Several common developmental disorders emerge during early to middle childhood (e.g. autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder) and are associated with impairments in executive function ...(EF). Contrary to the prevailing view, I suggest that, within populations at-risk, the association with EF is found because individuals with strong EF skills are better able to compensate for atypicalities in other brain systems early in life, and are therefore less likely to receive a diagnosis later in life. I discuss evidence consistent with this view from considerations of individual variability, neuroimaging, and genetics. To the extent that this view is correct, it offers hope for remediation of some later emerging symptoms, as evidence from typical groups indicates that training programs for EF in preschoolers may be effective in improving skills.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
This paper explores the lives and careers of video game live broadcasters, especially those who gain their primary real-world income through this practice. We introduce the dominant market leader - ...the platform Twitch.tv - and outline its immensely rapid growth and the communities of millions of broadcasters, and tens of millions of viewers, it now boasts. Drawing on original interview data with professional and aspiring-professional game broadcasters ('streamers'), we examine the pasts, presents, and anticipated futures of streamers: how professional streamers began streaming, the everyday labour practices of streaming, and their concerns and hopes about the future of their chosen career. Through these examinations we explore the sociotechnical entanglements - digital intimacy, celebrity, content creation, and video games - that exemplify this new media form. Live streaming is an online practice expanding in both production and consumption at immense speed, and Twitch and its streamers appear to be at the forefront of that revolution.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
We assessed the effects of porosity and hydrophobicity on water uptake by biochars. Biochars were produced from two feedstocks (hazelnut shells and Douglas fir chips) at three production temperatures ...(370 °C, 500 °C, and 620 °C). To distinguish the effects of porosity from the effects of hydrophobicity, we compared uptake of water to uptake of ethanol (which is completely wetting and not affected by hydrophobic materials). For both feedstocks, low temperature biochars took up less water than high temperature biochars but the same amount of ethanol, suggesting that differences in water uptake based on production temperature reflect differences in surface hydrophobicity, not porosity. Conversely, Douglas fir biochars took up more water than hazelnut shell biochars due to greater porosity. Thus, designing biochars for water holding applications requires two considerations: (a) creating sufficient porosity through feedstock selection, and (b) determining a production temperature that reduces hydrophobicity to an acceptable level.
•Porosity of biochars increases slightly with increasing production temperature.•Water uptake by biochars depends on feedstock and production temperature.•Residual porosity depends on feedstock, providing substantial volume for water uptake.•Decreased hydrophobicity at higher production temperatures allows greater water entry.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
A domain-general framework for interpreting data on human functional brain development is presented. Assumptions underlying the general theory and predictions derived from it are discussed. ...Developmental functional neuroimaging data from the domains of face processing, social cognition, word learning and reading, executive control, and brain resting states are used to assess these predictions. Finally, potential criticisms of the framework are addressed and challenges for the future presented.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Purpose To summarize emerging concepts regarding the onset and progression, traction effects, and complications of the early stages of age-related posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). Design ...Interpretive essay. Methods Review and synthesis of selected literature, with clinical illustrations, interpretation, and perspective. Results Imaging of the vitreoretinal interface with optical coherence tomography has shown that PVD begins in the perifoveal macula. Recent longitudinal studies have demonstrated conclusively that early PVD stages persist chronically and progress slowly over months to years. Vitreous traction forces resulting from perifoveal PVD with a small vitreofoveolar adhesion (500 μm or less) may cause localized cystoid foveal thickening or one of several macular hole conditions. Traction associated with larger adhesion zones may cause or exacerbate a separate group of macular disorders. Ultrastructural studies suggest that epiretinal membrane develops from cortical vitreous remnants left on the retinal surface after PVD and plays an important role in traction vitreomaculopathies. Conclusions Age-related PVD is an insidious, chronic event that begins in the perifoveal macula and evolves over a prolonged period before vitreopapillary separation. Although asymptomatic in most individuals, its early stages may be complicated by a variety of macular and optic disc pathologic features, determined in part by the size and strength of the residual vitreoretinal adhesion.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This article considers the nature and functions of humour in digital game live streaming on Twitch. Most streamers and viewers seem uncomfortable with ‘serious’ in-game narrative content, resulting ...in weighty or emotional moments in games becoming sources of comedy and humour. Many also subvert the platform’s power dynamics by mocking community standards or the possibility of being banned, while some go even further and treat streamers themselves as fair game for mockery. This article thus examines how the humour of play, games and the Internet combine and evolve in an emerging and distinctive ‘stream-humour’, which can be sometimes playful and supportive yet sometimes shade into antagonism, rule-bending and hostility. Examining these dynamics on Twitch, in turn, provides a valuable window into how platform infrastructures and cultures generate norms and cultures of humour and amusement, and strengthens our understanding of online communities and platform power in this and similar contexts.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Nuclear spins are highly coherent quantum objects. In large ensembles, their control and detection via magnetic resonance is widely exploited, for example, in chemistry, medicine, materials science ...and mining. Nuclear spins also featured in early proposals for solid-state quantum computers
and demonstrations of quantum search
and factoring
algorithms. Scaling up such concepts requires controlling individual nuclei, which can be detected when coupled to an electron
. However, the need to address the nuclei via oscillating magnetic fields complicates their integration in multi-spin nanoscale devices, because the field cannot be localized or screened. Control via electric fields would resolve this problem, but previous methods
relied on transducing electric signals into magnetic fields via the electron-nuclear hyperfine interaction, which severely affects nuclear coherence. Here we demonstrate the coherent quantum control of a single
Sb (spin-7/2) nucleus using localized electric fields produced within a silicon nanoelectronic device. The method exploits an idea proposed in 1961
but not previously realized experimentally with a single nucleus. Our results are quantitatively supported by a microscopic theoretical model that reveals how the purely electrical modulation of the nuclear electric quadrupole interaction results in coherent nuclear spin transitions that are uniquely addressable owing to lattice strain. The spin dephasing time, 0.1 seconds, is orders of magnitude longer than those obtained by methods that require a coupled electron spin to achieve electrical driving. These results show that high-spin quadrupolar nuclei could be deployed as chaotic models, strain sensors and hybrid spin-mechanical quantum systems using all-electrical controls. Integrating electrically controllable nuclei with quantum dots
could pave the way to scalable, nuclear- and electron-spin-based quantum computers in silicon that operate without the need for oscillating magnetic fields.
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FZAB, GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
In flowering plants, pollen tubes undergo tip growth to deliver two nonmotile sperm to the ovule where they fuse with an egg and central cell to achieve double fertilization. This extended journey ...involves rapid growth and changes in gene activity that manage compatible interactions with at least seven different cell types. Nearly half of the genome is expressed in haploid pollen, which facilitates genetic analysis, even of essential genes. These unique attributes make pollen an ideal system with which to study plant cell-cell interactions, tip growth, cell migration, the modulation of cell wall integrity, and gene expression networks. We highlight the signaling systems required for pollen tube navigation and the potential roles of Ca
2+
signals. The dynamics of pollen development make sexual reproduction highly sensitive to heat stress. Understanding this vulnerability may generate strategies to improve seed crop yields that are under threat from climate change.
Alcohol use has been linked to impairment of cognitive and psychomotor driving skills, yet the extent to which skill impairment contributes to actual crashes is unknown. A reasonable assumption is ...that some driving situations have higher skill demands than others. We contend that intersections, the presence of other vehicles or moving objects, and work zones are examples of common situations with higher skill demands. Accordingly, if skill deficits are largely responsible for alcohol-involved crashes, crashes involving a drinking driver (versus only sober drivers) should be overrepresented in these driving situations.
Publicly available FARS data from 2010 to 2017 were collected. Fatal crashes were coded as alcohol-involved (1+ driver with a blood alcohol concentration BAC ≥ .05 g/dl) or having no impaired driver (BACs = .000). Drug-positive crashes were excluded. Crashes were also coded as involving moving versus stationary objects, occurring at versus away from intersections, being multivehicle versus single vehicle, occurring at or away from work zones.
Across multiple models, controlling for time of day and type of road, alcohol-involved crashes were significantly underrepresented in crashes at intersections, with moving objects, and other vehicles. Most strikingly, alcohol-involved crashes were 24 percentage points more likely to be with a stationary object than a moving object.
No evidence supported the idea that skill reductions are a primary contributor to alcohol-involved crashes. Alternative explanations and limitations are discussed.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In an elegant example of bench-to-bedside research, a hypothesis that cells in the outflow pathway actively regulate conventional outflow resistance was proposed in the 1990s and systematically ...pursued, exposing novel cellular and molecular mechanisms of intraocular pressure (IOP) regulation. The critical discovery that pharmacologic manipulation of the cytoskeleton of outflow pathway cells decreased outflow resistance placed a spotlight on the Rho kinase pathway that was known to regulate the cytoskeleton. Ultimately, a search for Rho kinase inhibitors led to the discovery of several molecules of therapeutic interest, leaving us today with 2 new ocular hypotensive agents approved for clinical use: ripasudil in Japan and netarsudil in the United States. These represent members of the first new class of clinically useful ocular hypotensive agents since the US Food and Drug Administration approval of latanoprost in 1996. The development of Rho kinase inhibitors as a class of medications to lower IOP in patients with glaucoma and ocular hypertension represents a triumph in translational research. Rho kinase inhibitors are effective alone or when combined with other known ocular hypotensive medications. They also offer the possibility of neuroprotective activity, a favorable impact on ocular blood flow, and even an antifibrotic effect that may prove useful in conventional glaucoma surgery. Local adverse effects, however, including conjunctival hyperemia, subconjunctival hemorrhages, and cornea verticillata, are common. Development of Rho kinase inhibitors targeted to the cells of the outflow pathway and the retina may allow these agents to have even greater clinical impact. The objectives of this review are to describe the basic science underlying the development of Rho kinase inhibitors as a therapy to lower IOP and to summarize the results of the clinical studies reported to date. The neuroprotective and vasoactive properties of Rho kinase inhibitors, as well as the antifibrotic properties, of these agents are reviewed in the context of their possible role in the medical and surgical treatment of glaucoma.
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