Internal Tremors and Vibration Symptoms Among People with Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2: A narrative review of patient reports

To introduce the perspective of patients who have PASC with vibrations and tremors as a prominent component, we leveraged the efforts by Survivor Corps, a grassroots COVID-19 patient advocacy group, to gather information from people in their Facebook group suffering from vibrations and tremors. Survivor Corps collected 140 emails and 450 Facebook comments from members. From the emails, we identified 22 themes and 7 broader domains based on common coding techniques for qualitative data and the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis. Facebook comments were analyzed using Word Clouds to visualize frequency of terms. The respondents’ emails reflected 7 domains that formed the basis of characterizing their experience with vibrations and tremors. These domains were: (1) symptom experience, description, and anatomic location; (2) initial symptom onset; (3) symptom timing; (4) symptom triggers or alleviators; (5) change from baseline health status; (6) experience with medical establishment; and (7) impact on people’s lives and livelihood. There were 22 themes total, each corresponding to one of the broader domains. The Facebook comments Word Cloud revealed that the 10 most common words used in comments were: tremors (64), covid (55), pain (51), vibrations (43), months (36), burning (29), feet (24), hands (22), legs (21), back (20). Overall, these patient narratives described intense suffering, and there is still no diagnosis or treatment available.

Acupuncture and related therapies for carpal tunnel syndrome: A protocol for systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis

Review question / Objective: We aim to compare the efficacy and safety of different acupuncture and related therapies for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) using systematic review and network meta-analysis (NMA). Condition being studied: CTS is a symptomatic condition caused by compression of the median nerve within the carpal tunnel. Patients with CTS typically report paresthesia or pain in distribution of median nerve distal to the wrist. Diverse non-surgical treatments and surgical decompression have been used in the management of CTS. Acupuncture, a prominent component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), has also been practiced when treating CTS as a complementary therapy. However, the relative treatment effects of different acupuncture methods for CTS are unclear.

Technical aspects of the reconstruction of historic gardens

Built elements and structures are a prominent component of our historic gardens, both in terms of function and artistic composition and garden scenery. The surveys of historic garden structures are important research tasks, which also underpins and validates restoration work. In most cases, the neglected state of historic gardens and sites and the unavailable archival materials do not allow an authentic restoration of historic gardens to their original state. Nevertheless, there is a real need to reconstruct our historic gardens, based not only on historical authenticity but also on a systematic reinterpretation of the relationship between society and landscape. The objective of this article is to present a general methodology for renewal of historic gardens through examples of specific garden reconstructions. The case studies are the authors' own design works, which demonstrate the application of different design approaches, highlighting details of the reconstruction of specific built garden elements.

InSAR-based characterization of rock glacier movement in the Uinta Mountains, Utah, USA

Rock glaciers are a prominent component of many alpine landscapes and constitute a significant water resource in some arid mountain environments. Here, we employ satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) between 2016 and 2019 to identify and monitor active and transitional rock glaciers in the Uinta Mountains (Utah, USA), an area of ∼3000 km2. We used mean velocity maps to generate an inventory for the Uinta Mountains containing 205 active and transitional rock glaciers. These rock glaciers are 11.9 ha in area on average and located at a mean elevation of 3308 m, where mean annual air temperature is −0.25 ∘C. The mean downslope velocity for the inventory is 1.94 cm yr−1, but individual rock glaciers have velocities ranging from 0.35 to 6.04 cm yr−1. To search for relationships with climatic drivers, we investigated the time-dependent motion of three rock glaciers. We found that rock glacier motion has a significant seasonal component, with rates that are more than 5 times faster during the late summer compared to the rest of the year. Rock glacier velocities also appear to be correlated with the snow water equivalent of the previous winter's snowpack. Our results demonstrate the ability to use satellite InSAR to monitor rock glaciers over large areas and provide insight into the environmental factors that control their kinematics.

Pharmacological Activity of Earthworms

Earthworms have a significant role in soil structure and organic matter dynamics. They make up a considerable amount of macrofauna biomass and are a prominent component of soil fauna communities in most habitats. Soil structure, water flow, nutrient dynamics, and plant development are all influenced by earthworms. Earthworms have long been recognized for their medicinal benefits. Because earthworm tissues are a rich source of proteins, peptides, enzymes, and physiologically active compounds, extracts produced from them have been utilized to treat a variety of illnesses. Several investigations have found that earthworm extracts include a range of macromolecules with anti-oxidative, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and other properties. Some of these efforts included the use of earthworm preparation in the wound healing process. Earthworms are utilized as a part of a nutritious diet in several nations. They have a great nutritional value because of the large percentage of different proteins in their bodies. In addition to human food, earthworms are used to feed animals (fish, chicken, etc.).

Probing the Jupiter-Io interaction with synergistic measurements of radio and ultraviolet auroral emissions from Juno, Nançay and HST observatories

<p>The prominent component of Jovian decametric (auroral) emissions is induced by Io. Io decametric emissions (Io-DAM) have thus been monitored on a regular basis by Earth- or Space-based radio observatories for several decades. They display a typical arc-shaped structure in the time-frequency plane which results from the motion of the Io flux tube relative to the observer convolved with the anisotropic radio emission cone. Remote determination of the Io-DAM beaming pattern was used to check the emission conditions at the source (e.g. Queinnec & Zarka, 1998). It has been done at several occasions using various models of magnetic field/lead angles which introduce significant uncertainties. Nevertheless, Io-DAM arcs were shown to be consistent with oblique emissions triggered by the Cyclotron maser Instability from loss-cone electron distributions of a few keVs (Hess et al., 2008). The CMI validity for Jovian DAM and the prominence of loss cone electron distributions has been later confirmed by Juno in situ measurements (e.g. Louarn et al, 2017). In this study, we took advantage of simultaneous radio/UV or bi-point stereoscopic radio measurements provided by Juno/Waves, the Nançay Decameter Array and the Hubble Space Telescope to unambiguously derive the beaming pattern of several Io-DAM arcs and compare it with theoretical expectations. We then assess the energy of CMI-unstable auroral electrons at the source and discuss our results at the light of similar independent studies reaching different conclusions.</p>

Robust Visual Relationship Detection towards Sparse Images in Internet-of-Things

Visual relationship can capture essential information for images, like the interactions between pairs of objects. Such relationships have become one prominent component of knowledge within sparse image data collected by multimedia sensing devices. Both the latent information and potential privacy can be included in the relationships. However, due to the high combinatorial complexity in modeling all potential relation triplets, previous studies on visual relationship detection have used the mixed visual and semantic features separately for each object, which is incapable for sparse data in IoT systems. Therefore, this paper proposes a new deep learning model for visual relationship detection, which is a novel attempt for cooperating computational intelligence (CI) methods with IoTs. The model imports the knowledge graph and adopts features for both entities and connections among them as extra information. It maps the visual features extracted from images into the knowledge-based embedding vector space, so as to benefit from information in the background knowledge domain and alleviate the impacts of data sparsity. This is the first time that visual features are projected and combined with prior knowledge for visual relationship detection. Moreover, the complexity of the network is reduced by avoiding the learning of redundant features from images. Finally, we show the superiority of our model by evaluating on two datasets.

PEDDLING OR PERSUADING: CHINA'S ECONOMIC STATECRAFT IN AUSTRALIA

With the globalization of Chinese capital, economic statecraft has become an increasingly prominent component of China's foreign policy. In this article, I examine China's use of economic inducements in developed democracies, a topic of growing concern for policymakers, focusing on the case of Australia. I show how Beijing's attempts to coopt public voices and influence Australia's foreign policy using non-transparent political donations and academic funding generated a strong backlash. At the same time, economic interdependence has provided a buffering effect, with key domestic actors in Australia advocating for cooperative relations, although this effect can in turn be limited by Beijing's coercive economic tactics. My findings underline the reputational costs of certain approaches to economic statecraft, the value of building supportive coalitions, and the challenges faced by China's authoritarian state capitalist model. They also highlight the impacts of globalized Chinese capital in developed democracies, including the resilience and vulnerabilities inherent in democratic political processes.

Effect of Ankle Torque on the Ankle–Foot Orthosis Joint Design Sustainability

The ankle joint of a powered ankle–foot orthosis (PAFO) is a prominent component, as it must withstand the dynamic loading conditions during its service time, while delivering all the functional requirements such as reducing the metabolic effort during walking, minimizing the stress on the user’s joint, and improving the gait stability of the impaired subjects. More often, the life of an AFO is limited by the performance of its joint; hence, a careful design consideration and material selection are required to increase the AFO’s service life. In the present work, a compact AFO joint was designed based on a worm gear mechanism with steel and brass counterparts due to the fact of its large torque transfer capability in a single stage, enabling a compact joint. Further, it provided an added advantage of self-locking due to the large friction that prevents backdrive, which is beneficial for drop-foot recovery. The design was verified using nonlinear finite element analysis for maximum torque situations at the ankle joint during normal walking. The results indicate stress levels within its design performance; however, it is recommended to select high-grade structural steel for the ankle shaft as the highest stresses in AFO were located on it.

Doctrine «deterrence by denial» in modern diplomacy

The security environment today is more complex and demanding than at any time since the end of the cold war, which increases the need for States and their coalitions to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of deterrence and defense policies. The issue of deterrence is becoming central to the national security policies of the great Powers, and deterrence strategies are becoming a prominent component of foreign policy and diplomacy in a multipolar world. At the same time, the effectiveness of traditional methods of deterrence through punishment decreases, while the importance of the doctrines of coercion and deterrence through denial increases, which play an increasing role as tools of hybrid war as a new form of interstate confrontation and naturally complement strategic nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence with high-precision weapons in conventional equipment. In conditions of limited scale of military operations, the doctrine of deterrence by punishment quickly turns into coercion, when it is necessary not only to "dissuade" the aggressor, but also to oust him and force him to retreat from the accomplished limited, hidden conquest. Against the background of the decline in the possibilities of deterrence by punishment, the doctrine of "Deterrence by denial", designed to create physical obstacles to the enemy, to make it difficult for him to achieve his goal, is gaining more and more development in politics and diplomacy. The effectiveness of this form of deterrence depends on the fear associated with the costs that will be incurred by the enemy during the act of aggression in the place where it will occur. Deterrence by negation is designed to make aggression unprofitable, make it harder to capture a target, and make it harder to hold it. The transformation of deterrence doctrines leads to the emergence of new tasks and tactics of modern diplomacy in a rapidly changing world.