Faced with the decline of the traditional family and the explosive growth of the over-65 population, the Japanese are looking for new ways to care for their elders. This timely study documents the ...birth of a major social phenomenon in Japan—the planned retirement community.
In the mid-1980s, Yasuhito Kinoshita spent a year living in Japan's first such community, Fuji-no-Sato. His collaboration with Christie W. Kiefer, a cultural gerontologist, is the first detailed study of a retirement community in a non-Western culture.
Fuji-no-Sato is a social community with no visible traditions. Kinoshita and Kiefer show that its residents' preference for long-established relationships creates the need for the invention of relationships that have no precedent in Japanese society.
This book reveals much about Japanese culture, and about the "graying of society" that plagues the newly industrialized countries of Asia. Its lessons about sensitivity to the elderly's values and the need for clear communication have important applications in other cultures as well.
The chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and molecular biology of oxylipins (defined as a family of oxygenated natural products that are formed from unsaturated fatty acids by pathways involving at ...least one step of dioxygen-dependent oxidation) are complex and occasionally contradictory subjects that continue to develop at an extraordinarily rapid rate. The term includes docosanoids (e.g. protectins, resolvins and maresins, or specialized pro-resolving mediators), eicosanoids and octadecanoids and plant oxylipins, which are derived from either the omega-6 (n-6) or the omega-3 (n-3) families of polyunsaturated fatty acids. For example, the term eicosanoid is used to embrace those biologically active lipid mediators that are derived from C20 fatty acids, and include prostaglandins, thromboxanes, leukotrienes, hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acids and related oxygenated derivatives. The key enzymes for the production of prostanoids are prostaglandin endoperoxide H synthases (cyclo-oxygenases), while lipoxygenases and oxidases of the cytochrome P450 family produce numerous other metabolites. In plants, the lipoxygenase pathway from C18 polyunsaturated fatty acids yields a variety of important products, especially the jasmonates, which have some comparable structural features and functions. Related oxylipins are produced by non-enzymic means (isoprostanes), while fatty acid esters of hydroxy fatty acids (FAHFA) are now being considered together with the oxylipins from a functional perspective. In all kingdoms of life, oxylipins usually act as lipid mediators through specific receptors, have short half-lives and have functions in innumerable biological contexts.
Summary
We performed a retrospective case note review to identify the major complications of epidural analgesia occurring after surgery at our hospital. By cross‐referencing the radiology, ...microbiology and patient information management system databases, we identified patients who had undergone either spinal magnetic resonance imaging or a lumbar puncture within 60 days of surgery in the period from January 2000 to December 2005. Review of these case notes identified six cases of epidural abscess, three of meningitis and three of epidural haematoma. Symptoms of epidural abscess or meningitis developed a median of 5 days after epidural catheter removal. Methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus was the predominant pathogen. Epidural haematoma symptoms developed while the epidural catheter was in place. These symptoms were initially attributed to the epidural infusion. Diagnostic delays contributed to adverse neurological outcome in three patients. This study suggests that leg weakness is a critical monitor of spinal cord health. A national database is needed to establish a more accurate estimate of the incidence of major complications and to identify relevant risk factors.
West Antarctica has experienced dramatic ice losses contributing to global sea-level rise in recent decades, particularly from Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. Although these ice losses manifest an ...ongoing Marine Ice Sheet Instability, projections of their future rate are confounded by limited observations along West Antarctica's coastal perimeter with respect to how the pace of retreat can be modulated by variations in climate forcing. Here, we derive a comprehensive, 12-year record of glacier retreat around West Antarctica's Pacific-facing margin and compare this dataset to contemporaneous estimates of ice flow, mass loss, the state of the Southern Ocean and the atmosphere. Between 2003 and 2015, rates of glacier retreat and acceleration were extensive along the Bellingshausen Sea coastline, but slowed along the Amundsen Sea. We attribute this to an interdecadal suppression of westerly winds in the Amundsen Sea, which reduced warm water inflow to the Amundsen Sea Embayment. Our results provide direct observations that the pace, magnitude and extent of ice destabilization around West Antarctica vary by location, with the Amundsen Sea response most sensitive to interdecadal atmosphere-ocean variability. Thus, model projections accounting for regionally resolved ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions will be important for predicting accurately the short-term evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The authors examine U.S.-based evidence that connects characteristics of the social environment with outcomes across the psychosis continuum, from psychotic experiences to schizophrenia. The notion ...that inequitable social and economic systems of society significantly influence psychosis risk through proxies, such as racial minority and immigrant statuses, has been studied more extensively in European countries. While there are existing international reviews of social determinants of psychosis, none to the authors' knowledge focus on factors in the U.S. context specifically-an omission that leaves domestic treatment development and prevention efforts incomplete and underinformed. In this review, the authors first describe how a legacy of structural racism in the United States has shaped the social gradient, highlighting consequential racial inequities in environmental conditions. The authors offer a hypothesized model linking structural racism with psychosis risk through interwoven intermediary factors based on existing theoretical models and a review of the literature. Neighborhood factors, cumulative trauma and stress, and prenatal and perinatal complications were three key areas selected for review because they reflect social and environmental conditions that may affect psychosis risk through a common pathway shaped by structural racism. The authors describe evidence showing that Black and Latino people in the United States suffer disproportionately from risk factors within these three key areas, in large part as a result of racial discrimination and social disadvantage. This broad focus on individual and community factors is intended to provide a consolidated space to review this growing body of research and to guide continued inquiries into social determinants of psychosis in U.S. contexts.
First Resolution of Microlensed Images Dong, Subo; Mérand, A.; Delplancke-Ströbele, F. ...
The Astrophysical journal,
01/2019, Letnik:
871, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
We employ Very Large Telescope Interferometer GRAVITY to resolve, for the first time, the two images generated by a gravitational microlens. The measurements of the image separation
mas, and ...hence the Einstein radius
θ
E
= 1.87 ± 0.03 mas, are precise. This demonstrates the robustness of the method, provided that the source is bright enough for GRAVITY (
K
≲ 10.5) and the image separation is of order of or larger than the fringe spacing. When
θ
E
is combined with a measurement of the “microlens parallax”
, the two will together yield the lens mass and lens–source relative parallax and proper motion. Because the source parallax and proper motion are well measured by
Gaia
, this means that the lens characteristics will be fully determined, whether or not it proves to be luminous. This method can be a powerful probe of dark, isolated objects, which are otherwise quite difficult to identify, much less characterize. Our measurement contradicts Einstein’s prediction that “the luminous circle i.e., microlensed image cannot be distinguished” from a star.
Recent satellite-remote sensing studies have documented the multi-decadal
acceleration of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in response to rapid rates of
ice-sheet retreat and thinning. Unlike the Greenland ...Ice Sheet, where
historical, high-temporal-resolution satellite and in situ observations have
revealed distinct changes in land-ice flow within intra-annual timescales,
observations of similar seasonal signals are limited in Antarctica. Here, we
use high-spatial- and high-temporal-resolution Copernicus Sentinel-1A/B synthetic
aperture radar observations acquired between 2014 and 2020 to provide the
first evidence for seasonal flow variability of the land ice feeding George
VI Ice Shelf (GVIIS), Antarctic Peninsula. Our observations reveal a
distinct austral summertime (December–February) speed-up of
∼0.06±0.005 m d−1 (∼ 22±1.8 m yr−1) at, and immediately inland of, the grounding line of the
glaciers nourishing the ice shelf, which constitutes a mean acceleration of
∼15 % relative to baseline (time-series-averaged) rates of
flow. These findings are corroborated by independent, optically derived
velocity observations obtained from Landsat 8 imagery. Both surface and
oceanic forcing mechanisms are outlined as potential controls on this
seasonality. Ultimately, our findings imply that similar surface and/or
ocean forcing mechanisms may be driving seasonal accelerations at the
grounding lines of other vulnerable outlet glaciers around Antarctica.
Assessing the degree of seasonal ice-flow variability at such locations is
important for quantifying accurately Antarctica's future contribution to
global sea-level rise.
Changes to the grounding line, where grounded ice starts to float, can be used as a remotely sensed measure of ice‐sheet susceptibility to ocean‐forced dynamic thinning. Constraining this ...susceptibility is vital for predicting Antarctica's contribution to rising sea levels. We use Landsat imagery to monitor grounding line movement over four decades along the Bellingshausen margin of West Antarctica, an area little monitored despite potential for future ice losses. We show that ~65% of the grounding line retreated from 1990 to 2015, with pervasive and accelerating retreat in regions of fast ice flow and/or thinning ice shelves. Venable Ice Shelf confounds expectations in that, despite extensive thinning, its grounding line has undergone negligible retreat. We present evidence that the ice shelf is currently pinned to a sub‐ice topographic high which, if breached, could facilitate ice retreat into a significant inland basin, analogous to nearby Pine Island Glacier.
Key Points
Grounding line change mapped along Bellingshausen margin of West Antarctica with Landsat and InSAR from 1975 to 2015
Results show majority of grounding line retreated along entire margin implicating ocean‐forced dynamic thinning
Grounding line at Venable Ice Shelf currently pinned but potential for retreat as at Pine Island Glacier
A suite of grounding-line landforms on the Antarctic seafloor, imaged at submeter horizontal resolution from an autonomous underwater vehicle, enables calculation of ice sheet retreat rates from a ...complex of grounding-zone wedges on the Larsen continental shelf, western Weddell Sea. The landforms are delicate sets of up to 90 ridges, <1.5 meters high and spaced 20 to 25 meters apart. We interpret these ridges as the product of squeezing up of soft sediment during the rise and fall of the retreating ice sheet grounding line during successive tidal cycles. Grounding-line retreat rates of 40 to 50 meters per day (>10 kilometers per year) are inferred during regional deglaciation of the Larsen shelf. If repeated today, such rapid mass loss to the ocean would have clear implications for increasing the rate of global sea level rise.
We report the lens mass and distance measurements of the nearby microlensing event TCP J05074264+2447555 (Kojima-1). We measure the microlens parallax vector using Spitzer and ground-based light ...curves with constraints on the direction of lens-source relative proper motion derived from Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) GRAVITY observations. Combining this determination with the angular Einstein radius measured by VLTI-GRAVITY observations, we find that the lens is a star with mass at a distance DL = 429 21 pc. We find that the blended light basically all comes from the lens. The lens-source proper motion is , so with currently available adaptive-optics instruments, the lens and source can be resolved in 2021. This is the first microlensing event whose lens mass is unambiguously measured by interferometry + satellite-parallax observations, which opens a new window for mass measurements of isolated objects such as stellar-mass black holes.
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