P. Cinzano, F. Falchi, C. D. E. D. D. Astronomia
et al.
ABSTRA C T We present the first World Atlas of the zenith artificial night sky brightness at sea level. Based on radiance-calibrated high-resolution DMSP satellite data and on accurate modelling of light propagation in the atmosphere, it provides a nearly global picture of how mankind is proceeding to envelop itself in a luminous fog. Comparing the Atlas with the United States Department of Energy (DOE) population density data base, we determined the fraction of population who are living under a sky of given brightness. About two-thirds of the World population and 99 per cent of the population in the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and European Union live in areas where the night sky is above the threshold set for polluted status. Assuming average eye functionality, about one-fifth of the World population, more than two-thirds of the United States population and more than one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way. Finally, about onetenth of the World population, more than 40 per cent of the United States population and one sixth of the European Union population no longer view the heavens with the eye adapted to night vision, because of the sky brightness.
In the social sciences, the mobilities paradigm studies people in movement in contrast to a sedentary paradigm that treats dwelling as being at peace and at home. If the world of movement in places such as stations, hotels, motorways, resorts, and airports is seen as parallel to the sedentary world, it raises a question of whether there are any forms of sacred space equivalent to those found in fixed settlements. In the world of movement, in general, religious activity is lacking or takes attenuated or simplified forms. Sacred affordances can, however, be found in unexpected places. Dedicated sacred space is mostly absent except for multifaith spaces (MFS), a new form of sacred space that has evolved since the year 2000. One way to understand MFS is to see them as adapted to the mobile world in the same way that other services have been commodified for universal use in a world in motion.
Introduction. Mesotherapy is a widely used technique around the world. However, there is currently no internationally recognized, evidence-based standard for its various clinical applications. To address this gap, we have reviewed the current state of the art, critically evaluated its clinical benefits and limitations, and proposed a set of standards including procedural steps, recommended actions, and practical instructions in the form of protocols, guidelines, and expert recommendations. Methods. A team of researchers conducted a comprehensive literature review, selecting studies published between 1976 and 2023. Drawing on the available evidence and the needs expressed by patient associations, 23 clinical questions were developed and presented to a panel of experts. Through multiple rounds of evaluation, evidence-based recommendations were formulated and subsequently submitted for structured evaluation and voting by a broad, multidisciplinary panel of international experts, representing numerous national and international scientific societies. Results. The recommendations outlined in this guideline support the use of mesotherapy across diverse clinical and organizational settings, providing a standardized framework that ensures both efficacy and patient safety in osteoarticular pain, rehabilitation, and dermatological fields. Conclusions. The era of mesotherapy based on personal beliefs now gives way to evidence-based practice. The limitations underscore the need for continued high-quality research and scheduled guideline updates.
Vision Loss Expert Group of the Global Burden of Disease , the GBD 2019 Blindness and Vision Impairment Collabora
ABSTRACT Purpose To assess burden of blindness and visual impairment (VI) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as of 2020, the planned end point of the Vision 2020 program. Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis assessed burden, in the better eye, of blindness (presenting distance visual acuity, VA < 3/60), moderate and severe vision impairment (MSVI; VA < 6/18 but ≥ 3/60) and mild vision impairment (VA < 6/12 and ≥ 6/18); and also functional presbyopia (<N6 or N8 in the presence of ≥ 6/12 best-corrected distance visual acuity) in SSA. Results In 2020, an estimated 5,083,000 people (95%Uncertainty Interval, UI, 4,474,000–5,696,000) in SSA were bilaterally blind; 20442,000 more (95%UI 18,568,000–22,430,000) had MSVI. The age-standardized prevalence of blindness in SSA is the highest for any GBD super-region, nearly double the world average (0.99%, 95%UI, 0.85–1.12; vs 0.52%, 95% UI, 0.46–0.59 respectively). The Western (4.15%) and Eastern (3.79%) SSA sub-regions had the highest age-standardized prevalence of blindness for the 50+ age group amongst SSA sub-regions. Improvement in age-specific prevalence since 2000 was less than the Vision 2020 target (−25%) for all subcategories of VI; improvement in blindness was the only category close to the goal (about 80–100% of goal across SSA sub-regions). Conclusions The SSA age-specific prevalence of VI has generally improved since 2000, especially for blindness. However, the number of VI cases has increased with population growth and aging, and Vision 2020 targets were not met. Because most causes of VI require individual-level clinical care, large increases in training and eye care delivery systems development/financing are critical areas of focus.
Rebeca Reyes-García, Ó. Moreno-Pérez, C. Guillen-Morote
et al.
Background: Sex differences in type 2 diabetes (T2D) are a growing area of diabetes research. No data have been reported on sex differences with oral semaglutide (oSEMA) in a real-world setting. Methods: We included people with T2D who started treatment with oSEMA in routine clinical practice between November 2021 and November 2022, with at least one report of clinical follow-up (FU) data at 3 months. We evaluated in women with T2D (WWT2D) the clinical effectiveness of oSEMA and factors associated with clinical response and persistence. We also analyzed differences in baseline characteristics, clinical effectiveness, persistence rates and safety according to biological sex. Results: Of the 1018 subjects [median age: 63 years, body mass index (BMI): 33.8 kg/m2, HbA1c: 7.8%], 469 were WWT2D. In WWT2D, oSEMA reduced HbA1c by 0.7% [−0.1 to −1.3] and 0.9% [−0.2 to −1.5] at the 6- and 12-month FU visits, while weight decreased by 4.6% [2.0 to 7.9] and 7.2% [2.5 to 10.9], respectively. Weight loss was >10% in 29.8% of WWT2D (95% CI 25.8 to 34.1); meanwhile, the combined endpoint (HbA1c decrease ≥ 1% + weight reduction ≥ 5%) was achieved in 23.5% (95% CI 19.8 to 27.5%) of WWT2D at the 12-month FU visit. Achievement of glycaemic targets was similar in women and men (59.3% vs. 61.1%). We found no sex differences in weight loss (6.9% vs. 6.8%), oSEMA maintenance dose, persistence rate (76.3% vs. 77.3%), or adverse events. Conclusions: oSEMA was effective and safe in WWT2D in a real-world setting, with nearly one-third of patients reporting weight loss >10% and more than two-thirds achieving HbA1c < 7%. oSEMA showed no sex bias in terms of effectiveness and safety.
Background/Objectives: Existing data regarding the kinetics of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) are limited. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the kinetics of highly sensitive (hs) cTnI following acute myocardial infarction (MI) in a large-scale, real-world cohort. Methods: A prospective observational cohort study included all consecutive patients admitted to the intensive cardiovascular care unit (ICCU) with ST-segment elevation MI (STEMI) and non-ST-segment elevation MI (NSTEMI) who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) between January 2020 and April 2024. Hs-cTnI concentrations were measured at the time of presentation and daily thereafter. Results: A total of 1174 STEMI patients [191 females (16.3%)] with a mean age of 63 years and 767 NSTEMI patients [137 females (17.9%)] with a mean age of 66.7 years were enrolled. The average hs-cTnI peak levels were 77,937.99 ng/L and 24,804.73 ng/L for STEMI and NSTEMI patients, respectively. A single peak of hs-cTnI was observed in 83% and 78% of STEMI and NSTEMI patients, respectively, while two peaks were observed in 11% and 19% and three or more peaks were observed in 6% and 3% of STEMI and NSTEMI patients, respectively. A higher number of peaks was associated with a lower ejection fraction and more in-hospital complications. Additionally, a higher number of peaks correlated with a higher in-hospital mortality rate among NSTEMI patients. Conclusions: Most STEMI and NSTEMI patients displayed a monophasic kinetic pattern of hs-cTnI peak levels. However, a greater number of hs-cTnI peaks was linked to a higher incidence of clinical complications, lower ejection fraction, and increased mortality.
Kevin H. Knuth, Philippe Ailleris, H. Agrama
et al.
After decades of dismissal and secrecy, it has become clear that a significant number of the world's governments take Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena (UAP), formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), seriously -- yet still seem to know little about them. As a result, these phenomena are increasingly attracting the attention of scientists around the world, some of whom have recently formed research efforts to monitor and scientifically study UAP. In this paper, we review and summarize approximately 20 historical government studies dating from 1933 to the present (in Scandinavia, WWII, US, Canada, France, Russia, China), several historical private research studies (France, UK, US), and both recent and current scientific research efforts (Ireland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, US). In doing so, our objective is to clarify the existing global and historical scientific narrative around UAP. Studies range from field station development and deployment to the collection and analysis of witness reports from around the world. We dispel the common misconception that UAPs are an American phenomenon and show that UAP can be, and have been, scientifically investigated. Our aim here is to enable future studies to draw on the great depth of prior documented experience.
Yingqiang Gao, Fabian Winiger, Patrick Montjourides
et al.
Religion and spirituality (R/S) are complex and highly domain-dependent concepts which have long confounded researchers and policymakers. Due to their context-specificity, R/S are difficult to operationalize in conventional archival search strategies, particularly when datasets are very large, poorly accessible, and marked by information noise. As a result, considerable time investments and specialist knowledge is often needed to extract actionable insights related to R/S from general archival sources, increasing reliance on published literature and manual desk reviews. To address this challenge, we present SpiritRAG, an interactive Question Answering (Q&A) system based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Built using 7,500 United Nations (UN) resolution documents related to R/S in the domains of health and education, SpiritRAG allows researchers and policymakers to conduct complex, context-sensitive database searches of very large datasets using an easily accessible, chat-based web interface. SpiritRAG is lightweight to deploy and leverages both UN documents and user provided documents as source material. A pilot test and evaluation with domain experts on 100 manually composed questions demonstrates the practical value and usefulness of SpiritRAG.
Text-to-image diffusion model since its propose has significantly influenced the content creation due to its impressive generation capability. However, this capability depends on large-scale text-image datasets gathered from web platforms like social media, posing substantial challenges in copyright compliance and personal privacy leakage. Though there are some efforts devoted to explore approaches for auditing data provenance in text-to-image diffusion models, existing work has unrealistic assumptions that can obtain model internal knowledge, e.g., intermediate results, or the evaluation is not reliable. To fill this gap, we propose a completely black-box auditing framework called Feature Semantic Consistency-based Auditing (FSCA). It utilizes two types of semantic connections within the text-to-image diffusion model for auditing, eliminating the need for access to internal knowledge. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our FSCA framework, we perform extensive experiments on LAION-mi dataset and COCO dataset, and compare with eight state-of-the-art baseline approaches. The results show that FSCA surpasses previous baseline approaches across various metrics and different data distributions, showcasing the superiority of our FSCA. Moreover, we introduce a recall balance strategy and a threshold adjustment strategy, which collectively allows FSCA to reach up a user-level accuracy of 90% in a real-world auditing scenario with only 10 samples/user, highlighting its strong auditing potential in real-world applications. Our code is made available at https://github.com/JiePKU/FSCA.
Catherine M Olsen, Christopher G. Donovan, Christine Connors
et al.
Australia has the world's highest skin cancer rates. The keratinocyte cancers (basal cell carcinoma [BCC] and squamous cell carcinoma [SCC]) are the most common and costly, yet unlike melanoma, they are not nationally registered, and the lack of registry data hinders control efforts. The Tasmanian cancer registry collects data on BCC and SCC incidence, revealing concerning trends and high-risk groups. International examples show how registry data inform policy and prevention. Comprehensive registration would enable similar benefits for Australia. We propose a phased approach, starting with high-risk lesions, alongside standardised pathology reporting and the potential use of artificial intelligence, and recommend an evaluation of the cost of this integrated strategy.
The notion that God is present in creation has long featured in Eastern Christian thought, appearing as early as Origen (3rd century) and Evagrius of Pontus (4th century). Two major philosophical principles underlay the theology of divine immanence in creation: creation ex nihilo (the physical world is not eternal, but has a beginning, and it was created by God “out of nothing”) and nothing can exist totally separate from God, from a divine act of creation. The difficulty in ancient and modern times is to articulate this theology without falling into pantheism, a fusion or identification of God and creation. This is typically achieved by the simultaneous affirmation of divine immanence and divine transcendence: God is more, infinitely more, than creation; indeed, the divine essence is beyond human comprehension, the basis of apophatic theology. This essay explores these notions in Orthodox thought, especially in modern times. Modern Orthodox theologians (notably Sergius Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos Ware, and John Zizioulas) draw on the patristic theologies of the logoi (“reasons”) of things in Maximus the Confessor (7th century) and the divine energies of Gregory Palamas (14th century) to develop a robust theology of creation which affirms human relationship with the rest of creation and human responsibility for the care of creation. These notions coalesce in the philosophical–theological position of panentheism, to which several modern Orthodox theologians adhere, providing a solid grounding for positive affirmations of the world as God’s creation.
What factors contribute to the success of national teams in the Men's Ice Hockey World Championships and the Men's Ice Hockey World Junior Championships? This study examines whether hosting the tournament provides a home advantage; the influence of past tournament performances; the impact of players' physical characteristics such as height, weight, and age; and the value of experience from the World Championships compared to the NHL and other leagues. We employ a dynamic ranking model based on the Plackett-Luce distribution with time-varying strength parameters driven by the score. The results show that experience in the IIHF tournaments outweighs experience in the NHL. Furthermore, in junior championships, there is a significant home advantage, and shorter, heavier players tend to have an edge. In senior championships, future success is linked to past achievements in both junior and senior championships, with younger teams performing better. Finally, we conduct a forecasting analysis to predict the probabilities of winning the tournament, earning a medal, and advancing to the playoff phase.
En el tratado De vita contemplativa, también conocido como Los terapeutas, Filón describe la vida cotidiana de una congregación ascética judía alejandrina. La obra es mencionada por primera vez en la Historia Eclesiástica de Eusebio de Cesarea, pero haciendo de los protagonistas una comunidad de hebreos cristianizados por los primeros seguidores de Jesús llegados a Alejandría. El calificativo de terapeutas se debería al propio Filón, y aludiría a las características espirituales curativas que tendría el modo de vida de estos devotos filósofos según el prelado, “puesto que el nombre de cristianos aún no era conocido en todo lugar” (Eus., H.E. II 5, 1-2). Esta adscripción cristiana del tratado, aunque inexacta, pervivió durante siglos merced a los esfuerzos de la Iglesia por mantenerla como una verdad indiscutible, y a la escasa o nula atención que el judaísmo prestó a Filón, y también a los terapeutas porque, entre otras cosas, los creyó en exceso alegoristas y de algún modo bajo el influjo de los seguidores de Jesús. Fue a partir del Renacimiento cuando gracias a la proliferación de estudios sobre la Antigüedad, se efectuaron investigaciones que acabaron con el tiempo situando a De vita contemplativa, a los terapeutas y al mismo Filón en la esfera cultural y filosófica judía que les correspondía. En este artículo vamos a analizar los pormenores de semejante peripecia religiosa e intelectual.
The Republic of Kenya Ministry of Health update on Corona Virus on 13th February 2020 insisted that persons were to avoid close contact with people suffering from acute respiratory infections. A ban was imposed on public meetings. Later, lockdowns were introduced, and religious meetings were banned across the country. Religious actors during and after the Covid-19 lockdowns devised ways through which they could reach their members, given the absence of physical meetings. The adoption of religious virtual space has impacted African women’s congregational life variously. Acknowledging the integral role of technology in our contemporary times, this article reflects on the creation and adoption of virtual space by African women in CITAM Ngong and
Nomiya Church, Kenya, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It will also highlight some aspects relating to mental health during the pandemic. Using grounded theology as a useful methodological approach, over a period of 6 months, data was collected that was in touch with the realities of the religious arena. Through grounded theology, data was generated deriving from
research on religious virtual space. Methodologically, the study adopted grounded theology as a method for unearthing stories informing the everyday lives of African women in the religious virtual space from data collected over six months. The theoretical framework applied is Rogers’ diffusion and adoption theory to explain the adoption of technology by women from these two churches.
The key findings emerging from the study are that technology adoption is complex and inherently social. In addition, gendered experiences from the everyday lives of these African women considered broader and embedded structures, because it is in relation to these that the religious virtual space was made meaningful. Further, access to the right technology and resources that
run technology influenced the use of the religious virtual space by the women.
My recent research on an early female bhakti saint brought to the fore differences between her perspective as represented in poetry attributed to her and her medieval biographer’s representation of her concerns. Through that study, the widespread academic use in recent scholarship of traditional biographies to interpret female bhakti saints became especially visible and problematic to me. In this experimental essay, I consider what patterns we might find if we prioritize the poetry attributed to influential female bhakti saints, navigating the significant issues of subjectivity, voice, and utterance to discern the contours of their devotional subjectivity as an authoritative nexus for conceptualizing and expressing individual and group devotion. In contrast to scholarly assurances that female bhakti saints are internally steadfast or that they are mainly troubled by external situations, I argue that their devotional subjectivity voices their realization that diverse embodied experiences of contestation are generative for a shared sense of devotion.
Harrison G. Zhang, J. Honerlaw, M. Maripuri
et al.
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 code (U09.9) for post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) was introduced in October of 2021. As researchers seek to leverage this billing code for research purposes in large scale real-world studies of PASC, it is of utmost importance to understand the functional use of the code by healthcare providers and the clinical characteristics of patients who have been assigned this code. To this end, we operationalized clinical case definitions of PASC using World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control guidelines. We then chart reviewed 300 patients with COVID-19 from three participating healthcare systems of the 4CE Consortium who were assigned the U09.9 code. Chart review results showed the average positive predictive value (PPV) of the U09.9 code ranged from 40.2% to 65.4% depending on which definition of PASC was used in the evaluation. The PPV of the U09.9 code also fluctuated significantly between calendar time periods. We demonstrated the potential utility of textual data extracted from natural language processing techniques to more comprehensively capture symptoms associated with PASC from electronic health records data. Finally, we investigated the utilization of long COVID clinics in the cohort of patients. We observed that only an average of 24.0% of patients with the U09.9 code visited a long COVID clinic. Among patients who met the WHO PASC definition, only an average of 35.6% visited a long COVID clinic.
This article examines the figure of Thomas Müntzer in Marxist historiography, as well as the “utopianisation” of Müntzer in Ernst Bloch’s 1921 study on Thomas Müntzer as Theologian of the Revolution. I review some of the differences in Martin Luther and Müntzer in their competing views for the future after the break from Rome, and the theological thrust of Müntzer’s vision. This is then connected with elements from Bloch’s Müntzer, chiefly focussing on spirit and history.