Influence of Ancient Mesopotamian Aesthetics of Gardens/Parks and Water Installations on the Development of Landscape Architecture

Based on the information from fundamental historical sources, the oldest origins of civilization can be found in the river valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Throughout Mesopotamia important routes of trade and migration of peoples followed, which influenced the emergence and development of one of the world’s first urban-type civilizations. It was here that the Sumerian civilization evolved, leading to a major cultural and technological breakthrough. Their widely used irrigation canals influenced not only the landscape, but also the entire ecological, economic and political systems of the time, water being a particularly important factor in this civilization. The oldest known gardens have also expanded here, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon still fuel people's imagination. Due to its unique geographical location, the region has had a profound impact on the surrounding nations, and it is no accident that the Assyrian Imperial Parks of Northern Mesopotamia exerted a great influence on the civilizations that followed. Undoubtedly, ancient Mesopotamia occupies a fundamental place in the development of garden art. With the growing use of roof gardens and the use of plants in modern architectural constructions as an extremely important tool for composition, it is worth exploring more closely the origins of this landscape-relevant process.

The Association between COVID-19-Related Wellbeing with Materialism and Perceived Threat

The ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a profound impact on people’s wellbeing. Here, we proposed that an individual characteristic might be associated with wellbeing; that is, materialism. Specifically, we conducted three studies (total N = 3219) to examine whether people with high levels of materialism would experience poorer wellbeing (i.e., anxiety and depression, in the current case). The results showed that materialism was positively associated with depression (Studies 1A, 1B and 2) and anxiety (Study 2). Moreover, such a relationship was mediated by people’s perceived threat of COVID-19 (Study 2). These findings were observed in both Chinese and American people. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical contributions.

BuddhistRoadPaper 5.6 "Light on ‘Art in the Dark’: On Buddhist Practice and Worship in the Mogao Caves"

This piece has partly been written in response to a series of claims put forward by Robert Sharf almost a decade ago in his article Art in the Dark in which he argues that the Buddhist caves in Dunhuang (and elsewhere in China and Central Asia) were not for worship, but were created as a sort of ancestral memorials, or decorated mausoleums meant to be left in the dark. Given that the implications of such reading of Buddhist cave-art in the Sinitic cultural-sphere would surely have a profound impact on our overall understanding of Buddhist ritual practices and cave-art, should Sharf’s readings turn out to be correct, the evidence and speculations he uses as underpinnings for his line of argument in particular merit closer scrutiny. Moreover, as he touches upon a range of other related issues, all of which concern Buddhist ritual practices one way or another, it seems worthwhile to devote a lengthier essay to a more detailed discussion.

James Malcolm Rymer

James Malcolm Rymer (b. 1814–d. 1884) created two of the most influential monsters of 19th-century fiction: Varney the Vampyre and Sweeney Todd. The son of an Edinburgh-born London engraver, Malcolm Rymer, who published poetry and a Gothic novel, Rymer was raised in a working-class literary-artistic family. His brothers Gaven and Chadwick were artists, and his brother Thomas put his engraving skills to criminal use as a serial financial forger. For the penny periodicals magnate Edward Lloyd, Rymer prolifically wrote bestselling serials including Ada, the Betrayed, or, The Murder at the Old Smithy (1843); The Black Monk, or, The Secret of the Grey Turret (1844); Varney, the Vampyre, or, The Feast of Blood (1845–1847); and the Sweeney Todd tale The String of Pearls, a Romance (1846–1847, expanded in 1850 as The String of Pearls, or The Barber of Fleet Street). In the 1850s, Lloyd’s business model changed. Favoring news over fiction, he jettisoned Rymer, who in 1858 took up employment composing serials for Reynolds’s Miscellany, a penny periodical founded by the radical journalist and novelist George W. M. Reynolds. Some of Rymer’s serials of this period, such as the outlaw romances Edith the Captive, or the Robbers of Epping Forest (1861–1862) and its sequel Edith Heron, or the Earl and the Countess (1866), were issued in stand-alone editions by Reynolds’s regular publisher, John Dicks. Rymer also composed essays, short tales, and poetry and served as a periodical editor, including of two of Lloyd’s penny periodicals. Extremely private, he published for the most part anonymously, as “the author of” several of his bestselling penny bloods, and under a variety of pseudonyms, including the anagrams “Malcolm J. Errym” and “Malcolm J. Merry” and “Lady Clara Cavendish.” In the 20th century, while Sweeney Todd’s fame grew, Rymer was largely forgotten, in part because an apocryphal bibliographic tradition erroneously maintained that The String of Pearls and many of his other works were written by another Lloyd employee, Thomas Peckett Prest. Since the 1960s, scholarly interest in penny fiction has brought to light Rymer’s contemporaneous popularity, his complex aesthetics, his often liberal or radical politics, his profound impact on Victorian mass culture, and his work’s vibrant transmedia afterlives.

Deep Learning for Orthopedic Disease Based on Medical Image Analysis: Present and Future

Since its development, deep learning has been quickly incorporated into the field of medicine and has had a profound impact. Since 2017, many studies applying deep learning-based diagnostics in the field of orthopedics have demonstrated outstanding performance. However, most published papers have focused on disease detection or classification, leaving some unsatisfactory reports in areas such as segmentation and prediction. This review introduces research published in the field of orthopedics classified according to disease from the perspective of orthopedic surgeons, and areas of future research are discussed. This paper provides orthopedic surgeons with an overall understanding of artificial intelligence-based image analysis and the information that medical data should be treated with low prejudice, providing developers and researchers with insight into the real-world context in which clinicians are embracing medical artificial intelligence.

Berbagai Dampak Hukuman (Punishment) dalam Pendidikan Terhadap Peserta Didik

All humans are obliged to be educated. The objective of the subject of education is to improve the quality of oneself in order to become a complete person. In achieving that goal, education has tools to support its smooth running. One of the educational tools punishment which is punishment, has a profound impact on learners. The punishment in education is the punishment given to the learner aimed at edifying the offending learner. After the sentencing, the impact of the learner, the impact of each learner varied, to which in the study, researchers tried to dig up information on the impact of the punishment on the learner by using literature and secondary data, that is, data from previously existing sources such as journal articles, books, and scripts. Then the data was qualitatively analyzed using the miles and hubermans' methods. Analysis has resulted in some effect on learners. The effects are positive and dam impact.

Dynamic Turnover of PI4P and PI(4,5)P2 under Hypoxia Controls Electrostatic Plasma Membrane Targeting

Phosphatidylinositol (PtdIns) 4-phosphate (PI4P) and phosphatidylinositol 4,5-biphosphate (PI(4,5)P2 or PIP2) are key phosphoinositides that determine the identity of the plasma membrane (PM) and regulate numerous key biological events there. To date, the complex mechanisms regulating the homeostasis and dynamic turnover of PM PI4P and PIP2 in response to various physiological conditions and stresses remain to be fully elucidated. Here we report that hypoxia in Drosophila induces acute and reversible depletion of PM PI4P and PIP2 that severely disrupts the electrostatic PM targeting of multiple polybasic polarity proteins. Genetically encoded ATP sensors confirmed that hypoxia induces acute and reversible reduction of cellular ATP levels which showed a strong real-time correlation with the levels of PM PI4P and PIP2 in cultured cells. By combining genetic manipulations with quantitative imaging assays we showed that PI4KIIIa, as well as Rbo/EFR3 and TTC7 that are essential for targeting PI4KIIIa to PM, are required for maintaining the homeostasis and dynamic turnover of PM PI4P and PIP2 under normoxia and hypoxia. Our results revealed that in cells challenged by energetic stresses triggered by hypoxia, ATP inhibition and possibly ischemia, dramatic turnover of PM PI4P and PIP2 could have profound impact on many cellular processes including electrostatic PM targeting of numerous polybasic proteins.

Return of Fandom in the Digital Age With the Rise of Social Media

In the digital age, the rise of social media has enabled the fan culture transitioning from “static” consumption to “dynamic” interaction. This is not only a result of the advancement of ICTs, but also a shift in digital communication driven by participatory culture. This chapter explores why social media in digital age have such a profound impact upon fandom. In particular, what is new with these fan communities that social media has done so much to enable. There is a blurring in the lines between fandom producers and consumers in the participatory fandom. Given the new forms of cultural production, fan culture has been enabled by social media and is more powerful than it was ever before. Finally, how the changing relationships between fans and producers have redefined the fandom economy.

“Internet + Tourisim” promotes the research on the inheritance and development of Jinan spring culture

With the rapid development of Internet technology, “Internet +” has enabled the development of tourism and helped the transformation and upgrading of tourism. Cultural tourism is having a profound impact on cultural inheritance and development. This paper aims to promote Ji ‘nan Spring Culture to move towards the direction of smart tourism by the deep integration of “Internet + Tourism”. Discuss reasonable and feasible inheritance, development and protection strategies. To solve the problems existing in the development of Spring Culture and tourism, protect and inherit the features of Spring Culture, and promote the orderly and healthy development of Spring Culture in Jinan.

Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Online Mental Health Forums

Like many of the disasters that have preceded it, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a profound impact on people’s mental health. Understanding its impact can inform strategies for mitigating negative consequences. This work seeks to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health by examining how discussions on mental health subreddits have changed in the three months following the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic. First, the rate at which the pandemic is discussed in each community is quantified. Then, volume of activity is measured to determine whether the number of people with mental health concerns has risen, and user interactions are analyzed to determine how they have changed during the pandemic. Finally, the content of the discussions is analyzed. Each of these metrics is considered with respect to a set of control subreddits to better understand if the changes present are specific to mental health subreddits or are representative of Reddit as a whole. There are numerous changes in the three mental health subreddits that we consider, r/Anxiety, r/depression, r/SuicideWatch; there is reduced posting activity in most cases, and there are significant changes in discussion of some topics such as work and anxiety. The results suggest that there is not an overwhelming increase in online mental health support-seeking on Reddit during the pandemic, but that discussion content related to mental health has changed.