Current Science and the Black Hole Connection

2022 ◽  
pp. 279-305
Author(s):  
Dirk Klaas Meijer

In this chapter, an attempt is made to provide a condensed overview of the alarming state of the art of current scientific endeavor, as it is revealed in an international spectrum of critical reports but often is not openly discussed in the scientific community. These calamities include the lack of a basic analysis of the current scientific world itself, by which major influences of corrupt science policies and the power of traditional views remain in the dark. In addition, there is a worrying increase in technology-induced information dependence. We are facing an information wave of such magnitude that in order to survive we need to learn to ride it in a proper way by realizing our bio-cosmological connections and interconnectedness. The current problems in science, as observed by the present author and extensively put forward by leading scientists all over the world, are listed, and a set of potential solutions is tentatively offered.

Author(s):  
Shigeru Ikuta

The present author has been using new dot codes developed independently by Gridmark, Inc. and Apollo Japan, and conducting school activities with original handmade teaching materials overlaid with these dot codes in collaboration with schoolteachers all over the world. In our work, just touching the “invisible” dot codes printed on the paper or symbol icons by using a sound pen clearly reproduces voices and sounds. By using a scanner pen connected to a tablet or PC, multimedia sources such as movies, Web pages, and PowerPoint files, in addition to voices and sounds, can be reproduced on its screen. In this article, state-of-the-art dot code technology including a recently developed new application for a smart phone is outlined, and basic information regarding the creation of original handmade materials using dot codes and the use at both general and special needs schools is presented.


Author(s):  
Yulia V. Samodova

Information on the coming Open Access Week which will be held from 19 to 23 October 2009. Interest in the results of scientific researches all over the world has led to consolidation of forces of the international scientific community and to expand the now-annual event from a single day to seven days.


Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 648
Author(s):  
Michela Pugliese ◽  
Vito Biondi ◽  
Enrico Gugliandolo ◽  
Patrizia Licata ◽  
Alessio Filippo Peritore ◽  
...  

Chelant agents are the mainstay of treatment in copper-associated hepatitis in humans, where D-penicillamine is the chelant agent of first choice. In veterinary medicine, the use of D-penicillamine has increased with the recent recognition of copper-associated hepatopathies that occur in several breeds of dogs. Although the different regulatory authorities in the world (United States Food and Drugs Administration—U.S. FDA, European Medicines Agency—EMEA, etc.) do not approve D-penicillamine for use in dogs, it has been used to treat copper-associated hepatitis in dogs since the 1970s, and is prescribed legally by veterinarians as an extra-label drug to treat this disease and alleviate suffering. The present study aims to: (a) address the pharmacological features; (b) outline the clinical scenario underlying the increased interest in D-penicillamine by overviewing the evolution of its main therapeutic goals in humans and dogs; and finally, (c) provide a discussion on its use and prescription in veterinary medicine from a regulatory perspective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 2535
Author(s):  
Di Fan ◽  
Hyunwoo Kim ◽  
Jummo Kim ◽  
Yunhui Liu ◽  
Qiang Huang

Face attributes prediction has an increasing amount of applications in human–computer interaction, face verification and video surveillance. Various studies show that dependencies exist in face attributes. Multi-task learning architecture can build a synergy among the correlated tasks by parameter sharing in the shared layers. However, the dependencies between the tasks have been ignored in the task-specific layers of most multi-task learning architectures. Thus, how to further boost the performance of individual tasks by using task dependencies among face attributes is quite challenging. In this paper, we propose a multi-task learning using task dependencies architecture for face attributes prediction and evaluate the performance with the tasks of smile and gender prediction. The designed attention modules in task-specific layers of our proposed architecture are used for learning task-dependent disentangled representations. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed network by comparing with the traditional multi-task learning architecture and the state-of-the-art methods on Faces of the world (FotW) and Labeled faces in the wild-a (LFWA) datasets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5466
Author(s):  
Federico Pasquaré Mariotto ◽  
Varvara Antoniou ◽  
Kyriaki Drymoni ◽  
Fabio Luca Bonali ◽  
Paraskevi Nomikou ◽  
...  

We document and show a state-of-the-art methodology that could allow geoheritage sites (geosites) to become accessible to scientific and non-scientific audiences through immersive and non-immersive virtual reality applications. This is achieved through a dedicated WebGIS platform, particularly handy in communicating geoscience during the COVID-19 era. For this application, we selected nine volcanic outcrops in Santorini, Greece. The latter are mainly associated with several geological processes (e.g., dyking, explosive, and effusive eruptions). In particular, they have been associated with the famous Late Bronze Age (LBA) eruption, which made them ideal for geoheritage popularization objectives since they combine scientific and educational purposes with geotourism applications. Initially, we transformed these stunning volcanological outcrops into geospatial models—the so called virtual outcrops (VOs) here defined as virtual geosites (VGs)—through UAV-based photogrammetry and 3D modeling. In the next step, we uploaded them on an online platform that is fully accessible for Earth science teaching and communication. The nine VGs are currently accessible on a PC, a smartphone, or a tablet. Each one includes a detailed description and plenty of annotations available for the viewers during 3D exploration. We hope this work will be regarded as a forward model application for Earth sciences' popularization and make geoheritage open to the scientific community and the lay public.


Author(s):  
Marcos Sanchez Sanchez ◽  
John Iliff

<p>This paper describes the key elements from early planning to completion of a new bridge over the River Barrow which is part of the New Ross bypass in the south of Ireland. The structure has a total length of 887m, with a span arrangement of 36-45-95-230-230-95-70-50-36m. The two central twin spans are the longest of its kind in the world (extrados with a full concrete deck). The bridge carries a dual carriageway with a cable arrangement consisting of a single plane of cables located in the central axis of the deck. The design and construction focused in providing a structure with long term durability, resilience, and a robust approach to design scenarios using the Eurocodes and state of the art analysis techniques, including extreme events such as fire and ship impact<i>.</i></p>


2021 ◽  

The COVID-19 pandemic forced physicians around the world to make tragic decisions: Whose life should be saved when it is apparent that available resources are insufficient to treat everyone? Under the heading of "triage" a broad societal debate ensued that also ignited the scientific community. This anthology unites voices from medicine, law, and philosophy for a conversation. It reveals controversies that are deeply rooted in ideas of law, morality, and the role of the individual in the state. Simultaneously, answers are being formulated to questions that have become sadly prominent in the COVID pandemic but could also valid beyond it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9&10) ◽  
pp. 747-765
Author(s):  
F. Orts ◽  
G. Ortega ◽  
E.M. E.M. Garzon

Despite the great interest that the scientific community has in quantum computing, the scarcity and high cost of resources prevent to advance in this field. Specifically, qubits are very expensive to build, causing the few available quantum computers are tremendously limited in their number of qubits and delaying their progress. This work presents new reversible circuits that optimize the necessary resources for the conversion of a sign binary number into two's complement of N digits. The benefits of our work are two: on the one hand, the proposed two's complement converters are fault tolerant circuits and also are more efficient in terms of resources (essentially, quantum cost, number of qubits, and T-count) than the described in the literature. On the other hand, valuable information about available converters and, what is more, quantum adders, is summarized in tables for interested researchers. The converters have been measured using robust metrics and have been compared with the state-of-the-art circuits. The code to build them in a real quantum computer is given.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2.ESP) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Soraya Pereira Franco Adriano ◽  
Betânia Maria Pereira Santos ◽  
Carmem Gabriela Gomes de Figueiredo Figueiredo ◽  
Ana Carolina Bernardes Dulgheroff ◽  
Ronaldo Rodrigues Sarmento ◽  
...  

Objetivo: Analisar a produção científica acerca da atual pandemia do novo coronavírus, destacando aspectos referentes às características do vírus, bem como a epidemiologia, o diagnóstico e tratamento da COVID-19 no intuito de fornecer informações aos profissionais de saúde e à comunidade científica. Método: Revisão narrativa, com busca nas bases de dados Scielo, Medline, Lilacs e Pubmed, referente ao período de fevereiro a maio de 2020, utilizando os descritores: “infecções por coronavírus” or “coronavirus infections”, “COVID-19”, “betacoronavirus”, “Síndrome Respiratória Aguda Grave”, “SARS-Cov-2”, “diagnóstico”, “diagnosis”. Resultados: Foram evidenciadas três categorias temáticas: aspectos referentes ao vírus; a epidemiologia e a clínica da doença; e aspectos do diagnóstico e tratamento. Conclusão: O Coronavírus sofreu mutações desde o início da pandemia, mas não se sabe se estas mutações afetaram seu poder de infecciosidade. Em diferentes partes do mundo a epidemiologia da COVID-19 foi diferente. Com relação ao tratamento, a droga que tem se mostrado mais promissora até o momento é o remdesivir. Sem uma vacina eficaz, a maior arma que dispomos é o isolamento social.Descritores: Infecções por Coronavírus; COVID-19; Síndrome Respiratória Aguda Grave. SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME AND COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2): A NARRATIVE REVIEWObjective: To analyze a scientific production on the current pandemic of new coronaviruses, highlighting aspects related to virus resources, as well as the epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 in order to provide information to health professionals and the scientific community. Method: Narrative review, searching the Scielo, Medline, Lilacs and Pubmed databases, for the period from February to May 2020, using the keywords: "coronavirus infections" or "coronavirus infections", "COVID-19", "Betacoronavirus", "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome", "SARS-Cov-2", "diagnosis", "diagnosis". Results: Three thematic categories were highlighted: aspects related to the virus; an epidemiology and disease clinic; and aspects of diagnosis and treatment. Conclusion: The Coronavirus has mutated since the beginning of the pandemic, but it is not known whether these mutations have affected its infectiousness. In different parts of the world the epidemiology of COVID-19 was different. Regarding treatment, a drug that has been shown to be more promising until recovery is needed. Without an effective vaccine, the biggest weapon that affects social isolation.Descriptors: Coronavirus Infections; COVID-19; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. SÍNDROME RESPIRATORIO AGUDO GRAVE Y COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2): UNA REVISIÓN NARRATIVAObjetivo: analizar una producción científica sobre la pandemia actual de nuevos coronavirus, destacando aspectos relacionados con los recursos del virus, así como la epidemiología, diagnóstico y tratamiento de COVID-19 para proporcionar información a los profesionales de la salud y la comunidad científica. Método: Revisión narrativa, buscando en las bases de datos Scielo, Medline, Lilacs y Pubmed, para el período de febrero a mayo de 2020, utilizando los descriptores: "infecciones por coronavirus" o "infecciones por coronavirus", "COVID-19", "Betacoronavirus", "Síndrome respiratorio agudo severo", "SARS-Cov-2", "diagnóstico", "diagnóstico". Resultados: se destacaron tres categorías temáticas: aspectos relacionados con el virus; una clínica de epidemiología y enfermedad; y aspectos de diagnóstico y tratamiento. Conclusión: el coronavirus ha mutado desde el comienzo de la pandemia, pero no se sabe si estas mutaciones han afectado su infecciosidad. En diferentes partes del mundo, la epidemiología de COVID-19 fue diferente. Con respecto al tratamiento, un medicamento que ha demostrado ser más prometedor hasta que se necesita recuperación. Sin una vacuna efectiva, el arma más grande que afecta el aislamiento social.Descriptores: Infecciones por Coronavirus; COVID-19; Síndrome Respiratorio Agudo Severo.


Author(s):  
J R Bolter

Sir Charles Parsons died some three years after the author was born. In this paper the author looks back at the pioneering work of Parsons in the field of power generation. It shows how he was able to increase output of the steam turbine generator from 7.5 kW in 1884 to 50000 kW in 1930 while increasing efficiency from 1.6 to 36 per cent, and relates these achievements to the current state of the art. Blading design, rotor construction and other aspects of turbine engineering are considered. The conclusion is that Parsons and his associates charted the course which manufacturers and utilities throughout the world have continued to follow, although increasingly sophisticated design and analytical methods have succeeded the intuitive approach of Parsons. His constant search for improved efficiency was and is highly relevant to today's concern for the environment. Finally, although it did not become a practical proposition in his lifetime, the paper reviews Parsons' vision of, and continuing interest in, the gas turbine, first mentioned in his 1884 patents.


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