Search Results (1,059)

Background/Objectives: Although eligibility criteria for clinical trials significantly impact study outcomes, these criteria are often established without scientific justification, leading to delayed recruitment, small sample sizes, and limited study generalizability. Persistent Lyme disease (PLD) presents unique challenges due to symptom variability, inconsistent treatment responses, and the lack of reliable biomarkers, underscoring the need for scientifically justified eligibility criteria. Objective: This study examines the effects of commonly used enrollment criteria on sample yield in PLD clinical trials using real-world data (RWD) from the MyLymeData patient registry. The study also compares the effects of these criteria on enrollment for PLD versus acute Lyme disease (ALD) trials and evaluates the scientific rationale for each criterion. Methods: Data from 4183 Lyme disease patients enrolled in the MyLymeData registry were analyzed to assess the prevalence and cumulative impact of various criteria on sample yield. A comparative analysis of cohorts with PLD (n = 3589) versus ALD (n = 594) was conducted to identify differences in sample attrition. Results: In a large PLD cohort study, we found that current commonly used eligibility criteria would exclude approximately 90% of patients, significantly limiting study generalizability. Substantial differences in sample attrition between PLD and ALD cohorts highlight the need for tailored criteria. The strength of scientific justification varied widely among criteria. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the importance of using RWD to optimize eligibility criteria in PLD clinical trials. By providing insights into the balance between sample attrition and scientific justification, researchers can enhance trial feasibility, generalizability, and robustness. Our RWD sample demonstrates that researchers could substantially increase the sample yield from 10% to 64% by loosening restrictions on coinfections and misdiagnoses of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia syndrome, and psychiatric conditions. Full article

In the field of moral psychology, traditional perspectives often evaluate anger based on its consequences, either validating or condemning it for its perceived benefits or harms. This paper argues for a shift in focus from the outcomes of anger to its moral and psychological foundations. By integrating insights from psychological research, this study posits that the fundamental nature of anger is intrinsically linked to the quest for recognition. Justified anger is defined as an emotional response to the unmet need for fair acknowledgment, while unjustified anger stems from feelings of superiority and the pursuit of higher status. This paper distinguishes between these two forms of anger, providing a more nuanced and intuitive understanding of the emotion. This interpretive framework not only aligns with our experiential understanding of anger but also offers a theoretical bridge to reconcile divergent philosophical and psychological perspectives. This study emphasizes the importance of addressing the underlying issues of recognition and self-esteem, suggesting that anger, when properly understood and managed, can serve as a constructive force for social justice and mutual respect. Full article

The socio-spatiality of capitalist modernity is the embodiment of pressures to eliminate common, spatially adapted institutions in the name of an allegedly more rational world demarcated by the prospect of having everything private and predisposed to be exploited. The vital element of these pressures to legitimise economic inequalities to extract more and more value from labour and nature is the phenomenon of uncommoning. This article has several interconnected goals, especially, an interpretation of the meaning and practices of uncommoning—making use of classical, contemporary, and decolonial academic and grey literature—and a critical reflection on the frontiers of the modern world, where uncommoning is clearly the key socio-spatial driving force underpinning a deceitful democracy and providing justification for the encroachment of private properties upon the commons. This focus on the commons facilitates and radicalises the comprehension of how societies and communities deal with the allocation, use, and preservation of cherished elements of their material and immaterial reality. It can be constructively reached from the perspective of Global South societies, indigenous nations in particular, with solid experiences and knowledge of the commons. They have the outstanding intellectual and moral authority, and the main job for most is to listen, learn, and act together. Full article

Many countries, including Sri Lanka, are taking steps to integrate sex education into their educational systems to combat child abuse. However, this effort is often met with skepticism in Asian nations, including Sri Lanka. This study takes a unique approach by applying the criteria of the health belief model to predict the quality of reproductive health (SRH) education in Sri Lanka, offering a fresh perspective on this issue. A positive philosophical framework and a deductive approach have been employed to provide justification for the underlying assumptions. A structured questionnaire was used as the survey methodology, which included questions about external cues to action, self-efficacy, perceived barriers, perceived susceptibility, and perceived severity. Data was collected from a total of 384 Sri Lankan non-state undergraduate students to test their perception of these factors and how they affect the perceived benefits of quality SRH education. The level of self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility, and perceived severity yielded a coefficient estimate that was statistically significant, thus influencing the perceived benefits of quality SRH education. These results, obtained through a multivariate regression analysis, underscore the importance of one’s role in implementing effective SRH education. Importantly, there is no evidence that external cues to action and perceived barriers predict the perceived benefits of quality SRH education. This underscores the gravity of the situation and the need for immediate action. The findings of this study have significant practical implications. They can be used to develop an effective SRH program that aims to prevent sexual abuse among adolescents. This study also demonstrates that the health belief model can serve as a useful conceptual framework for such intervention programs, providing tangible solutions to the issue of SRH education quality. Full article

This article is devoted to the study of geoheritage objects and the scientific justification for the creation of a geopark in the Ulytau region of Central Kazakhstan. This region is the largest copper-bearing province in the world and has a unique natural and cultural heritage. The purpose of this article is to show the scientific and tourist significance of geoheritage objects of the potential Ulytau Geopark. The geological history of this area tells about no less than 500 million years of the planet’s development. Geological, historical and sacred objects make this area extremely interesting for the development of geotourism and the creation of geoparks as a basis for the sustainable development of the area. The research methods included a bibliographic method, which made it possible to collect information on the geoheritage of the territory; field survey techniques; and methods based on the evaluation of the criteria for eligibility for UNESCO Geoparks. The methodology included five main blocks of assessment (geology and landscape, structure and management model, interpretation and environmental education, geotourism and sustainable development at the regional level) and represents an integrated interdisciplinary approach to present regional features in the context of the geological heritage of the world. Despite the length of time geology has been studied and the resources actively used, geoheritage sites have not been previously studied and characterised. Geoparks in Kazakhstan are at an early stage of development and this article aims to show the potential for establishing geoparks in the Ulytau region. Full article

This study proposes an image enhancement detection technique based on Adltformer (Adaptive dynamic learning transformer) team-training with Detr (Detection transformer) to improve model accuracy in suboptimal conditions, addressing the challenge of detecting cattle in real pastures under complex lighting conditions—including backlighting, non-uniform lighting, and low light. This often results in the loss of image details and structural information, color distortion, and noise artifacts, thereby compromising the visual quality of captured images and reducing model accuracy. To train the Adltformer enhancement model, the day-to-night image synthesis (DTN-Synthesis) algorithm generates low-light image pairs that are precisely aligned with normal light images and include controlled noise levels. The Adltformer and Detr team-training (AT-Detr) method is employed to preprocess the low-light cattle dataset for image enhancement, ensuring that the enhanced images are more compatible with the requirements of machine vision systems. The experimental results demonstrate that the AT-Detr algorithm achieves superior detection accuracy, with comparable runtime and model complexity, reaching 97.5% accuracy under challenging illumination conditions, outperforming both Detr alone and sequential image enhancement followed by Detr. This approach provides both theoretical justification and practical applicability for detecting cattle under challenging conditions in real-world farming environments. Full article

The desire of Gukurahundi survivors for cultural platforms that enable them to discuss, mourn, and commemorate their loved ones is now very loud in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland and Midlands provinces. While community-based organisations have provided platforms for Gukurahundi survivors, the children of survivors, and academics to interface and interact, the government’s gatekeeping processes remain a challenge for the community-wide memorialisation and documentation of the genocide. In this conceptual paper, I frame Gukurahundi as a meteorological event within a general Zimbabwean cultural context, foregrounding the desecration of the Ndebele people’s cultural practices, rituals, and ceremonies. Drawing from the documented legacies of this cultural violence within Matabeleland and south-western parts of the Midlands, through videos and the literature, I argue that this cultural violence resulted in the silencing of the remembrance of Gukurahundi, which remains critical to the resolution of the stand-off between the ZANU-PF government and the communities. In this paper, I further argue that this ecological symbolism provided a justification and legitimated direct brutal violence on presumed ZAPU and ex-ZPRA veterans who were largely Ndebele-speaking or of ethnic descent. Finally, I argue that it is not that the absence of alternative narratives but the sociopolitical and cultural environment that constrains these from being available and implemented. Full article

While there are many works on the applications of machine learning, not so many of them are trying to understand the theoretical justifications to explain their efficiency. In this work, overfitting control (or generalization property) in machine learning is explained using analogies from physics and biology. For stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics, we show that the Eyring formula of kinetic theory allows to control overfitting in the algorithmic stability approach—when wide minima of the risk function with low free energy correspond to low overfitting. For the generative adversarial network (GAN) model, we establish an analogy between GAN and the predator–prey model in biology. An application of this analogy allows us to explain the selection of wide likelihood maxima and ab overfitting reduction for GANs. Full article

Background and Objectives: Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the male population and the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide in men as of 2022. One of the potential biomarkers that can predict the progression of the disease is the transmembrane adhesion molecule CD44s. The aims of this study were to determine the expression of CD44s in prostate cancer in the central tumor mass and in the tumor periphery of the disease and to compare it with the clinicopathological parameters (PSA, Gleason score, surgical margins, and biochemical recurrence of the disease) in patients treated with radical prostatectomy. Materials and Methods: The research was randomized retrospectively during the period from 2001 to 2006. Tissue microarrays of 121 archival acinar prostate carcinoma samples were immunohistochemically evaluated for CD44s expression. The immunoexpression was determined semiquantitatively, taking into account the percentage (0 (0–5%), 1 (6–24%), 2 (26–75%), and 3 (76–100%) and intensity of the membranous staining of the tumor cells (0 absent; 1 weak at 400×; 2 intermediates at 100×; 3 strong at 40×) and calculated to obtain a final score (0–3 were regarded as negative; 4–6 were regarded as positive). Results: For statistical purposes, we divided the tumors into two categories: Gleason grade group 1 makes up 80.7% and grade group 2, which includes all the remaining Gleason grade groups (out of 2–5), accounts for 19.3% of the tumors. Grade group 1 had the highest incidence of score 4 (positive expression). There were statistically significantly more positive expressions in those tumors with negative prostatectomy margins (chi square: p = 0.001; Cramer V: 0.319). There was no correlation between CD44s expression and biochemical recurrence (p = 0.218), nor with the preoperative PSA values (p = 0.165). In the grade group 1 tumors, the CD44s immunoexpression and status of prostatectomy margin were statistically significantly related with negative margins (p = 0.028). An analysis of the expression of CD44s according to the localization in the central part of the tumor mass and on the periphery of the cancer in the group of tumors with a positive margin did not show a significant correlation because the sample was too small. Descriptively, it can be noted that the expression on the periphery was higher, and the central/peripheral expression ratio was higher in favor of the periphery. Conclusions: Our results provide insight into the possible value of CD44s expression for predicting the behavior of prostate tumors and the justification of therapy after a prostatectomy. Also hypothetically, they indicate a protective role of CD44s in a group of well-differentiated tumors at the periphery of the tumor mass. Therefore, it is useful to study the CD44s molecule further in this sense. Full article

The Doctrine of Christian Discovery is a series of fifteenth-century papal bulls that served as the theological and legal justification for the colonization of the world and the enslavement of the Original Free Nations, starting first on the African continent before spreading across the globe. In the 1800s, these bulls and other documents like The Requerimiento and colonial charters would be codified and enshrined together in U.S. law as the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, becoming the foundation of property law and international law. Also, considering what Peter d’Errico calls Federal Anti-Indian Law, we will trace and document how this framework of domination began with the Catholic crowns of Europe and transformed into the dominion theology found within Christian nationalist theologies today. Our research highlights how the Doctrine became enshrined and encoded within Protestantism and the imagined “secular” of the U.S. and Canada, countries who rhetorically espouse separation of church and state while justifying land theft, treaty violations, and the abuse of Indigenous nations and peoples through the Doctrine. We craft a genealogy of Christian domination by carefully analyzing primary sources, especially the colonial charters. We will conclude by juxtaposing the domination framework and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s principles of the Gayanashagowa (Great Law of Peace). Full article

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been adopted by schools to equip students with the competencies and language skills needed in today’s multilingual and multicultural society. However, teaching content courses through a foreign language requires specific teacher training, both initial and ongoing. This qualitative descriptive study analyses the development of bilingual teaching knowledge in terms of teaching skills among pre-service CLIL teachers (n = 15) at the University of Cádiz in Spain. Two reflective reports written by each pre-service teacher before and after participating in the course CLIL I: Foundations and Curricular Proposals for the Primary School Classroom (2022/23) were analyzed. The responses were categorized using Qualitative Content Analysis. The reflective reports included questions about their conception of bilingual teaching; methods for teaching bilingual courses; and justifications for their teaching methods. In addition, a focus group was conducted with a representative sample of participants. The results reveal a significant development in pre-service teachers’ knowledge of the teaching skills required for bilingual teaching. Particularly, there is an increase in contributions related to justifying their teaching methods. Moreover, the findings highlight pre-service teachers’ recognition of the differences between foreign language and CLIL teachers, as well as their ability to plan CLIL teaching effectively. Full article

The post-communist period has seen several wars in regions with a majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians. These conflicts have prompted Eastern Orthodox churches to formulate stances on war and develop new doctrines of righteous war. These responses draw on a long lineage of Eastern Roman and Slavonic traditions, particularly the Cyrillian doctrine of righteous war expounded in the Life of Constantine-Cyril. This paper examines the theological responses of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the wars in the former Yugoslavia, providing a reference point for comparison with the current theological debates and assessment of doctrines of warfare in light of the war in Ukraine. The focus is on the biblical hermeneutics and theological framing of various Serbian-centered doctrines. These new outlines draw on diverse traditions within Slavonic and Eastern Orthodox theology. The paper aims to provide insights into the shaping of Eastern Orthodox positions on war and the theological genesis of justifications for war. The discussion sheds light on the intricate relationship between war and Christianity within the Eastern Orthodox context in Serbia. Full article

The Protestant Reformation’s insistence on forensic justification developed the distinct concepts of justification and sanctification. The alien righteousness of Christ is all that is needed to justify the sinner rather than the co-operating of good works as proclaimed by The Roman Catholic Church at The Council of Trent. The justification/sanctification spilt leads to a practical problem among Protestants: what is the purpose of good works if the believer is already justified? In this paper, I argue Søren Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology aids us with the bifurcation of justification and sanctification. I start with examining the components of Kierkegaardian anthropology, showing the dynamic nature of humans as beings in process. All humans have a spirit which pushes them to actualize themselves. Second, I describe Kierkegaard’s view of humans as a negative unity, living outside of faith in the life of sin. Third, I explain humans as a positive unity—those who have posited faith. Lastly, I demonstrate how Kierkegaard’s anthropology shows that all humans will do something with their existence. The sinner sins, while the justified does good deeds. Kierkegaardian anthropology shows that sanctification is a necessary result of justification, not a necessary cause of justification. Full article

A review of the application of remote sensing technologies in the SHM and management of existing bridges is presented, showing their capabilities and advantages, as well as the main drawbacks when specifically applied to bridge assets. The main sensing technologies used as corresponding platforms are discussed. This is complemented by the presentation of five case studies emphasizing the wide field of application in several bridge typologies and the justification for the selection of the optimal techniques depending on the objectives of the monitoring and assessment of a particular bridge. The review shows the potentiality of remote sensing technologies in the decision-making process regarding optimal interventions in bridge management. The data gathered by them are the mandatory precursors for determining the relevant performance indicators needed for the quality control of these important infrastructure assets. Full article

Since the publication of Julicher’s Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, parable research has largely focused on the legitimacy of allegory, classification of form, and matters of meaning and polyvalence. Still underdeveloped is an evaluation of the function of parables. This paper argues that one of the functions of Jesus’ parables was to invite hearers to turn from their previously defined notions of the kingdom of God and join him in his vision of the kingdom. The paper begins with an examination of the Markan Jesus’ citation of Isaiah 6:9–10 as a justification for speaking in parables and concludes that, while Israel was largely obdurate, the offer of repentance remained. Preaching repentance is one component of the work of a prophet, and an examination of Jesus’ vocation indicates that his parables function as prophetic witnesses. The paper concludes with an exploration of how the parables might serve as invitations to turn from self-defined notions of kingdom and join Jesus in his movement. Full article