Journal articles on the topic 'Non Cartan dynamics'

Theoretical possibilities of models of gravity with dynamical signature are discussed. The different scenarios of the signature change are proposed in the framework of Einstein-Cartan gravity. We consider, subsequently, the dynamical signature in the model of the complex manifold with complex coordinates and complex metrics are introduced, a complexification of the manifold and coordinates through new gauge fields, an additional gauge symmetry for the Einstein-Cartan vierbein fields, and non-flat tangent space for the metric in the Einstein-Cartan gravity. A new small parameter, which characterizes a degree of the deviation of the signature from the background one, is introduced in all models. The zero value of this parameter corresponds to the signature of an initial background metric. In turn, in the models with gauge fields present, this parameter represents a coupling constant of the gauge symmetry group. The mechanism of metric determination through induced gauge fields with defined signatures in the corresponding models is considered. The ways of the signature change through the gauge field dynamics are reviewed, and the consequences and applications of the proposed ideas are discussed as well.

Relativistic localizing systems that extend relativistic positioning systems show that pseudo-Riemannian space-time geometry is somehow encompassed in a particular four-dimensional projective geometry. The resulting geometric structure is then that of a generalized Cartan space (also called Cartan connection space) with projective connection. The result is that locally non-linear actions of projective groups via homographies systematically induce the existence of a particular space-time foliation independent of any space-time dynamics or solutions of Einstein’s equations for example. In this article, we present the consequences of these projective group actions and this foliation. In particular, it is shown that the particular geometric structure due to this foliation is similar from a certain point of view to that of a black hole but not necessarily based on the existence of singularities. We also present a modified Newton’s laws invariant with respect to the homographic transformations induced by this projective geometry. Consequences on galactic dynamics are discussed and fits of galactic rotational velocity curves based on these modifications which are independent of any Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) or dark matter theories are presented.

In the framework of the Multifractal Theory of Motion, which is expressed by means of the multifractal hydrodynamic model, complex system dynamics are explained through uniform and non-uniform flow regimes of multifractal fluids. Thus, in the case of the uniform flow regime of the multifractal fluid, the dynamics’ description is “supported” only by the differentiable component of the velocity field, the non-differentiable component being null. In the case of the non-uniform flow regime of the multifractal fluid, the dynamics’ description is “supported” by both components of the velocity field, their ratio specifying correlations through homographic transformations. Since these transformations imply metric geometries explained, for example, by means of Killing–Cartan metrics of the SL(2R)-type algebra, of the set of 2 × 2 matrices with real elements, and because these metrics can be “produced” as Cayleyan metrics of absolute geometries, the dynamics’ description is reducible, based on a minimal principle, to harmonic mappings from the usual space to the hyperbolic space. Such a conjecture highlights not only various scenarios of dynamics’ evolution but also the types of interactions “responsible” for these scenarios. Since these types of interactions become fundamental in the self-structuring processes of polymeric-type materials, finally, the theoretical model is calibrated based on the author’s empirical data, which refer to controlled drug release applications.

In this paper, inflation in the framework of Einstein–Cartan theory is revisited. Einstein–Cartan theory is a natural extension of the General Relativity with nonvanishing torsion. The connection on Riemann–Cartan space–time is only compatible with the cosmological principal for a particular form of torsion. We also show this form to be compatible with gauge invariance principle for non-Abelian and Abelian gauge fields under a certain deviced coupling procedure. We adopt an Abelian gauge field in the form of “cosmic triad”. The dynamical field equations are obtained and shown to sustain cosmic inflation with a large number of e-folds. We emphasize that at the end of inflation, torsion vanishes and the theory of Einstein–Cartan reduces to the General Relativity with the usual FRW geometry.

Problem. An analysis of the literature has shown that some issues of the kinematics and dynamics of the Hooke’s joint are not fully covered. In particular, this applies to the determination of the kinematic characteristics of the relative movements of the links in the movable joints of the crosspieces and cardan yokes, as well as the acceleration of the crosspiece in the study of the hinge. These kinematic characteristics are the basis for dynamic analysis of the cardan transmission; they are used at research of operation of the bearings of a cardan joint cross; they are necessary to determine the energy expended to overcome the forces of friction in these kinematic pairs; they form the basis for evaluating transmission efficiency. Goal. The goal of this work is to determine the kinematic characteristics of the cross in its absolute and relative motions. Methodology. The research is based on the graphical and analytical method of kinematic analysis of spherical motion of a rigid body. At the initial stage, the calculated dependences for determining the angular velocity of the cross in its absolute and relative motions were obtained. The relative angles of rotation of the links in the movable joints of the crosspiece and cardan yokes were determined by integrating the corresponding differential equations. To determine the angular acceleration of the crosspiece, the theorem on the addition of angular accelerations of a rigid body rotating around two non-parallel axes was used. Results. The study of the kinematics of the cardan joint made it possible to identify and eliminate ambiguities in determining the relative angular velocities of the elements of the kinematic pairs of the cross and cardan yokes. Functional dependences for determination of angular acceleration of a crosspiece in absolute and relative movements, and also relative angles of rotation of links in kinematic pairs of a crosspiece and cardan yokes were received. It was shown that the angular acceleration of the crosspiece is a periodic function of the angle of rotation of the input link. During the operation of the hinge, the crosspiece creates insignificant periodic dynamic loads, which should be taken into account in accurate calculations of high-speed cardan transmissions. Practical value. The work is devoted to the study of the kinematics of the asynchronous hinge, which is the foundation for its dynamic analysis and ultimately aimed at improving the output performance of the cardan transmission. The research method combines mathematical calculations with simplicity and clarity of graphic constructions, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the kinematic features of a hinge of uneven angular velocities. The obtained results can be used in the design and study of motor-transmission units, which include the Hooke’s joint.

This research had two main aims. First, to analyse the degradation dynamics of herbicides commonly used in carrot (aclonifen, clomazone, flufenacet, linuron, metribuzin, pendimethalin, S-metolachlor). Second, to compare the amount of herbicide residues with the maximum residue level and with requirements of non-residual production. The field experiments were conducted in 2012–2016. All tested herbicides resulted in relatively low concentrations of residues in carrot roots (up to 10 µg/kg) when the recommended withdrawal period was followed between application and harvest. The concentration of S-metolachlor in carrot roots exceeded the maximal residual limit (MRL) if the application was carried out four days before harvest. The measured values of other tested herbicide residues in carrot roots did not exceed the MRL in any of the tested samples. Pre-emergent use of clomazone, linuron and flufenacet could be recommended for non-residue carrot production. Post-emergent use of metribuzin can be used for non-residue carrot production if the interval between application and harvest is at least 80 days. Concentrations of herbicide residues in carrot leaves were many times higher than in roots. All tested herbicides can be applied for safe carrot production if applicators adhere to the requirements for use.

The effects of non-Riemannian structures in Cosmology have been studied long ago and are still a relevant subject of investigation. In the seventies, it was discovered that singularity avoidance and early accelerated expansion can be induced by torsion in the Einstein-Cartan theory. In this framework, torsion is not dynamical and is completely expressed by means of the spin sources. Thus, in order to study the effects of torsion in the Einstein-Cartan theory, one has to introduce matter with spin. In principle, this can be done in several ways. In this work we consider the cosmological evolution of the universe in the presence of a constant isotropic and homogeneous axial current and the Weyssenhoff spinning fluid. We analyse possible solutions of this model, with and without the spinning fluid.

We discuss the bosonization of non-relativistic fermions in one-space dimension in terms of bilocal operators which are naturally related to the generators of W-infinity algebra. The resulting system is analogous to the problem of a spin in a magnetic field for the group W-infinity. The new dynamical variables turn out to be W-infinity group elements valued in the coset W-infinity/H where H is a Cartan subalgebra. A classical action with an H gauge invariance is presented. This action is three-dimensional. It turns out to be similar to the action that describes the color degrees of freedom of a Yang–Mills particle in a fixed external field. We also discuss the relation of this action with the one recently arrived at in the Euclidean continuation of the theory using different coordinates.

In the paper the problem of feedback control of vibrational fields in a vibration unit is analyzed taking into account the influence of the elasticity of cardan shafts, the drive dynamics, saturation for control torques. In addition, the synthesized rotor synchronization control algorithm uses the estimates of a non-stationary observer, which makes it possible to implement it practically on a two-rotor vibration unit SV-2. The performance of the closed loop mechatronic systems is examined by simulation for the model of the two-rotor vibration unit SV-2.

One of the key differences between Finsler metrics and Riemannian metrics is the non-reversibility, i.e. given two points p and q, the Finsler distance d(p, q) is not necessarily equal to d(q, p). In this paper, we build the main tools to investigate the non-reversibility in the context of large-scale geometry of uniform Finsler Cartan–Hadamard manifolds. In the second part of this paper, we use the large-scale geometry to prove the following dynamical theorem: Let φ be the geodesic flow of a closed negatively curved Finsler manifold. If its Anosov splitting is C2, then its cohomological pressure is equal to its Liouville metric entropy. This result generalizes a previous Riemannian result of U. Hamenstädt.

We take the first steps towards a better understanding of continuous orbit equivalence, i.e., topological orbit equivalence with continuous cocycles. First, we characterize continuous orbit equivalence in terms of isomorphisms of$C^{\ast }$-crossed products preserving Cartan subalgebras. This is the topological analogue of the classical result by Singer and Feldman-Moore in the measurable setting. Second, we turn to continuous orbit equivalence rigidity, i.e., the question whether for certain classes of topological dynamical systems, continuous orbit equivalence implies conjugacy. We show that this is not always the case by constructing topological dynamical systems (actions of free abelian groups and also non-abelian free groups) that are continuously orbit equivalent but not conjugate. Furthermore, we prove positive rigidity results. For instance, for solvable duality groups, general topological Bernoulli actions and certain subshifts of full shifts over finite alphabets are rigid.

We studied the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC)-pool mineralisation in agricultural soil. A laboratory incubation experiment was conducted using the soil from a long-term experiment involving the following fertilisation regimes: no fertilisation (CK); mineral (NPK); organic (M), and combined organic-inorganic fertilisers (MNPK). SOC mineralisation rate decreased as follows: MNPK > M > NPK > CK. Cumulative SOC mineralisation (C_m) ranged between 730.15 and 3 022.09 mg/kg in CK and MNPK, respectively; 8.81% (CK) to 20.45% (MNPK) of initial SOC was mineralised after a 360-day incubation. Soil C_m values were significantly higher under NPK, M, and MNPK compared to those under the CK treatment. Dynamic variation in C_m with incubation time fitted a double exponential model. Active carbon pools accounted for 2.06–6.51% of total SOC and the average mean resistant time (MRT₁) was 28.76 days, whereas slow carbon pools accounted for 93.49–97.94% of SOC, with an average MRT₂ of 8.53 years. The active carbon pool in fertilised soils was larger than in CK; furthermore, it was larger in M- and MNPK- than under NPK-treated plots. SOC decomposed more easily in long-term fertilised plots than in non-fertilised plots.

Abstract Autophagy and glycolysis are associated with osimertinib resistance. The energy complement and dynamic balance between these two processes make it difficult to block the process of drug resistance; breaking the complementary relationship between them may effectively overcome drug resistance. However, the exact mechanisms and the key players for regulating autophagy and glycolysis remain unclear. In this study, we demonstrate that autophagy and glycolysis levels in osimertinib-resistant cells were markedly higher than parental cells, and a dynamic balance existed between them. Inhibition of the class III phosphoinositide 3-kinase vacuolar protein sorting 34 (VPS34) with 3-methyladenine or small interfering RNA can not only inhibit abnormally enhanced autophagy but also inhibit glycolysis by inhibiting the location of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the expression of hexokinase II. By demonstrating that VPS34 is the key player controlling autophagy and glycolysis simultaneously, our study may provide a new strategy for overcoming osimertinib resistance for treatment of EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer patients.

The small open area available at the slots of underdrains in pressurized granular bed filters for drip irrigation implies: (1) the existence of a region with non-uniform flow, and (2) local values of modified particle Reynolds number >500. These flow conditions may disagree with those accepted as valid for common pressure drop-flow rate correlations proposed for packed beds. Here, we carried out detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of a laboratory filter to analyze the results obtained with five different equations of head losses in porous media: (1) Ergun, (2) Darcy-Forchheimer, (3) Darcy, (4) Kozeny-Carman and (5) power function. Simulations were compared with experimental data at different superficial velocities obtained from previous studies. Results for two silica sand media indicated that all equations predicted total filter pressure drop values within the experimental uncertainty range when superficial velocities <38.3 m h−1. At higher flow rates, Ergun equation approximated the best to the observed results for silica sand media, being the expression recommended. A simple analytical model of the pressure drop along flow streamlines that matched CFD simulation results was developed.

In this paper, the role of gradient micro-inertia terms η ¯ ∥ ∇ u , t ∥ 2 and free micro-inertia terms η ∥ P , t ∥ 2 is investigated to unveil their respective effects on the dynamic behaviour of band-gap metamaterials. We show that the term η ¯ ∥ ∇ u , t ∥ 2 alone is only able to disclose relatively simplified dispersive behaviour. On the other hand, the term η ∥ P , t ∥ 2 alone describes the full complex behaviour of band-gap metamaterials. A suitable mixing of the two micro-inertia terms allows us to describe a new feature of the relaxed-micromorphic model, i.e. the description of a second band-gap occurring for higher frequencies. We also show that a split of the gradient micro-inertia η ¯ ∥ ∇ u , t ∥ 2 , in the sense of Cartan–Lie decomposition of matrices, allows us to flatten separately the longitudinal and transverse optic branches, thus giving us the possibility of a second band-gap. Finally, we investigate the effect of the gradient inertia η ¯ ∥ ∇ u , t ∥ 2 on more classical enriched models such as the Mindlin–Eringen and the internal variable ones. We find that the addition of such a gradient micro-inertia allows for the onset of one band-gap in the Mindlin–Eringen model and three band-gaps in the internal variable model. In this last case, however, non-local effects cannot be accounted for, which is a too drastic simplification for most metamaterials. We conclude that, even when adding gradient micro-inertia terms, the relaxed micromorphic model remains the best performing one, among the considered enriched models, for the description of non-local band-gap metamaterials.

Abstract Ovarian cancer is one of the major causes of mortality among women. This is partly because of highly asymptomatic nature, lack of reliable screening techniques and non-availability of effective biomarkers of ovarian cancer. The recent availability of high-throughput data and consequently the development of network medicine approach may play a key role in deciphering the underlying global mechanism involved in a complex disease. This novel approach in medicine will pave the way in translating the new molecular insights into an effective drug therapy applying better diagnostic, prognostic and predictive tests for a complex disease. In this study, we performed reconstruction of gene co-expression networks with a query-based method in healthy and different stages of ovarian cancer to identify new potential biomarkers from the reported biomarker genes. We proposed 17 genes as new potential biomarkers for ovarian cancer that can effectively classify a disease sample from a healthy sample. Most of the predicted genes are found to be differentially expressed between healthy and diseased states. Moreover, the survival analysis showed that these genes have a significantly higher effect on the overall survival rate of the patient than the established biomarkers. The comparative analyses of the co-expression networks across healthy and different stages of ovarian cancer have provided valuable insights into the dynamic nature of ovarian cancer.

Northern forests of Iran are among the most important plant communities in Iran due to their dynamic and diverse vegetation composition and fertile soils. There is little information about carbon stocks of these forests. In the present study, above- and belowground carbon stocks of trees, litter, herbs and soil organic carbon stock at three selected sites of these forests were calculated using random plots and non-destructive sampling. The FAO method was used for carbon estimation of trees and Walkley-Black method was used for soil carbon stock and carbon coefficient was estimated directly. The results showed that both the tree carbon stocks and soil carbon stocks increased from east to west with increasing altitude, showing significant differences. The results also indicate that these forests have a high carbon sequestration potential as a green belt across the northern slopes of the Alborz Mountains, when the contribution of the aboveground section was greater than that of the belowground section (soil and roots) at all sites.

We perform the study of the stability of the Lorenz system by using the Jacobi stability analysis, or the Kosambi–Cartan–Chern (KCC) theory. The Lorenz model plays an important role for understanding hydrodynamic instabilities and the nature of the turbulence, also representing a nontrivial testing object for studying nonlinear effects. The KCC theory represents a powerful mathematical method for the analysis of dynamical systems. In this approach, we describe the evolution of the Lorenz system in geometric terms, by considering it as a geodesic in a Finsler space. By associating a nonlinear connection and a Berwald type connection, five geometrical invariants are obtained, with the second invariant giving the Jacobi stability of the system. The Jacobi (in)stability is a natural generalization of the (in)stability of the geodesic flow on a differentiable manifold endowed with a metric (Riemannian or Finslerian) to the non-metric setting. In order to apply the KCC theory, we reformulate the Lorenz system as a set of two second-order nonlinear differential equations. The geometric invariants associated to this system (nonlinear and Berwald connections), and the deviation curvature tensor, as well as its eigenvalues, are explicitly obtained. The Jacobi stability of the equilibrium points of the Lorenz system is studied, and the condition of the stability of the equilibrium points is obtained. Finally, we consider the time evolution of the components of the deviation vector near the equilibrium points.

The product bears the shock load during the circulation process. The cushioning materials need to absorb the energy generated during the shock to prevent damage to the product. The cushion packaging system generally consists of products, cushioning materials, and an outside packaging carton. Therefore, it is necessary to study the factors affecting the cushion performance of the system. This paper adopts a BP neural network to develop a more precise constitutive relationship. Based on the trained constitutive network model, the dynamic equation of the system is established, and the Runge-Kutta algorithm is utilized to resolve it. The multi-objective optimization (MOP) model of the series cushioning system is established for the first time. The model considers more factors, such as the stability of the cushioning material and whether to use local cushioning. The factors affecting the performance of the cushioning system are deeply studied, and a variety of evolutionary algorithms (PESA2, SPEA2, MOPSO, MOEA/D, and NSGA-II) are utilized to solve the multi-objective optimization problem. The performances of the solution sets obtained by the evolutionary algorithms are studied based on several performance indicators. The results show that these solution sets have good convergence, and the all-around performance of NSGA-II ranks first. Finally, comparing the knee point of the non-dominated solution set calculated by NSGA-II with the parameters in the literature, it is found that the former has better defense performance and less material consumption, which can be used for future product design. Therefore, the evolutionary algorithm can favorably resolve the multi-objective optimization of the series cushioning packaging system under the dropping shock.

In this era of startling developments in the medical field there remains a serious worry about the hazardous potential of various by products which if not properly addressed can lead to consequences of immense public concern. Hospitals and other health care facilities generate waste products which are evidently hazardous to all those exposed to its potentially harmful effects. Need for effective legislation ensuring its safe disposal is supposed to be an integral part of any country's health related policy. This issue is of special importance in developing countries like Pakistan which in spite of framing various regulations for safeguarding public health, seem to overlook its actual implementation. The result unfortunately is the price wehave to pay not only in terms of rampant spread of crippling infections but a significant spending of health budget on combating epidemics which could easily have been avoided through effective waste disposal measures in the first place. Waste classified under the heading 'bio-hazardous' includes any infectious or potentially infectious material which can be injurious or harmful to humans and other living organisms. Amongst the many potential sources are the hospitals or other health delivery centres which are ironically supposed to be the centres of infection control and treatment. Whilst working in these setups, health care workers such as doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and sanitation workers are actually the ones most exposed and vulnerable to these challenges. Biomedical waste may broadly be classified into Infectious and toxic waste. Infectious waste includes sharps, blood, body fluids and tissues etcwhile substances such as radioactive material and by-products of certain drugs qualify as toxic waste. Furthermore health institutions also have to cater for general municipal waste such as carton boxes, paper and plastics. The World Health Organisation has its own general classification of hospital waste divided into almost eight categories of which almost 15% (10% infectious and 5% toxic) is estimated to be of a hazardous nature while the remaining 85% is general non hazardous content.1A recent study from Faisalabad, Pakistan has estimated hospital waste generation around 1 to 1.5 kg / bed /day for public sector hospitals in the region,2while figures quoted from neighbouring India are approximately 0.5 to 2 KG / hospital bed /day.3 Elsewhere in the world variable daily hospital waste production has been observed ranging from as low as 0.14 to 0.49 kg /day in Korea4 and 0.26 to 0.89 kg/day in Greece5to as high as 2.1 to 3.83 kg/day in Turkey6 and 0.84 to 5.8 kg/day in Tanzania.7Ill effects of improper management of hospital waste can manifest as nosocomial infections or occupational hazards such as needle stick injuries. Pathogens or spores can be borne either through the oro-faecal or respiratory routes in addition to direct inoculation through contact with infected needles or sharps. Environmental pollution can result from improper burning of toxic material leading to emission of dioxins, particulate matter or furans into the air. The habitat can also be affected by illegal dumping and landfills or washing up of medical waste released into the sea or river. Potential organisms implicated in diseases secondary to mismanagement of hospital waste disposal include salmonella, cholera, shigella, helminths, strep pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis, herpesvirus, anthrax, meningitis, HIV, hepatitis and candida etc. These infections can cause a considerable strain on the overall health and finances of the community or individuals affected. The basic principal of Public health management i.e 'prevention is better than cure' cannot be more stressed in this scenario as compared to any other health challenge. Health facilities must have a clear policy on hazardous waste management. To ensure a safe environment hospitals need to adopt and implement international and local systems of waste disposal. Hospital waste management plan entails policy and procedures addressing waste generation, accumulation, handling, transportation, storage, treatment and disposal. Waste needs to be collected in marked containers usually colour coded and leak proof. Segregation at source is of vital importance. The standard practice in many countries is the Basic Three Bin System ie to segregate the waste into RED bags/ boxes for sharps, YELLOW bags for biological waste and BLUE or BLACK ones for general/ municipal waste. All hospital staff needs to be trained in the concept of putting the right waste in relevant containers/ bags. They need to know that more than anything else this practice is vital for their own safety. The message can be reinforced through appropriate labelling on the bins and having posters with simple delineations to avoid mixing of different waste types. Sharps essentially should be kept in rigid, leak and puncture-resistant containers which are tightly lidded and labelled. Regular training sessions for nurses and cleaning staff can be organised as they are the personnel who are more likely to deal with waste disposition at the level of their respective departments. Next of course is transportation of waste products to the storage or disposal. Sanitary staff and janitors must be aware of the basic concepts of waste handling and should wear protective clothing, masks and gloves etc, besides ensuring regular practice of disinfection and sterilization techniques.8Special trolleys or vehicles exclusively designed and reserved for biomedical waste and operated by trained individuals should be used for transportation to the dumping or treatment site. Biomedical waste treatment whether on site or off site is a specialised entity involving use of chemicals and equipment intended for curtailing the hazardous potential of the material at hand. Thermal treatment via incinerators, not only results in combustion of organic substances but the final product in the form of non-toxicash is only 10 to 15% of the original solid mass of waste material fed to the machine. Dedicated autoclaves and microwaves can also be used for the purpose of disinfection. Chemicals such as bleach, sodium hydroxides, chlorine dioxide and sodiumhypochlorite are also effective disinfectants having specialised indications. Countries around the world have their own regulations for waste management. United Kingdom practices strict observance of Environmental protection act 1990, Waste managementlicensing regulations 1994 and Hazardous waste regulations 2005 making it one of thesafest countries in terms of hazardous waste disposal. Similar regulations specific for each state have been adopted in United States following passage of the Medical Waste tracking act 1988. In Pakistan, every hospital must comply with the Waste Management Rules 2005 (Environment Protection Act 1997), though actual compliance is far from satisfactory. It is high time that the government and responsible community organisations shape up to seriously tackle the issue of bio hazardous waste management through enforcement of effective policies and standard operating procedures for safeguarding the health and lives of the public in general and health workers in particular. Outbreaks, defined as excess cases of a particular disease or illness which outweighs the response capabilities, have the capacity to overwhelm health care facilities and need timely response and attention to details in order to avoid potentially disastrous sequelae . In this day and age when improvement in public health practices have significantly curtailed outbreak of various diseases, certain viral illnesses continue to make headlines. One of the notable vector borne infectious disease affecting significant portions of south east Asia in the early part of twenty first century is 'Dengue fever'. Dreaded as it is by those suffering from the illness, a lot of the hysteria created is secondary to a lack of education and understanding of the nature of the disease and at times a result of disinformation campaign for vested interests by certain political and media sections.'Dengue' in fact is a Spanish word, assumed to have originated from the Swahili phrase -ka dinga peppo -which describes the disease as being caused by evil spirit. 1 Over the course of time it has been called 'breakbone fever', 'bilious vomiting fever', 'break heart fever', 'dandy fever', 'la dengue' and 'Phillipine, Thai and Singapore hemorrhagic fever' Whilst the first reported case referring to dengue fever as a water poison spread by flying insects, exists in the Chinese medical encyclopedia from Jin Dynasty (265-420 AD), the disease is believed to have disseminated from Africa with the spread of the primary vector, aedes egypti, in the 15th to 19th century as a result of globalisation of slave trade 45In 80% of the patients affected by this condition the presentation is rather insidious and at best characterized by mild fever. The classical 'Dengue fever' present in about 5% of the cases is characterized by high temperature, body aches, vomiting and at times a skin rash. The disease may regresses in two to seven days. However inrare instances (<5%) it may develop into more serious conditions such as Dengue hemorrhagic fever whereby the platelet count is significantly reduced leading to bleeding tendencies and may even culminate in a more life threatening presentation i.e Dengue shock syndrome.6To understand the actual dynamics of Dengue epidemic it is important to understand the mode of its spread in affected areas. Aedes mosquito (significantly Aedes Egypti) acts a vector for this disease. Early morning and evening times7 are favoured by these mosquitos to feed on their prey. There is some evidence that the disease may be transmitted via blood products and organ donation. 8 Moreover vertical transmission (mother to child) has also been reported 9Diagnostic investigations include blood antigen detection through NS-I or nucleic acid detection via PCR. IO Cell cultures and specific serology may also be used for confirming the underlying disease. Whilst sporadic and endemic cases are part of routine medical practice and may not raise any alarm bells, outbreaks certainly need mobilization of appropriate resources for effective control. Needless to say 'prevention is better than cure' and should be the primary target of the health authorities in devising strategies for disease control.The WHO recommended 'Integrated Vector control programme', lays stress on social mobilisation and strengthening of public health bodies, coherent response of health and related departments and effective capacity building of relevant personnel and organisations as well as the community at risk. For Aedes Egypti the primary control revolves around eliminating its habitats such as open sources of water. In a local perspective in our city Peshawar, venue of the recent dengue epidemic, it may be seen in the form of incidental reservoirs such as receptacles and tyres dumped in open areas such as roof tops with rain water accumulating in them and provtdjng excellent breeding habitats, Larvicidal and insecticides may be added to more permanent sources such as watertanks and farm lands. There is not much of a role for spraying with organophosphorous agents which is at times resorted to for public consumption. Public education is the key to any effective strategy which must highlight the need for wearing clothing that fully covers the skin, avoiding unnecessary early morning and evening exposure to vector agents, application of insect repellents and use of mosquito nets. It is also important not to panic if affliction with the disease is suspected as in a vast majority of instances it is a self limiting illness without any long term harmful effects and needs simple conservative management like antipyretics and analgesics.An important consideration for responsible authorities in a dengue epidemic is to ensure that maximum management facilities for simple cases are provided at the community level through primary and secondary health care facilities and that the tertiary care hospitals are not inundated with all sort of patients demanding consultation. These later facilities should be reserved for those patients who end up with any complications or more severe manifestation of the disease.Research is underway to develop an ideal vaccine for Dengue fever. In 2016, a vaccine by the name 'Dengvaxia' was marketed in Phillipines and Indonesia. However with development of new serotypes of the virus, its efficacy has been somewhat compromised.As for treatment , there are no specific antiviral drugs. Management is symptomatic revolving mainly around oral and intravenous hydration. Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) is used for fever as compared to NSAIDS such as Ibuprophen infusion as well as blood and platelet transfusion.Data to date shows that slightly more than twenty three thousand people have been diagnosed with dengue over the past three months ie August to October there is a lower risk of bleeding with the former. Those with more severe form of the disease may need Dextran 2017, in Peshawar, Pakistan with around fourteen thousand needing admission and about sixty nine recorded deaths. The mortality is well within the acceptable international standards of less than 1% for the disease. In the backdrop of all the debate surrounding the current epidemic, one can infer that such outbreaks are best addressed with effective planningwell ahead of the time before the disease threatens to spiral out of control. Simple measures such as covering water storage facilities, using larvicidals where practical, use of insect repellents, mosquito nets and avoiding unnecessary exposure can offerthe best protection. Public health messages via print and electronic media can help educate people in affected areas and allay any anxiety building up from a fear of developing life threatening complications. Health department must mobilise all its resources to ensure local management of diagnosed patients with simple dengue fever and facilitate hospital admission only for those suffering from more severe form of the disease. Moreover the media hype into such situations needs to be addressed through constant updates and discouraging any negative politicking on the issue. To sum up Dengue fever is not really an affliction to be dreaded provided it is viewed and managed in the right perspective.

In this era of startling developments in the medical field there remains a serious worry about the hazardous potential of various by products which if not properly addressed can lead to consequences of immense public concern. Hospitals and other health care facilities generate waste products which are evidently hazardous to all those exposed to its potentially harmful effects. Need for effective legislation ensuring its safe disposal is supposed to be an integral part of any country's health related policy. This issue is of special importance in developing countries like Pakistan which in spite of framing various regulations for safeguarding public health, seem to overlook its actual implementation. The result unfortunately is the price wehave to pay not only in terms of rampant spread of crippling infections but a significant spending of health budget on combating epidemics which could easily have been avoided through effective waste disposal measures in the first place. Waste classified under the heading 'bio-hazardous' includes any infectious or potentially infectious material which can be injurious or harmful to humans and other living organisms. Amongst the many potential sources are the hospitals or other health delivery centres which are ironically supposed to be the centres of infection control and treatment. Whilst working in these setups, health care workers such as doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and sanitation workers are actually the ones most exposed and vulnerable to these challenges. Biomedical waste may broadly be classified into Infectious and toxic waste. Infectious waste includes sharps, blood, body fluids and tissues etcwhile substances such as radioactive material and by-products of certain drugs qualify as toxic waste. Furthermore health institutions also have to cater for general municipal waste such as carton boxes, paper and plastics. The World Health Organisation has its own general classification of hospital waste divided into almost eight categories of which almost 15% (10% infectious and 5% toxic) is estimated to be of a hazardous nature while the remaining 85% is general non hazardous content.1A recent study from Faisalabad, Pakistan has estimated hospital waste generation around 1 to 1.5 kg / bed /day for public sector hospitals in the region,2while figures quoted from neighbouring India are approximately 0.5 to 2 KG / hospital bed /day.3 Elsewhere in the world variable daily hospital waste production has been observed ranging from as low as 0.14 to 0.49 kg /day in Korea4 and 0.26 to 0.89 kg/day in Greece5to as high as 2.1 to 3.83 kg/day in Turkey6 and 0.84 to 5.8 kg/day in Tanzania.7Ill effects of improper management of hospital waste can manifest as nosocomial infections or occupational hazards such as needle stick injuries. Pathogens or spores can be borne either through the oro-faecal or respiratory routes in addition to direct inoculation through contact with infected needles or sharps. Environmental pollution can result from improper burning of toxic material leading to emission of dioxins, particulate matter or furans into the air. The habitat can also be affected by illegal dumping and landfills or washing up of medical waste released into the sea or river. Potential organisms implicated in diseases secondary to mismanagement of hospital waste disposal include salmonella, cholera, shigella, helminths, strep pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis, herpesvirus, anthrax, meningitis, HIV, hepatitis and candida etc. These infections can cause a considerable strain on the overall health and finances of the community or individuals affected. The basic principal of Public health management i.e 'prevention is better than cure' cannot be more stressed in this scenario as compared to any other health challenge. Health facilities must have a clear policy on hazardous waste management. To ensure a safe environment hospitals need to adopt and implement international and local systems of waste disposal. Hospital waste management plan entails policy and procedures addressing waste generation, accumulation, handling, transportation, storage, treatment and disposal. Waste needs to be collected in marked containers usually colour coded and leak proof. Segregation at source is of vital importance. The standard practice in many countries is the Basic Three Bin System ie to segregate the waste into RED bags/ boxes for sharps, YELLOW bags for biological waste and BLUE or BLACK ones for general/ municipal waste. All hospital staff needs to be trained in the concept of putting the right waste in relevant containers/ bags. They need to know that more than anything else this practice is vital for their own safety. The message can be reinforced through appropriate labelling on the bins and having posters with simple delineations to avoid mixing of different waste types. Sharps essentially should be kept in rigid, leak and puncture-resistant containers which are tightly lidded and labelled. Regular training sessions for nurses and cleaning staff can be organised as they are the personnel who are more likely to deal with waste disposition at the level of their respective departments. Next of course is transportation of waste products to the storage or disposal. Sanitary staff and janitors must be aware of the basic concepts of waste handling and should wear protective clothing, masks and gloves etc, besides ensuring regular practice of disinfection and sterilization techniques.8Special trolleys or vehicles exclusively designed and reserved for biomedical waste and operated by trained individuals should be used for transportation to the dumping or treatment site. Biomedical waste treatment whether on site or off site is a specialised entity involving use of chemicals and equipment intended for curtailing the hazardous potential of the material at hand. Thermal treatment via incinerators, not only results in combustion of organic substances but the final product in the form of non-toxicash is only 10 to 15% of the original solid mass of waste material fed to the machine. Dedicated autoclaves and microwaves can also be used for the purpose of disinfection. Chemicals such as bleach, sodium hydroxides, chlorine dioxide and sodiumhypochlorite are also effective disinfectants having specialised indications. Countries around the world have their own regulations for waste management. United Kingdom practices strict observance of Environmental protection act 1990, Waste managementlicensing regulations 1994 and Hazardous waste regulations 2005 making it one of thesafest countries in terms of hazardous waste disposal. Similar regulations specific for each state have been adopted in United States following passage of the Medical Waste tracking act 1988. In Pakistan, every hospital must comply with the Waste Management Rules 2005 (Environment Protection Act 1997), though actual compliance is far from satisfactory. It is high time that the government and responsible community organisations shape up to seriously tackle the issue of bio hazardous waste management through enforcement of effective policies and standard operating procedures for safeguarding the health and lives of the public in general and health workers in particular. Outbreaks, defined as excess cases of a particular disease or illness which outweighs the response capabilities, have the capacity to overwhelm health care facilities and need timely response and attention to details in order to avoid potentially disastrous sequelae . In this day and age when improvement in public health practices have significantly curtailed outbreak of various diseases, certain viral illnesses continue to make headlines. One of the notable vector borne infectious disease affecting significant portions of south east Asia in the early part of twenty first century is 'Dengue fever'. Dreaded as it is by those suffering from the illness, a lot of the hysteria created is secondary to a lack of education and understanding of the nature of the disease and at times a result of disinformation campaign for vested interests by certain political and media sections.'Dengue' in fact is a Spanish word, assumed to have originated from the Swahili phrase -ka dinga peppo -which describes the disease as being caused by evil spirit. 1 Over the course of time it has been called 'breakbone fever', 'bilious vomiting fever', 'break heart fever', 'dandy fever', 'la dengue' and 'Phillipine, Thai and Singapore hemorrhagic fever' Whilst the first reported case referring to dengue fever as a water poison spread by flying insects, exists in the Chinese medical encyclopedia from Jin Dynasty (265-420 AD), the disease is believed to have disseminated from Africa with the spread of the primary vector, aedes egypti, in the 15th to 19th century as a result of globalisation of slave trade 45In 80% of the patients affected by this condition the presentation is rather insidious and at best characterized by mild fever. The classical 'Dengue fever' present in about 5% of the cases is characterized by high temperature, body aches, vomiting and at times a skin rash. The disease may regresses in two to seven days. However inrare instances (<5%) it may develop into more serious conditions such as Dengue hemorrhagic fever whereby the platelet count is significantly reduced leading to bleeding tendencies and may even culminate in a more life threatening presentation i.e Dengue shock syndrome.6To understand the actual dynamics of Dengue epidemic it is important to understand the mode of its spread in affected areas. Aedes mosquito (significantly Aedes Egypti) acts a vector for this disease. Early morning and evening times7 are favoured by these mosquitos to feed on their prey. There is some evidence that the disease may be transmitted via blood products and organ donation. 8 Moreover vertical transmission (mother to child) has also been reported 9Diagnostic investigations include blood antigen detection through NS-I or nucleic acid detection via PCR. IO Cell cultures and specific serology may also be used for confirming the underlying disease. Whilst sporadic and endemic cases are part of routine medical practice and may not raise any alarm bells, outbreaks certainly need mobilization of appropriate resources for effective control. Needless to say 'prevention is better than cure' and should be the primary target of the health authorities in devising strategies for disease control.The WHO recommended 'Integrated Vector control programme', lays stress on social mobilisation and strengthening of public health bodies, coherent response of health and related departments and effective capacity building of relevant personnel and organisations as well as the community at risk. For Aedes Egypti the primary control revolves around eliminating its habitats such as open sources of water. In a local perspective in our city Peshawar, venue of the recent dengue epidemic, it may be seen in the form of incidental reservoirs such as receptacles and tyres dumped in open areas such as roof tops with rain water accumulating in them and provtdjng excellent breeding habitats, Larvicidal and insecticides may be added to more permanent sources such as watertanks and farm lands. There is not much of a role for spraying with organophosphorous agents which is at times resorted to for public consumption. Public education is the key to any effective strategy which must highlight the need for wearing clothing that fully covers the skin, avoiding unnecessary early morning and evening exposure to vector agents, application of insect repellents and use of mosquito nets. It is also important not to panic if affliction with the disease is suspected as in a vast majority of instances it is a self limiting illness without any long term harmful effects and needs simple conservative management like antipyretics and analgesics.An important consideration for responsible authorities in a dengue epidemic is to ensure that maximum management facilities for simple cases are provided at the community level through primary and secondary health care facilities and that the tertiary care hospitals are not inundated with all sort of patients demanding consultation. These later facilities should be reserved for those patients who end up with any complications or more severe manifestation of the disease.Research is underway to develop an ideal vaccine for Dengue fever. In 2016, a vaccine by the name 'Dengvaxia' was marketed in Phillipines and Indonesia. However with development of new serotypes of the virus, its efficacy has been somewhat compromised.As for treatment , there are no specific antiviral drugs. Management is symptomatic revolving mainly around oral and intravenous hydration. Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) is used for fever as compared to NSAIDS such as Ibuprophen infusion as well as blood and platelet transfusion.Data to date shows that slightly more than twenty three thousand people have been diagnosed with dengue over the past three months ie August to October there is a lower risk of bleeding with the former. Those with more severe form of the disease may need Dextran 2017, in Peshawar, Pakistan with around fourteen thousand needing admission and about sixty nine recorded deaths. The mortality is well within the acceptable international standards of less than 1% for the disease. In the backdrop of all the debate surrounding the current epidemic, one can infer that such outbreaks are best addressed with effective planningwell ahead of the time before the disease threatens to spiral out of control. Simple measures such as covering water storage facilities, using larvicidals where practical, use of insect repellents, mosquito nets and avoiding unnecessary exposure can offerthe best protection. Public health messages via print and electronic media can help educate people in affected areas and allay any anxiety building up from a fear of developing life threatening complications. Health department must mobilise all its resources to ensure local management of diagnosed patients with simple dengue fever and facilitate hospital admission only for those suffering from more severe form of the disease. Moreover the media hype into such situations needs to be addressed through constant updates and discouraging any negative politicking on the issue. To sum up Dengue fever is not really an affliction to be dreaded provided it is viewed and managed in the right perspective.

AbstractContinuous monitoring of the intracranial pressure (ICP) is essential in neurocritical care. There are a variety of ICP monitoring systems currently available, with the intraventricular fluid filled catheter transducer currently representing the “gold standard”. As the placement of catheters is associated with the attendant risk of infection, hematoma formation, and seizures, there is a need for a reliable, non-invasive alternative. In the present study we suggest a unique theoretical framework based on differential geometry invariants of cranial micro-motions with the potential for continuous non-invasive ICP monitoring in conservative traumatic brain injury (TBI) treatment. As a proof of this concept, we have developed a pillow with embedded mechanical sensors and collected an extensive dataset (> 550 h on 24 TBI coma patients) of cranial micro-motions and the reference intraparenchymal ICP. From the multidimensional pulsatile curve we calculated the first Cartan curvature and constructed a ”fingerprint” image (Cartan map) associated with the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) dynamics. The Cartan map features maxima bands corresponding to a pressure wave reflection corresponding to a detectable skull tremble. We give evidence for a statistically significant and patient-independent correlation between skull micro-motions and ICP time derivative. Our unique differential geometry-based method yields a broader and global perspective on intracranial CSF dynamics compared to rather local catheter-based measurement and has the potential for wider applications.

Abstract We define three fundamental solvable bilinear deformations for any massive non-relativistic 2d quantum field theory (QFT). They include the $$ \mathrm{T}\overline{\mathrm{T}} $$ T T ¯ deformation and the recently introduced hard rod deformation. We show that all three deformations can be interpreted as coupling the non-relativistic QFT to a specific Newton-Cartan geometry, similar to the Jackiw-Teitelboim-like gravity in the relativistic case. Using the gravity formulations, we derive closed-form deformed classical Lagrangians of the Schrödinger model with a generic potential. We also extend the dynamical change of coordinate interpretation to the non-relativistic case for all three deformations. The dynamical coordinates are then used to derive the deformed classical Lagrangians and deformed quantum S-matrices.

In semiconductor spin qubits which typically interact through short-range exchange coupling, shuttling of spin is a practical way to generate quantum operations between distant qubits. Although the exchange is often tunable through voltages applied to gate electrodes, its minimal value can be significantly large, which hinders the applicability of existing shuttling protocols to such devices, requiring a different approach. In this work, we extend our previous results for double- and triple-dot systems, and describe a method for implementing spin state transfer in long chains of singly occupied quantum dots in a non-adiabatic manner. We make use of Cartan decomposition to break down the interacting problem into simpler problems in a systematic way, and use dynamical invariants to design smooth non-adiabatic pulses that can be implemented in devices with modest control bandwidth. Finally, we discuss the extensibility of our results to directed shuttling of spin states on two-dimensional lattices of quantum dots with fixed coupling. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Shortcuts to adiabaticity: theoretical, experimental and interdisciplinary perspectives’.

Recently, Barrow et al. showed that chaotic dynamical systems may be obtained from small fluctuations of torsion in cosmological plasmas. Following this idea our goal in this paper is to show analytically that torsion fluctuations in primordial plasmas induce chiral fluctuations, magnetic field fluctuations, dynamo plasma instabilities, as well as rapid oscillations in the chiral plasma. These phenomena are important in plasma relaxation to allow for a plasma dynamo instability to induce a lower electric voltage in plasmas. This phenomenon is induced in Minkowskian plasma physics, but to our knowledge it is proved for the first time in Einstein–Cartan sort of cosmology. In cosmological models where torsion gravity and electromagnetic fields are non-minimally coupled, dynamo instability is obtained when conductivity fluctuations are driven by torsion. Moreover, symmetry breaking of plasmas is shown here to be obtained from conductivity torsion fluctuations, which serves to bypass Zeldovich anti-dynamo theorem, inducing a dynamo onset, as shown recently in domain planar walls [L. Garcia de Andrade, Einstein–Cartan spin-polarised nucleons in domain wall dynamos, Ann Phys. (N.Y.) 432 (2021) 168558.]. Moreover, chiral charge fluctuations are shown to be induced by torsion fluctuations. It is shown that chiral charges may vanish, whereas the effective chiral charges may be driven by torsional fluctuations. It is also shown that dynamo electric field induces a magnetic helicity which oscillates and dynamo action is shown to dominate oscillations. This agrees with the results obtained from loop voltage. Chiral effective charges’ fluctuations are derived to be proportional to the product of anisotropic conductivity and magnetic field fluctuations.

Abstract Currently, the only definitive method for diagnosing ovarian cancer involves histological examination of tissue obtained at time of surgery or by invasive biopsy. Blood has traditionally been the biofluid of choice in ovarian cancer biomarker discovery; however, there has been a growing interest in exploring urinary biomarkers, particularly as it is non-invasive. In this systematic review, we present the diagnostic accuracy of urinary biomarker candidates for the detection of ovarian cancer. A comprehensive literature search was performed using the MEDLINE/PubMed and EMBASE, up to 1 st April 2021. All included studies reported the diagnostic accuracy using sensitivity and/or specificity and/or receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve. Risk of bias and applicability of included studies were assessed using the QUADAS-2 tool. Twenty seven studies were included in the narrative synthesis. Protein/peptide biomarkers were most commonly described (n=18), with seven studies reporting composite scores of multiple protein-based targets. The most frequently described urinary protein biomarker was HE4 (n=5), with three studies reporting a sensitivity and specificity &gt;80%. Epigenetic (n=1) and metabolomic/organic compound biomarkers (n=8) were less commonly described. Overall, six studies achieved a sensitivity and specificity of &gt;90% and/or an AUC &gt;0.9. Evaluation of urinary biomarkers for the detection of ovarian cancer is a dynamic and growing field. Currently, the most promising biomarkers are those that interrogate metabolomic pathways and organic compounds, or quantify multiple proteins. Such biomarkers require external validation in large, prospective observational studies before they can be implemented into clinical practice.

From elephants to ABBA fans, silicon to hormone, the following discussion uses a new research method to look at printed text, motion pictures and a teenage rebel icon. If by ‘print’ we mean a mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium, then printing has been with us since before microdot security prints were painted onto cars, before voice prints, laser prints, network servers, record pressings, motion picture prints, photo prints, colour woodblock prints, before books, textile prints, and footprints. If we accept that higher mammals such as elephants have a learnt culture, then it is possible to extend a definition of printing beyond Homo sapiens. Poole reports that elephants mechanically trumpet reproductions of human car horns into the air surrounding their society. If nothing else, this cross-species, cross-cultural reproduction, this ‘ability to mimic’ is ‘another sign of their intelligence’. Observation of child development suggests that the first significant meaningful ‘impression’ made on the human mind is that of the face of the child’s nurturer – usually its mother. The baby’s mind forms an ‘impression’, a mental print, a reproducible memory data set, of the nurturer’s face, voice, smell, touch, etc. That face is itself a cultural construct: hair style, makeup, piercings, tattoos, ornaments, nutrition-influenced skin and smell, perfume, temperature and voice. A mentally reproducible pattern of a unique face is formed in the mind, and we use that pattern to distinguish ‘familiar and strange’ in our expanding social orbit. The social relations of patterned memory – of imprinting – determine the extent to which we explore our world (armed with research aids such as text print) or whether we turn to violence or self-harm (Bretherton). While our cultural artifacts (such as vellum maps or networked voice message servers) bravely extend our significant patterns into the social world and the traversed environment, it is useful to remember that such artifacts, including print, are themselves understood by our original pattern-reproduction and impression system – the human mind, developed in childhood. The ‘print’ is brought to mind differently in different discourses. For a reader, a ‘print’ is a book, a memo or a broadsheet, whether it is the Indian Buddhist Sanskrit texts ordered to be printed in 593 AD by the Chinese emperor Sui Wen-ti (Silk Road) or the US Defense Department memo authorizing lower ranks to torture the prisoners taken by the Bush administration (Sanchez, cited in ABC). Other fields see prints differently. For a musician, a ‘print’ may be the sheet music which spread classical and popular music around the world; it may be a ‘record’ (as in a ‘recording’ session), where sound is impressed to wax, vinyl, charged silicon particles, or the alloys (Smith, “Elpida”) of an mp3 file. For the fine artist, a ‘print’ may be any mechanically reproduced two-dimensional (or embossed) impression of a significant image in media from paper to metal, textile to ceramics. ‘Print’ embraces the Japanese Ukiyo-e colour prints of Utamaro, the company logos that wink from credit card holographs, the early photographs of Talbot, and the textured patterns printed into neolithic ceramics. Computer hardware engineers print computational circuits. Homicide detectives investigate both sweaty finger prints and the repeated, mechanical gaits of suspects, which are imprinted into the earthy medium of a crime scene. For film makers, the ‘print’ may refer to a photochemical polyester reproduction of a motion picture artifact (the reel of ‘celluloid’), or a DVD laser disc impression of the same film. Textualist discourse has borrowed the word ‘print’ to mean ‘text’, so ‘print’ may also refer to the text elements within the vision track of a motion picture: the film’s opening titles, or texts photographed inside the motion picture story such as the sword-cut ‘Z’ in Zorro (Niblo). Before the invention of writing, the main mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium was the humble footprint in the sand. The footprints of tribes – and neighbouring animals – cut tracks in the vegetation and the soil. Printed tracks led towards food, water, shelter, enemies and friends. Having learnt to pattern certain faces into their mental world, children grew older and were educated in the footprints of family and clan, enemies and food. The continuous impression of significant foot traffic in the medium of the earth produced the lines between significant nodes of prewriting and pre-wheeled cultures. These tracks were married to audio tracks, such as the song lines of the Australian Aborigines, or the ballads of tramping culture everywhere. A typical tramping song has the line, ‘There’s a track winding back to an old-fashion shack along the road to Gundagai,’ (O’Hagan), although this colonial-style song was actually written for radio and became an international hit on the airwaves, rather than the tramping trails. The printed tracks impressed by these cultural flows are highly contested and diverse, and their foot prints are woven into our very language. The names for printed tracks have entered our shared memory from the intersection of many cultures: ‘Track’ is a Germanic word entering English usage comparatively late (1470) and now used mainly in audio visual cultural reproduction, as in ‘soundtrack’. ‘Trek’ is a Dutch word for ‘track’ now used mainly by ecotourists and science fiction fans. ‘Learn’ is a Proto-Indo-European word: the verb ‘learn’ originally meant ‘to find a track’ back in the days when ‘learn’ had a noun form which meant ‘the sole of the foot’. ‘Tract’ and ‘trace’ are Latin words entering English print usage before 1374 and now used mainly in religious, and electronic surveillance, cultural reproduction. ‘Trench’ in 1386 was a French path cut through a forest. ‘Sagacity’ in English print in 1548 was originally the ability to track or hunt, in Proto-Indo-European cultures. ‘Career’ (in English before 1534) was the print made by chariots in ancient Rome. ‘Sleuth’ (1200) was a Norse noun for a track. ‘Investigation’ (1436) was Latin for studying a footprint (Harper). The arrival of symbolic writing scratched on caves, hearth stones, and trees (the original meaning of ‘book’ is tree), brought extremely limited text education close to home. Then, with baked clay tablets, incised boards, slate, bamboo, tortoise shell, cast metal, bark cloth, textiles, vellum, and – later – paper, a portability came to text that allowed any culture to venture away from known ‘foot’ paths with a reduction in the risk of becoming lost and perishing. So began the world of maps, memos, bills of sale, philosophic treatises and epic mythologies. Some of this was printed, such as the mechanical reproduction of coins, but the fine handwriting required of long, extended, portable texts could not be printed until the invention of paper in China about 2000 years ago. Compared to lithic architecture and genes, portable text is a fragile medium, and little survives from the millennia of its innovators. The printing of large non-text designs onto bark-paper and textiles began in neolithic times, but Sui Wen-ti’s imperial memo of 593 AD gives us the earliest written date for printed books, although we can assume they had been published for many years previously. The printed book was a combination of Indian philosophic thought, wood carving, ink chemistry and Chinese paper. The earliest surviving fragment of paper-print technology is ‘Mantras of the Dharani Sutra’, a Buddhist scripture written in the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, unearthed at an early Tang Dynasty site in Xian, China – making the fragment a veteran piece of printing, in the sense that Sanskrit books had been in print for at least a century by the early Tang Dynasty (Chinese Graphic Arts Net). At first, paper books were printed with page-size carved wooden boards. Five hundred years later, Pi Sheng (c.1041) baked individual reusable ceramic characters in a fire and invented the durable moveable type of modern printing (Silk Road 2000). Abandoning carved wooden tablets, the ‘digitizing’ of Chinese moveable type sped up the production of printed texts. In turn, Pi Sheng’s flexible, rapid, sustainable printing process expanded the political-cultural impact of the literati in Asian society. Digitized block text on paper produced a bureaucratic, literate elite so powerful in Asia that Louis XVI of France copied China’s print-based Confucian system of political authority for his own empire, and so began the rise of the examined public university systems, and the civil service systems, of most European states (Watson, Visions). By reason of its durability, its rapid mechanical reproduction, its culturally agreed signs, literate readership, revered authorship, shared ideology, and distributed portability, a ‘print’ can be a powerful cultural network which builds and expands empires. But print also attacks and destroys empires. A case in point is the Spanish conquest of Aztec America: The Aztecs had immense libraries of American literature on bark-cloth scrolls, a technology which predated paper. These libraries were wiped out by the invading Spanish, who carried a different book before them (Ewins). In the industrial age, the printing press and the gun were seen as the weapons of rebellions everywhere. In 1776, American rebels staffed their ‘Homeland Security’ units with paper makers, knowing that defeating the English would be based on printed and written documents (Hahn). Mao Zedong was a book librarian; Mao said political power came out of the barrel of a gun, but Mao himself came out of a library. With the spread of wireless networked servers, political ferment comes out of the barrel of the cell phone and the internet chat room these days. Witness the cell phone displays of a plane hitting a tower that appear immediately after 9/11 in the Middle East, or witness the show trials of a few US and UK lower ranks who published prints of their torturing activities onto the internet: only lower ranks who published prints were arrested or tried. The control of secure servers and satellites is the new press. These days, we live in a global library of burning books – ‘burning’ in the sense that ‘print’ is now a charged silicon medium (Smith, “Intel”) which is usually made readable by connecting the chip to nuclear reactors and petrochemically-fired power stations. World resources burn as we read our screens. Men, women, children burn too, as we watch our infotainment news in comfort while ‘their’ flickering dead faces are printed in our broadcast hearths. The print we watch is not the living; it is the voodoo of the living in the blackout behind the camera, engaging the blood sacrifice of the tormented and the unfortunate. Internet texts are also ‘on fire’ in the third sense of their fragility and instability as a medium: data bases regularly ‘print’ fail-safe copies in an attempt to postpone the inevitable mechanical, chemical and electrical failure that awaits all electronic media in time. Print defines a moral position for everyone. In reporting conflict, in deciding to go to press or censor, any ‘print’ cannot avoid an ethical context, starting with the fact that there is a difference in power between print maker, armed perpetrators, the weak, the peaceful, the publisher, and the viewer. So many human factors attend a text, video or voice ‘print’: its very existence as an aesthetic object, even before publication and reception, speaks of unbalanced, and therefore dynamic, power relationships. For example, Graham Greene departed unscathed from all the highly dangerous battlefields he entered as a novelist: Riot-torn Germany, London Blitz, Belgian Congo, Voodoo Haiti, Vietnam, Panama, Reagan’s Washington, and mafia Europe. His texts are peopled with the injustices of the less fortunate of the twentieth century, while he himself was a member of the fortunate (if not happy) elite, as is anyone today who has the luxury of time to read Greene’s works for pleasure. Ethically a member of London and Paris’ colonizers, Greene’s best writing still electrifies, perhaps partly because he was in the same line of fire as the victims he shared bread with. In fact, Greene hoped daily that he would escape from the dreadful conflicts he fictionalized via a body bag or an urn of ashes (see Sherry). In reading an author’s biography we have one window on the ethical dimensions of authority and print. If a print’s aesthetics are sometimes enduring, its ethical relationships are always mutable. Take the stylized logo of a running athlete: four limbs bent in a rotation of action. This dynamic icon has symbolized ‘good health’ in Hindu and Buddhist culture, from Madras to Tokyo, for thousands of years. The cross of bent limbs was borrowed for the militarized health programs of 1930s Germany, and, because of what was only a brief, recent, isolated yet monstrously horrific segment of its history in print, the bent-limbed swastika is now a vilified symbol in the West. The sign remains ‘impressed’ differently on traditional Eastern culture, and without the taint of Nazism. Dramatic prints are emotionally charged because, in depicting Homo sapiens in danger, or passionately in love, they elicit a hormonal reaction from the reader, the viewer, or the audience. The type of emotions triggered by a print vary across the whole gamut of human chemistry. A recent study of three genres of motion picture prints shows a marked differences in the hormonal responses of men compared to women when viewing a romance, an actioner, and a documentary (see Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton). Society is biochemically diverse in its engagement with printed culture, which raises questions about equality in the arts. Motion picture prints probably comprise around one third of internet traffic, in the form of stolen digitized movie files pirated across the globe via peer-to-peer file transfer networks (p2p), and burnt as DVD laser prints (BBC). There is also a US 40 billion dollar per annum legitimate commerce in DVD laser pressings (Grassl), which would suggest an US 80 billion per annum world total in legitimate laser disc print culture. The actively screen literate, or the ‘sliterati’ as I prefer to call them, research this world of motion picture prints via their peers, their internet information channels, their television programming, and their web forums. Most of this activity occurs outside the ambit of universities and schools. One large site of sliterate (screen literate) practice outside most schooling and official research is the net of online forums at imdb.com (International Movie Data Base). Imdb.com ‘prints’ about 25,000,000 top pages per month to client browsers. Hundreds of sliterati forums are located at imdb, including a forum for the Australian movie, Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan). Ten years after the release of Muriel’s Wedding, young people who are concerned with victimization and bullying still log on to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/> and put their thoughts into print: I still feel so bad for Muriel in the beginning of the movie, when the girls ‘dump’ her, and how much the poor girl cried and cried! Those girls were such biartches…I love how they got their comeuppance! bunniesormaybemidgets’s comment is typical of the current discussion. Muriel’s Wedding was a very popular film in its first cinema edition in Australia and elsewhere. About 30% of the entire over-14 Australian population went to see this photochemical polyester print in the cinemas on its first release. A decade on, the distributors printed a DVD laser disc edition. The story concerns Muriel (played by Toni Collette), the unemployed daughter of a corrupt, ‘police state’ politician. Muriel is bullied by her peers and she withdraws into a fantasy world, deluding herself that a white wedding will rescue her from the torments of her blighted life. Through theft and deceit (the modus operandi of her father) Muriel escapes to the entertainment industry and finds a ‘wicked’ girlfriend mentor. From a rebellious position of stubborn independence, Muriel plays out her fantasy. She gets her white wedding, before seeing both her father and her new married life as hollow shams which have goaded her abandoned mother to suicide. Redefining her life as a ‘game’ and assuming responsibility for her independence, Muriel turns her back on the mainstream, image-conscious, female gang of her oppressed youth. Muriel leaves the story, having rekindled her friendship with her rebel mentor. My methodological approach to viewing the laser disc print was to first make a more accessible, coded record of the entire movie. I was able to code and record the print in real time, using a new metalanguage (Watson, “Eyes”). The advantage of Coding is that ‘thinks’ the same way as film making, it does not sidetrack the analyst into prose. The Code splits the movie print into Vision Action [vision graphic elements, including text] (sound) The Coding splits the vision track into normal action and graphic elements, such as text, so this Coding is an ideal method for extracting all the text elements of a film in real time. After playing the film once, I had four and a half tightly packed pages of the coded story, including all its text elements in square brackets. Being a unique, indexed hard copy, the Coded copy allowed me immediate access to any point of the Muriel’s Wedding saga without having to search the DVD laser print. How are ‘print’ elements used in Muriel’s Wedding? Firstly, a rose-coloured monoprint of Muriel Heslop’s smiling face stares enigmatically from the plastic surface of the DVD picture disc. The print is a still photo captured from her smile as she walked down the aisle of her white wedding. In this print, Toni Collette is the Mona Lisa of Australian culture, except that fans of Muriel’s Wedding know the meaning of that smile is a magical combination of the actor’s art: the smile is both the flush of dreams come true and the frightening self deception that will kill her mother. Inserting and playing the disc, the text-dominant menu appears, and the film commences with the text-dominant opening titles. Text and titles confer a legitimacy on a work, whether it is a trade mark of the laser print owners, or the household names of stars. Text titles confer status relationships on both the presenters of the cultural artifact and the viewer who has entered into a legal license agreement with the owners of the movie. A title makes us comfortable, because the mind always seeks to name the unfamiliar, and a set of text titles does that job for us so that we can navigate the ‘tracks’ and settle into our engagement with the unfamiliar. The apparent ‘truth’ and ‘stability’ of printed text calms our fears and beguiles our uncertainties. Muriel attends the white wedding of a school bully bride, wearing a leopard print dress she has stolen. Muriel’s spotted wild animal print contrasts with the pure white handmade dress of the bride. In Muriel’s leopard textile print, we have the wild, rebellious, impoverished, inappropriate intrusion into the social ritual and fantasy of her high-status tormentor. An off-duty store detective recognizes the printed dress and calls the police. The police are themselves distinguished by their blue-and-white checked prints and other mechanically reproduced impressions of cultural symbols: in steel, brass, embroidery, leather and plastics. Muriel is driven in the police car past the stenciled town sign (‘Welcome To Porpoise Spit’ heads a paragraph of small print). She is delivered to her father, a politician who presides over the policing of his town. In a state where the judiciary, police and executive are hijacked by the same tyrant, Muriel’s father, Bill, pays off the police constables with a carton of legal drugs (beer) and Muriel must face her father’s wrath, which he proceeds to transfer to his detested wife. Like his daughter, the father also wears a spotted brown print costume, but his is a batik print from neighbouring Indonesia (incidentally, in a nation that takes the political status of its batik prints very seriously). Bill demands that Muriel find the receipt for the leopard print dress she claims she has purchased. The legitimate ownership of the object is enmeshed with a printed receipt, the printed evidence of trade. The law (and the paramilitary power behind the law) are legitimized, or contested, by the presence or absence of printed text. Muriel hides in her bedroom, surround by poster prints of the pop group ABBA. Torn-out prints of other people’s weddings adorn her mirror. Her face is embossed with the clown-like primary colours of the marionette as she lifts a bouquet to her chin and stares into the real time ‘print’ of her mirror image. Bill takes the opportunity of a business meeting with Japanese investors to feed his entire family at ‘Charlie Chan’’s restaurant. Muriel’s middle sister sloppily wears her father’s state election tee shirt, printed with the text: ‘Vote 1, Bill Heslop. You can’t stop progress.’ The text sets up two ironic gags that are paid off on the dialogue track: “He lost,’ we are told. ‘Progress’ turns out to be funding the concreting of a beach. Bill berates his daughter Muriel: she has no chance of becoming a printer’s apprentice and she has failed a typing course. Her dysfunction in printed text has been covered up by Bill: he has bribed the typing teacher to issue a printed diploma to his daughter. In the gambling saloon of the club, under the arrays of mechanically repeated cultural symbols lit above the poker machines (‘A’ for ace, ‘Q’ for queen, etc.), Bill’s secret girlfriend Diedre risks giving Muriel a cosmetics job. Another text icon in lights announces the surf nightclub ‘Breakers’. Tania, the newly married queen bitch who has made Muriel’s teenage years a living hell, breaks up with her husband, deciding to cash in his negotiable text documents – his Bali honeymoon tickets – and go on an island holiday with her girlfriends instead. Text documents are the enduring site of agreements between people and also the site of mutations to those agreements. Tania dumps Muriel, who sobs and sobs. Sobs are a mechanical, percussive reproduction impressed on the sound track. Returning home, we discover that Muriel’s older brother has failed a printed test and been rejected for police recruitment. There is a high incidence of print illiteracy in the Heslop family. Mrs Heslop (Jeannie Drynan), for instance, regularly has trouble at the post office. Muriel sees a chance to escape the oppression of her family by tricking her mother into giving her a blank cheque. Here is the confluence of the legitimacy of a bank’s printed negotiable document with the risk and freedom of a blank space for rebel Muriel’s handwriting. Unable to type, her handwriting has the power to steal every cent of her father’s savings. She leaves home and spends the family’s savings at an island resort. On the island, the text print-challenged Muriel dances to a recording (sound print) of ABBA, her hand gestures emphasizing her bewigged face, which is made up in an impression of her pop idol. Her imitation of her goddesses – the ABBA women, her only hope in a real world of people who hate or avoid her – is accompanied by her goddesses’ voices singing: ‘the mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself.’ Before jpeg and gif image downloads, we had postcard prints and snail mail. Muriel sends a postcard to her family, lying about her ‘success’ in the cosmetics business. The printed missal is clutched by her father Bill (Bill Hunter), who proclaims about his daughter, ‘you can’t type but you really impress me’. Meanwhile, on Hibiscus Island, Muriel lies under a moonlit palm tree with her newly found mentor, ‘bad girl’ Ronda (Rachel Griffiths). In this critical scene, where foolish Muriel opens her heart’s yearnings to a confidante she can finally trust, the director and DP have chosen to shoot a flat, high contrast blue filtered image. The visual result is very much like the semiabstract Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Utamaro. This Japanese printing style informed the rise of European modern painting (Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., were all important collectors and students of Ukiyo-e prints). The above print and text elements in Muriel’s Wedding take us 27 minutes into her story, as recorded on a single page of real-time handwritten Coding. Although not discussed here, the Coding recorded the complete film – a total of 106 minutes of text elements and main graphic elements – as four pages of Code. Referring to this Coding some weeks after it was made, I looked up the final code on page four: taxi [food of the sea] bq. Translation: a shop sign whizzes past in the film’s background, as Muriel and Ronda leave Porpoise Spit in a taxi. Over their heads the text ‘Food Of The Sea’ flashes. We are reminded that Muriel and Ronda are mermaids, fantastic creatures sprung from the brow of author PJ Hogan, and illuminated even today in the pantheon of women’s coming-of-age art works. That the movie is relevant ten years on is evidenced by the current usage of the Muriel’s Wedding online forum, an intersection of wider discussions by sliterate women on imdb.com who, like Muriel, are observers (and in some cases victims) of horrific pressure from ambitious female gangs and bullies. Text is always a minor element in a motion picture (unless it is a subtitled foreign film) and text usually whizzes by subliminally while viewing a film. By Coding the work for [text], all the text nuances made by the film makers come to light. While I have viewed Muriel’s Wedding on many occasions, it has only been in Coding it specifically for text that I have noticed that Muriel is a representative of that vast class of talented youth who are discriminated against by print (as in text) educators who cannot offer her a life-affirming identity in the English classroom. Severely depressed at school, and failing to type or get a printer’s apprenticeship, Muriel finds paid work (and hence, freedom, life, identity, independence) working in her audio visual printed medium of choice: a video store in a new city. Muriel found a sliterate admirer at the video store but she later dumped him for her fantasy man, before leaving him too. One of the points of conjecture on the imdb Muriel’s Wedding site is, did Muriel (in the unwritten future) get back together with admirer Brice Nobes? That we will never know. While a print forms a track that tells us where culture has been, a print cannot be the future, a print is never animate reality. At the end of any trail of prints, one must lift one’s head from the last impression, and negotiate satisfaction in the happening world. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Memo Shows US General Approved Interrogations.” 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. British Broadcasting Commission. “Films ‘Fuel Online File-Sharing’.’’ 22 Feb. 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3890527.stm>. Bretherton, I. “The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.” 1994. 23 Jan. 2005 http://www.psy.med.br/livros/autores/bowlby/bowlby.pdf>. Bunniesormaybemidgets. Chat Room Comment. “What Did Those Girls Do to Rhonda?” 28 Mar. 2005 http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/>. Chinese Graphic Arts Net. Mantras of the Dharani Sutra. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.cgan.com/english/english/cpg/engcp10.htm>. Ewins, R. Barkcloth and the Origins of Paper. 1991. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.justpacific.com/pacific/papers/barkcloth~paper.html>. Grassl K.R. The DVD Statistical Report. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.corbell.com>. Hahn, C. M. The Topic Is Paper. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.nystamp.org/Topic_is_paper.html>. Harper, D. Online Etymology Dictionary. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.etymonline.com/>. Mask of Zorro, The. Screenplay by J McCulley. UA, 1920. Muriel’s Wedding. Dir. PJ Hogan. Perf. Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, and Jeannie Drynan. Village Roadshow, 1994. O’Hagan, Jack. On The Road to Gundagai. 1922. 2 Apr. 2005 http://ingeb.org/songs/roadtogu.html>. Poole, J.H., P.L. Tyack, A.S. Stoeger-Horwath, and S. Watwood. “Animal Behaviour: Elephants Are Capable of Vocal Learning.” Nature 24 Mar. 2005. Sanchez, R. “Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy.” 14 Sept. 2003. 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. Schultheiss, O.C., M.M. Wirth, and S.J. Stanton. “Effects of Affiliation and Power Motivation Arousal on Salivary Progesterone and Testosterone.” Hormones and Behavior 46 (2005). Sherry, N. The Life of Graham Greene. 3 vols. London: Jonathan Cape 2004, 1994, 1989. Silk Road. Printing. 2000. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.silk-road.com/artl/printing.shtml>. Smith, T. “Elpida Licenses ‘DVD on a Chip’ Memory Tech.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. —. “Intel Boffins Build First Continuous Beam Silicon Laser.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. Watson, R. S. “Eyes And Ears: Dramatic Memory Slicing and Salable Media Content.” Innovation and Speculation, ed. Brad Haseman. Brisbane: QUT. [in press] Watson, R. S. Visions. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Watson, Robert. "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>. APA Style Watson, R. (Jun. 2005) "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>.