We study targeted redistribution by appointed state cabinet members (ministers) in Germany. Matching data on state ministers’ place of residence and state government employment data for the universe ...of western German municipalities for 1994–2013, we show within a difference-in-differences framework that municipalities that are the residence of a minister experience a higher annual growth rate in state government employment if they retain this status for more than one legislative term. Thus, our results suggest that appointed cabinet members engage in hometown favoritism. We discuss several potential mechanisms for this behavior.
Three-dimensional Cementitious materials Printing (3DCP) is a cutting-edge technology for the construction industry. Three-dimensional printed buildings have shown that a well-developed automated ...technology can foster valuable benefits, such as a freeform architectural design without formworks and reduced human intervention. However, scalability, commercialization and sustainability of the 3DPC technology remain critical issues. The current work presents the ecological fragility, challenges and opportunities inherent in decreasing the 3DCP environmental footprint at a material level (cementitious materials and aggregates). The very demanding performance of printable mixtures, namely in a fresh state, requires high dosages of cement and supplementary cementitious materials (SCM). Besides the heavy carbon footprint of cement production, the standard SCM availability might be an issue, especially in the longer term. One exciting option to decrease the embodied CO
of 3DCP is, for example, to incorporate alternative and locally available SCM as partial cement replacements. Those alternative SCM can be wastes or by-products from industries or agriculture, with no added value. Moreover, the partial replacement of natural aggregate can also bring advantages for natural resource preservation. This work has highlighted the enormous potential of 3DCP to contribute to reducing the dependence on Portland cement and to manage the current colossal wastes and by-products with no added value, shifting to a Circular Economy. Though LCA analysis, mixture design revealed a critical parameter in the environmental impact of 3DCP elements or buildings. Even though cement significantly affects the LCA of 3DCP, it is crucial to achieving adequate fresh properties and rheology. From the literature survey, mixtures formulated with alternative SCM (wastes or by-products) are still restricted to rice husk ash, Municipal Solid Waste ashes and recycled powder from construction and demolition wastes. Natural aggregate replacement research has been focused on recycled fine sand, mine tailing, copper tailing, iron tailing, ornamental stone waste, recycled glass, crumb rubber, rubber powder and granules, recycled PET bottles and steel slag. However, flowability loss and mechanical strength decrease are still critical. Research efforts are needed to find low-carbon cement replacements and mix-design optimization, leading to a more sustainable and circular 3DCP while ensuring the final product performance.
How should parties that oppose gender quotas react to their adoption and to the new environment of political competition? Should they signal to voters that they are willing to compromise and ...accommodate the new status quo, or should they dismiss the growing importance of gender in politics instead? In this article, we unmask the indirect effects of gender quotas by arguing that electoral threats act as a political competition mechanism changing elites’ strategic calculations about women’s inclusiveness. Using legislative debates in Portugal, we show that parties that voted against the gender quota reform but face an electoral threat adopt women-friendly stances in order to signal to voters that they are responsive to changes in the salience of gender. In contrast, parties that opposed the gender quota reform but do not face an electoral threat engage in strategies that are dismissive of these new policies.
Background
The global crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic has imposed a large burden on health systems worldwide. Nonetheless, acute abdominal surgical emergencies are major causes for ...nontrauma-related hospital admissions and their incidences were expected to remain unchanged. Surprisingly, a significant decrease in volume and a higher proportion of complicated cases are being observed worldwide.
Methods
The present study assesses the local impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the emergency presentation of acute appendicitis in a Brazilian hospital. A retrospective analysis was conducted on patients undergoing emergency surgery for the clinically suspected diagnosis of acute appendicitis during the 2-month period of March and April 2020 and the same time interval in the previous year. Data on demographics, timing of symptom onset and hospital presentation, intraoperative details, postoperative complications, hospital length of stay, and histological examination of the specimen were retrieved from individual registries.
Results
The number of appendectomies during the pandemic was 36, which represents a 56% reduction compared to the 82 patients operated during the same period in 2019. The average time of symptom onset to hospital arrival was significantly higher in 2020 (40.6 vs. 28.2 hours, P = .02). The classification of appendicitis revealed a significant higher proportion of complicated cases than the previous year (33.3% vs. 15.2%, P = .04). The rate of postoperative complications and the average length of stay were not statistically different between the groups.
Conclusion
Further assessment of patients’ concerns and systematic monitoring of emergency presentations are expected to help us understand and adequately address this issue.
Whenrobots physically interact with the environment, compliant behaviors should be imposed to prevent damages to all entities involved in the interaction. Moreover, during physical interactions, ...appropriate pose controllers are usually based on the robot dynamics, in which the ill-conditioning of the joint-space inertia matrix may lead to poor performance or even instability. When the control is not precise, large interaction forces may appear due to disturbed end-effector poses, resulting in unsafe interactions. To overcome these problems, we propose a task-space admittance controller in which the inertia matrix conditioning is adapted online. To this end, the control architecture consists of an admittance controller in the outer loop, which changes the reference trajectory to the robot end-effector to achieve a desired compliant behavior; and an adaptive inertia matrix conditioning controller in the inner loop to track this trajectory and improve the closed-loop performance. We evaluated the proposed architecture on a KUKA LWR4+ robot and compared it, via rigorous statistical analyses, to an architecture in which the proposed inner motion controller was replaced by two widely used ones. The admittance controller with adaptive inertia conditioning presents better performance than with a controller based on the inverse dynamics with feedback linearization, and similar results when compared to the PID controller with gravity compensation in the inner loop.
Considering the widespread use of rabbits in research that potentially causes pain and discomfort and the limited number of pain assessment validated tools in this species, we aimed to develop and ...validate a scale of acute postoperative pain in rabbits (RPBS). Footage of 58 rabbits from previous studies were used, recorded at 'baseline' (before orthopaedic and soft tissue surgeries), 'pain' (after surgery), 'analgesia' (after analgesic), and '24h post' (24 hours after surgery). The videos were randomised and assessed twice by four evaluators, within one-month interval between evaluations. After content validation, RBPS was further refined using the criteria from the validation. According to the principal component analysis, RPBS was considered unidimensional. The intra- and inter-observer reliability was excellent (ICC>0.80) for all evaluators. There was a high Spearman's correlation of the RPBS with unidimensional scales (>0.80) and a moderate correlation with the Rabbit Grimace Scale (0.68), confirming criterion validity. According to the mixed linear model, the scale was responsive, shown by the increase in pain scores after surgery. Construct validity was confirmed by known-group approach and internal relationships among items. Adequate item-total correlation (>0.3) was observed for all items, except for the attention to the affected area (0.04). The internal consistency was very good (Cronbach's α coefficient = 0.78; Mcdonald's ω coefficient = 0.83). The cut-off score for rescue analgesia was ≥3, with an area under the curve >0.95, demonstrating a high discriminatory capacity of the instrument. Scores 3 and 4 were within the uncertainty diagnostic zone. Specificity was 87% and sensitivity was 90%. It was concluded that the RPBS presented content, criterion, and construct validities, responsiveness, and reliability to assess acute pain in rabbits submitted to orthopaedic and soft tissue surgeries. The cut-off for rescue analgesia serves as a basis for the administration of analgesics to rabbits submitted to painful procedures.
Polymersomes are artificial nanoparticles formed by the self-assembly process of amphiphilic block copolymers composed of hydrophobic and hydrophilic blocks. They can encapsulate hydrophilic ...molecules in the aqueous core and hydrophobic molecules within the membrane. The composition of block copolymers can be tuned, enabling control of characteristics and properties of formed polymersomes and, thus, their application in areas such as drug delivery, diagnostics, or bioimaging. The preparation methods of polymersomes can also impact their characteristics and the preservation of the encapsulated drugs. Many methods have been described, including direct hydration, thin film hydration, electroporation, the pH-switch method, solvent shift method, single and double emulsion method, flash nanoprecipitation, and microfluidic synthesis. Considering polymersome structure and composition, there are several types of polymersomes including theranostic polymersomes, polymersomes decorated with targeting ligands for selective delivery, stimuli-responsive polymersomes, or porous polymersomes with multiple promising applications. Due to the shortcomings related to the stability, efficacy, and safety of some therapeutics in the human body, polymersomes as drug delivery systems have been good candidates to improve the quality of therapies against a wide range of diseases, including cancer. Chemotherapy and immunotherapy can be improved by using polymersomes to deliver the drugs, protecting and directing them to the exact site of action. Moreover, this approach is also promising for targeted delivery of biologics since they represent a class of drugs with poor stability and high susceptibility to in vivo clearance. However, the lack of a well-defined regulatory plan for polymersome formulations has hampered their follow-up to clinical trials and subsequent market entry.
Three new naphthoquinones, 5,6,7-trimethoxydunnione (1), 6,7-dimethoxy-α-dunnione (2), and 5,6,7-trimethoxydunniol (3) were isolated from the tubers of Sinningia mauroana Chautems, together with ...eleven known compounds: 5-hydroxy-6,7-dimethoxy-α-dunnione (4), 6-hydroxy-7-methoxy-α-dunnione (5), 7-hydroxy-6-methoxy-α-dunnione (6), cedrol (7), tectoquinone (8), plantainoside A (9), calceolarioside A (10), calceolarioside B (11), sanangoside (12), allo-calceolarioside A (13), and conandroside (14). The known compounds 4, 7-9 and 11-13 are being reported for the first time in this species. Hexane, ethyl acetate and ethanol extracts were tested for antioxidant activity by the ORAC-FL method, and the antioxidant capacity was measured as trolox equivalent (TE). The ethyl acetate (8808 µg TE g
−1
) and ethanol (7911 µg TE g
−1
) extracts showed high antioxidant capacity, while the hexane extract displayed weak antioxidant capacity (860 µg TE g
−1
).
The origin of cells that generate the blastema following appendage amputation has been a long-standing question in epimorphic regeneration studies. The blastema is thought to originate from either ...stem (or progenitor) cells or differentiated cells of various tissues that undergo dedifferentiation. Here, we investigate the origin of cells that contribute to the regeneration of zebrafish caudal fin skeletal elements. We provide evidence that the process of lepidotrichia (bony rays) regeneration is initiated as early as 24 hours post-amputation and that differentiated scleroblasts acquire a proliferative state, detach from the lepidotrichia surface, migrate distally, integrate into the blastema and dedifferentiate. These findings provide novel insights into the origin of cells in epimorphic appendage regeneration in zebrafish and suggest conservation of regeneration mechanisms between fish and amphibians.
To describe and present the clinical results of a new surgical treatment for sports hernia.
Retrospective cohort study.
Tertiary hospital.
Athletes who underwent sports hernia repair using the ...proposed technique between July 2006 and June 2020.
The surgery consists of a combination of a mini-open incision and preperitoneal placement of a three-dimensional bilayer permanent mesh (PHS).
The main clinical outcomes of the procedure were reviewed, including incidence of complications, long-term results, and recurrence rate.
Ninety-two sports hernia repairs were performed on 87 patients (79 male and 8 female patients, median age 30.2 ± 7.8 years). No intraoperative complications were observed. The mean follow-up was 15 months. Seventy-seven patients (88.5%) successfully resumed preinjury physical activities within 8 weeks; 80 patients (91.9%) within 12 weeks; and 83 (95.4%) within 6 months (median time of 10 weeks). Only one patient reported recurrence of symptoms.
Mini-open incision PHS repair seems to be a safe and effective method for treatment of sports hernia, resulting in early return to physical activities, with few complications, and low recurrence rate.
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