater inclusivity in both actors and audiences. It concludes that the main reason Shakespeare is performed is that actors want to play the roles he wrote.
Roles
Authors: Potter Lois
Published: August 2022

Chapter 5 discusses the roles that are the main reason actors want to play Shakespeare. The career path of a leading Shakespeare actor will include roles suitable for young, middle-aged, and older men; the situation is very different for women. For both, however, there are some roles that are ‘coveted’ and some that no one wants to play. This chapter looks at both kinds and at the special problems of those, like Falstaff and Richard III, that often require an exhausting physical transformation of the actor. It also considers why, given the high failure rate of Macbeth productions in the theatre, so many actors want to play the title character, and why actresses are not bothered by the fact that the female roles in the plays were not written for women to play.
And off We Go!
Authors: Jena Debdeep
Published: August 2022

This chapter provides a broad overview of the importance of semiconductors in the creation, storage, and movement of information or data, and in applications ranging from clean energy, medicine to space exploration. It outlines the science and applications of semiconductors, and discusses the organization of the book, and how best to use it.
Tight-Binding Bandstructure
Authors: Jena Debdeep
Published: August 2022

This chapter discusses the following questions: • How to extract the properties of molecules and crystalline solids if we know the properties of the constituent atoms, and their geometrical arrangement in real space, • Develop an intuitive understanding of the tight-binding model for electronic bandstructure of crystals, • Apply the tight-binding method to calculate and understand the bandstructure and physical properties of various semiconductors, ranging from graphene to Silicon to GaN, and • How to apply the tight-binding method to design and predict new properties such as those that are topological and non-trivial in origin.
Game of Modes: Quantized R, L, and C
Authors: Jena Debdeep
Published: August 2022

This chapter discusses the following questions: • What is Quantized conductance and resistance in ballistic semiconductors? • What is Quantum Capacitance and how is it related to the density of states? • What is Kinetic Inductance in a semicondutor?
Scattering, Mobility, and Velocity Saturation
Authors: Jena Debdeep
Published: August 2022

This chapter discusses the following questions: • We survey the experimental landscape of electron and hole mobilities in many scenarios ranging from zero/narrow bandgap semiconductors to ultra wide bandgap semiconductors, • Investigate quantitatively the scattering mechanisms that limit the electron mobility, ranging from intrinsic processes such as phonons to extrinsic processes such as dopants, alloy disorder, defects, and interfaces, and • Investigate the drift velocity as a function of the external electric field to understand velocity saturation and high-field effects.
Every End is a New Beginning
Authors: Jena Debdeep
Published: August 2022

This chapter discusses the following: • A broad summary of the field of semiconductors today, current challenges, and the state of the art. • We then place them in a broader scientific context to look back and then look forward to possibilities in the future. • We then discuss several new avatars of semiconductors, where they either exhibit themselves, or by close integration, new functionalities. • We end this book with a discussion of what semiconductors do for energy, healthcare, space exploration, and societal changes in the past, present, and the future.
Writing a Development Play
Authors: Ralph-Bowman Mark
Published: August 2022

Simple stories are easier to tell than complex ones. Hence the reality of a messy, often contradictory meeting of race, class, power, financial clout, and, fundamentally, gender within a development context seems unpromising theatrical material. Focusing on two theatre productions—The Project and With You Always—separated by nearly forty years, this chapter explores the challenges of engaging theatrically with this messy reality, and the way that both productions drew on research and lived experience in order to create something different. The Project was rooted in a combination of research into World Bank projects in the 1970s and the vitality of the lived experience of students in Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. With You Always was inspired by the research and experience disseminated through the academic book Aid, NGOs and the Realities of Women’s Lives: A Perfect Storm.
Who Consumes?
Authors: Harman Sophie
Published: August 2022

Research on popular representations of development and the visual or ‘aethetic turn’ in international relations emphasizes the power of affect on the viewer. However, we rarely interrogate what that affect or impact is. Affect or impact of the representation upon audience tends to be assumed or based on the ‘other’ audience rather than the subject of the representation. This is a key gap in engagement with popular representations of development: to think about representations is to not only think about the subject of the representation but how the represented view themselves and the representation. This chapter argues that issues surrounding popular representations of development not only have to consider issues or who speaks, who is represented, and who benefits in the production, but also who consumes. The chapter considers this question of affect and who consumes by exploring audience response to the feature film Pili.
Percolitis
Authors: Schulman L. S.
Published: August 2022

An epidemic is going like wildfire through the city of Oz. It is percolitis, equivalent to ∞+1 directed percolation. This chapter gives a mean field analysis of the epidemiology and examines the consequences, which include the order parameter and power law (temporal) correlations at the threshold (of transmission of the disease). With immunity the situation becomes more complicated and one sees the phenomena self-organized criticality and connections to galactic morphology and neurology. Self-organized criticality in a mean field model is explicitly obtained. There is also a section on better epidemiology.
Power laws
Authors: Schulman L. S.
Published: August 2022

A power law is [a frequency or probability] ≡ f(x) = ax−b, where x is a variable and a and b are constants. Many distributions are alleged to have this property: words (where x is the rank), city size (where x is the rank and f the population), music, genes, and so on. Scaling properties of power laws are explored and competing distributions (e.g. log-normal) are examined. Origins of power laws are found in diffusion, “rich get richer” distributions, self-organized criticality, and many other sources.
Putting it all together
Authors: Schulman L. S.
Published: August 2022

This is a summary of previous chapters and a review of principal conclusions and techniques.
The k-calculus
Authors: d’Inverno Ray , Vickers James
Published: August 2022

Chapter 2 starts by discussing the activity of model building. It then introduces a slightly non-standard (but insightful) approach to special relativity, using the ‘k-calculus’ approach of Bondi. The chapter begins by discussing relativity in the Newtonian framework. It then goes on to introduce the two key postulates of special relativity, namely, the equivalence of all inertial observers and the constancy of the velocity of light. It then shows how one may use a clock together with light signals to measure distances. The k-factor, which is in effect a Doppler factor and measures how the interval between successive light signals changes when measured by a moving observer, is then introduced, and an explicit formula for it is obtained. The physical implications are then examined, including the composition law for velocities, the relativity of simultaneity, the clock paradox, and the Lorentz transformations.
Integration, variation, and symmetry
Authors: d’Inverno Ray , Vickers James
Published: August 2022

Chapter 7, the final chapter of Part B, introduces tensor densities which enable one to carry out integration on manifolds. The next topic is an introduction to the calculus of variations which enables one to optimize an integral which depends on a function. It is shown how stationary values (i.e. maxima, minima, and saddle points) occur when the function satisfies the Euler–Lagrange equations. This method is then applied to obtaining the equation of geodesics as the shortest paths between two points. The chapter ends by introducing the concept of isometry, a transformation which preserves distances, and the derivation of Killing’s equation to obtain infinitesimal isometries.
The Schwarzschild solution
Authors: d’Inverno Ray , Vickers James
Published: August 2022

Chapter 15 introduces the notions of stationary space-time and static space-time. In simple terms, a solution is stationary if it is time independent. On the other hand, the stronger requirement that a solution is static means that it cannot be evolutionary. In such a case, nothing would change if time ran backwards. The definitions for static and stationary space-time are given in terms of both coordinates and, geometrically, hypersurface orthogonal vector fields and Killing vectors. The next section solves the vacuum field equations in spherical symmetry. This then leads to the Schwarzschild exterior solution, which describes the gravitational field outside a spherically symmetric star. The uniqueness of this solution allows one to deduce Birkhoff’s theorem, which states that a spherically symmetric vacuum exterior solution to a star is necessarily static. Finally, the Schwarzschild interior solution is discussed.
The Impact of Longevity on Pension Systems
Authors: Kallestrup-Lamb Malene , Kjærgaard Søren , Jarner Søren
Published: August 2022

This chapter focuses on understanding longevity trends and identifying which underlying factors are driving differences in longevity. Getting these trend improvements in life-expectancy right is essential for both governments and pension funds. In particular, the chapter illustrates the historical developments in mortality and longevity and quantifies how changes in life-expectancy do not necessarily imply that mortality rates change with the same magnitude or in the same direction at all ages. It illustrates the impact of socioeconomic status on life-expectancy and decomposes the change in life-expectancy by socioeconomic groups. Moreover, focus is turned to mortality forecasting, as this is one way for pension funds to manage their macro longevity risk. It introduces the Lee and Carter (1992) method, which represents one of the most influential proposals regarding mortality predictions and highlights issues related to underestimation as well as sensitivity towards data choices. This is highly relevant as modified versions of this model have become the standard approach in both the Danish public and private sector.
Public Finances and the Interplay Between Public and Private Pensions
Authors: Andersen Torben M. , Hougaard Jensen Svend E.
Published: August 2022

The interaction between public and private pensions involves some important features that risk undermining the support for the privately funded pension schemes and reduce pension contributions. On the one hand, because of means-testing of public pension benefits, the effective return on occupational pension savings is low, especially for low-income groups close to retirement age. On the other hand, a large group of people do not possess any substantial pension savings at retirement and are therefore fully reliant on public pensions. In order to address these two concerns, political agreements to impose mandatory pension savings on recipients of social benefits and to support the incentive for pension savings for low-income groups have been made in recent years, with full implementation in 2020. In this chapter we evaluate whether these new reforms appropriately address the concerns.
IT’S IN THE GENES
Authors: Gibson David J.
Published: August 2022

This chapter begins with the highly publicized Maricopa case, wherein forensic scientists used DNA extracted from plant material to place a suspect at the scene of a crime—investigators showed that the seed pods found in the suspect’s truck came from a tree next to where police discovered the body of his victim. It discusses how the Maricopa case was analogous to human DNA profiling as the prosecution sought to determine whether seeds in the suspect’s truck were from a tree growing where the body was found or from other trees commonly found elsewhere in the region. The chapter traces forensic scientists’ use of molecular evidence from plants since 1992; at that time it was uncommon for several logistical reasons, but its use has grown since. It outlines how investigators can use DNA to discriminate among individuals, cultivars, or varieties of a single plant species to identify plant fragments associated with a crime scene, determine the provenance of a sample, or identify plants in adulterated food or medicinal products.
Ireland’s West and the English Left
Authors: Patten Eve
Published: August 2022

This chapter explores the engagement of Ireland within England’s interwar socialist imaginary. It assesses writing from 1930s and 1940s British intellectuals geared to left-wing or communist utopianism and persuaded by concepts of Irish culture as a preserved repository of classical ideals. One of these, English Marxist George Thomson, made a long-term investment in Ireland’s west coast during the interwar decades, and subsequently engaged the perceived pre-capitalist idyll of the Blasket Islands as a wellspring for the socialist polemic of his book, Marxism and Poetry. Political events in Europe during the 1930s meanwhile, encouraged a triangular relationship, for many idealist intellectuals, between the ongoing convulsions of the Civil War in Spain, the ideological flux of a volatile England, and an Ireland still carrying revolutionary legacies, a complex backdrop that informs the Irish-set middlebrow romance and satirical fiction of the author Ethel Mannin.
Discourse status
Authors: Koev Todor
Published: August 2022

This chapter investigates the discourse status of parenthetical meaning. It starts with the well-known observation that there is a robust intuition that a (declarative) utterance carries a “main point”, or more technically, that some part of its content is “at-issue” in the given context. The intuition of at-issueness has been construed as based on what question participants are currently trying to answer (adopted here), which proposition it is proposed be added to the common ground, or what part of the existing discourse is still open for attachment by an upcoming segment. While parenthetical content is typically not at-issue, there are cases in which it does contribute to answering the question under discussion. Such cases suggest that the usual not-at-issue status of parentheticals is conversationally derived and not conventionally marked.
The annual cycle
Authors: Burt Stephen , Burt Tim
Published: August 2022

This chapter introduces the annual cycle of weather at Durham in terms of mean temperatures, rainfall and sunshine, and wind direction and speed. Averages for the current World Meteorological Organization standard 30-year period 1991–2020 are used throughout the book, and in this chapter, they are compared with 30-year averages from nineteenth-century observations at the site. Durham’s climate is considered in its regional context, including the influence of the North Atlantic and the European continent. Use is made of weather indices, including Lamb weather types and the North Atlantic Oscillation index. Reference is made both to Durham’s synoptic climatology as well as to individual spells of weather.
February
Authors: Burt Stephen , Burt Tim
Published: August 2022

This chapter examines the long-term records (including both averages and extremes) of temperature, precipitation, sunshine, barometric pressure, wind direction and speed, snowfall, and fog at Durham during the month of February. The chapter includes descriptive accounts and local photographs of notable weather events during the month of February. It covers how it is during the month of February that mean temperatures begin their seasonal rise, but also how February holds the record for both the coldest month and the coldest night in Durham’s record-keeping history. It also provides tables showing maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures recorded at the Durham Observatory.
March
Authors: Burt Stephen , Burt Tim
Published: August 2022

This chapter examines the long-term records (averages and extremes) of temperature, precipitation, sunshine, barometric pressure, wind direction and speed, snowfall and fog at Durham during the month of March. The chapter includes descriptive accounts and local photographs of notable weather events during the month of March. It covers how (generally) the month of March marks the transition from winter to spring and mentions that Durham in March usually has the highest range in temperature of any month in the year. Over the last 30 years, March has overtaken February as the driest month, and March also exhibits a huge range in monthly sunshine totals.
August
Authors: Burt Stephen , Burt Tim
Published: August 2022

In the minds of many, at least in England and Wales, August is the traditional high summer month—long school holidays, visits to the beach, light and warm evenings. However, the slow decline into autumn has begun. Temperatures normally begin to decline, and by the end of the month the evenings are drawing in and often starting to feel cool. This chapter examines the long-term records (averages and extremes) of temperature, precipitation, sunshine, barometric pressure, wind direction and speed, and fog at Durham during the month of August. The chapter includes descriptive accounts and local photographs of notable weather events during the month.
September
Authors: Burt Stephen , Burt Tim
Published: August 2022

September can be a month of ‘Indian summer’, where the temperatures can sometimes match those of July and August. However, September may also be a month of transition from summer to autumn, and calm periods may alternate with stormy, wet weather as the North Atlantic circulation begins its winter spin-up. September’s mean air temperature is 13.3 °C. This chapter examines the long-term records (averages and extremes) of temperature, precipitation, sunshine, barometric pressure, wind direction and speed, and fog at Durham during the month of September. The chapter includes descriptive accounts and local photographs of notable weather events during the month.
Climate change in Durham
Authors: Burt Stephen , Burt Tim
Published: August 2022

In their 2018 report, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded with high confidence that human-induced global warming had reached approximately 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2017, increasing at 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. This chapter consider the quantifiable effects of climate change on the long record from Durham Observatory. It considers particularly temperature, focusing on decadal means since 1851 and the effects on growing season; precipitation, exploring the trends in annual average rainfall, the wettest day of the year, and frequency of rainfall; and it examines the frequency of prolonged drought by measures of both rainfall and streamflow.
Motives for Travel and Instructions to Travellers
Authors: Dimmock Matthew , Hadfield Andrew
Published: August 2022

This chapter explores the varying reasons why English travellers claimed that they wanted to travel. Travel enabled them to learn new things that would prepare them for a more useful life in the service of the state, about government, culture, people, and conduct. Intercontinental travel was vital to establish an empire and so defend the nation’s identity within Europe. Attacks on travel were also relatively frequent, a prominent example being that of Roger Ascham, Elizabeth I’s tutor, who thought that travel encouraged vice and provided little in the way of a useful education which could be better spent studying books. The chapter includes Sir Thomas Bodley’s advice to Francis Bacon as well as Bacon’s reflections on the value of travel; Thomas Coryat on the benefits of unrestrained travel; and Richard Eden, Richard Hakluyt, and Samuel Purchas’s proselytizing about the value of empire.
The Americas
Authors: Dimmock Matthew , Hadfield Andrew
Published: August 2022

The chapter outlines the history of interest in settlement in the Americas, demonstrating that there was only limited enthusiasm until the first two decades of the seventeenth century, a marked contrast to the activities of the Spanish and Portuguese who occupied large parts of South America. The first English colonies were established in Virginia but these had limited success, even though they generated considerable interest. The chapter contains extracts from Richard Eden’s translations of Spanish accounts of voyages to the New World and encounters with the people there; a translation of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s account of the brutal treatment of indigenous Americans under Spanish rule; Thomas Harriot’s account of the land and people in Virginia; Walter Raleigh’s description of the fabled city of gold, El Dorado, in Guiana; Montaigne’s celebrated essay ‘Of the Cannibals’; William Strachey’s account of the Virginia colony in the early seventeenth century; and John Smith’s account of his encounter with Pocahontas.
Equilibrium Networks
Authors: Dorogovtsev Sergey N. , Mendes José F. F.
Published: August 2022

By the late 1970s, the theory of classical random graphs was already well developed, and mathematicians started to search for more general network constructions. In 1978, Edward A. Bender and E. Rodney Canfield published a paper entitled ‘The asymptotic number of labelled graphs with given degree sequences’ in which they described random networks with significantly richer architectures than the Erdős–Rényi graph. Béla Bollobás strictly formulated this generalization of the Erdős–Rényi model in his 1980 paper ‘A probabilistic proof of an asymptotic formula for the number of labelled random graphs’ and named it the configuration model. This generalization turned out to be a major step toward real networks in the post-Erdős epoch.
Seedborne Fusarium neocosmosporiellum Causing Foot Rot-Induced Wilting in Peanut Identified in Texas
Authors: Obasa Ken
Published: August 2022

A test of a batch of peanut ( Arachis hypogaea L.) seed variety of the runner type in 2021 in Texas revealed seed-associated Fusarium neocosmosporiellum. The identity of the Fusarium isolate was confirmed based on its morphological characteristics, as well as the internal transcribed spacer and translation elongation factor 1-alpha sequences. The inoculum potential of the Fusarium isolate was also evaluated on plants derived from F. neocosmosporiellum-free peanut seeds using the method of Koch's postulates. The results of pathogenicity tests determined the fungus to be pathogenic on peanut plants, resulting in foot rot-induced plant wilting and decline.

[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .
Assessing Motivations for Nonprescribed Buprenorphine Use Among Rural Appalachian Substance Users
Authors: McDonald Madelyn J. , DeVeaugh-Geiss Angela M. , Chilcoat Howard D. , Havens Jennifer R.
Published: August 2022

Objective

Buprenorphine (Suboxone) is an effective treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). However, there have been widespread reports of diversion and misuse. This study examined motivations for nonprescribed buprenorphine use among rural residents.

Methods

Eligible participants (N = 200) were at least 18 years old, had used any illegal or prescription drugs to get high, and had ever used nonprescribed buprenorphine. A questionnaire administered by a trained interviewer assessed demographic characteristics, substance use, and motivations for use.

Results

Primary motivations for first nonprescribed buprenorphine use included avoiding withdrawal and getting high, while at most recent nonprescribed use, motivations shifted toward maintaining abstinence from other drugs. In adjusted logistic regression analyses, past month use of stimulants decreased odds of nonprescribed buprenorphine use for the purposes of self-treatment by 68% (adjusted odds ratio, 0.26; 95% confidence interval, 0.11–0.61), whereas history of treatment for OUD more than doubled odds of use for self-treatment (adjusted odds ratio, 2.71; 95% confidence interval, 1.11–6.63).

Conclusions

Results indicate that many individuals used buprenorphine without a prescription, motivated largely by behaviors consistent with self-treatment, and diversion of buprenorphine may be driven by these motivations more than desire to get high. While many participants attempted to access treatment, many were still using nonprescribed buprenorphine for self-treatment, and many were dissatisfied with care they had received as part of a treatment program. Thus, increasing quantity of providers may not be adequate to address the opioid epidemic, but particular attention should be paid to providing care targeted to the needs of those with OUD in rural areas.
Chronic Warfarin Anticoagulation in Hip Fracture Patients Delays Surgery and Is Associated With Increased Risk of Postoperative Complications: A Multicenter Propensity-Score–Matched Analysis
Authors: Levack Ashley E. , Moore Harold G. , Stephan Stephen R. , Jo Sally , Schroeder Ian G. , Garlich John M. , Hadad Aidan , Little Milton T. M. , Miller Anna N. , Lyman Stephen , Lane Joseph M.
Published: September 2022

Objective:

To evaluate the effect of warfarin on blood transfusion and postoperative complications in a low-energy hip fracture population compared with a non-anticoagulated comparison group.

Design:

Multicenter Retrospective Cohort.

Setting:

Three Urban Level I Academic Trauma Centers.

Patients:

Acute, low-energy, native hip fractures in patients 55 years of age or older on chronic warfarin anticoagulation, propensity score matched 1:2 to non-anticoagulated hip fracture patients meeting all other inclusion criteria.

Main Outcome Measurements:

Transfusion and postoperative complication rates.

Results:

Two hundred ten anticoagulated hip fracture patients were matched to 420 nonanticoagulated patients. A higher proportion of patients required blood transfusion in the warfarin cohort (52.4% vs. 43.3%, P < 0.001), attributable mostly to the subgroup of patients undergoing arthroplasty. Warfarin patients had higher incidence of overall 90-day complications (47% vs. 38%, P = 0.039) and readmissions (31.4% vs. 8.9%, P < 0.001). Day of surgery international normalized ratio (INR) did not influence transfusions or complications among warfarin patients. Warfarin patients undergoing surgery within 24 hours had no difference in transfusions and had fewer complications compared with those undergoing surgery after 24 hours. On multivariable logistic regression analysis, warfarin use and day of surgery INR were not predictors of transfusion or complications.

Conclusions:

Patients on warfarin experienced longer time to surgery and higher incidence of overall transfusion and postoperative complications within 90 days of surgery. However, warfarin use and day of surgery INR was not independently associated with transfusions or complications. The reason for poorer outcomes in warfarin patients remains a topic of further investigation.

Level of Evidence:

Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Diagnosis and Management of Acute Pancreatitis in Pregnancy
Authors: Benson Meagan , Arena Goncharov Daphne , Jain Sangeeta
Published: August 2022

Acute pancreatitis is rare in pregnancy; however, the associated morbidity and mortality make prompt diagnosis and appropriate management essential.1,2 Although most cases are mild and improve with limited interventions, severe cases require a multidisciplinary approach in a critical care setting. The main principles of management include identification of an etiology to guide therapy, fluid resuscitation, electrolyte repletion, early nutritional support, and pain management. Antibiotics are not indicated for prophylaxis and should be reserved for cases with a suspected infectious process. Surgical management is indicated in select cases. Management in pregnant patients has few differences which are outlined below.
Hearing Results in Patients With No Ossicular Chain Reconstruction and Factors Influencing the Outcome
Authors: Alicandri-Ciufelli Matteo , Cantaffa Carla , Presutti Maria Teresa , Villari Domenico , Lucidi Daniela , Marchioni Daniele
Published: September 2022

Introduction

Ossiculoplasty is aimed at improving or maintaining the conductive portion of hearing in patients subjected to otologic surgery. However, satisfying hearing is frequently observed after tympanoplasty even in the absence of ossicular chain reconstruction. Aims of this article would be to evaluate hearing outcomes, in terms of pure tone average air-bone gap (PTA-ABG), in patients subjected to tympanoplasty for middle ear disease whose ossicular chain has not been reconstructed, and then to investigate factors influencing those outcomes.

Materials and Methods

Retrospective chart review of patients who underwent ear surgery from year 2003 to 2021 at the Otolaryngology–Head and Neck surgery department of the University Hospital of Modena was performed. Audiometric test results from patients who did not receive any ossicular chain reconstruction were collected and analyzed.

Setting

Tertiary University referral center.

Results

The mean patients' follow-up was 34.1 months. Overall, mean PTA-ABG in the study population was 23.5 dB. Integrity of stapes superstructure, malleus handle and malleus head, together with the use of tragal cartilage graft over autologous temporalis fascia to reconstruct the tympanic membrane were found to be significantly associated with better hearing outcomes, as demonstrated by lower PTA-ABG values. Stapes superstructure was found to be associated with more favorable outcomes in multivariate analysis, net of confounding factors.

Conclusion

Good hearing performance can be obtained in patients subjected to middle ear surgery, even if the ossicular chain is not reconstructed. Presence of ossicular chain remnants and the use of a rigid material for tympanic membrane reconstruction are the factors that seem to most favorably influence hearing outcomes after surgery for middle ear disease.
Postmastoidectomy Hyperacusis Syndrome: Clinical Features and Treatment
Authors: Ng Jia Hui , Kuthubutheen Jafri
Published: September 2022

Objective

We report a novel postmastoidectomy hyperacusis syndrome (PMHS) in patients who have had cortical mastoidectomies and experience hyperacusis to stimuli involving touch of the pinna and periauricular area. This report aims to describe the clinical characteristics of patients predisposed to this disabling complication after mastoid surgery and describes surgical treatment with mastoid cortex resurfacing with hydroxyapatite bone cement.

Patients

Three patients who have undergone intact canal wall mastoidectomies for nonchronic middle ear–related pathologies all reported a similar constellation of postoperative symptoms. None of the patients had any ossicular chain or middle ear abnormalities, and none had preoperative conductive hearing loss. All patients reported disabling hyperacusis related to light touch stimuli in the periauricular area. On examination, all three patients demonstrated synchronous movement of the tympanic membrane when the postauricular area was palpated.

Intervention(s)

After a period of observation, none of the patients noted any improvement to their symptoms. Resurfacing of the mastoid cortex with hydroxyapatite bone cement was performed in all patients.

Main Outcome Measure(s)

Presence of touch-induced hyperacusis and audiometry was assessed postoperatively. Patients were also examined for synchronous movement of the tympanic membrane with palpation of the postauricular area.

Results

All patients experienced complete resolution of touch-induced hyperacusis postoperatively. Pure-tone audiometric hearing thresholds remained unchanged after mastoid cortex resurfacing, and there was no longer tympanic membrane movement with palpation of the postauricular area.

Conclusions

PMHS can occur in patients after cortical mastoidectomy when there is no history of ossicular chain or history of chronic middle ear disease or middle ear abnormalities. PMHS can cause significant distress to patients and remain underrecognized unless synchronous tympanic membrane movement is specifically examined for. Treatment via mastoid cortex surfacing with hydroxyapatite bone cement is safe and effective.
Cystic Salivary Gland Neoplasms: Diagnostic Approach With a Focus on Ancillary Studies
Authors: Ribeiro Efrain A. , Maleki Zahra
Published: August 2022

Cystic salivary gland cytology can be challenging due to the fact that a cystic mass can be the clinical presentation of both non-neoplastic and neoplastic conditions. Neoplastic lesions consist of both benign and malignant neoplasms. The cytomorphologic features of these entities can overlap and the cystic background may additionally contribute to the complexity of these lesions and their interpretation. Ancillary studies have been reported in several studies to be beneficial in further characterization of the cellular components and subsequent diagnosis of the cystic lesions of the salivary gland. Fluorescence in situ hybridization, real-time polymerase chain reaction, and next-generation sequencing are now being utilized to detect molecular alterations in salivary gland neoplasms. MALM2 rearrangement is the most common gene fusion in mucoepidermoid carcinoma. PLAG1 rearrangement is present in more than half of pleomorphic adenomas. AKT1:E17K mutation is the key diagnostic feature of the mucinous adenocarcinoma. NR4A3 overexpression is highly sensitive and specific for the diagnosis of acinic cell carcinoma. MYB fusion is noted in adenoid cystic carcinoma. ETV6:NTRK3 fusion is helpful in diagnosis of secretory carcinoma. p16 and human papillomavirus (HPV) studies differentiate HPV-related squamous cell carcinoma from non–HPV-related neoplasms with overlapping features. NCOA4:RET fusion protein is the main fusion in intraductal carcinoma.
Follicular Dendritic Cell Sarcoma of Uterine Corpus: Report of 2 Cases
Authors: Boyraz Baris , Post Miriam D. , Hasserjian Robert P. , Oliva Esther
Published: August 2022

Follicular dendritic cell sarcoma is a rare dendritic/histiocytic tumor of intermediate malignant potential, which often involves extranodal sites, most commonly the gastrointestinal tract and mediastinum with only 5 cases reported in the female genital tract. We present the clinical and pathologic features of 2 such examples arising in the uterine corpus. Both patients (63 and 72-yr old) presented with postmenopausal bleeding and underwent an endometrial biopsy diagnostic of follicular dendritic cell sarcoma that was followed by hysterectomy. The tumors were polypoid, 3.5 and 5.0 cm, and were confined to the endometrium. Microscopically, ovoid to round to spindled tumor cells with pale eosinophilic cytoplasm and vesicular nuclei were arranged predominantly in sheets with an accompanying lymphocyte-rich inflammatory infiltrate. The tumor cells were positive for CD35, CD23, D2-40 in both tumors and additionally positive for CD21 in 1 tumor, all highlighting cell bodies and processes. Patients were alive without evidence of disease at 1 and 4 years with no adjuvant treatment. These cases highlight the importance of entertaining a broad differential diagnosis in lesions with epithelioid and/or spindled morphology involving the uterus.
Metastatic Cholangiocarcinoma to the Uterus Morphologically Imitating Primary Intestinal-type Endometrioid Adenocarcinoma
Authors: Kostelecky Nicolas , Ozhegov Evgeny , Cao Dengfeng , Krigman Hannah
Published: August 2022

Cholangiocarcinoma is an uncommon and aggressive malignancy of intrahepatic and extrahepatic bile ducts. We present a case of a 37-year-old woman with cholangiocarcinoma metastatic to the endometrium that mimicked a primary endometrial adenocarcinoma at resection. The patient is status-post orthotopic liver transplant for cholangiocarcinoma. She presented for evaluation of a clear, odorless vaginal discharge of 6 months’ duration. Endometrial biopsy demonstrated an adenocarcinoma with mucinous features similar to primary endometrial adenocarcinoma, but with an immunophenotype consistent with metastatic cholangiocarcinoma. Subsequent hysterectomy demonstrated complete replacement of the native endometrium, a presentation that represents, to our knowledge, the first such reported in the literature. Overall, extragenital metastatic disease to the uterine corpus is rare and involvement of the endometrium even less common. Metastatic cholangiocarcinoma represents a small subset of these metastases to the uterus.
ORF1p Is a Potential Novel Diagnostic Marker for Differentiated Vulvar Intraepithelial Neoplasia
Authors: Hofstetter Gerda , Mildner Michael , Tschandl Philipp , Pammer Johannes
Published: August 2022

Accurate diagnosis of differentiated vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia (dVIN) can be challenging as histomorphologic features may be subtle and overlap with nondysplastic lesions. In practice, aberrant p53 expression supports the diagnosis, but a substantial percentage retains wild-type p53. Recently, the retrotransposon long interspersed nuclear element 1 has been detected in distinct cancer types. We have now investigated the expression of the long interspersed nuclear element 1 encoded protein ORF1p in dysplastic and nondysplastic vulvar samples to assess its diagnostic value. Specimens of dVIN (n=29), high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (n=26), inflammatory vulvar lesions (n=20), lichen sclerosus (n=22), and normal vulvar epithelia (n=29) were included. ORF1p and p53 expression was determined using immunohistochemistry. The majority of dVIN [27/29 (93%)] and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions [20/26 (77%)] showed distinct (i.e. moderate or strong) ORF1p expression in the basal and suprabasal or all epithelial layers, respectively. Of note, ORF1p was present in all 4 cases of dVIN with wild-type p53 staining pattern. In contrast, ORF1p was negative or weakly expressed in most inflammatory lesions [14/20 (70%)] and lichen sclerosus [18/22 (82%), P<0.001]. Normal control epithelium exhibited negative staining in all cases. In conclusion, ORF1p might be a useful diagnostic marker for dVIN, especially in cases with retained wild-type p53.